When Bill Clinton’s team cleared out of the White House in January 2001, they played a little prank on their Republican successors.

According to reports - and, of course, this may have been just a journalist urban myth - the incoming staff of President George W Bush found that the “W” key had been removed from all the computer keyboards. The idea was that they would not be able to type their bosses's name.

Now, it emerges that Barack Obama’s staff played their own little trick on the incoming team of Donald Trump. Among items left behind in the White House, were copies of books written about Mr Obama.

(Getty (Getty)

Politico reported that other gifts included a Keurig coffee maker and a few other household items. According to deputy press secretary Stephanie Grisham, Mr Obama’s autobiography, The Audacity of Hope, was not among the items.

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The website suggested that the decision to leave behind the Obama books, was a subtle dig to the new president, who in his inaugural speech, described the nation he was inheriting as place that had sunk to “American carnage.”