President Barack Obama thinks that the 2016 presidential election could trigger the “corrective” he thinks the Republican Party needs in order to not fall prey to its most “extreme” elements.
“What we’ve seen within the Republican Party has been a refusal even to engage on a whole range of issues like climate change, for example, that are vitally important,” Obama said in an interview published Thursday with The Daily Targum, Rutgers University’s student newspaper. “The issue here has never been both sides stuck in a corner, unwilling to meet in the middle. The challenge has been a Republican Party that has become increasingly ideological and extreme, and I think that’s reflected in the current presidential race.”
“Now the good news is that political parties go through these moments, and there are a lot of good people out there who are Republicans who don’t recognize the direction that the party is taking,” the President continued. “My sense is that there will be a corrective at some point, perhaps after this next presidential election.”
Obama has heavily criticized presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump throughout the 2016 election cycle for his rhetoric and policy proposals.
He agreed to grant a phone interview to the Targum’s editor-in-chief a week before he travels to New Jersey to speak at Rutgers’ commencement ceremony.
h/t Politico
