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In new chapters of "Obama: The Call of History," Peter Baker, New York Times correspondent, portrays the former president who was questioning his legacy and personally insulted the fact that the voters elected Trump instead of Clinton, for whom he had campaigned during the final days of the 2016 contest.
"It stings," Obama told staff members at an Oval Office meeting in the weeks following the elections, a source told David Remnick of the New Yorker. "It hurts."
Baker describes Obama as deeply skeptical of Trump and mystified by the reason why voters chose him rather than by the more experienced Clinton. And he writes that Obama and some of his aides blamed Clinton and his campaign decisions for the result, which shocked the president of the time.
"For Obama and his team, however, the real blame falls squarely on Clinton," Baker writes in the book. "It was she who could not translate her solid balance sheet and sound economy into a winning message." It does not matter that Trump essentially ran Clinton the same game book that Obama did eight years ago, presenting it as a corrupt example of the status quo, she brought a lot of her problems to herself. "
Obama, who helped his vice president Joe Biden move away from a 2016 bid, felt that Clinton's victory was virtually assured.
"Obama woke up on election day, convinced, like most people in the country, that he would not give up nuclear football to Donald Trump," Baker writes. "The reality TV star, he thought, was a joke, the Americans would not want to turn to him."
On election night, Obama was watching a movie in the White House Theater when disturbing signs began to appear.
"Hein," he said, according to the memoirs of former first lady Michelle Obama. "The results in Florida are rather strange."
In public following Trump's victory, Obama adopted a resolute attitude and made efforts to ease the transition to the Republican administration. At their post-election meeting at the Oval Office – the first time they met – Obama told the press that he was "encouraged".
But in private, Baker writes that Obama "seemed mystified by the encounter".
"At various times in the meeting," he told Trump, Trump continued to guide the conversation about the size of his rallies, "it could attract a huge crowd, just like Obama but Hillary Clinton could not," Trump said. ", Baker writes. , citing memories contained in the book of Ben Rhodes, former Obama foreign policy advisor.
Later, Baker recounts that Obama had guessed his progressive approach to the presidency as his administration was unraveling.
"What if we were wrong?" Baker recalls that Obama asked his associates, quoting Rhodes. "Maybe we pushed too far."
"Obama did not seem to be convinced," Baker writes. "Sometimes," I wonder if I'm ten or twenty years old too early. " "
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