In a blistering farewell episode of the “WTF” podcast with Marc Maron, former President Barack Obama tore into law firms, universities, and businesses that have cut deals or caved to the policies and pressure of Donald Trump’s administration—especially when it comes to hiring and promotion criteria driven by none other than Stephen Miller.
“We all have this capacity, I think, to take a stand,” Obama said with his trademark calm intensity. But too many institutions, he argues, haven’t.
“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 cooked up by Stephen Miller,” he added, in one of his most direct rebukes of the Trump era’s lingering influence outside of his campaign trail appearances.
Obama wasn’t simply lamenting policy decisions—he was challenging the moral backbone of American institutions. While acknowledging that no one wants to invite a right-wing media firestorm or the wrath of the MAGA base, he pushed back on the idea that compromise is the only way to survive.
“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.
But, as he made clear, choosing the path of least resistance isn’t harmless—it erodes democracy from the inside.
Obama also took direct aim at Trump’s heavy-handed move to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, describing it as a naked abuse of executive power and a violation of long-standing legal boundaries.
“That is a genuine effort to weaken how we have understood democracy,” he said, referencing the Posse Comitatus Act, a foundational law that restricts military involvement in domestic law enforcement.
He made it personal: “If I had sent in the National Guard into Texas and just said, ‘You know what? A lot of problems in Dallas, a lot of crime there, and I don’t care what Gov. Abbott says. I’m going to kind of take over law enforcement, because I think things are out of control,’ it is mind-boggling to me how Fox News would have responded.”
The Integrity Gap
Obama’s message throughout the conversation emphasize that Americans are starved for authenticity, not culture war theatrics. “What people long for is some core integrity that seems absent, just a sense that the person seems to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.”
He praised younger Democrats who seem to embody that integrity, including Texas state Rep. James Talarico, who made a splash with a viral appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience.
“Talarico is terrific, a really talented young man,” Obama said, citing his willingness to engage with an audience that doesn’t automatically agree with him. “It requires a certain confidence in your actual convictions to debate and have a conversation with somebody who disagrees with you.”
In a refreshing take, Obama defended political figures who step into ideologically diverse spaces—like Rogan’s podcast—arguing it’s a chance to show you can handle pushback and still stand firm.
“It was interesting to me when people started criticizing Bernie [Sanders] or somebody else for going on Rogan. It’s like, why wouldn’t you? Yeah, of course, go,” he said.
Progressive Blind Spots
Still, Obama didn’t let the left off the hook. He took issue with progressive purism, which he believes can be alienating—and sometimes self-defeating.
“You can’t constantly lecture people without acknowledging that you’ve got some blind spots too, and that life’s messy,” Obama said.
He referenced a bit from Maron’s new stand-up special where the comic jokes that progressives annoyed the average American into fascism. Obama laughed but nodded at the deeper truth: “I think this was a fault of some progressive language, was almost asserting a holier-than-thou superiority that’s not that different from what we used to joke about coming from the right moral majority and a certain fundamentalism about how to think about stuff that I think was dangerous.”
And on sensitive topics like trans rights, Obama emphasized the need for empathy over condescension.
“If I talked about trans issues, I wasn’t talking down to people and saying, ‘Oh, you’re a bigot,’” he said. “I’d say, ‘You know, it’s tough enough being a teenager. Let’s treat all kids decently. Why would we want to see kids bullied?’”
This wasn’t the usual post-presidency reflection interview. Obama wasn’t there to just wax poetic about hope and change. This was a call to action.
Take a stand.
Because if the people and institutions with the power to resist won’t do it now—when, exactly, will they?
