For eight years, Barack Obama played the role of the unflappable president. Cool. Collected. Above the fray. The man who never sweated, never panicked, never let the mask slip. That was the brand. That was the image. That was the guy who told America that Trump was a “con man” and a “clown” who had no business anywhere near the Oval Office.
Then election night 2016 happened. And behind the closed doors of the White House, the coolest president in modern history broke down and cried.
The Tapes
RealClearInvestigations senior reporter Paul Sperry dropped the claim on X, citing over 1,100 hours of newly compiled audio and video — assembled by Columbia University in cooperation with the Obama Foundation. According to Sperry, the recordings show that Obama and his National Security Adviser Susan Rice were “so distraught” after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton that they “literally broke down and cried in front of White House staff.”
Not privately. Not behind a closed door with the lights off. In front of staff. The President of the United States and his top national security official, weeping in the workplace because the voters chose someone they considered beneath them.
“After all they’d built, they feared their accomplishments were ‘at risk’ of being torn down by a ‘con man’ and a ‘clown,'” Sperry wrote. Then the question that matters: “Ergo, Trump had to be stopped?”
That’s not a throwaway line. That’s the thread that connects 2016 to everything that followed.
The “Clown” They Didn’t See Coming
Former Obama adviser David Axelrod offered another detail from the archive. At the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner — the same event where Obama publicly roasted Trump to his face — Axelrod overheard Trump “bragging to other attendees” about leading in the polls.
“I kind of chuckled at it and went to my seat,” Axelrod said. “I don’t think any of us really anticipated that Donald Trump would be a serious candidate for president, much less president.”
They chuckled. They dismissed. They mocked. And then they lost. And when they lost, they didn’t do what normal political operators do — accept the result, pack their offices, and go write a book. They cried. And then, if the subsequent years are any indication, they got to work making sure it wouldn’t happen again.
The Question Nobody Will Answer
Sperry’s final line is the one that should keep people up at night. “Ergo, Trump had to be stopped?”
Because what happened after those tears dried isn’t speculation. It’s public record. The Russia investigation was opened. The FISA warrants were approved. The intelligence community began leaking. The transition was surveilled. The incoming administration was undermined before it could unpack its boxes.
Susan Rice — the same woman who allegedly cried on election night — sent herself an email on January 20, 2017, Inauguration Day, documenting a conversation with Obama about investigating the Trump team “by the book.” The email was sent to herself, on her last day in office, memorializing a meeting that had occurred weeks earlier. Legal experts have called it a classic CYA memo — the kind you write when you know what’s coming and want to create a paper trail that protects you.
Obama’s team went from tears to action with a speed that suggests the grief didn’t last long before it became something else. Something operational.
The Arrogance Problem
The recordings reveal something more fundamental than emotional fragility. They reveal the mindset that made everything that followed possible. Obama and his circle didn’t just lose an election. They experienced something they genuinely believed was impossible. In their world, Trump was a joke. A reality TV host who didn’t belong in the same conversation as their Ivy League credentials and their Nobel Peace Prize.
They didn’t respect the voters who chose Trump. They didn’t understand them. They looked at 63 million Americans and saw dupes who fell for a con man. And when that contempt collided with the reality of a democratic outcome they couldn’t accept, it produced tears first — and then a years-long campaign to reverse what the voters had done.
That’s not democracy in action. That’s an establishment that believes it has veto power over election results.
The Recordings Nobody Can Hear
Sperry didn’t indicate whether the audio would be released publicly or whether transcripts would be made available. 1,100 hours compiled by Columbia University in cooperation with the Obama Foundation — and the public may never hear them.
That’s convenient. An archive that reveals the emotional state of a former president and his national security team on the night they lost power — assembled by a university working with the president’s own foundation — and the release details are unclear.
If those recordings contain what Sperry says they contain, they should be public. Not because crying is a crime. It isn’t. But because the emotional state of the people who subsequently oversaw the most aggressive intelligence operation against an incoming president in American history matters. Context matters. Motivation matters. And 1,100 hours of context is sitting in a Columbia University archive while the public gets second-hand reports.
What It Means Now
Obama cried. Rice cried. They called Trump a clown and a con man. They feared everything they’d built would be torn down. And within weeks, the machinery of the federal government was mobilized to prevent exactly that — not through politics, but through surveillance, investigation, and institutional sabotage.
The tears weren’t just grief. They were the starting gun.
And nine years later, Trump is in his second term, Obama is posting complaints on social media about the endangerment finding, and the “clown” they chuckled at in 2011 has outlasted every attempt to stop him.
Turns out the joke was on them.