A terrific piece by David Remnick at The New Yorker. He captures and conveys Obama’s thoughts and feelings on the President-elect in an authentic way adding a little color along the way.
The morning after Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, Barack Obama summoned staff members to the Oval Office. Some were fairly junior and had never been in the room before. They were sombre, hollowed out, some fighting tears, humiliated by the defeat, fearful of autocracys moving vans pulling up to the door. Although Obama and his people admit that the election results caught them completely by surpriseWe had no plan for this, one told methe President sought to be reassuring.
This is not the apocalypse, Obama said. History does not move in straight lines; sometimes it goes sideways, sometimes it goes backward. A couple of days later, when I asked the President about that consolation, he offered this: I dont believe in apocalypticuntil the apocalypse comes. I think nothing is the end of the world until the end of the world.