Obama targets Trump, says he’s exploiting fears of working class

He added that especially people with blue collar jobs have found it harder in this new economy and Trump has been trying to exploit this anger and misdirect it towards the government.

Trump has called Mexican immigrants rapists and criminal and has called for banning non-American muslims from entering the country, using rhetoric that could have ended another campaign.

President Barack Obama was confronted Mon.by an NPR reporter who asked throughout a sit-down interview why the general public does not have much assurance within the White Home’s current technique to combat the Islamic State.

Obama’s interview with NPR came as the president has struggled to calm public fears over terrorism in the wake of attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif.

Al-Qaida was responsible for the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in NY and Washington D.C. that killed more than 3,000 people.

Obama also criticized Republican calls for “carpet bombing” the Islamic State in the Middle East, and he continued to reject calls for a no-fly zone in Syria that have been supported by a number of those aspiring to the Oval Office, including Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. “You’re talking about making up tapes and videos which don’t exist”.

Still, the president said his administration had not done enough to explain its strategy and promote its successes in carrying it out. “It would be awful for our national security”.

On domestic matters, Obama said he was concerned that a recent uptick in campus protests around the country, in which students have shone a spotlight on racial misunderstandings, has in some cases shut down important debates.

“We haven’t on a regular basis, I think, described all the work that we’ve been doing for more than a year now to defeat ISIL”, he said. And “that doesn’t solve the ISIL problem”.

More than a year ago the president authorized the beginning of a U.S.-led air campaign in Iraq and Syria to go after the militants.

“That’s part of the American experience”, Obama said. “This has been true since the founding”.

Obama said that the coverage of ISIS has been “saturated” as the media chases eyeballs and clicks. “But, it’s important for people to recognize that the power, the strength of the United States and its allies are not threatened by an organization like this”. “But at no point was there a sense that in fact it could do catastrophic damage to us”.

Information for this article was contributed by Darlene Superville of The Associated Press; by David Nakamura of The Washington Post; and by Margaret Talev of Bloomberg News.