President Obama slams Trump, says has no temperament, Knowledge or basic honesty

Washington:US President Barack Obama has slammed Donald Trump, saying that the Republican presidential candidate does not have the temperament, knowledge or "basic honesty" to be his successor at the White House. "He (Trump) doesn't have the temperament, or the judgment, or the knowledge, -- or, apparently, the desire to obtain the knowledge -- or the basic honesty that a President needs to have," Obama said at an election rally in North Carolina yesterday. In the remaining four weeks, Obama is expected to intensify his campaign against Trump and campaign for his former Secretary of State and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

In his address, Obama said Trump is different from the two previous Republican presidential nominees – John McCain and Mitt Romney. "When I was running against John McCain, when I was running against Mitt Romney, we had serious disagreements on the economy and on foreign policy and on social issues.

Those elections were close and contested. We had debates. But the truth is, although, obviously, I believed that the agenda that we set was the better agenda for America, I never thought that those people were not honorable," he said. "I did not think that if they were in the Oval Office that America would spin out of control.

I didn't think that they couldn't represent us on the world stage. I just thought they represented a different political party and a different philosophy," he added. Obama said the fact that Trump is not qualified to be the president was known even before surfacing of the 2005 tape in which he is seen making lewd remarks about women.

"So, like, tweeting doesn't qualify you. Sound bites don't qualify you. Insults certainly don't qualify you. Nobody can fully know what it's like to manage a global crisis, or know the feeling of sending a young person into war. But I tell you, nobody has been closer to those decisions than Hillary," he said amidst laughter and applause. "That was true even before we heard about his attitudes towards women. Now, of course, it was true when we heard what he thought about minorities, and what he thought about people of the Muslim faith, and when he made fun of disabled persons, or when he insulted Gold Star families," he said.

Obama said Clinton is only one candidate in the race who qualifies to the next president of the US. "As a First Lady, as a senator, as my Secretary of State, she knows what it means. She knows what it takes. I've seen her intelligence and judgement and temperament and her discipline. I saw her in the Situation Room, where she argued for the bin Laden mission. I saw it in capitals around the world, where she was tirelessly pursuing diplomacy that led to new partnerships; that opened up new democracies," Obama said.

By Lalit K Jha