My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman (2018) s01e01 Episode Script
Barack Obama
1
[applause]
[Letterman] Let me ask, what'll you do
when you're not president?
Well, I was thinking you and me,
we could play some dominoes together,
- Dominoes. All right.
- You know, and
We
We can
you know, go to the local Starbucks.
[phone keypad beeps]
[phone rings]
Mr. President,
this is Mr. Letterman.
How are you?
No, sir, I have not shaved.
I've been looking around for two years,
and I haven't been sure what I want to do,
and now I've got six shows.
Okay.
Right.
Okay, I appreciate your time.
God bless you, sir. Take care.
Thank you very much. Same to you. Bye-bye.
[man] How did he react?
You know, he's so busy,
got so many things to do.
He can't make a decision yet.
He'll let me know in two or three weeks.
Would love to work with me.
Doesn't know how, doesn't know when.
It was-- I think a qualified
I think it was a no.
[jazzy theme music plays]
[audience applauds]
Thank you very-- No, no, no.
Thank you very much.
That's very kind of you. Thank you.
I'm Dave Letterman.
I had a show for a while,
then I got fired. And
And now here I am, and I have
not so much what I regard as a show,
but there's something called-- Have you
ever heard of anything called Netflix?
I don't know what it is.
I don't even care how it works.
All I know is that when it does work,
the danger of radioactive poisoning
soars in your home.
[audience laughs]
Does anybody have any idea
who's coming out here?
[audience whoops]
Oh, you do? So you do know?
Who do you think's coming out, sir?
Is there any way you can approach
the stage and whisper it to me?
Just come right over here. Be careful.
This guy claims to know.
And by the way,
if he does know, he's gone.
- Just give me a hint.
- William Jefferson Clinton.
Yeah, okay. Okay.
Son of a bitch.
One more and then let's go.
Yes, sir, right here.
Oh, you're with the staff.
Boy, that's a sad day
when the staff has a question.
Okay, I think we're ready.
God knows I'm ready.
I've been waiting for this
for quite a long time.
Ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome my next guest,
the 44th president
of the United States of America
Barack Obama.
Dave Letterman.
[audience cheers]
Mr. President.
- [Obama] How you doing?
- I'm good. Thank you very much.
Hey.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
So
[audience cheers]
- Good to see you.
- Good to see you.
How are you?
I'm great.
Now, what I want to know is
- You and I recently left long-term jobs.
- We did.
- The first day you wake up--
- I was not fired though.
I I couldn't
I just want to
The first day you wake up
not as president:
like any other day? Like a different day?
What was that first day like?
You're not president. Your feet
hit the floor, "I'm not president."
It was later. I slept in
which I was pretty happy about.
And I took Michelle on a holiday.
'Cause I missed my wife.
We hadn't kind of hung out.
So we spent ten days,
and just had a wonderful time.
- And then--
- Where'd you go?
We went to the British Virgin Islands.
- Very nice.
- And it was
You got
There you go.
And then we got back,
and because Sasha,
my younger daughter,
is still in high school, we didn't move.
So we're still living in D.C.,
and we've gotten a house
a few blocks from where I used to live.
- [chuckles]
- And
- Same neighborhood.
- Same neighborhood.
Same general vicinity. And
And, you know, it was great.
I did not miss the trappings
of the office.
I sort of enjoyed puttering around
the house, trying to figure out
how does the coffee maker work, and
fighting with Michelle
for closet space, and
Relief? Any relief here?
I don't think "relief's" the right word.
I think there was a sense
that I'd run the race.
I had completed it.
I was proud of the work that we had done.
And that I was ready for the next stage.
Mm.
The stereotype of former presidents
is you're kind of sitting around
your house, and
waiting for somebody to call,
and you're kind of lonely,
- and don't know what to do.
- No, that's me.
But But you know the truth is,
it felt exciting.
Now, I will say everything felt like
it was moving in slow motion.
The guy who is representing me
in a possible book publishing deal,
he calls me, says, "Look, these publishers
are chomping at the bit.
We've got to meet with them right away.
You know, right now.
Things are really hot."
I said, "Okay, how about tomorrow?"
"No, no, no. It's gonna take
two weeks to set it up."
And I explained to him, I said,
"Well, where I'm coming from,
'right away' means
if we don't do something in half an hour,
somebody dies."
- So
- Yeah. Let's get this done before lunch.
Yeah. Well, I
Right after the
There was palpable sadness on my part.
I think a lot of people experienced it.
And I think that happens
with any major shift.
And then I see you--
You're hang gliding,
and you're climbing volcanoes,
and you're windsurfing,
and you're wrestling sharks,
and you're on somebody's private island,
and I'm at Bed Bath & Beyond looking at
Picking out hangers, you know, and I
Something's wrong here.
How did you spend your time--
Seriously, how did you spend your time
after your last show?
Did you take a deliberate break
with the wife and son?
Did you just brood
in the dark somewhere?
- I mean, what was--
- What have you heard?
I don't know. What was your strategy?
- What was your approach?
- Even before retirement,
there was a certain amount
of brooding in the dark, but
No, it coincided with Harry's vacation.
We traveled.
We went to a lot of fascinating,
interesting places.
We visited Japan.
Had not been to Japan before.
Went to an island off of Newfoundland.
Fogo Island. Had never heard of it before.
Saw icebergs.
Now, here's how this is gonna work.
I'm gonna ask you stuff
[audience laughs]
- And then you-- You respond to stuff.
- People were interested.
They It's a whole new
ball game now, man.
No, I know.
You know, you have a different set,
there's no band.
No, no band.
You know.
Now, I was talking to your wife
not so long ago,
and I said to her--
They always talk about
the presidential briefing.
- Yes.
- Right after the inauguration
- Right.
- bang, zoom
- Yes.
- you get the presidential briefing.
- Yeah.
- And they say it changes lives.
I said, "Do they do that
for the first lady?"
She says, "No, they don't."
Well, right there is a mistake.
Am I supposed--
Is now when I'm supposed to respond?
Yes.
- Yes, now you can talk.
- Okay, all right.
[Letterman chuckles]
Well, look
For the first lady,
you are a very public figure.
You are expected to help to shape
the public conversation
on issues that are important,
but people don't want you to be
too political.
They don't want you to be
too controversial.
As Michelle always pointed out
first ladies do not get paid.
What's definitely true is that
she had to figure out
Right.
how was she gonna use
the power of her office
and her personality
and ability to persuade,
and she did a magnificent job.
I'm still in awe of the work that she did.
[audience applauds]
So
I mean, it doesn't
It doesn't make any difference,
but I've known of presidents going back--
Eisenhower was the first one
I was aware of,
and his wife was Mamie.
Mamie was the first lady.
I'm sure she was a fine first lady,
but made no--
Virtually no impact on my life.
Mamie Eisenhower,
- you may be stunned to hear this, but--
- I am surprised.
You are surprised.
But your wife,
not only an impact on me,
but I think far beyond what is expected
or usually happens with the first lady.
And one of the things
that Michelle figured out,
in some ways faster than I did,
was, you know, part of your ability
to lead the country
doesn't have to do with legislation,
doesn't have to do with regulations.
It has to do with shaping attitudes,
shaping culture,
- increasing awareness.
- Right.
It's behavior. We watch the behavior
and we learn from that.
And the planting of the garden,
that's a big gesture.
Well, and it's something
that people can relate to.
It's something they can see
and feel and touch.
And meanwhile, while she's doing
all this cool stuff,
I'm standing behind a podium
and I'm droning on and on about
"Well, the legislative strategy
for such and such and"
And people are clicking the television,
you know, trying to find something else,
or tweeting something
that has nothing to do with
- what I was talking about.
- Once again, you're talking about me.
So
when you become president,
and you're in the Oval Office,
you feel, "Okay,
now I have to act presidential."
And we lost track
of what have gotten us there,
and that was our ability to tell stories
and relate to people.
Now, in fairness, part of it was
the world economy was collapsing,
and I had two wars
that I had to deal with.
And so, that'll make you kind of serious.
Two wars and a collapsing economy.
- Yeah, it was a
- Welcome to the gig.
Yeah, right. Yeah. It
Where's the handbook on that?
Well, I think people forget
how bad things were.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
It turns out the economy was collapsing
faster than it did
during the Great Depression.
The month I took office, we had lost
800,000 jobs just in that month.
One of the things I'm proudest about
is the fact that
within a year, we actually
had the economy growing again,
and within about a year and a half
we were actually adding jobs again
instead of losing them.
But, look, there was a lot of pain
at that time,
and a lot of anguish, and a lot of stress,
and there wasn't a good blueprint
for how to do that.
You know, I fall prey to a cliché
which I believe I first heard from you,
and it goes like this:
"My son, in 20 years, will say to me,
'Wait a minute.
You knew this was a problem,
but you didn't do anything about it.'"
And I apply that to all manner
of circumstances
in life and in the world.
Are we safe from the same thing
repeating itself?
There's some long-term trends
that are still a problem.
You still have growing inequality.
The combination of technology
and globalization
- Yeah.
- means that
there are entire industries
and categories of jobs
that are being eliminated.
The cost of college, the cost
of health care are still going up,
although not as fast as they were
when I came into office.
And so, in that environment
if all the money is going
to a handful of people at the top,
and they're investing
in all kinds of stuff,
because they want
to maximize their return,
that's how you start getting bubbles,
that's how you start getting
an overheated financial system.
The challenge that we still
have to address is,
how do we make an economy in this
globalized technological environment
that's working for everybody?
To hear you describe this
in a way that I can understand
just makes me so happy
you're still president, because
[audience laughs]
Let's just say
there's a democracy,
and the voting process
is being monkeyed with
by foreign countries.
