My final speak with President Obama in a White House had been scheduled for a day after a presidential election. we had hoped to demeanour behind on what he had achieved over 8 years and a issues that mattered a many to him and to a readers of Rolling Stone, hear his recommendation for Hillary and about a highway ahead. It was to be a “exit interview,” his tenth cover for Rolling Stone, a fourth speak together. Before drifting down to Washington, D.C., on a morning after a towering choosing results, we called and offering to postpone. This had to be one of a misfortune days of Obama’s domestic life, and he hadn’t had a impulse to simulate on it, to be indignant or to accept it.
But his bureau called back; Obama wanted to go brazen with a speak as planned. It was a dull, pale day, and a White House was scarcely dull when we arrived. It had been a prolonged and unfortunate night, and now usually a skeleton staff remained. It felt like a funeral.
The final time we had interviewed a president, in 2012, it was a idle afternoon. we had left over a time border by a half-hour, and on leaving a Oval Office, we ran into Hillary Clinton, a secretary of state, sitting by a table of a president’s assistant, watchful to come in. This time it was her ghost.
Rolling Stone has had a smashing attribute with Obama over a years. we initial met him during a commencement of his 2008 campaign, when he came adult to my bureau for dinner. We corroborated him when he was adult and when he was down. He noticed Rolling Stone readers as partial of his base. A year ago, we went to Alaska with him and toured a melting glaciers. With surprising pride, we watched him float a call of history.
I had many some-more questions for him than time allowed: Why had no one obliged for a Wall Street frauds, that cost millions of people their homes, their savings, their jobs, been sent to jail? Likewise, since did a people who misled America into a Iraq War also go scot-free? Would a arise of Donald Trump have been probable had any of them been hold accountable? What was his clarity of fulfilment in preserving so many millions of acres of inhabitant lands? And what did it take to finally put meridian change during a tip of his agenda. …
Alas.
Obama greeted me outward his bureau and walked me in. He was tired. He skipped a common tiny talk, took off his jacket, sat in his prevalent chair and said, “Let’s do this.” He spoke solemnly and with precision, staying loyal to his essential nature: controlled, methodical and cool. There are many things a sitting boss can't say, yet this was his delicately reasoned summary on a formidable and ancestral day.
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I have to start with final night and ask we how you’re feeling about a choosing of Donald Trump. Could we trust what we were seeing? Were we blown divided like a rest of us? And how are we feeling now?
Well, I’m disappointed, partly since we consider Hillary Clinton would be a unequivocally excellent president. As we pronounced on a discuss trail, a lot of a work we’ve finished is usually partially complete. And we need some smoothness in sequence for us to maximize a benefits.
Did we ever consider this was possible? Did this outcome ever start to you?
I will tell you, New Hampshire, 2008, we had usually won Iowa and had this whirlwind discuss of New Hampshire, outrageous rallies, outrageous crowds, and a inner pollster had us adult by 10. And around 7:30, as I’m putting on my garments to broach my feat speech, we get a strike on a doorway by David Plouffe, David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs. And they’ve got humble looks on their faces [chuckles]. And they say, “Barack, we have some engaging news for you. We don’t consider we’re gonna win this thing.”
That’s a thing about democracy. That’s a thing about voting. It doesn’t meant polls are irrelevant, yet there is always a human non-static concerned in this. So we consider a contingency of Donald Trump winning were always around 20 percent. That [doesn't] seem like a lot, yet one out of 5 is not that unusual. It’s not a miracle.
But aren’t we feeling chagrined, pissed off, upset, dismayed?
Well, we … no. You know, we don’t feel dismayed, because, series one, we couldn’t be prouder of a work that we’ve finished over a final 8 years. When we spin over a keys to a sovereign supervision to a subsequent boss of a United States, we can contend yet any irrationality that a nation is a lot improved off: The economy is stronger, a sovereign supervision works better, and a station in a universe is higher. And so we can take good honour in a work we’ve done. we can take good compensation in a people we’ve helped.
