opposite of donald trump, it's barack obama. >> part two of a special two-part series. >> obama came on the mandate of changing washington. by his very presence, he forced more polarization and gridlock than we had seen in the eight years prior. >> "divided states of america" >> frontlinis made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for public broadcasting. major support for frontliis provided by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information is available at macfound.org. additional support is provided by the park foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. the john and helen glessner family trust, supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. and by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler. (cheers and applause) >> the president-elect of the united states of america, donald trump. (cheers and applause) >> the trump we saw on election night, that face almost welled up with emotion, tight grimace, bewilderment in the eyes. that was a different trump. i'd never seen that trump in all my time covering him. >> sorry to keep you waiting; complicated business, complicated. >> narrator: donald trump rode to victory as the ultimate political outsider. his election capped a revolution inside the republican party. >> let's face it, he was larger than the republican party. in fact, his nomination was the hostile takeover of the republican party. >> narrator: for years he had been watching and waiting... >> he saw this moment. he saw that the gop had been breaking up, and he seized that. >> narrator: he had harnessed the anger of an increasingly frustrated segment of the american public. >> trump was so unfiltered, that he was speaking straight to tens of millions of americans who think that they've been betrayed-- not anger, betrayal-- by both washington and wall street. and they were looking for someone who-who spoke their language, and had their passion, and wouldn't back down. >> narrator: donald trump had stepped into a conflict that had been building throughout barack obama's presidency. >> to see the two of them in the oval office was kind of the, you know, the final moment of, how in the world did this happen? and what have we just gone through? >> narrator: during the obama years: clashes over politics, race, and the economy revealed deep divisions that gave rise to a political insurgency. (sirens wailing) >> polls open across the country... >> it's going to be a fierce battle for control in the house and the senate. >> one of the most closely watched mid-term elections in years. >> narrator: the first clear sign of the insurgency to come was in november 2010. >> you can't understand what happened with this divide without understanding the 2010 elections because that's the whole deal. >> an historic election for the republican party. >> narrator: the democrats and the president suffered an historic defeat, and had lost control of congress. >> and a whole new day in washington. a major victory for... >> well, it was obviously a sobering outcome, the mid-term. and he was very... unhappy and sad about the loss. we had a meeting at the white house, and the president began by saying, "we got our butts kicked, and there's no doubt about it." >> now the republicans back in power in the house of representatives. >> what you've got is a very unhappy electorate. >> narrator: many of the new republicans had run on a pledge to oppose the president, and enact a conservative agenda. >> once you change power on the capitol hill, it changes how the other side of pennsylvania deals with it. who are the players, what's possible, whether they want to get anything done, whether they even want to work with you. >> narrator: the president called the election "a shellacking." but he could not know just how consequential the loss would be. >> you know, some election nights are more fun than others. some are exhilarating, some are humbling. >> it's clearly one of the most critical moments in the obama presidency because it says we're now solidifying and accelerating this polarization, this division between the parties. >> one more question, please? >> narrator: just two years before, barack obama had arrived on a promise that he could unify the country and transform washington. >> we have never been just a collection of red states and blue states. we are, and always will be, the united states of america! >> narrator: but in his first year, he faced unexpected populist anger from what was called the tea party... >> you want to kill my grandparents, you come through me first! >> government run amok. >> narrator: ...over health care reform... >> he rammed it down america's throat. >> narrator: ...wall street bailouts... >> ...devastated by losses in mortgage investments... >> narrator: ...and obama himself. >> how about being able to call half the country racist? what's that going to do for your fundraising? >> he came into office with a very naive view of politics, and very quickly was reeducated. >> so how is that hope-y, change-y thing working out for ya? >> his biggest misunderstanding about american politics was that it wasn't polarized. >> you're pathetic! >> afro-leninism! >> we can't afford it. >> narrator: but for the republican establishment, the polarization was an opportunity. >> there were a lot of angry citizens across america. they saw that the democratic majority, along with the president, were going in a direction where i don't think people thought they would go. >> no! don't do this to us! >> narrator: it was an anger that gave the gop an historic midterm victory, and set the stage for an insurgency inside the republican party. >> new year, new congress, new strategy. >> day one in congress, sworn in... >> the 112th congress... >> do you solemnly swear that you will support and defend the constitution of the united states? >> narrator: the tea party class of 87 new republicans came to the capitol armed with revolutionary fervor. >> so help you god. >> i do. >> congratulations. (cheers and applause) >> narrator: they arrived determined to transform the american government, and their own party. >> i think all 87 came here with the idea to change washington. there was a tremendous amount of energy when we first got here. >> they came into office with the sounds of the tea partiers, the concerns of the tea partiers, their reaction to obama's massive overspending and a rejection of eight years of bush. not just the cost of wars and occupation, but the complete disregard of cost of government as an issue. >> republicans said this was not an election about... >> narrator: but to change washington, the insurgent freshmen would first have to deal with their own leader, the consummate political insider, the new speaker of the house, john boehner. >> i now pass this gavel and the sacred trust that goes with it to the new speaker. god bless you, speaker boehner. (cheers and applause) >> he is a career politician, ohioan, hardscrabble upbringing, arrived in 1990, was part of the gang that went after the democrats over the bank scandals, rose to power, became a deal maker. >> narrator: boehner had spent ten terms in congress, working his way up the leadership ladder. >> john boehner regards himself as an institutionalist, a guy who really loves, reveres even, the house of representatives. >> i didn't need to be speaker because i needed a fancy title, or a big office. i wanted to be speaker so i could lead an effort to deal with the serious issues that are facing our country. >> narrator: now boehner would have to deal with the insurgents who came to washington to take on the establishment he embodied. >> i don't think he knew what had fallen into his lap. i don't think he recognized that this was going to be such a hard ride. >> house republicans of the 112th congress plotted strategy. >> narrator: the week after they were sworn in, boehner and the house republicans headed to a private retreat in baltimore. >> ...talk about getting back to work. >> the two-and-a-half days of presentations. >> narrator: they came together to bond and build a strategy. >> what are the republicans planning? >> narrator: the star attraction in baltimore was not john boehner, but his heir apparent and political rival eric cantor. >> cantor is more in tune with the newer republican party than john boehner. he's a very ambitious politician, a skilled operator, and an operator, and somebody whose ambitions to be speaker or to be the republican leader have been evident from the start. >> narrator: cantor told the tea party class that they had been sent to washington to rein in the president. >> the president and his team totally disregarded half the country, if not more, when he did things like health care reform strictly on a partisan basis. these are things are too big to be done with just one party. so we need a check and balance on this president and that's why the republicans, i believe, we were elected into majority in 2010. (elevator dinging) >> narrator: at the baltimore retreat, cantor outlined a strategy for playing hardball with the president. >> cantor talked about these leverage options they had, shutting down the government or cutting off funding for this or that. and it aroused all of this excitement inside the republican base. they started to think these things could actually happen. >> narrator: cantor left baltimore after telling the freshmen that one of their first jobs would be to get behind a tough new budget that would radically change the size and scope of the american government. >> a manifesto that would return the country to eisenhower-era levels of government spending. i mean, it's an incredibly austere document. >> narrator: it was written by cantor's friend, congressman paul ryan, and was called the ryan budget. >> the nation's fiscal trajectory is simply not... >> narrator: it was designed to take on the government's debt-- lowering taxes, repealing obama's health care law, even the privatization of medicare. >> well, paul ryan is a very talented person. from a budget perspective and a number-crunching perspective, he gets it. he built a budget that was the best way to bring some of that fiscal sanity back in washington. >> ryan is no doubt an upcoming star, particularly... i mean, this guy on the budget... >> narrator: backing ryan and the tea party class, a chorus of voices on conservative talk radio and websites... >> his proposal has a chance of saving our country. >> narrator: ...angry at washington and looking for a fight. >> there's going to be a hundred years of darkness that follows us if we don't win this battle today. >> narrator: it was an important test for obama. would he compromise or stand his ground? >> they're clearly threatened by him just as they are threatened by sarah palin and the others. >> they had this idea, they'd give this speech, a powerful full-throated defense of his view of the fiscal situation. >> president obama will share his plans in a speech at george washington university. >> narrator: he decided to push back, drafting an aggressive speech that would take on the ryan budget. >> the decision was made that we had to frame this in a very aggressive way about what we wanted and what the president believed in. >> president obama will talk about his plans to reduce the national debt during a speech... >> narrator: but as the white house staff gathered washington's a-list, they made an error. they accidentally invited paul ryan, and gave him a front row seat. >> they had done what you normally do on one of these speeches, is they invited the congressional leaders. and somehow, it didn't filter up to the top who just was... who was going to be there. >> narrator: obama's chief of staff, bill daley, was one of the first to notice. >> when i saw him in the room, i thought "oh, my god." >> so in paul ryan's mind-- and he told me this-- he goes to the george washington university speech thinking, "maybe this is the moment where after we've laid out our negotiating positions, we start to come together a little bit." that's what he thinks he's stepping into. (applause) >> thank you. >> narrator: daley tried to warn the president, but it was too late. >> obama, you know, with the lights in his eyes, they say, unable to see who's directly in front of him, just launches into a blistering condemnation of the republican budget and how this is, you know, a very small and painful vision of a country shrinking. >> there's nothing serious or courageous about this plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending $1 trillion on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. that's not a vision of the america i know. >> it was an astonishing swipe at a congressman who happened to be sitting right there in the audience. >> and worst of all, this is a vision that says even though americans can't afford to invest in education, even though we can't afford to maintain