Obama, Tea Parties: "Let's Not Play Games"

UPDATE: Here is the transcript of President Obama's appearance at Fox High School in Arnold on Wednesday, as provided by the White House.

Note: The White House transcript never includes Obama's stumbling and habitual use of "uh" and "you know." Scroll down for a more accurate transcript excerpt.
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Today in Arnold, Missouri, Obama mocked the masses, the Tea Party protesters.

He, Obama, was arrogant, dismissive, and derisive.

He also took a swipe at FOX News and its viewers.

I suppose that's no surprise. A man who will mock Special Olympics athletes certainly wouldn't hesitate to mock people protesting his high tax, anti-private sector policies.

Obama is so full of... himself.

Video.



Transcript

BARACK OBAMA: So, so, you know, when you, uh, when you see, you know, you know, those of you who were wa...watching certain news channels that, you know, on which I'm not very popular, and you see folks waving tea bags around; l..let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we're gonna stabilize social security. Claire [McCaskill] and I are working diligently to do basically a thorough audit of federal spending.

Uh, but, but let's not play games and pretend that the reason is because of the Recovery Act, because that's just a fraction of the overall problem that we've got. We are gonna have to tighten our belts, but we're gonna have to do it in an intelligent way. And we gotta make sure that the people who are helped are working American families, and we're not suddenly saying that the, the way to do this is to eliminate programs that help ordinary people and give more tax cuts to the wealthy. We tried that formula for eight years. It did not work. And I don't intend to go back to it.

Obama sounds like he's on the campaign trail. It's the same old, same old. He's playing class warfare.

He doesn't sound like the president of the American people. He sounds like a candidate appealing to his faithful base. He's not reaching out by tossing around insults.

Why would he trash hundreds of thousands of Americans?

In effect, Obama said he didn't take the protesters seriously.

I think Obama owes the Tea Party protesters an apology.

Obama's remarks were arrogant, dismissive, and derisive.
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More on Obama in Missouri:

Obama tells town hall he's 'confident of the future ... not content with the present'

Obama leaves crowd wanting more