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During my eight years as
the Chief Official White House Photographer
for the Obama administration,
I documented all the important moments of his presidency.
The emotion,
the tough decisions,
the stressful times,
the fun times.
But also showing what he was like as a dad...
...as a husband,
just as a human being.
To me, that shows
how the job of the president should be done.
I think it's my right as an American citizen
to speak out when I see wrong.
And I really come at this from a unique perspective,
not just as a former photojournalist
but also having worked for
both the Obama and Reagan administrations,
and seeing what it's like on the inside of a presidency...
...whether you agree or disagree
with a president's policies,
how that president should behave.
I'm gonna throw some shade tonight, if that's okay.
But I want to tell you first how I... how I got there.
So, if we go back to January 20, 2017,
President Obama left his successor a personal note
and stuck it in the drawer of the Resolute desk.
And the last line of the note was:
"Michelle and I wish you and Melania the very best
"as you embark on this great adventure.
"And know that we stand ready to help
"in any ways which we can.
Good luck, and Godspeed."
With that, he left the Oval Office for the last time.
-Good morning, everybody.
Good morning, sir.
Take care, sir.
-Thank you. -Bye, sir. -Thank you, guys.
He went and said goodbyeto the household staff:
butlers, ushers, groundkeepers.
And Von Everett, who is one of the butlers
and had been there since the Reagan years--
you can imagine what it was like for him
to have been there for the first
African American president.
There's a tradition that
the incoming president comes to the White House
the morning before the inauguration for a reception.
After everyone else had finally boarded the motorcade,
President Obama took Trump aside
to brief him on a pending national security issue.
Uh, he escorted Trump to the limousine.
They had to ride in the limousine
to the Capitol together.
The guy on the far left is Mike White.
He was the head of
the Presidential Protective Division
of the Secret Service.
And you always see the person in that position
behind the president or behind the first lady.
As they were leaving the podium,
I now notice that Mike White and his deputy
were behind Trump and Melania and not behind President Obama.
That's when it really hit me
that this for real had happened.
You know, if I go back to January 20, 2017...
...I'm ready for the job to be done
because, you know, it just takes
so much out of you physically and mentally.
There was a sense of relief--
almost excitement--
that I would not have a BlackBerry with me
24-7-365 for eight years anymore.
You have no idea
how good of a feeling it was to be done with that.
But there was a sense of disbelief
and worry.
I was-- I really was concerned
for the... the country.
To this day, I have that same feeling.
I'm not literally in the room anymore,
but I know what happens in the room,
and that's what scares me
about what's happening today in the Oval Office.
After I left the White House,
I started this personal Instagram account.
My intention was to highlight some of the photographs
that I had made throughout my career.
I never intended to be vocal
in any way about what was going on.
So, the first day, he came to me
with his photo that he wanted to post on Instagram
with the president sitting on the Resolute desk
and the red curtains,
and he wrote a caption, something like,
"I like the old curtains better.
What did you think?"
And I said, "You can't say that."
Because he had spent eight years having no voice
and no opinion of what was going on,
and suddenly, here's an opinion about drapes.
And I said, "You can't do that."
Now, what I didn't tell you is I had just seen a picture
of the redecorated Oval Office
with these gold, ornate curtains.
And there was even a comment on that very first post
from somebody that said,
"Pete is dropping shade with a comment on drapes."
And I-I have to admit
I had no idea what "dropping shade" meant.
I knew what I was doing.
I just didn't know it was calleddropping or throwing shade.
-Don't be rude. -Mr. President-elect,
-can you give us a question? -Don't be rude.
You're attacking us. Can you give us a question?
-Don't be rude. -Can you give us a question?
No, I'm not gonna give you a que...
When you report fake news, which CNN does a lot,
you are the enemy of the people.
-Go ahead. - Mr. President...
Hi, Pete.
Welcome to India.
Thank you. It's-it's nice to be here.
Is there hope for photojournalism?
I think there's a lot of people doing a lot of great work,
but it-it doesn't help
when the president of the United States
calls journalists fake news and the enemy of the people.
I think that's really dangerous.
I-I think our president is causing grave damage
to the institution of the free press.
We have with us the former
Chief Official White House Photographer
to the U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama.
-Please welcome to the stage
Pete Joseph Souza!
I want to ask you as a photojournalist--
your commitment while photographing is to the truth,
but when you're the Chief White House Photographer,
uh, when you're consciously or subconsciously building
a public image of brand Obama, was there ever a conflict?
Yeah, I think that's a good question.
I often say to people, though my background
is-is a photojournalist,
certainly, when you're the Chief White House Photographer,
you're-you're working for the government.
But so, I didn't ever think of it as a conflict,
because it wasn't... I wasn't a PR photographer.
I look at myself as a historian with a camera.
The job as the Chief OfficialWhite House Photographer
is to visually document the presidency for history.
So, when inauguration rolled around,
I had in the back of my mind,
for the journey I was about to take,
this thought:
make authentic photographs.
Think mood,
emotion,
context.
Be ready for the fleeting moments
both big and small.
My goal was to create
the best photographic archive of a president
that had ever been done.
Lasting images for history.
The origination of my office was a military office
during the Kennedy administration.
LBJ wanted somebody to cover everything,
and he hired this guy named Yoichi Okamoto,
who had traveled with him as vice president.
And, you know, Johnson was such a character
and Okamoto was such a great photographer
that his pictures are just amazing.
You know, more than anyone,
his work was the kind of work that I wanted to do.
I wanted the level of access that Okamoto had to Johnson.
That's sort of what I was striving for with Obama.
Photographs can tell a story
just as a book can tell a story.
And it's a very special thing because it breaks down
the idea that these people are somehow different from us.
Yes, they have different responsibilities,
yes, they have greater anxieties,
but they're leading a life that has a daily ritual to it.
Think I knew how the job should be done,
having worked for the Reagan administration, too.
The White House photo editor
called me up one day out of the blue
and said, "We want you to apply for this job."
It was totally unexpected.
You know, I'm in my 20s,
and I'd never met a president before.
And I was just nervous.
It was kind of, like, just sort of overwhelming to me.
I actually turned it down at first.
A, I was not really that into politics.
B, I was really not the biggest fan of Reagan.
Five ways of photography.
Well, this is familiar.
But you hope that what you're doing
is important for history, right?
Used to say journalism is the first draft of history.
And I'm thinking, like, here's a chance
to actually be involved in documenting history.
The Photograph Office,
primarily, it was myself and Fitz and Jack,
and then Pete-- but we were very much a team.
Let's lock that sucker down.
Working at the White House as the first woman
official photographer
was a humbling experience.
I was recording for history.
-Now, is Pete in?
Is Pete nice and clear?
-Yes. -Okay. Okay.
The orchestration of
television coverage absorbs the White House.
They provide pictures of him looking like a leader,
confident with his Marlboro Man walk.
A good family man.
