Cooper: Endearing the public to Trump [videos]

President Barack Obama and a cast member of the acclaimed Broadway production "Hamilton," perhaps unwittingly, are among those doing their part to endear President-elect Donald Trump to the minds of those who voted for him earlier this month.

Obama, one of the most divisive presidents in modern American history, had previously said he and his family would live in Washington, D.C., after his presidency ends in January.

On Sunday, in Peru during his final official foreign trip, he said he didn't plan to be silent if the president-elect's directions for governing didn't align with his, which they certainly won't.

"As an American citizen who cares deeply about our country," Obama said while in Peru, "if there are issues that have less to do with the specifics of some legislative proposal or battle, but go to core questions about our values and our ideals, and if I think that it's necessary or helpful for me to defend those ideals, then I'll examine it when it comes."

Since many of the voters went to the polls to vote against the policies and actions perpetrated over the last eight years, any voiced defense of those ideas is bound to make the plans suggested by Trump seem more palatable.

Compare Obama's attitude with that of former President George W. Bush, who left office in 2008 after his actions and policies also left parts of the country with a bad taste in their mouths. Bush, though, like his father, President George H.W. Bush, before him, made a point of not criticizing his successor, which Obama has said in the past that he appreciated.

The former president, meanwhile, works with wounded warrior groups and has become adept at portrait painting.

"I'm out of the political world," Bush said recently. "I'm interested in politics. But I don't think it's helpful to have a former president criticize successors."

The lecture delivered to Vice President-elect Mike Pence by cast member Brandon Victor Nixon after Friday night's performance of the musical - and any similar pronouncement about the incoming administration by entertainers and pseudo celebrities - is likely to have a similar effect.

"We are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir," the actor said. "But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us."

Nixon, of course, has First Amendment rights to speak his mind, even if it was a questionable venue to do so. His actions were criticized by Trump, using the same right, and even other celebrities. But the voting public has seen Obama pander to this group for eight years, heard it demean many of the traditional values the public holds dear and cast its ballot in favor of change.

Pence, fortunately, appeared to turn the other cheek in the same mature way in which he has comported himself since becoming the vice presidential nominee.

The Indiana governor said when he heard boos and cheers at the production, he turned to his daughter and her cousins and "reminded them that is what freedom sounds like."

Pence said on "Fox News Sunday" the election results were "a very anxious time for some people" but that Trump meant the expressions of unity he made on election night.

"He is preparing to be the president of all of the people of the United States of America and to watch him bringing together people of diverse views, bringing people together who disagreed with him strongly, seeing him talk to leaders around the world," he said on "Fox News Sunday". "I just want to reassure every American that in the days ahead I am very confident that they are going to see President-elect Trump be a president for all of the people."

Indeed, every protest of Trump (they continued in Chicago over the weekend), every police shooting (four in three states), every hypocritical news report (questioning how Trump can consider Mitt Romney and others for cabinet posts when he criticized them but forgetting how Obama named his former bitter rival, Hillary Clinton, secretary of state) only assures people they made the right decision when they elected the outsider businessman.

How he governs as president - what his policies are, how he conducts himself, what results are from his programs - will be open to analysis. But the man won't be president for another 60 days. Until then, what he may or may not do at the time is only speculation.