Obama on Trump Presidency: I Won't be 'Popping Off in Every Instance'

Do you believe him?

While in Lima, Peru, President Obama was asked if he would pledge to remain quiet during the new Trump administration, the same way President George W. Bush remained quiet during Obama’s administration.

“Look, I said before, President Bush could not have been more gracious to me when I came in and my intention is to certainly for the next two months, finish my job and after that to take Michelle on vacation, get some rest, spend time with my girls and do some writing, some thinking,” Obama said in Peru.

“I want to be respectful of the office and give the president-elect an opportunity to put forward his platform and his arguments without somebody popping off in every instance,” Obama said.

“As an American citizen who cares deeply about our country, if there are issues that have less to do with the specifics of some legislative proposal but go to core questions about our values and our ideals, and if I think that it is necessary or helpful for me to defend those ideals, I’ll examine it when it comes,” the president said.

“But what I do know is that I have to take Michelle on vacation,” Obama joked.

Obama also talked about the Democrat Party’s loss of power at the state level and in the Senate.

“I came in as the economy was in flow fall and although I took the right steps to save the economy, in my midterm election of 2010 people couldn’t yet see the recovery and not surprisingly the president’s party got punished,” Obama argued.

“We lost control of a lot of not just Congressional seats but also governorships and state legislative seats and that happened to be the year that the census was done and you start doing redistricting,” he explained. “And so those Republicans took advantage of political gerrymandering to lock in majorities even though in a numerous subsequent elections Democrats have actually cast more votes or more votes have been cast for Democratic Congressional candidates than Republicans and yet you end up having large Republican majorities. So there are just structural problems we have to deal with. But, look, you can’t make excuses about the rules. That’s the deal and we have to do better.”