The White House has become
more and more of a stage, a theater,
and the question has become:
are the television networks gonna manage that theater?
Are they gonna manage that stage?
-Or is the White House gonna do that? -Get ready.
They were very aware of
creating the best backdrop possible for TV networks
and Timeand Newsweek.
Now, do you want us oneither side of the tree or what?
Well, we...
I think they want to do one standing,
but I think, for release purposes,
it'd be better to have you doing something,
and my suggestion was watering the tree.
We have two shovels. We have a chain saw.
-No, please.
Pete, it's too hot.
Can we just do a watering the tree?
-Watering the tree is fine. -All right.
-Uh... -Ah!
-Did you get that, Pete? -Yeah.
-You did, huh?
I've got an idea for another picture.
-Just one more.
I've got the chain saw.
No, and you're blocking me off.
Stopping me from...
Don't just stand there.
You're supposed to be saying no.
-I'm not gonna start the saw.
-No. -What?
-All right. -Thank you.
The amount of access you get
as the Chief Official White House Photographer
is really totally dependent on the relationship
that you have with the president.
All I tried to do was push for more access
for the behind-the-scenes moments,
most of which were never seen
until after he had left the presidency.
Some of the pictures that I would make
would be fairly intimate.
After Mrs. Reagan had undergone
breast cancer surgery at Bethesda Naval Hospital,
every day, at the end of the day,
he would take the helicopter and go visit her.
They were exactly the same way together
behind the scenes as they were in public.
There was very much a true love
and companionship between the-the two of them.
I always felt the best pictures I made of-of Reagan
were not from planned events.
They were things that happened between events
and moments that you couldn't ever predict--
they would just happen-- and that really humanizes
the president of the United States.
One of the roles of commander in chief is
you send people into harm's way.
But then the president usually is the one who has to go talk
to all the families who had lost someone.
He's clearly empathetic and compassionate,
and you can see the emotion in their faces
as they're looking up to see what Reagan is saying.
That's the way a president should behave
in times like that.
In some respects, I think it did a disservice
not to show him in these true, authentic,
behind-the-scenes moments more than they did.
Okay, folks.
I've always wanted to stand on the Cabinet Room table.
-Is it o...
Is it okay with you, Mr. President?
-What'd he put up? - "Scram."
And, Mr. President, just half a step this way.
He's to the left, and I'm to the right.
Another half step.
Big smiles.
Here we go.
Big smile.
I wanted this time to talk with you
about an extremely sensitive
and profoundly important matter of foreign policy.
Certainly, during the Iran-Contra affair,
there were a lot of pictures that I made where he was
agonizing over what he did or what he didn't do.
It was a big scandal.
I made that picture where the Tower Commission,
after this many-month investigation,
had concluded that, in fact,
Reagan had sold arms for hostages.
And you see that look on Reagan's face,
who was still somewhat in denial.
But to me, it really defines that whole scandal
and how impactful it was on his presidency.
I did not necessarily agree with some of the things
that President Reagan was doing.
For example,
how long it took him to come to grips with AIDS.
I think that, in retrospect, is more than disappointing.
But this photo I made of him holding a baby with HIV
did help destigmatize the disease.
I was naive and not as politically aware
as I should have been at the time.
But I did feel that he was a decent human being.
He respected other people from all walks of life.
When, uh, Reagan had, uh, passed away
and his body was being flown to the West Coast,
uh, Nancy Reagan requested
that Peter be on the plane with them.
And, of course, he had been
out of the White House for so many years.
And Peter did that.
When I left the White House under Reagan,
it wasn't like I was that well-known.
So, for nine years, I was a freelance photographer.
After that, I went to work
for the Chicago Tribune, based in D.C.
If somebody had told me that I would end up working
for the most iconic Republican president of our generation
and then the most iconic Democrat president
of our generation,
I would've said they were crazy.
What are those words?
-Yes, we can! -Yes, we can!
Thank you, Illinois! I love you!
Thank you!
Thank you, Illinois.
-In 2004... -Thank you, guys.
...Barack Obama was elected to the Senate.
I didn't see his 2004 speech at the convention
because I was traveling with Kerry.
The hope of a skinny kid with a funny name
who believes that America has a place for him, too.
I remember the editors in Chicago said to me,
"Make sure you get a picture of Obama."
And I was like... I didn't even know
what the guy looked like, you know?
You're on the front page of every paper this week.
-You're all over television. -Right.
Everyone's calling you the future, the savior
-of the Democratic Party. -Well...
-So, are you? -You know, I rank
99th out of 100 in seniority,
uh, so I-I'm gonna be sharpening pencils
and-and scrubbing the floors, I think,
-for the first couple of years. -I doubt that.
Jeff Zeleny,
who was a correspondent for the Tribune,
he came up to me one day, and he said,
"Hey, I'm thinking of pitching a story to the editors,
uh, following Obama's first year in the Senate."
I love this picture because,
you know, he's got half a sandwich in his mouth,
and then Sasha's eyeing the other half.
This was the day I met him.
The presence of my camera didn't bother him at all,
you know, which is not always the case,
especially with politicians.
DIRECTOR/PRODUCER: Did that say anything about him to you?
Um, you know, I found a good subject.
This was the first day that he was in Washington
as the newly elected senator.
And Malia was six.
Senator Obama spent the day with his family
and showing them around and helping them understand
what it was like.
And Sasha was three.
I mean, I think he thought
I was a competent photographer.
I continued to further that trust
as the year went by.
Why, in the age of, uh, YouTube
and so much Internet video, do photographs
still have a very powerful impact
in terms of covering politics?
You know, I-I-I like the still photograph.
It stops time.
You can remember a still photograph.
A-A lot of photojournalists now are evolving into video,
but I still think the still photograph,
for me, says a lot more.
I wasn't with him every day,
but I got to know him pretty well professionally.
It-it was very clear that he was different
from most politicians.
I hadn't really seen somebody,
especially a freshman senator, with this kind of presence.
He had us call him Barack.
He was casual.
He would e-mail you in the middle of the night.
Generationally, he had more in common
with the people who worked for him in their 20s
than he did with probably the other senators in Washington.
This would have been 2005.
I went to Russia and Ukraine and Azerbaijan with him.
We're in the middle of Red Square,
and not a single person recognizes him.
He was just a... a regular guy.
And then I went to Africa with him in 2006.
In Robben Island, we went to Mandela's cell.
-Now, the advantage of this cell... -He had some sun.
-Not only that. -Yeah.
You got the view of the outside.
On a clear day, you could see Cape Town.
When we went to Kenya,
he had this meeting with some NGOs.
And word got out that he was in there.
And when he emerged from this meeting,
there were, like, thousands of people
waiting to hear him say a few words.
When we went to Nairobi and he gave a big speech,
I got this picture of this guy writing down,
like, the bullet points of what he was talking about.
-Hey!
