Speaking at Miami Dade College on the campaign trail earlier today, U.S. President, Mr. Barack Obama, defended the Affordable Care Act vigorously in the face of increasing criticism from Republican Presidential candidate, Mr. Donald Trump, who has promised to repeal the act if he won the election next month. Interestingly for tech fans who are only too aware of the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco that unfurled over the past couple of months, President Obama made a not-so-subtle reference to Samsung’s discontinued phablet in his defense of the healthcare act that is often referred to informally as ‘Obamacare’. The act represents the most significant regulatory overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system in decades, but has often faced stinging criticism from the opposition for certain provisions they believe have raised health insurance premiums for millions of American families.
While discussing some of the more controversial aspects of the Affordable Healthcare Act, President Obama used the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 as an example to make his point. According to him, “When one of these companies comes out with a new smartphone, and it has a few bugs, what do they do? They fix it, they upgrade”. Then, in an apparent reference to the Galaxy Note 7, President Obama added, “Unless it catches fire and then they just, then they pull it off the market”. Of course, the folks over at Samsung may not have found it funny, but the Florida audience absolutely loved it if the video embedded below is anything to go by. For Samsung, though, President Obama referring to the ill-fated smartphone is yet another uncomfortable reminder of the highly-damaging blunder, even as the company’s employees and investors are trying to forget the whole Galaxy Note 7 thing as a terrible nightmare and hoping to get it out of public memory as soon as possible.
However, with reports of the Galaxy Note 7’s problems splashed all over the mainstream media for several days earlier this month, even the leader of the free world found the opportunity to take a lighthearted jab at Samsung way too tempting to pass up. Thankfully for Samsung, though, this time around, the mainstream media is likely to be more concerned with the acrimonious campaign rather than spend too much time on a little joke about exploding smartphones. Still, it will be interesting to see how Samsung bounces back from the giant PR nightmare and gain back some of the trust that has, no doubt, eroded because of the unseemly episode.