our commitment on medicare and medicaid, we can somehow afford more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy. >> i mean, jesus, it was... it was heavy. he didn't use ryan's name, he just made fun of anyone who could propose anything like what he had read recently as a proposal presented to the house republican leadership that did this to old people and, oh, on and on. it was... it was tough. and it was nasty. (applause) >> paul ryan gets up after it's all over and he makes a quick exit. >> narrator: the president's top economic adviser, gene sperling, ran after ryan. >> sperling jumped up like he'd been sitting in an electric chair, rushed out to mollify him. >> all i was trying to do was to let him know that, uh, that we did not know they were coming. his response was that he felt the president had poisoned the well. >> president took to task in his remarks yesterday. >> ryan was deeply offended by having been put into that position, and his republican friends were even more angry. >> president obama blasted paul ryan's budget this weekend. >> that was a personal bitch slap, primo insult. >> narrator: the republicans were outraged. >> ...furious that the president was so partisan. >> narrator: that afternoon, ryan and cantor went on the offensive. >> what we got was a speech that was excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate and hopelessly inadequate to addressing our country's pressing fiscal challenges. >> the only concrete proposal that he proposed was raising taxes, and that solution falls far short of dealing with the kind of crisis that we're facing as far as the debt's concerned in this country. >> we are teetering on the brink of utter economic destruction... >> narrator: just months into the new republican congress, the battle with the president was only growing. >> they are enslaving future generations to massive debt, massive government. >> narrator: in new york city, a political outsider was watching and listening. >> this election was about defeating obama, it was about stopping obama, it was about stopping the democrats. it was not about... >> donald trump saw a vacuum in which he could step into and have some kind of influence. trump saw an opportunity. >> obama's hell bent on weakening america, and he has told us... >> narrator: the real estate developer and reality tv star was looking for a way to raise his political profile. >> why won't they release the birth certificate? >> what is the logic, what's the connection? >> why don't they just release it and get it over with? >> narrator: trump saw an opening in a conspiracy theory surrounding obama's birthplace. >> the question is: that we have given the keys of the kingdom to a stranger, and that's why these myths live. >> donald trump realized that this issue, which had been lurking in the shadows of american politics, basically ignored and mocked by the mainstream press, resonated with a certain kind of voter out there. >> back to this birther business for just a second. >> obama is an unknown man, may not be a citizen, surrounded by radicals, surrounded by terrorists. >> why president obama would have spent $2 million to not show his birth certificate. >> mr. president, if you have nothing to hide, why are you hiding everything? >> trump understands among republicans there's a very substantial majority who have questions about obama's origins and how he just pops up out of nowhere to become a national figure and whether he was in fact eligible to serve as president. >> one last one, this lady in red has her hand up. >> narrator: in cities and towns across america, the issue struck a chord. (cheers and applause) >> narrator: establishment republicans had tried to avoid the birther issue, but the questions were growing on the internet. >> he won't even produce a birth certificate, don't you love that? >> obviously, if there's something there that the president doesn't want people to see on that birth certificate... >> narrator: trump seized the issue. >> and he sat up in trump tower watching. and, trump, who comes out of the new york tabloid wars, saw that the republican party wasn't countering obama with really tabloid fervor. >> more than 40% of the population still question whether he's actually an american or not. >> it was a universe in which there was already this reservoir of skepticism, and trump walked in and just dropped a match into it. >> please welcome my friend, donald trump. >> narrator: he made himself the face of the birther movement. >> why doesn't he show his birth certificate? i think he probably... >> why should he have to? >> because i have to and everybody else has to, whoopi. why wouldn't he show? excuse me. no, excuse me. i really believe there's a birth certificate. why... look, she's smiling. why doesn't he show his birth certificate? >> when he was becoming the leader of the birther movement, i think he understood who he was speaking to, it was the archie bunkers who were uncomfortable with an african american president. >> i never heard any white president asked to be shown the birth certificate. >> you are not allowed to be a president if you're not born in this country. he may not have been born in this country. >> narrator: to obama, the birther movement was about more than where he was born. >> it made it easy for people who had ideas that someone like him didn't belong in the white house to make the short leap over to the idea that this person wasn't even an american. and so some people said he's not an american figuratively, and all of a sudden people are saying he's not an american literally. >> narrator: it remained a problem he couldn't ignore. >> the president thought, "well, let's just deal with it," as mounting numbers of people were beginning to wonder, "well, is it true? is he actually not born here?" >> the president just said, "all right, let's put this to rest." and he, you know, they arranged to go get the long form birth certificate. >> another political story making news this morning, donald trump's growing poll numbers... >> narrator: but donald trump didn't know what obama was about to do. he was in new hampshire for what looked like the beginning of a presidential campaign. >> as promised, donald trump speaking now in portsmouth, new hampshire. let's listen. >> you ready? you get ready. whenever you're ready, i'm okay. >> narrator: trump's press conference was carried live on national television. but president obama upstaged him. >> okay. we're going to leave new hampshire and go to washington and the white house, where president obama is speaking. >> as many of you have been briefed, we provided additional information today about the site of my birth. >> narrator: obama had released his birth certificate. >> yes, in fact, i was born in hawaii, august 4, 1961, in kapiolani hospital. >> in some ways, it felt that all of black america had just been racially profiled, and people were saying if this can happen to him, the most powerful person in the world, what exactly can happen to us? what are the boundaries of what can happen to us? >> we're talking about the white house correspondent's dinner. tonight, it's an annual event right here in washington. >> obama joins the reporters who cover him at the annual... >> narrator: for good measure, the president went even further. >> my fellow americans. (cheers and applause) >> narrator: at the white house correspondents' dinner... >> mahalo. (laughter) >> narrator: ...he ridiculed trump and the controversy. (cheers and applause) >> donald trump is here tonight. (cheers and applause) no one is happier, no one is prouder, to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the donald. (laughter) and that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter-- like, did we fake the moon landing? (laughter) >> he engaged in what african americans would have called a game of the dozens. ritual insult that people go, except this is all one-sided. and you can see the humiliation being returned, you know, and trump looking increasingly uncomfortable. >> what really happened in roswell? (laughter) and where are biggie and tupac? (laughter) (cheers and applause) all kidding aside. obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. (laughter) >> donald dreads humiliation, and he dreads shame. so in the case of the president ridiculing him, i think this was intolerable for donald trump. >> god bless you and may god bless the united states of america. (applause) >> narrator: the president hoped he'd finally put the birther issue and donald trump behind him. >> the debt showdown, so many americans... >> narrator: that spring in washington, the president had a more pressing problem. >> the nation is on the brink of fiscal crisis. >> time's ticking on america's debt ceiling... >> narrator: eric cantor and the republicans were making good on their plans to threaten the white house with "leverage points." >> ...cannot agree on how or even whether to raise the debt ceiling. >> eric cantor appealed to the most militant feelings in the caucus. cantor proposes that they do something which had not been done before, which is to use the debt ceiling vote for maximum leverage and threaten to throw the country into default. >> narrator: cantor told the insurgents that they could stop the government from borrowing to pay its bills. they were ready for the fight. >> we all saw the debt ceiling as the... the best lever we had to make some changes, to deal with the spending problem, to deal with the big government problem. >> we do not need to raise the debt ceiling. there is no crisis. >> so we draw a line in the sand, this is our waterloo. >> narrator: at the white house, treasury secretary timothy geithner warned the president: failure to raise the debt ceiling would leave the country unable to pay its bills, and trigger a global financial crisis. >> i was really... was really terrified. we made trillions and trillions of dollars of commitments to try to hold things together, not just in the united states, but around the world. and that foundation rested on, in some sense, on our ability to borrow. and that was what was at stake. and i think i felt that the consequences if we lost that ability would have been existential, much worse in many ways than what we faced in the fall of '08. >> this is stimulus all over again, this is tarp all over again, this is the same lie repeated over and over again. the same attempt to make you think your country is coming to a screeching halt and is ending. >> narrator: with time running out, the president decided to act. he'd reach out directly to cantor's boss, the ultimate insider, the speaker of the house, john boehner. he knew boehner was a golfer, so he arranged a "get to know you" game. >> before the golf match started, i told the president, i said, "mr. president, this is about golf, not about anything else." and he and i were partners. we played well and we won. >> and afterward, they go back to the clubhouse and they're having a drink. and it's at that point when boehner says to the president, "hey, you know, on this debt ceiling stuff, we ought to do something big." >> i suggested to the president, you know, "why don't we have a conversation?" and he agreed. >> narrator: obama and boehner met in secret. the speaker entered the white house through a side entrance. >> well, that was boehner's decision, not ours, obviously. it's not every day that the speaker comes to see the president quietly and says, "i'm willing to do a deal" that everybody knows is going to be dangerous for him politically. >> narrator: boehner kept cantor and the republican insurgents in the dark. >> he's keeping it a secret from eric cantor. he knows how risky this is. boehner kept telling obama, "i'm taking a giant risk." you know, "we're risking the speakership because of this." >> narrator: the president and the speaker, one-on-one, trying to reinvent the size and cost of government. >> boehner calls these the "nicorettes and merlot sessions." as boehner says, the president's having iced tea and chewing a nicorette, and boehner's having a glass of merlot red wine and smoking a cigarette. >> narrator: they put together the outlines of a deal-- what would be called "the grand bargain." obama would agree to entitlement cuts, boehner would consent to the unthinkable for a republican-- raising tax revenues. >> well, it was very dangerous. but it became clear to me that the president wasn't going to deal with the spending problem without having a conversation about revenues. we always believed that through tax reform, there were lower rates for everyone. so i felt comfortable putting revenue on the table as a way of trying to get the president to be serious about the spending problem that we have. >> narrator: after a few weeks, both of them thought they had a deal. >> there was a lot of excitement in the oval office. it was clear that we had an agreement, that