“On the Holmes Front” with Frank Holmes
Few presidents could have more different public personas of their toughness than President Donald Trump and Barack Obama.
Trump stares down enemies, negotiates with cutthroats, and threatens to “rain down fire and fury” on anyone who attacks the United States.
Obama apologized for American greatness, folded under pressure, and sent our enemies pallets of cash.
New video footage just documented another way the two presidents differ: President Trump’s toughness reduced Barack Obama to tears at least once.
When Donald Trump got elected America’s 45th president in 2016, Obama broke down crying—and there’s video footage of it.
“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,” investigative reporter Paul Sperry revealed on Tuesday. “After all they’d built, they feared their accomplishments were ‘at risk’ of being torn down by a ‘con man’ and a ‘clown.’ Ergo, Trump had to be stopped?”
Although the footage has not yet been released publicly, but Sperry, a senior reporter with RealClear Investigations, has a long track record of breaking exclusives.
To make the reporting on Obama’s sob session even more humiliating, Obama did it to himself.
The evidence that makes many believe Obama is a weepy weakling comes from an oral history project of 1,100 hours of video and audio commentary that the Obama Foundation commissioned in partnership with the Columbia University’s Incite Institute.
What’s more, President Obama’s wife and staff have basically confirmed the story in front of an audience of millions.
As the Obamas prepared to turn the White House over to President Trump, “we went to Andrews Air Force Base, said goodbye to the military, got on Air Force One, and when those doors shut, I cried for 30 minutes straight—uncontrollable sobbing,” admitted Michelle Obama on her podcast last year.
The new video proves presidents are as different as snowflakes—and no president resembled a snowflake more than Barack Obama.
And it’s not the only evidence from the Obama Foundation vanity project confirming that America’s first black president felt the blues over President Trump’s unexpected 2016 election victory.
Michelle Obama says she cried for 30 minutes straight when Donald Trump became president.
The moment hit her hard and the tears wouldn’t stop.
She says it began after she said goodbye to the military, but what followed wasn’t just emotion, it was a total breakdown. pic.twitter.com/b1Th7zksho
— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) July 20, 2025
“The outcome of the election was a direct rebuke of everything that we had been trying to do for the last 10 years,” Obama’s last press secretary, Josh Earnest, told interviewers.
Obama thought Trump was beneath him, he said.
“Trump’s candidacy, the essence of his being and everything that he stood for and everything about the way that he carried himself and everything that he championed and his rhetoric, his campaign tactics — all were anathema to everything that the Obama campaign and the Obama era, the Obama administration, had been about,” said Earnest.
Imagine what Obama must think of Trump’s voters.
The new archives prove that when the American people rebuked eight years of ultra-liberal policymaking, sadness and contempt flowed through the entire Obama White House staff.
“All these people who are so tough and smart and complete badasses… were tearing up,” Jen Psaki, who would go on to become Joe Biden’s first White House spokesperson, confessed in another interview.
The Obamas admitted the election night cry wasn’t a one-time event. President Trump gave the Obamas a four-year case of grief…and it’s starting all over again.
It was glorious… pic.twitter.com/LPCINI3Yel
— Chrissy Stalions (@italianstalions) February 18, 2026
In August 2020, Michelle Obama told listeners to her podcast that she was “dealing with some form of low-grade depression,” which she blamed on President Trump personally. Michelle’s mental health struggles, she said, came “not just because of the (COVID-19) quarantine, but because of the racial strife, and just seeing this administration—watching the hypocrisy of it, day in and day out—is dispiriting.”
Fast forward to election night 2024, and the cycle began again. Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, and his daughter, Ella, broke down in tears after President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance trounced Harris and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, winning every swing state.
Other liberals preferred to grieve behind closed doors, like the Obamas.
Biden administration Secretary of State Anthony Blinken hosted at least two “cry sessions,” webinars to give Deep State employees who felt down in the dumps “practical strategies for managing stress and maintaining your well being” under the second Trump administration.
They can cry however, they like. But the Obamas only have themselves to blame.
Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and Ella Emhoff break down in tears over Kamala’s election defeat. pic.twitter.com/oZ4SKRJbGv
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) November 7, 2024
Many feel President Trump decided to run for president on April 30, 2011, out of revenge for Barack Obama’s insult-laced tirade at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ dinner.
As Obama spat out one mean-spirited insult after another, Trump sat stone-faced, clearly taking umbrage at the “jokes.”
“Many people consider this moment to be the decisive factor that motivated Trump to run for president,” stated the online conservative account Shadows of Ezra, which has more than 800,000 followers on X.
But Obama had poked the bear, and he couldn’t leave well enough alone.
🔥President Barack Obama will NEVER forgive himself for April 30th 2011 at The White House Correspondents Dinner. That was the night he set in motion for President Trump to not only end his entire career ..BUT LEGACY.
His HUBRIS put into motion Trump not only taking the keys… pic.twitter.com/PYaniD2hLS— Johnny St.Pete (@JohnMcCloy) October 9, 2025
Obama kept insulting and trying to humiliate The Don during the 2016 election.
Even as the polls showed Hillary Clinton’s candidacy collapsing even faster than she did, Obama recorded a video taunting President Trump. “At least I will go down as a president,” he said, dropped his cell phone to imitate a “mic drop” moment.
Trump would win his first underdog campaign for president shortly afterwards, bringing tears to Obama’s eyes and hatred and thoughts of revenge to his heart.
Remember when President Obama dropped the mic on Trump, saying at least he will go down as a President?
pic.twitter.com/wG4Af8nsxW— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) November 9, 2016
Hillary Clinton’s campaign had already financed the bogus Steele dossier, falsely accusing the future president of lewd and lascivious behavior with Russian prostitutes, as well as being compromised by the Kremlin.
Obama cooked up Operation Crossfire Hurricane in a White House meeting with then-Vice President Joe Biden. His administration used the doctored dossier to spy on Trump aide Carter Page and, through him, the whole Trump campaign,
When that failed, they tried to imprison Trump.
In Barack Obama’s third term—overseen by President Joe Biden—the White House unleashed Arctic Frost, run under the auspices of Jack Smith, in April 2022.
And now Obama’s right-hand “man,” Susan Rice, is threatening those who refuse to join The Resistance with “accountability” by the next Democratic agenda.
Susan Rice offers a taste of what’s coming should the left retake power — promises Democrats will punish corporations and other institutions who have “taken a knee to Trump.”
“It’s not going to end well for them."
“If these corporations think that the Democrats, when they come… pic.twitter.com/Hr4Lk5oica
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) February 20, 2026
Obama cried for a few minutes when the American people took back power over their own government.
But for eight years, Americans cried and suffered through an administration that threw open the border, slandered its history and heroes, and gaslit consumers that weak economic growth and growing credit card debt was all U.S. citizens deserved.
Turnabout is fair play.