President Barack Obama Encourages Young People to Vote: ‘The Stakes Are High’

President Barack Obama and Shade 45 host Sway Calloway reminisced on Thursday about their relationship over the past eight years, with the 44th president joking that he’s “a little grayer but other than that, no worse for wear.”

And as the president prepares to leave the Oval Office, he has a clear choice of who he wants to see sworn in on January 20, 2017.

“You have a clear choice in this situation of one person who is serious about the issues that young people care about, and you have another person who is not serious about them,” Obama said during a phone interview. “This shouldn’t be close.”

He added, “And I will tell you that, as good as I feel about the work that we’ve done over the last eight years in reducing poverty, cutting the unemployment rate in half, dealing with climate change, dealing with criminal justice reform — if Mr. [Donald] Trump is elected, all that stuff is reversed. All the progress we’ve made in the last eight years goes out the window. And if Hillary Clinton is elected, then the progress we’ve made continues, and she builds on it.”

Obama said Clinton has “made mistakes in the past, just like everybody has” when asked about the new email dumps released by WikiLeaks.

“But these are nothing compared to the ongoing, daily transgressions that Mr. Trump engages in. Whether it’s cheating people who do work for him by not paying them, or his attitudes toward women, or his attitudes toward minorities, or his attitude toward civil rights, his attitude toward Muslim Americans, his general lack of knowledge about basic issues that matter to the American people. The stakes are high, and listen, what I always say to young people — and I’ve said to old people, too — if you don’t vote, you’ve got no right to complain because you’ve given away your power.”

Obama reminded Sway’s listeners that “voting is easy,” directing the audience to IWillVote.com or encouraging them to text ‘Forward’ to 47246 to learn more about their options to vote.

“You have the chance to have influence, to make a difference, and those who say, ‘My vote doesn’t matter anyway’ … You know these margins are small in a lot of these states, so your vote matters,” Obama reiterated. “And if you want to break gridlock in Washington, then you can’t give your power away … I would just say to everybody that this is as important of an election as I’ve ever seen, the choices have not been starker.”

Obama does appear optimistic about Clinton’s chances. When asked about his advice for the next president, he offered some kind words to his former Secretary of State.

“My advice to Hillary will be, just listen to your conscience and do what you think is right and worry about the politics later. People always ask, ‘How is that you stay so calm, ignore a lot of the stuff that’s said about you?’ And what I always tell people is, ‘Look, I keep a long view on things. If I know every day that I’m doing my very best, I’m working as hard as I can, and I’m making decisions based on what’s good for the people that I’m serving, then it doesn’t really matter what the day-to-day poll numbers are. What will matter is when I look, I will say I did things the right way.’ And I think that Hillary will do the same. We’re only going to be in a position to have confidence in our next president if everybody votes.”

But one thing is for certain in future election cycles:

“[Michelle Obama] will never run for office,” Obama said, shooting down rumors of a political future for the First Lady. “She is as talented and brilliant a person as there is, and I could not be prouder of her, but Michelle does not have the patience or the inclination to actually be a candidate herself. That’s one thing y’all can take to the bank.”