Transcript: President Barack Obama, Part 2

KROFT: Thank you Mr. President.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Alright.

KROFT: Oh I have one thing.

OBAMA: Oh oh oh, wait, wait, wait - there's one more question . . . alright, go ahead.

KROFT: It's my own fault.

OBAMA: I'm going to give you one this last one cause you're excited about this one.

KROFT: One of the complaints has been that you've appeared on Comedy Central The View. They think it trivializes the president. I don't know if you saw this cartoon [Steve Kroft shows President Obama a political cartoon from the Daily News.]

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Let me take a look at it.

KROFT: Body by Bam.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Body by Bam.

KROFT: From The Daily News.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: The challenge right now, and you know this better than I do, Steve, is that it used to be a President could call a press conference, and the three major networks would come, and he'd talk to 'em, and you pretty much reached everybody in America. And these days the closest I can get to that is bein' on 60 Minutes.

But there are a whole bunch of folks you know, unwisely on their part, who don't watch 60 Minutes, who watch The Daily Show¸ or watch The View. And so I've got to adapt the presidency to reach as many people as possible in as many settings as possible so that they can hear directly from me.

This is an example of where, you know, on the one hand folks say, "Well, you know he's a little too remote." Then if I'm on The View, "Well, you know, he shouldn't be you know on some daytime TV show you know, he should be a little more imperious."

And, you know, I guess my attitude is if I'm reaching people, if I'm talkin' to 'em. If I'm engaged with 'em, whatever the venue, then hopefully that makes people a little clear about what it is that I'm trying to do, and understand the challenges that we face. And so I'm willing to take the risks of overexposure on that front.

Click here for part 1 of the transcript.

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[howardk2043]

How could Steve Kroft interview the president and speak of the current and past problems without even mentioning that we are in 2 WARS!! Doesnt this even come up with the fact that Obama pressed the least of important priorities (ie) healthcare, spending a whole year fighting while the economy crumbles, wars get worse and unemployment is out the door. A little more insight would have been beneficial.
Regds,
Howard

[idelie]

Okay people, we know now what our President is all about, how much work he has done to clean up the Republican and Bush mess. Their biggest problem is the fact that they are making promises to wall street, the banking system and the pharmaceutical company in driving the country into more mess to satisfy their selfish agenda where the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer.
Since the president took office a lot more people got into universities. A lot more people has health care coverage. The housing market has always been cyclical, this crisis is not new which by the way almost always get fixed by a democratic administration. we got more respect around the world (two years ago American were not welcomed almost everywhere in the world). We were considered as criminals, unintelligents.
We need to start fighting. Republican and Democrates do not own this country. we need to come up with a movement to counterfit the tea party movement which contains a lot of liars, cheaters, racists, selfcentered people so we can move the country forward. This President is an Innovator he came up with a lot of ideas that are now being implemented in Europe Asia and Africa we should focus on tapping in on them to make America a prosperous country again (Renewable energy, technology, science,research, inventions etc.) Let's be competitive again in this global economy so we can reclaim our strengths

[laciboros]

The full interview, only available on line, included full and thoughtful answers to the questions. I am astounded that the editors of CBS feel that they have the power to edit an interview with the President of the United States to reflect what they think is most important to the country. Unelected but admittedly in control of a powerful media outlet, they have chosen to highlight hot button issues instead of a balanced review of the Obama record. No wonder that more people trust Jon Stewart, who had the decency to devote his whole show to the President.

[cathysf]

right on laciboros!

[amfran]

60 Minutes stopped being journalism years ago, and Steve Croft reached a new low in pandering to the right in his "interview" with the President -- posing "questions" that were thinly disguised talking points of the tea party, and throwing in shameless editorial comments such as "the Republicans want to extend tax breaks for everyone to keep the economy moving". Where does it say that tax breaks for the top earners will "keep the economy moving"?? Only in Croft's head, and of course on Fox News. Why don't you send Croft over to Fox along with the rest of the 60 Minutes team....

[anotheramericanvoter]

I'm sorry... where did you find that quote? I couldn't manage to find it anywhere in either part of the transcript or video.

And can you elaborate somewhat on what your issue was regarding the questions? It seems you're rather unclear on the difference between an interview and a speech. In an interview, it is generally expected of the interviewer to ask tough questions. Given the election results, I'd find it odd if the interviewer didn't ask questions that address the talking points of the opposing parties. If Obama didn't want to talk about those sorts of things, he should have probably scheduled a press conference instead.

Finally, I would think you'd be proud that he fielded those tough questions reasonably well. Whether we should believe him or not remains to be seen, but he gave reasonable answers for a change.

[tilden1876]

I was disappointed that Steve Kroft misrepresented the President's proposal on taxes. Obama has proposed a cut for the first 250K for EVERY American - those above 250Kl get of $61,000 in cuts! Yet Steve said that the President only wanted cuts for those making less than 250K while the GOP wants it for everyone. This is just not factually accurate, or true in any sense! What happened to accuracy at 60 Minutes!

[laciboros]

Right on. It seems that there is more and more editorializing in the guise of interviewing. Leading questions abounded coupled with editing of answers. Accuracy and objectivity were clearly no longer the main goals of what used to be the best interviews on TV.