With The Daily Show's Jon Stewart heading to retirement in the next few weeks, the comedian sat down with President Barack Obama for the last time on his show.
"You're also senioritis, yes?" Stewart quipped. "What do you got, about a year?"
"You know, I can't believe that you're leaving before me," Obama joked. "In fact, I'm issuing a new executive order: that Jon Stewart cannot leave the show."
The interview that followed was at times testy and confrontational, but it gave several insights into how Obama views his accomplishments as president and the broader role of government. Watch part one above, then part two, part three, and the extended footage.
Obama on climate change
"We doubled fuel efficiency standards on cars, increased solar power by 20 times, and now we've got a Paris conference on climate change coming up later this year. If we can get China and India and some of the other big countries to take a look at what we've already done, and finally get something global, it would start addressing [global warming]."
Obama on the Iran deal
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"With respect to Iran, this is an adversary. They are anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, they sponsor terrorist organizations like Hezbollah.
"Well, as has been said frequently, 'You don't make peace with your friends.' The issue here is do we want them having a nuclear weapon? And the answer is no.
"If we are able to negotiate peacefully around not having a nuclear weapon, they're still going to cause us problems in various areas, we're still going to have enormous differences with them, and we're still going to have to work with core allies like Israel [and] with the Gulf countries to make sure that Iran is not sponsoring terrorism or destabilizing the region. But we will have taken off the table what would have been a catastrophic strategic problem if they got a weapon."
Obama on the media
"The media is a bunch of different medias. There's some that get on my nerves more than others. I think that's fair to say.
"The thing that I'm most concerned about is not that it's unfair or that it's too tough on government, because I think that that's what journalism and the media are supposed to be doing.
"I think it gets distracted by shiny objects, and it doesn't always focus on the big, tough choices and decisions that have to be made. And part of that is just the change in nature of technology. I mean, it is very hard now for folks to do an hour-long special on the other American, let's say, or some of the other classic documentaries that were done a long time ago. It's tough to get everybody's attention focused in the same way. And so what that means that on big, tough issues, sometimes it's hard to get the entire nation's attention focused on it.
"But part of my job and part of the job of everybody in the White House is, 'How do we adapt to this new environment? How are we more nimble? How are we dealing with social media?'"
Obama on the country's sense of shared sacrifice
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"I think it would be a wonderful idea for us to think about how we build on the national service that currently exists and expand it. Now, how people respond to it politically, how young people respond to it, it would be interesting to see that.
"Here's what I know: The best education I got was for a few years me working in low-income neighborhoods as an organizer — not really knowing necessarily what I was doing, but understanding that I wanted to try to commit myself to something bigger than just me.
"And the young people I meet around the country — and, by the way, around the world — they have that same sense. This notion that young people have lost their idealism or they're too cynical or ironic, it's not true. But we have to give them pathways to get them involved."
Obama on Donald Trump
"I'm sure the Republicans are enjoying Mr. Trump's current dominance of their primary."
Obama on government's role and management
"We ask our government to do things that other folks don't want to do, because you can't make money at it, because it's not profitable. So we want government to help make sure that kids get opportunity, and they have to reach the toughest-to-reach kids — the kids that the private schools generally screen out. We want to make sure that we are serving our veterans, including the oldest, poorest veterans. There's not a lot of money in doing that.
"And so a lot of times people will say, 'Well, why isn't this happening as quick, as fast?' If we're under-resourcing our government, and not staffing it the way it needs to be to do everything that's done, then we shouldn't be surprised that there are going to be gaps."
