Barack Obama's team was blindsided by Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential election, and the former president struggled with the outcome for weeks, according to a new book by his longtime adviser Benjamin Rhodes, The New York Times reports.
"I couldn't shake the feeling that I should have seen it coming," Rhodes writes in "The World as It Is," set to be published next week by Random House.
"Because when you distilled it, stripped out the racism and misogyny, we'd run against Hillary eight years ago with the same message Trump had used: She's part of a corrupt establishment that can't be trusted to bring change."
Rhodes also says the Obama team had no inkling of the ongoing FBI investigation into possible collusion between members of Trump's campaign team and Russia, and Obama did not impose sanctions on Russia for meddling before the election because he thought it might lead to Moscow hacking Election Day vote tabulations.
Additionally, Rhodes details Obama's encounter with Trump following the election in the book – he says Trump kept discussing the size of his rallies and how he and Obama could draw big crowds but Clinton could not – and quotes Obama as saying the American people can "just have a cartoon" in reference to the Republican nominee.
"I don’t know," he told aides according to the Times. "Maybe this is what people want. I've got the economy set up well for him. No facts. No consequences. They can just have a cartoon."
On handing the presidency over to Trump, Obama alluded to "The Godfather" movie: "I feel like Michael Corleone. I almost got out."
Rhodes served as Obama's deputy national security adviser.
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