Barack Obama on Trump’s Ape Video, Bad Bunny, And 2028 Election (Transcript)

And do you think that our Democratic leadership and our Democratic elected officials understand that for the first time?

BARACK OBAMA: Well, look, I think we have to acknowledge that we’ve got the harder job, right? So 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.

And what that means is that we have to think about the consequences of our actions. 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. So when you talk about Republicans, for example, it 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.

So 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.

And so I do think that there have been some, 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.

And 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. It’s hard for majorities to get stuff done, whether it’s trying to pass civil rights legislation in the 60s or, you know, trying to get gun control legislation or what have you. Because even though majority of people support it, Delaware and Wyoming have the same number of senators as California. All right. So that would require a constitutional amendment.

You then compound that with a filibuster. And the truth is, 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 the government is corrupt and not caring about them, which lends itself, which then lends itself to the kind of, it gives folks like Trump an opening.

So 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. And I’ve worked with Eric Holder to help set up the terrific work that the 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. 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. And I do think, 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? And 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, you know, when I was president of the United States, I suppose I could have simply unilaterally ordered the military to, you know, 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. And 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.

Looking Ahead to 2028

BRIAN TYLER COHEN: So 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.

And look, you are the ultimate pragmatist. And so what advice do you have as we head toward this election cycle, you know, this eventual 2028 election cycle, so that we don’t devolve into the same, you know, 2016 era Bernie-Hillary redux that feels like it always consumes the left?

Finding Common Ground in the Democratic Party

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 you have a parliamentary system, you have multiple parties and you got Green Party and you got the center left party and you’ve got a Socialist party and sometimes you 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. 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.

So 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? And 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. And 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 Mondaire in New York who runs an explicitly socialist grassroots campaign and excites and mobilizes folks. And that can win in New York City. It probably could not win in Virginia. And that’s okay. That’s healthy.

The Abundance Agenda and Practical Solutions

And 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 getting exercised because, oh, this is part of this sort of corporate Democrats trying to take over the party. Well, no, not really. What 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.

And I want us to have those arguments. And 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 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.

And so 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.

Balancing Values with Political Reality

And 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 US citizen kid. But we’ve got to accommodate the reality that the majority of the American people think that there’s a difference between somebody who’s a US citizen and somebody who’s not and that they want an orderly immigration system.

And 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 this wealthy, we have people just on the streets and we should have a, 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 if we really care about them, then we 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, you know, oh, you’re selling out or conversely, I think sometimes folks at the center say, you know, you’re being impractical and dismissing legitimate critiques and concerns. And 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 got to win elections.

And 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’re 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.

Looking Ahead to 2028

And I think that, you know, 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.

And 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’s going to execute. You know, Democrats aren’t good at doing that anyway.

BRIAN TYLER COHEN: Yeah, well, I think, you know, one block of voters who I think there has been particular focus paid to right now is young voters. And, you know, 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.

When I was a student, you could not find any other students on campus who were not supporting your campaign. And you had owned the cultural zeitgeist in a way that hadn’t been done before and frankly hasn’t been done since. And 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. And so what is your advice in terms of remobilizing a generation of Americans that we’ve had trouble mobilizing up to this point?

Reconnecting with Young Voters

BARACK OBAMA: Well, look, part of it has to do with the fact that I was young. So maybe don’t nominate a, look, I’m 64 now. I’m pretty healthy. 64 feel great. But the truth is, half of the references that my daughters make about social media, TikTok, et cetera, 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. And so some of it is choosing candidates who check that box.

I do think that there is an element of joy that needs to, that Democrats lost sometimes, that our campaign was fun. We had some, 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, you know, 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 Mondaire’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. And I think young people respond to that.

Moving Beyond Virtue Signaling

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. And I’ve 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.

And the truth is, most of us, all of us, are complicated and we have blind spots and sometimes we say dumb stuff. And 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. And we saw that in Minneapolis. Somebody showed me a friend of mine, Michelle 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.

And she showed me a clip of this street band that was performing every night after all these activities had been taking place and protests, et cetera. And they were just out there and they were playing music. And I’m trying to figure out how they were playing, you know, horns and drums, et cetera, in zero degree weather, because I would not have been able to put my lips on a trumpet. And people were celebrating what they had accomplished. And it was an embodiment of the values that make us care about other people.

And that, I think, is a spirit that when Democrats tap into that spirit, then we win the other side. Does the mean angry demagoguery, you know, exclusive us them, you know, divisive politics. That’s their, that’s their home court. Our court is coming together. Our court, look, a great example wasn’t political. Bad Bunny’s halftime show.

