In a searing denouncement, President Barack Obama castigated Donald Trump as “unfit” and “woefully unprepared” to serve in the White House. The Washington Post reports that the president attacked Donald Trump on his knowledge of foreign policy, saying that his lack of “basic knowledge” about foreign events, such as Russia’s annexation of Crimea, made him “woefully unprepared” for the job of president.
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Mr Obama also took to task Republican leaders who have frequently clashed with Mr Trump over this statements and policies about women, undocumented immigrants and Muslims. After Khizir Khan, whose son was killed in a suicide bombing in Iraq, said at last week’s Democratic National Convention that Trump had “sacrificed nothing”, Trump claimed he’d been “viciously attacked” and had a right to verbally assault the Khan family.
The top presidential candidates, Republican nominee Mr Trump and the Democrats” Hillary Clinton, are both against the TPP, but Mr Obama is aiming to push the landmark deal through Congress in the “lame duck’ period after the November 8 presidential election and before he leaves office in January.
“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”, Mr Obama said.
Obama, who said the choice between Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton wasn’t “even close” during a primetime address at the Philadelphia convention, asked why the Republicans have continued to line up behind their candidate.
“I have long held the belief that the Republican Party is becoming less capable of nominating a person who is electable as president”, Hanna wrote.
“He keeps proving it”, said Obama, standing alongside the prime minister of Singapore and casting aside any pretense of domestic unity.
During the GOP primary, Trump was critical of McCain and questioned his status as a war hero.
The president said ‘the question that I think they have to ask themselves is, if you are repeatedly having to say in very strong terms that what he has said is unacceptable, why are you still endorsing him?
Trump spent the days after winning the Republican nomination criticizing a USA district court judge’s Mexican heritage.
Throughout the election cycle, Republican legislators have expressed concern over Trump’s controversial comments, but none have withdrawn support.
Trump said that Obama and Clinton, his first-term secretary of state, had “destabilized the Middle East, handed Iraq, Libya and Syria” to Islamic State jihadists.
Khizr Khan criticized Trump’s call for a temporary ban on Muslims coming to the United States and challenged whether he had read the Constitution.
Meanwhile, Obama’s appeals to GOP lawmakers to renounce their nominee arrived just as Republican Rep. Richard Hanna of NY announced that he would be voting for Clinton instead.
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Obama remarked that Republican denunciations of Trump “ring hollow” as they continue to endorse Trump. Khan’s son, Army Captain Humayun Khan, was killed in a suicide auto bomb attack while serving in Iraq in 2004. John McCain (R-Arizona), who Trump had previously criticized for not being a war hero. Obama said this opinion of Trump is shared by prominent Republicans. But I’d rather not say what they are. Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt said the Khans “deserve to be heard and respected”.
