Washington (CNN) President Barack Obama lit into Donald Trump Tuesday, turning the tables to make the impassioned case that Trump is the one who's un-American. 
 
 Obama's extraordinary denunciation of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee was about far more than a personal intervention on behalf of Hillary Clinton in the ugly general election campaign. 
 
 The commander in chief's fury, which seethed out of him in a stunning soliloquy on live television, amounted to a moment of historic significance: a president castigating one of the two people who could succeed him as beyond the constitutional and political norms of the nation itself. 
 
 Obama's remarks, motivated by his disgust over Trump's response to the worst terror attack since 9/11, were also deeply ironic, given that Trump has hounded him for years with insinuations that he's not a real American. 
 
 The real estate mogul had returned to that theme on Monday, hinting that in some way the President was complicit or approved of Islamic terror attacks, saying on Fox News, "There is something going on." 
 
 Trump has based his attacks on conspiracy theories that Obama was born outside the country or a closeted Muslim. Obama's charge, in contrast, was based on his perception that the billionaire Republican's views are so extreme that he threatens the fabric of America itself. 
 
 And Obama sought to shame Republican leaders, many of whom were left squirming by Trump's views. Though they differ with many of his views -- House Speaker Paul Ryan again on Tuesday rejected the GOP presumptive nominee's stance on Muslims -- they are trapped by his millions of primary voters, who made it clear to the party leadership that the billionaire businessman should be heeded. 
 
 "That's not the America we want," he said. "It doesn't reflect our democratic ideals. It will make us less safe." 
 
 Obama also drew an implicit analogy between Trump's call for a ban on Muslim travel and the most "shameful" moments in American history when the government had mistreated its people, adding that then Constitution prohibited religious tests. 
 
 "If we ever abandon those values, we would not only make it a lot easier to radicalize people here and around the world, but we would have betrayed the very things we are trying to protect," Obama warned. 
 
 Trump responds 
 
 Trump responded to the President during his Thursday night rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, saying Obama "was more angry at me than he was at the shooter." 
 
 "The level of anger, that's the kind of anger that he should have for the shooter and these killers that shouldn't be here," Trump added, blasting Obama as a "lousy president" who had done a "terrible job." 
 
 Obama has pilloried Trump before. But Tuesday's remarks displayed a deeper intensity and anger, reflecting his apparent belief that America had reached a dangerous moment given Trump;s new status as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. 
 
 "I think the key for President Obama -- is he is talking to the world," presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "Donald Trump isn't just a candidate who a few months back was talking about banning Muslims from the United States. He has got a lot of momentum." 
 
 He continued, "President Obama wanted to make clear that the United States government, the federal government says no to what Donald Trump is suggesting, that it is hateful bigotry." 
 
 He concluded, "There was ire in his eyes and sarcasm in the way he went after Trump." 
 
 Obama told his aides on Monday that he wanted to deliver a speech rebutting the Republican nominee's comments after stewing over them, a senior administration official told CNN's Dana Bash. 
 
 The result was the kind of public venting that Obama, one of the world's most self-contained politicians, rarely indulges in publicly -- though this side of his character is familiar to those who have witnessed the much more impassioned rhetoric he adopts in private. 
 
 In some ways, it recalled the angry tirade against American politics that Obama delivered after the Newtown massacre of defenseless schoolchildren in 2012 and the subsequent rant he delivered about politicians that he implied were too cowardly to embrace his crusade for gun control. 
 
 He hammered Trump over his "dangerous" mindset and "loose talk and sloppiness" about who exactly America was fighting, implying that Trump's remarks were actually driving Muslims who might be prone to radicalization into the arms of ISIS. 
 
 And he doubled down to repudiate Republican campaigns that he was abetting terrorism by refusing to use the words "radical Islamic terrorism." 
 
 "What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change?" Obama asked during remarks at the Treasury Department. "Would it make ISIL less committed to try and kill Americans?" he continued, using a different acronym for ISIS. 
 
 "Would it bring in more allies? Is there a military strategy that is served by this? The answer is none of the above," he said. "Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away." 
 
 JUST WATCHED How Obama responds to shooting attacks Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH How Obama responds to shooting attacks 02:34 
 
 Speaking after Obama's remarks, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the President had grown frustrated at hearing "political talking points" being wielded in place of a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy. 
 
