I worked for about eight years as the chief official photographer for the outbreabam administration. I documented all the important moments of his presidency, the emotion, the tough decisions, the stressful times, the fun times. But also showing what he was like as a dad, as a husband, just as a human being. To me, that shows how the job of the president should be done. I think its my right as an american citizen to speak out. I really come at this from a unique perspective, not just as a former photo journalist, but also having worked for both the obama and Reagan Administrations and seen what its like on the inside of a presidency. Whether you agree or disagree with a president s policies, how that president should behave i got high hopes im going to throw some shade tonight, if thats okay. But i want to tell you first how i got there. So if we go back to january 20th, 2017, president obama had left his successor a personal note and stuck it in the drawer of the resolute desk. And the last line of the note was, michelle and i wish you and melania the very best as you embark on this great adventure and know that we stand ready to help in any ways which we can. Good luck and god speed. With that, he level the oval office for the last time. Thank you, sir. Thank you. He went and said goodbye to the household staff, butlers, ushers, groundskeepers. Vaughn everett who was one of the butlers and had been there since the reagan years, you can imagine what it was like for him to have been there for the first africanamerican president. Theres a tradition that the president comes to the white house the morning before the inauguration for a reception. After everyone else had finally boarded the motorcade, president obama took trump aside to brief him on a pending National Security issue. He escorted trump to the limousine. They had to ride in the limousine to the capitol together. The guy on the far left is mike white. He was the head of the president ial protective division of the secret service. You always see the person in that position behind the president or behind the first lady. As they were leaving the podium, i now noticed that mike white and his deputy were behind trump and melania and not behind president obama. Thats when it really hit me that this for real had happened. Physically and mentally, there was a sense of relief, almost excitement that i would not have a blackberry with me 24 7 365 for eight years anymore. You have no idea how good of a feeling it was to be done with that. But there was a sense of disbelief and worry. I was. I really was concerned for the country. To this day i have that same feeling. Im not literally in the room anymore, but i know what happens in the room. Thats what scares me about whats happening today in the oval office. After i left the white house, i started this personal instagram account. My intention was to highlight some of the photographs that i had made throughout my career. I never intended to be vocal in any way about what was going on. So the first day he came to me with his photo that he wanted to post on instagram with the president sitting on the resolute desk and the red curtains and he wrote a caption something like, i like the old curtains better, what did you think. I said, you cant say that, because he had spent eight years having no voice and no opinion of what was going on. And suddenly heres an opinion about drapes. I said you cant do that. Now, what i didnt tell you is i had just seen a picture of the redecorated oval office with these gold, ornate curtains. There was even a comment on that very first post from somebody that said pete is dropping shade with a comment on drapes. [ laughter ] and i have to admit i had no idea what dropping shade meant. I knew what i was doing. I just didnt know it was called dropping or throwing shade. Can you give us a question . Dont be give us a question. When you report fake news, which cnn does a lot, you are the enemy of the people. Go ahead. Mr. President thank you. Its nice to be here. Is there hope for the journalism. I think theres a lot of people doing a lot of great work, but it doesnt help when the president of the United States calls journalists fake news and the enemy of the people. I think thats really dangerous. I think our president is causing grave damage to the institution of the free press. [ applause ] i want to ask you as a photojournalist your comment that photographing is to the truth. When youre the chief White House Photographer, when youre consciously or subconsciously building a public image of brand obama, was there a conflict . Yeah, i think thats a good question. I often say to people, though my background is as a photojournalist, certainly when youre the chief White House Photographer, youre working for the government. So i didnt ever think of it as a conflict, because i want a pr photographer. I look at myself as a historian with a camera. The job as the chief official White House Photographer is to visually document the presidency for history. So when inauguration rolled around, i had in the back of my mind for the journey i was about to take this thought. Make authentic photographs. Think mood, emotion, context. Be ready for the fleeting moments, both big and small. My goal was to create the best photographic archive of a president that had ever been done, lasting images for history. The origination of my office was a military office during the kennedy administration. Lbj wanted somebody to cover everything and he hired this guy named yoshi yokomoto who had traveled with him as vice president. Johnson was such a character and yokomoto was such a great photographer. His pictures are amazing. More than anyone, his work was the kind of work that i wanted to do. I wanted the level of access that he had to johnson. Thats sort of what i was striving for witstrive ing for with obama. Photographs can tell a administrator ri just as a book can tell a juror ri. It breaks down the idea that these people are somehow different from us. Yes, they have different responsibilities, yes, they have greater anxieties, but theyre leading a life that has a daily ritual to it. I knew how the