While on the campaign trial, Trump said he wanted to reduce the U.S.’ involvement in North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and let Europe step up to pay for defense instead.
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On his trip, Obama is stopping first in Athens, where he’ll tour the Parthenon, meet with Tsipras, and give a speech about democracy and globalisation that will take on new relevance in light of Trump’s election.
Throughout the campaign, especially during the primaries in the first half of 2016, there were questions about the relationship between the Republican Party and the Trump campaign. “But they have got time to consider what exactly they want to achieve”, Obama said. Do I have concerns?
Obama’s trip, planned when it seemed certain Hillary Clinton would win, had been created to reassure the world that the USA had regained its footing after a toxic campaign that unnerved foreign capitals, noted Heather Conley, a Europe scholar at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
” It continues to be my strong belief, ” Obama said, ” that the way we are going to make sure that everybody feels a part of this global economy is not by shutting ourselves off from each other, even if we could, but rather by working together more effectively than we have in the past”.
Mr Obama said it’s too soon for the American people to cast judgment on the President-elect, saying they need to give him a chance to prove himself over his term.
Mr Trump on Monday spoke on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin announced, and both agreed their countries’ relations were “extremely unsatisfactory”. Obama warned during the campaign everything he’s accomplished over the last eight years could be out the window if Trump were elected.
The irony is cruel: In the name of a peaceful transition, the American president, having thoroughly denounced the billionaire Republican during the recent campaign, must now do his best to reassure his European counterparts about the future of American democracy under a President Trump. Obama said that Trump’s lack of a solid policy foundation could make him open to change.
Trump performed spectacularly in all of the major battleground states – Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin – places that banked numerous key electoral votes into the GOP candidate’s column, and places where analysts say a large number of Democratic voters did not cast a ballot.
He said he offered Trump honest advice in a lengthy conversation and highlighted the importance of finding trusted aides. I think he’s honest in wanting to be a successful president and moving this country forward and I don’t think any president ever comes in saying to themself, “I want to figure out how to make people angry or alienate half the country”. “‘It’s awful. It doesn’t work, and we have to undo it”, Obama said.
“Regardless of what experience or assumptions he brought to the office, this office has a way of waking you up”, Obama added.
“We’re going to have to compete everywhere”, he said, reflecting on his own 2008 win in Iowa, a state that went for Trump this time.
However, while we’re hearing things actually went well between the incumbent and his successor, things don’t seem particularly positive moving forward.
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“Breitbart will continue to be what it has been during the campaign – it was just a propaganda arm for Donald Trump”, said Kurt Bardella, a public relations consultant who dropped Breitbart as a client this spring following the incident with reporter Michelle Fields and Lewandowski. “I think that, whenever you’ve got an incoming president of the other side, particularly in a bitter election like this, it takes a while for people to reconcile themselves with that new reality”.
