The media portrayed Barack Obama as Mr. Cool in the White House.
But the reality was worse than anyone imagined.
And Barack Obama's worst nightmare came true after this humiliating reaction to Trump's victory was revealed.
Obama and Susan Rice Broke Down Crying in Front of Their Own Staff
According to newly surfaced audio and video archived by Columbia University as part of the Obama presidential records project, the man the media spent eight years calling "No Drama Obama" completely fell apart on election night 2016.
Barack Obama and his National Security Adviser Susan Rice were so shattered by Trump's victory that they literally broke down and cried in front of White House staff.
It's on 1,100 hours of tape.
RealClearInvestigations senior reporter Paul Sperry broke the story after reviewing the archive – Obama and Rice feared their accomplishments were "at risk" of being dismantled by a man they privately called a "con man" and a "clown."
The next morning, Obama stood in the Rose Garden, composed and gracious, pledging a smooth transition of power.
The night before, he was sobbing in front of his own people.
A man who had nothing to hide doesn't fall apart in front of his staff. Obama knew exactly what Trump's victory was going to uncover.
The FBI Was Already Running a Spy Operation Against Trump When Those Tears Fell
Obama was crying on election night 2016.
The surveillance operation against Trump and every Republican primary candidate had been running since November 2015.
An NSA compliance officer discovered that FBI contractors were illegally accessing the NSA database – running searches on Republican presidential candidates and exporting the results.
The officer reported it to NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers.
Rogers shut down all FBI contractor access on April 18, 2016 – seven months before the election – and launched an internal investigation.
When Clapper, Brennan, and Comey realized Rogers had discovered what they were doing, they went straight to the Secretary of Defense and asked Obama to fire him.
Obama didn't fire him. But he tried.
Rogers went straight to Trump Tower on November 17, 2016 – without telling his boss, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper – and briefed President-elect Trump on what had been happening.
The very next day, Trump's transition team packed up and moved out of Trump Tower entirely.
Rogers then personally notified the FISA Court of the abuses, and in April 2017, Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer responded with a heavily redacted 99-page opinion confirming the database had been systematically misused.
Obama's FBI – under James Comey and Andrew McCabe – was running those searches and feeding the results directly to Hillary Clinton's campaign.
The U.S. government used its most powerful intelligence tools to spy on political opposition and hand the product to one party's presidential campaign.
SpyGate was running while Barack Obama sat in the Oval Office.
They Called Trump a Clown While Running the Biggest Political Spy Operation in American History
Obama cried because Trump's election meant the walls were closing in.
The bogus Steele dossier wasn't created to authorize future surveillance of Trump.
It was created to retroactively justify surveillance that had already happened illegally.
When Admiral Rogers cut off database access in April 2016, Comey, Brennan, Clapper, FusionGPS, and Christopher Steele scrambled to build a cover story – and four years of the Russia hoax is what they built to cover it up.
Think about what that means for a moment.
The tears Obama shed on election night weren't grief over a lost election. They were the reaction of a man staring down the barrel of the biggest political scandal in American history – one he helped create.
Obama called Trump a "clown" in private while running an espionage operation against him that Richard Nixon never dared attempt.
The Columbia tapes captured a man who already knew what he'd done – and was terrified he'd finally have to answer for it.
Sources:
- Paul Sperry, "Obama, Rice Broke Down and Cried After Trump Won in 2016," RealClearInvestigations / X post, February 18, 2026.
- The Last Refuge, "The NSA Report No One Has Ever Seen," September 30, 2025.
- The Last Refuge, "A Common Misconception About The Origin of Spygate," April 15, 2020.
- Breitbart News, "Report: Obama, Susan Rice 'Broke Down and Cried' After Trump Defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016," February 18, 2026.
- WorldNetDaily, "Losing Their Grift: Obama So Distraught by First Trump Win," February 18, 2026.
- William Hamilton, "Admiral Rogers' Nefarious Neighborhood," SkyHiNews, June 6, 2018.
- The Stream, "Important Reading: Mike Rogers and Obama-Era FISA Abuse," May 1, 2019.
