Former President Barack Obama, in his first remarks since Donald Trump handily won the 2024 presidential election, called for "forging alliances and building coalitions" and urged Americans who want democracy to survive to compromise.

"Pluralism is not about holding hands and singing 'Kumbaya,'" Obama said in Chicago on Thursday during the Obama Foundation's Democracy Forum. "It is not about abandoning your convictions and folding when things get tough.

"It is about recognizing that, in a democracy, power comes from forging alliances and building coalitions, and making room in those coalitions not only for the woke, but the waking."