Barack Obama reveals he believed Trump would only be one-term president: 'I was right about that'
Former President Barack Obama, in a recent interview, said that he never expected President Donald Trump's election win in 2016, but believed that the Republican would be a one-term president. The Democrat leader also said that he was "not surprised" by Trump's refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power to President-elect Biden. Obama made the statement in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais, where he promoted his book 'A Promised Land'.
Obama, during the conversation, compared the current White House administration's reluctance to accept defeat with the aftermath of the 2016 election that witnessed Trump assuming the office. The former president said that he had called to congratulate Trump on the night of his victory and made immediate plans for his administration to help the oncoming one. He added that he had learned from the assistance offered by his predecessor former President George W. Bush when he was leaving the office and welcoming Obama in. The Democrat told the paper that a "peaceful transfer of power between parties is part of what makes democracy work. We didn't delay for weeks on end pretending that it hadn't happened."
The former president continued: "I arranged for all of my agencies and teams to prepare manuals for the transition. One of those manuals was a playbook on how to deal with the possibility of a pandemic. It seems that they didn't follow those guidelines that we provided."
President Trump and his campaign, ever since Election Day, November 3, have falsely claimed that they won the 2020 presidential elections despite Biden winning 290 electoral votes against Trump's 232. The Republican has also consistently floated claims of voter fraud without providing any evidence and has refused to concede to Biden.
"I am sad to say that by the end of Donald Trump's presidency, I was not surprised that he is acting the way he is acting," Obama said. The former president then went on to describe how he felt the country had changed over the last four years since he left office: "There is no doubt that some significant damage has been done both here in the United States and around the world. If you encourage, or at least are forgiving of, racist behavior, then those who have those impulses feel emboldened. If you embrace dictators on the world stage, then the commitment to democracy diminishes."
Obama, while talking about how he felt to be the first Black president, said that he "always expected backlash" and believed the "joy of my election was not going to last forever." However, he did not expect Trump to be elected as president. "I did not expect Donald Trump to be elected. What I did expect, though, was that if he was elected, it'd be one term. I was right about that," he said.
The former president said that the Trump administration was marred with alternative facts and reality and we are witnessing it even now. "There are alternative facts and an alternative reality that we're seeing even now, when Donald Trump declares that 'I haven't lost the election yet,' or 'There's been fraud and illegal votes cast,' even though there's no proof of it."
Obama's new memoir broke records on its first day of release and sold 887,000 copies in the United States and Canada. The numbers surpassed former First Lady Michelle Obama's first-day sales of her memoir 'Becoming' which sold 725,000 copies.