DHAKA: US President Barack Obama has a message for Donald Trump — being president is tougher than being on a reality show and the American people are too "sensible" to elect him.
"I continue to believe Trump will not be president," Obama said at a news conference in California after a meeting with southeast Asian leaders, reports the CNN.
"And the reason is that I have a lot of faith in the American people. Being president is a serious job. It's not hosting a talk show, or a reality show."
He went on: "It's not promotion, it's not marketing. It's hard. And a lot of people count on us getting it right."
Obama offered surprisingly frank assessments of the campaign to replace him, taking shots at Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
He also hinted hint that he was sympathetic to Hillary Clinton's position on the difficulty of enacting political change, as she faces a tough challenge from a candidate in Bernie Sanders, who has fired up Democratic primary voters who are demanding sweeping reform.
But it was the potential of a Trump administration that Obama seemed most eager to critique.
The presidency isn't "a matter of pandering and doing whatever will get you in the news on a given day. And sometimes, it requires you making hard decisions even when people don't like it," Obama said, adding that whoever succeeds him needs to be able to reflect the importance of their office and give foreign leaders confidence he or she knows their names and something about their nations' histories.
Obama also appeared to raise the question of whether Trump was prepared to be commander-in-chief.
"Whoever's standing where I'm standing right now has the nuclear codes with them, and can order 21-year-olds into a firefight, and (has) to make sure that the banking system doesn't collapse, and is often responsible for not just the United States of America, but 20 other countries that are having big problems, or are falling apart and are gonna be looking for us to something."
He added: "The American people are pretty sensible, and I think they'll make a sensible choice in the end."
Trump responded to Obama during an event in Beaufort, South Carolina.
BDST: 1200 HRS, Feb 15, 2016
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