Breaking News from Pod Save America - Obama Speaks Out Against Trump and MAGA in Urgent Message to Voters

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

In this episode of Political Experts React, Alex Wagner joins Dan Pfeiffer to break down the latest political ads and viral clips — featuring Obama on Marc Maron, Janet Mills, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And I would say that Marjorie Taylor Green agreeing with much of what I think these days is not helping with that problem. Welcome to Political Records React. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. And joining me today is the one and only Alex Wagner, Pod Save America contributor, host of a forthcoming but still as of yet untitled podcast on the Cricket Network. Is that correct? We do have a name for it, Dan. Do people know it? I mean, it's been said here and there on the streets.

So I feel like we can say it. Can you say it here? I want to. Do it. It's called runaway country because my lord, does it feel like we're cruising down the tracks with no brakes? That's where we are. That's a great time. I'm learning this in real time right now.

So this is great. I'm very impressed. What's your honest reaction as a communications expert? I think it's great. It's apropos. I think it'll do well. I'm excited. Thanks, Dan. I'm going to need your help relentlessly promoting it.

I'm happy to do it. The first video that we're going to watch today is an excerpt from an interview that Barack Obama did on Mark Merrin's podcast. This is the last episode of Mark Merrin's incredibly famous long-running podcast, WTF. Let's take a listen. We have blown through just in the last six months a whole range of not simply assumptions, but rules and laws. practices that were put in place to ensure that nobody's above the law and that we don't use the federal government to simply reward our friends and and punish our enemies. What's required in these situations is a few folks stand standing up and given courage to other folks and then more people stand up and kind of go like, yeah, no, that's not who we are. We don't want masked, you know, folks with rifles and machine guns patrolling our streets.

I want to ask you both what it feels like to hear Obama's voice. There are a lot of people who have been demanding that he speak out more. But then also, what do you think of this is a message? because we're in the midst of a pretty big debate inside the Democratic Party about the right way to talk about Trump 2.0 when it comes to not just the elections happening in Virginia, New Jersey, a couple weeks, but in the midterms next year. I'm never going to say, I don't want to hear from Barack Obama. And this is certainly, you know, one of the times where I'm very delighted that he is using his very important voice. I wish I had read the transcript of this before I had watched the delivery of the message because I think the substance of what he's saying is right on. Like we're blown through, I don't know, the law, the Constitution, norms, maybe even

liberal democracy. He's ringing an alarm bell. He's suggesting people become more engaged politically, politically, civically. all it takes is one person standing up to get other people to stand up. I guess it feels like, though, it's been run through the Obama phone where it's the free phone, the Obama gave poor people, that one, the Obama phone. Yes. It's just these times, what he's saying is so alarming. And the points he's raising are so significant. I wish there was a little bit more urgency in the, you know, in how he speaketh.

the message. I mean, I guess I'm not asking Obama not to be Obama, but I do feel like, you know, what has happened to this country and what is happening and where the course we're on suggests that people do exactly what he says, which is maybe to get out on the streets, to be protesting, to get the signs. But I'm not sure that qualifies as a call to action. And to me, that felt a little bit. It was dissonant given the sort of weight of what he was offering there to see him kind of, you know, in a podcast in his office talking to Mark Mariner. about it. Listen, this is not a diss on anybody who chooses. I think it's a very complicated position for a world leader to be in and a former president. But, you know, we heard from 24 on that

Trump was an existential threat to democracy. That message seems to continue. I would like to see a little bit more, I don't know, passion or something that is just tonally on par with what he's talking about. That said, great. Keep it up. Like more of this. More. More. More. More. more Obama talking to the country and encouraging people to be engaged and motivated by what they see unfolding. It is reflexively in my DNA to defend Barack Obama. I know. I can't pretend to be unbiased in this situation.

So I just say a couple things. One, like, people have been asking me all the time for 10 years now from the moment he left office. Like, why don't we hear more from Obama? Why don't we hear more from Obama? And there's, I think, two answers to that. The first is he likes to use his voice when he thinks it's going to matter most. He is a firm believer in the idea that if he talks all the time, when it matters most, it'll mean less.

