In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria which aired Sunday, President Obama said Donald Trump has been able to “appeal to a certain group of folks who feel left out,” but “that’s not the majority of America.”
“I’m wondering what you make of it because you’ve written in the past that the Kansas side of your family is white working class, Scotch-Irish,” Zakaria said. “These are the people who support Trump. These are the people who seem to have the most suspicion about you. What do you make of that?”
Obama answered by discussing a long United States tradition of immigration and inclusion, but he also acknowledges that some people — “once they’re included” — will worry about outsiders coming in and ruining everything. Obama believes this isn’t a new phenomenon, however:
“And what I’m always reminding people is that although you’ll see bumps — whether it’s the know-nothings or other spasms of other anti-immigrant sentiment directed at the Irish, or Southern Europeans as opposed to Northern Europeans, or the Chinese, or today Latinos or Muslims, the long-term trend is people get absorbed, people get assimilated, and we benefit from this incredible country in which the measure of your patriotism and how American you are is not the color of your skin, your last name, your faith, but rather your adherence to a creed, your belief in certain principles and values. And I don’t expect that that’s going to change simply because Mr. Trump’s gotten a little more attention than usual.”
Obama conceded that Trump has been able to zero in on people who worry about change and want things to stay the same in a social sense. And the president acknowledges that some of these people have “legitimate concerns,” but that it manifests as fear. The President assured Zakaria that those people are representative of the United States as a whole.
“If you talk to younger people — the next generation of Americans — they completely reject the kinds of positions he’s taking,” the president said.
(Via CNN)
