President Trump fired back at Barack Obama during remarks Friday afternoon, claiming he fell asleep while watching the former president slam him and congressional Republicans in a speech aimed at midterm election voters.
“I watched it, but I fell asleep,” Trump quipped during a fundraiser in North Dakota. “I’ve found he’s very good for sleeping.”
The president accused Obama of “trying to take credit for this incredible thing that’s happening to our country,” hours after the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued its monthly report showing steady job and wage growth in August.
“If the Democrats got in with their agenda in November almost 2 years ago, instead of having 4.2 [percent] up, I believe, honestly, you’d have 4.2 down,” Trump said, referring to rate of economic growth in the second quarter.
Obama has largely avoided the spotlight since leaving office, but in a rare speech on Friday the former Democratic president Americans of the “pivotal” moment they face heading into the November midterm elections.
Claiming the U.S. is currently facing a “backlash moment,” Obama told college students in Illinois “it did not start with Donald Trump.”
“He is a symptom, not the cause. He is just capitalizing on resentment that politicians have been fanning for years. A fear, an anger that is rooted in our past but is also borne in our enormous upheavals that have taken place in your brief lifetimes,” Obama said.
The speech ended shortly before Trump took the stage in North Dakota, where Republicans hope to unseat Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp this fall.
