If the Democrats didn’t have chutzpah, they wouldn’t have anything at all.

President Obama gave an interview to Rolling Stone magazine and lamented the impact he believes so-called “fake news” had on the presidential election.

According to Rolling Stone, Obama said:

One of the challenges that we’ve been talking about now is the way social media and the Internet have changed what people receive as news. I was just talking to my political director, David Simas. He was looking at his Facebook page and some links from high school friends of his, some of whom were now passing around crazy stuff about, you know, Obama has banned the Pledge of Allegiance.

“This is not simply an economic issue,” Obama added. “This is a cultural issue. And a communications issue.”

He made this statement to one of a few news organizations that can actually say it has had a monetary judgement leveled against it for peddling fake news.

Salon reported in early November:

A federal jury on Friday found Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely responsible for defamation of a former associate dean at the University of Virginia. Rolling Stone and parent company Wenner Media were found liable in a $7.5 million libel lawsuit filed in the wake of a campus rape exposé that was eventually discredited.

A 10-member jury in Charlottesville, Virginia, determined the Rolling Stone journalist was responsible for defamation with actual malice of Nicole Eramo, a former University of Virginia associate dean. Eramo brought the suit against the magazine in 2015, saying that she had been made the “chief villain” in Erdely’s November 2014 article titled “A Rape on Campus.”

Obama also blamed the Democrats’ stunning losses in November not on bad candidates or a lack of a message, but rather, knee-jerk scapegoat Fox News.

He said:

In this election, [white blue collar workers] turned out in huge numbers for Trump. And I think that part of it has to do with our inability, our failure, to reach those voters effectively. Part of it is Fox News in every bar and restaurant in big chunks of the country, but part of it is also Democrats not working at a grassroots level, being in there, showing up, making arguments. That part of the critique of the Democratic Party is accurate. We spend a lot of time focused on international policy and national policy and less time being on the ground. And when we’re on the ground, we do well.

That’s strange, because Hillary Clinton regularly touted her ground game as superior to that of Donald Trump’s and the Republicans’.

Politico reported FOUR DAYS before the election:

The presidential race may be tightening, but Democrats are convinced they have an Election Day ace-in-the-hole: Hillary Clinton’s ground game. They’re confident it will withstand Donald Trump’s late surge in key battleground states.

That’s according to The POLITICO Caucus — a panel of activists, strategists and operatives in 11 swing states, seven of which are seeing significant early- and absentee-voting operations. In those seven states where large numbers of voters are expected to cast their ballots before Election Day — Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin — more than three-quarters of Democrats think their party has done a better job turning out key voters thus far.

More fake news?