The Chris Cuomo Project - What Obama Can Teach Democrats Right Now (feat. Brian Tyler Cohen)

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

Brian Tyler Cohen (YouTube and podcast host, “No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen”) joins Chris Cuomo to break down his viral sit-down with Barack Obama — and what the former president’s message reveals about the Democratic Party’s identity crisis heading into 2026 and 2028. Cohen explains why the interview exploded online, what Obama represents in today’s media environment, and why cultural cachet now matters as much as policy. The two debate whether Democrats need an outsider populist, a centrist unifier, or something closer to Obama’s inside-outside balance. They also clash over AOC, the squad, the filibuster, generational change, and whether the party can actually deliver for voters frustrated by economic pressure and political chaos. The conversation also veers into transparency, UAPs, media power, and what Cohen’s alien question to Obama accidentally revealed about public trust. At its core, this is about whether Democrats can move beyond scolding and slogans — and present something voters believe actually works. Join The Chris Cuomo Project on YouTube for ad-free episodes, early releases, exclusive access to Chris, and more: https://www.youtube.com/@chriscuomo/join Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Head to https://Superpower.com and use code CUOMO at checkout for $20 off your membership. Live up to your 100-Year potential. #superpowerpod Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code CUOMO at https:// www.cowboycolostrum.com/CUOMO Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Barack Obama knows that they're aliens. Barack Obama knows that you got to be from outer space to not see what MAGA is about and what Democrats need to be to win. And he sat down with Brian Tyler Cohen, which shows the new age of media, right? Not sitting down with any of the big ABC, NBC, CBS, not even a magazine person. He's sitting down with digital media because that's where politics is fomented most, if not best. And he reminded the country, not just the ranks of the Democratic Party, what a leader looks like. And this interview has blown up because what it says about Barack Obama, sure.

But what it says about where the Democratic Party is and where it needs to be. Brian Tyler Cohen with the debrief and a bone to pick with your boy. BTC It's Chris Coming off a big moment How happy are you to have sat down With former president Barack Obama As the country turns a lonely eye to him

Yeah, you know, it was I mean, it's It's one of the interviews that I've been trying to get For the entirety of my career So that was And that was half the battle won But then he's also, dude can hang And it reminds

you that we could have nice things, and he was, and he is a generational figure for a reason. And so to just, it was the quickest, like, 48 minutes of my life. But, but I'm still kind of shell-shock that I was able to sit down with him on a one-on-one interview, you know. How big has the reach been now? Is it the quickest, rapid growth of anything you've ever put out? Yes, by a mile. Within a day, it had hit two and a half million. Within two days, it had hit, it had hit 5 million, and it continues to gain steam every single day. But easily, easily, the fastest growing interview that I've ever had. And it's interesting because I interviewed President Biden while he was in the White House in February of 2022.

And I checked to see where that interview was at. And that hadn't even hit 900,000. So it was a slog to get that thing to hit, you know, even less than 20% of what Obama hit. And it really does show, like, these analytics kind of speak for themselves in a big way. And I think the popularity that Barack Obama has, you know, 15 years after he's left office, is a testament to the juice this guy still got. Why do you think that is? Well, I think there are a few reasons.

One, here I think is the best distillation of this. and I heard this from John Lovett, so I want to make sure that he gets his credit for this. Democrats very often have front-of-the-classroom energy, and I very much include myself in this. Barack Obama was cool. Dude had swagger and charisma in a way that a lot of Democratic officials, certainly today don't have, certainly Democratic leadership.

I mean, you know, not in a million years. But he does, and he was like legit cool, and there was a reason that he became, that he was such a cultural behemoth in that way. And you've got a guy in Barack Obama who just this weekend you can see can sit down, have a really nuanced conversation about politics, can go to the NBA All-Star game

and ball with these guys and hang with them. And he can really do it all. And I think that that's missing in politics today. And so I hope that, like, people seeing what we had with Barack Obama gives a little bit of a blueprint in terms of what works as we look toward leaders and officials for 2026 and 28 because you need people who can, who have some cultural cachet in the way that a lot of Democratic politicians don't. I mean, you even saw, like, Trump in 2024 was able to go on the Joe Rogan pot. And I'm not somebody who's going to give Trump his flowers very often, I think. if you know me well enough. Yeah, you don't want to get canceled by your side.

