Barack Obama: “Look, I was expecting to handle a few challenges, not a whole mountain of them.”

It is a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs or what they say.

People need to “rediscover what’s the story we tell about how we’re going to live together, and see each other, and recognise each other, and disagree, and yet, still care for each other”.

Because if this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her — or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same.

It is a decision about how do we face and embrace this finite amount of time we have on the planet.