Blame Fox News for stirring up resentment of the poor that’s hurting antipoverty efforts, President Obama said Tuesday.
In a forum on poverty at Georgetown University, Obama bemoaned that in recent decades, “the effort to suggest that the poor are sponges, leeches, don’t want to work, are lazy, are undeserving, got traction,” and blamed the conservative-leaning cable channel for its role in the trend.
“I have to say, if you watch Fox News on a regular basis, it’s a constant menu. They will find folks that make me mad. I don’t know where they find them,” Obama said. “They’re all like, ‘I don’t want to work, I just want a free Obamaphone, or whatever. That becomes a narrative that gets worked up.”
“And very rarely do you hear an interview of a waitress, which is much more typical, who is raising two kids and doing everything right but still can’t pay the bills,” Obama added.
In his talk at the Catholic-Evangelical Leadership Summit on Overcoming Poverty, Obama suggested that U.S. poverty has been exacerbated by elites segregating themselves from the middle class and poor, and disinvesting in public goods that benefit less well off people.
“We don’t make those same common investments that we used to. And it’s had an impact,” the president said.
He blamed the media in general, and Fox News in particular, for fostering negative attitudes toward either the wealthy or the poor.
The public will need to have a better understanding of families who struggle in the current economy, Obama said, in order to “change how John Boehner and Mitch McConnell think,” referring to the Republican leadership in Congress.
The president indirectly criticized the Republicans’ budget-cutting proposals in his opening remarks, calling instead for new spending on education and early childhood programs.
