President Obama compared the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to descending through hell, during his toast at the State Dinner for Italy on Tuesday evening.
“And some days our presidential campaigns can seem like Dante’s Inferno,” Obama told the visiting Italian leaders, celebrities, government officials and media. Earlier in the day, at a press conference alongside Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Obama knocked the Republican nominee for claiming the election was “rigged” against him. The president said Trump ought to focus on winning the election, not complaining about the potential outcome.
Renzi also blasted Trump during the Rose Garden media conference when he called for countries to build a “bridge, not walls.”
But for the duration of Tuesday night’s final State Dinner, the president celebrated the relationship between U.S. and Italy, while also promising to leave office in January with a bang.
“But in the immortal words of a great Italian American, Yogi Berra, ‘It ain’t over ’till it’s over,'” Obama told attendees sitting around at tables on the South Lawn.
The president touted America’s mutually beneficial relationship with Italy and said the two countries’ democratic values have been the keys to both countries’ flourishing.
“No matter what you look like, what your last name is, how many vowels you have in your name, you can make it if you try. And even if we are not Italian American, or Mets fans, we can celebrate that Mike Piazza is finally in the Baseball Hall of Fame,” Obama said, referring to the New York Mets’ retired catcher.
