in World News Obama says ‘Fox News in every bar and restaurant’ helped Trump win election
By
President Obama said Fox News “in every bar and restaurant,” coupled with social media, contributed to Hillary Clinton’s surprising defeat on Nov. 8 by preventing voters from learning what benefits the Democrats had delivered to them
During an interview with Rolling Stone on Nov. 9 and published Tuesday, Obama dismissed the suggestion that his party had overlooked the “cohort of working-class white voters” that gave President-elect Trump his upset victory.
“Part of it is Fox News in every bar and restaurant in big chunks of the country,” Obama said. “But part of it is also Democrats not working at a grassroots level, being in there, showing up, making arguments. That part of the critique of the Democratic Party is accurate.”
Obama argued his administration had actually boosted the blue-collar communities that swung so hard for Trump after voting for Obama in 2008 and 2012, citing the survival of the auto industry in Michigan as an example.
“The challenge we had is not that we’ve neglected these communities from a policy perspective. That is, I think, an incorrect interpretation,” Obama said.
“What is true, though, is that whatever policy prescriptions that we’ve been proposing don’t reach, are not heard, by the folks in these communities,” he added. “And what they do hear is Obama or Hillary are trying to take away their guns or they disrespect you.”
The president in part blamed Facebook and conservative media for blocking his progressive message from resonating in the places Trump swept in the presidential race.
“One of the challenges that we’ve been talking about now is the way social media and the Internet have changed what people receive as news,” Obama said. “I was just talking to my political director, David Simas. He was looking at his Facebook page and some links from high school friends of his, some of whom were now passing around crazy stuff about, you know, Obama has banned the Pledge of Allegiance.”
Many Democrats have turned to a purported rise in “fake news” as a possible explanation for Clinton’s loss. Obama has joined them in suggesting the proliferation of articles they deem false or misleading unfairly soured Americans on Clinton in the run-up to Election Day.
Although Obama expressed disappointment in Trump’s victory, he said it did not take him totally by surprise.
“I think the odds of Donald Trump winning were always around 20 percent,” he said. “That [doesn’t] seem like a lot, but one out of five is not that unusual. It’s not a miracle.”