there was $800 billion in revenues, more than that in reductions and reforms on the spending side. and there... there in effect, was an agreement. >> when the president came out, he said, "i want this done," and everybody scurried to move into action. >> and he looked at us and he said, "get this deal done." and there we went. >> narrator: but as they worked out the details, a surprise. a group of republicans and democrats in the senate had their own outline of a plan-- one that might even generate more tax revenue. it was hard for the president to resist. >> obama went back to boehner and said, "look, things have changed. there's this other plan out here. i can't cut the deal that i thought i could cut before. i need 400 billion more dollars to sign on the dotted line." >> and i told the president, i said, "mr. president, we had an agreement. we had an agreement on sunday. and you know, if i make an agreement with someone, i've got to live up to the agreement that i made." but he wanted more revenue, wanted more revenue. >> narrator: still, boehner wanted the grand bargain badly enough that he actually considered the president's request. >> boehner had gotten this far and he thought, "okay, what can we offer to obama?" and he was starting to think through how to do his own counterproposal. >> narrator: to get the deal done, boehner needed cantor's help. but cantor couldn't believe what boehner was thinking about doing. >> cantor gets paul ryan and other people together. and they say, "my god, we've got a runaway speaker. how do we get control of him?" >> i said, "the president's come back now with even more revenues." i said, "i know that my sense being the whip, being trying to be close to where the members are, they're not going to be for tax increases, if we can't get a transformative deal." and i was totally supported in that conversation, jeb hensarling, paul ryan and others at the time. >> narrator: he confronted the speaker. >> i went to the speaker and i said, "look we can't do this. we can't do it at the increased revenue number. we can't do it at the lower revenue number." >> from cantor's perspective, he's now trying to walk boehner off a cliff. he's saying, "you want this deal so badly that what you are thinking about doing will destroy you and will destroy the caucus, and i won't let you do it." >> narrator: the president didn't know what was going on. >> he calls boehner that night and leaves a voicemail. boehner doesn't pick up. >> so the president, he said, "get back to me tonight, john." the president didn't hear. i think he called me around 10:00, 10:30, and said, "have you heard anything?" i said no. i tried to reach the speaker, and i had his cell phone, and he didn't answer, which is very unlike him because he always answered his cell phone. i reported that i hadn't heard back from him yet. so we were, you know, there was... trying to figure out what the hell was going on here. >> narrator: eventually, boehner returned the president's phone call. >> in the oval office, when the president's on that phone call, rob nabors, the head of congressional relations, sees the president is so angry, nabors worries that he's going to break the phone receiver. boehner put it quite succinctly. he said that the president was angry, and so angry and so hot, he was spewing coals. >> narrator: outraged, obama immediately called a press conference. >> i just got a call about a half hour ago from speaker boehner. it is hard to understand why speaker boehner would walk away from this kind of deal. and frankly, i think that, you know, one of the questions that the republican party's going to have to ask itself is, can they say yes to anything? can they say yes to anything? >> that moment, more than anything else, and the anger that obama demonstrated, when he came out to speak about it-- something very unusual for obama, visceral anger-- was a pivoted point in terms of the president's understanding about what he could do with the congress. >> now, let me just say what i said several weeks ago... >> narrator: then it was boehner's turn. >> dealing with the white house is like dealing with a bowl of jell-o. the white house moved the goalpost. there was an agreement on some additional revenues, until yesterday, when the president demanded $400 billion more, which was going to be nothing more than a tax increase on the american people. >> obama is knowingly and happily driving this nation into bankruptcy. >> a real debt limit seems to me to be exactly what we need here. >> our country literally could be lost. >> narrator: just two days before the deadline, the senate stepped in, working out a stop gap deal to defuse the debt ceiling crisis-- avoiding a default, but pushing the country's fiscal problems down the road, and deepening the political polarization. there was no "grand bargain." >> it was a realization that the environment had changed dramatically, that it was beyond personalities, that we had created a monster. and this monster was virtually out of control and running the country in large measure. >> we can't afford to have obama's very radical agenda. >> we are not stronger, we are not freer since the regime took over. >> he must be defeated, he must be driven out of washington. >> if you talked to people at the time, and in the aftermath of that, they say that period in august of 2011 was as low a point in his presidency as he had. >> narrator: barack obama had promised to change washington, but the dysfunction had only grown. >> barack obama is trying to dismantle the american dream. there's no other way to put this! >> narrator: and the hope of many that he could bridge the country's racial divide was about to be tested. >> narrator: the caller was george zimmerman. he had spotted a 17-year-old african american high school student near his home. >> narrator: that student: trayvon martin. >> narrator: he was shot and killed by zimmerman. >> trayvon martin was walking back from a convenience store when he was allegedly shot by a neighborhood watch captain. >> police have the gun, they've got the shooter... >> narrator: to some, the shooting suggested that race may have played a role. >> trayvon martin's only sin was his skin color. and that had he been a white kid in a hoodie trying to walk home that night, no one would have confronted him or bothered him. and i think that is why trayvon martin becomes such a pivotal tension point on race and justice during the obama years. >> the mountain of evidence in the trayvon martin shooting case... > the story that's ignited fierce passions across the nation, as allegations of racism and miscarriage of justice... >> the man who shot trayvon hasn't been charged. he's claiming self-defense. >> narrator: at first, the president did not make any public remarks about the shooting. >> the contradiction of this happening in the midst of a black presidency sharpened the irony and intensified the pain i think people felt around this. >> narrator: obama was reluctant to deal with race head on. he had learned to be cautious on the subject. >> police did not arrest george zimmerman, saying they didn't have probable cause. >> narrator: but now the pressure to say something was growing. >> protests are being planned tonight for a national day of justice. >> the shooting sparked outrage across the country. martin's parents say it was racially motivated. >> rallies were held across the country today, including here in d.c., demanding... >> people were pushing him, "say something. are you going to say anything? you're a black man, a young black boy has been murdered by a guy who's a hyped up, you know, neighborhood watchman. black america is traumatized by this." silence from the white house, nothing, no leadership, no... no insight. >> narrator: finally, almost a month after the killing, obama was confronted with it at a news conference in the rose garden. >> we were pressing the white house to say something, you know, to have... to have the president say something about it. >> can you comment on the trayvon martin case, sir? >> well, i'm the head of the executive branch and the attorney general reports to me, so i've got to be careful about my statements to make sure that we're not impairing any investigation that's taking place right now. >> every time there's an incident, his rhetoric is examined with a tuning fork. it never satisfies every... everybody. it's very, very difficult. >> but, obviously, this is a tragedy. i can only imagine what these parents are going through. >> and when he finally comes out, it was a rare moment of emotion for a president that liked to kind of keep that in check. >> but my main message is... is to the parents of trayvon martin. you know, if i had a son, he'd look like trayvon. and, you know, i think they are right to expect that all of us as americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves and that we're going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened. >> finally, when he's pushed, he makes it a personal one. you know, "if i had a son, he'd look like trayvon martin." innocent remark, anybody listening to that would see it's the father's heart looking at what might have been his own son. >> the president's a black dude and so, on some level, he has some sort of familiarity with that. he... he understands the kind of fear that has, you know, typically pervaded, you know, the notions of black malehood. >> the president has inserted himself in a racial way... >> narrator: on the right wing airwaves: outrage. >> his whole goal is to provoke a racial confrontation. >> he's got it in for this country. >> it became this huge tension point by the president literally just acknowledging his own skin color. that, look, i mean have two daughters, but if i would have had a son, he'd probably look like that kid. that's an objective fact. but it became this... this huge firestorm. >> if the president had a son he wouldn't look anything like trayvon martin, he'd be wearing a blazer from his prep school, he'd be driving a beamer. >> we have a president who has frozen racial tension in our country, instead of thawing racial tension. >> all of a sudden it goes into this racially retrenched place. people are kind of seeing this as a kind of indicator that he's not fair or perhaps he favors african americans. in the context of trayvon martin, this really explodes. >> the president's goal is to heighten the african american turnout by stoking a feeling of victimization in the african american community. >> the field of gop candidates for 2012 taking shape. >> more republican candidates are poised to enter the race for president. >> the gop race is still wide open. >> more republicans make up their minds whether they will... >> narrator: 2012 was also an election year. although anti-washington anger was growing, the gop choice was an establishment candidate: mitt romney. >> this country we love is in peril. and that, my friends, is one reason why we're here today. barack obama has failed america. (cheers and applause) >> narrator: he was a successful businessman and an experienced politician, a former governor. >> i believe in america, and i'm running for president of the united states. >> narrator: but many in the republican base-- especially in the tea party-- could barely stand him. >> verges on hysterical. mitt romney has never done a single thing to favor the conservative cause. >> i swear every time mitt romney opens his mouth, i have no... i think he's running against me. >> i don't think that romney was somebody who understood the angst of the american people. he didn't understand what... what especially the republicans throughout the united states were feeling, how-how disaffected they felt. >> mitt romney just further exacerbates the frustration among the republican base and the tea party wing of the party. how could it be that they end up with mitt romney as their nominee when there's so much anti-washington, anti-establishment energy out there? >> what does mitt romney believe? >> is he truly a conservative? >> not exactly a person of conviction. >> what type of values... >> narrator: romney knew he had to bolster his appeal among republicans and win over the tea party and insurgents. he named the author of the ryan budget his running mate. >> to announce my running mate and the next vice president of the united states, paul ryan! >> narrator: he took a tough stand on immigration. >> the answer is self-deportation. >> narrator: and he said he would finally deliver on that republican promise to repeal obamacare. >> if we want to get rid of obamacare, we're going to have to replace president obama. >> narrator: but one move that seemed a curiosity at the time would later take on greater significance. in las vegas, he would accept a controversial endorsement from the leader of the birther movement. (applause) >> mitt romney looks completely uncomfortable. donald