Welcome back to The Daily Show.

Our guest tonight is here to discuss the inaugural Obama

Foundation Democracy Forum, and how

he's training the next generation of young leaders

in the US and around the world.

Please welcome the 44th president of the United

States, Barack Obama.

[cheering]

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, that's right.

I should have brought Michelle here, so that you could--

[cheering]

This is how I'd like to be greeted when I come home.

But I feel like Michelle's the star now, right?

Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

Mr. President, welcome to The Daily Show.

It is wonderful to see you.

Do you miss your name, by the way?

Because everyone calls you Mr. President, but like,

I feel like I would, like if people

called me like Mr. Daily, I would

miss just being called Trevor.

Do you miss your name sometimes?

My best friends call me Barack.

TREVOR NOAH: OK, OK. So, Barack.

You should call me Mr. President.

TREVOR NOAH: Oh, I knew it.

But--

You know, I was--

[laughs] welcome to the show.

Let's start with, I mean, the most pressing news.

The midterms just happened.

You know, America voted.

The House is flipping.

Democrats have held onto the Senate.

Many credit you for coming out and pushing

out people to vote.

I would love to know two parts to that.

Number one, do you do you feel pressure whenever

you're asked to come out?

It's like in the movies when they need

that home run and the bases are load and the team's losing

and they go, Barack, we need you

to hit this out of the park, we might lose everything.

Do you feel the pressure?

Does it get to you?

And second of all, what does it say

about the state of the Democratic party

that they always need you to come out and do

that before an election?

Look, I think that the reason we did better

than expected can be attributed to not me or anything I did,

but it has to do with A, we recruited

some excellent candidates.

You look like at a Wes Moore in Maryland, a Josh

Shapiro in Pennsylvania.

You look at our Senate candidates,

you know, John Fetterman and Mark Kelly.

They are committed, passionate, down to earth,

they connect with people.

And so I come in mainly to shine a spotlight on them.

So that's point number one.

And the second thing that happened in this Midterm,

and we've seen it now for three elections,

so I'm starting to feel pretty hopeful that this is a habit,

young people are voting.

And you've got higher, it has been many times

remarked how I got thumped during Midterms

during my presidency.

And part of it was that voting rates were really low.

People in some sense, I think a lot of Democrats felt,

all right, Obama's there, we'll be OK.

And if it turns out that McConnell and Boehner

and others suddenly have power, then

that greatly restricts what a president can do.

And I think that lesson was learned.

Trump comes in and suddenly 2018, 2020, and now this one,

you've seen young people come in

and they're typically voting at a rate of 70 to 30, 60 to 40

Democrat to Republican.

TREVOR NOAH: Right.

And that makes a huge difference.

And so their--

TREVOR NOAH: But many of them are--

--enthusiasm I think is what really drove this election.

I agree with that in terms of the people who actually voted.

But young people don't seem to be turning out as much.

So the ones who did vote, voted overwhelmingly Democrat.

Yes.

But then the number of young voters

seems to be dwindling from election to election.

And many young voters are saying

they feel disillusioned.

They feel like America hasn't made a way for them.

They don't see a future for themselves.

Well, look, what is always true is young people are

going to vote at slightly lower rates than old people,

like me.

Because they've got better things to do.

Michelle and I are sitting at home, eating dinner.

We've kind of run out of things to say.

Well, let's go vote.

Young people, Malia and Sasha, they're out,

they got all kinds of stuff.

So that's always going to be the case

that young people voting rates are a little bit lower.

They are higher now than they were in the Midterms

when I was president.

And in such a polarized environment,

1%, 2%, 3%, if they're turning out at 21% instead of 18%--

TREVOR NOAH: It makes a difference.

--that can make an enormous difference.

Right.

When you look at that tiny difference,

you still see the places where, I mean,

people got into power despite the fact

that they deny elections.

I think Republicans got 170 election deniers

into Congress, people who don't believe in the way America

is running its elections, people who don't believe Joe

Biden should be president or they'll

be vague about their answers. BARACK OBAMA: Yeah.

