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\u201cThe outcome of the election was a direct rebuke of everything that we had been trying to do for the last 10 years,\u201d reflected Josh Earnest, who was Obama\u2019s last White House press secretary.<\/h2>\n
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\n\tFormer President Barack Obama in 2011. Doug Mills\/The New York Times<\/em>\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBy Peter Baker, New York Times Service\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFebruary 18, 2026\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/time><\/p>\n
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WASHINGTON \u2014 As President Barack Obama<\/a>\u2019s chief strategist, David Axelrod, made his way across a hotel ballroom on the night of the White House Correspondents\u2019 Association dinner in 2011, he happened to overhear Donald Trump<\/a> boasting to other guests. \u201cI know it\u2019s crazy,\u201d Trump was saying, \u201cbut I\u2019m in front of the polls.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI kind of chuckled at it and went to my seat,\u201d Axelrod recalled. \u201cI don\u2019t think any of us really anticipated that Donald Trump would be a serious candidate for president, much less president.\u201d It was later that same evening that Obama would mock Trump from the stage, ridiculing the reality television star in a moment that would go viral.<\/p>\n
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In fact, Obama and his team never saw Trump coming, as a new set of oral history interviews <\/a>released Tuesday makes abundantly clear. He was, to them, a \u201ccon man,\u201d a \u201cclown,\u201d a \u201claughingstock.\u201d He was a thorn in the side with his birther lies and demagogic bloviating. But as it turned out, Obama and his advisers, like many others, missed the shifting mood of the country that would ultimately upend Axelrod\u2019s assumptions.<\/p>\n
The oral history, compiled by Incite Institute, a social science research center at Columbia University, represents the most extensive set of interviews made public to date from the Obama presidency. The institute, in cooperation with the Obama Foundation, conducted more than 450 interviews totaling more than 1,100 hours of audio and video with Cabinet secretaries, White House aides, family members, opposition leaders and outside figures affected by administration policies.<\/p>\n
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$\"President$
President Barack Obama with then-President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, their first meeting in person, Nov. 11, 2016. \u2013 Stephen Crowley\/The New York Times<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Two limited tranches of the oral history interviews were released previously, but the institute posted the full set online Tuesday morning for the perusal of historians, researchers and the merely curious. The interviews do not include Obama or his wife, Michelle Obama, or vice president, Joe Biden, but do include major figures such as Hillary Clinton, John F. Kerry, Robert M. Gates, Paul D. Ryan, Oprah Winfrey and even the former president\u2019s mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, who died in 2024.<\/p>\n
The interviews tell the back story of a presidency that pulled the country out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression; rescued the auto industry; passed landmark legislation on health care, LGBTQ+ rights and financial regulation; brought home most troops from Iraq; and hunted down and killed Osama bin Laden. They also explore the failure to stop the Russian annexation of Crimea, the slaughter in Syria, the collapse of Libya and the rise of the Islamic State group.<\/p>\n
But nine years after he left office with high approval ratings and one year into Trump\u2019s second term, what remains striking is how inconceivable it seemed to Obama and his team that populist disenchantment with the establishment, globalization and demographic changes would elevate a figure they scorned. It was a question that hovered over the interviews as they struggled for answers.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe outcome of the election was a direct rebuke of everything that we had been trying to do for the last 10 years,\u201d reflected Josh Earnest, who was Obama\u2019s last White House press secretary.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump\u2019s candidacy,\u201d he added, \u201cthe essence of his being and everything that he stood for and everything about the way that he carried himself and everything that he championed and his rhetoric, his campaign tactics \u2014 all were anathema to everything that the Obama campaign and the Obama era, the Obama administration, had been about.\u201d<\/p>\n
$\"Donald$
Donald Trump campaigns in Fresno, Calif., May 27, 2016. \u2013 Stephen Crowley\/The New York Times<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Axelrod recounted that the first time he ever spoke with Trump was in 2010 during the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Trump reached out through Mika Brzezinski, one of the hosts of \u201cMorning Joe\u201d on MSNBC, to offer his services to plug the leak. Axelrod thought it was preposterous and politely declined.<\/p>\n