trump is totally in his element. it's... in a curious way, it's donald trump's event, not mitt romney's event. he, you know, he commands the stage. >> it's my honor, real honor and privilege to endorse mitt romney. >> it was literally one of the most bizarre political scenes i'd ever seen. >> and by the way, this is a great couple. >> i mean, mitt and ann romney were standing up there, and i kept looking at ann romney, who looked like she was using every single bit of energy she had not to start cracking up uncontrollably. at that moment, it seemed like, you know, not unlike sarah palin four years earlier, kind of a comic diversion, something that was different. >> so governor romney, go out and get 'em. you can do it. >> it was hilarious; it was bizarre. in retrospect, i guess it represented some kind of passing of the torch. >> narrator: romney and the gop establishment formally embraced donald trump. >> there are some things that you just can't imagine happening in your life. this is one of them. (laughter) being in donald trump's magnificent hotel and having his endorsement is a delight. >> for trump, it was the republican establishment saying, "you're one of us, and we'll stand on a stage with you." >> thank you so much for your help and your endorsement today. and look forward to seeing you out on the trail. thank you, donald. (cheers and applause) >> it was a tacit endorsement in the other direction of mitt romney to the kind of rhetoric that donald trump was vociferous in trafficking around obama's birth certificate, the perpetrator of a sort of blatantly nativist campaign against the president of the united states. >> president obama is battling for his own second term. >> narrator: that fall, the president had dropped in the polls and was fighting to keep his job. >> a different president obama out on the campaign trail today than we saw... >> narrator: four years earlier he had promised to bridge differences. >> a difficult road ahead for the president. >> i think you see a president obama with a thicker skin, more jaundiced eyes, has grown more skeptical, even cynical perhaps, about washington. >> narrator: as he made the case for reelection, the man who once promised to transcend differences now emphasized them. >> if i said the sky was blue, they said no. if i said there were fish in the sea, they said no. they figured, "if obama fails, then we win." >> it's hard to believe that it... it is the same person who was talking about bringing red america and blue america together because he is now a polarizing figure. >> because of their policies. the republicans messed up so bad. >> having seen the collapse around washington he knew he had to go into a different mode and he was prepared to do it. and it was a much tougher campaign. it was a grittier campaign. it was not a message of uplift in the same way, by any means, that the first campaign was. >> it's the same agenda that they have been pushing for years! >> and his entire campaign message is about the differences between the two parties, not the similarities. >> the voters vote, the counters count, as the candidates and their supporters hold their breath. we will take you to all of it. >> narrator: by election day, at romney-ryan headquarters, they believed they were about to reclaim the white house. (cheers and applause) >> paul ryan, on election day, was talking to people about resigning from his house seat immediately to concentrate on being vice president-elect, believing that, you know, that was going to happen that night. >> narrator: but just after 11:00... >> this is a fox news election alert. fox news can now project that president obama will win the crucial battleground state of ohio. this was the entire ball game. >> narrator: to the fox news team, including karl rove, it was a shocking surprise. >> do you believe that ohio has been settled? >> no, i don't. >> republicans were stunned by the outcome of the 2012 election. they believed it was all but inevitable that that would... that they would win. i just cannot believe though that the majority of americans would believe that incurring more debt is good for our economy, for our children... >> so many people today live in whole neighborhoods, whole communities where nobody disagrees with them. that if you were a mitt romney voter, you thought everybody hated president obama. you couldn't imagine that anybody would vote for that guy, he was so terrible. >> you know, it's a perplexing time for many of us right now if things continue in this trend that we have seen earlier tonight. >> narrator: in boston, there would be no victory party. the loss would have a profound effect on one particular republican: donald trump. >> trump went to boston, in fact, to be at the victory party that never occurred. he got on his plane, turned around, went back to new york city, and he started tweeting. >> "this election is a total sham and a travesty. we are not a democracy!" "we can't let this happen. we should march on washington and stop this travesty. our nation is totally divided!" "we should have a revolution in this country!" >> narrator: just six days later, trump filed this trademark application for the phrase "make america great again." laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign in 2016. >> right after romney lost, we had a brief chat. "can hillary be beat? who else is going to run?" he's already handicapping. romney's body wasn't even cold yet and he's already handicapping this election. it was clear to me then he was going to run. (cheers and applause) >> narrator: but for barack obama, that night seemed to be a second chance; the mandate he needed to finally deliver on that promise to move beyond the partisan divide. >> i think he honestly felt, "okay, i've won, i'm here for four more years. i'm not running again, i'm not on the ballot, and hopefully we can sit down here and find some common ground to move forward." (cheers and applause) >> "if i beat them, if i beat mitt romney, i will have won the debate. i will have a mandate and they won't." >> he and his people kept saying that, "we think that if we can defeat the republicans and we can do it decisively, that finally will break the fever. republicans will have gotten some kind of message that the obstructionism that... that you know, that i have endured will not continue." >> narrator: hope and change were in the air again, and it looked like some republicans were rethinking their strategy of confrontation. speaker john boehner was once again the highest ranking republican. >> he's strengthened a little bit within his caucus right after the election because whether he says this outright, it's implied that, "look, i tried it your way, guys, and obama beat us." >> narrator: and for eric cantor and paul ryan, the election seemed to signal that the tea party moment was over. >> cantor's a pragmatist, in a way. i mean, he's... he's going to go where the power is, and maybe the tea party isn't quite as strong as it was before. >> narrator: cantor would now publicly stand behind the speaker. >> the majority leader, cantor, was a much different person, much more reasonable, much more moderate, very worried about the fact that he was being seen as angling for the speaker's job and undercutting republican unity. >> narrator: with cantor in line, boehner moved to take control of his caucus. (thunderclap) >> a purge is underway with speaker boehner dumping... >> seen as not being team players within his own party. >> the speaker removing four conservative congressmen from key committees, a move seen by some... >> narrator: he purged tea party insurgents from key committee assignments. >> boehner needed to enforce some discipline, so he booted four members from their committees. this caused ripples throughout the entire republican caucus. republicans were shocked. >> leadership gets rid of challenges, gets rid of people that... >> narrator: and boehner made an overture to the president. >> they wanted to get a card out there and put it down quickly. so they prepared a speech and went through 18 drafts, and it was tinkered with right there on the teleprompter up until the final moments. >> house speaker john boehner is going to be speaking to reporters. >> speaker boehner on this very issue... >> good afternoon, everyone. we're ready to be led, not as democrats or republicans, but as americans. >> the speaker came out and acknowledged that the president won. elections have consequences, and he acknowledged that right away. >> if there is a mandate in yesterday's results, it's a mandate for us to find a way to work together on the solutions to the challenges that we all face as a nation. i had been preparing for months for one of two scenarios: either the president was going to win or romney was going to win. and so when it was clear that the president won, i wanted to go out to the public and show the president that i was being willing to be reasonable and responsible. we want you to lead-- not as a liberal or a conservative-- but as the president of the united states of america. let's rise above the dysfunction and do the right thing together for our country. thank you. >> narrator: but it wasn't long before that optimism was put to the test. (birds chirping) (phone dialing) >> 911. what's the location of your emergency? >> narrator: a shooting. >> narrator: 154 rounds from a bushmaster semi-automatic rifle at a connecticut elementary school. (gunshots) >> narrator: it was the 15th mass shooting of obama's presidency. >> narrator: this time, it was six- and seven-year-olds. (gunshots) >> narrator: 20 children and six adults were shot and killed. (siren blaring) >> there were just more emergency vehicles and personnel and helicopters than i had ever seen in my life. i couldn't... i just... it was a surreal scene. i just couldn't believe it. >> narrator: mark and jackie barden's son daniel was a first grader at sandy hook elementary. >> more and more of the kids were being collected by their families, and no daniel. and there was this growing group of parents that were growing in concern, "where's my child?" they told us that, "if you haven't been reunited with your loved one yet, you're not going to be." (police radio chatter) >> narrator: that morning, president obama received news of the shooting. >> newtown was the worst moment of the presidency. it was unfathomable to imagine 20 children, six- and seven-year-old first graders being gunned down in that violent and destructive way and then six adults who there trying to help. >> he has two daughters. he's thinking about these parents who are never going to see their children again, and he's... he's weeping. he's just openly weeping in the oval office in the white house. and he comes out to the briefing room to talk about it. >> the majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of five and ten years old. they had their entire lives ahead of them: birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own. >> and he can't control himself. he chokes up. he... he's very emotional about it. >> as a country, we have been through this too many times. may god bless the memory of the victims. and in the words of scripture, heal the broken-hearted and bind up their wounds. >> narrator: during his first term, obama had avoided the controversial issue of guns. but now he wouldn't. >> he's so upset that he says he's going to make it the mission of his presidency to change the gun laws of this country. i think it surprised even his staff how determined he sounds in that moment. and i think he thinks that having just won reelection he's got a mandate to do it. >> narrator: obama saw an opportunity to do something about guns, and maybe in a bipartisan way. >> it was in a context of sorrow. extreme... i mean, anger and frustration about why can't we do something about this. it was, like, "enough is enough is enough. put together something for me, joe." >> narrator: it would become the first major test of obama's second term. >> newtown, i think, struck everyone as just the point of no return on an issue that, like some of these other issues, had languished for some years. it just seemed like a given that, that this was the moment where the two sides could come together on just some of these basic principles. >> narrator: what obama needed was someone from congress who could try to find middle ground in the highly polarized world of gun politics. >> as your senator, i'll protect our second amendment rights. that's why the nra endorsed me. i'll take on washington and this administration to get the federal government off of our backs and out of our pockets. and i'll take dead aim at the cap-and-trade bill. >> narrator: joe manchin, an a-rated nra member and democratic senator from west virginia, was shaken by the newtown shootings. >> it really got to me. these are babies, five- and six-year-old children. who would