Barack Obama on Medium
Article by the President of the United States
BRIAN T. COHEN: It is my honor to be joined by the 44th President of United States, Barack Obama. Mr. President, thanks so much for joining me.
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: It is wonderful to be here, Brian. Thank you for having me.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: As you know better than anybody, the discourse has devolved into a level of cruelty that we haven’t seen before. What was disqualifying just a few years ago, now not only feels fine, acceptable, but actually rewarded. You have administration officials saying that the victims of ISIS aggression are domestic terrorists. You have JD Vance coming out and saying that it’s okay, you don’t have to apologize for being white. Just days ago, Donald Trump put a picture of you, your face on an ape’s body.
And so again, we’ve seen the devolution of the discourse. How do we come back from a place that we have fallen into?
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Well, first of all, I think it’s important to recognize that the majority of the American people find this behavior deeply troubling. It is true that it gets attention. It’s true that it’s a distraction. But as I’m traveling around the country, as you’re traveling around the country, you meet people, they still believe in decency, courtesy, kindness.
There’s this sort of clown show that’s happening in social media and on television, and what is true is that there doesn’t seem to be any shame about this among people who used to feel like you had to have some sort of decorum and a sense of propriety and respect for the office, right? That’s been lost.
But the reason I point out that I don’t think the majority of the American people approve of this is because ultimately, the answer is going to come from the American people. We just saw this in Minnesota, in Minneapolis.
It is important for us to recognize the unprecedented nature of what ICE was doing in Minneapolis, St. Paul, the way that federal agents, ICE agents were being deployed, without any clear guidelines, training, pulling people out of their homes, using five-year-olds to try to –
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: Bait their parents.
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: — bait, their parents, all the stuff that we saw, tear-gassing crowds simply who were standing there, not breaking any laws.
So the rogue behavior of agents of the federal government is deeply concerning and dangerous, but we should take a moment to appreciate the extraordinary outpouring of organizing, community building, decency, neighbors buying groceries for folks, accompanying children to school, teachers who were standing up for their kids, not just randomly, but in a systematic, organized way, citizens saying, “this is not the America we believe in,” and we’re going to fight back, and we’re going to push back with the truth and with cameras and with peaceful protests and shining a light on the sort of behavior that in the past, we’ve seen in authoritarian countries and we’ve seen in dictatorships, but we have not seen in America.
That kind of heroic, sustained behavior in subzero weather by ordinary people is what should give us hope, and should remind us that at the end of the day, the way we get a democracy that’s working and the way we get policies that actually are helping working families get ahead, the way that we restore norms, rule of law, decency, it’s going to be because we, citizens, are activated and paying attention and saying “enough” and saying we have a different idea of what the American family should look like and community should look like, and that is what I’m seeing across the board.
I was on a panel a while back, and I said, a lot of the values that we say we subscribe to during easy times, during peaceful times, it’s easy to say we believe in those things.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: When they’re not challenged.
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: When they’re not challenged. It’s easy to believe in free speech when it doesn’t seem like the government is trying to crack down on free speech.
It’s easy to say that we believe in the golden rule when we aren’t at risk of being arrested when we exercise the golden rule.
Right now, we’re being tested, and the good news is, what we saw in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and what we’re seeing in places across the country, including here in Los Angeles, has been the American people saying, no, you know what — at least a good number of the American people saying, we’re going to live up to those values that we say we believe in. As long as we have folks doing that, I feel like we’re going to get through this.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: I hear and appreciate what you’re saying about the agency of individuals. As we look toward our elected officials, our Democratic leaders, I think something that I’ve been having a lot of trouble reconciling is, for so long, it’s felt like Democrats are solely focused on protecting norms, institutions, processes, and then you’ve got a Republican Party that sees what it wants and will find a way to get it, laws be damned, constitution be damned, rules be damned. And we’re seeing that play out right now.
Given this massive asymmetry, where it often leaves us feeling like it’s a “Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown over and over and over again” situation.
What needs to be done, and do you think that our Democratic leadership and our Democratic elected officials understand that for the first time?
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Well, look, I think we have to acknowledge that we’ve got the harder job, right? We believe in government as a tool for good, as a potential force to create more jobs, and as a way to make sure that the planet doesn’t roast, to make sure that as we move forward and the economy grows, that everybody and not just some, are benefiting, and that kids are getting a good education.
