After Mitt Romney held forth about the “47%” of Americans “who don’t pay income taxes” and consider themselves “victims,” President Obama responded to his opponent on Tuesday's "Late Show with David Letterman."
“One of the things I’ve learned as president is you represent the entire country,” Obama told the talk-show host. “And when I meet Republicans as I’m traveling around the country, they are hard-working, family people who care deeply about this country, and my expectation is that if you want to be president, you’ve got to work for everybody.”
Obama said he disagreed with his opponent’s claim that nearly half of Americans feel entitled to government handouts — a statement caught on a camera phone at a private fund-raiser earlier this year in Florida and unleashed on the internet by Mother Jones on Monday.
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“There are not a lot of people out there who think they’re victims,” Obama retorted on "Letterman." “There are not a lot of people who think that they’re entitled to something. What I think the majority of people, Democrats and Republicans, believe is that we’ve got some obligations to each other, and there’s nothing wrong with us giving each other a helping hand.”
He added, “If there’s that single mom’s kid, even after all the work she’s done, still can’t afford to go to college, for us to be able to give them, you know, some help on a student loan so they can end up being – curing the next disease or making sure that they’re starting the next Google, I think that’s a good investment for America, and that’s – if you want to be president and you want to bring people together, I think that’s the attitude that you’ve got to have.”
Obama’s interview with Letterman will air on CBS Tuesday night. Watch the clip below:
