In an interview with NBC’s “Today” that aired Wednesday morning, President Obama said that Republicans have hurt their ability to govern by constantly criticizing Obama and Democrats.
Obama made the comments when asked about Donald Trump’s personal attacks against him.
“What Mr. Trump has done is to make more explicit and branded what really has been going on for a long time. This isn’t new stuff,” Obama said. “We don’t take it personally.”
“We do think that it makes it difficult to run the country, not just for me, but for Republican leaders. If you think about the fact that Republicans right now control both the House and the Senate and yet they can’t even pass their own agenda,” he continued. “Part of the reason is that if you are telling your base, if you’re telling your voters that the other side is not just wrong, but bad and unpatriotic and different and are undermining America, well then, what they’re going to say to you is, ‘You can’t work with them. You can’t compromise.'”
He noted that while he disagreed with his former opponents Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), “there wasn’t a sense that we couldn’t find common ground on certain things.”
Watch part of the interview via NBC News:
