Barack Obama on Democracy, Gaza and 2024

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Welcome to Pod Save America.

I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm Tommy's accountability partner, John Lovitt.

I'm Tommy Petor.

That's my worst nightmare.

On today's show.

Weird.

I have a different feeling about it.

Go.

We'll get to that later.

On today's show, Donald Trump takes the stand in his civil fraud case.

His advisors draw out plans to use the military against protesters if he wins the election.

A new set of battleground polls in the New York Times show Trump ahead of Joe Biden just about everywhere.

Speaker Mike Johnson uses an app to monitor his son's porn intake.

And later, our interview with Barack Obama on the 15th anniversary of his 2008 election.

How about that for a description of the

couple of accountability partners getting together in Chicago?

Think you would have done this if we told him what was his lead-in?

Probably not.

But first, it's Election Day, where Ohio will vote on a ballot measure that would protect abortion access.

Virginia will decide whether to give Republican Governor Glenn Yunken the Republican legislature he needs to ban abortion.

Kentucky will decide what polls are now showing is a very close race between Democratic Governor Andy Bashir and Republican anti-abortion extremist Daniel Cameron.

And Mississippi decides whether to elect a Democratic governor for the first time in 20 years.

If you live in these states or other places with elections on Tuesday, go vote.

Pennsylvania, Supreme Court.

Thank you, Tommy.

Thank you.

Big, big elections.

There's some New York City elections as well, local elections there.

There's elections, people.

If you need more info, if you want to know whether there's an election near you or how you can help, head to votesafeamerica.com, as always, and we'll be breaking down all the results later this week.

All right.

Let's get to the rest of the news.

Okay.

We are a year out from Election Day 2024, and the New York Times is kicking off the party with a new poll of more than 3,600 registered voters.

It's a big sample, across the six most competitive battleground states that show Donald Trump leading Joe Biden by an average of 48 to 44 percent.

So they did 600 voters per state.

Trump is up 5,241 in Nevada,

4943 in Georgia, 4,944 in Arizona, 4,843 in Michigan, and 4844 in Pennsylvania, with Joe Biden leading only in Wisconsin by 47 to 45 percent.

The results don't seem to reflect either Trump's strengths or the Democratic Party's weaknesses.

Trump is slightly more unpopular with voters in this poll than he was in 2020.

And voters would choose in this poll an unnamed generic Democrat over Trump by eight points.

And at least in this poll, even Vice President Kamala Harris performs two points better than Biden against Trump.

What is mostly bothering voters, at least in this poll, is what we've seen in nearly every single poll for the last several years.

Biden's age, his handling of the economy, and his ability to do the job.

I'll stop there so you two can get in on the fun.

And maybe we can start with your takes on the reaction from the Biden folks and some Democratic strategists, which I'd summarize as it's one poll.

Obama was in a similar spot back in 2011.

The election is a full year away.

The campaign hasn't started yet.

The economy is improving.

And Trump might be a convicted felon by the time people start voting.

What do you guys think?

Yeah, I mean, the point that we're a year out from the election is absolutely right.

Lots of time.

Events will change.

There's time to campaign.

The campaigning hasn't really even started.

There will be lots of paid media, billions of dollars of paid media, to try to sell Joe Biden's message to America.

That's all right.

The response that...

grinds my gears a little bit is the everyone stop bedwetting.

It's like, ah, we can't tell people that, you know, the future of American democracy democracy itself is at stake, but also like chillax.

You know, like I think everyone's allowed to feel a little anxiety.

And so, you know, I think what you do with that anxiety is up to you.

And

those of us who want to channel it into action by volunteering and donating and getting involved, I think that's the path forward here.

But in terms of what we learned from this poll, I mean, it's clear that Joe Biden personally has real challenges at the moment with younger voters, especially voters under 30.

He went from being up considerably in the last election to basically tired.

He has real challenges with voters of color, both African-American and Latino voters.

And there's real questions about his age.

And, you know,

the challenge going forward is whether

Biden can convince these voters of color and young voters that he's actually working for them and that his policies are improving their lives because a lot of people are saying in these polls they're not feeling that improvement.

And then separately, I think there's this age question of whether he can convince voters who have been convinced by, I don't don't know,

maybe it's misleadingly edited social media videos on TikTok or whatever that he's not fit for the job, that in fact he is.

But, you know, a lot of different tracks here for problems he needs to solve.

Yeah, I mean, it's also, by the way, like you don't need to see misleadingly edited.

footage of Joe Biden to worry about Joe Biden's age.

Joe Biden's age is his biggest liability.

He is very old.

It makes a lot of people, including us, nervous.

And I think like you look at what the response has been, you say, all right, Barack Obama went through a news cycle like this.

You can look at previous incumbents, George W.

Bush, and say, like, these are all people that saw polls at around this time that showed them down and they managed to claw their way back.

The uncertainty in all this, which I think is a reason for a lot of grave concern, is the effort you can make in the ways that you would in any race to to close some of these gaps around making sure people understand your accomplishments, making sure people understand the threat that Trump poses.

I mean, one number that I think is really bad in this poll, but is actually in a strange way, like a glimmer of hope, is it says only 46% of voters say Mr.

Biden has the proper temperament to be president, barely higher than the 43% who said the same of Mr.

Trump.

Like, you can look at that and say, hold on a second.

That's how, look how badly Biden has lost his edge.

But then you say, well, hold on a second.

But then you say, reintroduce people to the Donald Trump they know and hate.

And all of a sudden, you'll see those numbers come down.

But what we don't know is, okay, you've done that.

You've made a case for Joe Biden and his accomplishments, his legacy as president.

You've made a case against Donald Trump.

Does the age factor continue to matter in a way that you can't control for it, in a way that you can't change?

Is it a liability that is,

is it an unwinnable assignment to overcome the age question?

That is, I think, the fear.

I want to separate our analysis from our advocacy here.

Like, obviously, we want to do everything humanly possible to make sure Donald Trump doesn't become president again.

And that includes doing everything humanly possible to re-elect Joe Biden if he's the nominee.

But as always, we want to give you like the most honest analysis.

And that means no sugarcoating.

And it also means no like unnecessary doomerism either.

Neither.

So with that said, here's where I think the Biden folks have a point.

It is just one poll.

Even excellent polls.

which I think the New York Times Sienna poll is, can only tell you about how voters are feeling at that given moment.

And this happens to be a moment where the U.S.

and the world are in turmoil.

And Barack Obama did have approval ratings that were almost as bad as Biden's one year out from the 2012 election.

But here's where I disagree with some of the rosier analysis.

The polling averages all show Trump slightly ahead right now, not just this poll.

And you can, you know, look, a lot of people are like, the Susquehanna poll last week had Biden up seven.

It's like, yeah, it did.

But when you average all the polls, Trump is slightly ahead.

Unlike Barack Obama, Joe Biden's approval rating has been stuck in the low 40s for two years now.

Two years.

That was not the case with Barack Obama.

It went up and down, up and down.

For Joe Biden, it was in the low 40s when other Democrats, not named Joe Biden, overperformed in the midterms.

Midterms where the New York Times poll basically nailed the results of the most competitive Senate races and where most of the polls that weren't done by partisan Republican firms were also pretty accurate.

Polls did not predict a red wave in 2022.

The political coverage suggested a red wave.

The nonpartisan polls were actually really good.

And when Nate Silver wrote his trollish, is Obama Toast piece in the New York Times that everyone's citing from 2011, this is what the polls in the months of November and December said about an Obama-Romney race when Nate had that headline.

Obama plus six, Obama plus six, Obama plus four, Obama plus one.

There were 13 polls in those months.

Only two had Romney ahead.

The rest all had Barack Obama ahead.

So, and like

the other challenge, the age challenge, obviously, inflation has come down.

Prices have not.

And so the problem is like, you know, you're pissed about a 15 cheeseburger the 15 cheeseburger is no longer the price isn't going up anymore but it's stuck at 15 it's not gonna be 12 yeah it's not gonna be 12 that's the issue and that is a source of real frustration for people people say oh it's just one poll yes it is a snapshot and polls catch people at a moment in time what i find

to your point

this poll is a reflection of a lot of other polls this poll is not an outlier of what we're seeing it is it is in such a sense yeah no i'm saying so it's like yes you can view this as a snapshot in time but you can't say, oh, don't worry about one poll.

Because this poll is capturing a mood, is capturing a feeling, it is capturing a result that we've seen across the board.

Yeah, in the interest of not sugarcoating it, I mean, the sort of biggest things that worried me are on the economy, a majority of voters say Biden's policies have personally hurt them, but they think Trump's policies helped them.

So that means that 59% said they trusted Trump over Biden on the economy.

It was 59% to 37%.

That's a pretty large deficit on the economy.

And then when it comes to the age question, 71% of voters think Biden is too old to be an effective president.

Three years ago, only 30% of voters said he was too old to be president.

Now, the Biden folks will push back and say in that same poll, 39% of voters say Trump is too old.

And that's right and that's fair.

But I think that speaks to

probably a large subset of people in the country who feel like they're both too old and are looking for some sort of alternative, which might mean they lead to the Green Party, they are RFK Jr., et cetera.

And so I think when it comes to the age question, it's it's not guaranteed that you can change people's mind about whether someone is too old to do a job, right?

That might be a view that gets hardened.

The other last thing that worries me is half of the respondents think that Joe Biden profited from Hunter Biden's business dealings.

Now, all available evidence suggests that that is not true at all.

There's no evidence to back that up.

But it again speaks to how powerful the right-wing disinformation ecosystem has been and how much efforts on the Hill to just throw shit at the wall and see what sticks have actually been effective.

I want to zero in on the voters that Biden is losing here, as Tommy pointed out.

Young voters, especially young non-white voters, and also non-white voters in general.

And I think when you hear that,

maybe when a lot of people listening in our audience hear that, they think, oh, maybe those voters think that Joe Biden is not progressive enough.

That is not the case.

The young voters and the voters of color who have left Joe Biden in this poll are more disengaged from politics.

They are more moderate.

They do not necessarily think that Joe Biden isn't progressive enough.

They also don't think he's too liberal.

Most of them say that ideologically he's just fine.

They are upset about the age and they are upset about the economy.

And they aren't abortion, democracy, a lot of the social issues are not their top issue.

Their top issue is the economy.

That is the number one issue for a lot of these young voters.

They are extremely extremely disaffected.

And in general, they did not show up in the midterms.

So you must be thinking to yourself, like, okay, what about all the young voters I know that are very progressive and voters of color who are progressive?

They showed up in the midterms, and they voted for Democrats, and they have supported Joe Biden in the past.

So those voters are with us.

The voters who did not show up, if you just correct Joe Biden's problems with the voters who didn't show up in the midterms, he would be ahead right now.

Yeah,

and

if you just take the young voters who were open to Kamala, but not to Biden, you erase a lot of the gap.

And by the way, it's not like Kamala Harris is beating Donald Trump.

A generic Democrat is beating Donald Trump.

Kamala Harris is doing better than Joe Biden is doing, but she still carries some of the effects of incumbency.

59% of voters under 30 rated the economy as poor.

Zero respondents under 30 in Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin said the economy was excellent.

The other thing about this, too, is the message that's driving the midterms right now, trying to turn people out against right-wing extremism and turn people out in favor of abortion, which helped a great deal in the midterms.

These voters that we need to bring back aren't the kind of voters who turned out in the midterms.

Now, the question is, are they

people that are receptive to an argument around abortion and democracy, but it hasn't reached them yet?

40% of voters who picked Trump in this poll said that abortion should always or mostly be legal, and they picked Trump anyway.

And so what is it that we need to do to to reach those voters with a message around abortion?

Or is it that questions around this, we've talked about this before, like, you know, we have this belief that this argument for democracy is really effective.

It is for a certain segment of voter-strictly engaged people.

And also, by the way, for a lot of like moderate older voters that are the kind of people that have come to Joe Biden.

But for younger, disaffected voters, we're making an argument for democracy in a democracy they don't feel is working for them.

So what is it you need to do to make that case case around abortion, around democracy, and around basic economic issues to bring those people in in a way that we're currently not doing because clearly

there is something really missing here.

You got a real Nevada problem.

Well, 17% of Nevada Democrats said they'll vote for Trump.

Also, the most diverse state.

And it's very odd how for the first time in a long time, racial polarization has gone the other way in this poll.

So someone was like, people are

rightly questioning, like, well, then why is Biden leading by two in Wisconsin?

Wisconsin was a tight state.

Wisconsin is the whitest and one of the older states.

And he's doing next, the next two best states for him are Michigan and Pennsylvania.

And those are also pretty white states, but except for the areas around Philadelphia and Detroit where he's not doing that well.

And there's subsequent survey data.

that came that was done after this New York Times poll that suggests that Biden has some real problems with Arab American, Muslim American, young voters in Michigan that I think is just something to keep in the back of your head.

The other interesting thing is when you, Biden is doing better in this poll with likely voters than registered voters.

And if you just go by likely voters, he actually catches up to Trump in Michigan, and then he does better in some other ones.

And that's part of this is,

and Nate Cohn goes into this in the polling analysis, which is like some of these younger voters, when you asked them the first time, do you pick Biden or Trump?

They said neither.

And then it was only when you pushed them, they said, maybe Trump, but they don't really love Trump either.

They're not like sold on Trump.

And the question is, do these voters just stay home in 2024?

And so we also could be headed for a very bizarre situation where a lower turnout election helps Joe Biden, which is, again, why Democrats, one of the reasons why Democrats did so well in the midterms, because the type of voters who show up in the midterms, college educated, in cities, suburbs, like those were now more Democratic voters.

There's also, I mean, look,

young people

are not suddenly discovering that they're open to Donald Trump in a strange way.

This poll to me is a little bit of a bizarre version of what we started to see in 2016 and, you know, didn't really accept as what was happening, which is this idea of Trump as just like this giant middle finger you can pull like a lever.

Like, are you for Joe Biden?

Are you for Donald Trump?

I'm for neither.

Well, you have to pick.

Fine, then fuck you.

I'll vote for Donald Trump.

Yeah, so there could be a little, there could be that, or it could be serious.

Or

we don't know.