Hey. It's good to see all of you.
The reception at his grandmother's village
was, like, chaotic.
Anytime, I think,
a child comes back to his parent's grave,
it makes you reflect on, uh, your own life
and-and mortality, and...
uh, it makes you think about the next generation.
My wife and I are gonna get tested for HIV/AIDS.
So, I just want everybody to remember
that if a U.S. senator can get tested
and his wife can get tested,
then everybody in this crowd can get tested.
Because you need to know your status.
Seeing the overwhelming response that he got in Africa,
I remember coming back from that trip
saying that, y-you know, I'll bet he runs for president.
I mean, just the way
people were hanging on to his every word,
you could just see in people's faces
that this guy was something special to them.
Obviously, he was very intelligent.
But I think he also had the right temperament
to become president.
To me, this picture really tells a story
about a young U.S. senator about to walk out,
announce that he's running for president,
knowing that his life will never be the same.
And I think you can see that in his face.
You can see the anxiety in Michelle as she's trying
to brush off some lint from the back of his jacket.
I knew the gravity of the moment,
and I knew he had a shot.
I knew that once people got to see him and hear from him
that he had a shot.
He had the kind of qualities within him
where people... people would relate to him.
-I stand before you today to announce... -
my candidacy for president of the United States of America.
People forget that Hillary was so far ahead,
had so many endorsements,
that people thought he was a total long shot.
Does Obama face a big uphill battle
despite all the media attention he's getting?
Uh, he will have to deal with the issue
of only two years in the U.S. Senate.
The media was ready to
kind of write us off or put us in the barrel.
It was like, no, there is this broader force out there
that's not gonna let that happen.
American historywon't be the same again.
Americans elected a young man with a young family,
an African American-- the first ever.
It's been a long time coming,
but tonight, because of what we did on this day,
in this election, at this defining moment,
-change has come to America.
Gibbs called me on January 5
and offered me the job.
And I just said to Gibbs, I said, "Look,"
I said, "Here's the thing is, if I do this,
I have to have access to everything."
And he just said to me, "The president-elect gets it.
There's no worries there."
And I said, "Okay, I'll-I'll be there tomorrow."
Two days later, I met up with Obama.
He walked in the room, and he said, uh,
"We're gonna have some fun."
I think there was an enormous amount of respect overseas
when he was elected.
I think people were just excited
that our country had finally put prejudice aside
and elected an African American president.
And really a different kind of politician
that resonated around the world.
Pete was with the president all the time.
I mean, he'd start his day around 9:00.
I'd get his schedule.
But I came to learn that the schedule
was really just the starting point.
All right, let's go.
I covered all the behind-the-scenes meetings,
all the Situation Room meetings.
I mean, I-I can't take ownershipof this analogy,
but imagine trying to take a sip of water
from a firehose that never shuts off.
It was nonstop every day, 24-7,
always on call, always ready.
That was the challenge for me, for my job for eight years.
Pete had walking pneumonia one time,
and he still came to work.
I mean, if you really want to document
the presidency for history,
you got to be there all the time,
because you can't predict when images are gonna happen.
Pete really wanted to be
the guy who disappears.
And that's the gift when you're a White House photographer
is that the president doesn't even know you're in the room.
Occasionally, the cabinet would be gathered
to present some really tough decisions to the president.
You know, there'd be chatter, chatter,
people commiserating, and the first sign
that the president was imminent was when Pete walked in.
Everything would freeze.
So, I don't know what it felt like for him
for eight years to have that chilling effect on...
on every room.
Why should historians pay attention to what you do?
Well, I think, for me, the-the job
of the Chief Official White House Photographer
is important for history.
And-and that's the one thing that I am-am concerned about
with, you know, what's-what's happening
with the current administration,
that the access is not the same as...
as, uh... as-as I had for-for President Obama.
And I think history will suffer as a result.
President Obama puts his administration
front and center on yet another major aspect
of the country's troubled economic front:
restructuring the U.S. auto industry.
Early in 2009, we were in the midst
of this big financial crisis.
I think this picture helped show who's in the room,
the mood, the emotion of the moment,
which was-- he was about to call
the CEOs of two automobile companies
to tell them the federal government
was gonna take over the company.
As you recall, it was very controversial at the time.
And I was thinking, "Who is this man?"
How does he deal with crisis?
And I think some words that were crossing my mind were
"leadership," "character" and "empathy."
The more I've studied leaders in crisis times,
whether it's Lincoln or FDR or Teddy Roosevelt
or LBJ during the civil rights struggle,
they had almost, like, a family resemblance
of leadership traits, the first one being humility,
the ability to be able to acknowledge error
and learn from your mistakes.
I would go from there, maybe, to empathy
as an absolutely critical human quality--
the ability to understand other people's points of view
and to feel a sense of connection
to those other people.
All the leaders that I've studied
were able to communicate in a way to the people
so that they felt a sense of trust in what they were saying.
They were inspired to act because of them.
And then beyond communication
is the ability to control emotions
and to remain cool during difficult times.
And then at the very end, in some ways,
you have to have the self-confidence
to create a team of people around you
who can criticize you,
who can question your assumptions,
who can argue with you.
And then to accept that it's gonna come
from the country at large
is such an important quality in a leader.
Looking at President Obama, he came into office
with a desire to wind down America's wars overseas
and step up the focus at home.
But events had a way of intervening,
especially in the Middle East.
I want to speak to you tonight
about our effort in Afghanistan.
We did not ask for this fight.
But while we've achieved hard-earned milestones in Iraq,
the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated.
And as commander in chief, I have determined
that it is in our vital national interest
to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
President Obama again and again would come back to,
"Okay, if we do what you're proposing,
how is it likely to play out?"
He welcomed dissent and debate and discussion.
His belief was that he would make the best decisions
if he had been exposed to
the greatest array of counterarguments,
alternative viewpoints.
Let's say a really difficult backdrop like Syria.
We had tensions over that.
We have nothing but lousy options
confronting the president.
But the person who has to live with the consequences
and to know that they own the outcome,
that's the president and the president alone.
President Obama said, actually,
that he viewed the presidency as a relay race.
You're given certain problems when you come in.
You work on those problems.
Some of those things will not be solved during your time.
Maybe some steps have been taken to get that solved.
Maybe we've gone backwards or forwards.
Wars are gonna be there
that maybe shouldn't have been fought
or-or you wish hadn't been fought.
Wars are gonna be there that are left unfinished.
But it's really that continuing march.
For me,
it is constantly important to remind myself
why I got into this business in the first place.
Especially when it's hard.
You look at an issue right now like health care.
So many of us campaigned on the idea
that we were gonna change this health care system.
Well, here we are with a chance to change it.
This is an early health care speech
he was working on with Jon Favreau.
-Every page looked like this.
So, I think it really shows you how involved he was
in the words that were coming out of his mouth.
Don't you wish we had that now?