 But while the President's remarks likely cheered many of his supporters, the tone of his comments -- which included a call for gun control -- contained little reassurance for Americans scared about a new wave of homegrown terror on U.S. soil. 
 
 And while Obama mounted a stern defense of his administration's battle to eradicate ISIS in its self-declared caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq, his remarks will not assuage critics who argue he was late to the fight and is still not doing enough. 
 
 Mike Rogers, former head of the House Intelligence Committee, faulted Obama for treading the same kind of political terrain as Trump with his angry remarks. 
 
 "This was the chance for the President to try to bring us together. I think he is so focused on this presidential campaign he let himself go," Rogers, now a CNN commentator, said on "The Lead" with Jake Tapper. "I just don't think it looked presidential." 
 
 Obama's intervention also seemed motivated by a desire to help Clinton. 
 
 The former secretary of state lit into Trump herself on Tuesday, warning that Trump was temperamentally unfit to serve in the Oval Office. 
 
 She also made the case that his obsession with the words "radical Islam" was a smokescreen for his own lack of knowledge. 
 
 "Is Donald Trump suggesting that there are magic words that once uttered will stop terrorists from coming after us?" Clinton said in Pittsburgh. "What I will not do is demonize and declare war on an entire religion." 
 
 The Republican Party did lash out at Obama, however, with RNC Chairman Reince Priebus hitting out at the administration's record on fighting terrorism and faulting Clinton and Obama for pushing for gun control in the wake of the tragedy in Florida. 
 
 "Let's not forget: President Obama's hasty and politically driven withdrawal from Iraq, which Hillary Clinton supported, created the vacuum that enabled the rise of this terrorist group," Priebus said in a statement. 
 
 "Their failure to secure Libya after their military intervention gave ISIS a beachhead on another continent. Democrats want to talk about anything else because they have lost the national security debate." ||||| Video 
 
 WASHINGTON — President Obama angrily denounced Donald J. Trump on Tuesday for his remarks in the aftermath of the shooting massacre in Orlando, Fla., warning that Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was peddling a “dangerous” mind-set that recalled the darkest and most shameful periods in American history. 
 
 “We hear language that singles out immigrants and suggests entire religious communities are complicit in violence,” Mr. Obama said at the Treasury Department, without mentioning Mr. Trump by name. His statement, an extraordinary condemnation by a sitting president of a man who is to be the opposing party’s nominee for the White House, came after Mr. Obama met with his national security team on the status of the American effort against the Islamic State, a meeting that the president said had been dominated by discussion of the Orlando rampage. 
 
 “Where does this stop?” Mr. Obama said of Mr. Trump’s approach, noting that Mr. Trump had proposed a ban on admitting Muslims into the United States, and that the Orlando assailant, like perpetrators of previous domestic terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and Fort Hood, Tex., was an American citizen. 
 
 “Are we going to start treating all Muslim-Americans differently? Are we going to start subjecting them to special surveillance? Are we going to start discriminating against them because of their faith?” Mr. Obama asked, his voice rising with frustration. “Do Republican officials actually agree with this? Because that’s not the America we want — it doesn’t reflect our democratic ideals. It won’t make us more safe. It will make us less safe.” 
 
 Appearing in Pittsburgh as Mr. Obama spoke, Hillary Clinton gave a blistering denunciation of her own. She echoed many of the president’s points and even some of his language, assailing Mr. Trump’s temperament, ridiculing his proposals and arguing forcefully that he had failed to meet the gravity of the moment. 
 
 “History will remember what we do in this moment,” she told hundreds of supporters inside a union hall, asking “responsible Republican leaders” to join her in condemning Mr. Trump. “What Donald Trump is saying is shameful.” 
 
 Her half-hour speech was a point-by-point rebuttal to Mr. Trump’s remarks a day earlier, when he issued a searing broadside implying that all Muslim immigrants posed a threat to American security. The nearly simultaneous condemnations of Mr. Trump from the president and the presumptive Democratic nominee to succeed him had the feel of a coordinated assault, although the White House insisted there had been no preplanning. 
 
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 Mr. Trump, unbowed by the criticism, said Mr. Obama was coddling terrorists. 
 
 “President Obama claims to know our enemy, and yet he continues to prioritize our enemy over our allies and, for that matter, the American people,” he said in a statement on Tuesday. “When I am president, it will always be America first.” 
 
