Obama says Republicans portrayed white men as ‘victims’ to win votes for Trump

Former President Barack Obama has attributed Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election to a sense of insecurity, instilled by Republicans, that white men in America were “under attack”.

Talking about his new book A Promised Land, the former president said the stories that got through to white male Americans in the last presidential campaign were that “the Democrats don’t believe in Christmas, you know, only care about minorities and black folks and are trying to take your stuff and trying to take your guns away”.

He told the Guardian that this was a narrative created by the Republican party. “What’s always interesting to me is the degree to which you’ve seen created in Republican politics the sense that white males are victims,” he said.

“They are the ones who are under attack – which obviously doesn’t jive with both history and data and economics. But that’s a sincere belief, that’s been internalised, that’s a story that’s being told and how you unwind that is going to be not something that is done right away,” he added.

Mr Obama also answered questions about his tenure and spoke about four years of the Trump administration, without naming President Trump, saying his government “objectively has failed, miserably, in handling just basic looking after the American people and keeping them safe.”

On criticisms of his own tenure – that he didn’t do enough for black people – Mr Obama said: “I understand it because when I was elected there was so much excitement and hope, and I also think we generally view the presidency as almost like a monarchy in the sense of once the president’s there, he can just do whatever needs to get done and if he’s not doing it, it must be because he didn’t want to do it."

Mr Trump’s failures, he suggested, were different, “because he breaks laws or disregards the constitution."

He added that “the good news for me was I was very confident in what I had done for black folks because I have the statistics to prove it," and listed policies that aimed to reduce poverty and provide better access to healthcare.

The memoir written by the former president follows his presidential campaign and his first term as president ending with the killing of Osama bin Laden. The memoir has been making headlines its candid views on American and world politics.

Mr Trump also makes an appearance in the memoir for his role in 2011 stoking conspiracy theories regarding Mr Obama’s citizenship.

Talking about why he named his book A Promised land, Mr Obama said in an interview with the 60 Minutes programme: “Even though we may not get there in our lifetimes, even if we experience hardships and disappointments along the way, I still have faith we can create a more perfect union — not a perfect union, but a more perfect union,” he said.

A Promised Land, the first of a planned two volumes, sold nearly 890,000 copies in the US and Canada in its first 24 hours, and over 1.7 million copies in North America by 24 November, putting it on track to be the best selling presidential memoir in modern history.