But when the spill was finally halted, Trump had another idea for Axelrod. \u201cI build ballrooms, I build the greatest \u2014 you can ask anybody, my ballrooms are the greatest ballrooms,\u201d Trump told him by phone, as Axelrod recalled. \u201cYou have these state dinners, and you have them in these shitty little tents out in the backyard. Let me build a modular ballroom that you can assemble when you have state dinners so it\u2019ll look good.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Axelrod thought that would be a bad signal in the midst of \u201cthis monstrous recession\u201d and brushed him off. \u201cI said: \u2018Well, that\u2019s really nice of you. I\u2019m going to pass this on to the social secretary and I\u2019ll have her call you,\u2019\u201d Axelrod recalled. \u201cI did. She didn\u2019t.\u201d Nearly a decade later, Trump is now finally building his ballroom.<\/p>\n
The decision to roast Trump at the 2011 correspondents\u2019 dinner stemmed from aggravation over the continuing lies about Obama\u2019s birthplace. \u201cI thought what he was doing was racist,\u201d recalled Jon Favreau, the speechwriter who helped draft the remarks. \u201cI thought and still do think that he is a ridiculous human being who deserves to be ridiculed at every possible chance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Favreau and his colleagues came up with lines making fun of Trump\u2019s \u201cCelebrity Apprentice\u201d television show<\/a>. \u201cWe gave it to Obama and he loved it,\u201d Favreau said. \u201cHe was so excited to do it.\u201d Did Favreau think at the time that Trump might be a formidable presidential candidate? \u201cNot even a brief moment did I ever think that.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the dinner, Favreau said Trump approached Seth Meyers, the late-night comic who performed that night and also made fun of Trump. \u201cHe told Seth: \u2018That was very unfair what you did. It was very unfair.\u2019\u201d At the after-party, Favreau said, he and Meyers laughed at Trump. \u201cWe were like, \u2018Wow, we really got him.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
There are those who speculate that Trump\u2019s red-faced fury that evening may have played a part in motivating him to run for president. He kicked off his campaign four years later, in June 2015. \u201cNobody took it seriously at the time,\u201d said Cody Keenan, another speechwriter for Obama.<\/p>\n
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Indeed, after Trump proposed banning Muslims from entering the United States, Earnest dismissed the Republican candidate from the White House lectern. \u201cI talked about Donald Trump and his ideas being relegated to the dustbin of history,\u201d Earnest recalled. \u201cI think I was kind of wrong about that unfortunately.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump surged to the Republican nomination despite the Obama team\u2019s expectations, but even then they assumed he could not beat Clinton in the general election. Obama wanted to give a speech at the Democratic National Convention pushing back against the forces that Trump represented.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the time, I don\u2019t think anybody thought Donald Trump was going to win,\u201d Keenan said. \u201cSo it wasn\u2019t aimed at him, and that\u2019s because his party is the party that made it happen. None of this began with Donald Trump. These were trends that have been happening for a long time, stoking fear of the others, stoking misinformation, kind of this phony populism that turned people against each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
$\"Donald$
Donald Trump during his second presidential debate with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at Washington University in St. Louis, Oct. 9, 2016. \u2013 Doug Mills\/The New York Times<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
While more voters cast ballots for Clinton, making her the popular-vote winner, the Electoral College lined up for Trump, making him the president-elect. The White House was a dark place in the days that followed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a pall over everything because you have no idea what the Trump stuff is going to be, and everything feels at risk,\u201d said Denis McDonough, the last White House chief of staff for Obama. \u201cI feel like we accomplished what we set to accomplish. Except Trump won.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The day after the election, Obama called distraught aides to the Oval Office to comfort them. \u201cHistory doesn\u2019t move in a straight line,\u201d he told them and encouraged them to be proud of what they had accomplished.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat struck me in those days after Trump won was even in the midst of that how steady he was,\u201d Favreau said. \u201cI expected to find him depressed, alarmed, panicked. None of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
But there were some moments when the normally stoic Obama revealed his own emotions. \u201cHe came to speak to the senior staff,\u201d recalled Christy Goldfuss, the managing director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. \u201cHe got up to give a speech and he started crying and he thanked everybody and he thanks all of us for believing in him.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was not the only one with moist eyes. Jen Psaki, who was Obama\u2019s communications director, recalled that even figures like Jacob J. Lew, the Treasury secretary, and Susan Rice, the national security adviser, \u201call these people who are so tough and smart and complete badasses,\u201d were \u201ctearing up\u201d at points.<\/p>\n
In those moments, and plenty since, it was hard for Obama\u2019s team not to wonder what it all meant. \u201cIt\u2019s like, was that a success?\u201d Psaki reflected. \u201cI don\u2019t know, but it is a piece of history, which is important.\u201d<\/p>\n
This article originally appeared in The New York Times<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n
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