President Barack Obama formally endorsed presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, calling her the most qualified candidate for the White House, and urged Democrats to unite after a hard-fought primary to win November’s election.
“I don’t think there has ever been someone so qualified to hold this office,” said Mr Obama in a video posted on YouTube and Mrs Clinton’s campaign website.
The president’s long-anticipated blessing comes two days after Mrs Clinton secured enough delegates with victories in California, New Jersey and New Mexico to be able to clinch the Democratic nomination at next month’s party convention.
“I’m with her,” said Mr Obama, borrowing one of Mrs Clinton’s campaign slogans. “I am fired up and I cannot wait to get out there and campaign for Hillary.”
The endorsement came with the announcement that Mr Obama would campaign for his former secretary of state in Green Bay, Wisconsin on Wednesday.
After more than a year of avoiding comment on the Democratic primary race, Mr Obama is said to be keen to campaign against Republican contender Donald Trump.
Mr Trump responded shortly after the announcement of Mr Obama endorsement with a statement of his own on social media website Twitter: “Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obama - but nobody else does!”
Mr Obama’s backing of Mrs Clinton heaps further pressure on Vermont senator Bernie Sanders to bow out of the race. The release of the video came shortly after the president met Mr Sanders, at the senator’s request, at the White House.
The president paid tribute to Mr Sanders in the video for Mrs Clinton, praising him for bringing out millions of first-time, young voters and running “an incredible campaign.” He referred to their meeting on Thursday in the past tense in the video.
“I had a great meeting with him this week and I thanked him for shining a spotlight on issues like economic inequality, the outsized influence of money in our politics and bringing young people into the process,” he said in the video.
His spokesman later said that Mr Obama recorded the video before Tuesday’s primary results which gave Mrs Clinton a majority of pledged delegates but after she was declared the presumptive nominee by the Associated Press based on the support of super-delegates, the party leaders and elected officials who vote next month.
‘Work together’
After meeting Mr Obama privately in the Oval Office, Mr Sanders said that he expected to “work together” with Mrs Clinton to beat Mr Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, while sticking with his plan to continue his campaign.
“I look forward to meeting with her in the near future to see how we can work together to defeat Donald Trump,” Mr Sanders told reporters at the White House.
Despite his decisive losses in Tuesday’s final state primaries, Tte self-professed democratic socialist vowed to keep campaigning through the final primary contest in Washington DC next Tuesday and until the Democratic Party’s national convention in Philadelphia next month when the nominee will be formally picked.
Mr Sanders thanked Mr Obama and vice-president Joe Biden for not putting their “thumb on the scales” by backing any one candidate during the primary.
In effusive praise of his one-time bitter rival, Mr Obama said that Mrs Clinton had “the courage, the compassion and the heart to get the job done - and I say that as somebody who had to debate her more than 20 times.”
“From the decision we made in the situation room we made to get Bin Laden, to our pursuit of diplomacy in capitals around the world, I have seen her judgment, I’ve seen her toughness, I’ve seen her commitment to our values up close,” he said.
In another endorsement, former Democratic candidate Martin O’Malley, who dropped out of the race in February, also weighed in behind Mrs Clinton.
“The voters have spoken, it is now time to unite our party,” said the Irish-American former mayor of Baltimore and one-time governor of Maryland.
