With Republicans still dealing with the fallout from their midterm defeats, Donald Trump has chosen to revisit an old political rivalry.
In an interview with Stephen A. Smith, he claimed he could easily defeat Barack Obama in an election, insisting he had won more votes and carried more states. Obama, he declared, was “highly overrated.”
Smith asked Trump whether he really believed he could beat Obama. The president’s answer was immediate: “I think I could beat him easily.”
Trump went on to compare their election records, saying: “I got many more votes than he got, and I got many more votes in the states.”
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He was particularly keen to talk about Texas and Florida. “If you take a look at Texas, I have the all-time record. Florida, I have the all-time record,” he told Smith before taking another shot at Obama.
“I think he’s highly overrated, yeah,” Trump said.
The interview also offered Trump a chance to discuss the Republican Party’s poor performance in the midterms. Even he acknowledged that some of the candidates put forward by his party had failed to connect with voters.
Asked about the losses, he admitted that voters “didn’t like the candidates” Republicans had chosen.
One of those candidates was Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whom Trump backed against incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn. Paxton ultimately lost the general election to Democrat James Talarico, despite receiving the president’s endorsement.
Trump was not particularly interested in reconsidering that decision. He accused Cornyn of being “very disloyal to me” and explained why he had supported Paxton.
“He was disloyal at certain parts, when it was perhaps maybe a good thing for him to be, when I wasn’t in as much favor as at other times,” Trump said.
“But he wasn’t for me, and I remember that. You know, I have a very good memory.”
The conversation also turned to the war in Iran, which has become another political headache for the administration as energy prices rise and public dissatisfaction grows.
Trump acknowledged that the military campaign could hurt him politically, even as he defended the decision.
“I think historically that’s going to be a great decision, I hope,” he told Smith. “But short-term, I guess, it’s tougher politically. I knew that.”
Trump has also repeatedly floated the idea of serving a third presidential term, despite the constitutional two-term limit.
Trump’s hostility toward Obama goes back well before their time in the White House. He spent years promoting the false claim that Obama was not born in the United States, eventually acknowledging in 2016: “President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period.” He offered no apology for the years he had spent questioning the former president’s citizenship.
Featured image via YouTube screengrab
