President Barack Obama - Post-Presidential Life and Nurturing Future Leaders | The Daily Show

are you gonna filibuster me or like because i don't have all the time you want me to be very good at like so is this like a roundabout way of saying you just want me to give short uh pithy answers no i don't want show questions you want me to speed up you want me to talk faster no no no no please mr president i will not i will not purposely filibuster but sometimes i will have a pause as i'm formulating my thoughts as you well know michelle michelle has been speeding up my auto uh my my audiobook so you know i guess you can press a button so it plays yeah you won like 1.25 or one and a half yeah yeah yeah you're a one and a half guy you're definitely one and a half guy i was a little offended by that but that's okay that's fine it does it doesn't communicate the depth of feeling with which i'm doing the reading but it's okay how do you like being referred to like just as a human being do you like mr president people call me barack but then sometimes some folks feel awkward doing it obviously my that's what my friends call me so i i consider you a friend but you may feel you know so no no no the people the people will feel like like even africans will they'll write me letters saying how dare you this is my fortune so i don't want to get you in trouble so you can say mr president that makes sense you can call me potus my favorite one was obiso that was my favorite please call me that mr president welcome to the daily social distancing show i am very happy to be here with you you're out there promoting a brand new book a promised land a 700 page book if i may add i love reading your stuff don't get me wrong but like i would have liked 350 350 why 700 pages you know i would have been i would have broken it up even more but uh you know the the publishers thought that bringing it up into two volumes would be uh about right and look the goal of the book was to give people a sense of what it's like to be in the white house right as a normal person uh finding themselves in extraordinary circumstances and i think part of the goal particularly for young people uh i wanted them to to get a sense that you know not everybody's gonna end up being president but if you decide that your voice makes a difference if you decide that you can have an impact then through the ups and downs you will end up uh having some pretty extraordinary experiences and and i wanted i wanted to be an encouragement for people to say ah you know the guy yeah he's okay but he's not so special and look what he ended up doing maybe i can do something something as well it feels like this book is barack obama convincing barack obama to remain optimistic and what i mean by convincing barack obama i think of like a young barack obama i think of a fledgling barack obama not trying to emulate you per se but rather anyone who's trying to make a change in the world or their world that's what that's what it feels like if you if you are writing to young people to be optimistic in the book what are some of the frustrations that you understand on their side that may hinder that optimism you know because if a young person says yeah but this system right now is crumbling more and more how do you how do you maintain that optimism or do you think there has to be a point where they go i'm not optimistic i'm just fighting to break what it is to create something new part of the reason that it's 700 pages long is because by reading the book they'll see man there are a lot of structural problems or barriers in making this place better we're learning right now in vivid uh a vivid example of the fact that our democracy is not the way we would imagine it to be right there are all kinds of elements to it where the most votes don't necessarily translate into the equivalent amount of power very popular proposals can wither on the vine because of a filibuster in the senate and and so i i don't try to gloss those over you know the paris accord did not solve climate change but it created the first global framework whereby all countries agreed we have to do something about this and here's a mechanism to do it you can still be terrified about the pace at which we are burning up the planet and yet think that was a worthwhile endeavor because it gives us at least the opportunity maybe three four five years down the road to keep building on that so that is the kind of mentality i want young people to have um a certain impatience a certain frustration a certain anger about the status quo there are times now where you know you you have younger activists criticizing me for obama why didn't you take care of this or that or the other and i i welcome them feeling frustrated and impatient because that's how i was uh before i got started and then they'll get their own knocks on the head and uh you know uh some stuff won't work out exactly the way they want but the impulse is is the one that i want to encourage because it's it's as a consequence of that that constant striving and imagining something better that things don't get exactly as we wanted but they get better you're a very serious person because i mean you're a president of the united states but at the same time you're a lot more fun than a lot of people think you know i i'm constantly trying to explain to people i'm a funny guy but but i don't know but you're right but you really are you really really are and what i liked in the book is there are moments where there's just like a roasting of people or life like the g20 i've never i've never heard of a world leader describe the g20 the way you do in the book the high school of it all i wondered on a personal level have you maintained connections with those world leaders as like like do you do you send angela merkel memes do you like who are you still close with just as a human being you know i don't send angela merkel memes but i talk to her sometime sometimes you know she'll give me a call i'll give her a call and and uh we'll trade notes um you know there are a handful of folks uh who uh you've been in the foxhole with right you've you've done some good important work um some of them are still uh in power so i don't want to mention that you know uh that i'm giving them a call because you know who knows that might get him in trouble you mentioned somebody like angela merkel look uh you know the stance she took in europe relative to immigration and the enormous political cost she paid for that and yet there was something inside her that said look i'm not going to uh simply abandon uh a million people who are in desperate need you know you see that in somebody uh and and you say i i i i it it encourages you that for all the uh cruelty and and finality and corruption around the world there are a lot of good people doing good work and some of them actually rise to significant positions of