Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
President Barack Obama said in an interview published Wednesday that the way conservative media “vilified” him affected his confidence. “In 2008, I was never subjected to the kind of concentrated vilification of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the whole conservative-media ecosystem, and so as a consequence, even for my first two years as a senator I was polling at 70 percent,” he said in comments to The Atlantic. His comments were included in the “My President Was Black” cover story, with interview excerpts released Tuesday and Wednesday. Just weeks before he’s due to hand over control of the White House, the outgoing president opened up about the personal toll the media had on him. Toward the end of the 2008 race, he said, certain news outlets began portraying to voters “some image of me as trying to take away their stuff and give it to black people, and coddle criminals.” That depiction was “deployed in full force” once he took office, he said, “and it had an impact in terms of how a large portion of white voters would see me.” Even now, he said, many Trump supporters “are responding to a fictional character named Barack Obama who they see on Fox News or who they hear about through Rush Limbaugh.”