Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich reacted angrily to ex-President Barack Obama's comment during an interview on David Letterman's new Netflix talk show that Fox News viewers are "living on a different planet."
"What the Russians exploited, but it was already here, is we are operating in completely different information universes," Obama told Letterman on, "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction," reports The Hill.
"If you watch Fox News you are living on a different planet than you are if you listen to NPR."
"Many, many years from now in a nursing home, or a nice retirement community, Barack Obama will be still living in a fantasy life," Gingrich told Fox News' Sean Hannity Friday night.
"He'll think that Iran really wanted to have a deal, he'll think that high taxes really work, he'll think that welfare's a good deal," Gingrich said.
Hannity, however, conceded there may be "some truth" to Obama's words.
"There is some truth in what he's saying in this regard," Hannity said. "He's right, the mainstream media, they want to destroy [President Donald] Trump and they loved him. It's that simple."
Obama made the comments while weighing in on Russian meddling in the 2016 election through social media platforms, saying the way people watch news created a "bubble" that made it easier for Russia to take advantage of viewers' habits.
"One of the biggest challenges to our democracy is the degree to which we don't share a common baseline of facts," Obama told him. He also noted that social media was key to his 2007 campaign, and he had been optimistic about its use.
"I think what we missed was the degree to which people who are in power ... can in fact manipulate that and propagandize," said the former president.
Social media, and the way it uses algorithms to send information, has led to politics becoming polarized, he added.
"If you are getting all your information off algorithms being sent through phone and it's just reinforcing whatever biases you have, which is the pattern that develops," he said. "At a certain point, you just live in a bubble, and that's part of why our politics is so polarized right now. I think it's a solvable problem but I think it's one we have to spend a lot of time thinking about."
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