Obama: Feeling 'Feisty' and Ready to Take On 'Crazies' on Iran

Once in a while, even U.S. presidents tell us how they really feel. Monday was one of those times for President Barack Obama.

Fresh off a two-week vacation, President Barack Obama told Democratic donors in Nevada that he’s feeling “feisty.” And in relating a conversation with the Senate Democratic leader, Nevadan Harry Reid, Obama got real about his opponents.

“We were doing a little reminiscing and then figuring out how we’re going to deal with the crazies in terms of managing some problems,” Obama said at a fundraiser for the Nevada State Democratic Party. The room of about 100 donors burst into laughter.

So who are “the crazies?” Obama didn’t say, specifically. A White House spokesman, Eric Schultz, didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry.

Obama faces a Republican-led Congress set on blocking his agenda. Nothing new there. He’s trying to round up support for a nuclear deal with Iran that even some in his own party oppose, led by Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat. Chances are Obama wasn’t talking about Schumer, though.

Obama told the donors, who paid as much as $33,400 to attend the soiree at the home of Myra and Brian Greenspun, the publisher of the Las Vegas Sun newspaper, that members of his party “are not perfect” and also act irrationally at times.

“There are some folks in our party who sometimes are dogmatic,” Obama said. “But Democrats govern. Democrats are willing to do things that are hard.”

One guy who’s pretty sure he’s a crazy: Bill Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, a conservative political magazine.

“We ‘crazies’ wear his scorn as a badge of honor,’” Kristol tweeted on Tuesday. Kristol opposes the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program.