President-elect Donald Trump said Wednesday night that he is “getting along very well” with President Barack Obama, hours after Trump took to Twitter to suggest that Obama was leaving “roadblocks” for his transition effort.
Speaking to reporters outside his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump said that he had “a very very good talk” with Obama earlier Wednesday.
“I actually thought we covered a lot of territory,” the President-elect said according to a transition pool report. “Our staffs have been getting along very well and I’m getting along very well with him other than a couple of statements that I responded to.”
Trump said that he and Obama “talked about it and smiled about it.”
“Nobody is ever going to know because we are never going to be going against each other,” he said.
White House spokesman Eric Schultz said that Obama and Trump’s conversation, “like the others since the election, was positive and focused on continuing a smooth and effective transition,” according to a Politico report.
In a podcast interview with former advisor David Axelrod that went live on Monday, Obama said that he could have won the 2016 presidential election with a vision of “one America that is tolerant and diverse and open.”
On Tuesday, Obama warned against “the urge to turn inward” and “demonize those who are different” in a speech at Pearl Harbor alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Trump slammed Obama for his “inflammatory” statements in an apparent response which began on Twitter Monday afternoon and continued through early Wednesday morning.
“Thought it was going to be a smooth transition – NOT!” the President-elect tweeted on Wednesday.
Yet later the same day, Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago that he thinks the transition is going “very, very smoothly.”
This post has been updated.
