Obama: Trump Won't Be President
HE TALKS BIDEN, CLINTON ON 60 MINUTES
By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff
newser.com
Posted Oct 12, 2015 4:06 AM CDT
(NEWSER) – It doesn't sound as if President Obama is losing much sleep worrying about turning the keys to the White House over to Donald Trump. In a 60 Minutesinterview aired Sunday night, the president told Steve Kroft that while Trump is a "great publicity-seeker," he doesn't "think he'll end up being president of the United States." Trump seems to have tapped into "genuine anti-immigrant sentiment" among some GOP voters and he "knows how to get attention," Obama said. "He is, you know, the classic reality TV character and, at this early stage, it's not surprising that he's gotten a lot of attention." More from the interview:
Asked whether he could win a third term if he was allowed to run again, Obama gave what the LA Timescalls an "unequivocal" yes.
Obama said he hadn't been aware of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, and he thinks the issue has been "ginned up" because of politics. "I think it is important for her to answer these questions to the satisfaction of the American public. And they can make their own judgment," he said. "I can tell you that this is not a situation in which America's national security was endangered."
Whether Joe Biden enters the 2016 race is up to Joe Biden, Obama said, but "I think Joe will go down as one of the finest vice presidents in history, and one of the more consequential. I think he has done great work."
On foreign policy, Obama said he thinks the world is a safer place than when he took office—though there are "places, obviously, like Syria that are not safer." He rejected Kroft's suggestion that Vladimir Putin is challenging his—and America's—leadership by conducting military operations in Syria, saying: "If you think that running your economy into the ground and having to send troops in in order to prop up your only ally is leadership, then we've got a different definition of leadership."
(On Saturday, Obama offered Kanye West some political advice.) |