Second, it makes me feel better to hear him. I think it makes a lot of Democrats feel better to hear him. Just if he was just like out narrating news, heck, if Barack Obama would just read the morning news in the morning, I'd feel better about the morning news, right? Right? Right. That's just like, it's soothing. The dull. But his like main job and where he has the most impact is not in sort of managing.

the anxieties of people like us. It's like bringing change, right? And there is just like this reality now that it's been, you know, 10 years since he left office or 8 years since he left office, you know, more than 15 years since he started running for office.

He shouldn't be the leader of the party, right? Like it'd be sort of like imagine in 2015 if we were like, man, where's Bill Clinton? Why isn't it Bill Clinton speaking out, right? Well, but there's extenuating circumstances. But just, but he, but the idea that we're still like counting on that is sort of a failure of the party in the intervening gears, right? It's a failure of leaders to step up. It's a failure of Joe Biden to assume that role.

But even when he was president, he didn't really take on the role of party leader in a public facing way. Can I interrupt you though, Dan? Yeah, go. It's not fair. I mean, you worked for the dude. Yeah. I covered the dude. I know the dude.

He is a once in a generation leader. You know this. his skills at oratory and his understanding of his empathy, he's just so dialed in to the country in a way that I don't, I mean, I don't think anyone else living is in terms of former presidents. And so of great people, great things are expected to some degree. And he's I'm not trying to say that Barack Obama, it all rests on his shoulders. But I think the expectations are higher because he's so singular. And also, you're totally right. I think the Democratic Party hasn't found its footing, maybe even post-Obama, right? So he's in a singular role and he has

singular demands placed thrust upon him in his post-presidency. Sorry, I guess you cut you off. Yeah, I think the question is, what does that role look like in a way that has the most impact in stopping the exact concerns he raised. And I think that's a question. I don't know the right answer to that. If he were to give a bunch of speeches between now and that, right, over the next three months, would that matter? Like, he's out with an ad today to direct a camera ad supporting Prop 50 in California.

Like, that's a very impactful thing that he can do because, like, if we actually pass Prop 50, then you're going to give Democrats an actual chance to take the majority. We don't pass Prop 50. we probably aren't going to have that chance. So I think, look, it's an ongoing debate. Like I said, I am, I am obviously as biased as you can be in it. And it really, like, to this day, I will still get my backup when people criticize decisions he made in 2015. Even when I, like, not because I think that every decision he made was right, it wasn't.

I just often feel like the critique is missing context. I'm like, no, no, no, no. It wasn't that simple with, you know, stuff like that. No, look, I get that. But I just think we are in terra incognit. You know, man. I guess the other thing, the other thing I'd say about this, beyond just the larger question of whether he should be speaking out more, which is like more is better, right?

Well, listen, I don't know that it's more. I just, I don't know that the old rules still apply. In fact, they don't apply, right? I mean, he talks about mask ice agents devastating communities either through fear or actual practical deportation. That demands a different kind of engagement. And I'm not sure that Mark Maren's podcast is it. The problem is not doing Mark Maren's podcast, right?

Because, like, you can't, it's like, you know, like the tone, right? Like it sounds, but you're also doing a podcast interview, right? As podcast or you know, I know that it's not a real, like, here we are having a, yeah, have the conference. Right. But they're like, will there be other moments where he expresses that urgency? Like, is he going to be strictly in 20206 on the campaign trail making this case? What I did think was, it has been lacking in a lot of democratic messaging that I think,

and this is one of the roles Obama can and has played over the last 15 years. here is he's a better storyteller than the party. And I think much of the party has just basically given up telling stories and Justin said, vomits up slogans. And it's like he just kind of articulate all the stuff is happening, like what's happening. And then he went to the exact motivation and who was benefited hurt by it. And it's like, that's a pretty simple message. And it's a, if we're looking for ways to talk about the ongoing threat of authoritarianism under Trump in a way that might be intelligible and persuasive to people who are not as dialed into politics as you and I, the way he did it there might be a model for people to do.

