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 "He is a great publicity-seeker - and at a time when the
Republican Party hasn't really figured out what it's for as opposed
to what it's against," Obama said of Trump during an interview on
CBS' "60 Minutes" program airing on Sunday night.
Opinion polls put Trump at the front of a crowded Republican field
seeking the party's nomination for the November 2016 presidential
election.
The billionaire real estate mogul and television personality has
aroused controversy with his provocative remarks on illegal
immigration. He has promised to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico
border and to deport the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants
already in the United States.
Obama said Trump had tapped into something that "exists in the
Republican Party that's real. I think there is genuine
anti-immigrant sentiment in the large portion of at least Republican
primary voters."
 "He is, you know, the classic reality TV character," the Democratic
president said, adding it was not surprising Trump had received a
lot of attention in the campaign's early stages.
Asked if he thought Trump would eventually disappear from the race,
Obama replied: "I'll leave it up to the pundits to make that
determination. I don't think he'll end up being president of the
United States."
Obama also said in the interview that he did not know about
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private
email server while she was his secretary of state but that it did
not pose a national security problem.
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"She made a mistake. She has acknowledged it," he said.
"I do think that the way it's been ginned up is in part because of
politics. And I think she'd be the first to acknowledge that maybe
she could have handled the original decision better and the
disclosures more quickly."
Discussing Joe Biden's possible entry into the Democratic race,
Obama called him one of the finest vice presidents ever and said:
"If you're sitting right next to the president in every meeting and
... wrestling with these issues, I'm sure that for him he's saying
to himself: 'I could do a really good job.'"
Asked if he thought he himself could be re-elected if not
constitutionally barred from a third term, Obama replied: "Yes."
(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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