Donald Trump was initially optimistic early in Barack Obama’s presidency, and gave him a “B+” grade in 2009.
Trump said Obama inherited a “total mess” from his predecessor, George W. Bush, and said at the time that Obama was trying to dig out from under it.
“He is really trying, but he inherited a total mess. However, I think he will be successful, although I also believe things could get a bit worse before they get better. He’s doing as well as can be expected,” Trump told CNN host Larry King in 2009, in a clip unearthed by The Daily Beast.
Back in the day, Trump had a blog.
“I gave [Obama] an overall grade of at least a B+ and I think he’s lived up to his challenges in a big way. As the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told him, ‘You’ve changed America’s relationship with the world,'” Trump wrote on March 18, 2009, two months after the president was inaugurated in January.
Trump is a well-known critic of President George W. Bush and his brother, former presidential rival Jeb Bush. Trump voted for John McCain in 2008 against Obama, but has said that Abraham Lincoln couldn’t have gotten elected that year because Republican incumbent Bush was so deeply unpopular.
At the time of Trump’s comments, Obama was still nationally highly popular and had a 63 percent approval rating according to Gallup. Obama had just been elected and inaugurated amid the financial crisis.
Obama would soon fall out of favor for Trump and millions of others, as he eventually passed the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
By 2011, Trump was agitating that he might run for president as a Republican, and that the president might not have been born in the United States. He opted against a run then, and instead endorsed Mitt Romney in February 2012.
