President Obama said on Monday he would not be concerned about the future of the country if a Republican candidate like previous nominees Sen. John McCain or former Gov. Mitt Romney were running against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for the White House. But Obama, speaking candidly in a late night television interview with ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, said Republican candidate Donald Trump is different than other conservative politicians.
“There’s something different about the way Trump has operated in the political sphere. I ran against McCain, against Romney. I thought I could do a better job, but they’re both honorable men. And if they won, I wouldn’t worry about generally the course of the country,” said Obama.
“But what we haven’t seen before is somebody questioning integrity of elections and the will of the people — a politics based on putting down in very explicit terms, Muslim-Americans who are patriots, or describing women on a one-to-10 score,” Obama added. “Regardless of what your political preferences are, there is a certain responsibility and expectations in terms of how you behave.”
The president said he has paid close attention to the election, including the billionaire businessman’s recent scandal, when Trump and “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush were caught engaging in a lewd conversation about grabbing women. Obama confirmed he watched the hot mic video on a staffer’s phone as he was leaving an event in Chicago.
Kimmel asked if the Democratic president knew at the time of watching the tape that it would be a big deal.
“Didn’t you?” Obama asked the host. “I mean, that’s just not the kind of thing — one of those things where, if your best friend who worked, you know, in the office somewhere had that video, it would be a problem for him. He’s not running for president and rightfully so.”
The president, on a three-day trip through California and Nevada, where he has been campaigning for Clinton and other Democratic candidates, does not appear to be taking Trump’s candidacy too seriously. When Kimmel asked if Obama ever laughed while watching Trump perform in presidential debates, Obama said, “most of the time.”
In a final nudge of the GOP nominee, Obama read a mean tweet, except unlike others he read earlier in the show, this one was written by Trump.
“President Obama will go down as perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States!” Obama read from Trump’s Twitter feed. He then added, “Really? Well, at least I will go down as a president.”