Can't get canceled. But like he can go on the Joe Rogan podcast and bullshit. Kamala Harris couldn't. Like she not only wasn't invited onto that podcast, but when she went on to call her daddy, it was about politics. And so we need to be able to bridge that divide in a better way than we're doing right now.

Obama offers a blueprint for that. And so I hope that, I hope that, you know, other people see what works and recognize. the impact that it could have. Why do you think he isn't more involved with what's going on? So I asked him this question, and I know that this is the question swirling around him

for the last decade plus. Like, he is the most popular politician in America and everyone's saying, you know, you're right there. Why don't you just, you know, be more involved? Like, go center stage, make sure that you're on the campaign trail for everybody everywhere all the time all at once. And, you know, his answer to me was, I'm not a politician anymore. I'm term limited out, so I can't do anything. And he has dedicated his post-presidency

to lifting up the next generation of leaders. And I think that we can't have it both ways. You can't both say that what is the most important thing right now in the aftermath of 2024 when we had Joe Biden, you know, the oldest, the, the, who would have been the oldest president, who obviously couldn't prosecute the case against Trump. We have, Democratic leadership who are all, you know, septuagenarians, you can't both say, I want a guy who doesn't have any prospect for a political career anymore, you know, because he's term-limited out. I want him to continue to be the face of the Democratic Party, and I want to be a Democratic

party that ushers in the next generation of leaders, people who are younger, more dynamic, more progressive, more technologically savvy, have more charisma, can, you know, hang on these on these podcasts and independent media channels, you can't have both. And so I think he's trying to walk the walk here and say, like, I believe that I recognize the problem. And, you know, he said explicitly that, that, you know, there comes a point where you're no longer in the zeitgeist,

as you once were. I mean, he's in his 60s. And he said, like, when his girls talk about stuff on TikTok, like, he's just not in it in the same way that somebody who's 50 or 40 or 30 is going to be in it. And so, so, you know, he's, walking the walk there and doing what he can to not become the problem that we have on the left, which is, okay, we only have a small bucket of people. Let's just continue thrusting them to the forefront

well into their 70s and then 80s and watching Jerry Connolly die in office, watching Ruth Bader Ginsburg die on the bench. That cannot be how it is on the left. One more context question than I want to get into some of the buzziness. How much of it do you believe is because because you don't have a next, that you don't have anybody that does half the things that he did as a candidate. I don't necessarily agree with the premise

that we don't have a next. I think we have a pretty robust bench. What I will agree with is that I don't know that we have anybody who can do it all like him. Like I think that he was able to bridge a lot of divides in the same way that like AOC has a lot of cachet with progressives, but I don't think that that necessarily works with moderates.

And on the flip side of that, I think there's plenty of moderate candidates who don't have cachet with progressives. Going back to 2008, that wasn't, like, Obama was able to unite the Democratic Party and, frankly, the country in a way that we hadn't seen a president or a politician do before. So I think that he had that ability to kind of bridge a lot of divides

in a lot of different, a lot of different sectors of, of the party in a way that I don't think that we're seeing right now. But look, I think, you know, we've got time. It's 2026. I'm not big in a horse race politics anyway. And frankly, I don't think that we have the luxury of being able to pretend that this is politics as usual and that we can look toward 2028

and think that everything is just going to be a-okay as these threats to democracy bear down on us. But with all of that said, We do have time for, you know, the AOCs of the world to build up her foreign policy chops. We do have time for, you know, a lot of these other moderate candidates. Wait, wait, wait, let me get through this. And then you can shit on AOC. Get through your talking point and then I'll come back to it.

Go ahead. And we have time for a lot of these moderate candidates to bolster their progressive bona fides, their populist bona fide. So we'll see what happens. There's a lot of shifting. This is very much like, you know, this is very much. a moving target here. The whole thing still has plenty of time

to kind of fall into place. So I'm not worried about that. But yeah, I mean, look, there's no doubting the extent to which Barack Obama is able to do what we haven't seen any candidate do since. Support comes from superpower. This is the right name for this product. Let me tell you something.