Yes, it is not off-putting. And it is inherently, like as you said, he could read the news and he would bring people in. This is why he's so convincing. I mean, not convincing because he's not authentic, but he's just incredibly compelling. So I'm never, like I said, I'm never going to complain when Barack Obama decides to use his incredible skills to to wait into the fucking muck that we all live in. So thank you for doing that, sir. If you like this video and you like Pod State America, I promise you you'll love my newsletter in the message box where I go deep. on what's happening in politics, give you actual, actionable advice about how you can fight back

against maga politics and Trump. And if you want to read more about my analysis of why the Democratic Party has lost their minds in the Maine Senate race, I put the link in the show description, sign up now. Our next video is an announcement video from Governor Janet Mills, who is going to run for Senate in Maine against Susan Collins entering a race. It has a number of younger candidates in it, including the sort of viral sensation. and Oisterman Graham Platner. Here's a cut down of her two-minute announcement video. Governor Janet Mills blasted President Trump today.

Janet Mills clashed with President Trump. Sparring with Maine's governor. Maine here, the governor of Maine? Are you not going to comply with it? I'm fine with state federal law. We are the federal law. You better do it. You better do it because you're not going to get any federal funding at all if you don't.

The governor said, see you in court. See you in court? I did see him in court. And we won. Federal judge ordered the Trump administration. to unfreeze federal funds for the state of Maine. Honestly, if this president and this Congress were doing things that were even remotely acceptable,

I wouldn't be running for the US Senate. But when Trump rips away health care from millions of Americans and drives up costs on everything from groceries to housing to trucks and cars, then turns around and gives corporate CEOs a massive tax cut. And Susan Collins helps him do it. After she helped him overturn Roe v. Wade,

my life's work has prepared me for this fight and I'm ready to win. This election will be a simple choice. Is Maine going to bow down or stand up? I know my answer. All right, what do you think of the video? First of all, I could watch that moment in the White House like over and over again. I just, you know, you've been in these rooms, Dan.

I've been in the press comp, like the sort of press version of them. But it takes Cajonis to just sit in the president and see you in court to his face. You know, Janet Mills was recruited by Chuck Schumer. there's a huge debate about whether she should be in the race, whether she's too old to be in the race, you know, whether this is the modeling that Ezra Klein suggested, you got to run pro-life candidates in the South to win from Democratic Party. And maybe you just need to run a person that Mainers love and know who's widely popular to oust Susan Collins. The ad itself is, I think a lot of people haven't seen a governor from a bluish state standing up to President Trump on an issue that Republicans think they're dunking on Democrats about. And I think the fact that, you know, she brings to the fore the essence of what the fight is about for governors of these states, which is taking the White House to court and winning is a shot in the arm for Democrats who feel like the fights, you know, rigged against them and they're never going to win anything. So I think there's something weirdly optimism bringing about that ad. You know, it feels like a moment where Democrats are on the offense.

and in that way I think it's effective. It's important messaging right now. Do I think that she presents herself as the most compelling candidate given who else is in the mix? I don't know. I mean, this is one of those things where I sort of understand the claims

that suggesting she's too old to be doing this is maybe unfair given her tenacity that she's displayed as the governor and in that moment. And the fact that she's saying she's going to run for one term and that this is about like leaving it all in the field and who the fuck really wants to run for the Senate at the age of 77 after you've been the governor of the state. Like she seems to be doing it for the right reasons. And I know there's a lot of PTSD from the

Biden candidacy. But this does feel a little bit different. I mean, this just feels like someone who's like, Susan Collins has got to go and I think I'm actually the best person to do it even though it's the last fucking thing I want to do. I don't know. I mean, I'm getting into the sort of candidacy more than the specific ad. But what did you think? I thought the, The ad was great. It was just a top-notch announcement ad. It checked all the boxes, right? It implicitly takes on the concern that she is too old to do this by leading with this confrontation with Trump.

It goes right at what the right message is about cutting health care to pay for tax cuts. It hit Susan Collins for, with her most controversial vote on, which is Brett Kavanaugh. Because Collins has been like we, I think there's an assumption among Democrats that its main. Kamala Harris won it by seven. Therefore, in the right year with a fine candidate, we should beat Susan Collins. That is deeply incorrect in my view. Totally. Because she won in 2020 by nine when Biden won the state by 11. And that's a massive, that is an unheard of swing. That's also the only Joe Manchin has been able to pull off in the last 15 years of American politics. And so this idea that just, all you need is a generic Democrat to do it, I disagree with. And she's also been a able to not vote for because of the 53 seats, she's been able to avoid taking the worst votes

this time. She didn't vote for a bunch of the controversial nominees. She didn't vote for the one big, beautiful bill. So you've got to go back to Brett Kavanaugh as an example of her betrayal. Yes, exactly, betrayal of what she promised, her role in overturning Roe v. Wade. So I think the ad is great. People who made the ad, they understand the challenges and the context surrounding her candidacy. have no problem with Janet Mills at all. I think if she wants to run, she should absolutely run. My big beef is the fact that the Senate Democratic leadership is supporting her over Grandin or these other candidates.