What that means is that we have to think about the consequences of our action. We have to try to figure out, how do we get working majorities to actually pass laws and to implement those laws and to make things happen.
Tearing stuff down doesn’t require all that. You talk about Republicans, for example, seems like they see what they want and they just go after it. Well, they’ve passed one significant piece of legislation since they’ve been — for all the hoopla, they haven’t actually codified and institutionalized much of anything. They have poured a huge amount of money into ICE and their immigration agenda, and they’ve cut taxes for really wealthy people, and now they’re trying to unravel a bunch of rules and norms and laws that are already in place. That’s an easier job.
I say that because we should accept the responsibility and the challenge that our job is going to be a little bit harder, because in order for us to get stuff done, like let’s say, the Affordable Care Act, well, we’ve got to cobble together a majority, and we’ve got to persuade, and we’ve got to convince.
I do think that there’s been some unwillingness on the part of Democrats in the past to break down some of the institutional barriers for us getting stuff done, just because, well, it’s always been done that way.
I’ll give you an example that frustrated the heck out of me when I was president, which was the filibuster in the Senate. The Senate is already structurally skewed and anti-majoritarian. Like, it’s hard for majorities to get stuff done, whether it’s trying to pass civil rights legislation in the ’60s, or trying to get gun control legislation or what have you, because even though the majority of people support it, Delaware and Wyoming had the same number of senators as California, right? All right, so that that would require a constitutional amendment.
You then compound that with a filibuster, and the truth is that Democrats, for some time, have been traditionalists in wanting to preserve that, when it blocks us from making government effective, which in turn, makes people feel like government is corrupt and not caring about them.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: Which lends itself to the Republicans.
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Which then lends itself to the kind of — it gives folks like Trump an opening, right?
Redistricting is another good example of where I strongly believe we should not be having politicians draw lines that determine who’s voting for them. We should have voters decide who their politicians are. I’ve worked with Eric Holder to help set up the terrific work that NDRC has been doing to try to make sure that we have fair maps.
But the fact that Governor Newsom here in California and others said, well, if they’re going to try to gerrymander their way out of losing this upcoming midterm, then we’re going to respond, and we’re going to respond in a lawful way where we put it up to a referendum and let people decide and not just give away the store because of traditions, and that was the right response.
So, I do think that — I don’t want us to simply duplicate the behavior of the other side. I don’t want us to have a slash and burn strategy where we don’t care about rule of law, we don’t care about some of the guardrails around our democracy, we start lying and having no regard for the truth, the way the other side seems to be comfortable with right now, because if that’s how we fight, then we lose what we’re fighting for.
But that doesn’t mean we have to get punked or be saps, or to cling to traditions just for the sake of tradition. I think what we have to continually evaluate is, in this moment in time, how do we make sure that we can advance our agenda in a way that reflects what’s good for ordinary folks, not special interests, not simply the well-to-do, and how do we do that in a way that’s consistent with integrity, honesty, democracy, the values that we claim to want to uphold? I think it’s possible to do that.
But the reason I started with reminding ourselves, yes, we have a harder job, because sometimes I think we’re tough on Democrats, saying, why aren’t you being as mean and tough and nasty as they are? Well, when I was President of the United States, I suppose I could have simply unilaterally ordered the military to go into some red state and harass and intimidate a governor there or cut off funding for states that didn’t vote for me. I could have exercised that prerogative, but that is contrary to how I think our democracy is supposed to work. I think we shouldn’t get discouraged by the fact that we have a tougher job. What we should do is expect that our side is smart enough to figure it out.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: You had mentioned persuasion, and I think that that’s a really good point here, because as we eventually head toward a next general election cycle, we’re going to be contending with a lot of the same infighting that’s plagued Democrats before. You’ll often have Leftists and Progressives butting up against Liberals and Moderates.
Look, you are the ultimate pragmatist, and so what advice do you have, as we head toward this election cycle, this eventual 2028 election cycle, so that we don’t seem 2016 era, Bernie-Hillary redux, that feels like it always consumes the Left?
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Well, look, first of all, I think it’s important to remember that the divisions in the Democratic Party tend to get magnified in the media. Relative to the divides that exist in most other countries, where the parliamentary system, you have multiple parties, and you’ve got the Green Party, and you’ve got the Center-Left Party, and you’ve got a Socialist Party, and sometimes you’ve got a Communist Party, our differences get exaggerated.
