Calmes: Happy birthday, Mr. President. Will you run again?
Obama: Yes I will. I’ll be here for you, like my fathers had been. I love you guys more than I can ever say.
“Our president has just delivered this great speech in Paris. We had a wonderful and strong debate in the U.S. presidential election last time. And he delivered what I think was his finest speech of this race. And I had a chance to take a few moments with him in Paris to talk about these issues around the world, and how he sees the world. And he talked about how important it is that we have strong alliances, and strong partnerships, and I think it’s something that is going to be very important as the world moves forward in the future, and to avoid the mistakes we made here in Paris and on the Iraq war, where we got into a war with no clear exit strategy, with no clear exit strategy for Iraq, that is something that will be very important for future leaders.
“And I think they also both made it clear that it’s important for us to move beyond the rhetoric and toward the action that is the most substantive way we can respond to real problems, and the world faces real problems as well around the world. And I appreciate what he said about the world not being kind to America’s allies, and we’ll see the results of that in the next few months. But what he and President Obama both made very clear was that the world is not always kind to America, and that’s why America has to be constantly on the lookout for ways to advance its interests and America’s values around the world, and to build strong alliances around the world.
“And just today, just as we were about to leave here, the United States of America has just lost two friends in very different ways. Just last night, in the most horrific terrorist attacks in our country’s history, we saw a young American citizen on a plane on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit who was murdered, as we heard, in a horrible way, by terrorists who overran his vehicle on that highway, killed his entire family, drove him for miles through that city, as they murdered other people