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Head to Superpower.com, use the code Cuomo at checkout, and you get 20 bucks off your membership, okay? And when you sign up, they're going to say, hey, where'd you hear about us? Please say Cuomo sent me. The problem that you have is that your party, in part through reaction formation, in part, and part through the miss and distrust of institutions and government are going to want an outsider. And most of the people you're talking about in terms of balancing out their portfolio, the fundamental deficiency is that they're insiders. They're part of the power structure.

That's Newsom's problem. AOC's problem less so, but foreign policy chops. If she were a Republican and she babbled like she did in Munich just now, you would be putting nails in her coffin, brother. You are being very forgiving to her. I am. But again, that's because she's not the president, and she's not even a declared candidate for president.

And it's 2026, and we have years until this matters. And frankly, you know, that's one half of it. The other half is, you know, relative to what we're seeing right now, the bar is so low when you have a president who's saber-rattling, about invading a sovereign country and our own NATO ally when you have a president's saber-rattling about Cuba and Colombia and Panama. Oh, no, I agree. Look, you're not going to be running against Trump.

I mean, you're running against them in the midterms. You're not going to be running against them in 2028. You're going to be running against either a much-watered-down version of him or a reconstituted Christian conservative. That party's got two choices, to try to double down on MAGA, which I think is going to be very hard, because they're going to have to find another outsider. And I don't know how they do that.

They could, but I don't see it. The second way is to run back to their roots and go back to Christian conservative. And either case is good for you guys. Yeah, I agree with that. And in terms of like what you said about they're needing to be an outsider on the Democratic side, I don't necessarily know that's true. Like we don't know what the mandate for the subsequent, for each subsequent election is going to be because oftentimes it's a rebuke of the previous presidency.

And so Trump was an outsider. and, you know, one could say, look how well that worked out. Right, but you have to match that with your desire to be what beat you. The Democrats have definitely been, look, you have been learning that lesson. You are way more aggressive. You believe that you got to take them on, on whatever the state of play is that day on social media. Whatever they, whatever there is, we're going where the distraction is and we're taking you on. No more going high.

I'm going exactly where you are. I'm going to beat your ass where you are. the Democrats are trying to become what beat them. And I don't mean that as a pejorative. And I think that will make them want a disruptor because that's what the populism usually feeds off of. And that's what you guys have going for you is outsider populist angst. Well, yeah, but you look at someone like Zoranamandani. Like he was able to harness that without feeling like he's just some dude walking off the street coming in from, you know, some job that was completely outside of government.

That's exactly what he was. Like, we, well, I mean, he was an assembly member. He's never had a job. He literally was a first term legislator who had done nothing, Nepo baby, who grabbed populist angst and played to an ethnic schism and a religious schism in New York City. And that's why he kicked my brother to the curb. The Democrats bought into, as a party, promoting someone who was anti-Semitic,

open to Islamism, and was an outsider. And a lot of people thought it was cool, especially, young people. Now, the regret index is crazy. That's not fair to Mamdani either. You got to give him some time to make some decisions. Everybody knew he was going to struggle in the beginning. This is a very tough boat to write. So that's what he did. I think that's what you guys will want to do in the national level. I would warn against it. You can't have someone who's Islamist-friendly on the national stage. I think that, first of all, I think people, people, I mean, this is part of what I spoke about with Barack Obama is that people are going to win in places that are right for them.

And I think that there's this, there's this sense among Democrats that every single candidate has to be perfect for every single jurisdiction across the country, but they don't. I mean, Zornamam Dani can win in New York and, to Obama's point, unsure, unclear as to whether he'd be able to win in Virginia and vice versa. Abigail Spanberger is not going to win in New York City, but clearly she was able to come out on top in, in Virginia. And so I think that there has to be. But Abigail Spanberger could. win in New York. Abigail Spanberger, Elise Slotkin, could win in a lot of places. I mean, I think that's the best news, and I guess it was boring because they're white women. Mikey Sherrill and

