Transcript: NPR's Full Interview With Former President Barack Obama

In a wide-ranging interview with All Things Considered host Michel Martin, former President Barack Obama talks about his new book, A Promised Land, the 2020 election results, President Trump's refusal to concede to President-elect Joe Biden, racial hostility in America and the role race played in his presidency.

Michel Martin: So thank you for having us. Thank you for receiving us here at your office, which is amazing.

Former President Barack Obama: It's wonderful to have you.

Have you developed any interesting COVID habits? Like some people are gardening. Mrs. Obama indicated she was learning to knit. Some of us who would kill any plant have somehow managed to manage a garden this year. Not talking about anybody in particular, just hypothetically. How about you?

I have to say Michelle is not just starting to knit. She's become this extraordinary knitter, which, I told her the other day, it's kind of weird how good you've gotten at this thing. She's making sweaters and scarves and caps and —

OK. But what about you?

I cannot claim to have cultivated a new hobby, partly because I was busy finishing the book up until a couple of months ago. And then we had this campaign that I had to participate in a little more than I had anticipated. So, who knows? I may start up something.

Well, let's talk about the campaign. How do you understand the election results? I mean, by that I mean, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris win the White House, but Republicans make gains in the House. And in fact, Republicans now control more state legislatures than at any point in U.S. history. They control both legislative houses in 32 states. And of course, we are speaking at a time when there are more than 10 million COVID cases in the United States, 240,000 people have died. This is as, just as we are speaking now. Yet 70 million people voted for the incumbent who presided over all this. So what do you thinks going on here? How do you understand it?

Look, I think there's no doubt that the country is deeply divided right now. And, you know, when I think back even to my own first presidential election in 2008, the country didn't feel this divided, what some people have called the great sort in which you have a combination of a political, cultural, ideological, in some cases, religious and geographical divide that seems to be deeper than just differences in policy. A lot of that I think has to do with changes in how people get information. I've spoken about this before, I write about this in my book. If you watch Fox News, you perceive a different reality than if you read and that didn't use to be as stark because you had local newspapers and you had people overlapping in terms of where they got information. But now partly because of social media and sort of the echo chamber, a lot of the people who voted for Donald Trump do not believe that in fact COVID was mishandled, contrary to the facts that now you or I might assert, those aren't the facts that they accept. And I think that until we can start having a common baseline of facts from which to discuss the direction of the country, we're going to continue to have some of these issues. Now part of it is also the fact that the Republican Party — because you mentioned state legislatures — Democrats tend to now be primarily in metropolitan areas, not just cities, but surrounding suburbs, metro areas and Republicans are spread