Obama gathers key Europe leaders amid questions about Trump

On the second day of a European farewell tour, Obama will build on a topic he outlined on Tuesday (15 November) – the “frustration and anger” of an electorate that feels it has been left behind by rapid globalisation. Obama declined to criticize the decision, saying instead: “It would not be appropriate for me to comment on every appointment that the president-elect starts making if I want to be consistent with the notion that we are going to try to facilitate a smooth transition”.

“He expressed a great interest in maintaining our core strategic relationships”, Obama said, recalling his conversation with Trump in the Oval Office last week.

Obama left the United States as protests erupted against Trump’s election, and president-elect Trump named Stephen Bannon, a fascistic white supremacist, as his top political counselor.

Yet in today’s world, looking to the recent past for answers to economic challenges probably will not work, he said. Obama has attempted to strike a conciliatory tone, insisting Trump remains committed to transatlantic ties and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, despite the Republican businessman’s statements during the campaign. He added brief remarks on the need for a political settlement in Syria, American political reason on the sensitive subject of immigration and the continuing failure to close the American military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. “And I am confident that if you stay the course, as hard as it has been, Greece will see brighter days”, he said in a message to the country. Americans are about to find out how true this is as Trump names the senior members of his new team.

“As long as we retain our faith in democracy, as long as we retain our faith in the people, as long as we don’t waver from those central principles that ensure a lively, open debate, then our future will be ok”, Obama said. “It’s risky, not just for the minority groups that are subjected to that kind of discrimination or in some cases in the past, violence, but because we then don’t realize our potential as a country when we’re preventing blacks or Latinos or Asians or gays or women from fully participating in the project of building American life”.

And that, in turn, has created distrust between people and their governments, Obama said.

The sight of “the rich and the powerful” seemingly living by a different set of rules – “avoiding taxes, manipulating loopholes” – “feeds a profound sense of injustice and a feeling that our economies are increasingly unfair”, he warned.

Obama touched down in Berlin for a visit due to last until Friday, during which he will hold talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel as well as the leaders of Britain, France, Italy and Spain.

“The lesson I draw – and I think people can draw a lot of lessons but maybe one that cuts across countries – is we have to deal with issues like inequality”, said Obama.

The U.S. president said he had been surprised by the Trump victory, but indicated he did not see it as a repudiation of his own policies.

In the end, what might have been Obama’s triumphant tour for his sophisticated idea of democracy instead became a reminder of the basics of the ancient Greeks.

“It would be very short-sighted to stop the process that would bring us out of the program, which is within reach”, he said.

The country’s leaders are seeking a fresh United States pledge to help alleviate the country’s enormous public debt. Demonstrations were banned in parts of Athens, and roads and subway stations were shut down for the first official visit of a sitting US president since Bill Clinton went in 1999.