I cannot, for the life of me, understand why they decided to do that. Like, even if you think she's a better candidate, let the primary play itself out. It's like read the room, people. Like, we're in a moment where people hate politicians. They hate the Democratic Party. They're worried about the gerontocracy. And then the Democratic Party, which just helped inch, engineer, the Joe Biden re-election fiasco, comes out and says, we're not going to let them

voters and made a side. What we're going to do is we're going to put our thumb on the scale for the 77-year-old incumbent two-term Democratic governor of the state is a crazy move to me. Yes, who was recruited by the. Yes, they recruited her and they're going to have her support. And what that support means is she's going to get access to donors, they get more endorsements, like unions and others may be hesitant and endorse Platner because they don't want to go on the wrong side of the Democratic Democratic campaign committee almost always win the primary. And the DSCC is getting involved in primaries in ways that make no sense to me. They're also supporting Haley Stevens in Michigan over Mallory McMorro and Abdul Al-Said two very exciting candidates. Like once again, why get involved? Why just let the voters decide? And so I think

that choice is crazy. And I think it's, I guess it's good she pledged to serve one term, but she'll be 85 at the end of her term because she's 77 now. She turned 78 in December. She'll be six years older than Susan Collins at that point. And she'll be three years older than Joe Biden, five years older than Joe Biden, four years older, whatever, than Joe Biden than when he dropped out of the presidential race. It's just like at a time, like there are people like Dick Durbin and Jerry Natlin, who's other Democrats who had the chance to run for reelection, looked at it and said, you know what, what our party needs is younger leadership. And they stepped aside. And so like if she wants to, like I said, if she wants to run, great. And if she beats Graham Platner

or all these other people in the primary, great. I will contribute to her the day after she wins the nomination and do everything I can't help her wins his accounts. My big beef is with the DSCC for getting involved. I think that's a very strange, bizarre choice that makes me question their sensitivity to all the challenges the Democratic Party has, and they're reading of what happened in 2024, right? It's just very notable. The Republicans are recruiting people like they were trying to recruit Auburn basketball coach Bruce Pearl to run for Senate and SEC ESPN commentator Paul Feinbaum to run for Senate, and we're recruiting two-term incumbent governors. There are calculations being made that we were, the math, we would maybe not agree with,

but it's quite obvious that they think that this is the sheriff. fire bet for winning the state. And they're looking at the history that you were you were outlining before, which is that Susan Collins is a very popular figure in the state, has been there for a long time as this main institution. And they want another institution to take her down. I could talk about this race for truly ours because I think it is just such an interesting window into just how people in Toronto 2024, what I view to be to some of the shortcomings, strategic shortcomings of the Democratic Party in the post-2020 environment, our risk aversion, a tendency towards insider politics, all those things.

But instead, we're going to move to our third video, which includes a voice of reason on Trump, the economy, and the government shutdown. Let's take a listen. As a conservative and as a business owner in the construction industry and as a realist, I can say, we have to do something about labor and that needs to be a smarter plan than just round up every single person and deporting them just like that. So, and I'm going to get pushed back on that, but it's, I'm, I'm just living in reality from here on out.

Yeah. And if I'm, if anybody's mad at me for saying the truth, then I'm sorry. I'm not willing to allow millions of Americans, people I personally know, constituents in my district, I'm not willing to allow their premiums to double and triple. overnight starting in January of 2026. Okay. That is hard to imagine, but that was actually Marjorie Taylor Green. Space Leasers.

She was on Tim Dillon's podcast. This comes after she did an exceedingly normal CNN interview with Wolf Witzer, where she also laid out her real critique of Republican shutdown strategy and Mike Johnson's refusal to bring the house back and the need to extend the Obamacare premium tax credits. What the hell did you? do you think has happened in Marjorie Taylor Green? The snake is eating its tail. The head has come so far right that it's left. I think what's happened in the strange upside down Earth 2 matrix that we're living in, Dan, is that Trump's insanity has made the reality of government and policy very tangible, right?

