JFK asked Dwight Eisenhower’s advice during the Cuban missile crisis. Bill Clinton is pally these days with both George HW Bush and his son, George W. But such bipartisan comradeship is hard to imagine should Barack Obama make way for Donald Trump in the White House.
Trump, the billionaire and reality TV star, is “unfit” and “woefully unprepared” to be president, Obama said on Tuesday, signalling a breakdown of US politics as usual. He urged leaders of the Republican party to take the unprecedented step of denouncing their nominee and did little to dispel fears that Trump would pose a threat to US and global security.
Facing Democrat Hillary Clinton in the November election, Trump has overturned conventional political wisdom this year with a series of outlandish and outrageous statements. In the past week alone Trump has tangled with the parents of an American Muslim soldier killed in Iraq and displayed worrying ignorance of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
“Yes, I think the Republican nominee is unfit to serve as president,” Obama said during a joint press conference Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, at the White House. “I said so last week [at the Democratic national convention], and he keeps on proving it. The notion that he would attack a Gold Star family [the name for a family whose relative has died in service] 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.”
While the Bush family have kept Trump at arm’s length, a growing number of Republicans condemn Trump’s comments but continue to endorse him. Obama continued: “If you are repeatedly having to say, in very strong terms, that what he has said is unacceptable, why are you still endorsing him? What does this say about your party that this is your standard bearer?
“This isn’t a situation where you have an episodic gaffe. This is daily and weekly, where they are distancing themselves from statements he’s making. There has to be a point at 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.’ The fact that that has not yet happened makes some of these denunciations ring hollow.”
Though he said he did not doubt Republicans’ sincerity or outrage, Obama added: “There has to come a point at which you say somebody who makes those kinds of statements doesn’t have the judgment, the temperament, the understanding to occupy the most powerful position in the world because a lot of people depend on the White House getting stuff right.”
This goes beyond the normal hurly-burly of policy disagreements between Democrats and Republicans, Obama said. The former host of The Apprentice is in quite another category, the president said, from John McCain, whom he defeated in 2008, and Mitt Romney, whom he beat in 2012. Both were more moderate, traditional political figures.
“There have been Republican presidents with whom I disagreed but I didn’t have a doubt that they could function as president,” said Obama, speaking from a lectern near a portrait of Republican president Theodore Roosevelt in the East Room of the White House.
“I think I was right and Mitt Romney and John McCain were wrong on certain policy issues but I never thought that they couldn’t do the job. And 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 and then we’ll compete four years from now to try and win an election.
“But that’s not the situation here. And that’s not just my opinion. That is the opinion of many prominent Republicans. There has to come a point at which you say enough. The alternative is that the entire party, the Republican party, effectively endorses and validates the positions that are being articulated by Mr Trump. And as I said in my speech last week, I don’t think that actually represents the views of a whole lot of Republicans.”
Ever sensitive to criticism, Trump released a statement in response, linking Obama to his former secretary of state and would-be successor. “Obama-Clinton have single-handedly destabilised the Middle East, handed Iraq, Libya and Syria to Isis, and allowed our personnel to be slaughtered at Benghazi [in Libya],” he said.
He added: “They have produced the worst recovery since the Great Depression … Our nation has been humiliated abroad and compromised by radical Islam brought onto our shores. We need change now.”
As Obama gave his unprecedented criticism of Trump in front of a foreign leader, the Republican nominee held a rally to a cheering crowd in a high school auditorium just over 30 miles away.
There, Trump received a replica Purple Heart medal from a veteran. The Republican nominee who received five deferments from the military draft during the Vietnam war, brandished the medal on stage proclaiming “I’ve always wanted to get the real Purple Heart. This was much easier.”
Trump criticized news networks for not airing the speech of Pat Smith, the mother of one of the four Americans to die in the terrorist attacks on Benghazi. Smith, who spoke at the Republican national convention, had her speech broadcast live on CNN and MSNBC. It did not appear on Fox because Trump was being interviewed by Bill O’Reilly while she was on stage.
Obama delivered a searing indictment of Trump at last week’s Democratic national convention in Philadelphia while also championing Clinton, who would be the first female president in American history. His comments on Tuesday suggest that he will only intensify the offensive as he joins her on the campaign trail. Obama is enjoying a surge in popularity in his eighth and final year in office.
Pakistan-born Khizr Khan, whose son, US army captain, Humayun Khan, died in Iraq in 2004, set the Democratic convention alight when he brandished the US constitution and challenged whether Trump has ever read it. Trump has questioned why Ghazala Khan did not speak, implying her religion prevented her from doing so, and claimed he was “viciously attacked”, triggering an ugly controversy.
McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, said Trump did not have “unfettered license to defame those who are the best among us” but did not withdraw his endorsement of the nominee.
During the press conference on Tuesday, Obama also reaffirmed his support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, putting him at odds with both Clinton and Trump amid a wave of anti-globalisation sentiment. “Well, right now I’m president, I’m for it, and I think I’ve got the better argument,” he said. Once the election dust has settled, he added, he would sit down with members of both parties to make his case.
At Trump’s speech in Ashburn, Virginia, the Republican nominee defended his foreign policy team, which has been widely criticized for lacking any experience. One member, Carter Page, is closely linked to the Kremlin and has compared the US’s Russia policy to slavery. The Republican nominee boasted: “These are people who aren’t involved currently, because look at the world: it’s a mess. I don’t want to use the people who are involved currently.” He insisted: “These people are better.”
The Republican nominee also criticized a crying baby in Ashburn. When an infant first started crying at the rally, Trump proclaimed: “Don’t worry about the baby. I love babies. I love babies. I hear that baby crying, I like it.”
Shortly after, when the baby continued to cry, Trump said: “Actually I was only kidding. You can get that baby out of here. That’s all right. Don’t worry. I think she really believed me that I love having a baby crying while I’m speaking.”
While chants of “lock her up” about Clinton have become commonplace at Trump rallies in recent weeks, Tuesday’s event was notable for a child heckler who twice shouted “take the bitch down” about the former secretary of state. The adult who accompanied the heckler, who was roughly 10 years old, told reporters who asked about the coarse language afterwards: “I think he has a right to speak what he wants to” and said he learned such words in “Democratic schools”.
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