Obama said in an interview broadcast Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that Trump’s comments to the New York Times _ in which Trump suggested allies that haven’t paid their North Atlantic Treaty Organisation dues wouldn’t be guaranteed of getting help if Russian Federation invaded _ were an admission that the USA might not live by NATO’s “most central tenet”.
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To listen to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the Cleveland convention is to conclude that in 2016, it is now midnight in America – that our homeland is under relentless invasion by foreigners who come not for a better life for their families but rather to commit crimes and threaten our nation.
“Fair to say”, Obama did say, “this is not just a choice between parties or policies; the usual debates between left and right”.
Wednesday’s display was the picture of diversity that Democrats have sought to frame the whole week: The first African-American president symbolically seeking to hand the weightiest baton in the free world to a woman.
But Obama has now debunked the anecdote as a joke that the Times took seriously.
He began there, but he used it as the setup for a speech not as a valedictory.
All that was at risk, Obama suggested in Philadelphia, the birthplace of America, was the democratic project itself.
Tonight, the current president is joining her party – for it is her party now – in making the case to the nation for electing the former first lady, senator and secretary of state as the first woman to occupy the Oval Office.
And so, Obama was all in. To sit by and refuse to support Clinton is to effectively support Trump.
But polls in the last week have shown a tightening race, with Trump overtaking Hillary Clinton in some instances.
When she formally accepts it on Thursday, she will become the Democratic standard-bearer against Republican nominee Trump in the November 8 election.
The accusation comes after Donald Trump Jr.’s stepmother, Melania Trump, was caught repurposing passages from a 2008 speech by Michelle Obama in her own speech at the RNC. “And I promise you, our strength, our greatness, does not depend on Donald Trump”.
Hard to say who was better. “That is America. Those bonds of affection, that common creed”.
“It is the nature of democracy that until those votes are cast and the American people have their say, we don’t know”, Obama said. “That’s the Hillary I know”.
It was a unity speech, yes, but it wasn’t simply that.
“Hillary Clinton is “lista”, he said. “And I don’t see that kind of person being the president of the United States”, he said.
And so the terms were set.
There is no question that history will judge Obama’s tenure as a success – even now, an increasing number of Americans approve of his presidency. Because he’s selling the American people short. He didn’t just invoke Reagan, he cited him, and wondered how Republicans could fail to see what he saw.
Obama said he got a lot of phone calls from confused friends after the story ran. Mr. Trump himself stepped on stage as well as Governor Pence.
This wasn’t Democrats versus Republican, he said, or liberals versus conservatives. Whatever its myriad faults, the Democratic Party is not on the verge of falling victim to a demagogue; it is not, fundamentally, broken.
“We’re going to carry Hillary to victory this fall, because that’s what the moment demands”, Obama said.
But the night will likely be most remembered for the power of Obama’s rhetoric.
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I’m not sure what definition of “fringe” Trump is using. This wasn’t mockery. This wasn’t a Donald roast. “Young people who were so strongly in favor of Obama eight years ago and four years ago, the issues that are most important to them, they’re even more afraid of Trump turning back the clock on those issues”, he said.