What do you what do you think it says

about American democracy that so many people are getting

elected to these positions when they seem to dismiss

the election itself?

Well, the interesting thing is, you notice,

election deniers don't deny their own election.

Funny how that works.

How many of them actually believe

some of the nonsense that circulates versus those who

think it's convenient or it's a way to own the libs

or it's a way to send a message or align themselves

with Trump?

That's hard to say.

But what is important is, that because of some really

concerted efforts in a lot of important states,

some of the most egregious, prominent, and potentially

dangerous election deniers--

TREVOR NOAH: Right.

--they got thumped.

They got beat.

And particularly in these Secretary of States races,

and in some cases, Governor's races,

where in the next presidential election,

you could have somebody who could really do some damage.

There, I think we held the line.

Now what it does say more broadly,

is the fact that not just here in the United States,

but around the world, the fundamental precepts

of democracy are being challenged.

TREVOR NOAH: Right.

We're not having arguments about policy,

but we're having arguments about the rules of the game,

which previously we all agreed to, right?

There was a notion that all right,

we run elections, whoever gets the most votes actually wins.

The loser concedes, goes back and tries

to do better next time.

And what we've seen now for a whole host of reasons

is a creeping sense that if the outcome is not what we want,

then we can do whatever we want and say

whatever we want in order for us to win.

And that is profoundly dangerous.

And as I said, it's not unique to the United States,

but when it happens in the United States,

it sends a signal all around the world

that weakens democracy.

And that's why I think us getting our house

in order is so important.

When you look at the discourse in the country,

as well, and around the world, but again, I

think you're correct in that America is

a leader in what's happening right now,

the discourse has become so toxic.

Yeah.

TREVOR NOAH: You were in every single state.

You were meeting with people all the way from Iowa

through to California, wherever you were

meeting people on the ground.

They were listening to you.

There was an openness, even though people

had different political affiliations.

It seems like that has eroded over time.

And I wonder what you make of that.

Where do you think it's coming from?

Do you think it's social media?

Do you think it's the tenor of politicians in the capital?

Two things.

The biggest change that's taking place.

When I ran for let's say US Senate in Illinois,

you go down state, that's the South.

I mean, it's rural, it's conservative.

There aren't a lot of folks who look like you or me.

And certainly, there are more Trevors than there

are Baracks in these areas.

[laughs]

And so-- and I'm driving around, I've got a map.

For young people here, it's this paper thing.

You can't figure out how to fold it back,

but it's how you find your way on roads.

But I go into a town and it'd be 70% Republican, a lot

of evangelicals, et cetera.

But I could go to a diner or a VFW Hall or a county fair.

I could go to the local newspaper,

and the owner there is conservative,

and he's got a bow tie and buzz, cut

and he's kind of skeptical about my ideas.

But there wasn't the filter that

had been created by Fox News or the media infrastructure,

the sort of right wing conspiracy theory folks.

And so they came at me with an open mind.

And I could listen to them, and they could listen to me.

And at the end of the day, they might say, well,

he's a little liberal for our taste,

but we have something in common.

He talked about his mom getting sick.

I remember my mom getting sick.

You know, it seems like he loves his kids.

I love my kids.

There was some sense of connection.

And I think the filter now has become so thick.

It started I think with Fox News

and some of the other traditional media.

And now with social media, that's gotten turbocharged.

If you go into those same communities now,

they have so many preconceptions about what

somebody like me believes, cares about,

et cetera, that it's very hard to penetrate.

So I think the answer is both thinking about information

flow and media, and how can we break through that information

bubble that people are in.

That requires, by the way, progressives to get

out of their media bubble.

Because we've got some preconceptions that I

think create barriers as well.

And then working a lot more locally.

Because you notice that when you're

on the ground doing stuff, it's harder to stereotype people.

And the nationalization of our politics I think

has been damaging.

The more we can focus on grassroots efforts,

real world rather than just virtual meetings,

conversations, that's what over time I think

can help strengthen democracy.

And that's part of what our emphasis has been

at the foundation is, with young leaders who