Free Republic

A forthcoming memoir by Obama confidant Ben Rhodes includes the startling admission that the 44th president’s inner circle should have seen Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss coming – because President Trump was essentially using the Obama playbook to discredit her. The New York Times published excerpts of the book, "The World As It Is," which describes outgoing President Barack Obama’s shock and disbelief at Trump’s election victory. But Rhodes also seems to acknowledge that Trump used some of the same lines of attack employed by Obama during the hard-fought 2008 presidential primary against Clinton – minus what Rhodes describes as the...

Riding in a motorcade in Lima, Peru, shortly after the 2016 election, President Barack Obama was struggling to understand Donald J. Trump’s victory. “What if we were wrong?” he asked aides riding with him in the armored presidential limousine. He had read a column asserting that liberals had forgotten how important identity was to people and had promoted an empty cosmopolitan globalism that made many feel left behind. “Maybe we pushed too far,” Mr. Obama said. “Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe.” SNIP--- Mr. Rhodes describes the reaction of foreign leaders. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of...

Full title....................Obama called Trump a 'cartoon' in private, reveals former aide who admits president defeated Hillary with the same message his boss did: 'She's part of a corrupt establishment'......................President Barack Obama went through multiple emotional stages after Donald Trump's election - sometimes angry, sometimes resigned - as he talked to aides about the 'cartoon' figure who cared more about crowd size than policy, as he referred to the president-elect who would follow him into the Oval Office. Obama also expressed rare self-doubt, wondering whether he had misjudged his own influence on the country. The revelations on the former president's inner...

WASHINGTON — Riding in a motorcade in Lima, Peru, shortly after the 2016 election, President Barack Obama was struggling to understand Donald J. Trump’s victory. “What if we were wrong?” he asked aides riding with him in the armored presidential limousine. He had read a column asserting that liberals had forgotten how important identity was to people and had promoted an empty cosmopolitan globalism that made many feel left behind. “Maybe we pushed too far,” Mr. Obama said. “Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe.” His aides reassured him that he still would have won had he...