--- title: Paris Agreement: Pete Souza Posts Photos of Barack Obama description: Former White House photographer Pete Souza took to Instagram to comment on President Trump's decision to pull out from the Paris Agreement. canonical: https://time.com/4803376/obama-photographer-on-trump/ author: Lena Grossman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-06-02T17:49:37.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-08T09:05:15.556Z og:title: Obama Photographer Trolls Trump With National Park Photos og:description: He uploaded a number of photos of President Obama at parks across the country og:url: https://time.com/4803376/obama-photographer-on-trump/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3189a9b6c260059c/6988cfef0b72e32a6f6ee13e/pete-souza-paris-agreement-decision.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4928 og:image:height: 2772 og:image:alt: US-CLIMATE-WARMING-UN-COP21-OBAMA og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Obama Photographer Trolls Trump With National Park Photos twitter:description: He uploaded a number of photos of President Obama at parks across the country twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3189a9b6c260059c/6988cfef0b72e32a6f6ee13e/pete-souza-paris-agreement-decision.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # President Obama's Photographer Just Showed How He Really Feels About Trump's Paris Agreement Decision > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=ccb9db49-fc97-4686-b066-053df8fe77fa&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: 10 Days that Define the Obama Presidency: The Paris Accords [Watch (HLS stream): 10 Days that Define the Obama Presidency: The Paris Accords](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/RNoECeNp.m3u8) (3:10)  _Published 2017-01-18. As President Obama's two terms in office come to a close, TIME is taking a look back at the most pivotal moments of his presidency._ by [Lena Grossman](https://time.com/author/lena-grossman/) ## Lena Grossman Jun 2, 2017 5:49 PM UTC As President Obama's two terms in office come to a close, TIME is taking a look back at the most pivotal moments of his presidency. by [Lena Grossman](https://time.com/author/lena-grossman/) ## Lena Grossman Jun 2, 2017 5:49 PM UTC [Pete Souza](http://time.com/4639338/obama-photos-we-loved/), former Chief Official White House Photographer for President Obama, has no qualms trolling President Donald Trump on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/petesouza/). In fact, he does it on pretty much a daily basis. In light of President Trump’s [decision](http://time.com/4801134/paris-agreement-withdrawal-donald-trump-rose-garden/) to pull out of the [Paris Agreement](http://time.com/4802829/mit-researchers-trump-climate-change-paris/), Souza posted multiple photos of President Obama, whose captions all quoted the lyrics to “[This Land Is Your Land](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxiMrvDbq3s).” Souza’s modus operandi for comparing the Trump and Obama presidencies involves juxtaposing decisions made by President Trump with photographs of President Obama doing [pretty something at odds with POTUS](https://www.instagram.com/p/BUiXhWslde6/?taken-by=petesouza). Before Souza went on a posting spree, he [uploaded a photo](https://www.instagram.com/p/BUz2b%5Fal7OE/?taken-by=petesouza) of the signed Paris Agreement with the caption “He tried. But we failed our children.” The photographs of President Obama show him at many national parks, which could be another subtle jab at President Trump. Trump’s proposed could [cut funding](http://time.com/4723693/donald-trump-salary-national-park-service/) to the Department of the Interior by 11.7%. Similarly, after the inauguration, some national parks [went rogue](http://time.com/4649608/national-parks-climate-change-donald-trump-tweets/) and defied President Trump on Twitter. The first picture involving the lyrics “This land is your land. This land is my land” shows the Obama family at Acadia National Park in Maine. “From California to the New York Island” shows President Obama at Yosemite National Park, looking out at Yosemite Falls. Similarly, “From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf Stream Waters” is a photo of Obama holding a young Sasha in the ocean in Panama City Beach, Fla. President Obama greets young children in the Everglades National Park in “This land was made for you and me.” Other locations in his Instagram uploads include [Koko Head Hiking Trail](https://www.instagram.com/p/BU1wj64l0O1/?taken-by=petesouza) in Hawaii, [Kenai Fjords National Park](https://www.instagram.com/p/BU1zFohFfM2/?taken-by=petesouza) in Alaska, at an unnamed hilltop in [Oahu,](https://www.instagram.com/p/BU12qq2FU1q/?taken-by=petesouza) and at [Mount Mansfield](https://www.instagram.com/p/BU2BwoJFjLx/?taken-by=petesouza) in Vermont. “The future depends on all of us,” reads his last caption. ## Transcript [00:00] Two weeks ago in Paris. I said before the world that [00:04] we needed a strong, global agreement to accomplish [00:08] this goal. An enduring agreement that reduces global [00:12] carbon pollution and sets the world on a course to a [00:15] low carbon future. A few hours ago, we succeeded. [00:20] You have the Paris Climate Accords where you