I mean, the one thing I would say, look, I think we've done, done i think we've done our uh um our our uh penance to the pessimism gods i think we've we've paid our respects the fire is burning i i know i've i just real analysis i know no i know i'm not not i'm i'm agreeing i'm glad we're having this conversation there was one one piece of this is i think like there was a little note of a little note of hope a little

you know oh i have a couple yeah i have a couple i'm i'm i'm getting to the good side okay well just that one one that i thought was interesting is that that um if if if trump is uh convicted yeah of a crime six percent of voters across Arizona Georgia Michigan Nevada Pennsylvania Wisconsin said they would switch their votes to Biden I like which would change this entire poll it's not just barely I mean gets it at 49% Biden 40 no that means so it goes from Trump 48 Biden 44 to Biden 49 Trump 39 I mean that's and it's a it's a ball game but it's just it's not even a majority of the countries no but that's all you're saying yeah no I was I know 6% sounded small but then when I look at what they actually look at what happens in each state Biden's winning by double digits in every state no it's the it's the 49 is from

people who switch from Trump to Biden and also people, Trump voters who go to third party.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: But what I was going to say about that is, okay, people are very bad, I think, sometimes at imagining how a changing circumstance will change how they feel.

You'll see one number that I think was quite abysmal that I don't take very seriously is where people say they would never do this or never do that.

There's several of our presidents have been people who have had polls that said more than the majority would never support them.

But the fact that even just imagining it, there are 6% of people who switch tells you that like the impact of what happens with Donald Trump is convicted could have like a massive shift in

polling.

It is the biggest source of optimism in this poll that if Donald Trump is convicted,

but it also speaks to

all of we say it a million times, but like all of us who pay such close attention to politics and are like news junkies, like most voters are just normies.

They don't pay that close attention to politics.

And so you know what?

Because we're all like, how could they see that Donald Trump did this and said this?

And how could they still vote for him?

And like, they're not paying that close attention.

They forget pretty easily.

And you know what?

They really care about the economy, but there are also people who, if they see a candidate for president get convicted of a crime, they're going to be like, oh, no, I don't think that's a good idea.

I don't want to vote for that person.

I'm pretty unhappy with Joe Biden.

I think he's a little too old, but this guy's a criminal.

Like, it does make sense that like when you,

whenever you're confused about the electorate, just think, like, what are normal people who don't pay close attention to politics thinking right right now?

I will say I had that thought and then I gave myself another anxiety thought, which is, okay,

there's a huge concern among young people that Joe Biden is too old.

And that is especially pronounced among people who are disaffected and don't play close attention.

Over the next year,

if they do start paying closer attention, if the coverage starts shifting to a head-to-head race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, is Joe Biden

on the campaign for the next 11 months and 29 days, is that going to leave people reassured around his age?

Or is that going to bring more attention, especially given the way it's edited and shared on social media,

more fodder for people's deep concerns?

That's up to him in the campaign.

The other sign of optimism is: look, the voters that are giving Trump the lead in this poll are voters that have typically supported Democrats and just supported Biden, in fact, by large margins, right?

Young voters, black voters, Hispanic voters.

So, in theory, these are easier voters to win back for Joe Biden, right?

Like this, the idea that Donald Trump could get 20% of the black vote, something that has not happened with, forget about Donald Trump, any Republican president in the post-Civil Rights Act era, like that would be, and Nate Cohn says this in the analysis, it would be like a earthquake in American politics.

And it is probably unlikely, right?

Now, does...

Donald Trump can still win without 20%.

He got 8% last time.

He could get 9, 10, 11, and probably win that way.

But it does speak to the idea that once you, like Tommy said, throw a billion dollars into a campaign,

start polarizing, you know, a campaign that reminds people what they care about, what Donald Trump is all about, what Democrats are all about, what's at stake for them and their lives, like the numbers could start shifting.

That's the other thing.

And the other, look, an unnamed generic Democrat led Trump by this poll by three in 2019.

Now the unnamed generic Democrat leads Trump by eight, right?

And that just goes to show that like Trump has become less popular between 2019 and now.

The problem is Biden led Trump by two in 2019 in this poll at this time and now loses by five.

So it is a Biden issue.

Yeah, and just the other the other piece of this, too, is

people do not, again, this is not a poll that shows Donald Trump's strengths, it shows his weaknesses.

People that are choosing between two options they're extremely unhappy with are not making a firm and solid choice.

They're not, this is not a like, this is not a,

this, this result may mirror a lot of polls in the past, but it's not, it's not stable because the support because people's decision is firm.

It is stable because people are really unhappy with their choices and they continue to have that feeling.

So our pal David Axelod caused quite a stir when he said that Joe Biden needs to decide whether it's in his best interest or the country's best interest to keep running.

What do you guys think of Axe's Twitter thread there?

I mean, let's just start with the fact that David Axelrod is a good person who genuinely cares about the future of the country, and he's not doing this to be a dick or because he wants to hurt Joe Biden or, you know, any other nefarious reason.

He's just worried like everybody else.

I think what is so hard about this situation we're all in is nobody wants to make the mistakes of 2016 again.

Nobody wants to

convince themselves that, oh, there's no way a Democrat could lose Pennsylvania or there's no way that Hillary Clinton can't win to someone as terrible as a human being as Donald Trump.

So we're going to all get asked the hard questions and kind of speak truthfully about these polls.

But you also don't want to contribute to Joe Biden's political problems by helping generate unhelpful unhelpful narratives about his candidacies, right?

So that's the

push and pull.

The hard place we're all stuck in.

But at the end of the day, unless you're a Dean Phillips supporter or you're excited by Marianne Williamson,

there's no one else in the Democratic primary for you to vote for.

So, and I've seen no evidence that Joe Biden's considering dropping out.

So, as much as I respect Axelrod's opinion, I don't think that Joe Biden is going to listen to David Axelrod on this question.

I don't think he's going to listen to us either.

I think there's probably a very small group of friends and family and advisors that Biden may or may not talk to about a question like this.

And so, you know,

I get where Axe is coming from, but I also get why the White House is frustrated that he tweeted it, you know?

So you're totally extremely small group of people, probably a smaller group of people than most others, right?

Like Biden has a very close circle, and Joe Biden is going to make this decision.

And the only people he's going to listen to are probably Jill Biden and Valerie, his sister, and probably not even Barack Obama, right?

Like not like it's a very small group of of people.

And so you focus on the things you can control and not the things you can't control.

We cannot control.

We're not going to get like a hashtag trending on Twitter to get Joe Biden to step aside.

Like we cannot control this, right?

And Axe can't control it.

No one can control it.

So it's got to be something that he decides.

Now, if he did decide at some point to step aside, then you have Kamal Harris, who's still in this poll losing to Trump.

by a little by just almost the same as Biden, just slightly better.

And then you've got Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, J.B.

Pritzker, maybe Raphael Warnock, none of whom have been tested on the national stage or even in the polls yet.

They'd have to get on the ballot in most primary states this month.

Then when are the debates?

When and how do they all raise money?

How's everyone supposed to choose between them by January or February or March when these primaries are?

Now, I'm not saying that's all impossible.

It can happen, but The alternative scenario where Joe Biden steps down tomorrow brings a bunch of challenges on its own that I think we should just be ware of before everyone's like, oh, that's the, that's, that would be the saving grace if he just stepped down.

Like it's, there's a lot of challenges to that at this point.

I was really like very late.

