Trump was 'awed' when Obama told him what he would have to handle as president

Barack Obama speaks while meeting with President-elect Donald Trump (L) following a meeting in the Oval Office November 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. Trump is scheduled to meet with members of the Republican leadership in Congress later today on Capitol Hill. (Win McNamee/Getty)

A new profile on President Barack Obama gives more detail on Donald Trump's apparent lack of familiarity with the scope of the presidency.

The Wall Street Journal previously cited sources saying that during Trump's private meeting with Obama last week, the president-elect was surprised by the wide range of the president's job.

New Yorker editor David Remnick described some of the topics the two covered, as explained to him by some of Obama's staff members.

"Obama told staff members that he had talked Trump through the rudiments of forming a cabinet and policies, including the Iran nuclear deal, counter-terrorism policy, health care — and that the President-elect's grasp of such matters was, as the debates had made plain, modest at best. Trump, despite his habitual bluster, seemed awed by what he was being told and about to encounter."

Despite Trump's apparent "loose grasp of policy," Remnick wrote, Obama and his team made sure to respect the traditional etiquette displayed during a presidential transition — in part to preserve a shot at influencing Trump in the future, Remnick said.

Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff, also painted a less-than-rosy picture of the Trump transition effort. On the day after Election Day, he reportedly chatted with the person Trump sent to learn how to staff and run the White House — Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

"Everything's great!" McDonough told The New Yorker, evidently with a struggle.

"He clenched his teeth and grinned harder in self-mockery. McDonough is the picture of rectitude: the ramrod posture, the trimmed white hair, the ashen mien of a bishop who has missed two meals in a row. "I guess if you keep repeating it, it's like a mantra, and it will be O.K. 'Everything will be O.K., everything will be O.K.'"

Read the full New Yorker profile here.

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