Obama Blames Social Media as the Cause of a More Divided America

‘There have been a couple of trends that occurred over the course of my presidency’

This story is cross-posted at our consumer site, Grabien News. Watch it there – without audiomarks.
Current Time 0:00
Duration -:-
Loaded: 0%
Stream Type LIVE
Remaining Time -:-
 
1x
  • Chapters
  • descriptions off, selected
  • captions off, selected

    RUSH EXCERPT: 
    HOLT: "The notion is that this is a more divided country today than it was than you took office. That may or may not be because of you. But — but many people accept that as a fact. Do you?"
    OBAMA: "You know what I think has happened? There have been a couple of trends that occurred over the course of my presidency. First of all, I think the splintering of the media and the rise of social media means that a lot of people just have one source of information or a handful of places where they go to get the news. And it just reinforces whatever biases they already have. And that’s true across the ideological spectrum."
    HOLT: "Everybody’s got a louder platform."
    OBAMA: "Everybody’s got a louder platform. But they also don’t have to pay attention to what people who disagree with them think."
    HOLT: "America just elected a man who is the polar opposite of you. I mean, if that’s not divisive, I don’t know what is."
    OBAMA: "Well, but what’s also true is that the majority of the American people, think I’ve done a good job. The majority of the American people think that the issues we’ve worked on have been the right ones. So — so part of what we have to do is to figure out how do we get people back in a common conversation as opposed to these narrow, splintered conversations."