In an interview published Thursday with The Daily Targum, Rutgers University's student newspaper, Obama mused about not only his record but the historic contest to replace him. | AP Photo Obama: Republicans likely to correct course after 2016

Even as Donald Trump careens toward the Republican Party's nomination and a likely clash with Hillary Clinton in the general election, President Barack Obama believes the GOP will eventually straighten itself out.

But he also thinks the Republicans have only themselves to blame for Trump.


In an interview published Thursday with The Daily Targum, Rutgers University's student newspaper, Obama mused about not only his record but also the historic contest to replace him.

"My sense is that there will be a corrective at some point, perhaps after this next presidential election," Obama told the Targum's Dan Corey, who participated in last month's event for college journalists at the White House, at which he asked the president whether he could score a one-on-one interview.

Obama accepted that invitation ahead of delivering the school's commencement address this Sunday, using it as an opportunity to tick through his administration's accomplishments and scold the Republican Party for what he says it has become: "increasingly ideological and extreme, and I think that’s reflected in the current presidential race."

"I’ve always shown myself willing to compromise — principled compromises that would still advance the interests of the American people," the president remarked in the interview, conducted Monday. "What we’ve seen within the Republican Party has been a refusal even to engage on a whole range of issues like climate change, for example, that are vitally important. The issue here has never been both sides stuck in a corner, unwilling to meet in the middle."