Mm-hmm.
- Hypothetically.
- Hypothetically.
What is more damaging to that democracy?
Would it be the diminishment
by the head of the democracy of the press?
Or would it be somebody screwing around
with the actual voting process?
One of the biggest challenges
we have to our democracy
is the degree to which we don't share
a common baseline of facts.
There's a well-known senator
from New York,
Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
And one time, he was debating
one of his less capable colleagues,
and the guy got flustered
and said, "Well, Senator Moynihan,
that's just your opinion.
And I have mine."
And Moynihan says,
"Sir, you are entitled
to your own opinion,
but you are not entitled
to your own facts."
What the Russians exploited,
but it was already here,
is we are operating
in completely different
information universes.
If you watch Fox News,
you are living on a different planet
than you are if you, you know,
listen to NPR. Now
It used to be
Again, when we were young.
Although you're a little older than me.
You and I are the same age.
Just you got this--
He's got this Biblical beard, you know.
- I'm regarded--
- Do you have a staff? You're like
[audience laughs]
- The waters part.
- I'm a holy man now.
Yeah.
In our campaign in 2007, 2008,
we were some of the earliest adopters
of social media.
And we were reliant on
a bunch of 22- and 23-year-olds
and volunteers who we were sending out,
and they'd just go.
And they were communicating
entirely through social media,
and we essentially built
what ended up being the most effective
political campaign probably
in modern political history.
So I had a very optimistic
feeling about it.
And I think that what we missed
was the degree to which
people who are in power, people
Special interests
- foreign governments, et cetera
- Yeah.
can, in fact, manipulate that
- Propagandize.
- and propagandize.
I was under the impression that Twitter
would be the mechanism by which
truth was told around the world.
[audience laughs]
If you are getting all your information
off algorithms being sent through a phone,
and it is just reinforcing
whatever biases you have,
which is the pattern that develops--
There was an interesting experiment,
not a big scientific experiment,
but just an experiment that somebody did
during the revolution
that was taking place in Egypt,
in Tahrir Square.
Somebody took a liberal, a conservative,
and quote-unquote "a moderate,"
and sent them on a Google search.
"Egypt, type it in."
And for the conservative,
it came up "Muslim Brotherhood."
And for the liberal,
it came up "Tahrir Square."
And for the moderate, it came up
"vacation spots on the Nile."
But whatever your biases were,
that's what-- Where you were being sent.
And that gets more and more
reinforced over time.
That's what's happening
with these Facebook pages
where more and more people
are getting their news from.
At a certain point,
you just live in a bubble.
And that's part of why our politics
is so polarized right now.
I think it is a solvable problem,
but I think it's a
It's one that we have to spend
a lot of time thinking about.
It seems like a valuable tool
that has turned against us.
- Yeah.
- I read a book you wrote,
- Dreams from My Father.
- Yeah.
It was such
What an odyssey, your life.
What an odyssey, your early life.
How well-written and how dense
each period of your life.
And one of many things
that I was taken by
was your relationship with your mother.
Tell me about that relationship,
and how you feel now about it.
Yeah, it's interesting.
The book's called Dreams from My Father,
because it was a exploration,
or a chronicle of me trying
to figure out who my dad was,
and, as a consequence,
how I got this name,
and what it meant to be
an African-American
whose father was African, and--
You know, how did all that work?
It was only after I wrote it,
and then, even more profoundly,
after my mom had passed away,
I realized she's actually
the guiding spirit in my life.
The father was the absent one,
and so I was chasing that,
and took this for granted.
My mother was a fascinating woman.
Born in Kansas.
Traveled around a lot when she was young.
So she ends up in Hawaii.
She's a student, she meets this
- African--
- First African student
to be admitted
to the University of Hawaii.
And they have this brief affair,
they get married quickly,
divorced quickly.
I'm a byproduct of that.
And then he's gone.
And so she, along with my grandparents,
basically raised me.
She remarries again,
this time to an Indonesian,
and we traveled to Jakarta in 1967.
I lived there for four years
before moving back to Hawaii.
And she ended up specializing
in women's development issues.
She's She was one of the pioneers
in microfinancing,
where you'd go into a village,
and women who were doing all kinds of work
but they weren't getting paid for it,
figuring out how they could monetize
what they were doing,
and ended up being a tool
to, you know, empower them
and create more development
in poor countries.
And, you know, when I think about
the values that carried me forward
they trace to her.
She was very much a child of the '60s
and a little bit of a skeptic
about a lot of things,
but what was interesting
was she hung on to some very basic
kind of Midwestern values.
Be honest, be kind, be useful,
be responsible, work hard,
treat everybody with respect.
When I think about the work
that I ended up doing,
there's no doubt that
some of that rubbed off.
There-- In the book, there are many
examples of what you have described,
two of which touched me,
and I'm not sure why.
She said that from her
She's being very modest
about her role in your life.
From her you got your eyebrows.
See, she did-- She was very proud
of the fact that my eyebrows were strong.
[audience laughs]
Which was an important asset
that I have now passed on to my daughters.
She also said that the brains
I'm not sure that was the word.
came from your father.
I think from my father,
who I only met for a month, I--
And-- Or the stories
that were told about me.
And a lot of-- My mother was very generous
in telling stories
that put him in the best light,
and not the bad ones.
And it wasn't-- It was only later that
I learned the bad ones, not from her.
But, you know, what I came to appreciate
was the degree to which
I wanted to be present
in my children's life.
That's not something
he taught me directly.
He taught me by his absence.
The other thing that stuck with me--
I believe you were in Indonesia.
You moved to Indonesia
when you were-- Is it six?
- Six years old.
- Six years old.
And your mother, bless her heart,
is worried about the quality
of education you're getting there.
So, every morning,
she wakes you up at like five, like six,
- before you go to school in Indonesia
- Yeah.
and she teaches you,
like, a full day's curriculum.
It's basically homeschooling.
Homeschooling before you go to school.
Because she was so worried
about the welfare of her son
- and the education he was getting.
- Yeah. Well
So, we'd wake up, and she'd go--
I'd do all those lessons,
- and--
- That's sweet though.
Well, it was In retrospect,
you think, "Isn't that wonderful?"
At the time, I thought,
"This is terrible.
I've got two schools"
You know, I'd start complaining.
I'd be like, "I'm tired.
I don't want to do this."
And she made the obvious point,
which when you're seven or eight
you don't think about, which is,
- "This is no picnic for me either."
- Yeah.
- Exactly.
- My mother
- had great faith in education.
- Yeah.
And I was an indifferent student
in high school.
Partied a lot.
Started getting a little more serious
in college,
and I started reading a lot
and was inspired
by the Civil Rights Movement.
When I graduated, I thought to myself,
"I can't think of anything
more worthy of my efforts
than what those young
Freedom Riders did,
voter registrars and people
who risked everything
to try to advance our democracy."
I was inspired by it,
but there was no movement around.
Recently, I did something
that was so important to me.
It has to do with Congressman John Lewis.
I went to Selma, Alabama
and the congressman and I
walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
I've met people who have received
the Congressional Medal of Honor,
and he is as great a hero
John Lewis is an extraordinary American.
He is a great friend of mine,
and I'm lucky for it.
[newscaster] On Sunday, March 7th,
state troopers and sheriff's deputies
advanced on a column of demonstrators
who had planned a 50-mile march
to Montgomery, the capital.
[man] We, the Negro citizens
of Dallas County
and other Alabama counties,
are marching today
from Selma to Montgomery.
We're marching to our state capital
to dramatize to our nation
and to the world
our determination
to win first-class citizenship.
[newscaster] The match lasted only minutes
before being turned back
by state troopers and sheriff's possemen.
[crowd clamors]
[newscaster] With teargas, Selma ceased
to be an obscure Southern city
and became a symbol.
[Letterman] How many times
have you walked this bridge?
[John Lewis] Many, many times.
Since 1965, only missed one year
and not returning.
- This is where it all happened.
- If you don't mind,
let's talk a little bit about that day.
How old were you?
You were 22 when you made this walk?
When I made the walk
across the bridge, I was 25.
- Twenty-five years old.
- Twenty-five.
You know, that day,
I was wearing a light trench coat.
- You had the trench coat on.
- Trench coat.
- You had the backpack.
- Had a backpack.
In the backpack,
I had an apple, an orange,
toothpaste and toothbrush,
and two books.
I thought we were gonna be arrested
and go to jail.
- You'd go to jail.
- Go to jail.
You and your friends were not breaking
any laws when you made this march?
No, we were walking here on the sidewalk.
Barack Obama would have been with you
had he been the right age, wouldn't he?
- Oh, he would have been here.
- Yeah.
He would have been
an unbelievable spokesperson.
Unbelievable leader of the movement.
- We're getting close to the confrontation.
- Yes.
And is this about where you said
that you saw death?
What does that feel like?
I thought I was going to die.
It was something-- Some force
that was just pushing us on.
Sometimes, you have to be inspired
and lifted up
- Well
- by what I call the spirit of history.
Yeah, I'll tell you,
being here with you is inspiring.
[John Lewis]
We had been taught not to be afraid
but be determined
and be orderly, peaceful,
and abide by the philosophy
and the discipline of non-violence.
But can you teach not to be afraid?
I mean, pretending to not be afraid
is as good as actually
not being afraid, isn't it?
- Well, it is.
- Yeah.
[man] Troopers here,
advance towards the group.
See that they turn around and disperse.
[crowd clamoring]
[John Lewis] I was hit in the head
by a state trooper with a nightstick.
My legs went from under me,
and all these years later,
I don't know how I got up.
