War on Trump

Obama declares war on Trump

The fired-up president upstages Hillary as he torches the GOP nominee.

By Nolan D. McCaskill and Glenn Thrush

Barack Obama came not just to praise Hillary Clinton — but to bury Donald Trump.

The president, clad in shirtsleeves — and defiance — for most of his kickoff speech Tuesday in Charlotte, North Carolina, heartily endorsed his former secretary of state and vanquished 2008 opponent, saying he was eager to “pass the baton” to the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Yet for 40 minutes, Obama brandished the presidential baton and used it to batter the presumptive Republican nominee after enduring months of Trump’s insults, criticisms of his “weak” foreign policy and insinuations that he is a secret Muslim working against the country’s interests.

Obama and Trump each views the other man as the embodiment of all that is wrong in America — and the 44th president, released from the constraints of withholding his endorsement in the just-completed Democratic primary, declared a war-within-a-war as his party’s nominee sat on a stool nearby: Obama vs. Trump 2016.

“Even the Republicans on the other side don’t really know what the guy’s talking about — they really don’t,” Obama said of Trump, who had scheduled his own Tuesday night counter-event in Raleigh, 170 miles to the east on I-40.

“You ask ‘em, they’re all like, ‘I don’t know,’” added Obama, who never mentioned Trump by name. “Then they kinda duck the other way. … Am I joking? No.”

Clinton has acknowledged that she isn’t as dynamic a speaker as Obama — and even during their side-by-side speeches praising each other on Tuesday, Obama’s off-the-cuff humor and biting attacks on Trump upstaged the more scripted, stentorian delivery of a presumptive nominee known more for her resilience than her rhetorical gifts.

"I feel very privileged because I've known the president in many roles: as a colleague in the Senate, as an opponent in a hard-fought primary, and the president I was so proud to serve as secretary of state," Clinton said, wearing a striking magenta suit that stood out against the backdrop of blue “I’m With Her” signs.

“I also know him as the friend that I was honored to stand with in the good times and the hard times. Someone who has never forgotten where he came from,” Clinton said.

But Obama, like the other president who has been campaigning for Clinton — Bill — spent as much time defending his own policies and approach to governing as he did in praising the woman who will be the first female nominee of a major party. Obama’s staff has said over the past few weeks that he’s been infuriated by Trump’s rise — and eager to jump back on the trail to personally take on a man he views as a bully, liar and coward.

He began by mocking Trump’s favored mode of political communication — Twitter — contrasting the challenges of leading a country with talking tough on a social media app.

“Everybody can tweet, but nobody actually knows what it takes to do the job until you've sat behind the desk,” he said with a chuckle, referring to his workspace in the Oval Office.

Obama acknowledged that even his youngest daughter, Sasha, tweets — then joked that her Twitter skills didn’t make her any more qualified to be president than Trump is. “She doesn't think that she, thereby, should be sitting behind the desk,” he added. “So, you can't fully understand what it means to make life-and-death decisions until you've done it. That's the truth. But I can tell you this: Hillary Clinton has been tested.”

North Carolina — which Obama lost narrowly in 2012 and won by an even smaller margin in 2008 — is shaping up to be a major battleground this year. Trump has held a narrow but slipping lead in polls here, and Obama is expected to spend a significant amount of his trail time in the state, and adjoining Virginia, which are both within an hour’s flying distance of Washington and have large, politically active African-American populations.

Obama stomped on Trump’s ubiquitous campaign slogan to “make America great again” — a phrase that particularly irks black voters who have less fond recollections of segregation and economic inequality, particularly in the South.

“Just the other day, somebody was writing about, wow, when you look at the surveys in the world, turns out that when Obama came into office, the world didn’t think we were that great,” he recalled. “But now, they think we’re the greatest. They think we’re the strongest. They think we’re the best positioned.”

“We were in a hole before I came into office, but right now, the world — the rest of the world — thinks we’re pretty darn great. And, by the way, you can look that up. That’s a fact,” he continued, before hammering Trump again. “That’s not, like, something I just made up and tweeted.”

Obama, who has been working behind the scenes for months on Clinton’s behalf, said his admiration for the former New York senator grew during the bitter slog of 2008 and has only grown over the years. And, striking a theme that Clinton herself has repeated throughout 2016, he praised her as the one true champion for the middle class in the race.

“If that’s your concern, this isn’t even a choice,” he said. “Because the other side has nothing to offer you.”

Still, like the joint rally in Unity, New Hampshire, which ended the 2008 primaries, the Charlotte event seemed equal parts Obama and Clinton. And he alternated his ’08 “Fired up, ready to go!” mantra with the somewhat less sonorous chant of “Hill-a-ry!”

Adding to the throwback aura was his recitation of his 2008 campaign theme, many parts of which wilted in the partisan heat of the capital: a post-partisan, post-racial approach to increasing economic opportunity.

“I don’t care whether you’re white, black, Hispanic, Native American, polka dot, male, female — I don’t care,” he said.

“If what you care about is who’s gonna be fighting for ordinary folks who are fighting for a better life for themselves and their children, then I don’t know how you vote for the guy who’s against the minimum wage, against unions, against making sure that everybody gets a fair shot, against legislation for equal pay, against sick leave and family leave and against all the things that working families care about,” he added.

The choice in November, Obama stressed, is between “a path that divides us with harsh rhetoric” that pushes policies for the top 1 percent or one in which Americans "transform our politics so they’re responsive to working families.”

Obama credited America’s standing in the world to Clinton’s work as secretary of state — while not mentioning the morning’s announcement that the FBI was not recommending charges related to her use of a private email server while at State — before launching another veiled attack at her opponent.

“Part of the reason is that Hillary understood and continues to understand that just a bunch of tough talk doesn’t replace the hard work of diplomacy,” he said. “A bunch of phony bluster doesn’t keep us safe. And she understands we can’t retreat from a world that needs American leadership.”

Republicans for years have “talked a good game” about immigration reform but haven’t done anything but make Trump their standard-bearer — “a nominee whose only plan is to build a higher wall,” Obama said.

“That’s not a plan,” he said, before admonishing the booing crowd to express its frustrations with Trump at the ballot box. “Hold on a second. I was waiting for this opportunity: Don’t boo, vote. Don’t boo, vote. Booing doesn’t help. You need to vote.”

The president warned that Trump would appoint Supreme Court justices who see the world like he does, adding that the high court is no joke and this election is no reality show.

“When a crisis hits, you can’t just walk off the set. You can’t fire the script writer,” Obama said. “You can’t be reckless. You don’t have the luxury of just saying whatever pops into your head. You’ve actually gotta know what you’re talking about. You’ve gotta actually do your homework. You can’t just kick out reporters.”

It’s not likely Clinton and Obama will appear on many more stages together — though they will repeat their public hug at the Democratic convention this month in Philadelphia — to cover more ground.

But the pair, who once famously tangled with each other on a Washington tarmac during an especially tense moment in the 2008 primaries, seem to genuinely enjoy each other’s company — albeit in a photo-friendly way.

When the motorcade carrying the pair returned to the airport in the rain, Clinton and Obama stood under an umbrella near Air Force One for a while chatting — rotating slowly so that the cameras on all sides could get the shot.

At one point, he threw an arm over her shoulder — and she gave a thumbs-up before saying goodbye and handed off the umbrella to an aide and headed back to her car.