Obama and Susan Rice Reportedly ‘Broke Down and Cried’ After Trump’s 2016 Win

A new report claims former President Barack Obama and his then-national security advisor, Susan Rice, were so distraught after Donald Trump won the 2016 election that they both cried.

The claim was posted on X Tuesday by RealClearInvestigations senior reporter Paul Sperry.

According to Sperry, the reaction is documented in 1,100 hours of audio and video compiled by Columbia University in a collaboration with the Obama Foundation.

Sperry wrote that after Trump’s unexpected victory, Obama and Rice feared that “all they’d built” was “at risk” of being undone.

He further claimed they worried their work would be dismantled by what they described as a “con man” and a “clown.”

Sperry added that both of them “literally broke down and cried” in front of White House staffers.

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…

— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) February 18, 2026

The report does not include the audio or video itself.

Sperry did not indicate whether the audio would be released publicly or whether transcripts would be made available.

Trump’s 2016 win over Democrat Hillary Clinton stunned Washington’s political class and sparked an effort to undermine Trump before he ever entered office in 2017.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence last year issued a report titled “Declassified Evidence of Obama Administration Conspiracy to Subvert President Trump’s 2016 Victory and Presidency.”

According to DNI Tulsi Gabbard, the Russian collusion hoax was a part of that effort.

“There is irrefutable evidence detailing how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an Intelligence Community Assessment that they knew was false, promoting the contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, as though it were true,” she found.

Gabbard added, “The documents we released shows how they did it: manufacturing findings from shoddy sources, suppressing evidence that disproved their false claims, disobeying IC tradecraft standards, and withholding the truth from the American people.”

She added that anger over Trump’s win ultimately led to a “yearslong coup” against Trump that included everything from his impeachments to the criminal charges that were filed against him after his first term.

Gabbard included a timeline of events she said began shortly after the 2016 election that involved numerous Obama administration officials.

According to her report, the outgoing administration began work to undercut Trump within a few weeks of the election and with just over a month until Trump’s first inauguration.

Trump was not convicted by the Senate in either of the two impeachment and multiple federal criminal cases against him were dropped after he won another term in 2024.

The president survived two attempted assassinations in the final stretch of the election.

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