During a news conference in Canada Wednesday, President Barack Obama couldn’t help but slam the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump without mentioning him by name.
In recapping the lengthy press conference, CNN host Jake Tapper was stunned by President Obama’s prolific rants about Trump.
“It is one of the grandest ironies that a giant real estate developer in New York is currently living rent free in President Obama’s head,” Tapper said on his Wednesday show. “Whatever the topic is, President Obama is eager go after the presumptive presidential nominee whether or not the topic is ISIS after the Orlando shootings, or if the topic is trade, or in this case, the question was about clean energy and President Obama wanted to give a lesson as to what populism truly is.”
CNN Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger agreed with Tapper saying, “Yeah, and he ended up referring to Donald Trump not by name, of course, talking about nativism, xenophobia and cynicism.”
“Look, the elephant in the room in this entire press conference with three North American leaders was Donald Trump on every issue, including trade, which they all made a case for strengthening the TPP and for strengthening NAFTA, which Donald Trump wants to get out of. Hillary Clinton is now not a fan of either of those,” Borger told Tapper.
“But particularly, Jake, on immigration, these were leaders who referred more than once to demagogues. The president did it and the president of Mexico did it. Talking about demagogues who believe in simple solutions, saying the world is not as simplistic as that. Not believing in isolationism. President of Mexico was given an opportunity to take back his words comparing Donald Trump to Hitler. And Jake, he did not do that,” she added.
President Obama has been proactive in slamming Trump in recent weeks. Following the Orlando nightclub attack, the president hammered him for criticizing the administration’s rejection of using “radical Islam” in their rhetoric.
Obama will appear next week with former Secretary Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail in North Carolina.