have ever... it's just beyond my imagination, most americans', to conceive that anything this horrific could happen in america. >> lightbulbs went off at the capitol. harry reid and chuck schumer and their aides realize, "wait a second. we now have a democrat with an a rating from the nra saying he wants to do something." >> narrator: manchin joined with republican senator pat toomey to draft a bill that could attract republican votes. >> we have what looks to be a model of bipartisan action. joe manchin of west virginia, joining with a conservative republican who had headed up the club for growth, pat toomey. and they propose a modest change in the gun laws, but one that would begin, at least, to turn an issue that had gone entirely in one direction in a somewhat different direction. >> they join together to draft a bill that is going to finally close the gun show loophole, this, this loophole that we have that allows you to buy guns without a background check at gun shows or in private sales. and it looks like this bill might make it through. >> narrator: and with polls showing wide public support for expanding background checks, manchin and the vice president figured they had a chance. >> i was optimistic. over 91% of the american people supported expanding background checks, 80% of the households that had an nra member supported it. >> i've had enough of all these people, all their talk. >> it's what the democrats do, folks, they always try to hide their agendas behind women and children and, most of all, victims. >> they apparently don't believe liberty is on the line. they apparently don't believe the constitution and the bill of rights are on the line. >> narrator: larry pratt represented some of the most fervent gun owners. >> the manchin bill was not aiming at loopholes. it was aiming at nailing down some remaining freedom that american people have. gun control simply kills people, and for senator manchin to wave the bloody shirts of those children from newtown is despicable. >> i have no faith in these people, none. you would think now if ever that a so-called conservative republican in the senate would have learned the lesson that this president cannot be relied on to follow the law. >> narrator: one by one, key republicans and even some democrats in congress backed away from the bill. >> cutting deals over what? over the second amendment? i despise these people. >> there was immense pressure from conservative groups to not respond to newtown with legislation. that's what we've really seen in the obama era. conservatives urging republicans to not do anything in response to national events, whether it was a tragedy or something else. inaction became the new priority. >> it's decision day for new gun control legislation... >> the first votes taken today... >> members of the families in the gallery today... >> narrator: as the bill faced a crucial vote in the senate, the families of newtown victims watched from the senate gallery. >> i remember sitting there kind of in a daze. >> mr. lautenberg, mr. leahy. mr. lee. >> and that's about all. i'm just, i'm sorry that i have such a... you know, i think my psyche was just kind of letting in little bits at a time. it was just all so... it was such a whirlwind of, of craziness for me. >> mr. wyden. (gavel raps) >> on this vote, the amendment is not agreed to. >> narrator: the bill fell five votes short. >> they felt betrayed. that's the word, "betrayed." "how could they vote that way? don't they understand what happened? how can they do that? how can this be?" i mean, it was disbelief and a sense of betrayal. that was the mood. >> narrator: the president watched the vote with disbelief. >> it was an emotional setback for the president. it was a huge political setback for the president, and in some ways, helped to set the tone again for what was going to come after in other areas. >> narrator: obama invited the newtown families to the white house after the vote. >> daniel was a first grader at sandy hook elementary school. >> i know that he felt, he felt a sense of responsibility to us and to the nation and to that 90% of the country that, that wanted this. you know, i think he felt a strong sense of responsibility toward that. and his disgust was palpable. >> it came down to politics-- the worry that that vocal minority of gun owners would come after them in future elections. >> after newtown, i think his inability to get something done really made him feel powerless. and that was, that's not a feeling you expect to have as a president, and i think it, i think it really rattled him. >> so all in all, this was a pretty shameful day for washington. thank you very much, everybody. >> it's an odd diminishment of the power of the president, who's just won a pretty substantial re-election victory. and it is a reminder of the kind of the, the degree to which elections no longer settle things. >> narrator: on guns, obama had failed to turn the tragedy of newtown into action. and soon another crisis, another challenge to moving the country forward. >> we are watching the trial of george zimmerman very closely, waiting for a verdict... >> narrator: there was a verdict in the case of george zimmerman, the man who shot and killed trayvon martin in what he claimed was self-defense. >> the circuit court of the 18th... we the jury find george zimmerman not guilty. >> oh, my... >> not guilty. >> not guilty. >> of what? everything? >> everything. >> are you (bleep) kidding? >> it's crap, like always. and that's right. these men get away with it all the time. (crowd chanting) >> the system has failed! the system has failed! >> obama initially, after george zimmerman is found not guilty, releases a nearly cryptic press release that says, you know, "we're a nation of laws. the jury has decided. we must abide by those laws." >> narrator: the president watched as the protests grew. >> stop, are you serious? i mean, this is, this is... this is epic tides of grief washing across the collective soul of black america. (protesters chanting) the trauma that they are enduring. >> the people inside the white house could see that he just desperately wanted to come out and say something. >> narrator: and he did, surprising the press corps. >> when he finally came out, it was like a last-minute thing. >> i gotcha, all right. the reason i actually wanted to come out today is not to take questions, but to speak to an issue that obviously has gotten a lot of attention over the course of the last week, the issue of the trayvon martin ruling. >> he walks into the press room and begins essentially to riff on what his experience as a black man has been, and why in black america there is such a distrust, or lack of trust of the system, of the police, of these processes. >> when trayvon martin was first shot, i said that this could have been my son. another way of saying that is trayvon martin could have been me 35 years ago. >> it is a very literal placement of himself in this person's shoes in saying to african-americans that this is an experience that he is familiar with. >> there are very few african- american men in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. that includes me. >> that was actually a unique moment for the president. it's him speaking to his own experience as a black american, something that no one can seize away from him. >> there are very few african- american men who haven't had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. that happens to me. >> he began to speak for black people for the first time in his administration. it was apparent that we had a friend, we being black people, in the white house. >> why must he go behind a microphone today and give a speech that's intended to rile up... >> obama is grievance politics, and the primary reason for that grievance is race. >> narrator: but as before, his comments lit up the airwaves. >> he fed into the victimization that the left has been peddling for decades to excuse... >> narrator: this time obama seemed to accept that he could not convince everyone. >> this president doesn't stand for anything that i stand for. >> he doesn't have to worry about another potential election. he's already kind of been stymied in his political agenda by, you know, intransigent republicans. at this point, speaking his mind is not going to make that any worse. (siren wailing) >> narrator: that fall, the republican civil war entered a new phase. >> madam president. >> the senator from texas. >> madam president, i rise today in opposition to obamacare. >> narrator: the freshman senator from texas launched a direct challenge to president obama and the gop leadership. >> madam president, i intend to speak in support of defunding obamacare until i am no longer able to stand. >> narrator: it looked like an old-fashioned filibuster. >> and it was a stepping-out moment for ted cruz. cruz wanted to make his name known. >> and i love this story, and so i'm going to read it to you. >> and he has dr. seuss books. >> "sam-i-am. that sam-i-am, that sam-i-am! i do not like that sam-i-am!" >> what conservatives wanted at that time was a fight. even if it didn't make strategic sense, even if there wasn't a clear plan. >> "i do not like green eggs and ham." >> narrator: cruz was making the first move in a larger strategy: to shut down the government if obamacare was not stopped. >> i sincerely hope that senator reid and president obama do not choose to force a government shutdown simply to force obamacare on the american people. that would be a mistake. >> narrator: cruz was trying to rally the republican insurgents, tapping into tea party anger that boehner and the establishment hadn't kept their promise to repeal obamacare. >> ted cruz recognizes the state of the republican party and the frustration of conservatives in the republican party that's been welling up, you know, from sarah palin time, tea party time, all through this period. and he was going to be the embodiment of that grassroots anger. >> obamacare is a cancer. it's a cancer unleashed by the federal government. >> you republicans get off your backside and stand as a bold contrast to obamacare. >> you had talk radio... >> any republican who votes against this strategy is not worth your vote... >> ...saying, "we're going to run a primary against you if you can't stop obamacare." >> ...because i'm not going to support anybody that doesn't vote to defund obamacare. >> so ted cruz leaps to the front of this movement and he decides he's going to exert some leadership. >> narrator: cruz was pushing the renegade house members to shut down the government. >> he found support in the lower chamber. cruz began to meet with them at this mexican restaurant on capitol hill, tortilla coast, to urge them to stand up to the republican establishment and essentially invite a government shutdown. >> narrator: eric cantor was concerned. he had once encouraged the insurgents to use "leverage points," but now he believed cruz had gone too far. >> the false notion that this shutdown would have gotten rid of obamacare is what never sat well with me. it was inaccurate and it was, frankly, a falsehood. it was a lie. >> narrator: but it no longer seemed to matter what eric cantor and john boehner thought. >> i think we could use a good government shutdown right about now. just to prove... >> government shutdown? losing elections? what do you guys think you've been doing? >> what is this threat of a shutdown going to do to the stock market? oh my god... >> narrator: the calls for a shutdown were growing. >> we elected them to block obama. >> if john boehner didn't go along with the shutdown, he might no longer be speaker. >> your government shut down... >> narrator: boehner relented. he'd let them shut down the government and hope the public backlash would teach the insurgents a lesson. >> he was going to let them, i think the phrase was, "touch the hot stove." get burned, see what it felt like, and hopefully learn the lesson for next time. >> what is the republican establishment afraid of? >> narrator: all across america, the federal government shut down. >> this is about freedom, this is about saving the republic... >> narrator: national parks, art galleries... >> my advice to the republicans: hold the line. >> narrator: hundreds of thousands of federal workers were furloughed. >> stand with the american people. >> narrator: the shutdown continued for more than two weeks. in polls, most americans blamed the republicans. >> wow. i mean, that was really one of the darkest days. we, you know, shut down... unfortunately, they included things like the v.a. they included things like clinical trials for pediatric cancer patients. you know, these are things that when they're shut down, you're not helping anybody. >> this was the moment that they saw how far the tea partiers were willing to go. these people will stop at nothing. there's no line they