President Barack Obama on Tuesday slapped down Donald Trump's claim that the 2016 presidential race is rigged, telling the Republican nominee to "stop whining" and get on with his campaign. In language usually used to scold a moody teenager, Obama discarded diplomatic decorum, skewering the mogul from the Rose Garden in front of visiting Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
Trump has ramped up conspiracies about America's election system as his poll numbers have plummeted in the wake of sexual assault allegations against him. He trails around seven points nation-wide and bookmakers in Europe - where political betting is legal - have already begun to pay out on a Clinton win. But the White House is increasingly concerned that Trump and his supporters will not recognize the election's outcome, plunging the country into a political crisis.
According to a poll by Politico and Morning Consult, 41 percent of American voters, including 73 percent of Republicans, now believe the vote could actually be stolen from Trump. "I have never seen in my lifetime or in modern political history any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections and the election process before votes have even taken place. It's unprecedented," Obama said. "If, whenever things are going badly for you and you lose, you start blaming somebody else? Then you don't have what it takes to be in this job," he added.
Addressing Trump's allegations of "large scale voter fraud," Obama said "there's no evidence that that has happened in the past, or that there are instances in which that will happen this time." "I'd advise Mr Trump to stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes," Obama told a news conference. The withering riposte comes on the eve of the third and final presidential debate.
With three weeks until the November 8 election, this may be Trump's last chance to make a positive mark on millions of voters. Campaigning in Colorado on Tuesday, a slightly subdued Trump indicated his scorched-earth tactics would continue. "We've only just begun to fight, believe me," he said. "This is our final shot, folks." Polls giving Clinton the lead were inaccurate, he said. In fact, "they're sort of good" for the Trump campaign.
"We are going to have one of the greatest victories in political history," he predicted, excoriating the media for being "an extension of the Hillary Clinton campaign." "The press has created a rigged system and poisoned the minds of the voters," he said. "Either we win this election or we lose the country." Trump doubled-down on his vote rigging claims, saying that "noncitizens" might decide the election and "voter fraud is all too common" in cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago and St. Louis - which have large African-American populations.
Comments
Comments are closed.