President Barack Obama, after all of his campaigning for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the final days of the presidential election, was asked how he would feel about handing the power of the Oval Office to a President Donald Trump.
In a Friday night interview on MSNBC, Rev. Al Sharpton, an MSNBC host, asked Obama to picture standing in front of a newly elected Trump on inauguration day.
"Can you imagine how you would feel standing on the steps of the Capitol having to hand over the power and watch him put his hand on that Bible and become your successor?" he said.
"No," Obama responded, succinctly.
It is a multilayered notion for Obama to ponder, because of Trump's years-long history of questioning Obama's legitimacy as a president and as an American citizen. After five years of driving the so-called birther movement, Trump only weeks ago acknowledged publicly that he believes Obama was indeed born in the United States.
The president continued Friday:
"You know, the thing is, I don't take any of this personally because he is not who's fit to be president in any circumstances. I would feel deeply frustrated not because of anything he said about me, but because I would fear for the future of our country. And I say that mindful of the fact that there are disagreements between Republicans and Democrats."
Obama has been driving an increasingly impassioned appeal for Clinton in recent days, as the race tightens and the chances of a Trump win grew increasingly possible. However, he expressed some concern that it may be hard to dislodge voter complacency, because the idea of a Trump win is still far-fetched for many.
"The main thing that I've been trying to explain to people is ... everything that we've done over the last eight years will be reversed with a Trump presidency," Obama said.
Peripheral disruptions from an FBI investigation of Clinton's private email server have added to the urgency on both the Democratic and Republican sides — with the former seeking to reassure voters, and the latter raising the volume of their attacks on Clinton's trustworthiness.
Despite this, Obama said he is heartened by what he has been seeing on the campaign trail:
"The good news is that what we've seen over the last several days is in Florida, in North Carolina, in places all across the country, votes generally have been up. We have seen in the African-American community big surges in early votes, big surges in Latino votes, big surges in youth votes."
Reiterating his indictments of Trump's qualifications — and, in some cases, lack thereof — Obama added: "When you have a choice ... the idea that you would sit on the sidelines is unacceptable."
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