And I don't know how I made it back
across the bridge to the church.
And when I got back at the church
someone asked me to say something.
And I stood up and said,
"I don't understand it.
How President Johnson
can send troops to Vietnam,
and cannot send troops to Selma, Alabama
to protect people whose only desire
is to register to vote."
And the next thing I knew,
I'd been admitted
to the Good Samaritan Hospital.
[Letterman] And then it was
on everybody's TV that evening.
[John Lewis] And it became known as
Bloody Sunday in Selma.
[Letterman] What was the total number
of the marchers on the fin--
- The second pass.
- Right.
[John Lewis] By the time we made it
to Montgomery on the final march,
there were probably
more than 20,000 people.
[Letterman] Twenty thousand?
That's remarkable.
Symbolically
when the march was completed successfully,
what is on the other side of the bridge?
The vote.
- Barack Obama.
- Yeah.
If it hadn't been for the march
from Selma to Montgomery,
there probably no Barack Obama
as president of the United States.
John Lewis is absolutely right, that
he and all those other folks that marched
carried me across that bridge.
Well, they carried America
across that bridge.
And so
[audience applauds]
You know, the interesting thing
about John for me
was that he was really the inspiration
to take the path that I took.
And in fact, where we are,
at City Colleges of New York,
here in the Amsterdam campus,
is where I got my first organizing job.
And I didn't work here long,
and I was pretty miserable at what I did,
I was terrible.
I organized some meeting
about poverty or something.
I was really-- Passed out fliers,
I was really energized,
and like four people came,
which was fewer than the panelists
I had arranged,
and it was depressing.
But the reason I mention this
with respect to John is that
it was actually what carried me through
multiple failures,
not just as an organizer,
but then my early efforts in politics
was reminding myself that, well, look,
the burdens I'm going through
- Yeah.
- Nobody's siccing dogs on me.
- Right.
- Nobody's beating me
half to death.
You go to that museum
on the other side of the bridge,
- Yeah.
- And you-- You're alive
with the movement when you are there.
And I said to the congressman,
"We can define racism,
but can we explain it?"
And he said to me something I think
he just said to me
because he knew
I would never understand it.
He said, "It's just
the difference in skin color."
And I said
"It can't possibly be that simplistic."
Well, yeah, look,
the long view on human history
it turns out that we come up
with all kinds of reasons
to try to put ourselves over other people.
Racism is a profound example of that
but obviously, biologically,
there's no actual reality to it,
other than we made this thing up.
We made it up.
Over time, what happens is,
because it manifests itself
in very concrete ways,
slavery, Jim Crow, subjugation,
it becomes a social reality,
and it ends up having very real impacts.
It is true that African-Americans,
on average, are poorer
than other Americans.
Well, it's not because of the race,
it's because of the social constructs
over the course of three,
four hundred years that made them poor.
And so, John Lewis, Dr. King,
what they teach us is
to ask ourselves questions
if we see cruelty, if we see inequalities,
if we see injustice.
"Why is that?
Am I a part of this?
Am I willing to do something about it?
Are there sacrifices
I'm willing to make to change it?"
And that's not always easy,
but it's necessary.
That's how progress is made.
And that's why I always say that
the way America has become more perfect
Not perfect, but more perfect.
typically has to do with
ordinary people deciding,
"You know what? That's not right."
There's another cliché
that I'm fond of invoking,
which is, "Nothing right in the world
- ever occurs without a fight."
- Or at least some discomfort.
Yes.
Because there's a reason--
Somebody's benefiting from the status quo.
[Obama] In one afternoon 50 years ago,
so much of our turbulent history
met on this bridge.
We gather here to honor the courage
of ordinary Americans
willing to endure billy clubs
and the chastening rod
tear gas, and the trampling hoof.
The idea held
by generations of citizens
who believe that America
is a constant work-in-progress
who believe that loving this country
requires more than singing its praises,
or avoiding uncomfortable truths.
It requires the occasional disruption,
the willingness to speak out
for what is right,
to shake up the status quo.
That's America.
The way he represented me as an American,
- I haven't experienced that before.
- Yeah.
Well, I never saw a president
so committed, so fair, so dedicated.
I'd just never seen anyone like him.
Without being just flat out
specific about this,
how big a setback
is the current administration?
It is a major setback to the hopes,
the dream, and aspiration of a people.
Not just African-America,
- but all America.
- Yeah.
Because I think what has happened
in America today,
is a threat not just to our own country,
but to the planet.
Kind of the genesis of this, Congressman,
is when you decided you weren't going
to attend Donald Trump's inauguration.
And that ridiculous quote,
"John Lewis, just another
all-talk, no-action congressman,"
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I found that very upsetting.
How did you react to that?
Well, I just
sort of had what I call
"an executive session" with myself,
and I said, you know
"This man, he doesn't know
anything about me."
All my life, I've been acting
and speaking up
I was arrested and jailed
40 times during the '60s,
and five times
since I've been in Congress.
You think, okay, the Civil Rights Act
Voter Registration Act,
okay, things get better as we move away
from sadness and tragedy.
Things get better,
things seem to get better.
And then all of a sudden,
it seems like, well, wait a minute,
things are not better,
not only are they not better,
in Insidious ways, they may be worse.
I think in the whole struggle,
there may be some setbacks,
some delays, some interruption
- Yeah.
- but you take a long hard look,
we will get there.
We will redeem the soul of America.
We will
make this little piece
of real estate
we call America, and the world,
a little better.
We all have a role to play.
We all can do something,
we all can make a contribution.
- But I'm making a contribution
- You're making a contribution.
because you're nice enough to let me
walk across the bridge with you.
The march across the bridge
was voter rights.
And there were changes
to the voting law in 2013
because, I think the understanding was
that some of these provisions
no longer apply.
We've outgrown them, we're smarter,
- we be--
- That was the argument that the Supreme--
- This Supreme Court accepted.
- Right.
And I talked to him about that,
and I was stunned.
He says, "That setback
cost us a hundred years."
Now, he may have been invoking hyperbole.
Let's say it's 50 years,
let's say it's ten years.
Yeah, I-- Well, look,
we're the only advanced democracy
that deliberately discourages
people from voting.
We create all these barriers
and difficulties,
and the reason is, is that's all
directly related to our history.
Initially, there were a very small
category of people who could vote.
White men with property.
Then expanded to white men
without property.
And then we kept on
expanding the franchise,
but those vestiges of thinking that
only some of us are worthy
of having a say
you know, that carries on.
And the fact that wehave
a very narrow window to vote
in a lot of places
You know, if you're a working single mom
who's taking the bus to work,
and you got to get your kids
ready for school,
and you got to punch a clock
and you don't have a break,
and now on a Tuesday, and it's snowing
There's no reason for that
other than we just want to--
It's petty.
- Yeah.
- It's so petty.
Well, you know, but, look,
what ends up happening
is we have some of the lowest voting rates
of any democracy on Earth.
The truth is,
is that people opt out themselves
because they just don't think
anything can happen.
They figure, "My voice doesn't matter,
my vote doesn't matter,
Washington's broken,
rich people are gonna make decisions."
So if you go to Selma
the lesson to draw
has less to do
with the particulars of the laws
that were changed or not changed,
has more to do with the spirit
that said, "Okay
I'm a Pullman porter, I'm a maid
but if enough maids
and Pullman porters walk
and pray and sing and show this injustice,
we can awaken the conscience of a nation."
Now, Mr. President
I know you have to get back
to the Oval Office.
[audience laughs]
Yeah, the
[audience applauds]
You know
Let me just say this,
that if it were not
for the Constitution
there'd be Michelle.
Oh!
No, no, no. No, you
You guys are misunderstanding me.
What I'm saying is I'm prevented
from running again by the Constitution.
But even if it were not
for that Amendment
Michelle would leave me. And
Oh, well, okay. I can--
I understand that now.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- I want her around.
Yeah.
As well you should.
Now
Let's talk about something
you and I have in common: kids.
We-- Yes.
You took your older daughter
away to college
And as moving-- More moving
than you thought it would be?
Did
It was
It was like open heart surgery, man.
I mean, it was
One of the best descriptions
I ever heard of children
is it's like having your heart
outside your body.
And they're not that smart,
and they're kind of wandering around,
and crossing streets,
and getting on airplanes,
and you're like, "Come--"
You want to put them
Put them back in.
And it was interesting to see
how everybody handled things differently.
All right. So, Michelle
she had like a cleaning glove, you know.
One of those, you know, yellow ones,
and she's got--
She's scouring the bathroom,
and, you know, has all these plans
about how everything should be.
And Sasha
It was really touching,
'cause Sasha tries to be cool,
so she didn't want to admit
that she was gonna miss her sister.
She's neater than her sister,
so she was helping to make the bed
and fold clothes,
and just being really quiet about it,
but in a way thatwas really
moving and touching.
And I was basically useless, right?
I wasn't-- There was no
And everybody had seen me,
you know, crying and misting up
for the previous three weeks,
and so
Malia was very thoughtful. She says,
"Hey, Dad, you know, I've got this
lamp in this box, and, you know,
put the desk lamp together."
You know. I said, "Sure," you know.
So I
So I grab it, and
You know, it should have taken
like five minutes or three minutes.
It had one of those little wrenches
that are in-- The little--
- It comes with the tool.
- The little tool.
And And it only had
four parts or something.
And I'm sitting there, and I'm
just toiling away at this thing,
and it's taken half an hour.
And meanwhile,
Michelle's finished scrubbing,
and she's organizing closets and all this.
And I was just pretty pathetic.
And I held it together
in front of Malia, and then,
when we drove away
you know, Secret Service is in the front,
and they're just looking ahead.