-Um...
but I think this picture also tells you something
about how he works with other people.
Because instead of just handing Jon
the marked-up draft the next morning
when he came to the Oval Office,he called Jon in,
and they sat on the sofa for an hour and a half
and went over every change that he had made.
I know how bitter and contentious the issue
of health insurance reform has become.
This bill is the greatest threat to freedom
that I have seen in the 19 yearsI've been here in Washington.
We've gotten caught up in the political game
in a way that's just not healthy.
This is Nancy-Ann DeParle,who was as responsible as anyone
for the Affordable Care Act.
And Nancy-Ann had two young boys,
and they never saw their mom for, like, two years.
Like, she would leave the house early in the morning,
and the boys hadn't even woken up yet.
And by the time she got home, they were often already asleep.
And that's the kind of sacrifice
that people at the White House made.
President Obama was aware of this.
It-it was... wasn't anything that was ever said,
but I started noticing it-- where, whenever he could,
he would make a point to make sure the boys were invited
when the NBA basketball players
came to the White House or events like that.
This is Nicky.
He invited him into the Oval Office,
uh, to share a PowerBar with him.
Um...
Nicky...
came to one of my book signings.
He's now a sophomore at Duke.
And, uh, told me
how much this picture meant to him.
And he realizes now
the good work that his mom was doing.
There was still some lobbying to be done.
Lots of phone calls is in the...
in-in the limo with Phil Schiliro,
his legislative director.
And I think this was the phone call
where he realized that they probably had enough votes.
And he took his lucky charms out of his pocket.
I saw that he took his lucky charms out that morning;
I was like, "Okay, this is a good sign."
Let's get this done.
The bill is passed.
And he felt on this day that he got something done
that bettered people's lives.
--Oh, got to switch cameras here.
-Oh.
-Oh, sorry about that, sir. -No problem.
-Are we all right? -Yep.
Just got to switch, uh...
All right.
He-he caught me in an embarrassing moment.
-I saw. -Where... It's, like, that's...
That never happens to me.
Sorry about that, sir.
Yeah, that was a little embarrassing.
-Ah, man, I tell you. -Right in front of, uh,
National Geographic, and suddenly...
suddenly, the camera broke down.
-Golly. -I filled the disk.
-He's usually much better than this, I promise you. -
Remember, Pete, remember, you got to take
-the lens cap off before... -No, it wasn't the lens cap.
-The lens cap is important. -No, no, no, it was the...
I filled the disk. I mean, the speech was so exciting
-that I filled the disk with... -It was...
One of the cool things that my office did
was hang jumbo prints.
It's a tradition that had started
with the Nixon administration.
So, we would update them every few weeks.
There's actually only a few dozen people
that interact with the president of the United States
on a regular basis.
And yet, there's hundreds of people working for him.
So, this was a way for them to see him in a very personal way.
I think it sort of gave them added purpose.
The first time that we went to the U.N.,
we had a break one afternoon,
and he and Reggie Love played basketball for, like, an hour.
Now, Reggie Love was 27 at the time,
was six-six.
He was the captain of the Duke University
basketball team when they won a national championship.
Barack Obama was 20 years older,
at least four inches shorter
and didn't start forhis high school basketball team.
But he's, like, the most competitive guy I've ever met.
At one point, President Obama goes up,
blocks Reggie's shot.
They finished the game,
and President Obama makes a beeline towards me.
Comes up to me, and he goes, "Did you get that block?"
And I'm, like, scrolling through,
and I come to this picture, and he goes... he goes,
"That's great. Make that a jumbo."
He made Reggie sign it,
"Dear Mr. President, nice block.Reggie Love."
Somebody came to me and said, "We need to get these online."
Pete said, "The White House wants us
to put pictures out on Flickr,"
which was a photo streaming platform.
My job was to make an edit of... from 10,000
down to what would be about 50 pictures a week.
That was unprecedented.
No previous administration had ever
put out as many pictures.
And I thought it was a great way for the public
to see what was happening behind the scenes.
When you get to be my age and you look back at, uh,
things that happened early in your life,
you start sort of connecting the dots a little bit.
I was trying to remember with Jane
when we went to Washington.
I think it was in 1965.
But we went and visited the White House,
and we also got this book
-called The White House.
And I used to look at this book all the time.
This book was published shortly before
Kennedy was assassinated.
And Jackie Kennedy wrote the introduction.
She said that the book originally
was intended just for children.
I'm gonna get emotional
just-just reading this.
"It-it seems such a shame that they"--
meaning the kids that visited the White House--
"should have nothing to take away with them.
"It was hoped that they would read more about the presidents
who interested them the most."
You know, I was one of them.
This book, for each administration,
was-was updated subsequently.
The last version of this, I have the cover photo
and have several photos
of-of President Obama inside the book.
-So, you talk about full circle.-
This was when my mom met,
uh, President Obama for the first time.
And he wrote, "To Lillian. It was a joy to meet you.
Thanks for doing such a great job with Pete."
So, this is my grandmother and grandfather.
They were both born in the Azores.
They emigrated within a year or two of each other.
My parents both worked.
My mom was a nurse.
My dad was a boat mechanic.
I had no interest in anything other than sports.
I didn't get interested in photography
until I was in college.
If there was such a category, I would have been
-the most unlikely to succeed.
I think, when he was at BU,
he took a course in photography.
And he came home, and he said,
"Mom, I want to be a photographer."
I said, "Oh, my God, four years at BU,
and you're gonna take pictures?"
That's what I thought. Oh, my God.
To me, it was magic.
Shooting a roll of film,
rolling that film up onto the reel,
and as you're shaking the tray, the image starts to appear.
You're in control from start to finish.
And I was like, "This is what I want to do."
He really wanted to be a photographer, you know,
and that's a really competitive field.
And the day that he left to go to Kansas
to get his master's degree,
when he was driving out of the driveway,
I started to cry.
And our dad said, "Why are you crying?
He's just going away for a year."
And I said, "No, he's not. He's never coming back."
I was always trying to make a good picture
for every assignment, no matter how bad it was.
You know, if there's a dogthat crosses the street at 1:00,
that has a potential to be the page-one photo.
You realize your photographs do have an impact.
I got a call one day from
the director of photography at the Sun-Times,
and he goes, "We want you to come interview."
So I flew up to Chicago,
and he hired me, and, uh, so I went from
a 6,000-circulation daily newspaper
where I was the only photographer
to a 600,000-circulation newspaper
where I was one of 25 photojournalists.
I really think it was helpful for me to have
the number of experiences that I had had.
Did some stuff for National Geographic.
When Lifewas a monthly, I did some work for them.
Right after 9/11,
a correspondent and I snuck into Afghanistan
just as the-the war was getting underway.
And in some ways, it was one of the more fulfilling things
I've ever done in my career
because my images were appearingin the Tribuneevery day,
and I really felt that I was doing good work
and people were seeing it.