power and and uh uh in that sense democracy can work the way it's supposed to uh if you know we have a a vigil and citizenry and and uh that's not always the case you've started leadership programs not just in south africa but all over the world the obama foundation has set about on a journey to inspire young people to grow up to become leaders growing up in south africa i was taught about the different levels of what a struggle is going to be you know the freedom fighters may not necessarily be the best politicians the best politicians may not necessarily be the best leaders right the best activists may not be the best organizers and so on and so forth everyone has a role to play in trying to get to a certain place and so i wonder when you set up these you know this this leadership academy that's that's all over the globe you know you're clearly trying to create mini obamas everywhere um which is probably like a fever dream of the right but what you what you're trying to do is create something specific and i would like to know what that is what are you what do you believe a leader is not just somebody who's in power but a leader the program we did in johannesburg we gathered up 200 young leaders from 50 countries on the continent of africa and it was as varied you had young women who had started rural health clinics yeah you had mps who who had taken a more conventional political route you had entrepreneurs the thing they all had in common though was this this sense not only that the world could be better and that they had a role to play in it but also the belief that they couldn't do it by themselves and that they had to in some ways unlock the potential and power of other people a speech i gave in johannesburg uh in conjunction with that it was for the anniversary of mandela's uh 100th anniversary um where i i contrasted that sort of democratic inclusive leadership to the strongman leadership that in some ways we've seen ascendant in certain parts of the world um in some ways has was ascendant uh here in the united states um and and those are two different stories of what it means to be a leader and and power and uh that conflict that battle between a more democratic inclusive vision and one that's top-down dominance subordinate uh you know that's a contest that's taking place here in the united states and around the world and uh it's not going to be finished just because the election's over and donald trump was defeated because you see examples of this in the philippines in hungary uh in in uh a variety of countries uh uh in in africa and asia and uh so that that contest is gonna continue what i find fascinating about the conversation that a lot of americans are having now and you you talk about this in the book as well is how america's influence in the world has diminished over the past few years you know how how countries around the world have no longer said what is america doing we'll work with them it's been more like no guys we can't wait for america we're doing our own thing but i wonder as as somebody who has grown up in other parts of the world as someone who has family in other parts of the world is is there an argument that maybe that's a good thing that the world doesn't follow america anymore or what what would the what would the inverse of that argument be like should the world follow america or is it time for the world to start doing its own thing and america to be less the world police i think it is a good thing that other countries catch up and have their own capabilities and their own agency that's not something that i think america should fear my argument would be that uh even in a more multi-polar world where you don't have just one big power but you have uh other countries who are coming into their own the principles that america articulated at its best about rule of law human rights uh freedom of speech democracy those values at least i choose to believe uh are not exclusively american you as somebody who lived in south africa know uh the the the play that in other countries sometimes you hear where somebody who's doing something entirely for power uh and and money and influence will say if they're criticizers say ah you know you've been just influenced by western thinking that that's colonial thinking no no no no you you are stealing from your people don't and when we criticize you don't don't claim that somehow uh uh this is some american uh hegemony being uh asserted against you we're calling you on the fact that you're a thief i i think it's important for us to to to recognize that for all its failings the the the values that america has often articulated on the world stage have been ones that i would still believe in and that a lot of people took comfort from and when we are not asserting them oftentimes they don't you know they don't play out on the world stage i sometimes wondered if you ever grappled with the difficulty of the paradox that america was creating in what it was trying to do in the world and then what its actions were sometimes creating in the world you know i i mean i think about that in the middle east you know wars that have been started under false pretenses people who have been killed who had nothing to do you know and so i wonder as someone who had to make decisions and someone who was in that leadership position do you sometimes grapple with how america did or did not help itself in in how it acted with the world because in the world like i'll tell you as an international person we would oftentimes go like man yes america is great and it's doing wonderful things but then you'd be like but also man sometimes they just break the rules and uh no one can say anything about it absolutely all and i record examples in the book of where i'm grappling with this right and one of the interesting challenges of being president of the united states but i think being head of government or state uh in any country is uh you inherit a legacy right so if i come in as president and uh i i can't undo the iraq war the decision to go into iraq now i i can manage as best i can how we can wind down that war mitigate some of the damage that's been done but i can't reverse it um did you ever did you ever envy though how like trump just came in and basically broke though because i mean he didn't care uh no i i didn't envy it because i do care and and and i i i do not think that is an option to to simply pretend that that the legacy of problems or issues that you inherit uh are somehow things you can just brush aside um so so the the answer is yes i i would struggle with the fact that any action i took particularly when you're talking about um you know counterterrorism right that's probably the area where i wrestled with this most because my obligation first and foremost in the united states was to make sure that people didn't get hurt that's sort of the bare minimum that you