As President Obama makes his way into the 2016 campaign, conservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer is warning Donald Trump that taking the president on won’t be easy.
“Barack Obama is no Jeb Bush. He’s not low energy,” said Krauthammer, referring to the notorious label Trump stuck to his former Republican rival. “He’s a skilled campaigner who clearly despises Trump and relishes the fight. And he carries the inestimable advantage of the gravitas automatically conferred by seven and a half years of incumbency. Moreover, he now enjoys an unusually high approval rating of around 53 percent. Trump’s latest favorability is 29 percent.”
In his quest to clinch the GOP nomination, Trump, to great effect, slapped a memorable tag on each of his opponents, like “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz and his repeated description of Bush as “low energy.”
Trump has done the same to “Crooked Hillary” Clinton, the presumed Democratic nominee, but has yet to confront Obama with the same tactic.
News reports have said that Obama is readying to come off the sidelines to campaign aggressively on behalf of Clinton to succeed him and it is unclear how Trump would fare taking on a sitting president in an actual election.
“Hillary Clinton is a lousy campaigner but her machine is infinitely larger and more skilled than any of Trump’s 16 GOP competitors,” Krauthammer said. “More riskily, Trump is now going toe-to-toe with a sitting president.”
