Sen. Bernie Sanders interrupted his attack on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Saturday to speak a little truth about the economy.

The former presidential contender from Vermont spoke to an audience of college students in Akron, Ohio, to pump out turnout for Democrat Hillary Clinton in that all-important state. He praised President Obama’s economic record, arguing that he rescued the country from a crisis.

“And nobody should [say] ‘Oh, everything is great; Obama’s president; things are fantastic.’ They are not fantastic.”

But then Sanders slipped back into primary mode.

“Are we where we want to be in the economy today? No we are not,” he said. “And nobody should [say] ‘Oh, everything is great; Obama’s president; things are fantastic.’ They are not fantastic.”

Sanders, who played the role of change candidate to Clinton’s candidacy of the status quo during their primary fight, poured cold water on Obama’s celebration of the falling unemployment rate — currently at 4.9 percent.

“Real unemployment in this country is a lot higher than the official unemployment,” he said, making theatrical air quotes, “because official  unemployment doesn’t include those people who have given up looking for work or working part time.”

In some ways, Sanders’ comments echo Trump, who also has ridiculed Obama’s record by pointing to unemployment statistics. The Vermont senator’s critique of the unemployment statistic also was an explicit rebuke of a favorite Obama talking point.

In February, after the Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate dipped below 5 percent for the first time in his presidency, Obama spiked the ball.

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The United States of America right now has the strongest, most durable economy in the world,” he said at the time. “I know that’s still inconvenient for Republican stump speeches as their doom and despair tour plays in New Hampshire. I guess you cannot please everybody.”

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Similarly, Obama took a bow during his speech at the Democratic National Convention in July.

“We’ve seen deficits come down, 401(k)s recover, an auto industry set new records, unemployment reach eight-year lows, and our businesses create 15 million new jobs,” he said.

The first recommendation that Sanders made to get the country “where we want to be” was a massive program to repair America’s “crumbling infrastructure.” As an argument for Clinton, it is an odd place to start, since Trump has proposed spending more than 3½ times as much money on building and fixing roads, bridges, tunnels, ports, treatment plants and other projects.

To be sure, Sanders is no Trump fan. In Akron and at a rally later in Kent, he accused the GOP nominee of making bigotry the “cornerstone” of his campaign. He said Trump’s past doubt of Obama’s American birth was a racist attempt to delegitimize the nation’s first African-American president.

Sanders said the nation could not afford to elect a president who “rejects science and thinks that climate change is a hoax.”

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And he took a gratuitous shot at broadly popular laws requiring voters to show photo identification, telling the audience in Akron that people have a right to vote “in most cases … depending on what state you’re living in.”

The rest of the senator’s comments at the two Ohio stops would sound familiar to anyone who paid even cursory attention to the Democratic primary race. He railed against income inequality and “millionaires and billionaires.” He called for hiking the minimum wage to $15 an hour, making college tuition-free for most Americans and reducing the debt of recent college graduates.

But it is his glass-is-half-empty view of the economy that departs from the Obama party line — although, Clinton herself, has struggled to find a balance between defending the president’s record and showing concern for Americans who continue to struggle. In June, she told CNN that the unemployment rate for May — the lowest since 2007 — reflected people leaving the labor force.

“The numbers that have come out this week are disappointing to anybody, because we want to keep jobs growing,” she said at the time.