 Members of Mr. Trump’s party were themselves critical of his rhetoric and proposals. Speaker Paul D. Ryan, the nation’s highest-ranking elected Republican, said at a news conference Tuesday that Mr. Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigrants was not in the country’s interests, nor did it reflect the principles of his party. 
 
 “There’s a really important distinction that every American needs to keep in mind: This is a war with radical Islam. It’s not a war with Islam,” Mr. Ryan said. “The vast, vast majority of Muslims in this country and around the world are moderate, they’re peaceful, they’re tolerant, and so they’re among our best allies, among our best resources in this fight against radical Islamic terrorism.” 
 
 Senator Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican who has been among the most outspoken in his party about withholding his endorsement of Mr. Trump, said in a Twitter post that he was “appreciative” that Mr. Ryan had spoken out. 
 
 Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, flatly refused to talk about his party’s presidential nominee on Tuesday, an indication of the precarious position in which Mr. Trump has placed Republican elected officials. 
 
 Mr. Obama bitterly rejected criticism from Mr. Trump and other Republicans about his steadfast refusal to use the term “radical Islam” to describe the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS or ISIL. 
 
 “If there’s anyone out there who thinks we’re confused about who our enemies are, that would come as a surprise to the thousands of terrorists who we’ve taken off the battlefield,” Mr. Obama said at the Treasury. “There’s no magic to the phrase ‘radical Islam.’ It’s a political talking point. It’s not a strategy.” 
 
 Mrs. Clinton echoed the idea, asking pointedly in her speech: “Is Donald Trump suggesting that there are magic words that once uttered will stop terrorists from coming after us?” 
 
 The president said he would not use the wording because he was unwilling to give the Islamic State the victory of acceptance of its vision that it is the leader of a holy war between Islam and the West. 
 
 “If we fall into the trap of painting all Muslims with a broad brush and imply that we are at war with an entire religion, then we are doing the terrorists’ work for them,” Mr. Obama said. 
 
 Mr. Obama is scheduled to travel to Orlando on Thursday to visit with the surviving victims and the families of those killed in the rampage on Sunday morning. He was to have traveled to Wisconsin on Wednesday for his first campaign appearance with Mrs. Clinton since endorsing her last week, but the event was canceled in light of the shooting. 
 
 Still, Tuesday’s one-two punch left little doubt that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton plan to savage Mr. Trump on the campaign trail. The president was careful not to cast his criticism in political terms and never mentioned Mr. Trump’s name even as he clearly targeted him — at one point referring derisively to “politicians who tweet” — and his policy proposals. 
 
 Instead, Mr. Obama spoke ominously of the stakes for the nation’s security, and its very identity, if the ideas espoused by Mr. Trump and many in the Republican Party are widely accepted. 
 
 “We’ve gone through moments in our history before where we acted out of fear, and we came to regret it,” Mr. Obama said. “We’ve seen our government mistreat our fellow citizens, and it has been a shameful part of our history.” 
 
 Mrs. Clinton, in a striking departure from her speech on Monday, when she refrained from saying Mr. Trump’s name and said it was “not a day for politics,” took direct aim on Tuesday at his penchant for conspiracy theory. She reminded the crowd that he was “a leader of the birther movement” questioning Mr. Obama’s birthplace. 
 
 After the Orlando attack, she noted, Mr. Trump suggested on television that Mr. Obama sympathized with Islamic terrorists. 
 
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 “Just think about that for a second,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Even in a time of divided politics, this is way beyond anything that should be said by someone running for president of the United States.” 
 
 “We don’t need conspiracy theories and pathological self-congratulations,” she added. “We need leadership, common sense and concrete plans.” 
 
 Mr. Obama staunchly defended his administration’s approach to countering terrorism, listing gains that the United States has made against the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria and Libya: killing the group’s top leaders, capturing more of its territory and whittling away at its financial resources. 
 
 He also called on Congress to enact gun restrictions that it has so far resisted, including the resurrection of a ban on assault weapons and a measure that would bar people on “no-fly” lists because of suspected terrorist ties from buying a gun. 
 
 “Enough talking about being tough on terrorism,” Mr. Obama said. “Actually be tough on terrorism and stop making it as easy as possible for terrorists to buy assault weapons.” 
 
