Washington, August 3

In a searing and virtually unprecedented presidential rebuke, Barack Obama declared embattled Republican White House nominee Donald Trump “unfit” to be president yesterday and called on party leaders to disown him.

Obama piled on as Trump’s campaign reeled from multiple self-inflicted scandals, calling the 70-year-old mogul “woefully unprepared” and “unfit to serve as president.”

“He keeps proving it,” said Obama, standing alongside the prime minister of Singapore and casting aside any pretense of domestic unity.

In recent days, Trump has criticised Muslims, babies, firefighters and the military, prompting his wincing Republican backers to issue awkward denunciations.

Trump hit back at Obama in a written statement, describing his two terms in office as an example of “failed leadership.”

Obama’s comments came amid a roiling war of words between Trump and the father of a slain US soldier who rebuked the Republican nominee as having “sacrificed nothing.”

“The notion that he would attack a Gold Star family that made extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our country, the fact that he doesn’t appear to have basic knowledge around critical issues in Europe, in the Middle East, in Asia means that he’s woefully unprepared to do this job,” said Obama.

Later in the day, Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson blamed both Obama and Clinton for the death of the soldier, Army captain Humayun Khan. “Donald Trump never voted for the Iraq War. Hillary Clinton did,” she told CNN. “It was under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that changed the rules of engagement that probably cost his life,” she said.

Khan was killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2004, when Clinton was serving in the US Senate but Obama had yet to be elected to national office.

On the campaign trail on Tuesday, Trump further dropped jaws by telling a mother and her crying baby to leave a rally and saying he “always wanted to get a Purple Heart,” after being given one by a military veteran who supports him.

The military honour is given by a sitting president to a member of the armed forces who is killed or wounded in combat. “This was much easier,” Trump remarked.

Donald declines to endorse Ryan, McCain

Washington: US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump ratcheted up tensions in his party yesterday by denying two leading figures, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan and Senator John McCain, support in their re-election bids.

Trump told The Washington Post in an interview that he could endorse neither Ryan, the top US elected Republican, nor McCain, a US senator from Arizona and a former Republican presidential nominee, as they face challenges in their states’ primary contests ahead of the November 8 general election.

Both Ryan and McCain had criticised Trump’s feud with the family of Army Captain Humayun Khan, who died in the line of duty in Iraq in 2004 and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for bravery after his death.

The discord comes just two weeks after the Republican National Convention in Cleveland that formally nominated Trump for president.

It is the latest rift in a party already frayed by internal dissent over its standard bearer, seen in stark relief at the convention where McCain was among high-level party members who essentially snubbed Trump by choosing not to attend.

Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, and former presidents George HW Bush and George W Bush also did not attend the convention.

Trump has had a running dispute with Khizr and Ghazala Khan since they took the stage at last week’s Democratic convention to cite their son’s sacrifice and criticise Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States.

The uproar has led many Republicans to distance themselves from Trump and voice support for the Khan family.