I also, by the way, one reason there's a very small circle of people that Joe Biden would listen to on this question is Joe Biden.

One reason Joe Biden is president is because he didn't listen to the people who told him why he's in the city.

It goes through his head all the time.

It goes through his staff's head all the time.

And I get it.

And it's right.

And like, you know, never, you know, Ron Clain said this, never underestimate how much people will underestimate Joe Biden.

I think that's true.

I think about that.

I think about that in my own reaction to this because, you know, I have this, we all have these, we're all in conversations.

Everyone listening to this show is talking to people about their concerns about this.

And their concerns

that, as much as they are worried about Joe Biden's age and his liabilities, that you don't feel certain that you would want to live in a world tomorrow where Joe Biden said he wasn't running.

And all of a sudden, not the fantasy of a perfect alternative, but the reality of a messy and very quick and very contentious process to choose an alternative is suddenly

what we are dealing with.

I don't know what that's like.

Neither do you.

Neither does anybody.

And so I don't know.

You know, Democrats, we get along.

We don't fight.

I'm sure a primary that lasted a month or two, I think it would go well.

I just say, I mean,

if Joe Biden did decide to drop out to tomorrow, and I'm not saying I'm calling for him or I want him to or anything like that, but if he did, I'm actually fine with a messy primary.

I think messy primaries are good.

It gets a lot of attention right now.

Oh, yeah, I'm too.

I'm just totally fine.

It's just, it wouldn't be simple.

No.

If you jumped in tomorrow, you already wouldn't be on the ballot in Nevada, New Hampshire, and you have to get on the ballots in Alabama, Michigan, and South Carolina by the end of this week, and California and Florida by the end of the month.

So it's an incredibly complicated piece of business.

And that's why I think people find Dean Phillips so fucking annoying because

even if people were like hungry for some Dean Phillips in their lives, he should have done this a year ago, not a week or two ago.

And also just and start playing out.

They're all going to want to differentiate themselves from each each other on issues.

The progressive base activists are still going to be there demanding certain positions.

Just as an example, everyone gets in, Joe Biden gets out, and suddenly it's like, who's going to call for a ceasefire?

Right.

And which of you are going to call for, which were

going to say no more aid to Israel, right?

And then you're going to start dividing up that.

And like, things are going to get, and that's just one issue.

Don't threaten me with a good time.

I know, you know, I know.

But I'm saying, that's just one issue, right?

Like, there's a whole bunch of other issues that are contentious.

And suddenly we're like, off to the existence.

I agree, Tommy, that like it,

I do not fear primaries I never have but it's a it's a scenario that's that's not without challenges it is 44 years to the day since Ted Kennedy decided he was going to challenge Jimmy Carter I think that looms over a lot of this people are worried that they would jump in lose and leave behind a weakened Joe Biden but

underneath that is also I think the reality that look even Axel Rodney was asked about this by the Times he obviously did an interview after and he said give me Joe Biden's record chop off 10 to 15 years I'd be really confident right Dean Phillips goes Me too.

Me too.

We all would.

Dean Phillips goes on television and says, I'm not running against Joe Biden.

I'm running for the future.

Okay.

What?

Why?

What's different?

Why are you better?

Why?

And, and, and it, the, the, yeah, Dean Phillips kind of proves the point of how the

alternate scenario is complicated, but it's not the easiest either.

Yeah, Barack Obama can challenge Hillary Clinton and he can use a generational frame, but that's as part as an avatar for deeper cultural, political, ideological differences.

Which he laid out over the

campaign.

The key one being supportive for the Iraq War.

Of course.

Steen Phillips is out there having voted with Joe Biden 100% of the time, saying, I'm better than him.

Why?

I just like, we are in one year.

I don't think so.

Right.

In one year, there's four boxes.

One of them is Joe Biden wins.

One of them is Joe Biden loses.

One of them is somebody else wins.

And one of them is somebody else loses.

If Joe Biden stays in the race,

people will look back at this moment and say, I told you so.

If Joe Biden gets out and a Democrat loses, people will look back at this moment and say i told you so i don't care about i told you so's i just think collectively collectively we have to be honest about our own uncertainty and anxiety that it is legitimate that it is real but that nobody has an easy or simple answer

yeah yeah and you know what and i actually don't worry about the conversation and having this conversation and i don't really worry about access tweet because we just talked about the voters who are worried about here they are not paying attention to this

they have no idea we're having this conversation it's just the freaks right now just just us freaks it really you know and like if Joe Biden goes through and he's running and he's the nominee, we're all going to just do every fucking thing possible to get him elected because Donald Trump in a second term is fucking terrifying.

I had a very smart, very thoughtful reporter today ask me if Barack Obama commenting on the situation in Gaza created political problems for Joe Biden.

And I very, very confidently said, no, the situation in Gaza creates political problems for Joe Biden, right?

Because that is the core thing.

No, I know, I know.

It's a DC story from a DC outlet.

So it is what it is, but it's like, yes, in terms of the things that actually move people, the voters are actually paying attention to, it's not going to be this debate we're all having.

Do you hear that?

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In the mountains, able to hear your own thoughts,

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Hey, it's Kirsten Gillibrand here at the DSCC with a very important message.

Something big is taking shape.

Democrats are gaining in the polls.

We're winning special election after special election, and we are far from through.

But I need your help to keep the work going and flip the Senate seats to finally put a check on Trump.

Will you chip in before midnight to help Democrats win the Senate?

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So the candidate who's somehow leading the race for the presidency

took the stand in the New York civil fraud trial that could cost him his business empire.

Donald Trump's four-hour testimony included multiple rants.

He was yelling at Letitia James, the attorney general.

He was yelling at the judge.

The judge at one point asked Trump's lawyer to control his client.

At one point told Trump this isn't a political rally.

And then of course Trump couldn't help but talk to the cameras as he left the courtroom.

Let's listen.

I think it went very well.

I think you were there and you listened and you

see what scam this is.

This is a case that should have never been brought.

I don't have to be here for the most part, but I certainly do have to be here because I want to be here.

This is a sad day.

I think it's a very sad day for America.

Seems like he's really impressed the guy who's going to decide how much money he has to pay, huh?

I keep coming back to that.

I keep coming back to that.

There's no jury.

Not a jury.

There's no jury.

It's not televised.

He's not playing for the cameras.

The person he is antagonizing is 100% in charge.

And by the way, not his guilt or innocence.

This guy already called him guilty a month ago.

This is purely about assessing how much this guy wants to punish Donald Trump.

And he walks in every day and just like puts a thumb in his eye every fucking day, comes up with a new way to make this judge absolutely fucking hate him.

And I love it.

And he does these little press avails from behind a couple layers of bike rack that makes him look like he's currently in prison, by the way.

And then to your point, though, about them like doing, worrying about all the wrong things, Don Jr.

and Eric testified last week.

Ivanka testifies on Wednesday.

Don Jr.

and Eric, I believe, blamed their accountants or suggested they didn't look at financial statements.

But then

Don Jr.

went on social media and basically spent three days whining that Sam Bankman Freed got like a weirdly hot courtroom sketch and that Don Jr.

made him look ugly.

And it's like, hey, man, maybe focus on the fact that SBF is going to go to jail for a very long time and you don't want to do that either.

That courtroom sketch, though, that was wild.

It was weird.

