REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks during a bill signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington June 29, 2015. The president later signed the House Resolution 2146 Defending Public Safety Employees' Retirement Act and Trade Preference Extension Act of 2015.
In a speech on the economy in Wisconsin on Thursday, Obama described the Republican primary field as a "bus-full of people" fighting for the nomination.
"I've lost count of how many Republicans are running for this job. They've have enough for an actual Hunger Games," Obama said. "That is an interesting bunch."
The president quickly praised the field for talking about income inequality, but said that the proposed solutions were too little, too late.
"We were talking about the middle class before it was cool, before it was trendy," Obama said.
Obama also singled out Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), who is set to enter the presidential field in two weeks, for policies that Obama characterized as anti-middle class.
"We've seen what happens when top-down economics meets the real world. We've seen proof, right here in Wisconsin," Obama said, rattling off some of Walker's actions, including rolling back collective-bargaining rules for unions and repealing a fair-pay law.
For his part, Walker had his own choice words for the president. On Thursday, Walker published an opinion piece on RealClearPolitics blasting Obama's support for public-sector unions and management of the Environmental Protection Agency, which Walker contends has stifled business growth.
As The New York Times points out, the two men set aside their differences briefly this morning at the airport.
The president was in Wisconsin to tout his new executive action to increase overtime pay for millions of American workers and push to raise the minimum wage.
Watch the clip below. Obama's comments on the Republican 2016 field start at 55:15 minutes: