The Donald Chronicles: The Fate of the World is Teetering

Today we have an exclusive guest columnist, President Barack Obama.  Well, exclusive in the sense that he's the only guest columnist here today.  This is a speech he gave Wednesday in North Carolina, with excerpts below.  It reminds me of a number I can't shake.  More than two-thirds of people surveyed say that Trump is not qualified to be President.

"So I hate to put a little pressure on you, but the fate of the Republic rests on your shoulders. (Laughter.) The fate of the world is teetering, and you, North Carolina, are going to have to make sure that we push it in the right direction...

But I want you to push away the noise for a second and just focus on the choice you face in this election -- because the truth is, the choice, if we put aside all the noise, all the distractions, all the hype, all the nonsense -- if you push all that away, this choice actually could not be simpler, it could not be clearer. It really couldn’t...

This choice actually is pretty clear, because the guy that the Republicans nominated -- even though a bunch of them knew they shouldn’t nominate him -- the guy they nominated who many of the Republicans he is running against said was a con-artist and a know-nothing and wasn’t qualified to hold this office -- this guy is temperamentally unfit to be Commander in Chief and he is not equipped to be President. (Applause.)

And this should not be a controversial claim. It really shouldn’t. I mean, it’s strange how, over time, what is crazy gets normalized and we just kind of assume, well, you know what, he said a hundred crazy things, so the hundred-and-first thing we just don’t even notice...

He says he'll be his own foreign policy advisor. He says he can do that because he has a "good brain." Now, that is contestable. (Laughter.) But what I can tell you is, we can't afford a President who suggests that America should torture people, or that we should ban entire religions from our country. (Applause.) We deserve better than a Commander-in-Chief who insults POWs, or attacks a Gold Star mom, or denigrates our troops...

We have to stop thinking that his behavior is normal, that it’s within the bound of what has, up until this point, been our normal political discourse. And you hear some folks now justifying it and making excuses. You hear some Republicans who -- they know he’s not qualified but they say, well, you know what, character doesn't matter and knowing the issues doesn’t matter and policy doesn’t matter so long as he supports Republican agenda.

But I have to tell you -- this office, it’s about who you are and what you are, and it doesn't change after you occupy the office. It just magnifies it. If you disrespect women before you are elected President, you will disrespect women when you’re in office. (Applause.) If you accept the support of Klan sympathizers -- the Klan -- and hesitate when asked about that support -- then you'll tolerate that support when you’re in office. If you disrespect the Constitution before you’re elected President, and you threaten to shut down the press when it writes stories about you that you don’t like, or you threaten to throw your opponent in jail without any due process, or you discriminate against people of different faiths, then imagine what you'll do when you actually have the power to violate the Constitution along those lines...

And guess what, North Carolina -- the good news is, all of you are uniquely qualified to make sure this guy who is uniquely unqualified does not become President. You just got to vote. You just got to vote."