The White House isn’t taking Donald Trump’s bait.

Trump on Monday delivered his most outrageous charge against Barack Obama of the 2016 season, suggesting that the president did not try to thwart the Orlando nightclub shooter because he’s sympathetic to terrorists. It was a sensational allegation delivered in Trump’s slippery style, a renaissance of the “birther” accusations in 2011 that dug deep under Obama’s skin.


But on Monday, Obama resisted outrage. When asked about the president’s reaction to Trump’s charge that, when it comes to terrorism, Obama “doesn't get it or he gets it better than anybody understands,” his spokesman opted for a rhetorical eye-roll.

“It's important not to get distracted by things that are so small,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.

Obama appears to be showing Trump his hand ahead of the bitter general election battle to succeed him. The White House batted away Trump’s toxic insinuations as petty amid the national tragedy and refused to be baited into using the term “radical Islamic extremism.”

Obama himself did not mention Trump when talking to reporters after being briefed by his national security officials, preferring instead to maintain his presidential posture while reassuring Americans that the most deadly mass shooting in U.S. history was not part of a larger plot.

And during the White House briefing Earnest repeatedly refused to engage on questions about Obama’s response to Trump’s attacks, only delivering a cutting line that Obama’s record “speaks for itself.”

“And that record includes a lot of dead terrorists,” he said.

It was a sharp retort to salacious suggestions that Obama may feel a kinship to terrorists, a conspiracy theory that some conservatives have long promoted and that Trump has tried to legitimize. On Monday morning, Trump hit the morning shows and repeatedly said Obama has suspicious motives.

"He doesn't get it or he gets it better than anybody understands. It's one or the other," Trump said of Obama on "Fox & Friends," adding, "We're led by a man who is a very — look, we're led by a man that either is, is not tough, not smart, or he's got something else in mind"

But while the White House’s cold-shoulder approach might work for Obama on his own, the strategy isn’t quite lining up with Clinton’s. On Monday, she opted to neutralize rather than ignore, calling Trump’s bluff by using the phrase “radical Islam.”

Obama’s reluctance to utter those two words, Trump said Sunday, are the reason that Obama “should step down.” And Clinton should end her candidacy if she can’t say them, Trump added.

Earnest outlined serious strategic considerations behind Obama’s preferred terminology to describe groups like ISIL that “pervert the religion of Islam.”

Those groups, Earnest said, try to “claim the mantle of Islam” to cast themselves as holy warriors in a legitimate “war with the United States.”

The president and his national security team “have gone to great lengths to debunk that myth,” Earnest said.

But Clinton didn’t seem too worried about reinforcing the myth on Monday.

“And to me, radical jihadism, radical Islamism, I think they mean the same thing. I'm happy to say either, but that's not the point,” Clinton said.

“She’s taking the issue off the table,” said Tommy Vietor, a former Obama national security spokesman. Clinton is essentially saying to Trump and other Republicans, Vietor added, “’Ok, you want me to say these words? Fine, there you go. Where’s your actual plan to deal with ISIS?’”

But Clinton’s words prompted Trump to declare victory — and Earnest to deflect questions about them.

"I'm confident that she agrees 100 percent with the president's approach to fighting ISIL and strongly supporting this goal of making clear that Muslims in the United States should not be stigmatized and marginalized and that we actually need to work effectively with state and local leaders all across the country,” Earnest said.

The exchanges provided a glimpse into the posture Obama and White House is likely to take in the coming months, as Obama leaves the attack dog role to other surrogates such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and instead retains a more high-minded stature and tries to reignite the 2008 passion for his campaign and lend it to Clinton.

It’s not like Obama has always demurred. More than Trump’s birtherism, the president has directly rebutted Trump’s downerism, proclaiming that America is already “pretty darn great” while touting strong jobs numbers in March.

Obama has also given sweeping speeches about American values in the face of Trump’s calls to ban Muslims, and last month, he essentially called the billionaire unqualified, telling a New Hampshire TV station that Trump “is not somebody who, even within the Republican Party, can be considered as equipped to deal with the problems of this office.”

But the White House has made clear that Obama will be picking his battles, even as Trump ramps up his general-election attacks against both the current president and Clinton.

In response to sluggish jobs numbers released earlier this month, Trump told Breitbart last week that Obama is doing a “terrible job with the economy” and it’s “only going to get worse” under Clinton.

And it was Trump’s trashing Obama’s Clinton endorsement (“He wants four more years of Obama—but nobody else does!”) that prompted her heavily retweeted “Delete your account” retort.

But Monday’s exchange suggests that Obama and his aides aren’t going to be in the rapid response business — even when Trump’s attacks are deeply personal.

“They have a job to do. Their job is to be adults. Donald Trump can flail around like a child on the campaign trail,” Vietor said.

Other top Democrats, however, weren’t turning the other cheek.

“It is not enough to simply beat Trump. He must be destroyed thoroughly. His kind must not rise again,” tweeted David Plouffe, the architect of Obama’s 2008 victory now informally advising Clinton.

Neera Tanden, head of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, said Trump’s racial rhetoric had gone from coded to literal. “We have moved beyond dog whistles to ringing bells,” Tanden tweeted.

And while Republicans including House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) made sure to emphasize the "Islamic terrorist" term in their statements, others scoffed at Trump's demand that Obama resign if he's not willing to embrace the language.

"I expect the president will not resign," Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) told reporters.

