Former President Barack Obama blasted law firms, universities and businesses for succumbing to the Trump administration as he appeared as the final guest on Marc Maron’s pioneering podcast.
The former president warned that the country is “being tested right now” and urged people to “take a stand” during outspoken comments on many of President Donald Trump’s policies.
Obama returned to “WTF With Marc Maron” for the final episode after 16 years and more than 1,600 episodes of the stand-up comedian’s groundbreaking show.
While still in office a decade ago, the 44th president visited Maron’s Los Angeles garage studio to feature on the show, helping make the podcast one of the biggest in the country when the now-dominant form of media was in its infancy.
The identity of the comic’s final guest was not revealed until the episode dropped Monday. Maron explained the conversation needed to be with a “singular” guest who could “address how we move through the world we’re living in, as frightening as it is.” (Watch the full interview at the end of this story.)
In his most striking comments during the interview, which took place in Obama’s office in Washington, D.C., the former president hit out at Trump policies that have led to “masked folks with rifles and machine guns patrolling our streets” and “kangaroo courts and trumped up charges,” as he said there needed to be “a few folks standing up and giving courage to other folks.”
“We’re not at the stage where you have to be like Nelson Mandela and be in a 10-by-12 jail cell for 27 years and break rocks,” he said of the protest required today, referencing the fight against South African apartheid.
But he went on to spell out how it did need law firms to say, “We’re going to represent who we want, and we’re going to stand up for what we think is our core mission.”
Similarly, university presidents needed to risk losing some federal government grant money “because what we’re not going to do is compromise our basic academic independence.”
And businesses needed to stand firm on diverse hiring and say, “We’re not going to be bullied into saying that we can only hire people or promote people based on some criteria that’s been picked up by Steve Miller,” a reference to one of Trump’s most influential White House aides.
“We all have this capacity, I think, to take a stand,” he added.
Obama added that “we’re being tested right now,” and that there are “consequences to the choices that we’re making.”
“If you decide not to vote, that’s a consequence,” Obama said. “If you are a Hispanic man, and you’re frustrated about inflation, and so you decided all that rhetoric about Trump doesn’t matter, ‘I’m just mad about inflation,’ and now your sons are being stopped in LA because they look Latino.”
“Maybe incarcerated for a few days,” Maron added.
“Maybe without the ability to call anybody, might just be locked up…well, that’s a test,” Obama continued.
Earlier in the conversation, Obama critiqued the Democratic Party as he admitted he’d been “drawn back in to day-to-day politics or commentary more than I had wanted to.”
He referred to a Maron stand-up line where the comic argued the Democratic Party and progressives “figured out how to be so annoying.”
“We annoyed the average American into fascism,” Maron chimed in on Monday’s show.
Obama said this “cracked me up” because he said he’d previously warned his party “you can’t just be a scold all the time.”
“You can’t constantly lecture people without acknowledging that you’ve got some blind spots too,” Obama added, going on to criticize “some progressive language” for “almost asserting a holier-than-thou superiority” reminiscent of the religious right.
As their talk wound up, Obama noted that the success of Maron’s podcast was a reason to think “we’re going to be OK.”
“I think part of the reason you had such a big fan base during this 16-year run is there was a core decency to you and the conversations that you had,” Obama said.
Maron announced in June that he and longtime producing partner Brendan McDonald had decided to end the show.
The comic said he and McDonald are “tired” and “burnt out” but “utterly satisfied with the work we’ve done.”
Watch the full Obama-Maron conversation below.