Barack Obama has blasted Donald Trump saying his comments about women would disqualify him from working at a convenience store.
The US President urged senior Republicans to formally withdraw their endorsement of Mr Trump as presidential candidate in his fiercest attack yet on the embattled White House hopeful.
Addressing a campaign rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, last night, Mr Obama referred to Mr Trump’s crude remarks about women, saying: “Now you find a situation in which the guy says stuff that nobody would find tolerable if they were applying for a job at 7-Eleven.”
He added: “You don’t have to be a husband or a father to say that’s not right. You just have to be a decent human being.”
Mr Trump’s campaign has been thrown into crisis after the release of a video in which he spoke of trying to seduce a married woman and how he could “do anything” to women.
Hillary Clinton v Donald Trump: US Presidential Election
A string of top Republicans have distanced themselves from their nominee, including Speaker of the House Paul Ryan who said he would not defend him.
Mr Obama questioned how senior Republican politicians could still want Mr Trump to be president.
“The fact is that now you’ve got people saying: ‘We strongly disagree, we really disapprove...but we’re still endorsing him.’ They still think he should be president, that doesn’t make sense to me,” he told the crowd.
Last night Mr Trump stepped up the war against his own party, promising to teach his Republicans opponents a lesson and to fight for the presidency “the way I want to.”
“I’m just tired of non-support,” he said on Fox News Channel’s The O’Reilly Factor. Singling out Mr Ryan, he said: “I don’t want his support, I don’t care about his support. I wouldn’t want to be in a foxhole with a lot of these people, that I can tell you, including Ryan. By the way, including Ryan, especially Ryan.”
Earlier he tweeted that the “shackles have been taken off me” and “I can now fight for America”.
Polls have shown Mr Trump falling further behind Democrat rival Hillary Clinton with just over four weeks until the election.
The latest, from Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll, puts her eight points ahead among likely voters, with one in five Republicans saying his comments about groping women disqualify him from the presidency.
