Washington: US President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that campaign trail rhetoric from leading presidential candidates was damaging the US in the eyes of foreign leaders.
He said he receives questions “constantly” from fellow officials about the “wackier suggestions that are being made” in the race to secure the Republican nomination, reports CNN.
He said those suggestions were not coming only from presidential front-runner Donald Trump, as he called some of Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s immigration proposals “draconian”.
“People expect the president of the United States and the elected officials in this country to treat these problems seriously,” Obama said during an appearance in the White House briefing room in which he discussed the US economy, but was responding to a reporter’s question on the state of the 2016 race.
“They don’t expect half-baked notions coming out of the White House. We can’t afford that,” the president said.
–IANS