Facing rejection of his worldview on both sides of the Atlantic, President Obama doubled down Tuesday on the dangers of populism and declared that Donald Trump’s supporters don’t realize how good they’ve had it for the past eight years.
Declaring, “My vision’s right,” the president said Mr. Trump won the presidential election by exploiting conservatives’ “troubling” rhetoric to play on Americans’ skepticism of globalization and diversity. He accused Republicans of fanning flames of “anger and fear in the American population” over economic uncertainty to help Mr. Trump win, and warned that similar forces are threatening the European Union.
“You’ve seen some of the rhetoric among Republican elected officials and activists and media,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference in Athens, Greece, with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. “Some of it [was] pretty troubling and not necessarily connected to facts, but being used effectively to mobilize people. And obviously President-elect Trump tapped into that particular strain within the Republican Party and then was able to broaden that enough and get enough votes to win the election.”
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