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WATCH: Obama, A 'Wire' Superfan, Talks To Show's Creator David Simon

President Obama is a fan of The Wire. He has even said Omar Little was his favorite character on the HBO show.

On Thursday, the White House uploaded a video of Obama talking to David Simon, the creator of the show that told the story of how the drug war affected Baltimore in the early 2000s. Obama called the show "one of the greatest, not just television shows, but pieces of art in the last couple of decades."

Their conversation was mostly about the challenges faced by law enforcement and the effects of the war on drugs on communities.

"The challenge is folks go into prison at great expense to the state, [and] many times [are] trained to become more hardened criminals while in prison, come out and are basically unemployable and end up looping back in [to prison]" Obama said.

You can watch the entire interview below.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Krishnadev Calamur is NPR's deputy Washington editor. In this role, he helps oversee planning of the Washington desk's news coverage. He also edits NPR's Supreme Court coverage. Previously, Calamur was an editor and staff writer at The Atlantic. This is his second stint at NPR, having previously worked on NPR's website from 2008-15. Calamur received an M.A. in journalism from the University of Missouri.
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