expect out of a nation state that you're living in is that you can defend against harm because you're dealing with non-state actors that meant that by the time i took office you had networks that were embedded in societies uh not necessarily supported by those societies but they're there and they are plotting in their planning and that wasn't made up uh and there were organizations that if they could blow up the new york subway system they would if they could get their hands on a biological weapon they would use it you then are wrestling with how do i protect the american people from those actors but do it in a way that is morally and ethically justified and war is madness kinetic action of any sort military action of any sort that results in death and destruction at a certain level is not the thing i would want humanity to do and what happens to people is tragic it is not uh it is not something you gloss over what what what it does to our soldiers and our troops you know as i talk about in the book uh it's not just the harm that our young men and women suffered and i would witness in walter reed but it's also how it changes them internally when they have uh engaged in violence even if necessary and justified against others so um the the best i could come up with was to never uh glorify it to to never pretend like it isn't a dilemma and so those kinds of questions i think are ones that not only should american leaders have to grapple with but i think the american people have to be aware and and sometimes the media does not do a very good job it's a very binary you know the iraq war it's glorious for the first year and a half and then suddenly it's not yes and we're shocked that us invading another country might turn out to be messy um hopefully that's not uh a lesson we have to repeatedly relearn 2020 was a year for many of racial reckoning you know it was the year when people of all ages took to the streets black and white alike and said we need to change the way the police deal with people in this country predominantly black people in this country it was an interesting time as well because i mean your presidency as you know better than anyone and people thought well that is it we're now in a post racial utopia barack obama's in the white house we have half black half white all black good times let's have a good one and then people saw that there was still a lot of work to be done let's talk a little bit about the movement as you see it the problem i have with headlines sometimes is like people take things out of context etc but some activists criticize you for saying they've got to be careful of snappy slogans you know like defund the police because it loses people but i i i wonder do you think that the slogan is off is the thing that makes people for or against you or do you think people are just going to be for or against you and then the slogan doesn't really mean as much and what i mean by that is like like donald trump's make america great again it's not a it's not a very divisive slogan if you look at it on the face of it that's a great slogan why would anyone not want to make america great again but the subtext said something else when you're thinking of that as someone who's great at slogans by the way i mean yes we can it's snappy it worked although as i said uh in the book i actually thought it was corny i didn't i didn't like it that much when uh when my team uh came up with it um and then they went to ask michelle and michelle said no it's not corny it's fine so clearly she had a better political uh brain than i did on this i i i i'm glad you actually brought this up because you know what's been fascinating uh while i've been on this book tour is you know people have asked me what's my source of optimism and uniformly what i have said is nothing made me more optimistic during a very difficult year than the activism that we saw uh in the wake of george floyd's murder and black lives matter and i have consistently believed that their courage activism media savvy strategic resolve uh far exceeds anything that i could have done at their age and i i think has shifted the conversation in in ways that um i i would not even even imagined a couple of years ago so throughout this slew of of compliments i then said well what do you think about the particular slogan defund the police and i said well that particular slogan i think the concern is that there may be potential allies out there that you lose and the issue always is how do you get uh enough people to support your cause that it you can actually institutionalize it and translate it into laws right structures and so forth there were two or three writers who i admire who wrote obama's making it a mission to chastise black lives matter and you go what hold on a second i just spent the the whole summer complimenting them what are you talking about the the reason uh it caught attention i suspect is there were some in the democratic party who suggested the reason we didn't do better in uh the congressional elections this time was because of this phrase and i think that people assumed that somehow i was making an argument that that's why we didn't get you know uh a bigger democratic majority that actually was not the point i was making i was making a very particular point around if we in fact want to translate the the the very legitimate belief that how we do policing needs to change and that if there is for example uh a homeless guy ranting and railing in the middle of the street sending a a mental health worker rather than an armed untrained police officer to deal with that person might be a better outcome for all of us and make us safer right that if we describe that to not just white folks but let's say michelle's mom that makes sense to them but if we say defund the police not just white folks but michelle's mom might say if i'm getting robbed who am i going to call and is somebody going to show up right so the issue here becomes you know at any given time how are we translating and using language not to make people more comfortable quote unquote right because that's always a strain and historically right they all the the concern in these debates is also is often uh oh are are we just trying to make white people comfortable rather than speaking truth to power right that's the framework we tend to think about these things right yeah the issue to me is not making them comfortable it is can we be precise with our language enough that people who might be persuaded around that particular issue to make a particular change that gets a particular result that we want what's the best way for us to describe that so what you're basically saying is we should workshop all of our slogans with michelle that's what i hear you saying that probably would be wise uh it would it would probably work but but i want to go back to something you said earlier which i think