I don’t wish to sweeten it. There are consequences to elections. It means that a subsequent Supreme Court probity is going to be somebody who doesn’t simulate my bargain of a Constitution. It means that a work we’ve finished internationally and domestically on meridian is going to be threatened. It means that a Affordable Care Act, that has supposing 20 million people with health insurance, is going to be mutated in ways that some people are going to be harm by. we consider it doesn’t take us all a proceed behind to a standing quo, because, notwithstanding a rhetoric, a Republicans are going to interpretation that simply throwing millions of people off a rolls with no health word isn’t intelligent politics. But substantially a categorical reason that we don’t feel dismayed, yet do feel disappointed, is a implausible immature people who have worked in my administration, worked on a campaigns. If we demeanour during a information from a election, if it were usually immature people who were voting, Hillary would have gotten 500 electoral votes. So we have helped, we think, figure a epoch to consider about being inclusive, being fair, caring about a environment. And they will have flourishing change year by year, that means that America over time will continue to get better.
You consider it’s still a on-going country?
I consider that zero is determined, yet that a series of people who have a clever faith in a fair, just, equal, thorough America is a infancy and is growing.
And partial of a challenge, though, that we do have, and this is something that I’ve been nipping on for a while now, is that there is a conspirator of working-class white electorate that voted for me in vast numbers, yet that we’ve had difficulty removing to opinion for Democrats in midterm elections. In this election, [they] incited out in outrageous numbers for Trump. And we consider that partial of it has to do with a inability, a failure, to strech those electorate effectively. Part of it is Fox News in any bar and grill in vast chunks of a country, yet partial of it is also Democrats not operative during a grassroots level, being in there, display up, creation arguments. That partial of a critique of a Democratic Party is accurate. We spend a lot of time focused on general process and inhabitant process and reduction time being on a ground. And when we’re on a ground, we do well. This is since we won Iowa.
But how did a Democrats skip a white operative category in such good numbers, who clearly had these vast mercantile issues? They have mislaid their jobs in industrial states. …
It’s not utterly that simple, since this is not simply an mercantile issue. This is a informative issue. And a communications issue. It is loyal that a lot of prolongation has left or remade itself since of automation. But during a march of my presidency, we combined prolongation jobs during ancestral rates, and consider about it: In Michigan—
But, we mean—
Hold on. Let me finish. If we demeanour during Michigan, that we won, not usually in 2008 yet in 2012, by a far-reaching margin, we paid a lot of courtesy to prolongation jobs, that is since a automobile courtesy is on double shifts in plants that used to be close down. If we demeanour during minimum-wage laws or family-leave process or a investments that we finished in village colleges or, for that matter, a Affordable Care Act, these are all vast investments for operative families, white, black and Hispanic. The plea we had is not that we’ve neglected these communities from a process perspective. That is, we think, an improper interpretation. You start reading folks saying, “Oh, we know, working-class families have been neglected,” or “Working-class white families have not been paid courtesy to by Democrats.” Actually, they have. What is true, though, is that whatever process prescriptions that we’ve been proposing don’t reach, are not heard, by a folks in these communities. And what they do hear is Obama or Hillary are perplexing to take divided their guns or they disregard you.
One of a hurdles that we’ve been articulate about now is a proceed amicable media and a Internet have altered what people accept as news. we was usually articulate to my domestic director, David Simas. He was looking during his Facebook page and some links from high propagandize friends of his, some of whom were now flitting around crazy things about, we know, Obama has criminialized a Pledge of Allegiance.
I consider it is unequivocally critical for us, as progressives – set aside a Democratic Party as an institution, yet usually anybody who wants to see a some-more on-going America – to consider about how we are handling on a belligerent and display adult everywhere and fighting for a support of folks and giving them a petrify clarity of what it is that we consider will make their lives better, rather than depending on entrance adult with a right technocratic policies and pity that with a New York Times editorial board. If we are not on a ground, and people are not conference and observant us face-to-face, afterwards we’ll keep on losing, even yet we honestly trust that a Republican prescriptions are not going to be as useful to these folks.
