Donald Trump For President? David Plouffe Says There's No Chance He'd 'Ever Be Hired'
Senior White House adviser David Plouffe weighed in on the presidential ambitions of Donald Trump on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday.
"I saw Donald Trump kind of rising in some polls and given his behavior and spectacle the last couple of weeks, I hope he keeps on rising," said Plouffe. "There is zero chance that Donald Trump would ever be hired by the American people to do this job."
In recent weeks, Trump has captured headlines and sparked controversy by repeatedly raising skepticism over whether President Barack Obama is a citizen of the United States. He has released his own official birth certificate and has called on Obama to do the same despite the fact that the president's birth records have been available online for over three years. Last week, Trump signaled that he has investigators on the ground in Hawaii in search of more details on the president's birthplace.
Plouffe called the actions demonstrated by Trump "sideshow behavior."
"There may be a small part of the country that believes these things, but mainstream Americans think it's a sideshow," he said, adding that voters want political leaders to focus on the economy and pressing policy issues.
Karl Rove and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) are two conservatives who have expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that Trump continues to hammer the issue.
Nevertheless, Trump raised doubt over the president's citizenship once again in an interview that aired on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday. He called the ordeal "a strange situation" and suggested that it's because of the media that "the word birther is a negative word."
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First Posted: 04/10/11 11:58 AM ET Updated: 06/10/11 06:12 AM ET