No, no, no, Donald Trump can’t be president, won’t be president, is more like a child whining in a sandbox than a prospective commander-in-chief, President Barack Obama thinks.

So stop asking him about it.


Unless, of course, there’s a way to ask him about it that will let him showcase just how ridiculous he finds the thought of having Trump in the Oval Office, and let him laugh at the Republican nominee, and try to lead the country in laughing along with him.

Standing Thursday afternoon at the podium in the Pentagon for his pre-vacation press conference, a blue map of the world behind him, the core of the military around him, a long briefing on the counter-ISIL efforts just concluded, the stagecraft was all there. And Obama, two days after he declared Trump unfit for the office he now holds, took full advantage.

In sum: Trump is a ridiculous sore loser conspiracy theorist who needs to be publicly reminded not to leak the classified intelligence briefings he’s about to start getting as a major party nominee.

But the president didn’t stop there. After spending his introductory statement pointedly pronouncing the names of the ISIL strongholds American-backed operations have taken, and the prominent ISIL leaders his administration has killed—“none of ISIL’s leaders are safe, and we are going to keep going after them,” he said, for effect — Obama skewered the Republican nominee.

“I would ask all of you to just make your own judgment,” Obama said, turning to one of the early, prominent examples of Trump displaying his ignorance about world affairs. “Just listen to what Mr. Trump has to say and make your own judgment with respect to how confident you feel about his ability to manage things like our nuclear triad.”

Thursday was Obama’s birthday. He’s about to head off on a two-week vacation for Martha’s Vineyard. But unlike so many of his have-a-nice-summer press conferences in past years, when he’s all but run out of the White House briefing room to avoid being chased with questions, he stood through this one with a smile on his face, batting away questions, enjoying the poll numbers that show his approval numbers continuing to shoot up and not-so-subtly referencing the campaign polls that show Hillary Clinton 10-15 points up over Trump.

He didn’t seem like a man who felt he’d be needing to use his birthday wish to hope she somehow finds a way to pull this out.

“I thought I made myself pretty clear,” Obama said, batting down the third question out of the first four that he got about Trump. “I obviously have a very strong opinion about the two candidates who are running. One is very positive. And one is not so much.”

Or you could have just watched him trying to hold himself back for long enough for a reporter to finish asking a question about Trump’s claim that the election will be rigged to start mocking him.

He couldn’t hold it for long. He was laughing as he called Trump “ridiculous.”

“I don't even really know where to start on answering this question,” he said. “Of course the elections will not be rigged. What does that mean?”

Obama sketched out what a nationwide conspiracy would have to look like, the number of people involved, the silence and complicity even in Republican strongholds like Texas.

“That doesn’t make any sense. I don’t think anybody would take that seriously,” he said.

Just to be clear what the difference is between Trump’s and the serious president Obama is eager to remind people he is, he took this as an opportunity to launch into actual voting problems that his administration has been concerned about and remains concerned about, particularly around potential civil rights violations at the polls that he said his Department of Justice is on the lookout for.

But Trump? He just can’t take getting beaten, Obama said, savoring what he sees as the downfall of a bully who’s made it personal against him for years.

“I think all of us at some points in our lives have played sports or maybe just played in a schoolyard or sandbox, and sometimes folks if they lose, they complain they got cheated,” Obama said. “But I’ve never heard of somebody complaining about being cheated before the game was over. Or before the score is even tallied.”

So sure, the president acknowledged, despite all that and everything else he’s said, Trump’s going to get the intelligence briefings. That’s the normal process, and necessary, he said, to make sure that whoever comes into office has a running start. And yeah, if the American voters disagree about Trump and elect him despite Obama’s many warnings, he’ll abide by the Constitution—in what seemed like another, Khizr Khan-inspired dig—and go about a peaceful transfer of power.

Then he dared Trump, the man who’s said, albeit not recently, that once he’s elected, “I'm going to be so presidential that you people will be so bored.”

“What I will say is that they have been told these are classified briefings and if they want to be president, they have to start acting like a president and that means being able to receive these briefings and not spread them around,” Obama said.

Pressed again on whether he thought Trump could be trusted, Obama seemed satisfied with himself.

“I think I’ve said enough about that,” he said.