So what do we consider is a destiny of a Democratic Party? A month ago, everybody was assured that a GOP was in a final genocide throes; now you’ve got 3 branches of supervision in a hands of one party. You’ve got voter suppression, that is guaranteed to continue, you’ve got redistricting, all these things. Where’s a Democratic Party going? This seems to be a hard-right turn.
Well, yet there’s not a hard-right turn. Take a demeanour at, take a demeanour at—
If we control 3 branches of supervision and you’ve got a Supreme Court …
If we consult a American people, including Trump voters, they’re in preference of a aloft smallest wage. They’re in favor, in vast numbers, of decriminalizing marijuana. They, we think, are, increasingly and with intolerable speed, usurpation of a need to provide a LGBT village with respect. They are hugely questionable of Wall Street, hugely questionable of a Establishment. Part of what Trump did, as good as Bernie, was run opposite that Establishment. Now a irony, of course, is that one would consider Trump would be deliberate partial of that Establishment and not a genuine alien like Bernie was. So this doesn’t seem to be a impulse in that there is a outrageous spin to a right.
What is loyal is that a ability of Republicans to win state elections, congressional elections and Senate elections is going to be a plea for Democrats for a while, unless they can change perceptions about a Democratic Party and on-going causes in these farming or primarily white areas, quite in a Midwest. It’s going to be harder to do in a South for a lot of chronological reasons.
With honour to a presidency, a Democrats still, actually, are in a improved place and will continue to be in a improved place than Republicans. This was always gonna be hard, because people get sap of one celebration after 8 years. It’s usually happened once in complicated story where we had that kind of transparent send of appetite – or during slightest in a final 40, 50 years. we don’t consider that voter-suppression laws are gonna be a normal or gonna be a categorical problem that we have to bargain with. We are not gonna be in a conditions in that Democrats can’t win in any of these areas, yet we’re gonna have to rearrange ourselves some-more effectively. Look, in North Carolina, a state we won once by one indicate and a state we mislaid once by one point, a Democratic administrator [appears to have] won in North Carolina notwithstanding Trump winning North Carolina. And partial of a reason he won was North Carolinians were sleepy of a hard-right bulletin by a sitting Republican governor, and these inequitable laws that had been upheld destined during a LGBT village that people suspicion went too far. But partial of a reason Roy Cooper, that North Carolina governor-elect, won is since he was on a belligerent in those communities and he was operative hard.
So, do Democrats have to re-examine how they proceed things? Do progressives have to re-examine how they proceed things? Absolutely. When we sat here and talked to Bernie Sanders, one of a things that he and we both concluded on was that we have to energise a DNC so that it’s not noticed as a Washington entity yet rather that it is a grassroots classification that is out all opposite a nation and creation a common means with operative people.
What’s your devise going to be going brazen with this?
You know, I’m gonna nap for a integrate of weeks when we get out of here, take my mother on a well-deserved vacation. And I’ll spend time in my initial year out of bureau essay a book, and I’m gonna be organizing my presidential center, that is gonna be focused on precisely this emanate of how do we sight and commission a subsequent epoch of leadership. How do we rethink a storytelling, a messaging and a use of record and digital media, so that we can make a impressive box opposite a country? And not usually in San Francisco or Manhattan yet everywhere, about since meridian change matters or since issues of mercantile inequality have to be addressed. So we will continue to be unequivocally active, and Michelle is going to continue to be unequivocally active – and [on] a unequivocally thing that brought us here, which is a faith that when we work with people on a belligerent during a grassroots level, change happens. When people feel divided from a institutions of government, they can pitch behind and onward in all sorts of ways.
Let me ask we about meridian change. Trump says he’s going to lift out of a Paris Agreements. Is that possible?