Listen, Bernie Sanders believes, just like Nancy Pelosi believes, just like Chuck Schumer believes, just like Hakeem Jeffries believes, just like AOC believes, in equality and non-discrimination against people because of race or gender or sexual orientation. Well, all Democrats believe in that. That’s a core value.
Democrats believe that government should provide a strong safety net for people when they’re down on their luck. Everybody I just mentioned believes in that.
Everybody believes that there should be some regulation of the market so that you don’t have monopolies and oligopolies that are simply dictating the terms of the economy, and that we should have a tax system that levels out some of the inequalities that result.
I think it’s important for us to remind ourselves as a starting point, what do we have in common. Most of the time, the differences are tactical. It has to do with, well, how much of a tax hike can people put up with? How much regulation should we be thinking about when it comes to climate change?
If we recognize that typically, the arguments in the Democratic Party aren’t about core values, but are really around tactics and how do you get stuff done, now we can have a robust debate. And I want a robust debate.
What we can also do is not try to nationalize every issue all the time. This last off-year election, I think, was a great example. You’ve got a candidate like Spanberger in Virginia who runs what would be considered a more centrist campaign and runs a terrific campaign. And then you’ve got Mamdani in New York who runs a, well, explicitly socialist, grassroots campaign and excites and mobilize folks. That can win in New York City. It probably could not win in Virginia. And that’s okay. That’s healthy.
Sometimes I think we get into arguments, a recent one, this idea that the quote/unquote
“abundance agenda” is somehow a sellout and folks on the Left are getting exercised because, oh, this is part of this sort of corporate Democrats trying to take over the party.
Well, no, not really, but I think it is entirely legitimate to say, for example, we need to build more affordable housing, which is going to require higher taxes on people like me and people who are well off, in order to subsidize the construction of affordable housing, let’s say in a place like California, and also be able to say, you know what, there are a bunch of well-intentioned rules and zoning laws and so forth that baby boomers like me and existing homeowners have used to block the construction of affordable housing, even in democratic cities.
And so, if we want to actually deliver housing, rather than have some abstract argument, then we got to figure out not an either/or of do we spend more money, or do we reform some of these things that are preventing the construction of affordable housing? We have to do both. I want us to have those arguments.
One last thing, I think, that I’ve noticed in a lot of our internal arguments, a lot of which, by the way, are taking place online, and ordinary voters, this is all –
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: (Inaudible/crosstalk).
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: — completely off their radar screen.
One of the things I think it’s important for Democrats, for us also to recognize, Progressives to recognize, folks on the Left, to recognize, it’s possible for us to have a moral sense of what is right and true and what needs to be done, and also recognize that we are in a particular time and place here in America, and voters are not going to agree with us 100% on everything.
It is not a sellout, it’s not a betrayal to say that we’re going to shape our agenda and our message in a way that allows us to build a working majority to get stuff done. I think particularly around social issues sometimes we get confused around this.
You witness what happened in Minneapolis, and you say to yourself, morally speaking, that five-year-old child who’s standing in front of that SUV as his father’s being dragged off, that child is equal to mine or any child. His immigration status, his nationality, does not change the love and decency that we should be showing that child.
But what is also true is that we’re a nation of laws, we have borders, and we’ve got to figure out an immigration policy that is orderly and that is fair and is enforced in a sensible way that is compatible with our values, but may not fully capture the degree to which that kid should have the same chances in life as a U.S. citizen kid.
But we’ve got to accommodate the reality that the majority of American people think that there’s a difference between somebody who’s a U.S. citizen and somebody who’s not, and that they want an orderly immigration system.
Sometimes, I think what happens in the online debate is, if somebody suggests, well, we have to have some immigration enforcement, then somebody is going to point at that child and say, “So you don’t care about that kid, so you must be a bad person.”
The same would be true, let’s say here in Los Angeles, around the homeless issue. I think morally, ethically speaking, it is an atrocity that in a country that’s wealthy, we have people just on the streets, and we should insist on policies that recognize their full humanity, people who are houseless, and be able to provide them the help and resources that they need.
But we should also recognize that the average person doesn’t want to have to navigate around a tent city in the middle of downtown, and that we’re not going to be able to build a working majority and support for the resources that we need to help folks like that, whether it’s drug treatment or temporary housing or what have you, we’re not going to be able to generate support for it if we simply say, you know what, it’s not their fault, and so they should be able to do whatever they want, because that’s a losing political strategy.
