At an event focused on overcoming poverty at Georgetown University Tuesday afternoon, President Obama took a shot at FOX News for propagating the narrative that "the poor are sponges, leeches, don't want to work, are lazy, are undeserving."



"We're going to have to change how the media reports on these issues," the president also said.



Obama said the media should instead report on "what it's like to struggle in this economy.'



The president also blamed FOX for "an effort to either make folks mad at folks at the top or to make or be mad at folks at the bottom."



"I have to say that if you watch FOX News on a regular basis, it is a constant menu," Obama said at Georgetown University. They will folks who make me mad. I don't even know where they find them. 'I don't want to work, I just want a free Obamaphone or whatever.' And that becomes an entire narrative that gets worked up and very rarely do you hear an interview of a waitress, which is much more typical who is raising a couple of kids and doing everything right but still can't pay the bills."





PRESIDENT OBAMA: There's always been a strain in American politics where you've got the middle class and the question has always been, who are you mad at, if you're struggling, if you're working but you don't seem to be getting ahead? And over the last 40 years, sadly, I think there's been an effort to either make folks mad at folks at the top or to make or be mad at folks at the bottom. And I think the effort to suggest that the poor are sponges, leeches, don't want to work, are lazy, are undeserving, got traction.



And look, it's still being propagated. I have to say that if you watch FOX News on a regular basis, it is a constant menu. They will folks who make me mad. I don't even know where they find them. 'I don't want to work, I just want a free Obamaphone or whatever.' And that becomes an entire narrative that gets worked up and very rarely do you hear an interview of a waitress, which is much more typical who is raising a couple of kids and doing everything right but still can't pay the bills.



And so if we're going to change how John Boehner and Mitch McConnell think, we're going to have to change how our body politic thinks, which means we're going to have to change how the media reports on these issues and how people's impressions of what it -- what it's like to struggle in this economy looks like and how budgets connect to that. And that's a hard process because of -- that requires a much broader conversation than typically we have on the nightly news.