Thursday at the Pentagon after meeting with his National Security Council, when asked about Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s concerns the national election is part of a “rigged system,” President Barack Obama said, “Of course the elections will not be rigged. What does that mean?”

Obama said, “I don’t even really know where to start on answering this question. Of course the elections will not be rigged. What does that mean? The federal government doesn’t run the election process. It is states, cities, and communities all across the country. They are the ones who set up the voting systems and voting booths. If Mr. Trump is suggesting that there is a conspiracy theory that is being propagated across the country, including in places like Texas, where typically it is not Democrats who are in charge of voting booths, that is ridiculous. That does not make any sense. I don’t think anybody would take that seriously.”

He continued, “Now, we do take seriously, as we always do, our responsibility to monitor and preserve the integrity of the voting process. If we see signs that a voting machine or system is more vulnerable to hacking, then we inform those local authorities who are running the elections that they need to be careful. If we see jurisdictions that are violating federal laws in terms of equal access and aren’t providing ramps for disabled voters or are discriminating in some fashion or otherwise violating civil rights laws, then the Justice Department will come in and take care of that. This will be an election like every other election.”

Obama added, “I think all of us at some point in our lives have played sports or just played in a school yard or sandbox. Sometimes if folks lose, they complain they got cheated, but I have never heard of somebody complaining about being cheated before the game was over or before the score is even tallied, so my suggestion would be, you know, go out there and try to win the election. If Mr. Trump is up 10–15 points on election day and ends up losing, then maybe he can raise some questions, but that does not seem to be the case at the moment.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN