Barack Obama says Donald Trump won’t be President

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump holds up a picture of Annabel Hill — the woman whose farm in Waynesboro, Georgia, he helped save — during a campaign rally in North Augusta, South Carolina, on Tuesday. — AFP

US President Barack Obama believes Republican White House hopeful Donald Trump would not be elected as his successor as being a President is tougher than hosting a reality show and Americans are too “sensible” to elect him.

“I continue to believe Mr Trump will not be President. And the reason is because I have a lot of faith in the American people, and I think they recognise that being President is a serious job,” Mr Obama told reporters after the first ever US-Asean Summit in Sunnylands, California.

“It’s not hosting a talk show or a reality show. It’s not promotion. It’s not marketing,” he said.

The 69-year-old billionaire real estate tycoon fired back, saying Mr Obama was lucky that he did not run for office in 2012.

“You’re lucky I didn’t run last time when Romney ran because you would have been a one-term President,” Mr Trump said at a campaign rally in South Carolina. Mr Obama also criticised other Republican candidates.

He said he thinks foreign observers are troubled by some of the rhetoric that’s been taking place in these Republican primaries and Republican debates. Meanwhile, Mr Trump pushed back Tuesday against his rivals for the Republican nomination, as the real estate mogul sought to cement victory in South Carolina.

With just four days until the state’s crucial primary, Mr Trump became yet again the focus of attacks by challengers to his frontrunner status, including his nearest adversary Ted Cruz who blasted the businessman-turned-reality TV star as a liberal.

He also traded political punches with Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush and laid out attack lines ahead of the crucial primary, the third in the long party nominations races and the first in the US South.

Separately, Mr Trump was granted a rare honour by Stephen Colbert on Tuesday’s Late Show when the tycoon was welcomed as a surprise phone-in guest and spared from making an actual appearance on the CBS programme.

Mr Colbert took the call on an orange, coiffed “Trump Phone,” on which Mr Trump spoke from South Carolina, where he is campaigning.

Slyly asked by Mr Colbert what he was wearing, Mr Trump replied, “a very beautiful blue suit”.

He drew boos when he restated his claim that a replacement for the late US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia be delayed until a new President is sworn in.