A week before Election Day, Obama told Ohioans that progress made in the past eight years, such as health care coverage, job creations, lower poverty rates, would be in jeopardy without Clinton in the White House.
“There is only one candidate in this race who has devoted her life to a better America. And that’s next president of the United States, Hillary Clinton. But make no mistake. This is not something you can take for granted. All the progress we have made goes out the window if we don’t do our jobs in these next seven days. Our future depends on what you do these next seven days,” Obama said.
Trump’s Ohio campaign spokesman Seth Unger said in a statement: “Even the Campaigner-in-Chief Barack Obama can’t breathe enthusiasm into Hillary Clinton’s depressed Democrat base in Ohio, which has been demoralized during the early voting by the reopening of the FBI investigation into her possible criminal conduct.”
The campaign added that Trump is in a strong position to “shut down the corrupt pay-to-play Washington machine that Hillary Clinton has built over the last three decades to fuel her presidential ambitions.”
In his nearly 45 minutes of remarks, the president delivered withering criticism of Trump, describing him as reckless and dangerous.
“He says he’ll be his own foreign policy advisor because he says he has a good brain. Who talks like that? We can’t afford a president whose brain has suggested that we should torture people again or ban entire religions from our country, who insults POWs or attacks Gold Star mothers or talks down to our troops and our veterans,” Obama said. “Even a Republican senator said we can’t afford to give the nuclear codes to somebody so erratic.”
Obama also went off on a riff against Trump’s remarks over the years about women. “This is a lifetime of calling women pigs and dogs and slobs and grading women on a ten-point scale …. This is habitual and it is a part of who he is.”
Recent polls conducted after the FBI announced it is reviewing more emails linked to Clinton’s use of a private email server show the race between Trump and Clinton tightening nationwide.
Clinton, who campaigned in Kent and Cincinnati on Monday, is making heavy use of high-powered surrogates such as the Obamas, former President Bill Clinton, daughter Chelsea Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden in final push to win. Obama’s job approval rating stands at about 54 percent — its highest point in the past four years, according to the Pew Research Center.
Obama also told the crowd to send former Ohio governor Ted Strickland to the U.S. Senate over incumbent Republican Sen. Rob Portman.
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