How is former aide to President Barack Obama, Ben Rhodes, handling President Trump’s administration?
“Not well,” Rhodes told New York Magazine in an interview published Sunday evening.
Rhodes, whose shock on Election Night 2016 recently went viral in a clip of HBO’s “The Final Year,” emphasized that his former boss took the news of Hillary Clinton’s loss to President Trump better than he did.
Rhodes stressed that Obama was “probably the most intellectually disciplined person I’ve ever met, in the sense that he basically takes the worldview of, ‘I can control what I can control and I can’t allow myself to be consumed by the things that are beyond my control.’”
Obama, Rhodes surmised, thought he had done “a good job as president” when he left office. And although Trump has sought to undo much of his legacy, Rhodes said Obama isn’t about to let Trump into his head.
“He can control how he gives advice to Democrats and the post-presidency foundation he builds and the issues he chooses to focus on, but he can’t control Trump. And so he doesn’t let it into his head,” Rhodes said. “In a way, I think he’s also smart enough to realize that the moment he lets it in his head, Trump wins. Like, if he was sitting around feeling sorry for himself because Trump pulled out of the Iran deal or did whatever, that’s actually what Trump wants. And I do think that Obama’s optimism — or, optimistic message — always overlooks the fact that he was pretty clear-eyed about — you know, he’s an African-American. He knows that not every story has a happy ending. That there’s inherent unfairness in American society.”
Rhodes has a new memoir out, The World As It Is, and recently was added to NBC News and MSNBC’s roster.
He has been an consistent critic of the Trump administration and he said in his interview with New York Magazine that while some Obama policies are “recoverable,” he doesn’t think the U.S. will be “fully recoverable” from the election of Trump, who he called an “authoritarian demagogue.”
