All I can say is [kids] have turned out to be terrific young women. We were concerned mostly about whether they'd develop an attitude, right?
[My kids] are, sweet, kind, funny, smart, respectful people, and they treat everybody with respect. That's not just the biases of a parent. We feel pretty good when we hear back from friends, cause they still have sleepovers and they go to other folks houses and when the parents say, oh you know, Malia, she's just so sweet, or Sasha helped to pick up the dishes.
As you might imagine, if you're a teenager having a couple of people with microphones and guns always following you around, that could grate on them. But you know, they've handled it with grace and I give Michelle [Obama] most of the credit for how well they've done, but I also just think they are graceful, good young, young women.
Now suddenly you got members of your [White House] team who were 23, 24. They've met their wives here, or their husbands here.
I'm kind of a night owl.
The Russians sought to interfere with the election process - that the cyber hacking that took place by the Russians was part of that campaign, and that they had a clear preference in terms of outcomes.
Our intelligence communities spend a lot of time and effort gathering a lot of strands and a lot of data [on Russian hacking]. There are times where they're very cautious and they say, "We think this is what happened, but we're not certain."
I don't think I underestimated [Vladimir Putin], but I think that I underestimated the degree to which, in this new information age, it is possible for misinformation for cyber hacking and so forth to have an impact on our open societies, our open systems, to insinuate themselves into our democratic practices in ways that I think are accelerating.
There are gonna be elections coming up among our NATO allies that we have to pay attention to. I anticipate that this kind of thing can happen again here. And so in addition to the report assessing what exactly happened, what we have also done is to make sure that the Department of Homeland Security and our intelligence teams are working with the various folks who run our elections.
One of the things that I've urged the president-elect to do is to develop a strong working relationship with the intelligence community and I think it's important that Congress, on a bipartisan basis.
I hope that this [hacking] does not continue to be viewed purely through a partisan lens.I think there are Republicans as well as Democrats who are concerned about this.
The second thing we have to do is to make sure that all of us think about how we approach our elections and our democracy not only to secure them from vote tampering, but also to make sure that we understand when propaganda is being churned through the system.
One of the things that I am concerned about is the degree to which we've seen a lot of commentary lately where there were, there are Republicans or pundits or cable commentators who seemed to have more confidence in Vladimir Putin than fellow Americans because those fellow Americans were Democrats. That cannot be.
If we get to a point where people in this country feel more affinity with a leader who is an adversary and view the United States and our way of life as a threat to him, then we're gonna have bigger problems than just cyber hacking.
You [as a president] have to have a strong team around you. You have to have respect for institutions and the process to make good decisions because you are inherently reliant on other folks.
If you think that running your economy into the ground and having to send troops in in order to prop up your only ally is leadership, then we've got a different definition of leadership.
America must always lead on the world stage.
I would love to see an America where race is understood in the same way that the ethnic diversity of the white population is understood.
If we're serious about building an economy that lasts, we have got to get serious about education. We are going to have to pick up our games and raise our standards.
People always - I think were surprised about me connecting with folks in small town Iowa. And the reason I did was - first of all, I had the benefit that at the time nobody expected me to win. And so I wasn't viewed through this prism of Fox News and conservative media making me scary. At the time, I didn't think seem scary, other than just having a funny name. I seemed young.
I don't have a philosophical objection, necessarily, to a travel ban if that is the thing that is going to keep the American people safe.
I want people around the world to hear me. To all those who would do us harm, no act of terror will go unpunished. It will not dim the light of the values that we proudly present to the rest of the world. No act of violence shakes the resolve of the United States of America.
This comes from a group of people who`ve been wrong about every foreign policy issue over the last two decades. They supported Hillary Clinton`s war in Libya. They supported President [Barack] Obama`s bombing of Assad.
We are now at a point where because we in fact have been successful at stopping a number of plots, a threat has evolved. We do see these lone-wolf actors. We do see these encouragements for troubled individuals to pick up a gun and act out of this ideology.
We are on alert 24/7. And everything that you report will be investigated. We do it in private. We do it covertly. This could be a problem, it could simply be your neighbor having a bad day. But better be safe than sorry.
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