That did not look like him.

Yeah.

No, it did not.

Anyway, that's just an aside.

I just, I don't, like, I know that sometimes we assign strategy to Trump and even if it's not like a well-thought-out strategy, it's like he's got like a good instinct or he's got an instinct for being a showman or media or whatever.

But like, there isn't, this is not instinct.

pissing off the judge that's going to decide how much you owe.

This is him being an undisciplined fuck.

Like, he's just like the guy he, he, when you, because when he walked into the courtroom and they asked him questions he did the like he pretended he was like zipping up his mouth right because he's under a gag order so he like knew that he shouldn't do this and then he just can't help himself this is why we got to get him out on the campaign trail again got to get him out there cover him all the time the guy can't help himself he always falls back into the undisciplined donald trump that screws himself well it's also like it's very it's very much like um an inner monologue that then pops out.

So he's on the stand and he's about the judge.

He said, he called me a fraud and he didn't know anything about me, Trump said, referencing the judge, the judge who's in the room.

First of all, rude to talk about somebody in the third person when they're sitting there.

Absolutely.

But then the judge retorts, read my opinion, perhaps for the first time.

That's a good one.

The New York Times live blog pointed out that he even embarked on an impassioned ode to his Scottish golf course, calling it the greatest golf course ever built.

Again.

Who is that helping, Doc?

I know.

So in case voters aren't put off by electing a convicted felon who tried to overturn the last election, perhaps Trump's plans for a second term will give people pause.

The Washington Post reports that Trump intends to use the Justice Department to not only investigate Democratic opponents like Joe Biden and his family, but also former allies who've turned against him, like Bill Barr and John Kelly.

He's got the whole list.

He's got the whole list.

And this is even more alarming.

Because the Bill Barr, John Kelly thing, yeah, I kind of laughed.

It's really alarming.

Trump's goons...

are reportedly drawing up plans to invoke the Insurrection Act as early as Inauguration Day to deploy the military against any anti-Trump protesters.

It has a name.

It's a group of outside people.

It has a name.

It's called Project 2025.

Yeah, I think it's like, how is it the Heritage Foundation?

What's happening over there?

For the first time, nothing good.

Accelerationists.

But usually they're just talking about supply-side economics.

Now they're using the military against the American people.

Like, can we get enough people to care about that?

Or would voters rather a president who threatens them at gunpoint than Joe Biden, who's a little too old?

Yeah, yeah.

Put this in a fucking ad.

Put this in an ad.

People need to.

I'm not convinced this one's going to work.

Look, I care a lot about this.

Deploying the military against demonstrators is very bad.

He's told advisors that he wants the Department of Justice to investigate all of his allies.

Apparently, John Kelly, his former chief of staff, said that in the first term, Trump would tell his White House counsel to have the FBI investigate his enemies, and they would just kind of pocket veto those kind of crazy demands.

But in the second term, you're not going to have thoughtful, reasonable people in any of these jobs.

It's going to be the lunatics chosen by this Heritage Foundation group of whoever it is, Stephen Miller.

I do not think,

sadly, that people will give a shit that if Donald Trump goes after Bill Barr and John Kelly or even Democrats.

And I hate that, but I worry about what the polls would say about that.

I do think military against the American people is something that would get people going.

And I could be wrong, but I'd love to.

Maybe you just got to convince them it's like real story and not just like hyperbolic reporting from Democrats or whatever.

That's how I, like, I don't,

there's this, we're in this vice grip again, which is that when Trump is off the front pages, people forget how terrible he is and how monstrous he is.

And then when he's back on the front pages,

the tears of his horrors kind of meld together and it ends up being a kind of like...

fire alarm that's always going off about the ways he'll abuse the Justice Department, his threat to abortion rights,

his chaos, the fact that

the military said they wouldn't launch nuclear weapons if he wanted to launch them, unleashing

the cops into Lafayette Park.

It's just like the crime and the corruption and the scandal.

And I don't have an answer to it, but I do think that like it does end up becoming either silence or noise.

And I don't know.

I don't think it's it's it's we don't know because it's nothing right now.

No one's doing it.

And I think like even on that one, I would,

there's the images of the trip across Lafayette Park when he tried to do it there.

There's him saying he wished he did it.

He wished he invoked the Insurrection Act.

We have that.

Then we have the Washington Post story.

So you're right.

Like just a story and a headline.

I don't think you're going to, I know there's challenges, but you can tell a story.

Here's how we square the circle.

Bill Barr, John Kelly, General Milley, the top military and political aides to Donald Trump.

Maybe this can convince them to sit down on camera and tell the stories that they tell to the Atlantic on background, or when they go to the Aspen Institute forum and they get drunk with the editors of some fancy magazine.

Like, sit down, record these on camera, tell us what you heard, tell us the worst stories, and maybe you can prevent this outcome that includes you getting prosecuted.

I mean, we have some of them doing that during the January 6th hearings,

which I think had an effect in the deterrent.

What I was going to add is Trump has now taken to referring to the January 6th insurrectionists who've been convicted as hostages.

Did you see this?

And I think that images of the Capitol and images of what these people did and of the people who died and the chaos, and you put video of Donald Trump calling them hostages, that he's basically saying, or sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, that he will pardon and release.

I think that's pretty fucking damning.

Because again, one of his lowest moments is when people saw January 6th, they really internalized just how dangerous he was.

We have to put that back in people's minds.

Yeah.

I do.

It's like turning the military against the American people is going to be, it's chilling to people.

And I think that like we got to, we got to, I mean, we've got to figure out a way to make the case because it's the truth.

It's not just like a political attack.

It's, it's what he's going to do.

It's what he wanted to do before.

And like, if for no other reason than that, you like, you have to make that case.

I also just, I also think this ties back to the conversation we had about polling, too, because I do think that like we're, we're,

you know, we're, our minds go right to, right, what do you do?

How to react?

What does it mean?

But you step back from this, and it's like, I think a lot of people see a poll like that.

And like, to your point, they're like, I don't understand, I don't understand.

And you're like, the point you made is right.

Like, people don't know.

They're not seeing it.

These are the disaffected people.

These are the people that aren't paying as close of attention.

That's a big part of it.

But another part of it, too, is like the fact that Joe Biden came in in the wake of

a pandemic.

facing a recalcitrant Republican opposition and managed to get as much done as he did get done and that he's not getting any credit for it.

That is obviously something the Joe Biden campaign has to deal with.

It's something that we as people that want to make sure a Democrat wins has to deal with.

But it is, I think, okay to point out, like, we are, we start with a handicap of a media environment in which it is very hard for people to get informed and understand what's going on in the world.

And like, that sucks.

That is really frustrating.

That makes politics a slog.

It makes it feel impossible.

And like, that isn't even, that isn't, yes, the Joe Biden campaign has to deal with that reality, but that's not on, that's not on Democrats.

That's not on us as individuals who care about this.

That is the reality of dealing with this broken system that made someone like Trump eligible to be president in the first place.

That's all.

Let's not forget that if Trump wins, it's very likely that Mikey Johnson remains Speaker of the House.

And the more we learn about this guy,

weirder he gets.

Here's a clip from all the way back in 2022.

I first saw this clip.

I was like, oh, is this someone unearthing this from the early 2000s?

