Barack Obama: “What I do think happened in that situation is that a 24/7 media cycle that's always looking for controversy...”

A drift towards extremism was "not inevitable

And I will fight for that, even if I don’t always think it’s going to win.

I’m going to insist that we can do better than we’re doing right now.

It is a decision about how do we face and embrace this finite amount of time we have on the planet.