President Barack Obama on Sunday linked Fox News, which he suggested was a “Republican news channel,” to the success of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate.
During an interview on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked the president if he felt responsible for the angry voters supporting GOP hopeful Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.
“There’s no doubt that I feel frustrated about it,” the president said. “Number one, we’re still shell shocked from what happened in 2007-2008… People lost homes, lost jobs, lost life savings and they still don’t fully know how that happened and was the system fixed in a way they can have confidence in.”
Wallace wondered why Obama had not “fixed that in eight years.”
“The perception is going to be changing over time as people see results,” Obama replied. “But — and this is the big but — nobody is going to be 100 percent satisfied in a democracy like ours with every outcome.”
“And I think the danger both among Republicans and among Democrats who just listen to each other or they just listen to people that already agree with them — you know, Republicans have their own TV station,” he noted.
“Go ahead,” Wallace interrupted. “You can say Fox News.”
“They’ve got their own publications, their own blogs,” the president continued. “Democrats, same thing. Increasingly what happens is, we don’t hear each other. And so what happens then is when Republicans promise to repeal Obamacare and it doesn’t get repealed, they’re outraged.”
Obama noted that Democrats had also been outraged when they failed to get a public health insurance option in the Affordable Care Act.
“This can be our century just like the 20th century was as long as we don’t tear each other apart because our politics values sensationalism or conflict over cooperation,” Obama concluded. “If we get that part right, nobody can stop us.”
Watch the video below from Fox News Sunday, broadcast April 10, 2016.
