“I’m in D.C., so I’m for it,” he said to a room of mostly young, minority boys who were at the White House for Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative. “Folks in D.C. pay taxes like everybody else. They contribute to the overall well-being of the country like everybody else. They should be represented like everybody else.”

Obama said he’s supported the idea of statehood for D.C. “for quite sometime” but acknowledged that “the politics of it” would make it something difficult to move through Congress.