What Obama told his daughters after Trump’s win

It’s been over a week since Donald Trump won the US presidential election but the dust has far from settled. 

Parents across the country are still struggling to find anything positive to say to their children – particularly their daughters – about a US election marred by misogyny and sexism.

And it seems President Obama also shared the same difficulty on the morning of Trump’s shock victory.

The 55-year-old, who is father to Malia, 18, and Sasha, 15, has revealed what he told them an interview with New Yorker.

‘What I say to them 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.’

He then told them: ‘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.’

But the most important point Obama said was that his daughters should not to despair.

‘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?’

Obama and Trump’s relationship has been quite hostile, ever since 2011 when Trump alleged that Obama had been born in Kenya and questioned his legitimacy as a US citizen.

In response, Obama mocked the reality star billionaire on a number of occasions.

But during the presidential election campaign, things got more serious.

Obama said at the time: ‘One of the most disturbing things about this election is just the unbelievable rhetoric coming from the top of the Republican ticket.’

Yet the pair appear to have (somewhat) put their differences aside after meeting privately for the first time at the White House, with Obama saying the pair had an ‘excellent conversation’.