They're pretending that they can't
hear me in the back
[imitates crying]
you know, sniveling.
But
the ritual of it was powerful.
How do you feel now about it?
What's changed, I think,
from when we were kids
is that is technology.
All right. So, I get home,
she knows I'm pathetic,
so she's texted me
you know, hearts and
it's all great and
You know, so, we're talking
on a regular basis.
When we were kids, you had to go down
to the end of the hall of the dorm.
- That's right.
- You had to
And my grandmother,
who had grown up during the Depression,
she hated long-distance calls,
'cause she figured it was a waste
of money, it was way too expensive.
All right. So, if you called collect,
you weren't sure whether
she was gonna accept.
"What is it you want?" You know.
Yeah.
Like you're calling from jail
or something.
"I'm wishing you happy birthday."
Now, what is
I have a story about Malia
that I've not told anyone.
But I want to get to devices,
because my son
is a device guy,
- and your daughter's
- Yes.
well-schooled in devices.
Everybody-- You know,
they're everywhere.
They're called smartphones, Dave.
- You don't have to call them devices.
- They're not devices?
I mean I mean
[audience applauds]
Technically they're devices.
Took you a half an hour
to assemble a four-part lamp.
This is true.
That's a decent point.
- We were at a function at the White House.
- Yeah.
- I had never met either of your daughters.
- Yeah.
- And I see Malia.
- Yeah.
And I think, "I just want to say hello."
Thank you. I go over,
and I say, "You don't know who I am.
I know your mother and father.
My name is Dave Letterman,
and I am very happy to be here
at the party, and thank you
for inviting me to the party."
And she says, "Yeah, you look like a guy
who really knows how to party."
[audience laughs]
- That was a pretty good line.
- She really did.
And I'm telling you, I loved it.
- Yeah.
- It was
- It was absolutely delightful.
- She actually is
- She's a riot.
- Yeah.
She is funny.
- Are they both funny?
- They're funny in different ways.
So here's a good example.
They are both extraordinary writers.
Malia will write something.
She'll come in and say,
"Dad, I wrote this.
I want to I want you to read it
right away see what you think."
And I'll read it, and I'll have comments,
and then we'll go in,
and we'll go back and forth, and,
"Oh, Dad, that's really helpful."
Sasha, we'll be at dinner,
and Michelle will say
"Your teacher just called.
Wanted to see if that extraordinary poem
you wrote should be--
If we could include it
in our literary magazine."
"What poem?"
"It's nothing."
"Well, what do you mean?
Your teacher just said
they want to include it
in the literary magazine.
Can you show me the poem?"
"No."
"What do you mean, 'no'?"
"Okay, you can read it,
but you can't talk to me about it at all.
If I give it to you, will you promise
not to say anything to me
about the poem?"
"Well, what if I think it's great?
What if I"
"I don't want to hear anything about it."
So, that's kind of the
It's irritating, because I go through
the same thing.
Harry has that same whatever that is,
and I would like it to leave
where-- "Don't say that again."
"Harry, congratulations.
I heard you did well on the math test."
"Don't talk to me about the math test."
"Okay."
That's why I wish Harry had a sibling,
because I had assumed and had hoped
that he would be just like me.
- Well
- Yeah.
- He's not just like me.
- No.
And I'm not sure any of us
- hope that either.
- Yeah.
[audience laughs]
Oh, buddy I saw a picture of you
in the Pete Souza book.
And, uh
[Obama] Pete Souza,
for those who don't know,
- was the White House photographer.
- Yeah.
And we paid him tax dollars,
and now he's making a billion dollars
with the damn book.
Who owns the negatives?
I don't get any of it.
But there's a picture of you dancing,
and the guy playing the band to whom--
Leading the band to whom you're dancing
- is Prince.
- Is Prince, yeah.
And I thought I was blessed to have
Paul Shaffer with me every night,
- but honest to God--
- That was a fun night.
Yeah.
So, this was probably
three or four months before he died.
And Prince asks Sasha
to come up and dance,
and she's an excellent dancer.
Then Sasha pulls me up
which surprises me, because she always
mocks my dancing, but
- I have dad moves.
- Yeah.
And I think the key is
Is what we call "staying in the pocket."
Stay Staying in the pocket.
You got to stay in the pocket, because
I think everybody here knows
dads who get out of the pocket.
[audience laughs]
And they're trying stuff
that they can't really pull off.
Yeah.
And they start doing like karate kicks
- and all kinds of stuff.
- Really? Karate kicks?
Is that one of the things you do?
But the point is, is that
that's not cool, 'cause you cannot
pull that off at your age.
Now, I had hoped to talk about
the Foundation.
I know a little bit about the Foundation.
I know that the Foundation
is not just a library
where we can go look at pictures.
The Foundation is a living organism.
It's bringing life back to an area
of the South Side of Chicago.
I know we're putting young people to work,
and we're teaching young people
how to cope with the future,
- and what to do--
- You know a lot.
You're doing great.
I'm not as dumb as people think I am.
So, I'm gonna leave this to you now.
I'm being threatened now that it's--
We're way late.
- So, it's entirely up to you--
- Who's threatening--
Has the Secret Service
pulled a gun on you, or
I didn't notice that red dot
on your forehead.
- Now, look--
- They had a little talk
before the evening.
Even as I was approaching
the end of my term,
I had asked myself
"What will be most impactful?
What will be most useful?
What I realized is the thing
that I could probably do uniquely,
is work to train
the next generation of leaders
to bring about change, because
Because
You know, during
During my presidency,
I would travel all around the country,
and I'd travel all around the world,
and I-- We made a habit
of me having town halls with young people.
Some of them had already
accomplished remarkable things.
And they'd meet each other,
and they'd trade ideas,
and excite each other,
and stay in contact.
And over time, we had networks
of hundreds of thousands
of these young leaders all around
the world and around the country.
And we thought, "How could we kind of
make that more systematic?"
So, really, it's designed to be
sort of a hub
for young people who want to learn
how they can have an impact
to convene, get trained,
get mentored, get supported.
But the key point I want to make on this,
because you mentioned John Lewis
every once in a while, you'll find
in every period in our history,
in every era, in every country
these extraordinary folks
like a John Lewis
who, against all odds, change history.
There are so many more young people
who would like to get involved
but don't know how
or aren't quite as courageous
as a John Lewis is,
but maybe if they had some
encouragement, would participate.
And not everybody is gonna march
and go into politics.
They might volunteer in their community
to do something good.
They might encourage
their friends and neighbors
to learn about the issues and vote.
We were talking earlier about
the whole issue of racism
and the silence that some people,
who probably knew better, felt,
and so, they just let things
continue as they were.
The interesting thing
is the reverse happens.
'Cause we're social animals,
and if we see others
who are volunteering
we'll think,
"Well, maybe we'll volunteer."
If they see others voting
"Maybe I'll vote."
If they feel as if there's
a community around them
that says this is the norm,
for us to feel like we have a say
in our lives and we can connect
with people,
even if they don't look
exactly like we do,
or worship in the exact same way,
or have the same sexual orientation,
but we have these common
interests involved,
and that's the habits of the heart
that we've developed
you know, it works that way, too.
So, that's what the Foundation is going
to try to promote in a systematic way.
You invoke the phrase "against all odds,
maybe someone who can change
or make history."
You, of course, described yourself.
I
[audience cheers]
We've been lucky.
Don't-- Don't you
You know, I
[audience continues cheering]
Can I say-- I wanted to ask Dave
a lot of questions.
He got grumpy at the beginning.
I couldn't ask him questions.
But here's one question I did have in
'Cause we're wrapping up, is
Don't you say to yourself,
"Boy, am I lucky"?
And one of the things that I think
I always am surprised by
is when I see people
who have been successful
in business, or entertainment,
or politics
and they're absolutely convinced
that it's all because they were so smart.
And I'm always saying,
"Well, look, I worked hard,
and I've got some talent,
but there are a lot of hardworking
talented people out there."
There was this element of chance to it.
There was this element of
Of serendipity.
And I wonder whether
you feel that sometimes, where--
And the reason that,
for me at least, is important,
is so: A, I don't feel too self-important;
but B
you know, you want to see
if you can maybe
figure out how to sprinkle that stardust
- on other people.
- Okay.
Mr. President, this is what I am
struggling with at this point in my life.
I have been nothing but lucky.
When John Lewis and his friends,
in April of '65--
March of '65,
were marching across that bridge,
in April of '65,
me and my friends
were driving to Florida
to get on a cruise ship
to go to the Bahamas
because there was no age limit
to purchase alcohol,
and we spent the entire week
- pardon my French, shit-faced.
- Right.
[audience laughs]
Why wasn't I in Alabama?
Why was I not aware?
I have been nothing but lucky,
and the luck continues here this evening.
And I will tell you one thing.
When I was a kid,
and it's still taught today,
irrespective of the man or woman
who holds the office,
you have to respect
the office of president.
Without a question of a doubt,
you are the first president
- I truly and fully respect.
- That means a lot.
Thank you.
[audience cheers]
Thank you, brother.
That was fun.
Hey.
Thank you.
[jazzy theme music plays]
Thank you, New York.
- Hey, get these cameras out of here.
- Get these cameras out.
- What are they doing?
- Where are we going? Someone--
Wait a minute, you can beat 'em up.
Go ahead, beat 'em up.
No, no, they actually look
- We're going this way?
- They look harmless.
We should redo this. The
Come on, we'll
- What are we--?
- What they want--
They want a shot of us
walking into the sunset together.
How do you know this
and I don't know this?
Come on, we're gonna go this way.
This is the way that we're going.
