President Barack Obama urged Democrats “win big” for Hillary Clinton, to send the world a message that the “corrosive” Donald Trump did not represent America.
“America is great. America can survive just about anything,” he said. “But what America cannot have for any prolonged period of time is … a fundamentally unserious person and somebody whose standards of ethics and tolerance and how they treat other people is corrosive.”
Obama embarked on a lengthy diatribe in front of Democratic donors in California, after spending the morning golfing with his press secretary Josh Earnest.
He warned that Trump would be a threat to the Constitution of the United States.
“Do we think of the Constitution as something fundamental that all of us have an obligation to try to uphold, or do we think that it’s just something that we can pick and choose from at our convenience depending on what’s expedient?” he asked.
He warned that Trump would make the country into “an infomercial or a reality show” because he had “no fidelity to the truth.”
“We can’t have that in the Oval Office,” Obama stated.
The president called for Democrats to beat Trump soundly in the presidential election to send a message that would echo throughout the world.
“We’ve got to work as hard as we can, not just to make sure that Hillary wins, but to make sure she wins big to send a clear message about who we are as a people; to send a clear message about what America stands for,” he said.
He ridiculed Trump for suggesting that the system was “rigged” against him, comparing him to a kid having a tantrum on the playground.
“You know there was always the kid who, like, if they weren’t winning, they’d be all like starting to have a tantrum and start whining and complaining about this isn’t fair,” he said as the audience laughed. “Well, no, you just got beat, that’s all.”
The president argued that Republicans did not offer a “check” on a potential Hillary Clinton presidency, but rather the same gridlock that he faced as president.
“A check means that we’re not going to get serious about dealing with all the major issues that the American people desperately want to see dealt with,” Obama said.
He warned that Democratic priorities like stopping global warming, increasing the minimum wage, and spending on free early child care would be blocked without significant majorities in the House and Senate.
Republicans, he explained, were acting like “Keystone Cops” who couldn’t even keep the government open, blaming the Republican Freedom Caucus.
“A check means the possibility of another government shutdown unless we get some crazy riders that are attached to the budget that have nothing to do with the but have to do with the particular social agenda of the Freedom Caucus, so-called.”
Obama also blamed Republicans for creating the pervasive cynicism about government and the politics of Washington D.C.
“If you’re frustrated about more jobs and a faster-growing economy, you got to understand how this happened,” he said. “It happened because the Republican Party wanted to put a check on progress. We got to vote against that. We got to push back against that.”