I think that the FDA has not been able to catch some of these things as quickly as I expect them to catch and so we’re going to be doing a complete review of FDA operations. At bare minimum, we should be able to count on our government keeping our kids safe when they eat peanut butter. That’s what Sasha eats for lunch. Probably three times a week...
You know, the bowling alley doesn‘t seem to be improving my game. That‘s the one thing I have noticed.
I think that today, faith drives so much of our politics, that I thought, "If you don't talk about it, you are missing a whole big part of what is going on politically."
Our politics at its best involves us recognizing ourselves in each other. And our politics at its worst are when we see immigrants or women or blacks or gays or Mexicans as somehow separate, apart from us.
I think at a certain age I became conscious of the power of words. And it was fairly late. I was kind of a goofball - but I was always subconsciously thinking about issues.
Mexico is going to need the United States to cooperate in order to rid itself of the violence and corruption that results from the drug trade.
State visits are often an opportunity for the United States to reaffirm our ties and friendship with our closest partners around the world.
There's no question that a lot of Americans on both the right and the left are expressing some fears and frustrations about the dislocations brought on by globalisation. Many of those frustrations are legitimate and they need to be addressed.
I'm confident that America's foreign policy rebalance to the region will endure beyond my presidency because it's in the national interest of the United States.
It's no wonder that America's engagement in the region has strong, sustained, bipartisan support. So I'll be handing my successor a strong foundation - including closer ties with Singapore - on which to continue building, and I'm optimistic that will happen.
On the spectrum of successful politicians, I'm not introverted the way some have been.
I think part of the reason that I have been successful, though, despite maybe not always fitting my message into the pre-packaged formulas, is there is this whole other media ecology out there of the Internet and Instagram and memes and talk shows and comedy, and I'm pretty good at that.
There are problems that just end up being really hard and by definition the only problems that come to my desk are the ones that nobody else can solve.
There wasn't a time where I felt fearful that I couldn't make the best decisions possible.
We can make sure that people who don't have health insurance can buy into an insurance pool that gives them better bargaining power.
Health care has become a proxy for a broader set of issues about how much government should be involved in our economy, particularly coming off a huge economic crisis.
I want to make sure that as president of the United States that I'm not asserting in some way that my decisions overrule the decisions of prosecutors who are there to uphold the law.
Where we get into problems, typically, is when our personal religious faith, or the community of faith that we participate in, tips into a sort of fundamentalist extremism, in which it's not enough for us to believe what we believe, but we start feeling obligated to, you know, hit you over the head because you don't believe the same thing. Or to treat you as somebody who's less than I am.
I very much believe in reforming the tax system.
There's just a whole different attitude and vibe when you're not in power as when you're in power.
Rather than me sort of characterize the appropriateness or inappropriateness of what Donald Trump is doing at the moment, I think what we have to see is how will the President-elect operate, and how will his team operate, when they've been fully briefed on all these issues, they have their hands on all the levers of government, and they've got to start making decisions.
Our vulnerability to Russia or any other foreign power is directly related to how divided, partisan, dysfunctional our political process is. That's the thing that makes us vulnerable.
Ultimately, I remain optimistic about not just America's future, but the direction that the world is growing.
If we are not serious about facts and what's true and what's not. And particularly in an age of social media where so many people are getting their information in sound bites and snippets off their phones, if we can't discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems.
It's time to end the hypocrisy of those who accumulate wealth through the global economy, and then siphon funds to those who teach children to tear it down.