And this way, they will be able to create
this poignant moment.
[applause]
[Letterman] Let me ask, what'll you do
when you're not president?
Well, I was thinking you and me,
we could play some dominoes together,
- Dominoes. All right.
- You know, and
We
We can
you know, go to the local Starbucks.
[phone keypad beeps]
[phone rings]
Mr. President,
this is Mr. Letterman.
How are you?
No, sir, I have not shaved.
I've been looking around for two years,
and I haven't been sure what I want to do,
and now I've got six shows.
Okay.
Right.
Okay, I appreciate your time.
God bless you, sir. Take care.
Thank you very much. Same to you. Bye-bye.
[man] How did he react?
You know, he's so busy,
got so many things to do.
He can't make a decision yet.
He'll let me know in two or three weeks.
Would love to work with me.
Doesn't know how, doesn't know when.
It was-- I think a qualified
I think it was a no.
[jazzy theme music plays]
[audience applauds]
Thank you very-- No, no, no.
Thank you very much.
That's very kind of you. Thank you.
I'm Dave Letterman.
I had a show for a while,
then I got fired. And
And now here I am, and I have
not so much what I regard as a show,
but there's something called-- Have you
ever heard of anything called Netflix?
I don't know what it is.
I don't even care how it works.
All I know is that when it does work,
the danger of radioactive poisoning
soars in your home.
[audience laughs]
Does anybody have any idea
who's coming out here?
[audience whoops]
Oh, you do? So you do know?
Who do you think's coming out, sir?
Is there any way you can approach
the stage and whisper it to me?
Just come right over here. Be careful.
This guy claims to know.
And by the way,
if he does know, he's gone.
- Just give me a hint.
- William Jefferson Clinton.
Yeah, okay. Okay.
Son of a bitch.
One more and then let's go.
Yes, sir, right here.
Oh, you're with the staff.
Boy, that's a sad day
when the staff has a question.
Okay, I think we're ready.
God knows I'm ready.
I've been waiting for this
for quite a long time.
Ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome my next guest,
the 44th president
of the United States of America
Barack Obama.
Dave Letterman.
[audience cheers]
Mr. President.
- [Obama] How you doing?
- I'm good. Thank you very much.
Hey.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
So
[audience cheers]
- Good to see you.
- Good to see you.
How are you?
I'm great.
Now, what I want to know is
- You and I recently left long-term jobs.
- We did.
- The first day you wake up--
- I was not fired though.
I I couldn't
I just want to
The first day you wake up
not as president:
like any other day? Like a different day?
What was that first day like?
You're not president. Your feet
hit the floor, "I'm not president."
It was later. I slept in
which I was pretty happy about.
And I took Michelle on a holiday.
'Cause I missed my wife.
We hadn't kind of hung out.
So we spent ten days,
and just had a wonderful time.
- And then--
- Where'd you go?
We went to the British Virgin Islands.
- Very nice.
- And it was
You got
There you go.
And then we got back,
and because Sasha,
my younger daughter,
is still in high school, we didn't move.
So we're still living in D.C.,
and we've gotten a house
a few blocks from where I used to live.
- [chuckles]
- And
- Same neighborhood.
- Same neighborhood.
Same general vicinity. And
And, you know, it was great.
I did not miss the trappings
of the office.
I sort of enjoyed puttering around
the house, trying to figure out
how does the coffee maker work, and
fighting with Michelle
for closet space, and
Relief? Any relief here?
I don't think "relief's" the right word.
I think there was a sense
that I'd run the race.
I had completed it.
I was proud of the work that we had done.
And that I was ready for the next stage.
Mm.
The stereotype of former presidents
is you're kind of sitting around
your house, and
waiting for somebody to call,
and you're kind of lonely,
- and don't know what to do.
- No, that's me.
But But you know the truth is,
it felt exciting.
Now, I will say everything felt like
it was moving in slow motion.
The guy who is representing me
in a possible book publishing deal,
he calls me, says, "Look, these publishers
are chomping at the bit.
We've got to meet with them right away.
You know, right now.
Things are really hot."
I said, "Okay, how about tomorrow?"
"No, no, no. It's gonna take
two weeks to set it up."
And I explained to him, I said,
"Well, where I'm coming from,
'right away' means
if we don't do something in half an hour,
somebody dies."
- So
- Yeah. Let's get this done before lunch.
Yeah. Well, I
Right after the
There was palpable sadness on my part.
I think a lot of people experienced it.
And I think that happens
with any major shift.
And then I see you--
You're hang gliding,
and you're climbing volcanoes,
and you're windsurfing,
and you're wrestling sharks,
and you're on somebody's private island,
and I'm at Bed Bath & Beyond looking at
Picking out hangers, you know, and I
Something's wrong here.
How did you spend your time--
Seriously, how did you spend your time
after your last show?
Did you take a deliberate break
with the wife and son?
Did you just brood
in the dark somewhere?
- I mean, what was--
- What have you heard?
I don't know. What was your strategy?
- What was your approach?
- Even before retirement,
there was a certain amount
of brooding in the dark, but
No, it coincided with Harry's vacation.
We traveled.
We went to a lot of fascinating,
interesting places.
We visited Japan.
Had not been to Japan before.
Went to an island off of Newfoundland.
Fogo Island. Had never heard of it before.
Saw icebergs.
Now, here's how this is gonna work.
I'm gonna ask you stuff
[audience laughs]
- And then you-- You respond to stuff.
- People were interested.
They It's a whole new
ball game now, man.
No, I know.
You know, you have a different set,
there's no band.
No, no band.
You know.
Now, I was talking to your wife
not so long ago,
and I said to her--
They always talk about
the presidential briefing.
- Yes.
- Right after the inauguration
- Right.
- bang, zoom
- Yes.
- you get the presidential briefing.
- Yeah.
- And they say it changes lives.
I said, "Do they do that
for the first lady?"
She says, "No, they don't."
Well, right there is a mistake.
Am I supposed--
Is now when I'm supposed to respond?
Yes.
- Yes, now you can talk.
- Okay, all right.
[Letterman chuckles]
Well, look
For the first lady,
you are a very public figure.
You are expected to help to shape
the public conversation
on issues that are important,
but people don't want you to be
too political.
They don't want you to be
too controversial.
As Michelle always pointed out
first ladies do not get paid.
What's definitely true is that
she had to figure out
Right.
how was she gonna use
the power of her office
and her personality
and ability to persuade,
and she did a magnificent job.
I'm still in awe of the work that she did.
[audience applauds]
So
I mean, it doesn't
It doesn't make any difference,
but I've known of presidents going back--
Eisenhower was the first one
I was aware of,
and his wife was Mamie.
Mamie was the first lady.
I'm sure she was a fine first lady,
but made no--
Virtually no impact on my life.
Mamie Eisenhower,
- you may be stunned to hear this, but--
- I am surprised.
You are surprised.
But your wife,
not only an impact on me,
but I think far beyond what is expected
or usually happens with the first lady.
And one of the things
that Michelle figured out,
in some ways faster than I did,
was, you know, part of your ability
to lead the country
doesn't have to do with legislation,
doesn't have to do with regulations.
It has to do with shaping attitudes,
shaping culture,
- increasing awareness.
- Right.
It's behavior. We watch the behavior
and we learn from that.
And the planting of the garden,
that's a big gesture.
Well, and it's something
that people can relate to.
It's something they can see
and feel and touch.
And meanwhile, while she's doing
all this cool stuff,
I'm standing behind a podium
and I'm droning on and on about
"Well, the legislative strategy
for such and such and"
And people are clicking the television,
you know, trying to find something else,
or tweeting something
that has nothing to do with
- what I was talking about.
- Once again, you're talking about me.
So
when you become president,
and you're in the Oval Office,
you feel, "Okay,
now I have to act presidential."
And we lost track
of what have gotten us there,
and that was our ability to tell stories
and relate to people.
Now, in fairness, part of it was
the world economy was collapsing,
and I had two wars
that I had to deal with.
And so, that'll make you kind of serious.
Two wars and a collapsing economy.
- Yeah, it was a
- Welcome to the gig.
Yeah, right. Yeah. It
Where's the handbook on that?
Well, I think people forget
how bad things were.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
It turns out the economy was collapsing
faster than it did
during the Great Depression.
The month I took office, we had lost
800,000 jobs just in that month.
One of the things I'm proudest about
is the fact that
within a year, we actually
had the economy growing again,
and within about a year and a half
we were actually adding jobs again
instead of losing them.
But, look, there was a lot of pain
at that time,
and a lot of anguish, and a lot of stress,
and there wasn't a good blueprint
for how to do that.
You know, I fall prey to a cliché
which I believe I first heard from you,
and it goes like this:
"My son, in 20 years, will say to me,
'Wait a minute.
You knew this was a problem,
but you didn't do anything about it.'"
And I apply that to all manner
of circumstances
in life and in the world.
Are we safe from the same thing
repeating itself?
There's some long-term trends
that are still a problem.
You still have growing inequality.
The combination of technology
and globalization
- Yeah.
- means that
there are entire industries
and categories of jobs
that are being eliminated.
The cost of college, the cost
of health care are still going up,
although not as fast as they were
when I came into office.
And so, in that environment
if all the money is going
to a handful of people at the top,
and they're investing
in all kinds of stuff,
because they want
to maximize their return,
that's how you start getting bubbles,
that's how you start getting
an overheated financial system.
The challenge that we still
have to address is,
how do we make an economy in this
globalized technological environment
that's working for everybody?
To hear you describe this
in a way that I can understand
just makes me so happy
you're still president, because
[audience laughs]
Let's just say
there's a democracy,
and the voting process
is being monkeyed with
by foreign countries.
