It’s been a full-on week for US President Barack Obama. With just a few days until he relinquishes his title as Commander in Chief, Obama has been wrapping up his official business, not least of which was his monumental farewell speech in Chicago.
Only a few hours before that speech, Obama sat down with NBC reporter Lester Holt at a neighbourhood diner to run through a few of the most prominent aspects of his presidency.
While that speech called for hope – again – his chat for the Dateline program hit upon what Obama typifies as his “greatest disappointment” – a failure to instigate broad scale changes to America’s gun control laws to avoid more senseless mass shootings.
“My worst day as president was hearing that twenty six-year-olds had been shot in the most brutal way – in their school, where they should have been safe.And it was only two days later where I had to try to comfort parents of these six-year-olds, and their siblings, eight-year-olds, ten-year-olds, whose little sisters, little brothers, had just been slaughtered.”
After describing what he thought would have been the groundswell of support for sweeping reforms after the Sandy Hook massacre, Obama said “the fact that it didn’t even get the kind of hearing and votes that you expected, that it didn’t generate a debate,” was his “greatest disappointment.”
Catch his thoughts at the 23:17 mark below:
Source and photo: Dateline / NBC.
