President Barack Obama arrives at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, north of San Diego, as part of a California campaign visit Oct. 23, 2016. | AP Photo Obama calls Issa 'the definition of chutzpah'

LA JOLLA, Calif. — Note to Rep. Darrell Issa from President Barack Obama: If you want to call him one of the most corrupt presidents in history, say he should be impeached and question whether he was telling the truth about his birth certificate, maybe don’t then brag about working with him in a campaign mailer as you try to hang onto your seat.

Or at least, don’t use a picture of him writing at his desk in the Oval Office as you do.


Issa, Obama said, is one of the Republicans he blames for fanning the flames that created Donald Trump, and is now trying to run from Trump as his polling figures plummet. The California Republican is also the kind of Republican, according to Obama, who spits fire at him and then shows up with family members every year for pictures at the White House Christmas party.

“Some of them say, ‘I’m praying for you,’” Obama said. “And I don’t question the sincerity that they are praying for me: ‘Please change this man from the socialist Muslim that he is.'”

He paused.

“I’m sure it’s more sincere than that,” he said, laughing.

Laughing as he spoke, and at points locking eyes with his also laughing political director David Simas in the back of the room, Obama said he couldn’t believe that Issa, now locked in the hardest race of his career, had sent out the mailer, which brags, “I am very pleased that President Obama has signed into law the Survivors’ Bill of Rights — legislation I cosponsored to protect the victims of sexual assault.”

“That is the definition of chutzpah,” Obama said, adding later, “that is shameless.”

Standing here Sunday night at a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee at the home of longtime donor Christine Forester, Obama said Issa’s “primary contribution to the United States Congress has been to obstruct and to waste taxpayer dollars on trumped-up investigations that have led nowhere.”

Obama called out to Democratic candidate Doug Applegate, the former Marine colonel who’s challenging Issa, sitting at one of the tables in front of him.

“I think somebody called Darrell Issa — was this you, Doug? — that Darrell Issa was Trump before Trump,” Obama said.

Issa, Obama said, “is not somebody who’s serious about working on problems. Contrast that with Doug — he’s shown himself to care about this country … that’s somebody you want in Congress.”

Issa’s not the only one, Obama said, urging people to keep up their enthusiasm and voter turnout in the last two weeks until the election. Calling his close ally House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “soon to be speaker again of the House” — a prediction he shied away from just a few hours earlier at a campaign stop in Nevada — Obama said Democrats need to kick Issa and all the Republicans like him out of Congress.

Everything that Trump says, he argued, could just as easily be found in many Republican floor speeches in Washington: “The Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives are repeatedly promoting crazy conspiracy theories and demonizing opponents.”