I don't want peopleto come away with the impression
that I was a war photographer, 'cause I wasn't.
But when there are RPGs coming at you,
I did not do a really good job,
'cause I was scared shit. I'll admit it.
The realization was, "Okay, this is...
I'm not good at this."
We thank you again for coming here tonight.
Lynsey was actually kidnapped twice in her career.
We know that Brian swims with sharks.
So, Pete, was there ever a time
-where you really felt...
...really felt fearful in the White House
beyond January 20, 2017?
This White House.
Yeah, this White House.
-No, I never felt fearful.
I didn't have bullets flying over my head,
and I didn't have sharks coming at me from all directions,
so I had it easy compared to these two.
The one thing that-- uh, we were talking earlier--
you have to have intuition
in terms of when it's time to-to give the man some space.
So it's more of a just in... intuitive sense
of when it's time to sort of slowly back away.
Every three months, we would go to Walter Reed,
and he would visit Wounded Warriors.
I think it affected him emotionally.
One time, he went, and we saw Cory Remsburg.
He had gotten injured by an IED.
The guy that he was on patrol with in Afghanistan
was killed instantly.
Cory was thrown into a ravine.
He was underwater.
Somehow he survived, not drowning.
He spent months in a coma.
He lost half his eyesight
and the ability to control half his body.
He had to relearn how to walk, talk and eat.
But here's the thing that really took me aback.
President Obama had met Cory
in, uh, Normandy the previous June,
and I had taken a picture of that encounter.
And the picture, we had sent a copy to the family,
and it was taped on the hospital wall.
And I was looking at that picture
and looking at Cory and saying to myself,
"This is the real cost of war."
Right? You some... you don't usually see it that starkly.
Cory's made remarkable progress.
Three years later, he visited with President Obama again
and was starting to walk with a walker.
In January of 2014, was the guest of honor
at the State of the Union address
and sat next to Michelle Obama.
And then towards the end of the administration,
President Obama visited him in Arizona at his new house.
One of the most important parts
of the president's day was when
they would go out to cities all over the U.S.
How long did it last?
-Seemed like forever. -It-it must have.
Thank God you guys are all right.
-Yes, sir. -All right? And, uh...
When you're face-to-face with people...
...those images are burned into your brain.
And you carry that with you.
Pete would always tell me the stories
of what happened on the road that day.
And when you go back, you are constantly reminded
of why you're working so hard.
You touched me so much with your clarity.
Morning meeting was at 9:30 in the Oval Office,
and every day, it was the same kind of meeting.
People sitting in the same chairs, in the same spots.
And I would think, "Oh, my God, I can't look
at another picture from this meeting."
But you have to look through frame-by-frame just in case.
And one night, I saw a scene,
and I started to cry.
And I get chills thinking about it because it was some...
I don't know what the meeting was,
but I knew from looking at the president's face
the intensity of the decision that he was making.
And I was incredibly moved
because I knew the responsibility
and the weight of that job,
and it made me understand how important it is
to have the right person in that chair
making those decisions.
When we vote, we're voting for a decision maker
who is listening to everyone around him
and is then making that decision.
And people say,
"It doesn't matter who's in the White House.
It doesn't matter. It doesn't..."
It totally matters who's in the White House.
Breaking news that the world's most wanted man
has been killed in a mission
led by United States Special Forces.
President Trump laying out what he watched
as he started to view this operation
in the Situation Room.
When you look at this picture...
...definitely looks like he's looking at the camera.
Don't you think?
And I've been in this room...
you know, more than a thousand times.
The photographer is completely blocking the screen.
It looks fishy to me.
If you're gonna release a photo like that,
then you've got to be truthful about what's taking place.
What was he looking at?
I'll go to the New York Times story that I saw.
"Unlike his predecessor, Mr. Trump does not allow
"his staff photographer free range
"to capture behind-the-scenes photographs
"of life and work in the White House.
"Instead, he most often invites Ms. Craighead
"or other White House photographers into the room
specifically for the purpose of taking an official picture."
We need to have real moments of real history,
not posed moments of history.
So, it's hard to know what you're missing.
I'll talk about the bin Laden raid.
It was a very tense day.
Throughout that day, h-he had meetings in the Situation Room,
and they had set up the communications link
in a small conference room
across from the big Situation Room.
So, when President Obama walked in,
Brigadier General Brad Webb stood up to give up his chair,
and President Obama saw that he was on a laptop
communicating directly with Admiral Bill McRaven,
who was essentially running the raid from Afghanistan,
and said, "No, no, no, you stay right there.
I'm just gonna pull up a chair next to you."
So, that's why President Obama is seated where he is.
You've got the most powerful people
in the executive branch of our government
all gathered in this room at the same time,
and yet they were powerless.
There was essentially nothing they could do
to affect the outcome of what they were witnessing.
And now it's up to those Special Forces on the ground.
That bin Laden photo is so powerful
because nobody is posing.
Um, you can see the nerves
on everybody's face in that room.
Tonight, I can report
to the American people and to the world
that the United States has conducted an operation
that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda.
The picture in the bottom right
is right after they knew they had killed bin Laden.
And you don't see any high fives.
It's, like, very anticlimactic in a lot of ways.
As a photographer,
as well as-as a human being, what were some of the things
which were easy for you to capture,
and what were a little more difficult?
I-I don't know that there was anything that was easy.
The hardest things were when he would have to meet
with families that were affected by tragedies.
And I am... I'm sad to say
that we had to do this too many times.
And it was incredibly emotional and difficult.
I felt intrusive at times but also that it was
part of my job to document these moments.
But I would say that that was the...
those were the most difficult times.
You dialed 911.
What's the location of your emergency?
Sandy Hook Elementary School.
-12 Dickenson Drive. - I think there's
somebody shooting in here, at Sandy Hook School.
Somebody's got a gun. I saw a glimpse of somebody.
They're running down the hallway.
-Okay... -Ooh, they're still running.
They're still shooting.
There's still shooting going on. Please.
One of the worst days of his presidency was the day
of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Newtown.
John Brennan, who at that time was
the Homeland Security advisor,
was updating him throughout the morning
and then finally came in and said that 26 people had died,
including 20 grade school kids.
He's reacting as a parent
more than probably as a president,
imagining the horror...
of kissing your child in the morning,
sending them off to school on the school bus,
and then only a few hours later
having to identify your child's body
who's been shot multiple times at close range.
He felt it was his duty as president
to speak to the nation in th-these times of tragedy.
I had never seen him do this before--
blow his cheeks as if he was unsure
whether he would be able to keep it together.
The majority of those who died today were children.
Uh, beautiful little kids
between the ages of five and ten years old.
They had their entire lives ahead of them:
birthdays, graduations,
weddings,
kids of their own.
Among the fallen were also teachers,
men and women who devoted their lives
to helping our children fulfill their dreams.
So, our hearts are broken today.
