Obama and Rice Broke Down After 2016 Upset

Adriana Stone 0 1 min read

Obama and Rice Broke Down After 2016 Upset

The 2016 shock still stings for some. New audio and video compiled by Columbia University with the Obama Foundation is stirring the pot again.

Reporters and commentators say the material shows real pain inside the West Wing the night President Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton. Staffers reportedly watched leaders who’d built a brand visibly shaken.

Paul Sperry posted about the material on X. He wrote exactly this:

“BREAKING: President Obama and his National Security Adviser Susan Rice were so distraught after Trump won in 2016 they literally broke down and cried in front of White House staff, according to 1,100 hours of new audio and video compiled by Columbia University in cooperation with the Obama Foundation.”

That line—if accurate—paints a vivid picture. It’s one thing to be disappointed. It’s another to be undone in front of your own team.

Sperry added a follow-up line that was shared widely. Again, verbatim:

“After all they’d built, they feared their accomplishments were ‘at risk’ of being town down by a ‘con man’ and a ‘clown,'” Sperry added. “Ergo, Trump had to be stopped?”

Raw footage can be messy. Context matters. But politics is theater and optics are everything. For Republicans, this is evidence elites panicked when voters chose change. For critics of the Obama years, it’s proof that those leaders felt their legacy was fragile.

Either way, the clips are fueling a broader narrative: the Washington class was confident it could steer the country and then bitterly surprised when it couldn’t. That anger and fear, critics say, helps explain years of partisan fights that followed.

Expect both sides to spin. Democrats will argue private emotion doesn’t change policy. Conservatives will point to the footage as a window into how out-of-touch leadership can be.

Whatever you think, the footage adds color to the story of 2016. It also reminds voters why many embraced President Donald Trump as an outsider who promised to shake up the system.

Here are the original posts referenced in the reporting, preserved in full:

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