George Stephanopoulos Questions Obama About Syria, 2016 Election [Video]

George Stephanopoulos interviewed President Obama this morning on This Week.

The ABC anchor talked to President Obama about the 2016 election, the United States relationship with Russia, and the current stalemate in congress.

Stephanopoulos asked Obama if this was a “wasted” year since three of Obama’s priorities, gun control immigration reform, and climate change, saw little progress this year.

Obama disagreed saying that there was a “terrific bipartisan” vote on immigration reform this year.

Obama said: “On immigration reform, we got a terrific bipartisan vote out of the Senate. You had Democrats and Republicans in the Senate came together, come up with a bill that wasn’t perfect—not my bill, but it got the job done. It’s now sitting there in the House. If Speaker Boehner put that bill on the floor of the House of Representatives right now, it would pass.”

Obama continued: On gun control, we had 80%, 90% of the country that agreed with it. The problem we have is we have a faction of the Republican Party, in the House of Representatives in particular, that view ‘compromise’ as a dirty word, and anything that is remotely associated with me they feel obliged to oppose. My argument to them is simple: that’s not why the people sent you here.”

Here’s a video of George Stephanopoulos’ interview with Obama.

Obama also talked about the 2016 election. Many people are speculating (it’s not even 2014 yet) that Hillary Clinton will run for president on the Democratic ticket. Others believe that Joe Biden is positioning himself for a run in 2016.

Obama didn’t pick sides but he did tell George Stephanopoulos that both Hillary and Biden would make good candidates.

Obama said: “What I would say to folks out there is we are tremendously lucky to have an incredible former secretary of state who couldn’t have served me better, and an incredible vice president who couldn’t be serving me better. And I suspect if you asked both of them, they’d say, ‘It’s way too premature to start talking about 2016.'”

The President also talked about the situation in Syria. When questioned about the United States’ relationship with Russia, Obama said that he welcomed Putin’s involvement and said that “this isn’t the cold war.”