BRIAN TYLER COHEN: I knew you were going to say that.

The Power of Community and Representation

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.

And it was a reminder of what Dr. King called the beloved community can look like, which is not perfect, and it’s messy sometimes. And, you know, I guarantee you not all those lyrics were probably politically correct. And if you translated them and, you know, people are complicated, but there was a sense of, all right, there’s room for everybody here. Yeah. And that, I think, is where we win.

BRIAN TYLER COHEN: You know, 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. And so 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. And so you’re right here. And so why is it important for you in this moment to make sure that you defer to others?

Empowering the Next Generation of Leaders

BARACK OBAMA: Well, first of all, I’m not a politician anymore and I can’t be. Right. I mean, I guess technically I could run for, you know, 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 if I even if I could run again.

But I’ve always believed, I mean, this has been 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. And so when I 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. So 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. And that’s what we need.

We just talked about it. You look at where excitement’s 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 ladder’s opportunity being taken away, have grown up in a moment in which there’s more social isolation. Right. And so, and understand both the good and the bad of social media. And so they’re the ones who are going to craft these, you know, who are going to remake our institutions so that they are consistent with the values that are, I think, timeless.

And so 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 or, but union organizers and grassroots organizers, as well as journalists and teachers and healthcare professionals and human rights activists. And we’ve now had thousands of folks go through the program, and these are folks who are doing remarkable stuff at very young ages.

I mean, 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 Obama Presidential Center: A Hub for Social Change

And the Presidential center, which will be opening up in June, is going to be the hub around which all this activity happens. And, you know, there will be a museum with Michelle’s dresses, since that’s what people want to see. You know, we’ll have some sports memorabilia and, you know, 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.

And 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 so that they work for this generation?

And that kind of spirit is what we hope this Presidential center will constantly refresh and renew. You know, this is kind of a social change university, and we want just ordinary visitors who aren’t, don’t think of themselves as activists as they go through these exhibits and they see, you know, what’s been done in the past. We want them to think, well, what can I do? And we’ll be giving them all kinds of ways in which they can then connect for, you know, with local organizations and get active in their own communities around the things that they care about.

That kind of reinvigorating our civic muscles, giving people a sense of, I’m not going to just sit here and doom scroll or occasionally tweet some complaint about what’s happening, but that I actually have agency and I can actually make a difference. We want to encourage that. And 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.

The Legacy of Social Movements

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. And I tried to manifest what I learned in every campaign I ran and tried to ride that all the way through my presidency. And, you know, I didn’t figure out all that stuff on my own.

And we have a long history in this country, you know, 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, like Valencia, is helping in solidarity or helping to bring down the Iron Curtain and inspiring the people. Power in the Philippines.

And, you know, 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? And that’s this enormous untapped power that we have to get back to.

Lightning Round

BRIAN TYLER COHEN: So I want to do a little bit of a lightning round here, because it’s not often I’ll get asked access to the President of the United States. So a couple questions here. Are aliens real?

BARACK OBAMA: They’re real, but I haven’t seen them. And they’re not being kept in…

BRIAN TYLER COHEN: What is it, Area 51.

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?

BARACK OBAMA: Where are the aliens?

BRIAN TYLER COHEN: Where are the aliens? Is there a person that you most want to meet that you haven’t met yet?

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. You know, there are some figures. He’s one. The Dalai Lama was another. Is another. Who, they’re how you hope they are. They kind of walk the walk. And my sense of this new pope is he’s from that. He’s cut from that cloth. You know, somebody who, you know, worked in places, you know, that really needed help and wasn’t just preaching from a pulpit, but getting his hands dirty, trying to help people. So I’m looking forward to talking to him.

BRIAN TYLER COHEN: I think we can…

BARACK OBAMA: At some point, I’ll probably have…

BRIAN TYLER COHEN: What world leader did you like the most and least?

BARACK OBAMA: You know, 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 a left, center left position. But she had integrity, very wicked smart. And we’re both analytical and practical and try to figure out how to problem solve. And so 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. People 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.

BARACK OBAMA: Look, I’ll be honest with you. Folks aren’t running pranks in the White House. They’re 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.

BARACK OBAMA: I tended not to pull pranks. People are intimidated enough by a president, you know, 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 going to prank me.

BRIAN TYLER COHEN: All right, last question here. Is Tupac alive?

BARACK OBAMA: He’s alive on my playlist.

BRIAN TYLER COHEN: All right. All right, we’ll leave it there. There you go, Mr. President.

BARACK OBAMA: I enjoyed it.

BRIAN TYLER COHEN: I appreciate it.

BARACK OBAMA: Thank you so much. Keep up doing the good work.

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