Appearing on Friday’s Ellen DeGeneres Show, President Obama lamented the “Twitter culture” in which people “expect quick answers without sacrifice” and complained about supposedly unfair media coverage: “The amount of stuff that is just put out there on the internet or on sometimes news broadcasts that are just factually inaccurate is surprising and it’s really hard to catch up.”
As an example of such imagined injustice, the commander-in-chief whined: “Since I came into office, we reduced the deficit by two-thirds, but if you ask the average person, they’re sure that spending has shot up. And the reason is because there are a bunch of folks who say that we’re wildly overspending, even though we aren’t.”
Obama failed to mention that the national debt surpassed $19 trillion on his watch.
He implored viewers: “And that’s just one small example, but it happens all the time. And that’s something that we have to fix, partly by people paying more attention to what’s going on every single day.”
Here is a transcript of the exchange aired on February 12:
(...)
ELLEN DEGENERES: Do you look at what’s going on now in the campaigning and do you miss it in any way? And do you look at them and go, “Ooh, you’re making big mistakes”?
BARACK OBAMA: I don’t miss it.
[LAUGHTER]
It’s always good to get out of Washington, which can sometimes be a little depressing.
DEGENERES: What will – to get out of Washington or to – what part is depressing?
OBAMA: Well, Washington.
[LAUGHTER]
DEGENERES: That’s – I would think so. I mean, really.
OBAMA: No, but –
DEGENERES: You’re kind of not kidding. You’re kind of not kidding.
OBAMA: I’m kind of not kidding.
DEGENERES: Yeah, I mean, what was the biggest surprise for you? When you became president, what surprised you the most?
OBAMA: Well, the fact is that, most of the time if something reaches my desk it means it’s really hard, which is why they bumped it up to me because nobody else could figure it out. And you know, when I came in, the economy was collapsing, we were about to go into a great depression. We had to make a whole bunch of decisions about saving the auto industry or making sure that businesses got back on their feet or the housing market would recover. And you know, you’re having to make big bets with incomplete information. You’re not sure that everything’s gonna work.
And I think that part of what’s happened in this Instagram, you know, Twitter culture is that we expect quick answers without sacrifice, without having to make choices, and politicians play into that. But the truth of the matter is, you know, the world is a big complicated place. The good news is, is that we’re generally going in the right direction and my hope is, is that we’ll continue to do so.
DEGENERES: That’s everybody’s hope, but let’s talk about me. I feel like – don’t you think if more people danced and just had fun instead of –
OBAMA: Yes.
DEGENERES: Everyone takes everything so seriously and I think that we have these, you know, people that all – I’m kind of kidding there obviously – but I think we have people – that we all have the one thing in common, which is we just want a good quality of life.
OBAMA: Right.
DEGENERES: And then we have these people that feel one way, and if someone feels another way, we tend to hate them. And it’s just –
OBAMA: That’s not helpful.
DEGENERES: No, it’s not helpful.
OBAMA: The amount of stuff that is just put out there on the internet or on sometimes news broadcasts that are just factually inaccurate is surprising and it’s really hard to catch up. Since I came into office, we reduced the deficit by two-thirds, but if you ask the average person, they’re sure that spending has shot up. And the reason is because there are a bunch of folks who say that we’re wildly overspending, even though we aren’t.
DEGENERES: Right.
OBAMA: And that’s just one small example, but it happens all the time. And that’s something that we have to fix, partly by people paying more attention to what’s going on every single day.
(...)
