Obama, in an interview that comes after his latest memoir, "A Promised Land," was published in late 2020, said he never thought some of the "dark spirits" that began rising within the Republican Party during his tenure would get this dark and reach the epicenter of the party.

"We have to worry," Obama said, "when one of our major political parties is willing to embrace a way of thinking about our democracy that would be unrecognizable and unacceptable even five years ago or a decade ago."

The clearest example of this, Obama said, was the January 6 insurrection and how there are now "large portions of an elected Congress going along with the falsehood that there were problems with the election." The insurrection at the US Capitol by Trump supporters came on the same day that 147 Republican lawmakers voted not to certify Joe Biden's electoral victory in key states.

The falsehood that the 2020 presidential election was stolen has been pushed by former President Donald Trump himself, who has since cheered on baseless Republican audits of elections.

Asked by Cooper about Republicans leaders briefly going against Trump following the insurrection, Obama said, "And then poof, suddenly everybody was back in line."

"Now, the reason for that is because the base believed it and the base believed it because this had been told to them not just by the President, but by the media that they watch," Obama said.

Trump, Obama argues in the book, encapsulates this, because to "millions of Americans spooked by a Black man in the White House, he promised an elixir for their racial anxiety."

But Obama also looked beyond Trump in the memoir, noting that the real rise of this brand of Republicanism began when Arizona Sen.

And it becomes that much more difficult for us to hear each other, see each other," Obama said, something the former President attributed to a nationalization of both media and politics.

"We have more economic stratification and segregation.

You combine that with racial stratification and the siloing of the media, so you don't have just Walter Cronkite delivering the news, but you have 1,000 different venues," Obama said.

"Because right now, we don't have them and we're seeing the consequences of that."

Race and division in 2021

At the heart of some of these divisions, Obama argued, is race -- a through line that defined Obama's rise in politics and his election as the first Black president.

The former President said during the interview that it remains "hard for the majority...

"I also think that there are certain right wing media venues, for example, that monetize and capitalize on stoking the fear and resentment of a White population that is witnessing a change in America."

While Obama jokes during the interview that he is a "little too gray-haired" to get back into community organizing, his daughters -- Sasha and Malia -- participated in Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis in 2020, giving their father a "great source of my optimism."

"My daughters are so much wiser and more sophisticated and gifted than I was at their age," Obama said with a laugh during the interview.

During that time, Obama tries to convey that even though he went on to become the President of the United States, he struggled with many of the things these young men deal with on a daily basis.

"The first time I sat down with these guys, the most important thing for me to communicate at that time, and I was President of the United States, was in many ways, (you) are ahead of me, of where I was at your age," Obama said.

They could achieve just as much," Obama said in the interview with Cooper.