Trump: 'No way' I would have lost to Obama

President-elect Donald Trump has two words for President Barack Obama, who suggested that his 2008 message of hope and change could have landed him a third term in the White House if he had been constitutionally eligible: “NO WAY!”

“President Obama said that he thinks he would have won against me,” Trump tweeted Monday afternoon. “He should say that but I say NO WAY! - jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc.”


Trump’s tweet came hours after the president — whose approval ratings this year have been some of the highest during his eight years in office — told David Axelrod, his former senior adviser, that the message from his 2008 campaign still resonates in 2016.

“I am confident in this vision because I’m confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it,” Obama said on “The Axe Files” podcast published Monday morning.

“I know that in conversations that I’ve had with people around the country, even some people who disagreed with me, they would say the vision, the direction that you point towards is the right one.”

Despite trailing by nearly 3 million in the national popular vote, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton on Election Day, penetrating the so-called blue wall with victories in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan en route to clinching a majority of Electoral College votes.

Trump railed against Obama and Clinton’s policies on the campaign trail, telling supporters that Clinton was, in essence, running as an extension of the past eight years while portraying himself as the change agent who could shake up Washington and bring power back to the American people.

He has promised to repeal and replace Obamacare once he takes office, derided the two Democratic politicians as founders of the Islamic State and slammed them for having supported free-trade policies like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and NAFTA.

Trump has been defensive regarding the election outcome, arguing that he could have won the popular vote if he wanted to and rejecting U.S. intelligence that Russia meddled in the presidential election, allegedly to boost his campaign.

But he has softened his rhetoric on Obama and Clinton, praising the president and even seeking his counsel during the transition, and reneging on his pledge to jail Clinton.