“Again and again, I’ve been frustrated by the degree to which, probably just because she’s been around a long time, people just do not give her credit," President Barack Obama said of Hillary Clinton. | Getty Obama warns: 'If you don't vote, that's a vote for Trump'

President Barack Obama on Wednesday warned Americans against staying at home on Election Day, saying such a move would be a boon for Donald Trump.

“If you don’t vote, that’s a vote for Trump,” Obama said during an interview on “The Steve Harvey Morning Show” broadcast Wednesday. “If you vote for a third-party candidate who’s got no chance to win, that’s a vote for Trump. So the notion somehow that, ‘Well, you know, I’m not as inspired because Barack and Michelle, they’re not on the ballot this time, and, you know, maybe we kinda take it easy’ — my legacy’s on the ballot. You know, all the work we’ve done over the last eight years is on the ballot.”


Obama praised his former secretary of state, hailing her as a candidate who is “capable, tough, does her homework” and cares about the same issues he does, such as an economy that works for everyone, affordable college and criminal justice reform, to name a few.

Then there’s Trump, Obama said, characterizing him as a candidate “who’s unqualified, doesn’t do his homework, doesn’t know basic facts that you need to know if you’re gonna be president of the United States.”

Obama highlighted some of Trump’s lowest moments in Monday’s presidential debate at Hofstra University, where the real estate mogul maintained that it was smart for him to pay little-to-no taxes and suggested that maybe he stiffed workers because they “didn’t do a good job and I was unsatisfied with” the work.

He also noted Trump’s attacks on Alicia Machado, a former Miss Universe, whom Trump taunted by calling her “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping.” On Tuesday, Trump told “Fox and Friends” that Machado “was the worst [Miss Universe] we ever had” and accused her of gaining “a massive amount of weight,” which he said “was a real problem.”

Trump “talks about their weight and talks about, you know, how they look instead of the contents of their character and their capabilities, which is not something that I want — not somebody I want in the Oval Office that my daughters are listening to and that sons are listening to and so, you know, across the board, you know, you’ve got somebody who appears to only care about himself,” Obama said, citing Trump rooting for the housing collapse as another example.

“For somebody who wants to be president of the United States and you’re not thinking about the hardship of foreclosures and people losing their homes and being out on the streets, that your only focus is how can I make a buck off it, that’s not the kinda person that I think we want representing us in the Oval Office,” he added.

Obama implored Americans to register to vote, insisting that with online registration in some states, it’s never been easier to get registered. But of course, he suggested that when the time comes, they vote for Clinton, who would succeed the nation's first black president as its first female president, if elected.

“Again and again, I’ve been frustrated by the degree to which, probably just because she’s been around a long time, people just do not give her credit. And part of it maybe is because she’s a woman, and, you know, we have not elected a woman president before,” Obama said. “But here’s somebody who, as I said at the convention, is as qualified as anybody who’s ever run for this office, and she’s been on the right side of the issues that we care about, and we need to support her, and that begins, by the way, by making sure that everybody’s registered and everybody’s voting.”

Abstaining could take America backward, Obama warned, going on to explain that after the Civil War, Jim Crow was enacted, black elected officials were purged and certain people couldn’t vote again. History, Obama said, can go forward, backward or even sideways, depending on how active and involved citizens are.

“The stakes in this election are so high. You know, you have some of Trump’s aides on record saying that their main agenda — they don’t really have much of an agenda, but to the extent they have one — is to basically eliminate the Obama presidency, to reverse everything that we have accomplished,” Obama said, ticking through his administration’s successes that a Trump administration would try to roll back, including increased incomes, reduction of poverty and mass incarceration, criminal justice reform and his signature health care law. “He has said those are the things he wants to reverse. He wants to make sure 20 million people don’t have health insurance, so the stakes could not be higher.”

“If we’re gonna protect everything that we’ve achieved and keep moving forward then we need Hillary Clinton to win, and I don’t want anybody staying home thinking this is any less important than it was in ’08 or 2012,” Obama continued, going on to remind voters that “if you do not vote, you’re voting for Trump. And if you vote, then you’re voting — even if I’m not on the ballot — you’re voting for the work that all of us have done together, making sure that’s locked in, making sure that’s sustained.”