Obama smacks back Trump tweet on 'Kimmel'

LOS ANGELES — Some people subtweet Donald Trump. President Barack Obama just read his response directly into a camera here Monday as part of the “Mean Tweets” segment on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

After reading several selections from people comparing him to "Sharknado," griping that he probably likes mustard on hot dogs (he does) and blaming him for a new bottle of conditioner being bad, he read one from a certain @realDonaldTrump, tweeted in August: “Obama will go down as the worst President in history on many topics but especially foreign policy.”


“Well @realDonaldTrump,” Obama said, “at least I will go down as a president.”

Having a good time on the small set — he and Obama were talking and laughing their way through commercial breaks on the ABC series — Obama took a couple of other shots at the Republican nominee. When Kimmel asked if the president just laughed watching Trump at the debates, Obama responded “most of the time.”

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Obama said, is as it happens, a perfect antidote to Trump and the divisions in politics he’s capitalized on.

“The brand of politics that Hillary represents, which is pragmatic and says you don’t get everything done all at once,” Obama said, “that may not attract as much attention, it’s not something that goes into 140 characters as easily, but I think she will be an outstanding president.”

Obama also defended Clinton when Kimmel said that people just don’t like her, saying that’s only because she’s been around for so long.

“When you have been in the public eye that long, and in politics, folks go after you, and they’re trying to find a weak spot and any mistake that you make ends up being magnified and ginned up and there are commercials around it, and a narrative starts to build —and that has an impact on you,” he said.

He also got into his experiences with Snapchat, describing his younger daughter secretly recording a long-winded conversation he was having at dinner about the power of social media, which she sent to a small group of friends with a picture of herself looking bored.

"Michelle, of course, loved it, Malia thought it was a riot,” Obama said. “This is what I go through during dinner."

As for his own phone usage, Obama seemed to suggest he probably won’t get caught in a situation like what happened when Clinton’s emails were released by the State Department or Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails being doled out by the WikiLeaks hack.

“My rule has been throughout my presidency, is that I assume someday, sometime, somebody will read this e-mail, so I don’t send any e-mail,” Obama said, “that at some point won't be on the front page of the newspapers."

Obama also dropped a little bit of trivia about himself — famous as a night-owl, he’s never gotten into what time he wakes up every day. Monday was the answer: His wake-up call comes at 7 a.m.