Trump candidacy should not be taken lightly: White House

The White House has said that one should not take the candidacy of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump lightly, and Democrats need to mount a serious campaign to ensure that the real estate magnate is not elected the next US President.

“We should not take Mr Trump lightly, and that even if he is the Republican nominee, that Democrats are going to need to mount a serious campaign to ensure that he is not elected the next President of the US,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at his daily news conference on Monday.

“That is certainly why I think you can expect that both the President and the Vice President will be active on the campaign trail, making a forceful case for the Democratic nominee, whether that, frankly, is Secretary (Hillary) Clinton or Senator (Bernie) Sanders,” he said. Meanwhile, the State Department said world leaders have been expressing their concern over the rhetoric coming from presidential candidates.While State Department Spokesman John Kirby did not name any presidential candidate, officials said the concerns were particularly against Trump, 69.

“I am not going to give you a list, but I can tell you, virtually every foreign leader that the Secretary (of State) meets with expresses concerns about the campaign rhetoric here in the US and a fair bit of angst about where things are going,” Kirby said. “These comments do not necessarily, in many cases, reflect certainly the Secretary’s view of our foreign policy objectives, or in many cases, our own values as Americans. So virtually all of them have expressed that concern, and he said so,” he added.