won't cross, no potential consequence too dire for them to continue to fight. >> narrator: but boehner and cantor had had enough. they heeded the public outcry and crossed the aisle to vote with democrats to end the shutdown. >> house speaker john boehner moments ago saying he will allow a vote. >> the shutdown's over. boehner and cantor believe that the sort of more rambunctious members of the house republican conference have been tamed, that they've learned their lesson, um, that they're not as influential, that other republicans now will no longer listen to them. >> narrator: with the shutdown over, boehner moved fast to get something done. and he had an issue: immigration reform. it grew out of this document, known as the republican autopsy, an analysis of what the party had to do in the wake of the loss to president obama. >> the republicans did a sobering study of where things stood. and they realized after 2012 that america's changing, and that if you wanted to win the white house, not just congress, you had to appeal to younger voters, latinos, and women. >> "we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform. if we do not, our party's appeal will continue to shrink." >> too many millennials, minorities, and others have rejected, um, us at the polls because they sense that somehow we're not inclusive. and unless we show the american people that conservative principles actually help them, in a real and not just theory, we'll never get the majority confidence back. >> narrator: republican paul ryan reached out to luis gutierrez, a democratic congressman and immigration reform advocate. >> he said, "i got to tell you, i don't want to do it because it's the politically expedient thing to do. i want to do it because it's the right thing to do." and i remember. there are times when people tell you stuff that you just remember. and he said, "i'm catholic, and my religious beliefs, my, my convictions, do not allow me to continue to have a permanent underclass of people that are exploited in america." and i said to myself, "wow, i can work with this guy." >> will immigration reform finally happen? >> ...a possible deal on immigration reform... >> narrator: it took months of negotiations, and by the spring, they believed they had the votes they needed. but in the meantime, the republican insurgency had spread to eric cantor's home district. >> join me in voting to term-limit eric cantor. it's time to restore the true conservative values we all stand for. >> narrator: cantor faced a challenge in his primary. >> cantor's deal-cutting with obama, pelosi, and boehner has to end. >> eric cantor became a creation of washington, and his constituency became barack obama and the house leadership. >> and if you listen to talk radio, if you were listening to, you know, laura ingraham or mark levin, cantor was part of the republican establishment that they were against. >> cantor had... the power's really gone to this guy's head. i mean, he's trying to take over the republican party. >> what are the republicans getting out of eric cantor being house majority leader? i'm not sure. >> narrator: the central issue became immigration. >> any republican who stands up and says we're going to give a special pathway to the people who are here illegally are in violation of their oath of office. >> back when i ran, i was running pretty much just on immigration. and so illegal immigration didn't seem to me was too, that controversial an issue to run on, right? you should follow the law of the land. and so that was the basic calculus. >> if dave brat here can get a big turnout, he's going to make a difference, right? >> dave brat for congress. eric cantor's district. let's send a real message. >> narrator: early on election night, it looked like cantor was in trouble. >> eric cantor is definitely in trouble in his district... >> i was sitting at the capitol hill club, eating dinner, and i get a text from somebody that eric cantor is losing his... his primary. i was as shocked as anybody else. >> cantor never saw it coming. i didn't see it coming. and as they're giving me the numbers, i couldn't believe it. i thought my staff was joking with me, and i didn't find it funny. >> history-making upset. house majority leader eric cantor lost... >> eric cantor... >> narrator: by 8:30, cantor knew it was over. >> a stunning upset is shaking things up on capitol hill. >> eric cantor, who vastly outspent his opponent, who had the entire party machinery behind him, loses by 11 points, to this economics professor that no one had ever heard of. >> i've never had a loss. and it was a huge one in a very public way. and i remember telling my wife, "we're going to go up on that stage. you're not going to cry. you're not going to cry." >> thank you. >> cantor thought he could always manage all this disorder. and that the anger on the right was something that he could control and actually even use for political gains, whether it was personal or for the majority. but what cantor didn't recognize is that the anger was much bigger than him. >> thank you all very, very much. >> narrator: his defeat was yet another sign of how the republican establishment was losing its grip. >> now his loss marks a huge victory for the tea party movement... >> ...clobbered by a novice, dave brat. >> if you weren't angry enough, then you didn't represent them. if you didn't shout and yell and scream, if you didn't call barack obama a traitor, if you didn't use the same language that they're using on talk radio or in social media, then you weren't strong enough, tough enough, anti-establishment enough. >> also raising questions this morning about tea party power... >> he said he will step down as majority leader on july... >> cantor was kind of like a labrador retriever who falls in with a pack of coyotes and, you know, for a while, they kind of recognize him as, like, a canine. "he's one of us." but at a certain point, they realize, "no, he's a domesticated house pet, and we're wild coyotes," and they ate him. >> tea party challenger david brat beat cantor... >> little-known tea party-backed... >> you can almost feel the capitol shake. i certainly wasn't a friend with eric cantor, but you didn't see... i've never seen so many people crying, with long faces, all upset on capitol hill. i mean that's, i think, the worst drubbing the establishment has had in many years. >> narrator: cantor's loss ended republican talk of immigration reform and put the rest of the gop leadership on notice. >> it put the fear of god in some of these guys, that if this can happen to eric cantor, it could happen to me. >> narrator: august 2014. race would once again be thrust into the national spotlight. a young black man, michael brown, was shot by a police officer in ferguson, missouri. >> holy (bleep), they just killed this nigger. there's blood everywhere. >> they just killed this nigger for no reason. >> for no (bleep) reason! >> he ain't armed, he don't got no gun. they just killed this nigger. >> you could feel it in the air, how palpable the anger and the pain was, how a line had been crossed. >> what do we want? >> justice! >> when do want it? >> now! >> what do we want? >> justice! >> when do we want it? >> now! >> all these things that had been culminating, that had been kind of slowly building up over the course of obama's presidency, it seemed like they all converged in ferguson, missouri. >> you are violating a state-imposed curfew. >> narrator: in the streets, anger. and for many, a feeling that things had not changed enough under the first black president. (firing tear gas canisters) >> narrator: by nightfall, violence. (alarm blaring, people shouting) >> we are now seeing officers in full riot gear. looking through sniper scopes and in these large mrap vehicles, these militarized vehicles. >> narrator: night after night, the streets of ferguson were a war zone. >> and, you know, this had become kind of an american crucible within the span of five days. >> narrator: on the day of the shooting, the president had headed out of town on vacation. >> it's kind of a perfect storm of racial calamity. there's a great deal of pressure, and people are feeling like the president should come off vacation and, you know, respond to this. >> narrator: the president knew many black americans expected him to do something. >> president obama is so handcuffed. no matter, no matter what he says, no matter what he does. you have a president who, as the chief spokesperson for the american government, is obligated by the nature of his position to defend the police officers, to defend the state, to argue for the protection of property. but to black americans, who thought they had their black president who would understand them, who would get them, it's just deeply lacking. >> narrator: on vacation, he met with attorney general eric holder to figure out how to respond. >> it was such a treacherous area for him to navigate, and i think it took him a while to sort of find his voice and figure out how he wanted to approach it in a way that he was comfortable with and that didn't cause him, you know, maximum political damage. >> narrator: finally, after five days, he went before the press. >> good afternoon, everybody. there is never an excuse for violence against police, or for those who would use this tragedy as a cover for vandalism or looting. >> it pulled him back into some of the same problems that he's had throughout, which is, how can he talk about race in america as a black president without alienating the institutions that he needs on his side to function? >> narrator: he chose the cautious route. >> now's the time for healing. now's the time for peace and calm on the streets of ferguson. >> and when ferguson blew, it blew up as well and exploded, um, his inability to grapple straightforwardly with the issue of race. as brilliant as he had been with trayvon martin, he was contorted and tragically twisted when it came to ferguson. >> thanks very much, everybody. >> narrator: the president would keep his distance. for months, the controversy simmered as a grand jury weighed whether to indict the police officer, darren wilson. as the announcement approached, authorities urged calm. >> everybody want me to be calm. do you know how them bullets hit my son? what they did to his body? as they entered his body? >> narrator: when officer wilson was not charged, the anger exploded again. >> a grand jury finding not enough evidence to charge the officer who shot and killed michael brown. the situation gets more violent... >> ...protesters set squad cars on fire, burned and looted stores... >> police say the violence is worse than anything they saw back in august, just after brown's death. >> it's been nine hours since the decision not to charge a ferguson police officer with the killing of an unarmed teenager. there is still no calm on the streets. >> narrator: the president tried to avoid taking sides. >> to those in ferguson, there are ways of channeling your concerns constructively and there are ways of channeling your concerns destructively. >> the split screen was the line that showed his disconnect with america. on one side of the screen, you're seeing the nation's black president begging that a city do not go up in flames. and on the other side of the screen, you're seeing young black people saying, "we're done waiting. we're not putting up with this anymore." >> protesters were back out on the streets today in ferguson. >> narrator: as ferguson burned, the deep divide over race only grew. >> we elect a black president, and eight years later, we have this? >> hundreds of people marched in the bay area today to protest... >> narrator: the black lives matter movement... >> in cleveland, demonstrators took to the streets... >> i can't tell you how many times i've heard that from activists-- in cleveland, in baltimore, in ferguson-- "i voted for barack obama twice. i canvassed for barack obama. and trayvon martin is still dead. and jordan davis is still dead. and oscar grant is still dead. and sandra bland is still dead." >> a black lives matter protest shut down traffic in frederick, maryland... >> narrator: ...and the backlash... >> black lives matter is just a complete fraud. >> narrator: ...exposing two very different americas. >> are you going to riot, loot, roast more pigs, what? >> absolutely unbelievable. all lives matter! >> there was no post-racial utopia for us to enter into. it only lay bare the undercurrents of racism that still existed. >> see, to me, dividing lives that matter by color sounds downright racist. no. (crowd chanting "black lives matter") >> narrator: in the fall of 2014, barack obama was entering the final years of his presidency and facing a harsh reality. the insurgents in congress were increasingly powerful. by now, republicans even had the senate. >> all is lost. it was our darkest moment. we found