That’s hilarious.
Barack Obama stood before his senior staff after Donald Trump’s election victory and cried. The 44th president, who had spent eight years projecting cool detachment, broke down in front of the people who built his administration and thanked them for believing in him.
That scene, along with 1,100 hours of raw audio and video footage, now sits in a new oral history archive compiled by Columbia University’s Incite Institute in partnership with the Obama Foundation. The collection pulls back the curtain on how Obama’s inner circle experienced the Trump era: first with dismissal, then with denial, and finally with tears.
The archive reveals a pattern that will surprise exactly no one who watched 2016 unfold in real time. Obama’s team didn’t just underestimate Trump. They refused to see him at all.
Cody Keenan, Obama’s speechwriter, captured the consensus cleanly: “Nobody took it seriously at the time.” He was referring to Trump’s June 2015 campaign launch, but the sentiment extended years earlier. David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, recalled bumping into Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where the future president told him something worth remembering: “I know it’s crazy, but I’m in front of the polls.”
Axelrod’s response was to chuckle and walk to his seat. Years later, he offered a more candid assessment of the moment: “I kind of chuckled at it and went to my seat. I don’t think any of us really anticipated that Donald Trump would be a serious candidate for president, much less president.”
According to the Daily Mail, that evening, Obama used the comedy portion of the dinner to mock Trump. No quotes from that routine survive in the archive. What does survive is the record of a political establishment so insulated by its own assumptions that a man telling them exactly what he planned to do registered as entertainment.
A Columbia University oral history archive contains recordings confirming that Barack Obama cried in front of senior staff following Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory. The collection, compiled by Columbia’s Incite Institute in partnership with the Obama Foundation, includes 1,100 hours of raw audio and video where witnesses describe Obama breaking down to thank his team for believing in him.
Key details from the archive include: Staff members, including Christy Goldfuss and Jen Psaki, recount Obama and other senior officials like Susan Rice tearing up or crying upon realizing the election outcome. The recordings reveal an inner circle that moved from dismissing Trump as a “clown” or “con man” to shock and emotional collapse when he won.
Not long after that, the conspiracy to overthrow a duly elected president took shape.
When Biden cheated his way into the White House in 2020, we didn’t cry. We rolled up our sleeves, vowed to fight his ass tooth and nail, and win the next election.
If you think 2016 was rough on the DemLeft, the meltdown they had in 2024 over Trump’s second victory was epic and twice as entertaining.
Related articles:
https://www.westernjournal.com/obama-susan-rice-reportedly-broke-cried-trumps-2016-win/