President Obama mocked Republicans who are just now starting to defect from supporting GOP nominee Donald Trump, saying that lawmakers contradicted their own principles for supporting him in the first place.
“Now these Republican politicians who were OK with this crazy stuff then suddenly they are walking away,” Obama said during a rally in Las Vegas Sunday in support of Democratic Nominee Hillary Clinton.
“All these years you say you stand for family values,” he said, referring to Republicans. “But why didn’t you walk away months ago when you heard your nominee for president call women pigs, dogs, slobs, grades them not on their character or intelligence but on a scale of 1 to 10?”
Obama singled out Republican Senate Candidate Rep. Joe Heck, who is in a close race with Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto. Heck earlier supported Trump but has since withdrawn his earlier support for the embattled GOP nominee.
“Now that Trump’s poll numbers are cratering, he says that ‘I am not supporting him.’ Too late. you don’t get credit for that,” Obama said.
Obama’s comments come as Democratic Nominee Hillary Clinton has been devoting more time on the campaign trail to heralding down-ballot candidates, and tying them to Trump.
RealClearPolitics shows a tight race between Heck and Masto, with its polling average showing Masto up 2.3 percentage points.
Obama also touched on Trump’s recent comments that the election results could be rigged. He said that swing states have Republican governors and that both Republicans and Democrats are watching how the ballots are filled out and how they are turned in.
“If this is rigged, boy it would be a really big conspiracy,” he said. “The Republican governor is not going to rig an election for Hillary Clinton.”