ourselves alone in the world. the congress had gone in a different direction and, um, we weren't sure if we'd ever get them back on anything. >> narrator: time was running out. >> "i got two years left. if they're not going to move on some of this stuff, i'm going to do it myself." >> it was finally just time to do the things that he wanted to do, irrespective of what kind of outrage might be prompted by the conservative side. >> narrator: he decided to act on his own. >> tonight i'd like to talk with you about immigration. >> narrator: in a dramatic move, the president would sign an executive order, acting unilaterally and cutting out congress. >> there are actions i have the legal authority to take as president. tonight, i am announcing those actions. >> he's going to go forward "with or without congress," that's his phrase, "with or without congress." he's given up, he's given up. >> thank you, god bless you, and god bless this country we love. >> narrator: immigration was only one of the president's executive actions. he also moved on climate change... >> president obama signed a landmark climate change deal on his final trip to china today... >> narrator: ...gun control... >> executive action on gun control... >> narrator: ...worker pay... >> president obama announced a sweeping change to the country's overtime rules... >> narrator: ...and the environment. >> president obama says the keystone xl pipeline project is dead. >> no to keystone. >> this creates, like, this sort of next big war between the republican party and obama. that is, that obama has, is no longer listening to congress. he's ignoring the will of congress, and that he's become a kind of, a kind of caesar. >> narrator: the insurgents were particularly infuriated. >> you couldn't have a more cynical statement or a more unconstitutional statement. "the house hasn't acted, therefore, i'm a dictator." right? is in essence what was just stated. >> the constitution is going to cease to exist as we know it. >> narrator: and as the right-wing fury grew... >> where does this end? does it ever end? at what point do we roll back this home-grown tyranny? >> the executive order. what they really are, are imperial fiats. >> narrator: ...it turned against the leaders of the republican party, too. >> a transformation has taken place among the republican leadership. they don't do what their voters believe... >> the speaker of the house, turns out he's a coward, a political coward! >> i think there were quite a few republicans, including john boehner, who were, you know, secretly half cheering what the president did. this is, "hey, if we can't get it done through these republicans and throthe republican base, we'll just blame it all on the president and let him do it." >> i think that what is happening here is that boehner wants to deal with obama. >> we have men and women much more junior to the so-called leaders who will do a hell of a lot better job. >> as conservatives on the blogs, on talk radio, they hammered boehner day after day, almost as much as they'd hammer the president. >> the rnc needs to be fumigated. they need to get rid of all the cockroaches, clean it out, start new, bottom-up, top-down. >> narrator: in new york city, at trump tower, donald trump had watched the unrest in the gop and was about to make his move. >> trump watches the defeat of eric cantor in 2014. he sees the rising unrest on the right and he sees an opportunity. >> donald trump entered the field pretty late, in june of 2015, and did so in what would be quintessential trumpian fashion. >> narrator: he had risen to political prominence questioning the president's legitimacy and now wanted the presidency for himself. >> he figures out that there is a white working-class constituency who see republican leaders as having been accommodationists or, in trump's estimation, just weak. >> it's hard to explain the trump phenomenon without explaining the fact that donald trump was willing to go where previous leaders wouldn't go in terms of arousing people against each other and appealing to their darker sides. >> narrator: the republican establishment had embraced immigration reform, but as he announced his candidacy, trump would go in the opposite direction. >> when mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. >> if there is a single issue that trump seizes on that represents this gap between the grassroots was and elites like paul ryan, it is undoubtedly immigration. >> they're bringing drugs. they're bringing crime. they're rapists. and some, i assume, are good people. >> donald trump, having used the birther issue to his effect, suddenly looks out there and sees that if he gets to the right of everybody else in a bombastic fashion on immigration, he emerges as first among equals. >> when do we beat mexico at the border? they're laughing at us, at our stupidity. >> narrator: trump's advisers had prepared him to take advantage of the anger over the airwaves and on the internet. >> they had been listening to thousands of hours of talk radio, and so they built this whole campaign message around trade and immigration. and so when trump descended that stairwell, he had already pinpointed the issue that was going to define the race. >> i would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and i'll build them very inexpensively. >> narrator: his rhetoric got him attention and fueled his rise. >> donald trump was a great candidate for some of those platforms like talk radio and some of the websites, because he gave content. he gave, he talked about illegal immigration in the way they had been doing it for years. >> how stupid are our leaders? how stupid are these politicians to allow this to happen? >> narrator: trump promised that he could do what the republican establishment failed to do. >> he's an outsider and he can say, "don't blame me for that mess. i'm the one who can go in and fix it." >> we will make america great again. thank you. thank you very much. thank you very much. >> you cannot be laconic to an electorate that is mad as hell. and for tens of millions of americans, that willingness to fight political correctness and not back down told them that he was the only candidate who would really blow things up in washington. >> i'll tell you what i like about him: he doesn't take any crap from obama. >> he's the leader right now of the entire conservative movement in america... >> donald trump has changed the entire debate on immigration. >> narrator: the very next evening, the president was once again confronted with two of the most difficult issues he had faced: race and guns. >> i copy. >> narrator: the president was briefed. >> we have breaking news. police and emergency responders are on the scene at what police confirm is a shooting inside a church... >> narrator: the shooting had taken place at the emanuel a.m.e. church in charleston, south carolina. >> ...are still looking for the gunman. >> narrator: the shooter had entered a bible study group. he was a white supremacist. the police found a journal. >> "the event that truly awakened me was the trayvon martin case. how could the news be blowing up the trayvon martin case while hundreds of these black-on-white murders got ignored?" >> he thought this country was being seized and taken away, that this was the rise of black and brown people, that you've even got a black president. >> "no one doing anything but talking on the internet. well, someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and i guess that has to be me." >> narrator: by 9:15, eight parishioners and their minister were shot to death. >> he went into the church, he said, "you people are taking over." who? he's speaking about obama. that's the president of the united states of america. he's unconsciously, to a certain degree, and perhaps consciously got obama in the crosshairs. but he can't shoot obama, he can't assassinate him. so vulnerable black people become the proxies for a president. >> narrator: obama again faced a decision. >> the charleston moment is so vitally important in the obama presidency, because it speaks to these two intractable issues of his presidency: mass shootings and, and race, and these racial incidents. >> narrator: the president decided to attend the funeral for the slain pastor in charleston. >> that massacre in south carolina let obama finally know that "black americans are the proxies for me." and i think that he was aware of the fact that he had to address this. he could no longer avoid this. that this was something that we as a nation must grapple with. >> narrator: on the way to charleston, sitting with michelle obama and his top aide, valerie jarrett, the president posed a question. >> he told valerie jarrett on the way down, as he was flying, he was thinking about singing "amazing grace." >> he mentioned it to me and to the first lady, and he said, "there's a moment in my eulogy where i think i might sing." and i said, "don't sing, don't sing." and he goes, "i think i'm going to sing." >> she wasn't sure it was a good idea. she remembered that he had once sang in public before and it hadn't gone over very well. >> that the president of the united states of america, the honorable barack obama, will come at this time. >> what you see is the president coming into a black space, and you see him not attempting to play the politics of the nation, not attempting to be the steady hand assuring everyone that everything is okay and will be okay. (cheers and applause) >> narrator: to a mostly black audience, he would be moved to speak in a way that he had never done as president. >> as a nation, out of this terrible tragedy, god has visited grace upon us, for he has allowed us to see where we've been blind. (applause) if we can tap that grace, everything can change. amazing grace. amazing grace. >> he paused. and i remember thinking, "is he thinking, 'am i going to sing? or am i not going to sing?'" >> ♪ amazing grace how sweet the sound... (congregation joins in) ♪ that saved a wretch like me ♪ i once was lost but now i'm found ♪ was blind, but now i see. (cheers and applause) clementa pinckney found that grace. cynthia hurd found that grace. >> finally, on this day, when he gave voice to singing and naming the names of the people who had fallen... >> depayne middleton doctor found that grace! >> he was as beautiful and as black as he had ever been. and as american as he had ever been, and there was no contradiction in any of them. his blackness didn't qualify his american identity. his american identity didn't qualify his black identity. they were seamlessly brought together in a holistic expression of empathy and grief and determination to move the nation forward. >> may grace now lead them home. may god continue to shed his grace on the unitstates of america. >> he wasn't attempting to be all things to all people. he was attempting to be the thing he needed to be to black america that day. i don't know that there's been a moment in the obama presidency that has more encapsulated both how far we have come on race and yet how far we still have to go. ("amazing grace" continues) >> narrator: by that fall, speaker of the house john boehner was facing his own moment of truth. >> i saw him pull up, so... >> narrator: a devout catholic, he waited to meet pope francis. >> he's on boehner time. >> it was a capstone to his career, that as a catholic, it was personally powerful and meaningful to him, and he helped make it happen. >> narrator: it was the first time a pope had visited the united states congress. >> your holiness. welcome. >> there's this incredible confluence of events in his life, where he's got the pope, he's brought the pope to washington, to the house of representatives. at the same time he's trying to fend off this budding rebellion against his leadership. >> narrator: the visit came just as the republican civil war was entering a new phase. >> nine of us got together and we said, "enough is enough. let's start a group that actually listens to the people back home, that actually has a good feeling for what the people back home want to do." >> narrator: there was a new tea party offshoot. they called themselves the freedom caucus, and their ranks quickly grew. >> the freedom caucus was a group of about 30, 40 members, of hardliners. and they didn't really have anything that united them beyond being hardline in opposition to the republican leadership. >> narrator: eric cantor had already been taken out. now the insurgents had their sights set on speaker john boehner. >> now they actually have a structure that they can use to exact concessions from boehner or punish him or even launch a challenge to his speakership. and it just becomes an even more ungovernable caucus for boehner. >> it was becoming clearer, i mean, by the month that john boehner had, you know, increasingly less control over his caucus. >> there was a big element of his