 The last time a president so aggressively injected himself into the race to succeed him was in 2000. But Bill Clinton’s criticism of George W. Bush, the governor of Texas and the Republican nominee that year, illustrates just how jarringly different this race is from a normal White House campaign. 
 
 “How bad can I be?” Mr. Clinton said at a fund-raiser that summer, mimicking the voice of Mr. Bush. “I’ve been governor of Texas. My daddy was president. I own a baseball team. They like me down there.” 
 
 ”Everything is rocking along hunky-dory,” he added. “Their fraternity had it for eight years, give it to ours for eight years.” 
 
 The ridicule, while tame by today’s standards, infuriated Mr. Bush’s father, former President George Bush, who warned that if Mr. Clinton “continues that, then I’m going to tell the nation what I think about him as a human being and a person.’’ ||||| The president warned that terrorist groups like the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) want to push the notion that "the West hates Muslims" as propaganda for recruitment. So, he argued, any U.S. actions that legitimize that notion are playing right into those groups' hands. 
 
 
 
 Later in the day, Trump told the Associated Press in an email that the president "claims to know our enemy, and yet he continues to prioritize our enemy over our allies, and for that matter, the American people." 
 
 He added that "when I am president, it will always be America first." 
 
 
 
 Among the many responses to the attack — during which a man armed with an assault rifle and pledging loyalty to the Islamic State group killed at least 49 people when he attacked a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida — Trump renewed his call for immigration bans. 
 
 "The immigration laws of the United States give the president powers to suspend entry into the country of any class of persons," Trump said Monday. "I would use this power to protect the American people. When I'm elected, I will suspend immigration from areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies, until we fully understand how to end these threats." 
 
 "We cannot continue to allow thousands upon thousands of people to pour into our country, many of whom have the same thought process as this savage killer," he said, adding that "many of the principles of radical Islam are incompatible with Western values and institutions." ||||| Here is President Obama's full speech after he met with his national security team in the wake of the shooting at an Orlando nightclub. (Reuters) 
 
 This afternoon President Obama offered his most detailed and comprehensive attack on Donald Trump, not just the particular things Trump proposes but his entire worldview. He was particularly contemptuous of the idea that once we speak the magical words “radical Islamic terror” the entire effort against terrorism will be transformed. 
 
 But for the moment I want to focus on this part of his critique of Trump, referencing Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from the country and his placing blame on all Muslims for individual acts of violence: 
 
 “We’ve gone through moments in our history before when we acted out of fear and we came to regret it. We’ve seen our government mistreat our fellow citizens, and it has been a shameful part of our history. This is a country founded on basic freedoms, including freedom of religion. We don’t have religious tests here. Our founders, our Constitution, our Bill of Rights are clear about that. And if we ever abandon those values, we would not only make it easier to radicalize people here and around the world, but we would have betrayed the very things we are trying to protect: the pluralism, and the openness, our rule of law, our civil liberties, the very things that make this country great. The very things that make us exceptional.” 
 
 Obama then went on to talk about how inspired he was by the cadets he saw at the Air Force Academy when we spoke at their commencement. “That’s the American military. That’s America. One team. One nation.” 
 
 There’s a formula presidents usually follow when they speak to the country after a tragedy, whether it’s a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, or an accident like a space shuttle blowing up. Express the sorrow and pain people are feeling. Praise those whose lives were lost. Emphasize the common purpose we all share (or ought to). Invoke fundamental American ideals that bind us together. And promise that out of the darkness we will become stronger, our future even brighter than our present or our past. 
 
 Some presidents weave those elements together more skillfully than others, but nearly all try to both mirror the public’s emotions and give them reason to hope. But not Donald Trump. 
 
 At moments like the Orlando shooting, we’re reminded of just how bleak and miserable Trump’s vision of America is, even when we haven’t just suffered a tragedy. It’s been said that presidential elections are usually won by the most optimistic candidate, and that will certainly be tested this year. That’s because there may never have been a candidate who sees America as such a dystopic nightmare of gloom and despair. 
 
 It’s not that Trump doesn’t say things will be great when he’s president, because he does. But his critique of the current state of the country goes far beyond what opposition candidates ordinarily say. A challenger will always argue that the party in power has been wrong about everything as they instituted disastrous policies. But Trump’s argument goes deeper, into the very heart of the nation as a whole. “When was the last time we’ve seen our country win at anything?” he says. “We don’t win anymore.” 
 
