Former President Obama on Tuesday labeled the Republican Party as “the minority party in this country” in a late-night interview.
The former president told “The Daily Show” host Trevor Noah that the Republican Party does not look like “the minority party” due to governmental structures like the Senate and the Electoral College that give it more influence.
“They have certain built-in advantages around power given their population distribution and how our government works,” Obama said.
“But the truth of the matter is that 60 percent of the people are occupying what I would consider a more reality-based universe, and those are the constituents we’re speaking to and that is a more diverse group,” he continued.
Obama cited his new book “A Promised Land” that was released last month in the interview, saying the first time he went to the House Republican caucus he noticed a lack of diversity among the lawmakers.
“It is much more homogeneous, which means that, yes, they have to do less work,” the former president told Noah. “But it also means that they can talk to themselves and as a consequence of the way our democracy, our republic is structured, they don’t have to appeal to as broad of a base.”
“That’s not fair,” Obama continued. “But you know I at least would prefer not having the progressives model ourselves … on the current Republican Party. That doesn’t feel like a good strategy to me to get the outcomes that we want.”
The former president has done several interviews over the last month to promote his book.
In the memoir, he asserts that his election as the first Black president “triggered a deep-seated panic” among some in the nation that President Trump took advantage of when “pedaling assertions that I had not been born in the United States and thus was an illegitimate president.”
“For millions of Americans spooked by a Black man in the White House, he promised an elixir for their racial anxiety,” Obama wrote.