Seven hours after his successor ranted again about the “totally biased” media and its “FAKE NEWS,” President Barack Obama walked into a White House press conference one last time, and even his polite “good afternoon, everybody” seemed like a kind of rebuke.
Standing in the briefing room Donald Trump is musing about shutting down, Obama began the final solo appearance of his presidency with pleasantries for a group at which Trump has raged. And then, as if addressing some other country, the president delivered a pointed tribute to the value of a free press.
“I have enjoyed working with all of you. That does not, of course, mean that I have enjoyed every story that you have filed, but that’s the point of this relationship. You’re not supposed to be sycophants, you’re supposed to be skeptics. You’re supposed to ask me tough questions,” Obama said.
Democracy “doesn’t work,” he continued, “if we don’t have a well-informed citizenry, and you are the conduit through which they receive the information about what’s taking place in the halls of power. So America needs you and our democracy needs you.”
George W. Bush held a farewell press conference in 2009. It was largely dedicated to a defence of his legacy. Though he touted the social progress of the last eight years, Obama appeared less interested in boasting about his time in office than in sending up another warning flare about what might come next.
Obama was intermittently deferential to Trump, saying the new president has the right to undertake major policy changes. But his opening monologue on press freedom — the kind of sermon presidents usually reserve for foreign strongmen — served as an unmistakable message to a president-elect who has attempted to discredit outlets that have criticized him or even questioned him.
Meaningful, too, was his selection of interlocutors. A week after Trump refused to accept a question from a reporter from CNN, a network he claimed was publishing lies, Obama called on a reporter from right-wing Fox News. As if to emphasize the importance of minority groups who feel threatened by Trump, Obama then called on representatives from outlets serving the black, gay, Arab and Hispanic communities.
And Obama, using cautious language, expressed concern about Trump’s decision-making style, which Trump calls instinctive and critics call erratic.
“If you’re going to make big shifts in policy, just make sure you’ve thought it through,” he said in response to a question about Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “And understand that there are going to be consequences and actions typically create reactions. And so you want to be intentional about it.”
Obama defended the most controversial act of his waning days: a commutation of the prison sentence ofChelsea Manning, the former Army private who gave secret information to WikiLeaks. Manning’s 35-year sentence was “disproportionate” to other leakers’, Obama said, and she has already served a “tough” sentence after seven years behind bars.
Obama, who was holding his 165th news conference, has long been castigated for his own record on press freedom. His administration has prosecuted whistleblowers, subpoenaed reporters’ phone records and operated in deep secrecy after he promised historic transparency. But Trump has treated the press with an open contempt more typical of authoritarian regimes than America’s elected officials.
Obama, who plans to live in a mansion in Washington until his younger daughter Sasha finishes high school in 2019, has not said precisely how he will spend his post-presidency. On Wednesday, he said he would not weigh in on “normal” policy debates during the Trump era — “I want to be quiet a little bit and not hear myself talk so darn much,” he said — but would speak out if “core values” were put at risk.
Such circumstances, he said, would include “systematic discrimination being ratified in some fashion,” efforts to restrict voting rights, deportations of the “DREAMer” undocumented immigrants brought to America illegally as children, and “institutional efforts to silence dissent or the press.”
Two days before the all-smiles pageantry of Inauguration Day, it was a sobering moment: a departing president suggesting his successor might pursue organized bigotry or attempt to squelch opposing voices.
He did not stop there. Asked about Russia, an adversary for which Trump has professed unceasing admiration, Obama also fretted that his successor would abandon the American tradition of advocating “basic norms and values” on the world stage. Even his trademark call for empathy and “basic respect,” nominally a plea to fellow citizens, seemed partly aimed, this time, at the incoming commander-in-chief.
As he did in his farewell speech last week, though, Obama pivoted from his dire admonitions to expressions of optimism. Asked what he tells his two daughters about Trump’s victory, he said: “The only thing that is the end of the world is the end of the world.”
“I believe in the American people. I believe that people are more good than bad. I believe tragic things happen. I think there’s evil in the world, but I think at the end of the day, if we work hard and if we’re true to those things in us that feel true and feel right, that the world gets a little better each time,” he said.
The first black president said he leaves a country with an enduring race problem, but also a country that is one day going to have a Latino, Jewish and Hindu president, plus “a whole bunch of mixed-up presidents at some point that nobody really knows what to call them.” While he acknowledged that his values were not “vindicated” in the election, he said he departs with the belief that “there’s a core decency to this country.”
Before he walked out the door, he sounded, once more, like the patriotic believer who exploded into the national consciousness in 2004.
“It is true that behind closed doors, I curse more than I do publicly, and sometimes I get mad and frustrated like everybody else does, but at my core, I think we’re going to be OK,” he said. “We just have to fight for it, we have to work for it and not take it for granted.”
He concluded with a remark that managed to seem both amiable and ominous.
“Thank you very much, press corps,” he said. “Good luck.”
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