Mm-hmm.
- Hypothetically.
- Hypothetically.
What is more damaging to that democracy?
Would it be the diminishment
by the head of the democracy of the press?
Or would it be somebody screwing around
with the actual voting process?
One of the biggest challenges
we have to our democracy
is the degree to which we don't share
a common baseline of facts.
There's a well-known senator
from New York,
Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
And one time, he was debating
one of his less capable colleagues,
and the guy got flustered
and said, "Well, Senator Moynihan,
that's just your opinion.
And I have mine."
And Moynihan says,
"Sir, you are entitled
to your own opinion,
but you are not entitled
to your own facts."
What the Russians exploited,
but it was already here,
is we are operating
in completely different
information universes.
If you watch Fox News,
you are living on a different planet
than you are if you, you know,
listen to NPR. Now
It used to be
Again, when we were young.
Although you're a little older than me.
You and I are the same age.
Just you got this--
He's got this Biblical beard, you know.
- I'm regarded--
- Do you have a staff? You're like
[audience laughs]
- The waters part.
- I'm a holy man now.
Yeah.
In our campaign in 2007, 2008,
we were some of the earliest adopters
of social media.
And we were reliant on
a bunch of 22- and 23-year-olds
and volunteers who we were sending out,
and they'd just go.
And they were communicating
entirely through social media,
and we essentially built
what ended up being the most effective
political campaign probably
in modern political history.
So I had a very optimistic
feeling about it.
And I think that what we missed
was the degree to which
people who are in power, people
Special interests
- foreign governments, et cetera
- Yeah.
can, in fact, manipulate that
- Propagandize.
- and propagandize.
I was under the impression that Twitter
would be the mechanism by which
truth was told around the world.
[audience laughs]
If you are getting all your information
off algorithms being sent through a phone,
and it is just reinforcing
whatever biases you have,
which is the pattern that develops--
There was an interesting experiment,
not a big scientific experiment,
but just an experiment that somebody did
during the revolution
that was taking place in Egypt,
in Tahrir Square.
Somebody took a liberal, a conservative,
and quote-unquote "a moderate,"
and sent them on a Google search.
"Egypt, type it in."
And for the conservative,
it came up "Muslim Brotherhood."
And for the liberal,
it came up "Tahrir Square."
And for the moderate, it came up
"vacation spots on the Nile."
But whatever your biases were,
that's what-- Where you were being sent.
And that gets more and more
reinforced over time.
That's what's happening
with these Facebook pages
where more and more people
are getting their news from.
At a certain point,
you just live in a bubble.
And that's part of why our politics
is so polarized right now.
I think it is a solvable problem,
but I think it's a
It's one that we have to spend
a lot of time thinking about.
It seems like a valuable tool
that has turned against us.
- Yeah.
- I read a book you wrote,
- Dreams from My Father.
- Yeah.
It was such
What an odyssey, your life.
What an odyssey, your early life.
How well-written and how dense
each period of your life.
And one of many things
that I was taken by
was your relationship with your mother.
Tell me about that relationship,
and how you feel now about it.
Yeah, it's interesting.
The book's called Dreams from My Father,
because it was a exploration,
or a chronicle of me trying
to figure out who my dad was,
and, as a consequence,
how I got this name,
and what it meant to be
an African-American
whose father was African, and--
You know, how did all that work?
It was only after I wrote it,
and then, even more profoundly,
after my mom had passed away,
I realized she's actually
the guiding spirit in my life.
The father was the absent one,
and so I was chasing that,
and took this for granted.
My mother was a fascinating woman.
Born in Kansas.
Traveled around a lot when she was young.
So she ends up in Hawaii.
She's a student, she meets this
- African--
- First African student
to be admitted
to the University of Hawaii.
And they have this brief affair,
they get married quickly,
divorced quickly.
I'm a byproduct of that.
And then he's gone.
And so she, along with my grandparents,
basically raised me.
She remarries again,
this time to an Indonesian,
and we traveled to Jakarta in 1967.
I lived there for four years
before moving back to Hawaii.
And she ended up specializing
in women's development issues.
She's She was one of the pioneers
in microfinancing,
where you'd go into a village,
and women who were doing all kinds of work
but they weren't getting paid for it,
figuring out how they could monetize
what they were doing,
and ended up being a tool
to, you know, empower them
and create more development
in poor countries.
And, you know, when I think about
the values that carried me forward
they trace to her.
She was very much a child of the '60s
and a little bit of a skeptic
about a lot of things,
but what was interesting
was she hung on to some very basic
kind of Midwestern values.
Be honest, be kind, be useful,
be responsible, work hard,
treat everybody with respect.
When I think about the work
that I ended up doing,
there's no doubt that
some of that rubbed off.
There-- In the book, there are many
examples of what you have described,
two of which touched me,
and I'm not sure why.
She said that from her
She's being very modest
about her role in your life.
From her you got your eyebrows.
See, she did-- She was very proud
of the fact that my eyebrows were strong.
[audience laughs]
Which was an important asset
that I have now passed on to my daughters.
She also said that the brains
I'm not sure that was the word.
came from your father.
I think from my father,
who I only met for a month, I--
And-- Or the stories
that were told about me.
And a lot of-- My mother was very generous
in telling stories
that put him in the best light,
and not the bad ones.
And it wasn't-- It was only later that
I learned the bad ones, not from her.
But, you know, what I came to appreciate
was the degree to which
I wanted to be present
in my children's life.
That's not something
he taught me directly.
He taught me by his absence.
The other thing that stuck with me--
I believe you were in Indonesia.
You moved to Indonesia
when you were-- Is it six?
- Six years old.
- Six years old.
And your mother, bless her heart,
is worried about the quality
of education you're getting there.
So, every morning,
she wakes you up at like five, like six,
- before you go to school in Indonesia
- Yeah.
and she teaches you,
like, a full day's curriculum.
It's basically homeschooling.
Homeschooling before you go to school.
Because she was so worried
about the welfare of her son
- and the education he was getting.
- Yeah. Well
So, we'd wake up, and she'd go--
I'd do all those lessons,
- and--
- That's sweet though.
Well, it was In retrospect,
you think, "Isn't that wonderful?"
At the time, I thought,
"This is terrible.
I've got two schools"
You know, I'd start complaining.
I'd be like, "I'm tired.
I don't want to do this."
And she made the obvious point,
which when you're seven or eight
you don't think about, which is,
- "This is no picnic for me either."
- Yeah.
- Exactly.
- My mother
- had great faith in education.
- Yeah.
And I was an indifferent student
in high school.
Partied a lot.
Started getting a little more serious
in college,
and I started reading a lot
and was inspired
by the Civil Rights Movement.
When I graduated, I thought to myself,
"I can't think of anything
more worthy of my efforts
than what those young
Freedom Riders did,
voter registrars and people
who risked everything
to try to advance our democracy."
I was inspired by it,
but there was no movement around.
Recently, I did something
that was so important to me.
It has to do with Congressman John Lewis.
I went to Selma, Alabama
and the congressman and I
walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
I've met people who have received
the Congressional Medal of Honor,
and he is as great a hero
John Lewis is an extraordinary American.
He is a great friend of mine,
and I'm lucky for it.
[newscaster] On Sunday, March 7th,
state troopers and sheriff's deputies
advanced on a column of demonstrators
who had planned a 50-mile march
to Montgomery, the capital.
[man] We, the Negro citizens
of Dallas County
and other Alabama counties,
are marching today
from Selma to Montgomery.
We're marching to our state capital
to dramatize to our nation
and to the world
our determination
to win first-class citizenship.
[newscaster] The match lasted only minutes
before being turned back
by state troopers and sheriff's possemen.
[crowd clamors]
[newscaster] With teargas, Selma ceased
to be an obscure Southern city
and became a symbol.
[Letterman] How many times
have you walked this bridge?
[John Lewis] Many, many times.
Since 1965, only missed one year
and not returning.
- This is where it all happened.
- If you don't mind,
let's talk a little bit about that day.
How old were you?
You were 22 when you made this walk?
When I made the walk
across the bridge, I was 25.
- Twenty-five years old.
- Twenty-five.
You know, that day,
I was wearing a light trench coat.
- You had the trench coat on.
- Trench coat.
- You had the backpack.
- Had a backpack.
In the backpack,
I had an apple, an orange,
toothpaste and toothbrush,
and two books.
I thought we were gonna be arrested
and go to jail.
- You'd go to jail.
- Go to jail.
You and your friends were not breaking
any laws when you made this march?
No, we were walking here on the sidewalk.
Barack Obama would have been with you
had he been the right age, wouldn't he?
- Oh, he would have been here.
- Yeah.
He would have been
an unbelievable spokesperson.
Unbelievable leader of the movement.
- We're getting close to the confrontation.
- Yes.
And is this about where you said
that you saw death?
What does that feel like?
I thought I was going to die.
It was something-- Some force
that was just pushing us on.
Sometimes, you have to be inspired
and lifted up
- Well
- by what I call the spirit of history.
Yeah, I'll tell you,
being here with you is inspiring.
[John Lewis]
We had been taught not to be afraid
but be determined
and be orderly, peaceful,
and abide by the philosophy
and the discipline of non-violence.
But can you teach not to be afraid?
I mean, pretending to not be afraid
is as good as actually
not being afraid, isn't it?
- Well, it is.
- Yeah.
[man] Troopers here,
advance towards the group.
See that they turn around and disperse.
[crowd clamoring]
[John Lewis] I was hit in the head
by a state trooper with a nightstick.
My legs went from under me,
and all these years later,
I don't know how I got up.
And I don't know how I made it back
across the bridge to the church.
