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		</div><p>US President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump are trading phone calls and pleasantries, just months after regularly flinging insults back and forth.</p>
<p>Membership in one of the world&#8217;s most exclusive clubs, the club of US presidents, appears to have a way of changing things, with Mr Trump talking about letting bygones be bygones.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;I&#8217;ve now gotten to know President Obama. I really like him,&#8221;</i> he said on NBC&#8217;s Today programme after Time magazine announced him as its Person of the Year.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;We have, I think I can say, at least for myself, I can&#8217;t speak for him, but we have a really good chemistry together. We talk.&#8221;</i></p>
<p>Mr Trump continued: <i>&#8220;He loves the country. He wants to do right by the country and for the country, and I will tell you, we obviously very much disagree on certain policies and certain things but, you know, I really like him as a president.&#8221;</i></p>
<p>Mr Obama has not been quite as effusive in his comments about Mr Trump since the November 8 election.</p>
<p>But he has repeatedly urged the public and world leaders concerned about a Trump presidency to adopt a <i>&#8220;wait-and-see&#8221;</i> approach. His argument is that campaigning is different to governing, and that the reality of holding office will lead Mr Trump to alter his thinking in some cases.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;That&#8217;s just the way this office works,&#8221;</i> Mr Obama said.</p>
<figure id="attachment_97888" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-97888" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/1475947497-6961e2b6484aa14873380a53a0a986d0-1038x576.jpg"><img src="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/1475947497-6961e2b6484aa14873380a53a0a986d0-1038x576.jpg" alt="President-Elect Donald Trump" width="600" height="333" class="size-full wp-image-97888" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-97888" class="wp-caption-text">President-Elect Donald Trump</figcaption></figure>
<p>It is unclear how genuine a friendship may develop between two men who have little in common beyond the presidency, or whether it is just Mr Obama exercising a little presidential decorum, leaving the past behind and showing his commitment to a smooth hand-off to the next administration.</p>
<p>It is not the tone many expected just a few months ago.</p>
<p>Mr Obama spent much of the campaign almost gleefully denouncing the showy New York businessman as &#8220;temperamentally unfit&#8221; and &#8220;uniquely unqualified&#8221; to lead the world&#8217;s most powerful nation.</p>
<p>Mr Trump was not shy about responding, tweeting at one point that Mr Obama <i>&#8220;will go down as perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States!&#8221;</i></p>
<p>Mr Trump also spent years fomenting the &#8220;birther&#8221; issue and trying to undermine Mr Obama with false claims that he was not a US citizen, and therefore an illegitimate president.</p>
<p>For that, Mr Obama publicly humiliated Mr Trump at the White House Correspondents&#8217; Association dinner in 2011, ridiculing his turn as host of a reality TV show and spreader of the birther theories.</p>
<p>White House press secretary Josh Earnest has acknowledged that Mr Obama and Mr Trump have had <i>&#8220;at least a handful&#8221;</i> of telephone conversations since their 90-minute Oval Office meeting on November 10.</p>
<p>But Mr Earnest declined to say what they talk about or characterise the relationship between them.</p>
<p>He did say Mr Trump initiated at least one of the calls.</p>
<p>Mr Trump had said at the White House that he would probably be calling on Mr Obama for his &#8220;counsel&#8221;, which turns out not to have been just bluster.</p>
<p>Paul Light, a New York University professor who studies government, said Mr Obama could simply show Mr Trump two photos, one each from Mr Obama&#8217;s first and final State of the Union addresses, to illustrate the &#8220;ageing process&#8221; that is the 24-hour, seven-day-a-week presidency.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;What Obama can do for him is kind of help bring him up to date or help him understand what he&#8217;s gotten himself into,&#8221; Mr Light said of Mr Trump, who is 70. Trump may be up to the task, but he doesn&#8217;t know what the task is.&#8221;</i></p>
<p>Ross Baker, a Rutgers University politics professor, said Mr Trump may be sending a <i>&#8220;message of reassurance that he is aware of his own limitations&#8221;</i> by publicising his outreach to Mr Obama.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;There&#8217;s no kind of handbook on how to be president,&#8221;</i> Mr Baker said.</p>
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