know, [00:23] through rather complex and stepped framework, you [00:27] had the world's leading powers all agreeing that they [00:30] would take steps to try and bring down the production [00:33] of carbon. Nobody really expected China to Wake up [00:36] one morning, and [ UNKNOWN ] cap its own emissions. [00:39] And over the course of several years of [ INAUDIBLE ] [00:42] negotiation, the Whitehouse and the Chinese [00:43] government developed a real partnership, areas of [00:46] common ground. Yes, there are gonna be special [00:48] [ UNKNOWN ] from developing countries, but the [00:51] developed world will move first. Partly that was driven [00:54] by how he said Issues of pollution and the domestic [00:57] issue of the climate in China but also a desire within [01:01] the United States but by the present to turn climate [01:03] into a legacy issue in an area, that he thinks that [01:08] in 20- 30 years he'll be remembered as a leader on. [01:10] And my fellow leaders accepting this challenge will not [01:13] reward us with Moments of victory that are clear or [01:17] quick. Our progress will be measured differently in [01:22] the suffering that is averted, and a planet that's [01:25] preserved. Whereas President [01:29] Bush had been pretty lateral in the way he approached [01:32] things, President Obama Envisioned a far more [01:36] multilateral, internationally agreed upon framework. [01:40] And he sought to heal a lot of the animosity that [01:44] existed in the world. He sought Quietly in [01:48] his first term and then more aggressively in the second [01:50] term to remake the US relationship with Cuba. And [01:52] then the other big diplomatic effort he undertook, also [01:56] in his second term, was to try and solve, at least for a [01:59] time, the spread of nuclear weapons around the world. [02:02] And this involved a multi year process of first [02:06] Increasing sanctions, and really harming the economy [02:10] of Iran, and then promising at the end that those [02:14] sanctions could be released if the country agreed to [02:18] essentially abandon for a time its nuclear research [02:21] program, and allow inspectors to ensure that that was [02:24] actually happening. But it really reset in a very [02:29] dramatic way. The American relationship with Iran, [02:32] which had been basically limited to animosity since the [02:35] 1970s. I mean, the President's legacy internationally [02:37] will certainly be defined by his desire to work with [02:42] international partners, international agencies. On the [02:45] negative side you end of things like Syria. Sort of the [02:47] quagmire there where the desire to sort of not go it [02:50] alone and foreign allies with different interests. [02:52] Different self interests, different moral views on the [02:55] issue that led to the US not really doing much of [02:57] anything. That might be our most significant foreign [02:59] policy failure But it comes from the same place as [03:01] some of his greatest foreign policy achievements, and [03:03] that's sort of the grand irony of the Obama foreign [03:07] policy. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4803376/obama-photographer-on-trump/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4803376/obama-photographer-on-trump/"},"headline":"President Obama's Photographer Just Showed How He Really Feels About Trump's Paris Agreement Decision","datePublished":"2017-06-02T17:49:37.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-08T09:05:15.556Z","description":"Former White House photographer Pete Souza took to Instagram to comment on President Trump's decision to pull out from the Paris Agreement.","url":"https://time.com/4803376/obama-photographer-on-trump/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Barack Obama","viral","White House","onetime"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3189a9b6c260059c/6988cfef0b72e32a6f6ee13e/pete-souza-paris-agreement-decision.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lena Grossman","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/lena-grossman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3189a9b6c260059c/6988cfef0b72e32a6f6ee13e/pete-souza-paris-agreement-decision.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"US-CLIMATE-WARMING-UN-COP21-OBAMA","caption":"US-CLIMATE-WARMING-UN-COP21-OBAMA","creditText":"NICHOLAS KAMM—AFP/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4803376/obama-photographer-on-trump/","name":"President Obama's Photographer Just Showed How He Really Feels About Trump's Paris Agreement Decision"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"10 Days that Define the Obama Presidency: The Paris Accords","description":"As President Obama's two terms in office come to a close, TIME is taking a look back at the most pivotal moments of his presidency.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/RNoECeNp/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2017-01-18T17:06:34.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/RNoECeNp.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4803376/obama-photographer-on-trump/","duration":"PT3M10S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4803376/obama-photographer-on-trump/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```