Barack Obama said that Donald Trump’s “constant” mentioning of him is “very strange”—but also revealing.
The former president appeared on the popular sports podcast All The Smoke on Wednesday, where he was asked how he manages to keep calm publicly in the face of Trump’s frequent attacks on his legacy.
“Don’t just want to cuss his a-- out sometimes?” he was asked by host and former NBA star Matt Barnes.
“I mean, the thing about it is—look, you got to ask him what it is that… the obsession,” Obama replied. “Obviously, you know, I have a room in his head—a suite in his head.”
“But the thing about it is that was always clear to me: Look, first of all, when I was president, the last thing I had time to do was worry about what somebody said or what my predecessor did. They’re gone. I’ve got work to do,” Obama continued. “If you’re doing the job right, every day, you’ve got five, 10 things that are real hard, and you have to be constantly focused.”
“The idea that I’d be worrying about somebody who came before and me trying to measure, ‘What’s he done today? Look, constantly worrying about that is a strange thing to me,” he said. “It shows me somebody who’s not focused on the American people and the job they’re supposed to do.”
Trump’s frequent mentions of Obama have only increased since the former president first left office, according to CNN, which reported that Trump mentioned Obama’s name 537 times—an average of 1.8 times per day and an increase from both years prior, according to the outlet.
He hasn’t slowed down in his second term, several years later. While deflecting from the steadily rising costs of his Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation, when asked why he hadn’t delivered on the shorter timeline and lower costs for the project, he told reporters on Monday, “Are you ready? Barack Hussein Obama.”
The 44th president said that he took a very different approach to the presidency than his late-night posting successor.
“The other thing that I learned pretty early in this gig was you have to screen out the noise in order for you to understand what’s in front of you and deal with it,” he explained on Wednesday. “My whole presidency, I never watched cable TV, never watched cable news, never read, I didn’t have social media.”
“There were people on my staff whose job it was to monitor what are folks saying because you also want to have input when you’re getting constructive criticism or when the American people are all like, ‘Look we’re upset about something.” You need to get that feedback loop. And the flip side of that is you also then don’t get puffed up when things are going good.”
Obama also said that despite Trump’s constant negative commentary about him, he has never seen that energy in face-to-face interactions with Trump.
“The other thing I believe in, and part of what we try to teach in our leadership training, is I believe in face-to-face,” he said. “I believe in conversation. So if this—whoever you were talking about—was in front of me, which has happened a couple times, he doesn’t talk like that because he knows better.”
“I think there is—that filter of the phone creates a situation where people just say kind of crazy stuff that they would never say to your face with no consequences,” he added.