No, no, no, 2022, where Johnson talks about using an app that allows he and his son to monitor each other's potential porn intake.

Covenant Eyes is the software that we've been using a long time in our household.

It's a subscription-based, we don't make any money on this.

I'm telling you, we use it, okay?

I'm endorsing it because I'm a user.

It scans, you obviously opt into it, but it scans every all the activity on your phone or your devices, your laptop, tablet, what have you.

We do all of it.

And then it sends a report to your accountability partner.

So my accountability partner right now is Jack, my son, right?

And so he's 17.

So he and I get a report of all the things that are on our phones or all of our devices once a week.

If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice.

I'm proud to tell you my son has got a clean slate, all right?

So

who's going to be a kind of, you two are going to be accountability partners?

I got Dan.

Yeah.

First of all, I just, it's hard enough being a teenager these days without big brother stopping you from masturbating.

You know?

He's like, look, I'm so proud my son's devices are clean.

It's like, okay, I guess he's using his imagination.

What are he?

It's a fucking teenage boy.

I don't care.

I don't care how many Bibles are in the house.

There is an unspoken understanding between fathers and sons that

you know that I know that you know what it's like to be a teenage boy.

And you know that I know, but we're not going to talk about that.

We're not going to send any transparency reports.

We're not going to talk about any slate being wiped clean, wiped clean of what, sir.

Like, this is fucking madness.

And I've seen a bunch of people on Twitter be like, oh, you know, I grew up in the evangelical church.

There were apps like this.

You know, like, this is the, that's the furthest thing from my upbringing.

So cult chalk, that's a cultural blind spot for me, I guess.

But having your accountability partner.

You know why the spot's so blind?

Having your accountability partner be your son?

That is a myth, John.

Having your accountability partner be your son is so fucking weird.

It's that is so weird.

I also like, um.

Someday he's going to snap and just to get back at his dad.

He's gonna he's gonna go house on that phone.

And Mike Johnson's gonna get quite a report someday.

Um

like I there's sort of a there's a there's a

so speaker Johnson.

Sorry to bring this up, but uh it sounds like but for Covenant Eyes, you'd be whacking it off constantly or what?

What are we talking about here?

How badly do you need this app?

It is really sus that you need an app to keep you from looking at porn.

Something's deeper there.

This is from this is from the promotional materials for Covenant Eyes.

Install the sensor app on all

Isn't that the enemy of these?

Isn't that what God's trying to stop them from doing?

By the way, isn't God the Covenant Eyes?

Why do you need an app to stop you if God is seeing it all?

Well, now we're getting into the real rest of it.

Just saying.

You know who I just really want to hear answer a question about Mike Johnson in this app just for fun because you know it's going to be a great response.

It's Donald Trump.

Yeah.

Don't you want to hear it?

A type five.

Don Jr.

I want to

hear a type five from Donald Trump on the covenant.

Because every once in a while, Donald Trump, he won't say anything bad, but he'll have this smile on his face like he's like,

we all know Pence is a freak.

Because Donald Trump does not want to be tied to the guy who's this fucking freaky.

He's just not like that.

I also want I want it to be a debate question this week.

Let's ask.

I want to hear Tim Scott talk about it.

I want to hear Ron DeSantis talk about it.

We always hear in the media and in polling that like Democrats are too liberal and that we're pushing this cultural agenda that some people don't like and it's foreign to them.

This is so much weirder than anything that the Democratic Party talks about.

This is batshit to me.

We thought it was cool to do the

car on the roof for Romney in the 2012 campaign.

That was this i would i would be talking about this thing

i will say i am sure too i will just to not to make i don't want to go

i like

there are plenty of people like just to internet porn like i am sure the next round of this story is going to be what the way the

head on there's so much hedging i'm trying to articulate this i'm trying to articulate

this to be a clip uh i'm trying to articulate this that

I think the next round of this story is going to be conservatives saying that liberals, oh,

you think kids looking at porn is good and you want

porn is good.

And look, like

the creepiness of this aside, like, I am sure there's going to be a round.

That's all I was getting at.

It's going to be a round of story, but like internet porn is bad for a lot of teens.

And it is actually, I think, really harmful for a lot of kids.

And it is like on a list of things that we,

one thing I thought when I saw this is like, in the same way that like food is really unhealthy and there's sugar and everything so you need to either be more disciplined than you than than you could ever hope to achieve or internalize body positivity despite the the whole culture telling you that you should feel ugly that there's so much porn everywhere and you need to be disciplined and stop looking at it we got a real Clinton V chip staffer over here well I do I just

what are you running for I'm not running for anything I'm not running for anything I'm running at home I got some cool content I need to watch Listen, all I know is that Mike Johnson is giving me a priest of confession who wants to hear a little too much about your masturbation vibes, and I don't like it.

I don't like it at all.

Wait, now what are you picturing?

Nothing.

And what are they wearing?

And they're wearing what?

Robes.

Well, kind of multiple.

I just think it's something for families to figure out.

Oh, yeah.

And I think they have.

They have.

He's not making us download Covenant Eyes not yet.

Not yet.

Not till Trump's second term.

Right.

Imagine how pissed you'd be if you're doing it.

Military in the streets.

Yeah, military in the streets coming up in the streets.

That was really cute the way you guys did that together.

Yep.

Yep.

That's why that's why we're accountability partners.

You get Dan.

Yeah, you get Dan.

You get to find out what kind of porn Dan likes.

Are we done?

Anyway, let's introduce our interview with Barack Obama.

That was way worse than I thought it was.

Before we get to our interview with Barack Obama, a few quick housekeeping notes.

Thank God.

Join us tonight.

Knock, knock, knock.

Housekeeper comes in.

You forgot to pay me.

Oh, is there nothing I can do?

What?

I'm just doing a porn story.

Oh, God.

Join us tonight, Tuesday night from 4 to 9 p.m.

Pacific for our election night support group on the Friends of the Pod Discord.

That'll be fun.

Then on Wednesday, November 8th, we'll be back on Discord for our group thread that will cover the third Republican primary debate.

That should be fun.

If you haven't joined Friends of the Pod yet, you're missing out on lots of fun.

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We've got more shows coming up.

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Also, check out What a Day and Hysteria.

They're going to have their own breakdowns of Tuesday's election results and what it all means.

So check all that out.

All right.

Last Thursday and Friday, we had the privilege of gathering in Chicago with a couple thousand of our closest friends to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Obama winning the 2008 election.

As part of the festivities that were hosted by the Obama Foundation, Tommy, Dan, Alyssa, and I got to sit down on stage with the man himself.

We talked about how Obama thinks about the election now, the future of democracy, the war in Gaza, and what all of us can do to help save democracy.

And also, if you like the 2008 Obama nostalgia, we have some great subscription exclusive content on this very topic coming your way.

So again, sign up at crooked.com slash friends to be the first to hear it.

When we come back, President Barack Obama.

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Democrats are gaining in the polls.

We're winning special election after special election, and we are far from through.

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It's more than an SUV.

It's your Equinox.

Chevrolet, Together Let's Drive.

What up, what up?

I was wearing a jacket and then

there was...

you know, this whole faux casual thing.

It's not the, I've been this way my whole life.

But then Alyssa did remind me, you know, that the whole shirt sleeve,

you know, roll up the sleeves thing, you know, that is

kind of the brand.

