Obama appeared on Jon Stewart's 'Daily Show' program. Read the complete transcript.
Jon Stewart: William Jefferson Clinton and you in Florida. Now, I know Florida, many of my people go there to retire. You might want to hold the rally early. They don't like to miss their shows at night or the early-bird special at the diner. So, whatever you can....
Barack Obama: No comment on that, Jon. I'm trying to win Florida.
Jon Stewart: What a wise man. I thought that at this point, you would be doing sort of a four corners offense, playing kind of a delay game, but you really are going at it. Tell me about this half-hour special that aired earlier tonight. What is this?
Barack Obama: Well, this is the Obama infomercial. I'll tell you a quick story. We're buying time on a lot of the stations. I was describing this to Michelle and my daughters, and Malia who is ten, she said "Hold up a second. Are you saying my programs are going to be interrupted?" I said no we didn't buy on Disney. She was relieved, but for everybody else who wants to watch, they're going to have a chance to take a look at not just sort of a pitch for me but really what we try to do is tell a story about what's happening in families all across America. We've got four families that we feature. All of them have great hopes, but all of them are struggling too. We want to talk about what the next four years would mean for them.
Jon Stewart: Will it annoy us? Or will we like it? Afterwards, will we think, did he just sell me a Shamwow? What the hell just happened? Or will we feel comforted and, you know....
Barack Obama: I hope what people will come away with, I hope they'll say to themselves you know what? This election is really important. These families that have been featured remind me of either myself or people I that know. I hope they'll have a better sense of exactly what I want to do as president. That's all you can do. At this stage, everything that needs to be said has probably been heard by a lot of voters. What you want to do is remind them one more time. Here's what I'm going to do, not oversell, let people make up their minds. That's how democracy works.
Jon Stewart: So much of this has been about fear of you. An elitist, a celebrity, a Muslim terrorist sympathizer. A Socialist, a Marxist, a witch. That's right. They've been calling you a witch. They're saying if you do win, is that a mandate for Socialism in this country? Has any of this fear stuff, do you think it's stuff with the electorate? Are you finding that on the trail?
Barack Obama: You know, it just hasn't. I mean, I think, there's a certain segment of hard-core Sean Hannity fans that probably wouldn't want to go have a beer with me, there's no doubt about that. But I think for the average voter, they're saying to themselves, what's all this stuff about? I'm trying to figure out whether I can hang on to my house or who is going to help me get a job or what about my health care, my premiums have doubled over the last couple of years. So I don't think that they're paying too much attention to this stuff. And the whole Socialism argument that doesn't fly too well. The evidence of this seems pretty thin. I said today that I think they found proof that when I was in kindergarten I shared some toys with my friends. That's clearly a sign that of subversive activity now, I can tell you, Jon, that being on your program I think is further evidence of these tendencies.
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