“The more aggressively and effectively we deal with those issues, the less those fears may channel themselves into counterproductive approaches that can pit people against each other,” Obama said as he opened the last foreign tour of his presidency.
Obama, in a joint news conference with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, said that both Trump’s election and the British vote to leave the European Union reflected the need to deal with “people’s fears that their children won’t do as well as they have.”
“Sometimes people just feel as if we want to try something and see if we can shake things up,” Obama said.
The president seemed skeptical that “the new prescriptions being offered” would satisfy the frustrations and anger evident in both votes. And he played a bit of defense, saying that his agenda over past eight years had dealt with those issues head on and “the country’s indisputably better off.”
The president earlier opened his Greek visit by offering reassuring words in Greece about the U.S. commitment to NATO even as he prepares to hand off to a Donald Trump administration, saying Democratic and Republican administrations alike recognize the importance of the alliance to the trans-Atlantic relationship.
Obama told Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos that a strong NATO is of “utmost importance” and would provide “significant continuity even as we see a transition in government in the United States.”
Pavlopoulos, for his part, thanked Obama for U.S. support of the Greek people in a time of social and economic crisis, and said he was confident that Trump “will continue on the same path.”
