Here’s what Obama told his daughters after Trump won the election

Obama, seeking to allay fears of major policy shifts under President-elect Donald Trump, urged his European counterparts to continue “seeking solutions to common challenges with the incoming USA administration on the basis of the core values that define the United States and Europe as open democracies”.

An honor guard saw Obama off on his sixth and final presidential departure from Germany.

Trump s shock election win has sparked fears of drastic policy upheavals as he has challenged a near 70-year-old security shield for U.S. allies under North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and vowed to withdraw from hard-fought deals on the climate and Iran s nuclear programme.

“Society’s need for predictability and stability could become so overpowering in the 2017 election year that even the creeping erosion of Merkel’s chancellorship won’t compromise her success at the polls in the end”, left-leaning news weekly Die Zeit said.

In a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Obama said on Thursday that while he does not expect Trump to “follow exactly our blueprint or our approach”, he is hopeful the president-elect will pursue constructive policies that defend democratic values and the rule of law. You don’t get into a fetal position about it.

Germany, which runs a budget surplus, has resisted pressure from European peers to spend more to help boost euro zone growth and last week the European Commission effectively urged Germany to loosen its purse strings next year.

But Obama’s farewell visit also come as the European Union faces unprecedented challenges that threatened to rip it apart.

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 USA citizen. And so it fell to Mr Obama to reassure them of Mr Trump’s “pragmatic” intentions, based on his own Oval Office meeting with the billionaire last week.

Trump and Obama seem to have struck a conciliatory tone since Trump’s election, at least publicly. From his suite in Trump Tower, he and top aides have been interviewing candidates for the 4,000-odd roles they must fill.

In the opinion of Lavrov, President Obama is contradicting himself.

“And that will be something that I think we’ll learn more about as the president-elect puts his team together”, he said.

Today, Deutsche Welle quotes the chancellor calling the recent US campaign season “grotesque”.

A pastor’s daughter and trained physicist, Merkel is popular among Germans who see her as a straight-shooter and a safe pair of hands in a crisis. Though Trump has since softened those comments, he hasn’t offered the explicit reassurances in public that Obama said he offered in private.

May says the meeting also “gave us an opportunity to thank President Obama for the contributions he’s made over the years and wish him well for the future”. “And my hope is that that’s something he is thinking about”.