🚨OBAMA and Colbert UNITE to take TAKE DOWN Trump!

[0:00] Cue the truth social meltdown because Obama sat down with Stephen Colbert for an interviewing. [0:05] Well, who do you think they talked about? [0:07] A lot of people tell me I should run for president. [0:10] This way. I think that you could perform significantly better than some folks that we've seen. [0:18] Barack Obama continued his recent media tour going from his New Yorker article that unsubtly took aim at the current president [0:26] to a more subtle but still pretty obvious jab at the sitting president while chatting with Stephen Colbert. [0:33] The former president has notably stepped back into the political conversation over the past month, [0:39] first sharing his detailed thoughts on the Supreme Court's ruling on the Voting Rights Act. [0:43] Former president stated, quote, [0:45] Today's Supreme Court decision effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act, [0:50] freeing state legislators to gerrymander legislative districts to systemically dilute [0:55] and weaken the voting power of racial minorities, [0:59] so long as they do it under the guise of partisanship rather than explicit racial bias. [1:05] And it serves as just one more example of how a majority of the current court seems intent on abandoning [1:12] its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy [1:17] and protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach. [1:21] And continuing with the topic of overreach, [1:23] he focused his attention during the sit-down with Colbert to the president. [1:28] He outlined how, quote, [1:29] The White House shouldn't be able to direct the attorney general to go around prosecuting [1:34] whoever the president wants to be prosecuted. [1:37] He stated that the attorney general is the people's lawyer. [1:40] It's not the president's. [1:41] The White House shouldn't be able to direct the attorney general [1:44] to go around prosecuting whoever the president wants to prosecute. [1:49] Right, because technically it's under the executive branch, [1:51] but the norm is that it's independent. [1:53] The norm, the idea is that the attorney general is the people's lawyer. [1:58] It's not the president's consigliere. [2:01] Right, even when it's Bobby Kennedy. [2:03] It's Bobby Kennedy. [2:05] And so, two of the core principles of a democracy. [2:13] We can survive a lot. [2:15] Bad policy, funky elections. [2:19] There's a bunch of stuff that, you know, we can overcome. [2:23] We can't overcome the politicization of the criminal justice system. [2:29] The awesome power of the state. [2:31] You can't have a situation in which whoever's in charge of the government [2:36] starts using that to go after their political enemies. [2:41] Because it's clear to Barack Obama, [2:43] Donald Trump's second term is creating exactly the kind of institutional crisis [2:48] that he spent years warning about. [2:50] Speaking directly to what happens when the president treats the government [2:54] less like a constitutional system [2:56] and more like his own personal device to go after his enemies. [3:00] This morning, I don't, we were talking about how busy you were this morning. [3:03] James Comey was in court. [3:04] He self-surrendered. [3:05] He's now been charged a second time. [3:07] This time over a social media post with seashells that said 86-47. [3:12] Do you really think that he was endangering your life [3:14] or threatening your life with that? [3:15] Well, if anybody knows anything about crime, [3:19] they know 86, you know, it's a mob term for kill him. [3:24] You know, you ever see the movies? [3:26] 86 him. [3:28] The mobster says to one of his wonderful associates, [3:31] 86 him. [3:32] That means kill him. [3:33] It's, I think of it as a mob term. [3:36] People think of it as something having to do with disappearing, [3:40] but the mob uses that term to say when they want to kill somebody, [3:44] they say 86, the son of a gun. [3:48] And I'm trying to keep the language nice and clear. [3:51] They don't use that term, son of a gun. [3:53] They use another term. [3:54] But that's a mob term for kill him. [3:56] Yeah. [3:56] But do you really think your life was in danger? [3:58] Probably. [3:59] I don't know. [3:59] You know, based on, based on what I'm seeing out there. [4:02] Yeah. [4:02] The people like Comey have created tremendous danger, [4:08] I think, for politicians and others. [4:10] He, you know, Comey is a dirty cop. [4:13] He's a very dirty cop. [4:15] He cheated on the elections. [4:16] He tried to help Hillary Clinton, as you know. [4:20] He dismissed a lot of things that he should have proceeded with. [4:23] I wasn't involved, but he should have proceeded with. [4:26] No, he's a dirty cop. [4:27] He's a crooked man. [4:28] And when Stephen Colbert joked about whether he should or could run for president, [4:35] Obama landed another clear dig at the current president. [4:37] Right. [4:38] I'm looking for a new gig soon. [4:39] Uh-huh. [4:40] And a lot of people tell me I should run for president. [4:44] Well, you certainly have the look. [4:45] Thank you very much. [4:45] You have the hair. [4:46] Well, for the record, I think it's a stupid idea. [4:49] How dumb do you think it is for people to say that I should run for president? [4:54] Well, you know, the bar has changed. [5:01] That is true. [5:03] At times, subterranean. [5:06] I don't have to limbo so low. [5:08] Let me put it this way. [5:09] I think that you could perform significantly better than some folks that we've seen. [5:16] All right. [5:17] Yeah. [5:17] I have great confidence in that. [5:20] Thank you very much. [5:21] Is that an endorsement? [5:23] It was not. [5:24] The bar has changed. [5:26] And I give it a few hours before that particular comment is met with a lengthy, grammatically flawed truth social post in return. [5:36] But Obama's not wrong, right? [5:37] In fact, he went further in discussing how the Republican Party has changed to conform to Trump's ways. [5:43] How the standards, not just for who can be president, have collapsed, but for what it means to actually be a Republican, a conservative-leaning Republican. [5:52] The next generation really wants things to change. [5:54] So you have great leaders. [5:57] You have people like Abigail Spanberger and Mikey Sherrill, very centrist. [6:01] But then you have further left, like AOC or Zoran