"This is not the apocalypse," United States President Barack Obama reportedly told staffers at the White House which bore the look of a "funeral home" after Donald Trump's stunning electoral win.
On the morning after Trump was elected President of the US, Obama summoned staff members to the Oval Office. Some were fairly junior and had never been in the room before, The New Yorker reported.
"They were sombre, hollowed out, some fighting tears, humiliated by the defeat, fearful of autocracy's moving vans pulling up to the door. Although Obama and his people admit that the election results caught them completely by surprise 'We had no plan for this'," a source was quoted as saying.
"This is not the apocalypse," Obama told White House staffers.
"I don't believe in apocalyptic -- until the apocalypse comes. I think nothing is the end of the world until the end of the world," the US President told the magazine.
The White House was "like a funeral home", a staffer was quoted as saying.
The magazine article also talked about what Obama told his two daughters about the election results.
"What I say to them (daughters Malia and Sasha) is that people are complicated. Societies and cultures are really complicated...This is not mathematics; this is biology and chemistry. These are living organisms, and it's messy," Obama told the magazine.
"And your job as a citizen and as a decent human being is to constantly affirm and lift up and fight for treating people with kindness and respect and understanding. And you should anticipate that at any given moment there's going to be flare-ups of bigotry that you may have to confront, or may be inside you and you have to vanquish," he said.
"And it doesn't stop...You don't get into a fetal position about it. You don't start worrying about apocalypse. You say, O.K., where are the places where I can push to keep it moving forward," he added.
IMAGE: US President Barack Obama holds a news conference in the White House press briefing room in Washington. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