Well, historically what happens is that when we have an general agreement, it carries over into a subsequent administration. There were agreements that President Bush finished that we respected, since as boss of a United States, it was critical for me to plan a clarity of smoothness in a U.S. government. There is no doubt that a Republican Party has taken a unequivocally tough position with honour to meridian change. And so some of a swell that we have made, it is going to be tantalizing for them to hurl back.
The good news is that a lot of these initiatives that we’ve taken work, and don’t usually work in terms of shortening emissions, they work from an mercantile perspective. And so over a march of my 8 years, when we doubled clean-energy prolongation or we cut [auto emissions] in half, that wasn’t usually a matter of regulations that can unexpected be erased; that had to do with investors and businesses and utilities and consumers all organizing themselves, reckoning out that, we know what, being intelligent on appetite is good for a universe and it’s good for my pocketbook. So we consider that a question for Donald Trump, for a Republicans in Congress [is]: Are they going to wish to hurl behind hundreds of thousands of jobs in a solar courtesy that have been created? Are they suggesting that somehow a Big Three automakers retool to make some-more gas-guzzling cars, even yet consumers are unequivocally happy saving income on gas? When it comes to appetite plants, discordant to a rhetoric, it hasn’t been my regulations that killed coal. More than anything, it’s indeed been healthy gas that’s been a lot cheaper, so it hasn’t been careful to build new spark mines.
I know all that, yet we have scarcely all of a scholarship observant we are past a tipping point, and you’ve got a Koch brothers financing an positively obstructionist Congress. That’s not going to change. Their beliefs seems to be set on a subject. The income that’s bought these votes is set on a subject. …
Yeah, listen. If we wish to convince me that all is going to be terrible, afterwards we can speak ourselves into that. Or we can act. It is what it is. There’s been an election. There’s going to be a Trump presidency, and Republicans are going to control Congress. And a doubt is gonna be, for those like we and I, who caring about these issues, do we figure out how to continue to make swell in this sourroundings until we have a possibility for a subsequent election. And will we have mobilized ourselves and swayed adequate people that we can get behind on a trail that we consider is going to be useful for families, useful for a environment, useful for a reserve and confidence and order of law and polite rights and amicable rights?
And one of a things that we have been revelation my younger staff, who in some cases have usually famous politics by my presidency, is story doesn’t transport in a loyal line. And it zigs and it zags and infrequently we take dual stairs brazen and afterwards we take a step back. You are positively right when it comes to us wanting to feel an coercion about meridian change, yet what I’ve always pronounced was, for us to get to where we need to go on climate, we got to have a American people [and] open opinion on a side. They’ve got to feel a clarity of coercion about it, and that requires us persuading and winning their votes so that we can exercise these policies. And we’ve finished poignant swell relations to where we were 8 years ago – [but] nowhere near where we need to go. The Paris Agreement envisions us attack targets a decade from now. I’m assured that America can still strike those targets. And it competence be that some-more of those targets are met on a behind finish since there are opposite policies entrance out of a Trump administration on this. But we consider that we can still grasp what needs to be achieved.
There’s no advantage that’s subsequent from pulling into a fetal position. We go out there, and we work. And we toil by challenges, and over time things get better.
Let me ask about immigration reform. Where do we go? What’s a trail brazen on immigration?
Well, look, there are those in a Republican Party who commend that regardless of how this choosing played itself out, over time, alienating a vast cube of a Latino voters, a Asian voters, is gonna be a problem. And that gives [Republicans] some self-interest in elucidate this in a essential way. It’s going to be critical for Democrats and immigration-rights activists to commend that for a infancy of a American people, borders meant something. And so there has to be, what I’ve pronounced before, both order of law and values that stay loyal to a newcomer roots. Those things don’t have to be contradictory, yet there have been times where in a big-heartedness around immigration, we haven’t sufficient addressed how do we get a nurse and official partial of it down. And we tend to boot people’s concerns about creation certain that immigration is official and orderly. And what that means, we think, is that there will still be an event during some indicate to do extensive immigration reform.
