The world will be in danger if Republican nominee Donald Trump becomes president of the United States, the top United Nations human rights official said on Wednesday.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein cited Mr Trump’s views on vulnerable communities including minorities and his talk of authorising torture in interrogations, banned under international law, as “deeply unsettling and disturbing“.
“If Donald Trump is elected on the basis of what he has said already, and unless that changes, I think it is without any doubt that he would be dangerous from an international point of view,” Mr Zeid told a news briefing in Geneva.
Mr Trump lashed out at US house speaker Paul Ryan and other “disloyal“ Republicans on Tuesday and vowed to campaign in whatever style he wants now that the party establishment has largely abandoned him. This occurred after a 2005 video surfaced last week showing him bragging crudely about groping women and making unwanted sexual advances.
Mr Trump has said he would immediately re-authorise the waterboarding of suspected militants if elected on Noember 8th, contending that “torture works“.
Mr Zeid said that he would rather not interfere in political campaigns. But when a candidate’s comments pointed to a potential use of torture, prohibited under the Convention against Torture, a pact ratified by Washington, or to vulnerable groups possibly losing their basic rights, he had to speak out.
Barack Obama assailed Mr Trump on Tuesday over remarks about groping women, also criticising Republicans who continued to support the candidate.
"You don't have to be a husband or a father to hear what we heard just a few days ago and say that's not right," the president said in Greensboro, North Carolina, in his first public remarks since the release of a 2005 tape showing Mr Trump bragging about groping and kissing women without their consent.
“You just have to be a decent human being to say that’s not right.”
Campaigning on behalf of Hillary Clinton in North Carolina, Mr Obama said the Republican presidential nominee is unfit "for a job at 7-Eleven", let alone the presidency.
He encouraged the crowd of nearly 8,000 to respond at the ballot box in November.
“If it makes you mad”, the president said, “then you say ‘That’s not somebody I want representing the United States of America.’ You can do something about it, North Carolina.”
“The guy says stuff nobody would find tolerable if they were applying for a job at 7-Eleven,” he added.
The president, among Ms Clinton’s most powerful surrogates, did not reserve his criticism solely for Trump. He also mocked Republicans who rebuked Mr Trump’s comments but continued to endorse his candidacy.
“That doesn’t make sense to me,” Mr Obama said. “You can’t have it both ways here. You can’t repeatedly denounce what is said by someone and then say but I’m still going to endorse him to be the most powerful person on the planet and to put them in charge.”
He also expressed his disbelief at the Republicans who have expressed hope that Mr Trump might change his ways.
“What did you think? He was going to transform himself? I mean, I’m 55 and it’s hard for me to change. I know at 70 it’s going to be harder.”
Earlier in the day, White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters the president had found Mr Trump's boasting about his behavior toward women to be "repugnant."
There had been a wide consensus across the political spectrum, Mr Earnest added, that Mr Trump’s remarks “constituted sexual assault”.