President Obama is not going to stay on the sidelines the next four years. In fact, he told former senior advisor David Axelrod in a CNN podcast that he plans to be “quiet for a while” once he leaves office, but will never be silent politically. He also said Republicans rejected his vision of “One America” and proved they can throw “sand in the gears” of progress.

“I am confident in this vision because I’m confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it,” Obama told his former senior advisor David Axelrod in a podcast. “I know that in conversations that I’ve had with people around the country, even some people who disagreed with me, they would say the vision, the direction that you point towards is the right one. In the wake of the election and Trump winning, a lot of people have suggested that somehow, it really was a fantasy. What I would argue is, is that the culture actually did shift, that the majority does buy into the notion of a one America that is tolerant and diverse and open and full of energy and dynamism…

“I have to be quiet for a while. And I don’t mean politically, I mean internally. I have to still myself,” he said. “You have to get back in tune with your center and process what’s happened before you make a bunch of good decisions. I got through about four minutes of the thing and then started, you know, getting the hanky out. It feels like the band is breaking up a little bit.”