Transcript: President Obama interviewed by YouTube's Steve Grove
January 27, 2011
Washington, DC
http://www.youtube.com/worldview

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GROVE: OK. Well, let's -- let's play it a few YouTube videos,
actually, that have come in from across the world, people actually
documenting their experiences in relatively serious situations -- in
fact, very serious situations. These are some clips just over the past
year that -- that citizens have taken from the scene during protests
documenting what's taking place. And you see Tunisia and
Thailand. And, of course, most recently, Mr. President, over the past
few days, in Egypt people have taken to the streets in Cairo and been
filming their experiences. A lot of people wrote in, you can see here,
from the streets of Cairo. I'm wondering your -- your reaction to the
events that are taking place there.

Kam Hawi (ph) wrote in saying, "Dear President Obama, regarding the
current situation in the Middle East in Egypt over the past two days,
what do you think of the Egyptian government blocking social networks
and preventing people from expressing their opinions?"

OBAMA: Well, let me say, first of all, that Egypt's been an ally of
ours on a lot of critical issues. They made peace with
Israel. President Mubarak has been very helpful on a range of tough
issues in the Middle East. But I've always said to him that making
sure that they're moving forward on reform -- political reform,
economic reform -- is absolutely critical to the long-term well-being
of Egypt.

And you can see these pent-up frustrations that are being displayed on
the streets. My main hope right now is that violence is not the answer
in solving these problems in Egypt, so the government has to be
careful about not resorting to violence, and the people on the streets
have to be careful about not resorting to violence.

And I think that it is very important that people have mechanisms in
order to express legitimate grievances. As I said in my State of the
Union speech, there are certain core values that we believe in as
Americans that we believe are universal -- freedom of speech, freedom
of expression, people being able to use social networking or any other
mechanisms to communicate with each other and express their
concerns. And that, I think, is -- is no less true in the Arab world
that it is here in the United States.

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