"He (Trump) is not somebody who's fit to be president in any circumstances. I would feel deeply frustrated, not because anything he said about me, but because I would fear for the future of our country," Obama told MSNBC.
"I say that mindful of the fact that there are disagreements between Republicans and Democrats, but I've said this in speeches before. When I ran against John McCain, I thought he had wrong ideas, and I believed I would be a better president," he noted.
"When Donald Trump says that he is prepared to be president, and he will have his family run his businesses, not in a blind trust, when he's got all kinds of business interests that nobody knows what's what and where money is coming from and where it might be going, that is the kind of unprecedented attitude with respect to the highest office in the land that would make me concerned about the country as a whole," Obama said.
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"The challenge that we always have, is that who votes doesn't always match up with the attitudes of the majority. If we had a system in which consistently the majority of the American people voted, not just during presidential years, but midterms, Congress would look very different and we'd have very different policies," he said.
"In Hillary Clinton, the country has somebody who is an outstanding public servant, knows her stuff, is as experienced as anybody has ever been for this office," he said.
"When you have a choice that stark, the idea that you would sit on the sidelines is unacceptable," he said.
Observing that progress is never made overnight, Obama said the fact of the matter is that nobody is going to be able to deliver everything to everybody right away from this office, as powerful as it is.