That doesn’t mean that we care less about those folks. It means that if we really care about them, then we’ve got to try to figure out, how do we gain majority support and be practical in terms of what we can get through at this moment in time, and build on those victories.
That a lot of times is the arguments that are taking place, but they become sort of performative, and people start saying, “Oh, you’re selling out.” Or conversely, I think sometimes folks at the center say, “You’re being impractical,” and dismissing legitimate critiques and concerns.
What we need to be able to do is to maintain both ideas at the same time, which is our long-term goals have to be driven by our values and our core beliefs and our ethics and our morals and the sense that every person counts, and short term, we’ve got to win elections.
Anyway, the good news is, I think that the folks that we are fighting politically, the current White House, this administration and their enablers, they’re behaving so badly, they are doing such crazy stuff, that it shouldn’t be hard for our side to coalesce around the areas where we agree on and focus on that.
I think that is going to happen if we are effective in winning the midterms, if we then have a robust primary for who’s going to be the next Democratic president. We shouldn’t be afraid of having a robust debate. I want all-comers to sort this out.
I benefited from having about as grueling a primary as I could have. It made me a better candidate. It ultimately made me a better president because I had been tested. My ideas had been tested. The story I was telling about America had been tested. That’s what we should be looking for, rather than expecting that somehow we’re going to all come up with some consensus blueprint, master plan that everybody is going to execute. Democrats aren’t good at doing that anyway.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: I think one block of voters who I think there has been particular focus paid to right now is young voters. You were able to mobilize a generation of young voters in a way that hadn’t been done before. I got involved in politics because of you, and in fact, a lot of millennials, folks my age, got involved in politics because of you.
In that time or since then, Democrats have lost their edge. When I was a student, you could not find any other students on campus who were not supporting your campaign. Democrats and you owned the cultural zeitgeist in a way that hadn’t been done before, and, frankly, hasn’t been done since. We’ve seen a shift happen, obviously, from 2008, 2012, up to 2024, and for the first time, we saw Democrats really lose their grip on culture in a way that hadn’t happened before.
What is your advice in terms of remobilizing a generation of Americans that we’ve had trouble mobilizing up to this point?
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Well, look, part of it has to do with the fact that I was young.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: Maybe don’t nominate an octogenarian?
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Look, I’m 64 now. I’m a pretty healthy 64, feels great, but the truth is, half of the references that my daughters make about social media, TikTok and such, I don’t know who they’re talking about. There is an element of, at some point, you age out, you’re not connected directly to the immediate struggles that folks are going through.
And so, I’m not making a hard and fast rule here, but I do think that Democrats do well when we have candidates who are plugged into the moment, to the zeitgeist, to the times and the particular struggles that folks are thinking about as they look towards the future, rather than look backward toward the past. Some of it is choosing candidates who check that box.
I do think that there is an element of joy that Democrats lost sometimes. Our campaign was fun. Look, it wasn’t always fun for me, but we built a community. We gave people a sense that if you are part of this, you’re doing something meaningful, and it wasn’t just talk.
Young people ran our campaigns. We empowered them. We put them in charge. They were out there figuring stuff out. I’m not the person who was figuring out our media strategy. I was not the person who was out there knocking on doors and talking to voters and creating events. It was 20- and 30-year-olds.
And so, what happened in our campaign, and what you recently saw in Mamdani’s campaign in New York, when there’s that sense of joy and engagement and involvement, then people feel like, all right, this is not just some transactional grind, this is me becoming part of a community and joining with others. I think young people respond to that.
And then a corollary to that is, I do think that culturally, and I’ve talked about this before, we did turn off — I think there was a certain way of talking about issues for Democrats where we sounded like scolds. I have said this before, there was a virtue signaling that made it seem as if ordinary folks, if they did not say things in exactly the right way, or meet this litmus test, that they were being chastised, pushed away.
The truth is, most of us, all of us are complicated, and we have blind spots, and sometimes we say dumb stuff. If you want to create an environment that is welcoming and makes people feel, okay, there’s room for me here, then the message and the story we tell has to be, all right, none of us are perfect, all of us count, we all have good in us that we can tap into, we can all learn from each other, and I think that is something we need to recover. That’s part of the fun of politics. That’s part of the community and the social bonding that can come about.