And when I got back at the church
someone asked me to say something.
And I stood up and said,
"I don't understand it.
How President Johnson
can send troops to Vietnam,
and cannot send troops to Selma, Alabama
to protect people whose only desire
is to register to vote."
And the next thing I knew,
I'd been admitted
to the Good Samaritan Hospital.
[Letterman] And then it was
on everybody's TV that evening.
[John Lewis] And it became known as
Bloody Sunday in Selma.
[Letterman] What was the total number
of the marchers on the fin--
- The second pass.
- Right.
[John Lewis] By the time we made it
to Montgomery on the final march,
there were probably
more than 20,000 people.
[Letterman] Twenty thousand?
That's remarkable.
Symbolically
when the march was completed successfully,
what is on the other side of the bridge?
The vote.
- Barack Obama.
- Yeah.
If it hadn't been for the march
from Selma to Montgomery,
there probably no Barack Obama
as president of the United States.
John Lewis is absolutely right, that
he and all those other folks that marched
carried me across that bridge.
Well, they carried America
across that bridge.
And so
[audience applauds]
You know, the interesting thing
about John for me
was that he was really the inspiration
to take the path that I took.
And in fact, where we are,
at City Colleges of New York,
here in the Amsterdam campus,
is where I got my first organizing job.
And I didn't work here long,
and I was pretty miserable at what I did,
I was terrible.
I organized some meeting
about poverty or something.
I was really-- Passed out fliers,
I was really energized,
and like four people came,
which was fewer than the panelists
I had arranged,
and it was depressing.
But the reason I mention this
with respect to John is that
it was actually what carried me through
multiple failures,
not just as an organizer,
but then my early efforts in politics
was reminding myself that, well, look,
the burdens I'm going through
- Yeah.
- Nobody's siccing dogs on me.
- Right.
- Nobody's beating me
half to death.
You go to that museum
on the other side of the bridge,
- Yeah.
- And you-- You're alive
with the movement when you are there.
And I said to the congressman,
"We can define racism,
but can we explain it?"
And he said to me something I think
he just said to me
because he knew
I would never understand it.
He said, "It's just
the difference in skin color."
And I said
"It can't possibly be that simplistic."
Well, yeah, look,
the long view on human history
it turns out that we come up
with all kinds of reasons
to try to put ourselves over other people.
Racism is a profound example of that
but obviously, biologically,
there's no actual reality to it,
other than we made this thing up.
We made it up.
Over time, what happens is,
because it manifests itself
in very concrete ways,
slavery, Jim Crow, subjugation,
it becomes a social reality,
and it ends up having very real impacts.
It is true that African-Americans,
on average, are poorer
than other Americans.
Well, it's not because of the race,
it's because of the social constructs
over the course of three,
four hundred years that made them poor.
And so, John Lewis, Dr. King,
what they teach us is
to ask ourselves questions
if we see cruelty, if we see inequalities,
if we see injustice.
"Why is that?
Am I a part of this?
Am I willing to do something about it?
Are there sacrifices
I'm willing to make to change it?"
And that's not always easy,
but it's necessary.
That's how progress is made.
And that's why I always say that
the way America has become more perfect
Not perfect, but more perfect.
typically has to do with
ordinary people deciding,
"You know what? That's not right."
There's another cliché
that I'm fond of invoking,
which is, "Nothing right in the world
- ever occurs without a fight."
- Or at least some discomfort.
Yes.
Because there's a reason--
Somebody's benefiting from the status quo.
[Obama] In one afternoon 50 years ago,
so much of our turbulent history
met on this bridge.
We gather here to honor the courage
of ordinary Americans
willing to endure billy clubs
and the chastening rod
tear gas, and the trampling hoof.
The idea held
by generations of citizens
who believe that America
is a constant work-in-progress
who believe that loving this country
requires more than singing its praises,
or avoiding uncomfortable truths.
It requires the occasional disruption,
the willingness to speak out
for what is right,
to shake up the status quo.
That's America.
The way he represented me as an American,
- I haven't experienced that before.
- Yeah.
Well, I never saw a president
so committed, so fair, so dedicated.
I'd just never seen anyone like him.
Without being just flat out
specific about this,
how big a setback
is the current administration?
It is a major setback to the hopes,
the dream, and aspiration of a people.
Not just African-America,
- but all America.
- Yeah.
Because I think what has happened
in America today,
is a threat not just to our own country,
but to the planet.
Kind of the genesis of this, Congressman,
is when you decided you weren't going
to attend Donald Trump's inauguration.
And that ridiculous quote,
"John Lewis, just another
all-talk, no-action congressman,"
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I found that very upsetting.
How did you react to that?
Well, I just
sort of had what I call
"an executive session" with myself,
and I said, you know
"This man, he doesn't know
anything about me."
All my life, I've been acting
and speaking up
I was arrested and jailed
40 times during the '60s,
and five times
since I've been in Congress.
You think, okay, the Civil Rights Act
Voter Registration Act,
okay, things get better as we move away
from sadness and tragedy.
Things get better,
things seem to get better.
And then all of a sudden,
it seems like, well, wait a minute,
things are not better,
not only are they not better,
in Insidious ways, they may be worse.
I think in the whole struggle,
there may be some setbacks,
some delays, some interruption
- Yeah.
- but you take a long hard look,
we will get there.
We will redeem the soul of America.
We will
make this little piece
of real estate
we call America, and the world,
a little better.
We all have a role to play.
We all can do something,
we all can make a contribution.
- But I'm making a contribution
- You're making a contribution.
because you're nice enough to let me
walk across the bridge with you.
The march across the bridge
was voter rights.
And there were changes
to the voting law in 2013
because, I think the understanding was
that some of these provisions
no longer apply.
We've outgrown them, we're smarter,
- we be--
- That was the argument that the Supreme--
- This Supreme Court accepted.
- Right.
And I talked to him about that,
and I was stunned.
He says, "That setback
cost us a hundred years."
Now, he may have been invoking hyperbole.
Let's say it's 50 years,
let's say it's ten years.
Yeah, I-- Well, look,
we're the only advanced democracy
that deliberately discourages
people from voting.
We create all these barriers
and difficulties,
and the reason is, is that's all
directly related to our history.
Initially, there were a very small
category of people who could vote.
White men with property.
Then expanded to white men
without property.
And then we kept on
expanding the franchise,
but those vestiges of thinking that
only some of us are worthy
of having a say
you know, that carries on.
And the fact that wehave
a very narrow window to vote
in a lot of places
You know, if you're a working single mom
who's taking the bus to work,
and you got to get your kids
ready for school,
and you got to punch a clock
and you don't have a break,
and now on a Tuesday, and it's snowing
There's no reason for that
other than we just want to--
It's petty.
- Yeah.
- It's so petty.
Well, you know, but, look,
what ends up happening
is we have some of the lowest voting rates
of any democracy on Earth.
The truth is,
is that people opt out themselves
because they just don't think
anything can happen.
They figure, "My voice doesn't matter,
my vote doesn't matter,
Washington's broken,
rich people are gonna make decisions."
So if you go to Selma
the lesson to draw
has less to do
with the particulars of the laws
that were changed or not changed,
has more to do with the spirit
that said, "Okay
I'm a Pullman porter, I'm a maid
but if enough maids
and Pullman porters walk
and pray and sing and show this injustice,
we can awaken the conscience of a nation."
Now, Mr. President
I know you have to get back
to the Oval Office.
[audience laughs]
Yeah, the
[audience applauds]
You know
Let me just say this,
that if it were not
for the Constitution
there'd be Michelle.
Oh!
No, no, no. No, you
You guys are misunderstanding me.
What I'm saying is I'm prevented
from running again by the Constitution.
But even if it were not
for that Amendment
Michelle would leave me. And
Oh, well, okay. I can--
I understand that now.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- I want her around.
Yeah.
As well you should.
Now
Let's talk about something
you and I have in common: kids.
We-- Yes.
You took your older daughter
away to college
And as moving-- More moving
than you thought it would be?
Did
It was
It was like open heart surgery, man.
I mean, it was
One of the best descriptions
I ever heard of children
is it's like having your heart
outside your body.
And they're not that smart,
and they're kind of wandering around,
and crossing streets,
and getting on airplanes,
and you're like, "Come--"
You want to put them
Put them back in.
And it was interesting to see
how everybody handled things differently.
All right. So, Michelle
she had like a cleaning glove, you know.
One of those, you know, yellow ones,
and she's got--
She's scouring the bathroom,
and, you know, has all these plans
about how everything should be.
And Sasha
It was really touching,
'cause Sasha tries to be cool,
so she didn't want to admit
that she was gonna miss her sister.
She's neater than her sister,
so she was helping to make the bed
and fold clothes,
and just being really quiet about it,
but in a way thatwas really
moving and touching.
And I was basically useless, right?
I wasn't-- There was no
And everybody had seen me,
you know, crying and misting up
for the previous three weeks,
and so
Malia was very thoughtful. She says,
"Hey, Dad, you know, I've got this
lamp in this box, and, you know,
put the desk lamp together."
You know. I said, "Sure," you know.
So I
So I grab it, and
You know, it should have taken
like five minutes or three minutes.
It had one of those little wrenches
that are in-- The little--
- It comes with the tool.
- The little tool.
And And it only had
four parts or something.
And I'm sitting there, and I'm
just toiling away at this thing,
and it's taken half an hour.
And meanwhile,
Michelle's finished scrubbing,
and she's organizing closets and all this.
And I was just pretty pathetic.
And I held it together
in front of Malia, and then,
when we drove away
you know, Secret Service is in the front,
and they're just looking ahead.