job should be done having worked for the Reagan Administration too. The White House Photo editor called me up out of the blue and said we want you to apply for this job. It was totally unexpected. You know, im in my 20s. I had never met a president before. I was just nervous. It was kind of like just sort of overwhelming to me. I actually turn it down at first. A, i was not really that into politics. B, i was really not the biggest fan of reagan. [ speaking foreign language] this is familiar. But you hope that what youre doing is important for history, right . I used to say journalism is the first draft of history. Im thinking heres a chance to actually be involved in documenting history. The Photograph Office primarily, it was myself and fitz and jack and then pete. But we were very much a team. Lets lock that sucker down. Working at the white house as the first woman official photographer was a humbling experience. I was recording for history. Is pete nice and clear . Yes. Okay. The or ka good family man. The white house has become more and more a stage a theater. The question has become, are the Television Networks going to manage that theater, are they going to manage that stage, or is the white house going to do that . They were very aware of creating the best backdrop possible for tv networks and time and newsweek. Do you want us on either side of the tree or what . Well, i think for release purposes, it would be better to have you doing something. My suggestion was watering the tree. We have two shovels. We have a chain saw. No, please. Its too hot. Can we just do a watering tree. Watering the tree is fine. [ laughter ] did you get that, pete . Yeah. You did, huh . Ive got an idea for another picture, just one more. Ive got the chain saw and youre blocking me off, stopping me. Dont just stand there. Youre supposed to be saying no. Im not going to start the saw. [ laughter ] all right. Thank you. The amount of access you get as the chief official White House Photographer is really totally dependent on the relationship that you have with the president. All i tried to do was push for more access for the behindthescenes moments, most of which were never seen until after he had left the presidency. Some of the pictures that i would make would be fairly intimate. After mrs. Reagan had undergone Breast Cancer surgery at bethesda hospital, every day at the end of the day he would take the helicopter and go visit her. They were exactly the same way together behind the scenes as they were in public. It was very much a true love and companionship between the two of them. I always felt that the best pictures i made of reagan were not from planned events. They were things that happened between events and moments that you couldnt ever predict that would just happen and that really humanizes the president of the United States. One of the roles of commander in chief is you send people into harms way, but then the president usually is the one who has to go talk to all the families who have lost someone. Hes clearly empathetic and compassionate, and you can see the emotion in their faces as theyre looking up to see what reagan is saying. Thats the way a president should behave in times like that. In some respects i think it did a disservice not to show him in these true authentic behind the scenes moments more than they did. Okay. [ laughter ] scram. Mr. President , just have a step this way. Hes to the left and im to the right. [ laughter ] another half step. Big smiles. There we go. Big smile. I wanted this time to talk with you about an extremely sensitive and profoundly important matter of foreign policy. Certainly during the iran contra affair, there were a lot of pictures i made where he was agonizing over what he did or what he didnt do. It was a big scandal. I made that picture where the Tower Commission after this manymonth investigation had concluded that, in fact, reagan had sold arms for hostages. You see that look of reagans face. He was still somewhat in denial. But to me, it really defines that whole scandal and how impactful it was on his presidency. I did not necessarily agree with some of the things that president reagan was doing, for example, how long it took him to come to grips with aids. I think that, in retrospect, is more than disappointing. But this photo i made of him holding a baby with hiv did help destigmatize the disease. I was naive and not as politically aware as i should have been at the time, but i did feel that he was a decent human being, he respected other people from all walks of life. When reagan had passed away and his body was being flown to the west coast, nancy reagan requested that pete would be on the plane with them. Of course, he has bed been out the white house for so many years and peter did that. When i left the white house under reagan, it wasnt like i was that well known. So for nine years i was a freelance photographer. After that, i went to work for the Chicago Tribune based in d. C. If somebody had told me that i would end up working for the most iconic republican president of our generation and then the most iconic democrat president of our generation, i would have said they were crazy. What are those words . Yes, we can thank you, illinois i love you thank you thank you, illinois. In 2004 barack obama was elected to the senate. I didnt see in his 2004 speech at the convention because i was traveling with kerry. The hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes america has a place for him too. Make sure you get a picture of obama. I was like, i dont even know what the guy looks like. Youre on the front page of every paper this week. Youre all other television. Everyones calling you the savior of the democratic party. Are you . I rank 99th out of 100 in seniority. Im going to be sharpening pencils and scrubbing the floors for the first couple of years. Jeff zeleny came up to me and said i am pitching a story of following obamas first year in the senate. I love this picture because hes got the half a sandwich in his mouth and sasha is eyeing the other half. This is the day i met him. The presence of my camera didnt bother him at all, which