Obama had never been about party building. President Obama could be deliberative, reticent and cautious to a fault, which spurred an appetite for a more impulsive, visceral, hurly-burly successor. Rhodes says that weeks after the election, he warned Obama that a narrative was developing that they didn’t do enough about the Russians and fake news. “And do you think,” Obama replied, “that the type of people reading that stuff were going to listen to me?”Obama was well aware during the campaign that his chosen heir sometimes seemed to be phoning it in. Afterward he told his aides: “Most of the folks in these places have been watching Fox News and think I’m the Antichrist.

Source: New York Times June 02, 2018 18:30 UTC