President Obama reflected on his tenure during an interview broadcast Friday, giving a nod to his 2008 campaign mantra, "Yes we can."

During an interview with NBC's Lester Holt, Obama watched a video clip of his younger self making a promise to supporters who enthusiastically chanted, "Yes we can." The president smiled in the interview, remarking, "Yes we did."

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"If you had told me at the beginning of my presidency that eight years later, the economy would be stabilized, we would have cut unemployment in half from its peak, that the stock market would've recovered – if you told me that we provided 20 million people health insurance that didn't have it before, I would've said, 'We did OK,'" Obama said.

Obama also said that his idealism is just as strong as when he entered office eight years ago.

"That idealism hasn't left. Look, I'm grayer. People like to note the additional wrinkles. But my spirit is unchanged. It's undaunted. I continue to believe that, as frustrating as sometimes it can be, American democracy moves the ball forward," he said.

Obama also reflected on an iconic moment of himself singing "Amazing Grace" during funeral services for Rev. Clementa Pinckney, one of the nine people who died in the shooting at a historically black church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015.

"Well, you know, the truth of the matter is that there are going to be times where people will listen and times where they won't. This was a moment when I think the entire country recognized, not just the evil that had been perpetrated, but also this amazing response on the part of these people in this church," Obama said.

"You do look for moments of human connection. And in some ways those end up being the moments that are most meaningful," he added.