Obama Assails Trump as “Unfit” to Be President

By Alexis Simendinger, Real Clear Politics–

In perhaps the most forceful denunciation of a presidential nominee by a sitting president in modern politics, President Obama on Tuesday called Donald Trump “unfit” to be president and said the GOP businessman lacked the “judgment, the temperament, the understanding to occupy the most important position in the world.”

Obama admonished Republican leaders who have distanced themselves from Trump’s persistently inflammatory rhetoric to abandon their endorsements of the Republican Party’s standard-bearer. Trump is “woefully unprepared to do this job,” the president said.

“There has to be a point in which you say, ‘This is not somebody I can support for president of the United States, even if he purports to be a member of my party,’” Obama said during an East Room news conference with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore, who is in the United States for a state visit.

The president pointed to implicit criticisms of Trump by House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. John McCain, who distanced themselves from Trump’s caustic rebuttals directed at the Muslim parents of a U.S. Army captain killed in Iraq in 2004.

During a powerful speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last week, Khizr Khan, accompanied by his wife, Ghazala Khan, offered to lend Trump a copy of the U.S. Constitution, which the Pakistani immigrant suggested Trump had never read.

“The notion that he would attack a Gold Star family that had made such extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our country, the fact that he doesn’t appear to have basic knowledge around critical issues in Europe, in the Middle East, in Asia, means that he’s woefully unprepared to do this job,” Obama said of Trump.

“There has to come a point at which you say enough.”

Trump was campaigning in Northern Virginia Tuesday afternoon. In a statement, he recited a litany of GOP complaints regarding Hillary Clinton, from the 2012 Benghazi attack to her email scandal, and asserted that she “has proven herself unfit to serve in any government office.”

The president, recognizing the force of his political condemnations while standing beside a visiting head of state, said there was a difference between faulting a presidential candidate over policy differences and declaring them unqualified to lead the United States. Obama underscored just how intensely he believes Trump is dangerously ill prepared and off-kilter to become the 45^th president, and he pondered why Republican leaders could endorse the nominee after repeatedly objecting to his rhetoric, miscues and policy prescriptions.

“This is different than just having policy disagreements,” he continued. “I recognize that they all profoundly disagree with myself or Hillary Clinton on tax policy or on certain elements of foreign policy. But, you know, there have been Republican presidents with whom I disagreed, but I didn’t have a doubt that they could function as president.”

Obama said he differed with GOP nominees John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012, but “never thought that they couldn’t do the job.”

“Had they won, I would have been disappointed but I would have said to all Americans … this is our president and I know they’re going to abide by certain norms and rules and common sense, will observe basic decency, will have enough knowledge about economic policy and foreign policy and our constitutional traditions and rule of law that our government will work,” he said.

Obama argued that Trump is out of sync with Republican Party tenets and values. “I don’t think that actually represents the views of a whole lot of Republicans out there,” he said.

Among registered voters surveyed by CNN following the Democratic convention, 36 percent of Republicans said they would definitely vote for Trump, while 44 percent of Democratic voters said they are solidly behind Clinton. Just 16 percent of registered voters said they are undecided. With Obama’s help, the Clinton campaign is seeking to undermine voter confidence in Trump and generate Democratic enthusiasm to turn out in November.

Even Republican analysts in the last week have argued that Trump’s rhetoric has helped Democrats move forward with that campaign strategy.