Weeks before the opening of his presidential library in Chicago, Barack Obama expresses his hopes for what the building will contribute to his legacy
“I want you to put my presidency in context,” Obama told CBS’ Stephen Colbert in an interview recorded at the library and broadcast on The Late Show last Tuesday.
“I assume in my eulogy somewhere it will be mentioned, ‘He was the first African-American president,’” Obama, 64, said. “But what I want people to understand is that there was an extraordinary journey that this country took to get to this point, and I was an episode in that journey.”
The 44th president’s period after leaving the White House has been marked by Donald Trump, the 45th and 47th president. Obama has been increasingly vocal about Trump’s targeting of long-standing American institutions and warns about what he called, “a rising wave of authoritarianism sweeping the world.”
Former US President Barack Obama speaks to students during a visit to the Learning Through Play kindergarten in the New York neighborhood of the Bronx, on April 18, 2026. photo Angelina Katsanis/Getty Images
Obama remains one of the most popular figures in the Democratic Party, someone sought out by candidates for campaign events and to promote initiatives in California and Virginia in favor of referendums to redraw electoral maps in the ongoing redistricting war launched by Trump.
published on May 4, Obama said he tries to reconcile his political activities with the desire he and former first lady Michelle Obama have to spend more time together.
“It creates genuine tension in our house and frustrates it,” he said, referring to campaign events. “I’m more understanding about it, in the sense that I understand why people feel that way, because they’re not seeing me in a historical comparison to other presidents. They don’t care that no other former president has been the party’s top official for four election cycles after leaving office.”
In the May 5 interview with Colbert, Obama was asked what direction he would like to see the Democratic Party take.
The construction of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, Illinois, on August 20, 2025. photo Scott Olson/Getty Images
“Within the Democratic Party, and I would say also among many independents and even some Republicans, there is a widespread belief in equality and justice – if you work, you should be able to earn a living wage, support a family and retire with dignity and respect,” he said, before mentioning the name of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, with whom Obama was in the Bronx.
Obama described Mamdani as “an extraordinary talent.”
“He wants people to be able to afford housing in New York,” Obama told Colbert. “I assume New York liberals want the same thing, so I don’t worry as much about some of these issues within the Democratic Party. What interests me most about Democrats is: They know how to talk to regular people like we’re not in a college seminar, right? Can you speak in plain language to people?”
And just as he – and other former presidents – have often been pressured to do, Obama was asked to reveal that the government is hiding evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial life. (He did earlier this year when asked if he knew if aliens were real.)
“One of the things you learn as president is that the government is terrible at keeping secrets,” he told Colbert, insisting that any secret evidence would have been made public by now, before offering himself as an emissary to extraterrestrials should they eventually reach Earth.
