Just so we know, Politico explains it’s not easy being orange, according to President-Asterisk Smallgloves:
Donald Trump can’t decide whether he thinks the transition of power is going well or not.
But he knows he doesn’t like how much attention Barack Obama is getting and is also bothered by what Trump and his closest advisers see as an active effort to poke the president-elect and undermine the incoming administration with last-minute policy changes on his way out of office, according to two people close to the transition.
And the relationship is likely to get worse in the three weeks until the inauguration: Obama is scheduled to give a farewell address Jan. 10 that is expected to be a recounting of his successes and an inherent contrast with Trump and the administration is rushing to make public a report on Russian hacking during the election that intelligence officials say was done to help Trump, though the president-elect has disputed that entirely…
Wednesday night, in response to a question from a reporter, Trump went even further to move past the situation.
“Our staffs have been getting along very well, and I’m getting along very well with him,” he said, “other than a couple of statements that I responded to and we talked about it and smiled about it and nobody is ever going to know because we are never going to be going against each other.”…
Most of all, though, Trump is frustrated with how Obama has poked him, by claiming in a podcast interview with former adviser David Axelrod that he could have beaten Trump had he been eligible to run again. (The president made that claim as part of an insistence that his kind of positive, hopeful campaign would have resonated with Americans, despite what Trump successfully tapped into.)
Trump was also irritated by Obama’s comments at Pearl Harbor on Tuesday afternoon in which he said, “even when hatred burns hottest, even when the tug of tribalism is at its most primal, we must resist the urge to turn inward. We must resist the urge to demonize those who are different.” These felt to Trump like direct criticism of the president-elect, according to two people close to Trump.
Obama administration aides deny that the president was talking about Trump. And the White House is pointedly not responding to Trump’s tweets…
Almost added “Old Man Yells At Clouds” as a category tag, except that seems too playful for the Cheeto Benito. Good for President Obama and his team, regardless.
What’s on the agenda for the evening?
Thursday Evening Open Thread: “What’s really bugging Trump about Obama”Post + Comments (206)