Barack Obama told Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to “stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes” during a White House news conference on Tuesday.
When questioned about Trump’s voter fraud allegations, the President told Trump that “no serious person” would question the American elections and suggest it is possible for them to be rigged.
“I have never seen in my lifetime or in modern political history any presidential candidate trying to discredit the election process before votes have even taken place,” said Obama, adding that there was no evidence to support Trump’s assertions.
The president went on to suggest that Trump did not have it in him to be the next leader of the US. He said:
“If you start whining before the game’s even over, then you don’t have what it takes to be in this job, because they are a lot of things that don’t go your way. 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.”
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law recently carried out a report titled “The Truth About Voter Fraud,”, citing that voter fraud incident rates between 0.00004 percent and 0.0009 percent.
However, it seems Trump’s statement has already made its mark; following his accusations of a “rigged” election process, a Politico/Morning Consult survey found 73 percent of registered Republican voters believe the election could be “stolen” from Trump.
At the same conference held on Tuesday, the president also expressed frustration with Trump’s continued flattery of Russian president Vladmir Putin, saying that “the degree to which he appears to model many of his policies and approaches to politics on Mr. Putin, is unprecedented.”
The third and final presidential debate will be held in Las Vegas on Wednesday.