President Obama went after Mitt Romney and Wall Street executives in a wide-ranging interview for Rolling Stone this month, at one point using an expletive to describe his Republican rival, Politico reports.
When talking about children with the magazine’s executive editor, the president took a jab at Romney.
“You know, kids have good instincts,” Obama said in the Friday edition of the magazine, according to Politico. “They look at the other guy and say, ‘Well, that’s a bullshitter, I can tell.’”
The Romney campaign, in an email to National Journal, hit back at Obama and criticized him on trust.
“President Obama talks about trust, but he has broken virtually every promise that Candidate Obama made in 2008—including his pledges to turn around our economy, cut the deficit, and change politics as usual in Washington,” Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg. “Voters realize that we can’t afford four more years like the last four, and Mitt Romney has laid out real plans to get our country back on track. In two weeks, Americans will choose his positive agenda over President Obama's failed leadership.”
The president also criticized the increasing pay of Wall Street executives, whom he said take on risky bets in the market. Despite signing sweeping financial regulations in 2010 known as the Dodd-Frank law, Obama said that more can be done.
“You still have a situation where people making bets can get a huge upside, and their downsides are limited,” Obama said, according to the Associated Press. “So it tilts the whole system in favor of very risky behavior.”
Obama said one of his biggest concerns, even after Dodd-Frank was, “Have we completely changed those incentives?”
“These days, you've got guys who are making five years of risky bets, but it’s making them $100 million every year,” Obama continued. “By the time the chicken comes home to roost, they’re still way ahead of the game.”
The president covered several other topics, from Romney’s “47 percent” comments to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who Obama said did not surprise him with his role in the ruling on the health care law earlier this year.
“It was interesting to see them, or Justice Roberts in particular, take the approach that this was constitutional under the taxing power,” Obama said, according to AP. “The truth is that if you look at the precedents dating back to the 1930s, this was clearly constitutional under the Commerce Clause. I think Justice Roberts made a decision that allowed him to preserve the law but allowed him to keep in reserve the desire, maybe, to scale back Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause in future cases.”
The magazine hits the stands on Friday.
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