Like for so long, Democrats had to argue in the abstract about why government was important or why policy was important or why you couldn't just have like, you know, why immigration, like the immigration system needed to be reformed, but you couldn't just storm in there with, you know, a deportation task force or, you know, why Obamacare and why funding, you know, health care is important, why Obamacare was structured the way that it was, why Medicaid expansion was important, why government subsidies are important. Now it's real. Like, now it's the, I was at, you know, there. There were numerous Trump rallies in 2024 where people hold up signs saying mass deportations now. And I would see these signs and I would say like, do you really understand what that means?

And people thought that they did. And now we're seeing the rubber hit the road and people actually understand what mass deportations now means. It means masked ice agents coming and ripping people out of communities, devastating entire neighborhoods. And oh, by the way, like a very significant labor shortage that Marjorie Taylor Green Construction Magnate is well aware of. and, you know, not doing anything on the subsidies, trying to basically continue to gut the social safety net by underfunding it and through atrophy means people's premiums are going to go up or people get kicked off their plans. And like now Democrats are actually fighting for tangible real things that affect people in their everyday lives. they see the reality of a broken government or a resistant Republican party play out outside their door. And it is forced a wholesale sort of reevaluation by some members of the GOP, I guess, including Marjorie Taylor Green, all like, you know, pretty foundational shit.

Immigration and healthcare policy. Oh, turns out maybe we were totally fucking wrong. And this is a bad idea. Like this, all this is a bad idea and could really fuck us with our constituents. And I guess congrats to Marjorie Taylor Green for being connected to that reality. Which is the first reality she's been connected to in a very long time. The space lasers, the nest thermosats, that stuff was not real. But this stuff very much is because it exists outside of the Matrix.

It exists to people, you know, people are seeing this in her home counties. You know, like this is something that, you know, when she's, she goes back to her district. This is something that people are talking to her about. And by the way, if the government still shut down on November 1st, depending on what happens with the ACA, like, this is about to explode. And Marjorie Taylor Green, conspiracist though she is, I think understands that. And I think for Democrats, it's why they can afford to go on the offense on these issues, much more so than they are on immigration. They are certainly on the offense on the ACA and health care. they understand that the American people are going to feel this in a tangible, I think, emotional way and certainly financial.

So anyway, I mean, congrats on the pivot. I don't even, what do we call this? Diling back into Earth 1. I would say that periodically over the last nine months here, as things have been spinning out of control around me, I sometimes in my quiet, dark moments, ask myself, am I the crazy one? And I would say that Marjorie Taylor Green agreeing with much of what. what I think these days, is that helping with that problem. It's not reassuring me that I may actually be the chrism. You are no longer on Earth 1.

Yeah, yeah. As we've established earlier on this. You know, I have no idea what's going on here. I mean, maybe she has, like she said, dialed into Earth 1. Maybe she's had a crisis of conscience and is now starting to actually care about how things affect her constituency. She is personally affected by these, both in terms of the construction industry. And it is her two adult sons or two adults, sorry, her two adult children, she said,

whose premiums will double if the premium tax credits are not extended. So maybe it's just, it's self-interested. I would say, and I will end it here, but that there is one, like, actual benefit to this for Democrats, which is we should use these clips, right? Like, it's very hard for a Democrat to convince a soft Republican or a Democratic politician to convince a soft Republican to leave Trump because they just assume that we have TDS, maybe, you know, or hate Trump or political biases. but you have one of Trump's closest allies criticizing him.

That happens so rarely that it's a very, very valuable asset. And so you can see that, you know, I hope Democrats, and a lot of Democratic content creators have been sharing this, putting it out there. You can see it in digital ads in 2026 to make the case against what he's against what Trump is doing with and what other Republicans are doing. Sort of like, don't take my word for it. Here's what Marjorie Taylor Green has to say. And I think that's pretty valuable.

Here's what Marjorie Taylor Green has to say. But listen to it this time. Yeah. But this time. It's real. Okay. Alex, thank you so much for joining some click,

Lex, which React. Thanks, Dan.