President Obama, speaking at an off-the-record appearance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last Friday, took a dig at the current Trump Administration and said his administration was by comparison scandal-free.
"One of the things I’m proud of in my administration was the fact — and I think these things are connected — we didn’t have a scandal that embarrassed us," Obama said in an event his handlers attempted to keep out of the press. "We make mistakes, we screw up, but it wasn’t anything venal during those years. I know it seems like a low bar, but — generally speaking, you didn’t hear about a lot of drama inside our White House."
Obama painted an image of his apparent scandal-free administration in contrast to the current White House.
"And part of it was — it’s not that there weren’t strong personalities or there wouldn’t be arguments or differences, partly because we were bringing together a bunch of different types of folks around the table just to try to deal with really tough issues, but I did have a strong bias towards people who just wanted to get things right, get things done, as opposed to people who were obsessed with ‘I want to do it, I want to be prominent, I want to get my name in the headlines.’”
Audio from the event was first published by Reason.
Here's an excerpt from his remarks:
OBAMA: “You can tell when somebody is putting team first. You can tell whether they are prioritizing the effort of the group and are trying to fit their skills into the success of the group. And I do think that that is the principle that I pay attention to. One of the things I’m proud of in my administration was the fact — and I think these things are connected — we didn’t have a scandal that embarrassed us. We make mistakes, we screw up, but it wasn’t anything venal during those years. I know it seems like a low bar, but — (Laughter and Applause) Generally speaking, you didn’t hear about a lot of drama inside our White House. And part of it was — it’s not that there weren’t strong personalities or there wouldn’t be arguments or differences, partly because we were bringing together a bunch of different types of folks around the table just to try to deal with really tough issues, but I did have a strong bias towards people who just wanted to get things right, get things done, as opposed to people who were obsesses with ‘I want to do it, i want to be prominent. I want to get my name in the headlines.’”
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