caucus that was the anarchy caucus. they didn't care what the consequences were. as far as they were concerned, government was bad and doing anything government-related was bad. >> is it time for new leadership in the house of representatives? >> if you're going to shoot the king, you know, you better kill the king. >> it speaks to the increasing political polarization... >> at every turn, john boehner was reminded that he had very little power. >> you want to know the wrath of the conservatives? they're going to get what they wished for. >> you know, there was, like, these pop-up rebellions happening all the time, that were just, you know, further evidence of kind of the humiliation of the power structure, and, in particular, of john boehner. >> but he has no one to blame but himself. i mean, i'm not going to sit over, i'm not going to do the waterworks of john boehner. >> and they're not going to take john boehner's crap sitting down anymore. >> narrator: the insurgent members were threatening a vote to remove him as speaker. >> speaker boehner unfortunately didn't listen. when you campaign one way... >> and the freedom caucus very ingeniously knows that if that vote is called, the outside groups, the conservative groups, conservative talk radio, the freedom caucus members themselves, they will turn the vote for john boehner into a conservative litmus test issue. >> if you call yourself a conservative, why be here if you're not going to fight? >> he was gone. any time a vote would have taken place, he would have been removed. and if there's one thing john boehner could do, was count votes. but he woke up one morning and said, "my gosh. i don't have the votes anymore." >> narrator: as he stood with the pope, boehner's days were numbered. >> he's weeping as he stood there with the pope there onstage. >> i always thought of john boehner as the loneliest man in american politics. >> ...recen por mí. >> ...to pray for me. >> the tea party hated him. the democrats didn't like him very much, either. >> narrator: the visit had been a high point, but now reality set in. >> i'm one of two reporters outside of boehner's office the night the pope is in washington. boehner starts to walk away. and i say, "mr. speaker, are you going to resign? are you going to step down?" and he just shrugs off the question and walks out. >> narrator: the very next day... >> ♪ my-oh-my, what a wonderful day! ♪ (reporters laugh) i used to sing that on my way to work in the morning. it's become clear to me that this prolonged leadership turmoil would do irreparable harm to the institution. so this morning, i informed my colleagues that i would resign from the speakership and resign from congress at the end of october. and i'm proud of what we've accomplished, especially proud of my team. i'm doing this today for the right reasons. and you know what? the right things will happen as a result. thanks. >> narrator: on capitol hill, the insurgents celebrated. freedom caucus member tim huelskamp was one of them. >> i remember walking down the hallway, and democrats coming up to me-- democrats, as well-- they started calling me speaker- slayer. you know, and i didn't assume that title. that's what they had given to me. but it was, it was just this frustration with washington, you know. and, and in a way, that, i think for... the establishment probably thought, "john boehner will be the scalp," and move on. but then, next, here comes donald trump. >> donald trump is back on the road, campaigning in iowa. >> three campaign events in iowa today... >> trump's campaign blitzed in iowa... >> narrator: that winter, trump traveled the country in pursuit of the republican nomination and waged his own war with the republican establishment. >> trump is driving the republican party elders-- not the electorate, the elders-- nuts. >> thank you for what you're doing. >> because of his ideological inconsistency, because of his thousands and thousands of contradictions, because of his "wing-it-as-you-go," his lack of reliance on the party elders. >> the endorsement provides mr. trump with a potentially significant... >> in the cruz team's view, donald trump is simply not conservative enough. >> narrator: the establishment largely shunned him. he received one key endorsement, from one of the party's first insurgents. >> governor sarah palin-- special, special person. thank you. >> thank you so much! it's so great to be in iowa. we're here just thawing out, lending our support for the next president of our great united states of america, donald j. trump. >> palin is absolutely emblematic of conservative populism that was unleashed on the right... >> heads are spinning, media heads are spinning. >> ...that became the tea party, that i think, you know, is somewhat of a piece to what donald trump has been able to do. >> you know, they stomp on our neck, and then they tell us, "just chill. okay? just, yeah, just relax." well, look, um... we are mad, and we've been had. they need to get used to it. >> what palin and trump managed to tap into is that a yawning gap opened up between the agenda of the grassroots of the republican party and the elites in the republican party. that is what donald trump took advantage of. >> being here tonight, supporting the right man who will allow you to make america great again, god bless you, god bless the united states of america, and our next president of the united states, donald j. trump. >> donald trump is running against the establishment. >> narrator: the establishment was furious. >> here's what i know. donald trump is a phony, a fraud. his promises are as worthless as a degree from trump university. >> narrator: mitt romney had once courted trump's endorsement. >> he's playing the members of the american public for suckers. >> narrator: but now, romney became the face of the establishment opposition. >> he gets a free ride to the white house, and all we get is a lousy hat. >> narrator: but it didn't matter. riding a wave of anti-washington, anti-elite fervor, trump took on and defeated 16 republican candidates. >> bush is failing. highly low on energy. he really is. he's low. >> narrator: including jeb bush, the establishment front-runner. >> ...but he's a nice person. >> narrator: and even ted cruz. >> lyin' ted-- the bible held high, he puts it down and then he lies. >> the people, they decided to completely reject the republican party, not even ted cruz, if you think about it. ted cruz is one of us. ted cruz is a conservative person who came to washington, d.c., to change and the party felt that even he was too tainted because he was a sitting senator. that the party was so bad that they wanted a complete outsider. >> with 18 days to go before this election day, it appears the race is about to get even uglier. >> it's absolute dog-eat-dog. >> the race for president sinking deeper into the gutter. >> narrator: barack obama knew his legacy was on the line, from health reform to those executive actions, but he believed the stakes were even bigger. >> ...nominees are neck and neck with a little more than two weeks until election day. >> donald trump is the representation of the anti-obama. to embrace donald trump is a direct repudiation of the universe that barack obama set in order. >> if you wanted the exact opposite of barack obama, it's donald trump. obama was cool, trump is hot. obama was cerebral and laid back. trump is rough and in your face. obama is mr. teleprompter. donald trump is a no-card and no-limits, no-boundaries, no-editing. obama is intellectual. trump is emotional. >> he has done such a lousy job as president. i think he's the worst president, maybe in the history of our country. i think he's been a disaster. he's been weak. he's been ineffective. >> narrator: the president decided to take trump on. he headed out of the white house and onto the campaign trail on behalf of hillary clinton. >> isis is honoring president obama. >> in the final weeks of the campaign, obama was very clear about what the stakes were. he didn't mince words, and he said that his entire legacy was on the ballot. >> what we've seen in this election is a dark, pessimistic vision of a country where we turn against each other. donald trump is uniquely unqualified to be president. he is temperamentally unfit to be commander-in-chief. >> there is a lot of pretty harsh stuff that presidents and presidential candidates say about one another, but rarely do you hear them just outright say, "he's a threat to america." and i don't think obama was being hyperbolic. i think he believed that. >> they're just fanning resentment and blame, and anger and hate. and that is not the america we know. that's not the america i know. >> the irony of the obama presidency, right, as someone who came on the mandate of changing washington as we know it, someone who came on the mandate of ending this gridlock and this polarization. by his very presence-- and by his very humanity, who he was, the color of his skin, the sound of his name, forced more polarization and gridlock than we had seen in the eight years prior. >> today is finally the day. the presidential nominees have made their... >> we're counting down to the first poll closings right now, and as we do... >> after a long, contentious presidential race we are near the end. >> you know, it's such a close race. we just cannot call it right now. >> this night is turning out to be a real nail biter. >> donald trump is currently leading in... >> narrator: then on election night, the president watched the votes come in. >> i wouldn't call anything encouraging for hillary clinton at the moment, to be honest. >> the clinton campaign believed they had a lock on this. >> i assume that what was going through the president's mind on election night was shock, surprise as it was throughout the democratic world, and the clinton campaign and all of her allies. but for him it's very personal. >> cnn projects: donald trump wins the presidency. >> donald trump will be the 45th president of the united states. >> narrator: by daybreak, the results were in. >> one of the largest upsets in u.s. political history... >> narrator: it had been a clean sweep for republicans: the house of representatives, the senate and the white house. >> we've got republicans winning all three branches of government-- the white house, senate and the house. >> narrator: the president's staff gathered to hear a statement from him. >> good afternoon, everybody. it is no secret that the president-elect and i have some pretty significant differences. >> he obviously despised trump. i'm sure he was devastated. if you saw the faces of the white house staff, they were crushed. >> i had a chance to invite him to come to the white house tomorrow to talk about making sure that there is a successful transition between our presidencies. all right? thank you very much, everybody. >> narrator: barack obama was elected on a promise to change washington and bridge divisions. now he turns over the white house to a new president promising his own change, and hands over a country not more unified, but increasingly more divided. >> his nomination was the hostile takeover of the republican party. >> the 45th president... >> and, let's face it, he was larger than the republican party. >> how did he win? >> he certainly knows who elected him, and it wasn't the establishment. >> the only thing that is predictable is the unpredictability of washington, d.c., from this point forward. buckle your seatbelts because it is going to be a wild ride. >> "trump's road to the white house." >> go to pbs.org/frontline, where you can read extended interviews with eric cantor... >> ...a sense that somehow we're not... >> ...wesley lowery... >> these 2 intractible issues of his presidency... >> ...and many others. then read more about key moments behind the partisan divide. visit our watch page, where you can stream more than 200 original frontline documentaries. connect to tfrontline community on facebook and twitter. then sign up for our newsletter at pbs.org/frontline. >> frontlinis made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for public broadcasting. major support for frontliis provided by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information is available at macfound.org. additional support is provided by the park foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. the john and helen glessner family trust, supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. and by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler. captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> for more on this and other frontline programs, visit our website at pbs.org/frontline. >> frontline'"divided states of america" is available on dvd. to order, visit shoppbs.org or call 1-800-play-pbs. frontline is also available for download on itunes. ♪ you're 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