70 years

Obama: Trump spent 70 years avoiding working people

By Louis Nelson

Speaking in the shadow of the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps made famous by the movie “Rocky,” President Barack Obama scoffed at the notion of Donald Trump as the champion of the common man.

“Look, I keep on reading this analysis that, well, you know, Trump’s got support from, like, working folks. Really? Like, this is the guy you want to be championing working people?” the president said at a rally for Hillary Clinton. “This guy who spent 70 years on this Earth showing no concern for working people. This guy is suddenly going to be your champion? I mean he’s spent most of his life trying to stay as far away from working people as he could. And now this guy's going to be the champion of working people? Huh?”

By contrast, Obama likened his former secretary of state to the silver-screen Philadelphia boxer, a statue of whom stood nearby. He recalled her 2008 primary victory in Pennsylvania and said that despite their hard-fought 2008 battle, he “really, really, really” wants to see her elected to the White House.

“Now, look, can I just say I am really into electing Hillary Clinton?” Obama said, interrupting the crowd’s chants of Clinton’s name. “This is not me going through the motions here. I really, really, really want to elect Hillary Clinton.”

Obama spent the bulk of the beginning of his rally ticking off his administration’s accomplishments, highlighting economic gains over the past eight years as well as renewed diplomatic ties to Cuba, a nuclear agreement with Russia and the death of Osama Bin Laden. As he listed successes from the past eight years, an audience member yelled that gas was $2 a gallon, to which the president jokingly responded “thank you for reminding me. Thanks, Obama.”

But the president also said “we knew that we wouldn't meet all of our challenges in one term or even in one presidency,” and went on to praise Clinton as the candidate best positioned to continue the progress he touted. He compared his former secretary of state to Donald Trump, a candidate who Obama said presents a “fundamental choice about who we are as a people. This is a choice about the very meaning of America.”

“What we’ve seen from the other side in this election, this isn't Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party. This isn't even the vision of freedom that Ronald Reagan talked about,” he said. “This is a dark, pessimistic vision of a country where we turn against each other, we turn away from the rest of the world. They're not offering serious solutions. They're just fanning resentment and blame and anger and hate. And that is not the America we know. That's not the America I know.”

Also unrecognizable to Republican leaders of the past, Obama said, would be Trump’s friendly tone towards Russia and specifically its president, Vladimir Putin. Of the Manhattan billionaire’s relationship with Putin, Obama said “he loves this guy,” and said the Russian president was “Donald Trump’s role model.”

“Can you imagine Ronald Reagan idolizing somebody like that?” Obama asked the crowd. “He saw America as a shining city on the hill. Donald Trump calls it a divided crime scene.”

The president also pilloried Trump’s recent interview with Larry King that aired on the Russian government-owned TV network RT America, where Obama said the GOP nominee sought to “talk down our military and to curry favor with Vladimir Putin.” Obama derided the praise Trump has lavished on Putin as “a strong leader” who has more adeptly led his own country than Obama has the U.S.

“The interviewer asks him well why do you support this guy? ‘He's a strong guy. Look, he's gotten a 82 percent poll rating.’ Well, yes, Saddam Hussein had a 90 percent poll rating,” Obama said, recalling in general terms praise that Trump has offered Putin in the past. “I mean, if you control the media and you've taken away everybody's civil liberties and you jail dissidents, that's what happens. The pollster calls you up and says ‘do you support the guy who if you don't support him he might throw you in jail?’ You say ‘yes, I love that guy.’”

Even with a historically unpopular candidate in Trump, Obama returned again to his regular campaign rally refrain: “Don’t boo, vote.” He called on Pennsylvanians not just to support Clinton but also Democrats up and down the ballot, highlighting Senate candidate Katie McGinty’s bid to unseat Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.

The Pennsylvania senate seat is one Democrats hope to capture as part of their larger bid to regain control of the Senate. Seeking to tie Toomey to his party’s presidential candidate, Obama told the crowd that “if you oppose raising the minimum wage you should vote for Trump. You should also vote for Pat Toomey. A Trump-Toomey economy will be right up your alley.”

“Pat Toomey strongly opposes Obamacare, the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, and many other Obama initiatives, so of course the president will support his opponent. But that hasn’t stopped Toomey from joining with the president on gun safety and some job creation measures," Toomey's Senate campaign responded in a statement emailed out by his campaign. "That’s the difference between a senator who thinks for himself, and the partisan extremist rubber stamp that Katie McGinty would be.”

Obama also acknowledged that Clinton’s decades in the public eye have left her exposed to “what I believe is more unfair criticism than anybody out here,” but cautioned Americans, and especially young Americans, not to dismiss her as a relic of the past. He praised her for continuing to seek public office “even if we haven't always appreciated her.”

“We are 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 is steady and true. And Hillary Clinton's steady and she is true,” the president said before urging voters to support Clinton by echoing a famous Teddy Roosevelt speech. “If you're serious about our democracy then you've got to be with her. She's in the arena and you can't leave her in there by herself. You have to get in there with her.”