They're pretending that they can't
hear me in the back
[imitates crying]
you know, sniveling.
But
the ritual of it was powerful.
How do you feel now about it?
What's changed, I think,
from when we were kids
is that is technology.
All right. So, I get home,
she knows I'm pathetic,
so she's texted me
you know, hearts and
it's all great and
You know, so, we're talking
on a regular basis.
When we were kids, you had to go down
to the end of the hall of the dorm.
- That's right.
- You had to
And my grandmother,
who had grown up during the Depression,
she hated long-distance calls,
'cause she figured it was a waste
of money, it was way too expensive.
All right. So, if you called collect,
you weren't sure whether
she was gonna accept.
"What is it you want?" You know.
Yeah.
Like you're calling from jail
or something.
"I'm wishing you happy birthday."
Now, what is
I have a story about Malia
that I've not told anyone.
But I want to get to devices,
because my son
is a device guy,
- and your daughter's
- Yes.
well-schooled in devices.
Everybody-- You know,
they're everywhere.
They're called smartphones, Dave.
- You don't have to call them devices.
- They're not devices?
I mean I mean
[audience applauds]
Technically they're devices.
Took you a half an hour
to assemble a four-part lamp.
This is true.
That's a decent point.
- We were at a function at the White House.
- Yeah.
- I had never met either of your daughters.
- Yeah.
- And I see Malia.
- Yeah.
And I think, "I just want to say hello."
Thank you. I go over,
and I say, "You don't know who I am.
I know your mother and father.
My name is Dave Letterman,
and I am very happy to be here
at the party, and thank you
for inviting me to the party."
And she says, "Yeah, you look like a guy
who really knows how to party."
[audience laughs]
- That was a pretty good line.
- She really did.
And I'm telling you, I loved it.
- Yeah.
- It was
- It was absolutely delightful.
- She actually is
- She's a riot.
- Yeah.
She is funny.
- Are they both funny?
- They're funny in different ways.
So here's a good example.
They are both extraordinary writers.
Malia will write something.
She'll come in and say,
"Dad, I wrote this.
I want to I want you to read it
right away see what you think."
And I'll read it, and I'll have comments,
and then we'll go in,
and we'll go back and forth, and,
"Oh, Dad, that's really helpful."
Sasha, we'll be at dinner,
and Michelle will say
"Your teacher just called.
Wanted to see if that extraordinary poem
you wrote should be--
If we could include it
in our literary magazine."
"What poem?"
"It's nothing."
"Well, what do you mean?
Your teacher just said
they want to include it
in the literary magazine.
Can you show me the poem?"
"No."
"What do you mean, 'no'?"
"Okay, you can read it,
but you can't talk to me about it at all.
If I give it to you, will you promise
not to say anything to me
about the poem?"
"Well, what if I think it's great?
What if I"
"I don't want to hear anything about it."
So, that's kind of the
It's irritating, because I go through
the same thing.
Harry has that same whatever that is,
and I would like it to leave
where-- "Don't say that again."
"Harry, congratulations.
I heard you did well on the math test."
"Don't talk to me about the math test."
"Okay."
That's why I wish Harry had a sibling,
because I had assumed and had hoped
that he would be just like me.
- Well
- Yeah.
- He's not just like me.
- No.
And I'm not sure any of us
- hope that either.
- Yeah.
[audience laughs]
Oh, buddy I saw a picture of you
in the Pete Souza book.
And, uh
[Obama] Pete Souza,
for those who don't know,
- was the White House photographer.
- Yeah.
And we paid him tax dollars,
and now he's making a billion dollars
with the damn book.
Who owns the negatives?
I don't get any of it.
But there's a picture of you dancing,
and the guy playing the band to whom--
Leading the band to whom you're dancing
- is Prince.
- Is Prince, yeah.
And I thought I was blessed to have
Paul Shaffer with me every night,
- but honest to God--
- That was a fun night.
Yeah.
So, this was probably
three or four months before he died.
And Prince asks Sasha
to come up and dance,
and she's an excellent dancer.
Then Sasha pulls me up
which surprises me, because she always
mocks my dancing, but
- I have dad moves.
- Yeah.
And I think the key is
Is what we call "staying in the pocket."
Stay Staying in the pocket.
You got to stay in the pocket, because
I think everybody here knows
dads who get out of the pocket.
[audience laughs]
And they're trying stuff
that they can't really pull off.
Yeah.
And they start doing like karate kicks
- and all kinds of stuff.
- Really? Karate kicks?
Is that one of the things you do?
But the point is, is that
that's not cool, 'cause you cannot
pull that off at your age.
Now, I had hoped to talk about
the Foundation.
I know a little bit about the Foundation.
I know that the Foundation
is not just a library
where we can go look at pictures.
The Foundation is a living organism.
It's bringing life back to an area
of the South Side of Chicago.
I know we're putting young people to work,
and we're teaching young people
how to cope with the future,
- and what to do--
- You know a lot.
You're doing great.
I'm not as dumb as people think I am.
So, I'm gonna leave this to you now.
I'm being threatened now that it's--
We're way late.
- So, it's entirely up to you--
- Who's threatening--
Has the Secret Service
pulled a gun on you, or
I didn't notice that red dot
on your forehead.
- Now, look--
- They had a little talk
before the evening.
Even as I was approaching
the end of my term,
I had asked myself
"What will be most impactful?
What will be most useful?
What I realized is the thing
that I could probably do uniquely,
is work to train
the next generation of leaders
to bring about change, because
Because
You know, during
During my presidency,
I would travel all around the country,
and I'd travel all around the world,
and I-- We made a habit
of me having town halls with young people.
Some of them had already
accomplished remarkable things.
And they'd meet each other,
and they'd trade ideas,
and excite each other,
and stay in contact.
And over time, we had networks
of hundreds of thousands
of these young leaders all around
the world and around the country.
And we thought, "How could we kind of
make that more systematic?"
So, really, it's designed to be
sort of a hub
for young people who want to learn
how they can have an impact
to convene, get trained,
get mentored, get supported.
But the key point I want to make on this,
because you mentioned John Lewis
every once in a while, you'll find
in every period in our history,
in every era, in every country
these extraordinary folks
like a John Lewis
who, against all odds, change history.
There are so many more young people
who would like to get involved
but don't know how
or aren't quite as courageous
as a John Lewis is,
but maybe if they had some
encouragement, would participate.
And not everybody is gonna march
and go into politics.
They might volunteer in their community
to do something good.
They might encourage
their friends and neighbors
to learn about the issues and vote.
We were talking earlier about
the whole issue of racism
and the silence that some people,
who probably knew better, felt,
and so, they just let things
continue as they were.
The interesting thing
is the reverse happens.
'Cause we're social animals,
and if we see others
who are volunteering
we'll think,
"Well, maybe we'll volunteer."
If they see others voting
"Maybe I'll vote."
If they feel as if there's
a community around them
that says this is the norm,
for us to feel like we have a say
in our lives and we can connect
with people,
even if they don't look
exactly like we do,
or worship in the exact same way,
or have the same sexual orientation,
but we have these common
interests involved,
and that's the habits of the heart
that we've developed
you know, it works that way, too.
So, that's what the Foundation is going
to try to promote in a systematic way.
You invoke the phrase "against all odds,
maybe someone who can change
or make history."
You, of course, described yourself.
I
[audience cheers]
We've been lucky.
Don't-- Don't you
You know, I
[audience continues cheering]
Can I say-- I wanted to ask Dave
a lot of questions.
He got grumpy at the beginning.
I couldn't ask him questions.
But here's one question I did have in
'Cause we're wrapping up, is
Don't you say to yourself,
"Boy, am I lucky"?
And one of the things that I think
I always am surprised by
is when I see people
who have been successful
in business, or entertainment,
or politics
and they're absolutely convinced
that it's all because they were so smart.
And I'm always saying,
"Well, look, I worked hard,
and I've got some talent,
but there are a lot of hardworking
talented people out there."
There was this element of chance to it.
There was this element of
Of serendipity.
And I wonder whether
you feel that sometimes, where--
And the reason that,
for me at least, is important,
is so: A, I don't feel too self-important;
but B
you know, you want to see
if you can maybe
figure out how to sprinkle that stardust
- on other people.
- Okay.
Mr. President, this is what I am
struggling with at this point in my life.
I have been nothing but lucky.
When John Lewis and his friends,
in April of '65--
March of '65,
were marching across that bridge,
in April of '65,
me and my friends
were driving to Florida
to get on a cruise ship
to go to the Bahamas
because there was no age limit
to purchase alcohol,
and we spent the entire week
- pardon my French, shit-faced.
- Right.
[audience laughs]
Why wasn't I in Alabama?
Why was I not aware?
I have been nothing but lucky,
and the luck continues here this evening.
And I will tell you one thing.
When I was a kid,
and it's still taught today,
irrespective of the man or woman
who holds the office,
you have to respect
the office of president.
Without a question of a doubt,
you are the first president
- I truly and fully respect.
- That means a lot.
Thank you.
[audience cheers]
Thank you, brother.
That was fun.
Hey.
Thank you.
[jazzy theme music plays]
Thank you, New York.
- Hey, get these cameras out of here.
- Get these cameras out.
- What are they doing?
- Where are we going? Someone--
Wait a minute, you can beat 'em up.
Go ahead, beat 'em up.
No, no, they actually look
- We're going this way?
- They look harmless.
We should redo this. The
Come on, we'll
- What are we--?
- What they want--
They want a shot of us
walking into the sunset together.
How do you know this
and I don't know this?
Come on, we're gonna go this way.
This is the way that we're going.
And this way, they will be able to create
this poignant moment.