is not always the case, especially with politicians. Did that say anything about him to you . You know, i found a good subject. This was the first day that he was in washington as the newlyelected senator. Senator obama spent the day with his family and showing them around and helping them understand what it was like and sasha was 3. I think he thought i was a competent photographer. I continued to further that trust as the year went by. In the age of youtube and so much internet video, do photographs still have a very powerful impact in terms of covering politics . You know, i like the still photograph. It stops time. You can remember a still photograph. A lot of photojournalists now are evolving into video, but i still think the still photograph for me says a lot more. I wasnt with him every day, but i got to know him pretty well professionally. It was very clear he was different from most politicians. I hadnt really seen somebody, especially a freshman senator, with this kind of presence. He had us call him barack. He was casual. Held email you in the middle of the night. Generationally, he had more in common with the people who worked for him in their 20s than he did with probably the other senators in washington. This would have been 2005. I went to russia and ukraine and asser b ass ass ass asserbajan with him. Hes just a regular guy. Then i went to africa with him in 2006. We went to mandelas cell. Not only that. Youve got the view of the outside. On a clear day, you can see capetown. When we went to kenya, he had this meeting with some ngos and word got out that he was in there. When he emerged from this meeting, there were like thousands of people waiting to hear him say a few words. When we went to nairobi, ive got this guy writing down the bullet points of what he was talking about. Hey. The reception at his grandmothers village was like chaotic. Any time i think a child comes back to his parents grave, it makes you reflect on your own life and mortality. It makes you think about the next generation. My wife and i are going to get tested for hiv aids. I just want everybody to remember that if a u. S. Senator can get tested and his wife can get tested, then everybody in this crowd can get tested, because you need to know your status. Seeing the overwhelming response that he got in africa, i remember coming back from that trip saying that i bet he runs for president. I mean, just the way people were hanging onto his every word, you just see in peoples faces that this guy was Something Special to them. He was very intelligent, but i think he also had the right temperament to become president. To me, this picture really tells a story about a young u. S. Senator about to walk out and announce that hes running for president knowing that his life will never be the same. I think you could see that in his face. You could see the anxiety in michelle as shes trying to brush off some lint from the back of his jacket. I knew the gravity of the moment and i knew he had a shot. I knew that once people got to see him and hear from him, that he had a shot. He had the kind of qualities within him where people would relate to him. I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for president of the United States of america. People forget that hillary was so far ahead, had so many endorsements that people thought he was a long shot. Does obama face a big uphill battle despite all the Media Attention hes getting . He will have to deal with the issue of only two years in the u. S. Senate. The media was ready to write us off or put us in the barrel. It was like, no, theres this broader force out there that was not going to let that happen. American history wont be the same again. Americans elected a young man with a young family, an africanamerican, the first ever. Its been a long time coming. Tonight because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to america. He call called me on january and said do you want the job . I said i have to have access to everything. He said, the president gets it. Theres no worries there. I said, okay, ill be there tomorrow. Two days later i met up with obama. He walked into the room and he said, were going to have some fun. I think there was an enormous amount of respect over saes when he was elected. I think they were excited that our country had finally put prejudice aside and elected an africanamerican president , really a definite kind of politician. That resonated around the world. Pete was with the president all the time. He started his day around 9 00. Id get a schedule, but i came to learn that the schedule was really just a starting point. I covered all the behind the scenes meetings, all the situation room meetings. I cant take ownership of this analogy, but imagine trying to take a sip of water from a fire hose that never shuts off. It was nonstop every day, 24 7, always on call, always ready. That was the challenge for me for my job for eight years. Pete had walking pneumonia one time and he still came to work. If you really want to document the presidency for history, youve got to be there all the time, because you cant predict when images are going to happen. Pete really wanted to be the guy who disappears. And thats the gift when youre the White House Photographer, is that the president doesnt even know youre in the room. Occasionally the cabinet would be gathered to present some really tough decisions to the president. You know, the chatter chatter people commiserating, and the first sign that the president was imminent was when pete walked in, everything would freeze. So i dont know what it felt like for him for eight years to have that Chilling Effect on every room. Why should historians Pay Attention to what you do . I think for me the job of the chief official White House Photographer is important for history. Thats the one thing that i am concerned about with, you know, whats happening with the current administration, that the access is not the same as i had for president obama. I think history will suffer as a result. President obama puts his Administration Front and center on yet another major aspect of the countrys troubled economic