US president Barack Obama ridiculed Donald Trump on Tuesday for saying the presidential election was rigged against him, the Republican nominee, to "stop whining and go try to make his case" to win more votes than Hillary Clinton.
Speaking at a news conference at the White House Rose Garden, Mr Obama said, “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”.
Mr Obama said the claims demonstrated Mr Trump lacked the leadership or toughness to be president. But he warned that the charges, which Mr Trump repeated to cheers at a rally in Colorado later in the day, would undermine the nation’s purest expression of democracy, a popular vote respected by the vanquished as well as the victors.
His sharp words reflected rising concerns among Democratic and Republican leaders that Mr Trump’s drumbeat of accusations was resonating with his supporters. Many worry that if Ms Clinton wins and Mr Trump refuses to accept the result, his stand will undermine her authority going into office and sow doubts about the legitimacy of the process.
On Tuesday, Mr Trump did not heed the president’s warning. While he did not address Mr Obama directly, he repeated his claims of an election stolen through voter fraud, singling out, with no evidence, African-American communities as the likely culprits of the fraud.
“Voter fraud is all too common, and then they criticize us for saying that,” he said in Colorado Springs. “But take a look at Philadelphia, what’s been going on, take a look at Chicago, take a look at St Louis. Take a look at some of these cities, where you see things happening that are horrendous.”
He said: “And if you talk about it, they say bad things about you, they call you a racist.”
Final debate
Ms Clinton was off the campaign trail Tuesday, preparing for her final debate with Mr Trump on Wednesday, so it fell to Mr Obama to rebut the Republican’s assertions.
There is no evidence, he said, that a presidential election has ever been rigged. He said there was little indication that it could be, given that elections are run by state and local authorities, with people from both parties supervising polling sites and ballot counting.
“The notion that somehow if Trump loses Florida, it is because of those people that you have to watch out for,” he said. “That is both irresponsible, and by the way, doesn’t really show the kind of leadership and toughness that you want out of a president.”
“If you start whining before the game’s even over,” he 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 because there are times when things don’t go ‘our way’ or ‘my way’”.
Asked about Mr Trump's statement that, if elected, he would meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin of before taking office, Mr Obama said: "I'm going to be a little more subdued in my discussions of the Republican nominee in this context than I might be on the campaign trail.
“Mr Trump rarely surprises me anymore.”
He said he was more surprised that other Republican leaders, who had stridently opposed his efforts to reach out to Russia early in his presidency, would now endorse a candidate who he said was unprecedented in his "flattery of Mr Putin."
When the subject returned to Mr Trump and the issue of voter fraud, the president said: “I’d invite Mr Trump to stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes.”
If Mr Trump won, the president said, Ms Clinton would deliver a concession speech and he would escort Mr Trump to the Capitol for the time-honoured ritual of a peaceful transfer of power.
“That’s what Americans do,” he said. “That’s why America is already great. One way of weakening America, making it less great, is if you start betraying those basic American traditions that have been bipartisan, and have helped hold together this democracy now for well over two centuries.”
New York Times