This evening, Michelle and I will do
what I know every parent in America will do,
which is hug our children a little tighter.
And we'll tell them that we love them,
and we'll remind each other how deeply we love one another.
But there are families in Connecticut
who cannot do that tonight,
and they need all of us right now.
In the hard days to come, that community needs us
to be at our best as Americans,
and I will do everything in my power as president to help.
Malia, who had just gotten home from school,
was standing in the hallway, and he latched onto her.
He just would not let her go.
Two days later, he was invited to come to Newtown.
It happened to coincide with, uh,
Sasha's annual, uh, dance recital,
which he was gonna have to miss.
So he decided to stop by the dress rehearsal
in the afternoon before flying up to, uh, Newtown.
He sat in a box by himself,
started editing his remarks already for that night.
And then, when Sasha was dancing,
he would turn and watch her.
At one point, I went down to the third row
to take some pictures of Sasha in her outfit
'cause I figured those would be
the only pictures they would have.
When I was standing there, this one young dance troupe
had filed out from backstage
and sat in the row right in front of me,
and there were about 20 or 25 little kids.
I said, "How old are you guys?"
She said, "We're six."
And I thought to myself, you know,
this is what just got wiped out in Newtown
was this whole row.
And I had to... I had to turn away
and start... I started crying.
We flew up to Connecticut,
and he spent two and a half hours
meeting with the families.
This is the Wheeler family, Francine and David.
Their son, Ben, who was six, was shot and killed.
And their oldest son, Nate,
hid in a school supply closet during the shooting.
We learned that the president was coming.
We waited for a long time because...
the president's people were trying
to hurry him through the process.
And he said, "No.
I will take as long as it takes."
He comes in, and... and he made a beeline for Francine.
And he just wrapped her up.
Just held her.
Let her, you know, sob into his lapel.
And I asked him...
I said, "Is this different?"
And he said, "I hope so, but I don't know."
There's no substitute for empathy.
It is a foundational relationship
between human beings.
And to know that the guy who's running the show...
...cares enough not just to come and visit
but to...
...to let you know that he cares about you,
that he cares about your wife.
You know, that he cares
about your nine-year-old kid.
We are so good at dismissing...
the people that we elect to serve us.
We're so good at turning them into things that aren't people.
And we have to be very careful about that.
Because when you do that,
then you get the elected officials that you deserve.
I've seen him run up these steps many times.
He didn't run up the steps that night.
Whether it's Newtown
or Aurora or any of these places,
Pete was the only guy who was always
in those rooms, you know?
And so, you could sense his anger
at-at what was going on around him.
So, can we go to the place
-that I usually get the, uh, cherry tomatoes? -Yeah.
Uh, can I get one kale bunch?
-Yeah, yeah. Thanks. Yep. -Thank you.
Presidential preference poll. All you need
-is a Sharpie to vote. -Oh, yeah, I'm voting.
I know Joe Biden, so I'm voting for Joe Biden.
Wait a minute. You're Pete, right?
-Yeah. Yeah. -I was at your show last night.
-Oh, you were? Oh, great. -It was terrific.
-Nice. Thanks. -Oh! I was, too! -It was excellent. Yeah, yeah.
-Yeah. -I'm Toni Brown.
-Oh, hi. Nice to meet you. -Welcome to Madison.
DIRECTOR/PRODUCER: Rumor has it
that the president takes responsibility
-for this happy union.
So, you know, as president, he started in 2009.
So, as he gets to know me more
and he gets to meet Patti,
he would tell people that he-he liked her
better than he liked me, you know.
Um, and so he'd start working on me,
like, in terms of, like, "Well, wait a minute.
So, you guys have been together for,"
you know, whatever it was-- 15, 17 years--
"and what... so, why haven't you gotten married?"
President Obama pushes everybody to get married.
Like, he loves... he loves love stories.
Michelle was on the trip,
and we're sitting in the conference room,
and he's just, like, n-not letting it go,
and he's turning to Michelle and saying,
"Can you believe that Pete won't ask Patti to marry him?"
And-and that's when he brought up,
"We'll do the wedding in the Rose Garden,
and I'll officiate," and I remember I said to him...
I said, "No, I don't want to do that," and he goes,
-"What? The Rose Garden's not good enough for you?" -
The most interesting part of my job was that I saw him
in all these different compartments of his life.
I saw him as a dad.
I saw how he behaved with his children.
I watched this family grow up, essentially.
You know, I think Sasha and Malia did such a great job
under the limelight.
And it-it's really a testament to Michelle
and Barack.
And Marian Robinson, who you see here on the right,
Michelle's mom, helped out,
especially when Michelle went on solo trips overseas.
This is him singing "Happy Birthday" to Michelle.
We were on a boat ride in the Gulf Coast.
I saw Michelle stroking his hand.
Then at the second inauguration,
just before they boarded the motorcade,
I, uh, approached him.
Michelle was standing next to him.
I said, "Mr. President, do you mind if I ride
in the limousine with you for part of the parade route?"
And he looked me in the eye, and he said,
"Well, Michelle and I were planning to make out."
And then he just started laughing.
He's like, "Of course you can," you know.
And he'll tell you that the best day at the White House
was the day that Congress passed the Affordable Care Act.
Not true.
The best day for him at the White House
was the day that Sasha's coach could not make the game
and he got to coach the game.
With a little help from Reggie Love.
So, um, the Sidwell Friends Vipers were undefeated.
And during the first half,
under the tutelage of Coach Obama,
they fell behind.
So he called time-out.
And Sasha's looking at him like,
"Dad, you are embarrassing me."
These are, like, nine-year-old girls,
and he's coaching as if
this is game seven of the NBA Finals.
And one my favorite days was we had a big snowstorm.
It was called "Snowmageddon."
And he ended up coming out for about two hours.
It was just the three of them and me.
At one point, they were in the Rose Garden.
And Sasha, you can see what she's about to do.
-She did it.
I mean, like, who else could throw a snowball
in the face of the president of the United States
and not get tackled by the Secret Service?
To this day, he has a photo
that's the lock screen photo on his iPad,
and it's this picture of the three of them
doing snow angels on the South Lawn.
Aw.
And then they grow up.
One-one of the most emotional days, uh, was in 2015.
In the morning on this day,
the Supreme Court upheld same-sex marriage.
It was a beautiful,
summery, warm morning.
Everyone knew that that decision
would come down that day. We didn't know when.
Um, and like every morning, went in, unlocked the door,
um, turned on the television.
You can hear the cheer in the crowd.
-A very dramatic moment here.
-A five-four decision.
And I called Joe, my now husband,
um, who was, uh, there, and I said, "It's done."
And the president walked in and put his arm around me.
It felt like, for that period of time,
we were on the right side of history.
The president did an interview in the Cabinet Room
several months before then.
I've been going through an evolution on this issue.