Spamberger are the best news you've got to have had in a long time, which is centrist, military, lefty, women are very powerful. Look, I don't disagree, but I also don't, I don't buy into this idea that that every single person who's elected is somehow like the face of the party and that Mikey Cheryl's election in New Jersey is is great news and Zormomondani's election in New York is bad news. I think that I think that it's we need to embrace being a big tent party and that means we are we have to be okay with having somebody who's much farther left in places that are going to elect much farther left people, much more centrist in places that are going to elect much more centrist people. I think I like I fundamentally believe that that is completely

fine. And that's part of being a big tent party is that you have to be okay with having somebody who you're uncomfortable with, who you're not 100% aligned with, you know, in places where we're that much better or clear or where that much better reflects the electorate that they've been elected to serve. And so like, I'm okay with with all that. I'm with you. I just think it's a fundamental. What you're talking about is a coalition, not a party. The problem with the two-party system. and you'll say, look, it's imperfect, but, you know, this is what we have. I refuse to surrender to a system that generates our problems. And you're talking about a coalition.

Mamdani wins here, Spamberger wins there, somebody else wins in Iowa. No, I agree. It's just not the same party. They don't believe in the same things. They're not about the same things. They're not of the same persuasion. You have in Momdani, can you imagine Mikey Cheryl or Spaner. or either governor going to visit someone who stabbed the cop before they go to visit the cop that was

stabbed? Look, I know is the answer you're looking for. Yeah, but I don't see how that really applies here. Like, what I think, what I think at its core is, like, there isn't actually a ton of difference between Mamdani and Spanberger. I think both of them ran on affordability agendas. Is one going to be farther left than the other? Is the other going to be farther right than the other?

Yeah, but I don't think that that. One is a Democrat. One is a socialist. One believes in capitalism. Went out of her way to say, I don't believe in socialism for America. We have some socialistic programs, but I don't want to tax the rich to death. I don't want to take the means of production. I mean, they're very, very different. Look, I'm telling you, they can win in different places. Don't get me wrong. We're both looking at the reality. But when I'm talking about the national ticket, you got to make a choice about what is going to win. You can't have one who's good in one place and one who's good in another place.

You know, that's what Barack Obama was. That's what I'm saying. Totally. Totally. And again, we have plenty of time before we have to figure that out. But look, I think that we have the opportunity right now to see how Mom Dani governs, to see how Spanberger and Mikey Cheryl govern. And I think at the end of the day, there is a lot less focused on what titles these people hold versus what they're actually able to do.

you know, part of, part of the rise of Trump or the re-rise of Trump is there, there is a sense of disillusionment among Americans that the government can actually do anything for people. Like, we have spent, God knows how many decades, hearing all of these promises from people, but at the end of the day, the only people that actually benefit from any of this shit are the ultra wealthy. And, and I think now people are much less, like, accustomed to just saying, I'm going to defer to my team, because if my team isn't helping me, then they're going to, then, then they'll find a new team. And we saw that with these record numbers of defections, into Trump's corner in 2020, in 2024, because, because they felt that the Democrats weren't

doing anything. And inflation was so high. And people's economic, uh, situation was so dismal. And you were picking, you were picking discrete culture issues and canceling people and running around with me too when they were looking for social justice on a different plane. Sure. And, and, and I think that. I think that it did go too far, clearly. I mean, that's not, don't take it from me, just take it from the national electorate. And so I think at this point, like I said,

it's not going to be so much like, okay, what are your labels and what party are you a part of? I think if somebody can show that they can deliver, whether it is an avowed Democratic Socialist in New York City or an avowed moderate running Virginia, I think that people are going to see, you know, if you're willing to make sure that government can work for people,

work for regular people, then I think people are going to have a lot more, a lot more leeway for those people than they would have otherwise had before. Oh, 100%. If you can actually, you're, you're right, but the remedy is actually what you're working against. Because what our politics is right now, on the left and on the right, at least for the last 12 years, is it's all talk, no walk. Yeah. It's all talk, no walk. So you don't have the, yeah, but look at what we did. Well, you're not doing anything because you're not in power. And when you were in power, you didn't get anything done. Right.