I don’t consider it’s gonna occur over a subsequent dual years or maybe even not over a subsequent 4 years, yet what we can do is make intelligent changes, building on what we’ve already finished around a legal-immigration system. What we can do is to work along a borders in a mild proceed with Mexico so that a vigour of what are now mostly Central American immigrants into a nation is rubbed in a benevolent way. And what we can do, and we will share this with President-elect Trump when we see him, is continue to make intelligent investments in countries like Honduras and El Salvador and Guatemala that can assistance them broach some clarity of contentment for their people.
You can now buy pot legally on a whole West Coast. So since are we still waging a War on Drugs? It is a gigantic failure. Why are we still dancing around a theme and creation pot homogeneous to a Schedule we drug?
Look, I’ve been unequivocally transparent about my faith that we should try to daunt piece abuse. And we am not somebody who believes that legalization is a panacea. But we do trust that treating this as a public-health issue, a same proceed we do with cigarettes or alcohol, is a many smarter proceed to bargain with it. Typically how these classifications are altered are not finished by presidential revelation yet are finished possibly legislatively or by a DEA. As we competence imagine, a DEA, whose pursuit it is historically to make drug laws, is not always going to be on a slicing corner about these issues.
[Laughs] What about you? Are we gonna get on a slicing edge?
Look, we am now unequivocally many in lame-duck status. And we will have a event as a private citizen to report where we consider we need to go. But in light of these referenda passing, including in California, I’ve already said, and as we consider we mentioned on Bill Maher’s show, where he asked me about a same issue, that it is illogical over a prolonged tenure for a Justice Department or a DEA to be enforcing a patchwork of laws, where something that’s authorised in one state could get we a 20-year jail judgment in another. So this is a discuss that is now ripe, many in a same proceed that we finished adult creation swell on same-sex marriage. There’s something to this whole states-being-laboratories-of-democracy and an evolutionary approach. You now have about a fifth of a nation where this is legal.
You got adult there and pronounced legalize same-sex marriage, and we pushed it right over a edge. …
Well, we know, no. we don’t consider that’s how it works. If we will recall, what happened was, first, unequivocally systematically, we altered laws around sanatorium visitation for people who were same-sex partners. we afterwards reserved a Pentagon to do a investigate on removing absolved of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” that afterwards got a buy-in of a Joint Chiefs of Staff, and we were afterwards means to [repeal] “don’t ask, don’t tell.” We afterwards filed a brief on Proposition 8 out in California. And then, after a lot of grounds was laid, afterwards we took a position.
So we’re in a grounds stage?
One of a things that we consider it’s critical for progressives to do when we’re in a contemplative mode after an choosing like this is, we can’t have it both ways. We can’t say, “Why aren’t we reaching out to a folks who voted opposite us? And by a way, since aren’t we maximizing removing 100 percent for a things that those of us, we know, who are already on-going and vital on a coasts consider should be finished right away?” The indicate is that politics in a big, opposite nation like this requires us to pierce a round brazen not in one prolonged Hail Mary to a finish zone, yet to, we know, systemically make progress.
So how do we consider we go about stitching a nation behind together?
Well, a many critical thing that I’m focused on is how we emanate a common set of facts. That sounds kind of abstract. Another proceed of observant it is, how do we emanate a common story about where we are. The biggest plea that we consider we have right now in terms of this order is that a nation receives information from totally opposite sources. And it’s removing worse. The whole transformation divided from curated broadcasting to Facebook pages, in that an essay on meridian change by a Nobel Prize-winning scientist looks flattering many as credible as an essay created by a man in his underwear in a basement, or worse. Or something created by a Koch brothers. People are no longer articulate to any other; they’re usually occupying their opposite spheres. And in an Internet epoch where we still value a giveaway press and we don’t wish censorship of a Internet, that’s a tough problem to solve. we consider it’s one that requires those who are determining these media to consider delicately about their responsibilities, and [whether there] are ways to emanate a improved conversation. It requires improved civics preparation among a kids so that we can arrange by what’s loyal and what’s not. It’s gonna need those of us who are meddlesome in on-going causes reckoning out how do we attract some-more eyeballs and make it some-more engaging and some-more interesting and some-more persuasive.
