President Barack Obama believes that Republican front-runner Donald Trump will not get to be his successor since the American people, as he put it, are “pretty sensible” and recognize that the nation’s highest office is “not a reality show”.
“I continue to believe Mr. Trump will not be President. And the reason is because I have a lot of faith in the American people,” Obama said at a news conference in California on Tuesday, adding: “I think they recognize that being President is a serious job. It’s not hosting a talk show or a reality show.”
“It seems like entertainment, and oftentimes it’s reported just like entertainment. But as you get closer, reality has a way of intruding,” he said, suggesting that the presidency is too important to be left to a candidate without the right temperament.
Obama’s blunt remarks came even as Trump, the New York billionaire who hosted the famous reality-TV show, The Apprentice, continues to lead the Republican polls nationally.
“As you get closer (to the election), reality has a way of intruding,” Obama said, before reminding reporters that the person who succeeds him will have access to the nuclear codes and the power to send young people into battle.
Trump, sure enough, promptly dismissed the Obama comment, dubbing it “actually a great compliment” from someone who has done “such a lousy job as President”. He went on to say that Obama was “lucky” not to have faced him (Trump) during his 2012 re-election, saying if he had run instead of Mitt Romney, Obama would have been “a one-term president”.
Obama, who was speaking to reporters after a US-ASEAN summit, came down hard not just at Trump, but the whole Republican field. While Trump may have whipped up the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric, statements from other Republican countries have been troubling as well, he said.
“You’ve got a candidate who sponsored a bill, that I supported, to finally solve the immigration problem, and he’s running away from it as fast as he can,” he said, referring to Senator Marco Rubio’s volte-face on the subject.