We saw that in Minneapolis. Somebody showed me, a friend of mine, Michele Norris, is from Minnesota, and she was up there, and she was going around talking to neighbors and people she had known for a long time, as they were mobilizing protests and activities around ICE.
She showed me a clip of this street band that was performing every night, after all these activities had been taking place, and protests, etcetera, and they were just out there and they were playing music. I’m trying to figure out how they were playing horns and drums, etcetera, in like zero degree weather, because I would not have been able to put my lips on a trumpet. People were celebrating what they had accomplished, and it was an embodiment of the values that make us care about other people. That, I think, is a spirit that when Democrats tap into that spirit, then we win.
The other side does the mean, angry –
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: Demagoguery.
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: — exclusive, us/them, divisive politics. That’s their home court.
Our court is coming together. Look, a great example, wasn’t political, Bad Bunny’s halftime show.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: I knew you were going to say that.
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Well, it resonated. It was smart. Because it wasn’t preaching; it was showing. It was demonstrating and displaying, this is what a community is. And people who did not speak Spanish and have never been to Puerto Rico, they saw that elderly woman serving a drink and the kids dancing with their grandmas, and it was intergenerational.
It was a reminder of what Dr. King called the “beloved community” can look like, which is not perfect, and it’s messy sometimes. I guarantee, and not all those lyrics were probably politically correct, and if you translated them, and people are complicated, but there was a sense of, all right, there’s room for everybody here. That, I think, is where we win.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: Your Presidential Center is opening up this summer, and you’ve dedicated your post presidency to lifting up the next generation of leaders, oftentimes in defiance of people begging and pleading with you to stay involved in the political process.
Why is it important for you to defer to those people, especially at a moment where it feels like there is a vacuum of leadership on the Left? You are among, if not the most popular politician in America. You’re right here. Why is it important for you in this moment to make sure that you defer to others?
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Well, first of all, I’m not a politician anymore, and I can’t be. I guess technically, I could run for city council or something, but I’m not in elected office. I don’t have levers of power. I’m term limited out. And by the way, I believe in the Constitution, and also I believe in my marriage, and Michelle would divorce me even if I could run again.
But I’ve always believed, and this is a central tenet of my work even before I was in elected office, that our job as leaders is to lift up other leaders, to empower others, to find their gifts and help them exercise those gifts.
When I had left the presidency, I said, what’s our foundation going to do? We care about climate change. We care about racial justice. We care about health care. We care about a whole bunch of issues, and I work on those issues. Right now, I’m spending a lot of time helping to think about how we’re going to respond to AI as it’s coming down the pike, and it’s moving fast. I care about specific issues.
But the thing I thought I could do uniquely, Michelle and I still have the capacity, not just here in the United States but globally, to inspire and motivate young people and invite them in to this process.
That’s what we need. We just talked about it. You look at where excitement is going to come from. It’s going to come from the 20-, 30-year-olds who know firsthand what it means to not be able to buy a house, know firsthand what it means to see some of the ladders of opportunity being taken away, have grown up in a moment in which there’s more social isolation, right, and
understand both the good and the bad of social media. They’re the ones who are going to craft, who are to remake our institutions so that they are consistent with the values that are, I think, timeless.
What we’ve tried to do at the Foundation has been to identify potential leaders, not just with traditional credentials, not just the kids coming out of fancy schools or with the top grades, but union organizers and grassroots organizers, as well as journalists and teachers and healthcare professionals and human rights activists.
We’ve now had thousands of folks go through the program, and these are folks who are doing remarkable stuff at very young ages. They’re setting up health clinics in Sub-Saharan Africa, or they’re designing new programs for intervention to help with the opioid crisis in Appalachia, or they’re working on how do we educate kids using technology in remote rural areas and Native American reservations, remarkable folks are doing amazing stuff.
The Presidential Center, which will be opening up in June, is going to be the hub around which all this activity happens. There will be a museum of Michelle’s dresses, since that’s what people want to see. Well, there’s some sports memorabilia and some cool stuff in there.
But really, the heart of the Presidential Center is going to be the music studio where kids are learning how to tell stories through music, and a place to record podcasts so they can learn how to talk about the issues in ways that resonate. There’s a Chicago Public Library in there, and there’s an auditorium where young people will be exposed to world leaders who are coming through and can talk about their own journey.
