Rick Perry Knocks President Obama's Upbringing, Attitude

Rick Perry Knocks President Obama's Upbringing, Attitude

President Barack Obama's "privileged" upbringing and inability to accept responsibility makes him out of touch with struggling Americans, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Wednesday.

"This president has never felt that angst that [the nation's 14 million unemployed] have in their heart," Perry told Fox News host Sean Hannity. "And I think he's always, when he has had problems, he's always pointed to somebody else and said it's their fault, not mine."

In a meeting last Saturday with CEOs in Honolulu, Obama described the American government and business sectors as a "little bit lazy."

"I think it's important to remember that the United States is still the largest recipient of foreign investment in the world. And there are a lot of things that make foreign investors see the U.S. as a great opportunity -- our stability, our openness, our innovative free market culture," Obama said. "But we've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades. We've kind of taken for granted -- well, people will want to come here and we aren't out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new business into America."

This week, the Perry campaign jumped on the comment, releasing a 30-second television advertisement that claims Obama was calling Americans lazy. Hannity also asked Perry to comment on the president's remarks.

"It reveals to me that he grew up in a privileged way," Perry said. "He never had to really work for anything."

Obama was raised by a single mother, who occasionally had to use food stamps to put meals on the table. He earned scholarships and took out loans to afford college and eventually became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, the MSNBC blog First Read reported.

In contrast, the GOP presidential candidate earned mostly Cs and Ds at Texas A&M University, where he studied animal science.

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