(Image via Twitter)
President Obama slammed congressional Republicans during a private fundraiser in San Diego, Calif., on Monday.
At a private residence in La Jolla, Obama addressed members and supporters of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, including former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
He argued that ever since Nancy Pelosi stepped down from House Speaker to Minority Leader, Congress “essentially shut down.”
“Now, after Nancy Pelosi was no longer Speaker, Congress essentially shut down,” he said. “And so much of the progress that we've done subsequently -- for example, most recently this year with getting the Paris agreement on climate change, and then we just followed up with two other agreements that bind countries internationally to reduce carbon emissions in airlines, and making sure that we're not releasing really harmful HFCs into the atmosphere -- those are things that we ended up having to do administratively.”
By "administratively," Obama meant bypassing Congress through his federal agencies and executive orders.
He went on to insult the GOP, saying that the Republican-controlled Congress can’t “get even their own stuff" passed.
“I thought that for the last two years I was going to spend a lot of time vetoing bills. I didn’t have to,” said Obama, drawing laughter from the audience. “Because they are not even organized enough to get their own stuff down.”
The president went on to blame Republicans for unemployment and a decaying U.S. infrastructure:
“And, as a consequence, things that previously were never considered ideological -- like rebuilding our roads, our bridges, our ports; putting people back to work; making our economy more productive -- stalled," he added.
He went on to share his hope that, with a Hillary Clinton presidency, Pelosi can return to her former role as Speaker of the House, “because Nancy knows how she can get things done.”
“And so, as I said at the event in Vegas, Donald Trump didn’t build that,” Obama fired. “He just slaps his name on it and took credit for it. And the strongest message we can send -- the message, by the way, that is most likely to get us past gridlock and give people some confidence that government can work and Congress can work is if we have Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, because Nancy knows how she can get things done and deliver on behalf of the American people.”