After President Barack Obama said in an interview with former senior adviser David Axelrod that he thinks he would have won if he had run this year, President-elect Donald Trump fired back on Twitter with a clear conviction of his own.
"NO WAY!" Trump tweeted.
In Obama's interview, which aired on CNN's "The Axe Files" podcast Monday, the president acknowledged he was acting a bit like a "Monday morning quarterback," analyzing the election after it played out. But Obama said he thought his message of "hope and change" still resonates with voters — and that it could have propelled him to victory over Trump.
"I am confident in this vision because I'm confident that if I — if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could've mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it," Obama said. "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 toward is the right one."
Trump responded on Twitter later in the day, strongly disagreeing with the president's assessment and declaring the "world was gloomy before I won — there was no hope."
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 The world was gloomy before I won - there was no hope. Now the market is up nearly 10% and Christmas spending is over a trillion dollars!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2016 After tanking upon Trump's unexpected victory, the stock market has been on a tear since his election as the 45th president.
Trump's reference to Christmas spending appears to come from the annual Deloitte Holiday Survey, which predicted Holiday sales to exceed $1 trillion this year, though the survey concluded that "overall, gift spending intentions remain similar to 2015."
In his interview with Axelrod, Obama made it clear he wasn't faulting Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for losing, saying he thought "there was a double standard with her" that the press and the public had formed over her decades in the spotlight.
Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon tweeted a response to Obama's claim, agreeing that the president could have won. He added that she could have, too, if FBI Director James Comey hadn't reopened the investigation into her private email server days before the election, a move that Clinton aides have repeatedly blamed for costing her the win.
"I agree Obama would have beaten Trump," Fallon wrote. "I also think Clinton could have, but for Comey. Despite his win, Trump is very weak."
Though Trump secured a large win in the Electoral College, Clinton won almost 3 million more votes nationwide.
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