President Obama said in Argentina Wednesday that Republicans distort his record so much that they might argue next that he wants to “turn the United States into Cuba.”
Obama was participating in a town hall with young people in Buenos Aires when a member of the audience asked him about the rise of Donald Trump and whether he thought the would win the presidency.
But Obama’s official interpreter translated the question to be non-Trump specific, and said it was focused on the rightward swing of the Republican party as a whole this election cycle.
At one point during his lengthy response and criticism of the GOP’s rightward turn, Obama said Republicans are so intent on opposing him, they would say he is going to “turn the United States into Cuba.”
“They tend to exaggerate,” he remarked.
The president admitted that the Republican Party has moved to the right “very strongly” during his presidency and said “there’s a lot of reasons for that.”
Obama rejected some critics’ arguments that he has taken the government in a sharp leftward direction, and Trump phenomenon is a response to that.
“The Republican Party, because of their efforts to oppose me, found themselves taking positions further and further away from the mainstream,” he said.
The anti-Obama strategy, he said, was successful in getting more Republicans elected in Congress in off years because voter turn-our is lower when voters aren’t choosing a president. But it does Republicans a disservice in general presidential elections when turn-out is higher and the entire nation is more tuned into the process, he said.
He also blamed the rightward trend of the GOP to social media choices and the impact that has on how information is presented.
“People are getting their information in sound bites … they can decide I’m only going to read the thing I agree with already as opposed to getting a broader opinion,” he said. “… It reinforced a politics that was based on what they opposed … and primarily they were opposed to me.”
