On the morning of his final State of the Union address, President Obama said he can envision Republican front-runner Donald Trump delivering the same speech only on “Saturday Night Live.”
Asked by “Today” show host Matt Lauer if he could imagine Mr. Trump standing before Congress to deliver the annual address as president, Mr. Obama said, “I can imagine it in a ’Saturday Night’ skit.”
“Look, anything’s possible,” the president said. “We [Democrats] shouldn’t be complacent. Everybody’s got to work hard.”
Asked if voters’ weariness with him has contributed to Mr. Trump’s campaign message and his lead in Republican primary polls, Mr. Obama replied, “The message that Donald Trump’s putting out has had adherents a lot of times during the course of our history.”
“Talk to me if he wins,” Mr. Obama said. “Then we’ll have a conversation about how responsible I feel about it.”
Vice President Joseph R. Biden, also appearing on the show, said he thinks “it’s possible” for Mr. Trump to win the presidency.
“If that were to occur — I hope it doesn’t because I have fundamentally different views than he does — I’d hope that he gets a lot more serious about the issues, a lot more serious about gaining knowledge about how this nation functions on foreign policy and domestic policy,” Mr. Biden said. “But look, that’s a long way off.”
The vice president said Mr. Trump is “divisive.”
“That’s not healthy. We always do best when we act as one America,” Mr. Biden said.
Referring to Mr. Trump’s campaign, Mr. Obama said “the overwhelming majority of Americans are looking for the kind of politics that does feed our hopes and not our fears, that does work together and doesn’t try to divide us, that isn’t looking for simplistic solutions and scapegoating but looks for us buckling down and figuring out how do we make things work for the next generation.”
For his final State of the Union address, the president said he wants to remind Americans “that we’ve got a lot of good things going for us.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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