“Do you mind if I just vent for a second?” President Barack Obama asked rally attendees in Philadelphia on Tuesday.
The president was pitching Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton when he told supporters he’s “frustrated” that the media have given credence to false equivalences between the two major-party candidates.
“I’m just telling the truth,” he said.
Obama took issue with how news outlets have covered issues regarding transparency and questionable practices carried out by the candidates’ family foundations. He defended Clinton’s record by noting she has released “decades worth of her tax returns,” even though GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump hasn’t released any.
“One candidate’s family foundation has saved countless lives around the world,” Obama said. “The other candidate’s foundation took money other people gave to his charity and then bought a 6-foot tall painting of himself.”
“He had the taste not to go for the 10-foot version,” Obama added, to laughs.
The president said the media have let Trump get away with misleading comments that would have led to a candidate’s undoing in past election seasons.
“Somehow, as things go on, because we’ve become so partisan, our standards for what’s normal have changed,” Obama said. “And Donald Trump says stuff every day that used to be considered as disqualifying for being president. And yet, because he says it over and over and over again, the press just gives up.”
The president referred to a recent incident in which NBC’s Matt Lauer allowed Trump to claim he was “totally against the war in Iraq” ― a demonstrably false comment ― without pushing back. It’s a lie Trump has made repeatedly on the campaign trail, and reporters for many media outlets faulted Lauer for his shortcomings.
Obama has a point: Trump has made many comments that would have ruined presidential candidates before him. Democrats have posited that expectations have been set so low for Trump that he has been held to an entirely different standard than other presidential hopefuls.
“The bottom line is that we cannot afford suddenly to treat this like a reality show,” Obama said. “We can’t afford to act as if there’s some equivalence here.”
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
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