“The presidential race, we should win. But Donald Trump got the nomination, so weird stuff happens," Barack Obama said. | Getty Obama: Election 'shouldn't be close, but it's close'

NEW YORK — President Barack Obama says he’s worried.

“This shouldn’t be close, but it’s close,” Obama told donors Tuesday night at a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee here on the Upper East Side. “The presidential race, we should win. But Donald Trump got the nomination, so weird stuff happens.”


Obama, who earlier in the day campaigned for Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia and has repeatedly said that he’s sure Trump won’t win, entered the final two months of the election trying to put the donors on edge.

He embraced the apocalyptic talk that’s been going around Democratic circles at the prospect of a Trump presidency, saying early on in his remarks, “It is a cliché that every election is the most important in our lifetime, but I got to tell you, this one — this one counts.”

Wrapping up his remarks, he hit this again: “I genuinely believe that the basic character of this country, and what happens, is dependent on what happens now. The stakes are really high.”

Obama didn’t spend much time talking about Clinton, other than praising her as deeply qualified for the job. He spent his time on Trump.

“You have a nominee of a major party that shows no awareness of just basic rudimentary domestic or foreign policy, advertises his ignorance every day, who proclaims his role model for leadership is Vladimir Putin,” Obama said.

Trump’s Putin praise seems to have particularly gotten under Obama’s skin. As he did in Philadelphia, he snickered at Trump’s praising the Russian president’s 82 percent approval rating.

Obama looked to the reporters seated at the back of the fundraiser.

“Can you imagine what my approval rating would be if all those folks in the back worked for me, and I was writing their stories? Wow,” Obama said. “I’d be doing really well.”

Then, noting the climbing approval rating that has the Clinton campaign eager to get him out on the trail more, Obama said, “I’m doing OK as it is.”

And Trump’s not alone, Obama charged. Republicans in Congress are just as bad, down to the current “crazy” push to impeach the IRS commissioner.

“It doesn’t matter to them that the facts do not match their positions and have been repeatedly refuted,” Obama said.

Though he mocked even that, knocking the GOP for never being able to come up with opposition that matters.

“They can’t get organized enough even to present the cockamamie legislation that they’re interested in passing,” Obama said.

Obama wasn’t the only one taking shots at Trump on Tuesday night.

Jim Chanos, the president and founder of Kynikos Associates and the host of the event, introduced Obama by ripping into the Republican nominee’s business record.

“The easiest short sales I ever had in my life were the stocks and bonds of Donald J. Trump’s companies,” Chanos said. “It was like numerous ocean liners hitting many icebergs, repeatedly.”