What that does is it builds a community of activists, and it reminds people, you’re not alone. You’re not alone in your sorrow when you see some of the stuff that’s been happening in this country over the last year. But you’re also not alone in being able to figure out, how do we push back and come up with new solutions, and how do we remake these institutions that they work for this generation.
That kind of spirit is what we hope this this Presidential Center will constantly refresh and renew.
This is kind of a Social Change University, and we want just ordinary visitors who don’t think of themselves as activists, as they go through these exhibits and they see what’s been done in the past, we want them to think, “Well, what can I do?” We’ll be given them all kinds of ways in which they can then connect with local organizations and get active in their own communities around the things that they care about.
That kind of exercise, reinvigorating our civic muscles, giving people a sense of, I’m not going to just sit here and doom scroll or occasionally Tweet some complaints about what’s happening, but that I actually have agency and I can actually make a difference, we want to encourage that.
That’s what we saw and have been seeing across the country in response to the violations and overreach and lawlessness that’s been coming out of this administration. We just have to encourage that and cultivate that and not assume that it happens on its own.
I became president because very early on in my career, I had people teach me the power of community and other people joining together around common interests. I tried to manifest what I’ve learned in every campaign I ran, and tried to ride that all the way through my presidency. I didn’t figure out all that stuff on my own.
We have a long history in this country, dating back to the Abolitionist Movement and the Suffragist Movement and on through the Civil Rights Movement and the Union Movement. And we have a long history internationally, Gandhi learning from Thoreau, who then inspires King, who then inspires Mandela, who, in the meantime, Lech Walesa and solidarity are helping to bring down the Iron Curtain and inspiring the People Power in the Philippines.
That spirit, that energy, it’s out there, and you can feel it, but it’s bottled up. We haven’t given enough outlets for young people to figure out, how do I become a part of that?
That’s this enormous, untapped power that we have to get back to.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: So I want to do a little bit of a lightning round here, because it’s not often I’ll get access to the president of the United States. So a couple questions here. Are aliens real?
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: They’re real, but I haven’t seen them, and they’re not being kept in, what is it —
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: Area 51?
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: — Area 51. There’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy, and they hid it from the president of the United States.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: What was the first question you wanted answered when you became president?
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Where are the aliens?
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: Where are the aliens. (Laughter.)
Is there a person that you most want to meet that you haven’t met yet?
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: I’ll be honest with you, being president or even being an ex-president, I can kind of meet everybody, so I’ve met a lot of folks. The person who I have not yet met that I’m looking forward to meeting, and I hope I get an opportunity sometime in the future, is the new pope who is from Chicago, and a White Sox fan.
I had the pleasure of getting to know Pope Francis pretty well, and he was legit. There are some figures — he’s one, the Dalai Lama is another — who they’re how you hope they are. They kind of walk the walk.
My sense of this new pope is, he’s cut from that cloth, somebody who worked in places that really needed help and wasn’t just preaching from a pulpit, but getting his hands dirty, trying to trying to help people. So I’m looking forward to talking to him.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: I think we can — I think —
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: At some point, it will probably happen.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: What world leader did you like the most and the least?
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: There are a lot of world leaders I enjoyed. Angela Merkel I became very close to because she really was the leader of Europe during my presidency, and we were grappling with a bunch of different stuff. She came from a Center Right tradition. I obviously come from the Left, Center Left position. But she had integrity, wicked smart. We’re both analytical and practical and try to figure out how to problem solve. She became a very close partner to mine.
I’m going to defer on the leaders I like least. There’s enough of a public record that you probably have a sense of some of the folks who I wasn’t happy with.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: Best prank out of the White House when you were president.
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Look, I’ll be honest with you, folks aren’t running pranks in the White House. There’s Secret Service. Everybody’s busy. If there were pranks, they weren’t run on me, and I didn’t –
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: You didn’t pull any?
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: I tended not to pull pranks. People are intimidated enough by a president. You don’t want to punch down on a prank. If you’re going to pull off a prank, it’s got to be on somebody who can prank you back, and wasn’t nobody gonna prank me.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: All right, last question here, is Tupac alive?
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: He’s alive on my playlist.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: All right. All right, we’ll leave it there. Mr. President, I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Thank you. Keep up doing good work.
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