That's the vibe.

Yeah.

For this crew.

So good to see everybody.

You too.

Hello.

Good to see everybody.

Okay, so first question is from me.

Okay.

Okay.

So 15 years ago, a lot of people in this room were in Grant Park, unarguably the nicest night that Chicago ever could have given us, weather-wise.

Unbelievable.

And I know that all of us have talked over the years about, well, do you remember this and do you remember that?

And like, our memories have iterated.

And so I just wanted to ask you, can you tell us what you think about that night when you look back on it?

I'll be honest with you, and

some of you have heard me say this.

I felt pretty sober that night

because

I was fairly optimistic at that point that we were going to win.

And I had said to everybody on the campaign trail, to staff, that

the point of winning

was not

the celebration and standing up.

The point of winning was then to do the work.

And

I have to say

by the time the official announcement was made, I was already spending a lot of time thinking about

the work.

And so

there was a satisfaction.

The thing probably that I remember the most

was

sitting in the hotel waiting for the final call.

And Pete Souza took a picture of this.

Some of you may have seen it.

Michelle was off with the girls doing something

in another corner of the room.

And I'm sitting there with Michelle's mom.

And we're just watching the television.

And she's just quiet, and she's just sitting there.

And I remember

thinking to myself,

what is

what does this mean for her?

She was born and raised in Englewood on the South Side, had moved then to South Shore,

married, raised a family.

During her childhood,

even

her going or being taken to

Marshall Fields or one of the department stores downtown

If she could go in, she wouldn't have been welcomed.

She had family,

people,

smart, skilled tradesmen,

some educators who could never aspire

to

do more than

work in a factory or work as a clerk.

And so she's sitting there and she's witnessing that her daughter is about to be the first lady of the United States.

And I remember her just, she's very quiet and then she just,

and she's not a demonstrative person, and she just

reached out and held my hand.

And I think

that's something that stayed with me.

I was thinking about how much the world has changed over the last 15 years.

And obviously,

you dealt with your fair share of crises in the White House.

We all remember that.

But

we were never living in fear that if we lost the next election, that we might lose our democracy.

And obviously, that is a fear that is very much with us right now.

And I know you've talked a lot about what it will take to protect democracy.

And, you know, that involves policies that improve people's lives, and structural reforms, and strengthening institutions, and winning elections.

But you and I have talked a lot over the years about the power of a really good story.

And I wonder if you were running for president today in this political environment, in this media environment,

what story would you tell

about why democracy is a better choice than what the demagogues and authoritarians are selling?

So

I think the starting point

is to talk about the things that are uppermost uppermost on people's mind to give you a permission structure to get to democracy, right?

One of the things

we learned about 2016 is

if you are simply running against

and

fear

and you don't have a positive story to tell about

the concrete challenges that people face, folks may not get to that higher level

story about the meaning of the country and so forth.

So

I remember during the midterms when I was a surrogate helping folks out,

one of the things I really insisted on is, well,

we need to talk about inflation.

And we need to talk about crime.

And we need to talk about immigration.

We need to talk about the things that

are

uppermost in people's minds or being fed to people

and

speak about those squarely.

And that's the gateway to then get to

where we want to be.

So that's point number one.

Look,

if you think back to what we did in

08,

12,

ideally when we were on our game during the course of

the presidency,

the story really didn't change about America.

And

the story

was

you have a bunch of people show up on these shores.

Many of them outcasts, many of them escaping tyranny, escaping

crushing poverty, escaping discrimination,

escaping caste,

and

trying to

make of their lives what

they could, and even more importantly, trying to make sure that their kids had something different.

And

it was

always

a

from the very beginning

an experiment in overcoming the gap between ideals and reality.

And democracy was never exactly as promised.

And then we had a bunch of people

who worked together

to realize that promise.

And I think the argument

we can tap into right now

is

remembering, reminding people of the fact that

we've been through stuff like this before.

We've been through eras in which

not that long ago,

in which

black people were second-class citizens, in which gay people were in the closet

out of necessity, because otherwise they might

not be able to be employed,

or worse.

We've been in situations in which women

were subordinate.

And

the good news is, is that

because

we had this system of being able to persuade each other

about the better angels of our nature

in fits and starts,

we got better.

We got kinder, we got more tolerant.

And it was, it's never been perfect, and it's never been,

it's always been messy,

but but there was a there was a pathway for us to express our best selves.

And that

was true not just for Democrats, it was true for Republicans too.

And so I think that's the starting point for them to be able to say,

and some of you have heard me say this, you know, it's not as if the entire history of this country, Democrats were on the right side of this thing.

Democrats, for most of modern history, up until the civil rights legislation,

they were anti-democratic

and terrorized people and killed them for trying to exercise their democracy.

So

we don't have clean hands.

And I think acknowledging that is, again, an entryway.

What I'm always trying to look for is a way to

get to the point

where

somebody

who

otherwise wouldn't listen and is fearful and is angry and suspicious

can stop because they feel as if I saw them for a second and I understood their lives.

And in that moment,

maybe then I can

persuade them

that

this precious thing we have, which is our ability to sort things out

and

exercise forbearance towards each other and

understanding and just getting along and listening.

If I can get to that moment,

then I think we'll be okay.

And that's really the instinct that people have.

Look,

let's face it, we did well in this last midterm,

not because all the trend lines were in our favor.

It was because the majority of people believe in that story and they recognize it in their own lives.

And so

speaking to them on those terms is what's vital, which is why I think the last time we were together,

you know, I said that kind of forbearance,

we have to exercise, we have to model and exercise as well.

And

a losing strategy for us, I think, is when

we

are so

insistent on our purity,

when we're so self-righteous about our positions,

that we can't see those folks,

or we're talking down to them, or

our general attitude is you know that

we're going to convince you about how wrong you are

I have not seen that work yet

now look

last point I'll make

and I I think about this a lot because I've been writing about it

there is there are times there are moments there is room for for a prophetic voice, just radical truth-telling.

And not only is that sometimes satisfying, but our own base sometimes needs to hear that, right?

But you have to pick and choose your spots, and you always have to, even when you're in that mode, you've got to give people an opening

to,

you have to give them an invitation to,

there's got to be room for them in that truth that you're speaking

You know,

I'm telling you something maybe that you don't want to hear, but you know what you I'll bet you can understand it and be a part of us addressing that truth

So

all right

Speaking of those kinds of conversations,

last week you wrote this thoughtful, you know, nuanced statement on the situation in Israel and Gaza.

Unfortunately,

the debate online, especially on social media, is not that.

It

can be very strident and dug in and a lot of people fighting and talking past each other.

I imagine there's a lot of people in this room or people listening at home who see what's happening, care deeply, want to be educated, want to participate in the conversation, but they're scared of saying the wrong thing, hurting someone's feelings unnecessarily, or just kind of not knowing enough to participate, and therefore they kind of tap out.

What's your advice to people who want to participate in these debates that can feel so fraught about what the path forward is?

Look,

I always say

I probably wouldn't have been elected

even to the Senate, and certainly not the presidency, had there not been this weird convergence with

the internet and early social media.

I was an outsider.

I didn't have the backing of

institutions and organizations.

And

there was so much power

in seeing all these young voices being able to gather together

from every walk of life.

