President Obama said on the “Today” show this morning that the tea party movement isn’t cohesive, and said some fringe members of the movement still question whether he is a U.S. citizen and if he is a socialist.
“It is a still loose amalgam of forces,” Obama told NBC’s Matt Lauer. He said he didn’t want to paint the group “in broad brushes” and wants to speak to those tea partiers with “mainstream, legitimate concerns.”
Obama said it’s possible that with a new focus on deficit reduction some in the relatively new tea party movement might end up agreeing with his administration’s actions. But not everyone will be swayed on fiscal responsibility, he said.
“There’s still going to be a group at their core who question my legitimacy … that group we’re probably not going to convince,” Obama said.
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