Donald Trump accuses President Obama of "roadblocks," then says transition going well
President-elect Donald Trump escalated his rhetoric against President Obama on Wednesday, accusing the current president of “roadblocks” leading up to Inauguration Day.
However, by that afternoon, Mr. Trump seemed to have changed his tune.
In a tweet Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump said he was “doing [his] best to disregard” the “inflammatory … statements and roadblocks” from Mr. Obama:
Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks.Thought it was going to be a smooth transition - NOT!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016
Mr. Trump was presumably still responding to Mr. Obama’s comments in a podcast interview released Monday, in which he said he would have been able to “mobilize” Americans against Mr. Trump had he been able to run for a third term in 2016.
“I am confident in this vision because I’m confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it,” Mr. Obama said in the interview with David Axelrod, his former senior political advisor, which was released on Axelrod’s podcast AxeFiles. “I know that in conversations that I’ve had with people around the country, even some people who disagreed with me, they would say the vision, the direction that you point towards is the right one.”
These comments appear to have gotten under Mr. Trump’s skin: Wednesday’s tweet is the third in three days about Mr. Obama.
On Monday, Mr. Trump tweeted that there is “NO WAY” Mr. Obama could have defeated him if he had been able to run for a third term this year:
President Obama said that he thinks he would have won against me. He should say that but I say NO WAY! - jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2016
And on Tuesday, Mr. Trump said Mr. Obama “campaigned hard (and personally) in the very important swing states, and lost”:
President Obama campaigned hard (and personally) in the very important swing states, and lost.The voters wanted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 27, 2016
Mr. Trump and Mr. Obama seemed to move past the scathing campaign trail rhetoric in the weeks immediately following Election Day, talking by phone on several occasions and speaking in positive terms about their interactions.
In a meeting with The New York Times in November, Mr. Trump described his “great meeting” with Mr. Obama. “I didn’t know if I’d like him,” Mr. Trump said. “I probably thought that maybe I wouldn’t, but I did. I really enjoyed him a lot.”
While it seemed that Mr. Trump’s tweets indicated a cooling in the relationship between the two men, it now appears to have thawed once again after Mr. Trump told reporters he received a friendly phone call from Mr. Obama on Wednesday afternoon. When asked if he thought the transition was not going smoothly, Mr. Trump replied: “I think very very smoothly. It’s going good. You don’t think so?”
Mr. Trump has been critical of several of Mr. Obama’s recent decisions, including the abstention on the United Nations Security Council vote condemning Israeli settlements.
Mr. Obama, too, has offered veiled criticisms of Mr. Trump in recent public speeches and appearances. For example, speaking aside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Pearl Harbor on Tuesday, Mr. Obama said that “even when hatred burns hottest, even when the tug of tribalism is at its most primal, we must resist the urge to turn inward. We must resist the urge to demonize those who are different.”