Barack Obama took aim at institutions and businesses who made deals or worked out settlements with the Trump administration, noting on a new podcast episode: “We all have this capacity, I think, to take a stand.”
In a talk with Marc Maron on the comedian’s last edition of his long-running WTF With Marc Maron, the former US president said institutions – including law firms, universities and businesses – that have changed course during the Trump administration should have stood by their convictions.
Instead of bending to the administration, Obama noted that universities should say: “This will hurt if we lose some grant money in the federal government, but that’s what endowments are for. Let’s see if we can ride this out, because what we’re not going to do is compromise our basic academic independence.”
He also noted that the organizations that did concede to Trump should be able to 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 cooked up by Steve Miller,” in reference to the top White House aide and architect of Trump’s hardline immigration policy.
Obama, whose two terms preceded the first Trump administration, also said that companies should also have stood up against the administration pressure campaign to turn back from diversity hiring.
“We think it’s important, because of what this country is, to hire people from different backgrounds,” Obama said.
Universities, law firms and other businesses have all reached agreements with the White House, including dropping DEI targets and agreeing to rein in alleged campus antisemitism in exchange for restoration of federal funding. A series of powerful Washington law firms have also agreed to provide free legal services to the administration, while corporations have rolled back diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
Disney, a frequent target of political-ideological factions on the left and right, scrapped its internal “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” program for “Opportunity & Inclusion” to empower “all through access, opportunity, and a culture of belonging”.
Elsewhere in the interview, Obama acknowledged that integrity comes at a price.
“Sometimes it’s going to be uncomfortable,” he told Maron, referencing a joke that Maron made in his standup routine that Democrats annoyed the average American into fascism.
“It cracked me up,” Obama said. “I wasn’t as funny about saying this, but four or five years ago I said: ‘Look, you can’t just be a scold all the time. You can’t constantly lecture people without acknowledging you’ve got some blind spots, too.’”
Vulnerability, he said, comes in standing up for core convictions but not attempting to assert “that I am so righteous, and so pure, and so insightful, that there isn’t the possibility I’m wrong on this.
“There was this weird progressive language,” he said, that implied a “holier than thou superiority that’s not different to what we used to joke about coming from the right and the moral majority … and certain fundamentalism that I think was dangerous”.
Maron posted the final episode of his show on Monday after 16 years of hosting and with more than 1,600 installments that he has broadcast from his Los Angeles garage. Obama brought the 62-year-old host, standup comic and actor to his Washington office for the last interview.
Obama asked the initial questions. “How are you feeling about this whole thing?” he said, “transition, moving on from this thing that has been one of the defining parts of your career and your life?”
“I feel OK,” Maron answered. “I feel like I’m sort of ready for the break, but there is sort of a fear there, of what do I do now? I’m busy. But, not unlike your job … I’ve got a lot of people who over the last 16 years have grown to rely on me.”
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