is is is really important um and i i said this in the wake of of some of this criticism uh i said look part of this is also everybody has different roles to play an activist a movement leader is is going to provide a prophetic voice and speak certain truths that somebody who is going to be elected into office will not be able to say i i re-read james baldwin's of fire next time this summer how is it that something written 50 years ago 55 years ago yeah yeah applies directly today right despite everything that's happened to to me that is as searing and as honest a a portrayal of the the the gaping wound of race in america but of course james baldwin can be elected to the u.s senate or unlikely that he would want to be the mayor of a city who's responsible for figuring out how do i deal with the police union right that's somebody else's role and and all these roles are important uh and so why do you think if i may interrupt why do you think though that republicans or right-wingers now do that though that's that's something that i i've struggled to to to understand you see now even in this election i mean some of the republicans who were running were q anon supporters and they were going we're running and this is what and some of them were winning some of them are so extreme and they're winning and so i i sometimes wonder if if there's this this is is it just a political thing in america where if you if you're in the republican party you can be completely bombastic in what you believe in and then as a democrat you're trying to toe the line between centrist and and and and left leaning because i think in fact the republican party is the minority party in this country the only reason that it doesn't look like they're the minority party is because of structures like the u.s senate and the electoral college that don't render them the majority party so so they have certain built-in advantages around power given their population distribution and how uh our government works but the truth of the matter is is that 60 of the people are are occupying what i would consider a more reality-based uh universe and those are the those are the constituents we're speaking to and that is a more diverse group you know i i describe uh in the book the first time i go to the uh to the republican house caucus to speak to him and i think there was an asian guy or gal and and maybe a couple of hispanics um and that was it i i i i i it is much more homogeneous which means that yes they have to do less work but it also uh means that they're they can talk to themselves and as a consequence of the way our democracy our republic is structured they don't have to appeal to as broad of a base um that's not fair but you know what i i i at least would prefer not uh having the progressives model ourselves out of uh or model ourselves on on uh the current republican party i that doesn't feel like a good strategy to me uh to get the outcomes that we want let's talk a little bit about let's loosen things up uh let's unbutton one of those uh one one of those buttons on the shirt um as someone who i consider to be one of the best deliverers of jokes and uh and roasts are you gonna be more careful going forward about who you roast and i say this because you roasted donald trump he ran for president you roasted kanye west he ran for president so i don't know if you've noticed but you have an ability to inspire people to run for the highest office in the land with some of the jokes that you tell about them well i i should i should roast people uh people i admire more i'll i'll start roasting you man who knows although you weren't born here so you know but look look i was able to get away with it apparently [Laughter] who knows um before i let you go i wanted to know one last thing and that is being president of the united states is arguably the toughest job in the world when you transition back to personal life i wonder what that is like because unlike you i don't have that power i've never been able to like just change a thing in the world or do something about it but now in many ways you are like me in that you see the thing on the tv and then you get angry or sad but you cannot really do anything about it and so i wonder as as former president barack obama have you have you transitioned into that completely or do you find different ways to try and fix the problems that you see in the world well first of all i'm not anything like you uh i still have a lot more influence in cloud so let's just be clear come on man i don't think you're trying to keep things in perspective i was hoping you i was hoping you just let that one slide i was hoping you'd just be like yeah you know trevor yeah in many ways look uh the truth is that um i i did not have those kinds of withdrawals and i know that they're they're people who uh i know who've had them when they leave public life and very visibly you know they're they want to get back on stage yeah michelle and i that's something we share um we feel good about the work we did we don't feel anxiety about not being the center of attention we get frustrated like i think citizens around the world and here in the country do when we see something unjust or or unfair and yes the goal i think for us is to find new ways uh to have that same impact understanding that we'll never have the exact same impact as you have in your oval office but you know a lot of the work around the foundation is you know you said create a lot of obama's i'm not sure that's the goal but to you know if 10 years 20 years down the road there are a thousand ten thousand hundred thousand young people who are now moving into positions of authority and power and in some ways uh have been shaped by our example in a positive way yeah that uh that's a legacy that may exceed anything that we did uh you know while we were in in in our formal positions and and uh and that feels pretty good well i can talk to you for hours but luckily i have a 700 page book to answer the rest of my questions um thank you for joining me thank you for taking the time um and uh yeah thank you for being you thank you mr mr president aka obizzle thank you for joining me on the daily social media we'll do it again volume 2. 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Channel: The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

Views: 1,804,936

Keywords: the daily show, trevor noah, daily show with trevor noah, the daily show episodes, comedy central, comedians, comedian, funny video, comedy videos, funny clips, noah trevor, trevor noah latest episode, daily show, trevor, news, politics, obama, president obama, barack obama, obama daily show, michelle obama, foreign policy, black lives matter, obama foundation, police reform, paris accord, president, obama interview

Id: s1_0V5KtpUI

Length: 32min 14sec (1934 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 12 2021