But

I'm dating myself now.

It was mostly MySpace and Meetup.

And

I always,

because I've been working a lot on social media issues and misinformation and now AI.

I always point out, you know the thing about meetup

was you had to meet up.

Because it's a pretty crude flintstone tool, right?

You send, it's like, hey, we're going to be in the church basement

in Des Moines on Saturday, meet up.

That was pretty much the extent of the technology.

Yeah, it's like a corkboard.

But the reason I tell that story is

that

the power of meeting up is something that all of you will remember whenever we'd walk into a campaign office.

Whatever your idea of what an Obama supporter was when you got into the campaign office, just as

was true if you went to a meet up meeting, is you've got

a young black woman with a nose ring, and you've got

some middle-aged white guy in a flannel shirt and a a buzz cut who's a Army veteran and you've got a Hispanic

gay engineer and

and the reason that was powerful was because you imagine at the first meetup meeting okay I've got an assumption about what an Obama supporter is

But then when I sit there, it turns out that

that person's not actually completely like me.

And if they're talking, that means that they've got some quirky ideas.

And I promise you, you all know we had some quirky volunteers.

And

who had some unexpected views that did not correspond to

the litmus test of progressivism.

Right?

The reason I'm telling that story is because what that allowed was for

all of us to see each other in their complexity

and then

still decide, all right, let's work together.

And then they had to all go out and knock on doors and meet people who were even more quirky,

right?

So, going back to obviously a serious question,

there is always,

there's no way to avoid

in this particular moment on this particular issue after

so much blood has been spilled

against the backdrop of this history.

It

doesn't matter whether it's online or in person, there is going to be

rage and anger.

and

not just generational traumas, right?

I mean, this is

century-old stuff that's coming to the fore.

And

you are, and you've witnessed the kind of worst cruelty and tragedy that can befall people with involving children and

spouses and grandparents.

And

passions are going to be high.

But

what I will say is that

if there's any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something,

it will require

an admission of complexity

and maintaining

what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas,

that what Hamas did was horrific and there's no justification for it.

And what is also true is that

the occupation

and

what's happening to Palestinians is

unbearable.

And what is also true is that there is a history

of the Jewish people that

may be be dismissed unless your grandparents or your great-grandparents or your

uncle or your aunt tell you stories

about

the madness of anti-Semitism.

And what is true is that

there are people right now who are dying

who have nothing to do

with what Hamas did

and what is true, right?

I mean, we can go on for a while.

And the problem with the social media and trying to TikTok

activism and trying to debate this on that

is you can't speak the truth.

You can pretend to speak the truth.

You can speak one side of the truth.

And in some cases, you can try to maintain your moral innocence

by virtue of

just grabbing that slice of the truth.

But that won't solve the problem.

And so, if you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth,

and you then have to admit

nobody's hands are clean,

that

all of us are complicit to some degree.

I look at this and I think back, what could I have done during my presidency

to move this forward as hard as I tried?

I've got the scars to prove it.

But there's a part of me that's still saying, well,

Was there something else I could have done?

That's the conversation we should be having, not just looking backwards, but looking forward.

And that can't happen if

we are confining ourselves to our outrage.

And even what I just said, which sounds very persuasive,

still doesn't answer the fact of, all right, how do we prevent kids from being killed today?

So,

which is why in conversations that I've had with some of the young activists, I come with some humility and I say, look, I get why you might

not want to look at history and context.

That's your primary concern.

But the problem is, is that

if you are dug in on that, well, the other side is dug in remembering

the videos that Hamas took of what they did on 7th, and they're dug in too.

And which means we will not stop those kids from dying.

So,

my advice to young people who want to get involved:

I guess

it's not possible anymore to download Meetup.

Whatever it is.

But

approximate that.

I would rather see you

out there talking to people,

including people who you disagree with, if you

genuinely want to change this,

then you've got to figure out how to speak to somebody on the other side and listen to them and understand

what they are talking about

and

not dismiss it.

Because you can't save that child without their help.

Not in this situation.

So, all right.

We went over time, didn't we?

That zero's been on.

You know, look,

come on, you guys know me.

Don't bait me with a question like that and then think

I'm going to.

This is why I could never

win these debates.

That's actually Dan's last question.

That's right.

You know, I mean,

put one on the bottom.

That's all right.

All right.

Sir,

you sat down with us on your last full day in the White House, which is, I'm sure, how you planned to celebrate the end of your presidency.

I did.

You did.

And in that interview,

you talked about how you saw your legacy.

And you said that you wanted your legacy to be not necessarily the policies you passed.

but what the people who got involved in politics through your campaigns, your administration, were still doing years later to affect change.

So here we are on the 15th anniversary of your election.

Thousands of alumni are here.

And I just wanted to close out here to get your reaction to what you see from what the people in this room are doing and how it makes you feel.

I mean, I am beaming with pride.

I'm

listening to Jesse and Lauren.

You know, I've had a chance, you know, yesterday, obviously, I stopped by

your

drunken Bacchanal.

I had a chance just now to speak to

some of our senior team.

And

maybe some of you have already heard this, but I'm going to repeat it because I just it bears repeating.

I actually generally am not nostalgic.

As

I'm writing about the presidency, as I think about the presidency, as I look at current issues,

I tend to remember the mistakes I made and

the doubts and questions I have and

the things I didn't get done.

and I don't look at things through rose-colored glasses.

I remember how hard

every step of the way was.

But as I just mentioned,

the team,

the people,

the family, the culture that we constructed,

that

feels as true

as anything in my life.

And it was reflected

on the campaign and it was reflected in the White House.

It was, as Michelle said, reflected in people in high-profile positions

in the West Wing and East Wing.

It was reflected in people who were working out of the limelight and agencies and embassies.

It was reflected by a bunch of kids dropped off in the the middle of farms and

communities that

they had never imagined themselves being in.

And yet, somehow, a bunch of 25 and

some younger

would persuade

these communities

that

we had a chance to be better and

listen to each other and treat each other with respect.

And the fact that somehow that sustained itself

across this many people,

and

this is just a fraction of the people who were involved,

and that that now is carried forward,

whether it's

somebody

like Lauren in Congress, or

Deb Haland, you know, suddenly goes to,

you know,

or

it's somebody like Jesse

or some of the folks you saw in the video who are

in their own communities,

transforming

the the culture of those communities

and modeling

that kindness and hard work and responsibility and consideration and

openness to other people.

That

gets me

choked up.

That makes me proud.

And that is something that

I think part of what sometimes all of us who were part of this struggle with is

we know that's out there in the country.

We can feel it.

And we know that

when people

have a chance to feel that

in themselves and in their communities and in their neighborhoods, they feel better

than they do when they're angry and hateful and

closed off

and lonely

and feeling victimized.

We know that.

And so there's a part of us, I think, sometimes we just

are

so

often

What we're trying to figure out is

how can we remind people of that?

Not any particular campaign, but the fact that that honest human response is available to us and will ultimately save us.

That's why I'm so proud of all of you.

That's the thing that

doesn't get old and stays with me and keeps me going.

President Obama, thank you so much for doing this.

Thank you for bringing us all together and thank you for giving every single person in this room and countless others the chance to go on this journey with you.

All right.

Appreciate you guys.

Love you.

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