President Barack Obama returned to “The Tonight Show” on Tuesday, discussing an array of different issues with host Jay Leno.
The interview touched on America’s increasingly frosty relationship with Russia. Obama said he was “disappointed” that Russian President Vladimir Putin extended asylum to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.
“I was disappointed because even though we don’t have an extradition treaty with them, traditionally we have tried to respect if there’s a law-breaker or an alleged law-breaker in their country, we evaluate it and we try to work with them,” Obama said. “They didn’t do that with us. And in some ways it’s reflective of some underlying challenges that we’ve had with Russia lately.”
Obama declined to apply a label to Snowden, saying he doesn’t “know yet exactly what he did, other than what he’s said on the Internet, and it’s important for me not to prejudge something.” And amid growing concern that Russia’s anti-gay laws could affect the country’s ability to host next year’s Winter Olympics, Obama said he trusts that Putin and the Russian government “understand that for most of the countries that participate in the Olympics, we wouldn’t tolerate gays and lesbians being treated differently.”
The President also returned to the subject of Trayvon Martin, weeks after he delivered extemporaneous remarks about the killing of the unarmed black teenager.
“Well, I think all of us were troubled by what happened. And any of us who were parents can imagine the heart ache that those parents went through. It doesn’t mean that Trayvon was a perfect kid — none of us were,” Obama said. “We were talking offstage — when you’re a teenager, especially a teenage boy, you’re going to mess up, and you won’t always have the best judgment. But what I think all of us agree to is, is that we should have a criminal justice system that’s fair, that’s just. And what I wanted to try to explain was why this was a particularly sensitive topic for African American families, because a lot of people who have sons know the experience they had of being followed or being viewed suspiciously.”