Uh, when I think about members of my own staff
who are in incredibly committed
and monogamous relationships-- same-sex relationships--
I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.
And when he vocalized in that interview
his support for same-sex marriage,
that was a-a moment for me, as well.
Sometimes there aredays like this,
when that slow, steady effort
is rewarded with justice
that arrives like a thunderbolt.
Then, later that morning, we flew to Charleston.
President Obama was invited to give
the eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney.
He was one of the nine African Americans
shot and killed
at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church
by somebody who had prayed with this group of nine people
at a prayer service for an hour
and then took out a gun and killed them all.
And President Obama wanted to give a eulogy
with the theme of "grace."
"Amazing Grace."
Yes!
-Sing, Mr. President.
It was emotional in the moment, as you can imagine.
I didn't know he was gonna sing "Amazing Grace."
And I didn't realize, like, the-the struggle.
You could see him trying to decide,
"Can I pull this off?
Should I speak the words or sing them?"
And he's trying to get the courage up to sing,
and he... and he did.
Bidding farewell to the reverend's daughters and widow.
Meeting with some of the other families backstage.
And then we flew back to D.C.
Someone had decided to light the White House
in rainbow colors.
These are all White House staff out on the North Lawn.
People were crying.
People were drinking champagne.
It was, I think, one of only two times
that I called my wife.
I said to her, "I don't care
"what you're doing or what you're wearing.
"Get in a taxi and come to the White House.
You need to be here to see this celebration."
How many people are you gonna be
-speaking in front of? -There's gonna be, like,
-800 people there.
-Yeah. -You ready, man?
Am I ready?
-Yeah, you ready? -Yeah.
Was Obama nice?
Yeah.
You'll hear all about him today.
Sweet.
Clearly, I could see
what he meant to the African American community.
As-as time went on, I was probably more aware
of just trying to tell the story
of what it meant for them,
uh, to have...
you know, to have him up onstage.
It was often in the back of my mind
that he was the first African American president
and I had to incorporate that into my photography.
This is Ruby Bridges, in person and as pictured
in the famous Norman Rockwell painting.
She was the first African American
to desegregate schools in Louisiana.
I think it's fair to say that, if it hadn't been for you guys,
I might not be here and we wouldn't be looking
-at this together, so... -Yeah.
This is Paul McCartney singing "Michelle" to Michelle.
The next day, I was walking
on the colonnade with President Obama.
I said, "That was really cool last night
when McCartney sang 'Michelle.'"
And President Obama turned to me.
He goes, "Yeah, I don't think Michelle Obama growing up
"on the South Side of Chicago as a young African American kid
"thought someday she'd be sitting in the front row
"of the White House as first lady
as a former Beatle sang her namesake song."
And then there's this picture.
This is Jacob Philadelphia.
At one point, Jacob's mom said,
"Mr. President, Jacob has a question for you."
So Jacob's kind of like...
"Mr. President, my friends told me
that my haircut is just like yours."
-And with that, uh,
President Obama bent over, Jacob touched his head.
Click, I got one photo, and it was gone.
That image waswhat Barack Obama had said to us
two years ago in an office in Chicago.
That kid literally can't even believe,
even though he's seeing the president of the United States
in the Oval Office, until he can feel his hair,
he doesn't truly believe that he's just like me.
That single image stands for so much more.
It stands for how kids
will see themselves differently forever.
But two, I think it tells you
something about Barack Obama.
That, at the behest of a five-year-old kid,
you would go ahead, bend over
and let that kid touch your head like that.
The fact that Pete succeeded in offering
a window into the man that was occupying the office
to show what the office can be, what it has been,
what it can be again, to show the...
the kind of integrity of purpose,
I think that's inspiring.
The presidency is about
a lot more than even just policy.
There's something intangible about that office.
What do people remember about the Obamas?
You know, they remember the marriage
between Barack and Michelle Obama.
They remember a certain speech he gave.
They remember how the rooms
that used to be only full of white men
are suddenly full of people of different races and genders.
That's what they take away from the Obama presidency.
And frankly, that's going to have a lasting impact
on this country and on... on the world.
I think Obama understood that the-the images of him
not only being president
but being president in a certain way,
that could change attitudes.
It did, I think, change perspectives
on what is possible and-and what is achievable
for people of color in this country.
But it also woke this, you know,
constantly present, ugly,
horrific racism.
When I first met Pete,
his politics were not at all evident.
You know, I always wondered, what did Pete Souza get
from President Obama?
Like, how did he change
because he spent so much time with President Obama?
The political concern-- you know, the-the feeling
that you have to care and make a difference.
You can make a difference.
He could no longer be this fly on the wall.
And I would see these moments
where Pete became furious for President Obama.
The way in which Pete has been most changed
is by becoming a vocal political person
because of President Obama.
Set the refugees free!
Hundreds swarmed the arrivals terminal at SFO today.
Citizens who are in shock at the speed of which
President Trump's executive orders are turning into action.
Pete Souza is a very unlikely
Instagram superstar, attracting millions of followers
after he started replying to President Trump's tweets
by posting Obama White House photos,
along with snarky captions.
He is President Obama's former chief photographer,
whose Instagram is now full of pics showing glaring contrast
in how the two presidents handled certain situations.
It's earned him the moniker "the King of Shade."
Do you have a picture for every single thing
that Donald Trump has lied about with Barack Obama?
-Pretty much. Pretty much, yeah.-
How much joy do you get when you do it?
Uh, I get a lot of joy, actually.
-Like, do you giggle?
I-I picture you sitting at home,
like, giggling, working on your laptop.
Uh, yeah, my-my wife said she didn't know I was that funny.
And I said, "You just haven't been paying attention."
When I first started out,
I was trying to be humorous in my comments.
You know, I had all these reporters
wanting to interview me
about what I was doing on Instagram,
and I would not respond.
Just say, "It speaks for itself."
In the words of some younger people,
they say you troll President Trump. Why?
The photographs that I post on Instagram now
and the-the words that I write, I think, speak for themselves.
And I think I've gotten more and more out there
in terms of making it pretty damn clear how I feel.
There are also a lot of questions about the phone call
you received from President Trump.
-What he said was... -The president?
Yes, the president.
Said that he knew what he signed up for
but it hurts anyways.
He couldn't remember my husband name.
If my husband risked his life for our country,
why can't you remember his name?
You know, since leaving the White House,
I made this conscious decision
that I couldn't not say anything,
that I couldn't not speak out.
It was all about the dignityof the office of the presidency.
Especially for young people,
what I didn't want them to think--
this is the way a president is supposed to behave.
No, it's not.
Pete bore witness to an ethical,
decent, not perfect,
certainly fallible, law-abiding,
humane presidency for eight years.
And my hunch, when I saw Pete
draw devastating contrasts
between what was and what is,
was he just felt he had no choice.
Whatever instinct that Pete may have had
to remain behind the scenes
seems to have been obliterated
by the harm that President Trump was doing
and the urgency to call that out,
to mobilize people.
