Obama Says He Would've Beaten Trump in Third Term

In an interview released Monday with David Axelrod - President Barack Obama's longtime friend and former adviser - Obama confidently affirmed that he thinks he could've won over President-elect Donald Trump if he'd run a third time.

"I am confident in this vision because I'm confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could've mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it," Obama said to Axelrod on his podcast, The Axe Files. "I know that in conversations that I've had with people around the country, even some people who disagreed with me, they would say the vision, the direction that you point towards is the right one.

Of course the whole situation is purely hypothetical - a Constitutional amendment limits presidents to two terms. But just a few hours after the podcast was released, Trump responded to Obama's assertion on Twitter. "President Obama said that he thinks he would have won against me," the tweet read. "He should say that but I say NO WAY! - jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc."


Hillary Clinton has been criticized for losing a number of voters who elected Obama to Trump, but Obama was complimentary of her campaign, and said she faced a serious double standard.

"Hillary Clinton performed wonderfully under really tough circumstances," Obama said. "I think there was a double standard with her. For whatever reason, there's been a longstanding difficulty in her relationship with the press that meant her flaws were wildly amplified. But. the reason I bring this up is because we've both been in campaigns. If you think you're winning, then you have a tendency, just like in sports, maybe to play it safer."

He added: "But if she was looking at the campaign and saying OK, I'm winning right now, and her economic agenda was in fact very progressive. But understandably, I think she looked and said well, given my opponent and the things he's saying and what he's doing, we should focus on that. In retrospect, we can all be Monday morning quarterbacks."