Barack Obama Emphasizes Civility More Than Warrior Spirit With Marc Maron On Final ‘WTF’: “We Probably Need To Be Shaken Out Of Our Complacency”
“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,” Barack Obama told Marc Maron of how businesses, universities and others should deal with his “successor” and his administration’s heavy booted tactics.
“We all have this capacity, I think, to take a stand,” the former POTUS added on the 1,685 and final episode of the WTF podcast with a swipe at one of Donald Trump’s most influential White House aides.
Revealed Monday morning as the final guest on the last WTF with Marc Maron, Obama was back chatting with the comedian for the first time since his Deadline revealed famous 2015 visit to Maron’s LA garage. This time, with Obama reflecting on the lack of an official leader of the opposition under America’s non-parliamentary system and how he was stymied by MAGA fueled Trump from being able to “move from player to coach,” Maron went to the 44th POTUS in DC to conduct their interview.
On the day that a peace of sorts is coming into focus in the Middle East under a Trump plan and the last Israeli hostages have been returned in a swap with Hamas, the last and pre-recorded WTF certainly suffered from being off the immediate news cycle. Full of mutual compliments, the hour-long convo between the two clearly very friendly men also showed its langour with the professorial Obama never taking the bait to step into the foreground as Trump’s attacks on the Constitution, abduction of Black and Brown Americans and the undocumented with masked and often violent ICE raids across the nation, including the two-term Democrat’s adopted hometown of Chicago, and Obamacare ramp up.
Not that Obama didn’t address the topics, but it was from a very civil distance of sorts.
“We have blown through, just in the last six months, a whole range of not simply assumptions, but rules and laws and practices that were put in place to ensure that nobody is above the law, and that we don’t use the federal government to simply reward our friends and punish our enemies,” he said to Maron at one point. Obama added: “What’s required in these situations is a few folks standing up and giving courage to other folks. And then more people stand up and go like, ‘Yeah, no, that’s not who we are. That’s not our idea of America.’”
Or rather, “people are right to be concerned” didn’t exactly sound like the battlecry many have been hoping would come from the man who once swore “Yes We Can.” Noting the shortcomings of the Democratic Party and its current leaders right now against Trump’s flooding of the media zone and executive orders onslaught, Obama noted: “It’d be great if we weren’t tested this way, but you know what? We probably need to be shaken out of our complacency.”
At the same time, noting the “holier than thou” attitude progressives often exude, Obama insisted on the MOR stance he has been advocating against MAGA for a decade now. “Saying, ‘Right, I’ve got some core convictions, beliefs that I’m not going to compromise,” he told Maron. “But I’m also not going to assert that I am so righteous and so pure and so insightful that there’s not the possibility that maybe I’m wrong on this, or that other people, if they don’t say things exactly the way I say them or see things exactly the way I do, that somehow they’re bad people.”
A stark contrast to Trump and MAGA, who specialize in seeing things one way, their way.
Closer to home on today’s somewhat nostalgic WTF, which Deadline revealed back in early June would be ending, Obama offered Maron some advice on closing out the past 16 years of his life.
“You’ve still got a couple of chapters left,” the 64-year-old former President, who left office in 2017 a relatively young man of 55, told the 62-year-old host. “Don’t rush into what the next thing is. Take a beat. Take some satisfaction looking backwards.”