Maybe a news business and a journal industry, that is being broken by Facebook, needs a funding so we can contend a giveaway press?
The plea is, a record is relocating so quick that it’s reduction an issue of normal media losing money. The New York Times is still creation money. NPR is doing well. Yeah, it’s a nonprofit, yet it has a flourishing audience. The problem is segmentation. We were articulate about a emanate of a divided country. Good broadcasting continues to this day. There’s good work finished in Rolling Stone. The plea is people are removing a hundred opposite visions of a universe from a hundred opposite outlets or a thousand opposite outlets, and that is ramping adult divisions. It’s creation people elaborate or contend what’s many argumentative or peddling in a many infamous of insults or lies, since that attracts eyeballs. And if we are gonna solve that, it’s not going to be simply an emanate of subsidizing or propping adult normal media; it’s going to be reckoning out how do we classify in a practical universe a same proceed we classify in a earthy world. We have to come adult with new models.
What kind of private moments have we had that conclude your final 8 years?
Oh, well, we know there have been obvious moments like me walking opposite a arcade and conference a chants of “USA” after we had gotten bin Laden, or being adult on a Truman Balcony with my immature staff after we got a Affordable Care Act passed. There have been times usually sitting in a Treaty Room reading letters from people who have a story to tell, a maestro who’s not removing services they need [and] a immature DREAM Act child who describes how he’s now gotten a grade and has left behind and is training in a propagandize where he went, that pierce we deeply.
But we consider a thing that we will skip a many about this place, a thing that can get me nauseating – and we try not to get too nostalgic, since we still got a garland of work to do – it’s a group we built here. The series of immature people in this place who are usually amazing. Somebody like a Brian Deese. Nobody outward of a White House indispensably knows Brian, contingency be 35, 37, something like that. He’s a emissary arch of staff for policy. He engineered a Paris Agreement, a [Hydrofluorocarbons] Agreement, a Aviation Agreement, competence have helped save a planet, and he’s usually doing it while he’s got dual babies during home, and could not be a improved person. And there are people like him opposite this administration. What we will take divided from this knowledge is them: observant how they work together, observant a commitments they have finished toward a issues that we caring about.
Do we consider Michelle should run for office?
Michelle will never run for office. She is as gifted a chairman as we know. You can see a implausible inflection she has with a American people. But we fun that she’s too essential to wish to be in politics.
What recommendation do we have for Trump?
Well, I’ll have a possibility to speak to him tomorrow, and we consider a categorical thing that we will contend to him is, series one, however we campaigned, once you’re in this office, we are partial of a bequest dating behind to those initial Revolutionaries. And this extraordinary examination in democracy has to be tended. So aside from any sold issue, a boss needs to commend that this is not about you. This is not about your power, your position or a perks, a Marine band. This is about this altered thing that we’ve hereditary and that we wish to pass on. And for me during least, that means we approximate yourself with unequivocally good people, that we spend time training and bargain what these issues are since they unequivocally indeed have an impact on people. They’re not games that we’re playing. And that to a best of your ability, you’re creation a decisions that we consider are right for a American people – even when they’re not popular, even when they’re not expedient. And a compensation we get from that is that when you leave this place, we can feel like you’ve been loyal to this measureless payoff and shortcoming that’s been given to you.
Do we consider a weight of story will constrain him to some extent?
I consider sitting behind that table is sobering, and that it will have an impact on him as it has on any president. But we consider a many critical imprisonment on any boss is a American people themselves, of an sensitive citizenry that is active and participating and engaged. And that is going to be something that we will, in my possess medium ways, continue to try to inspire for a rest of my life.