'The fate of the world rests on your shoulders': Obama delivers impassioned plea to America to reject Trump
"We won't win this election, potentially, if we don't win North Carolina," he said during a campaign rally for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. "I hate to put a little pressure on you, but the fate of the republic rests on your shoulders. The fate of the world is teetering."
In his speech to voters in the Tar Heel State, the president emphasized how crucial North Carolina's 15 electoral votes are to Clinton's path to capturing the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.
Obama repeatedly laid into Trump, one sentence after another, saying that he had "no respect for working people," mocking his claim that he has a"good brain," and lambasting the Republican presidential nominee's plan to bar all Muslims from entering the US.
"What I can tell you is that we can't afford a president that says we should torture people, or that should ban entire religions from our country," Obama said.
The president also raised the 2005 video of Trump boasting about kissing and forcing himself on women without their consent.
"If you disrespect women before you are elected president, you will disrespect women when you are in office," Obama said.
He added: "Imagine what you'll actually do when you have to the power of the Constitution along those lines."
Obama also noted how congressional Republicans have already mulled investigations and a potential impeachment of Clinton over her use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state.
"They're promising years of investigations years of hearings, more shutdowns, more obstruction," Obama said.
He added moments later: "You've got some Republicans in Congress already suggesting they will impeach Hillary. She hasn't even been elected yet. It doesn't matter what evidence, they'll find something. That's what they're saying already. How does our democracy function like that?"
With just one week until the general election, the Clinton campaign has deployed Obama to key battleground states including Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida in hopes that he can gin up Democratic turnout.
Despite strong early vote rates in states like Nevada, the president worried that black voter turnout is "not as solid as it needs to be" in other battleground states like Florida.