Mamdani. [6:05] What direction do you think would be best for this party to actually achieve change? [6:12] Well, two things I want to say. [6:15] First, you're right. [6:16] The presidential center is nonpartisan. [6:19] And the reason I want to mention that is because I'm worried about the Republican Party, not just the Democratic Party. [6:27] When I was president, people would ask me, well, what change would you like to see in Washington? [6:32] I'd say I'd love a loyal opposition. [6:36] I'd love a Republican Party that was conservative in some ways, that didn't agree with me on a whole bunch of stuff, but believed in rule of law and judicial independence and empirical evidence and science and wasn't constantly tapping into our worst impulses. [7:02] And there has been a Republican Party like that in the past, and I want to see that return because I think you have to have two healthy parties. [7:10] The most serious part of the Colbert interview was not the joke. [7:14] It was Obama describing one of the core accusations against Trump's second term, that the state is being weaponized against enemies. [7:22] I mean, just look at the recent James Comey example. [7:25] And to me, it's clear that this is part of the reason why Obama is becoming more visible again in the political limelight, because Trump is not just doing things that Obama disagrees with, right? [7:36] He is testing the institutions that Obama and honestly, the majority of Americans believe are essential to the republic. [7:43] The basic idea that presidential power should be restrained by law, norms and consequences is something that seems to be negotiable now under this president. [7:53] And if you look at what Obama said in the New Yorker piece, he also took a day at something that Trump holds dearly, the image of himself as this fearless leader. [8:03] Because as Obama discussed, Trump played right into Netanyahu's hands regarding Iran. [8:10] Obama had said previously that Netanyahu tried to convince him to pursue war with Iran, as he had done with previous presidents, and then suggested that Netanyahu later got what he wanted under Trump. [8:21] Now, our president will start a war with Iran playing to Iran. [8:25] Now, why would you send money to Iran knowing that they are building a nuclear weapon and they are the leading sponsor of terrorism? [8:35] Barack Obama was a great statesman who left America much safer. [8:39] I wouldn't put Donald Trump in the same paragraph. [8:43] The reality is when President Obama left, because of the great efforts of people like Valerie Jarrett, we had 97 percent of the enriched uranium out. [8:50] The reality is we didn't have 13 American service members dead. [8:54] The reality is we never had gas go up from $2.30 to $4. [8:58] The reality is we did not give China more role in the region. [9:01] Let me finish, Maria. [9:02] I'll let you finish. [9:03] We didn't give China more role in the region. [9:07] We did not give the IRGC a more hardline regime in there. [9:10] Do you know why? [9:11] Because Obama actually did his homework. [9:13] He actually tried to engage in statesmanship. [9:15] He had gotten he got China, Russia, the entire European allies on board with getting Iran on a path to not having a nuclear weapon. [9:24] All that all Trump did is listen to Netanyahu. [9:27] That's that's his entire foreign policy. [9:30] You know what? [9:30] I resent the fact that Israel is going to tell the United States what to do. [9:34] The American president should call the shots in this country. [9:37] He's not simply saying that Trump made a bad decision. [9:40] He is implying that Trump was maneuvered into a war that other presidents had avoided. [9:45] And that is a scathing indictment of the image that Trump likes to present of himself. [9:51] He likes to pretend that he's this alpha negotiator. [9:54] The man that nobody pushes around with the firm handshakes. [9:57] But Obama's critique suggests something very different. [10:00] That Trump was not in fact the strong man in the room with Netanyahu. [10:03] He was the easier mark, the president who could be pressured into doing what others refuse to do. [10:09] And despite what Trump will likely come out and say, what Obama says continues to hold substantial weight in this country, [10:17] not just within the Democratic Party, but with independents also who are turning against Trump in droves. [10:23] You were mentioning the CNN poll of polls. [10:26] And of course, the poll of polls is made up of individual polls. [10:28] And one of them that just came out over the weekend was the ABC News Washington Post Ipsos poll. [10:34] And you can see it right here. [10:35] I mean, this just tells the story, right? [10:38] The lowest net approval ratings ever for the president of the United States. [10:42] That is approval minus disapproval. [10:44] The lowest previous record, according to the ABC News Washington Post poll, was Trump was 24 points underwater. [10:50] That was all the way back in term number one. [10:53] My beard at that particular point did not have any gray in it like it does today. [10:57] But guess what? As my beard has turned to gray, Trump's numbers have fallen to a new record low, [11:02] according to the Washington Post's ABC News poll. [11:04] He is now 25 points underwater on the net approval rating. [11:08] That is the lowest ever that he has ever been at. [11:12] And so it's not much of a surprise to me that the CNN poll of polls is reflecting that with the record high disapproval rating. [11:19] Obama is the president that Trump has defined himself against for more than a decade, who lives rent free in his head. [11:25] Obama was saying this to Colbert, who himself has rented a spot upstairs also, means it's bound to have the White House walls lathered in ketchup. [11:34] A lot of people tell me I should run for president. [11:37] This way. I think that you could perform significantly better than some folks that we've seen. [11:45] Right. [11:45] I have great confidence in that. [11:49] Thank you very much. [11:50] Is that an endorsement? [11:51] It was not. [11:53] Want to stay plugged in? [11:55] Become a subscriber to our sub stack at MidasPlus.com. [11:58] You'll get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, ad free episodes of our podcast, [12:02] and more exclusive content only available at MidasPlus.com. [12:05] We'll be right back.