Former President Barack Obama told reporters in his last days as president that he wasn’t worried about a single Donald Trump term, but was concerned about a “sustained period” of political norms being undermined if he served two terms, according to newly released documents obtained by Bloomberg News.
Obama met with reporters three days before Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 17, 2017, for an off-the-record conversation. A White House transcript of the meeting — which was never reported under the ground rules agreed upon by the journalists — was included in a cache of documents released by the Justice Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
“I think that four years is OK,” Obama said. “Take on some water, but we can kind of bail fast enough to be OK. Eight years would be a problem. I would be concerned about a sustained period in which some of these norms have broken down and started to corrode.”
