THE PRESIDENT, WITH A 58% APPROVAL, CALLS TRUMP “A FRAUD”

…President Obama addressing the large crowd in Philadelphia for Hillary

 

The president has to deal with Russia, but unlike Trump, he doesn’t call Putin his “role model”

 

In his campaign speech for Hillary in Philadelphia, the president said he had lost patience with a campaign dominated by what he called “reality-television mentality”.

 

Per the president, “Look, I understand. We’re a young country. We are a restless country.  We always like the new, shiny thing. I benefited from that when I was a candidate. And we take for granted sometimes what’s steady and true. And Hillary Clinton’s steady, and she is true.”

 

This first solo campaign speech by the president occurred in the important swing-state area of eastern Pennsylvania and with a president that currently has a high approval rating of 58%.  It was also an opportunity for the president, a well-known political campaigner, to vent about a Republican nominee who he said “isn’t fit in any way, shape or form to represent this country.”

 

The president didn’t hold back throughout the speech when he mocked the novice GOP candidate as being “a fraudulent champion for the working class”.  He then suggested that the businessman was exploiting the voter’s angry mood for their negative circumstances, while Trump was himself living a gilded life in a Manhattan penthouse.

 

At the same time the president was speaking, in Clive, Iowa, Trump was going after both the president and Hillary.  Trump was saying that their Democratic policies have harmed the country and that Clinton’s character flaws disqualified her from being president.   According to Trump, “Hillary Clinton lacks the judgment, temperament and moral character to lead this country,”  And as he has done repeatedly in recent days, he went after Clinton for labeling half his supporters as, “a basket of deplorables.”  

 

Trump also said he is running to “reverse the policies of the past eight years and to create a future of prosperity for all Americans.”  But as usual, he gave no examples of what he would be replacing the past events with….?

 

While Trump was saying this, President Obama was saying: “I keep on reading this analysis that Trump’s got his support from, like, working folks.  Really? This is the guy you want to be championing working people? This guy who spent 70 years on this earth showing no concern for working people.”

 

Apparently, this has all been in the president’s plans for helping out his former Secretary of State.  By holding back and waiting until the issues of how to deal with the Bernie Sanders voters cooled down, the president has up until now been somewhat quiet about supporting Hillary.

 

But now, eight weeks to the day until the November Election Day, Obama appeared to be taking his turn as Clinton’s chief defender. 

 

With such a strong approval rating, the president said he “really, really, really wants to see her elected and pledged to work hard on her behalf”.  He continued with, “I could not be prouder of the leader we have nominated to take my place.  Even though I have run my last campaign, I am going to work as hard as I can this fall to elect Hillary Clinton as the next president of the United States.”

 

Today, with Hillary taking off some critical campaign days to deal with her pneumonia diagnosis, she is in an excellent position for having a popular president, a popular vice president in Joe Biden and a former popular US President with her husband Bill, all out campaigning as her surrogates.

 

But the current president was really relishing with his excellent campaigning methods, as he went directly after the Trumpster.

 

He said to his audience about The Donald: “I mean, he wasn’t going to let you on his golf course.  He wasn’t going to let you buy his condos. And now suddenly this guy’s going to be your champion?”

 

Obama also drew laughs when he took aim at Trump’s charitable foundation, noting, as The Washington Post reported, that he “took money that other people gave to his charity and then bought a 6-foot-tall painting of himself. He had the taste not to go for the 10-foot version.”

 

In continuing to make his point, Obama said to the crowd:  All of us, young, old, men, women, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, folks with disabilities, all pledging allegiance to the same flag — that’s the America I know,” Obama said. “That’s the America you know and believe in. And there is just one candidate in this race who’s devoted her life to building that America.”

 

The president was totally energized when going after Trump.  He left no doubt that he had a personal goal of defeating the man that first rose to political prominence as the #1 proponent of the false “birther” theory that Obama was not born in the United States and is therefore not legitimately president.

 

To this day, Donald Trump has not conceded that he believes that Obama is a legitimate president. 

 

The scuttlebutt today is that during the up-coming presidential debates, a moderator will probably be asking Trump if he still believes that President Obama was not born in the US, and it will be very interesting to hear Trump’s answer if the question is asked.

 

President Obama is next expected on the trail in October, with a lazar focus on young voters, blacks and Hispanics. Clinton’s strategists hope that Obama’s strong popularity among Democrats, and his sway with African Americans and the younger voters, will help Clinton overcome the difficult hurdle of winning a third term for the Democrats.

 

Obama made a final impression as to how tenacious Hillary Clinton can be as a campaigner.  In relating back to the 2008 contest against Hillary, Obama said, “Every time I thought I had that race won, I was like going up the ‘Rocky’ steps.  I was about to celebrate, and then I looked. She’s right there. And I got whupped here in Pennsylvania. She whupped me.”

 

Where this speech was all taking place was actually on those same steps of the historic Philadelphia Museum of Art that were featured in that famous “Rocky” picture with Sylvester Stallone.

 

Obama was truly in his element and he made it clear that, “No one, and certainly not Trump, really knows what it means to be the US president and make life-and-death decisions.”

 

The president finished with, “Anybody can pop off.  Anybody can fire off a Tweet. Everybody’s a critic. But that doesn’t mean you know what it’s like to manage a global crisis. You don’t know what it’s like to send a group of young people to war knowing that some won’t come back. But the closest you can come to understanding what it’s like is to be where Hillary’s been, to have been part of those decisions.”

 

Hillary couldn’t have asked for a better group of surrogates than those that are campaigning today on her behalf.

 

There will need to be some serious mistakes between now and November 8^th, for Hillary to lose to someone as unqualified as Donald J. Trump. 

 

But then……stranger things have happened.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016