This was a 911.
He got progressively worse.
I just thought it was dangerous.
So, I think, over time, yeah,
my Instagram posts got more pointed.
I thought that Trump had just gone way too far,
and I said, "Okay, I want to do this book, 'Shade.'"
Trump tweet on one page,
my response on the other.
Obama: An Intimate Portrait, which is a coffee table book
based on the eight years of the Obama presidency,
will hopefully last a lifetime.
The Shadebook, hopefully, will outlive its uselessness
on January 20, 2021.
-Peter Souza. Hey, baby.
Pete Souza.
I wasn't surprised to see him
hit this nerve on social media.
I was surprised to see him, like,
on a television show talking, you know?
You know, he's a behind-the-scenes guy.
And I think it spoke to just how offended he was
by the new reality
and how he felt compelled to speak up.
So, we usually don't see this from
-a White House photographer... -No.
...who has that fly-on-the-wall quality to him or to her.
What made you want to step out and-and make this stand?
Well, I think this guy disrespects
the office of the presidency.
I mean, it's as simple as that.
I always thought of you as fairly apolitical.
So, what is it about this moment
and this president that has... that has changed you?
He bullies people. He lies.
He calls you guys the, uh, enemy of the people.
He doesn't believe our own intelligence agencies.
There's just too many things.
I'm trying to make an argument
that this is not who we are.
That this president really doesn't speak for us
as Americans, what it means to be an American.
Believe me, he gets lots of hate mail,
'cause I get a lot of them on his behalf.
He's not loved by everyone, for sure.
But for the people who feel strongly, as he does,
they see him as almost a leader
to help them get that message across
and to help make some change in this country right now.
-How are you? -It's so good to see you.
-Congratulations to you. -Thank you. You, too.
-My God, you're kicking ass. -Huh?
-How you doing? -I'm doing good.
-How about you? -I'm good.
-I love the book. -Thank you.
I was... I saw POTUS today.
And one of the things that I was telling him was
-you can tell stories now... -Mm-hmm.
...and in context, they make complete sense.
Like, you couldn't have defended yourself
the way you did-- about Benghazi, for instance--
-while you're at... -No.
And yet, I had no choice 'cause I was,
you know, speaking on behalf of the government
and on behalf of the president.
Uh, and that was, you know, what I wanted to do
and what I committed to do at the time.
But that meant that, in that period,
I didn't have my own voice.
I'm a journalist who wishes
I could give my opinion once in a while.
I'm wondering, as the White House official photographer,
did you have to wait for a certain time to throw shade?
Yeah, I would never have done it,
uh, during his presiden... I would never have done it
if, you know, Jeb Bush or John Kasich or...
Um, look, this is... this is not a partisan thing to me.
This is somebody that I feel is not a good person,
doesn't respect the office of the presidency,
thinks about himself and not other people,
lies to us.
So, it-it became something that I felt I had to do.
I don't think, uh,
a photojournalist is supposed to be opinionated.
I'm now opinionated.
I, in some ways,
have ruined any chance that I have
of being a working photojournalist again.
But to me, that's a small price to pay
for doing what I think is the right thing.
Pete and I probably-- and I've never talked about this--
feel a similar sense of obligation--
and so do a bunch of our other former colleagues--
to... to fight these battles
because we don't want Obama to do it.
You know, or, you know, he shouldn't do it.
His voice is too important to be trivialized
by having to respond to tweets, you know?
I've never been overtly political,
and now I am political.
I want to make sure everybody knows
that what this guy is doing is not only not normal,
but it's really dangerous to the country.
This is a serious job, being the president.
I'm gonna do everything I can
to make sure people don't forget that.
President Obama invited the president-elect
just two days after the electionto the White House.
It was a surreal day.
And it just so happens by sheer coincidence
that another meeting had been scheduled that day,
uh, with a young boy, Alex Myteberi.
Alex had written a letter to President Obama
that he was so taken with
that he read excerpts of it at his U.N. speech that year.
I can still remember it,
seeing Omran in the ambulance,
face covered in blood and ash and dust.
It looks horrific to you that someone your age,
like, younger than me-- Omran was a year younger than me--
being hurt in an ambulance in another country
while I'm just sitting around at my grandma's watching TV.
For days and days,
he wanted to ask about Omran.
"Show me Syria. Where is Aleppo?"
First, he wanted to send a letter to Omran.
And when I told him,"Well, I don't have his address,
so I don't think he's gonna get it,"
that's when he decided to write to the president.
My thought was, "Okay, here goes the Santa Claus letter."
You know, that's the idea-- you just write it...
-Doing something. -...you drop it, then that's the end of it.
-Little did we know.
He said he wanted Omran to come live with him and his family.
"Since he won't bring toys," Alex wrote,
"I will share my bike, and I will teach him how to ride it."
"We will give him a family, and he will be our brother."
Those are the words of a six-year-old boy.
It's so nice to meet you.
-How have you been? -Good.
You look very nice in your suit.
-Thank you. -Is that a new suit?
-Mm-hmm. -I thought so.
You being so... so nice and kind
hopefully makes other people think the same way.
So, I was very proud of you. Hmm.
This picture was made
22 minutes after Trump had left.
This six-year-old kid, the son of two immigrants,
showed more compassion,
more empathy, more understanding,
and knows more about what it means to be an American
than our current president.
This is something that we take very seriously.
Uh, as soon as there is an outbreak
anywhere in the world of any disease,
the CDC, uh, is in communication
with the World Health Organization,
uh, and other multilateral agencies
to try to make sure that we've got an appropriate response.
Having watched President Obama,
based on the way he handled the H1N1 epidemic,
and the Ebola crisis in 2014--
I mean, if he had been president now,
he would have been facing this virus, too.
He couldn't have stopped it.
But he would have listened to the science early on.
It's really on Trump for not having a nationwide shutdown.
Put it in perspective.
This is 40 9/11s.
40 9/11s.
That's how many people have died.
I view everything now through the lens of the presidency.
I think one thing that's changed
is that the vast majority of the country
now realizes that having a competent, honest person
in the presidency really does matter.
I want to speak directly
to the young men and women of color in this country.
I want you to know that you matter.
I want you to know that your lives matter.
You have the power to make things better,
and you have helped to make the entire country feel,
uh, as if this is something that's got to change.
America's always been
two stories battling each other.
You know, the progressive, inclusive story
of-of people getting more rightsand more people being allowed
the promise of citizenship and opportunity
and struggling to overcome things
versus people who don't want to give up power, you know?
And if you just stacked up the images
of the Obama presidency and the Trump presidency,
you would see the two stories of America
in the starkest possible contrast.
And I think that's why Pete's images
have triggered such emotion in people--
'cause it's like, no, that's my America.
My America is in these pictures.
-Yes, we did. Yes, we can.
Thank you. God bless you.