 Try to imagine, for instance, what would happen if Hillary Clinton said, “This country is a hellhole. We are going down fast.” It’s difficult to contemplate, because a careful politician like Clinton would never say such a thing in a million years. But Trump did, and he says similar things all the time. “America is being taken apart piece by piece,” he said a week ago. “We’re broke…Our infrastructure is a disaster. Our schools are failing. Crime is rising. People are scared.” And that was in a victory speech. Or as he’s said before, “Our country is going to hell.” 
 
 When he looks at a non-Trump future, he sees outright apocalypse. “If we don’t get tough, and we don’t get smart – and fast – we’re not going to have a country anymore,” he said in his speech yesterday on terrorism. “There will be nothing left.” What does that mean, “nothing left”? Are we all going to be dead? Will America itself cease to exist, wiped off the map like Yugoslavia? It’s hard to tell, but it sure won’t be good. 
 
 That’s not to mention that, like his assertion about crime (which is at historic lows), so much of what Trump says about the living nightmare that is America is just false. We’re not “the highest taxed nation in the world.” There are not “tens of thousands” of terrorists streaming into the country. GDP growth is not “essentially zero.” The unemployment rate is not “42 percent,” and we don’t have “93 million people out of work.” 
 
 And don’t forget that when he wrote his campaign book, instead of giving it a title like “Into the Future” or “America Ascending” or “Greatness Awaits,” Trump called it “Crippled America.” 
 
 That’s not to say that Trump’s apocalyptic message doesn’t resonate with some people. He has tapped into a vein of discontentment, particularly among those who feel like they’re being left behind by demographic changes and a modernizing, diverse society. If you feel profoundly unsettled when you hear two people speaking Spanish on the street, Trump is your guy. He regularly laments the fact that we don’t know “What the hell is going on” on some topic or other, often immigration or national security. That notion — of being confused and bewildered by a world that doesn’t seem to make sense in the way it did back when you were young — is obviously powerful for some voters. 
 
 Trump may promise that once we elect him we’ll find ourselves living in a paradise of winning-ness, where the most serious question that confronts each of us is which 20-something Slovenian supermodel we want to make our fourth or fifth spouse. But his unceasing descriptions of our nation’s allegedly endless suffering also says something profoundly miserable about not only our country but ourselves. 
 
 You might find the typical politician’s paeans to America’s optimistic spirit overdone or trite, but when someone like George W. Bush says that “Americans live on the sunrise side of the mountain,” even if you don’t agree with him politically, you want that to be true of yourself and your country. It’s part of a politician’s job to not only promise greatness, but to assure the country that we have it in us to reach it. When Donald Trump talks, on the other hand, he tells us that only he can change our ghastly condition, and we ourselves will have barely any part of it. “I will give you everything,” he promises. “I will give you what you’ve been looking for for 50 years. I’m the only one.” 
 
 The clear message is that if we don’t pick him, we won’t just be making the wrong choice, we’ll doom ourselves to sink further into the unending torment we’ve made for ourselves. And we’ll deserve it.
– On Tuesday, in the wake of the Orlando shooting, President Obama launched a "blistering verbal assault" on Donald Trump, according to CNN. And Paul Waldman at the Washington Post says Obama "ripped into Donald Trump's nightmare vision of America" with "his most detailed and comprehensive attack" yet. In his speech, Obama took major issue with Trump's call to ban Muslim immigrants and his demand that Obama use the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism," the New York Times reports. According to CNBC, Obama says attitudes like that "make it a lot easier to radicalize people here and around the world" and go against “the very values America stands for.” Obama calls it a "dangerous mindset." Obama points out that the Orlando shooter was a US citizen born in America and would have been unaffected by Trump's proposed immigration ban. "Where does this stop?" CNN quotes Obama as saying. "Are we going to start treating all Muslim-Americans differently? Are we going to start subjecting them to special surveillance? Are we going to start discriminating [against] them because of their faith?” He also says the phrase "radical Islam" lumps Muslims and terrorists together and saying it wouldn't help. "Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away," he says. Obama called on Congress to pass stricter gun laws, including a ban on assault weapons, and to keep people on the no-fly list from being able to buy guns. “Enough talking about being tough on terrorism,” the Times quotes Obama as saying. “Actually be tough on terrorism.”