And I think that Trump is learning that lesson right now. And, you know, this is a guy who came into office, you know, swept into office amid these populist promises of lowering housing, lowering food, lowering rents, lowering inflation, all of those things. Yeah, and that's why he went to Venezuela. And that's why he's trying to push Iran and Greenland because gas and groceries ain't getting it done for him. It's a bad look. Right. And now a guy who came in as a populist who was going to drain the same. swamp is now leaning on Wall Street for the sum total of his existence, which means he's leaning on

AI and a handful of tech pros. And that's your opportunity. The country's up for grabs and we're exhausted by the culture wars. So what they want is trust and transparency. And they want things that are about them, not someone they don't identify with. Yeah. Well, look, I think that this is an opening for an entire generation of, there is an entire generation of Americans who've only known this kind of chaos and a government that they, that has done nothing for them. Like, I grew up in the Obama era and I watched what happened when the ACA was passed and all of a sudden, you know, I was covered up until I'm 26 years old. That's, that was a big deal for, for a punk kid like me who was like, you know, doing part-time jobs in Los Angeles as like a personal trainer and, and, you

trying to get acting jobs or whatever else I was doing out here at the time, like, I would not have had health care if it wasn't for him. And so that was, I think, the last era where government truly worked for people that weren't just the wealthy. And so there's a whole generation. All these Gen Z kids, all these Gen Alpha kids have grown up in an age where they've only heard politicians bullshit them. And I say that as, you know, having some humility because I'm part of a party that, you know, pointed a lot to the stock market and job growth and ignored the fact that, you know, despite these macroeconomic metrics, people were still hurting in their everyday lives and wages were still flat and people couldn't afford a $400 emergency if it had befallen them.

Still true. And correct, it's still true. And we rode that, that, you know, all the way to a loss in the 2024 election cycle. Now Trump has done the, you know, that to a, you know, to an even worse degree. And so a lot of these people have only known lies from their politicians and a government that doesn't work for them. And so we have an opportunity here with an entire multiple generations of people

who have never seen a government work for regular people. And I hope we take advantage of it because these opportunities don't come around long. And I think there are a lot of people who've been blackpilled. Look, you don't, you know, you don't adhere to one political party over the other. and I'm sure that's different now

from how it used to be for Chris Cuomo, son of Mario Cuomo, you know? So I think we have an opportunity here to remake the Democratic Party and we don't have the luxury of being able to drop the ball. I think you've got to be about the cause and not the caucus.

I think you've got to abandon that it's about the party and what the party is. The party is just a stain. The parties is a bad taste in people's mouths. Yeah, but look, the party is the only apparatus. that we have right now to combat what we're seeing from the right. The party is imperfect. The party has major issues. The party is led by people who don't necessarily care about the plight of normal people. And I think that I have said, God knows how many times that I do hope we see something of a

Tea Party of the left in the 26 and 2028 cycles. But the answer right now is not to, is not to like relinquish the one tool that we have at our disposal to be able to organize against a Republican Party that is that is decidedly undemocratic anti-democratic. Support comes from cowboy colostrum. You know why I'm doing this ad? Because it works. Okay. Why do you want colostrum?

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I just think that the tool is the people. I think that the populism is the new party, just how MAGA beat you. There's no Republican Party. Nobody talks about it. You've got your organizing structure and all that bullshit, and you'll have that on the left as well. But it's the populism, and that's where AOC comes in.

And that's where the desire for transparency, and that takes me to something. There's a bone to pick with you. Brian Tyler Cohen mocks News Nation's UAP coverage on a regular basis. Brian Tyler Cohen says that I've put too much time and energy into this, and yeah, it matters, but we can't be talking UAPs, as all these other things. And then the motherfucker does an interview with Barack Obama. And the clip that blows up my phone is this handsome West Coast cat having the unmitigated gall to sit there like Mike Wallace and say, Mr. President, where are the aliens? Are the aliens really? You have got some set. Are you, brother? Let me tell you. And then it goes everywhere, everywhere.

What would you like to say? So look, that question was part of a speed round. I didn't anticipate the reaction because I actually, there was a little bit of disjointedness in how people perceived his response. And that was, you know, he said, yes, aliens are real, but I just haven't seen them. I haven't seen them.

And unless there's some, you know, even bigger conspiracy where they're hiding this stuff from the president of the United States, then I don't know about it. Well, people glommed on to the first words of that, which is, yes, aliens are real. And that made news to a degree that I didn't think was possible before.

And then I started taking heat because I didn't ask a follow-up, but it seemed pretty obvious in the room when he gave that long, you know, qualifying answer that there's no evidence that the government has these aliens. But he had to take the extraordinary step of issuing a clarification

because this thing got so much, this thing got so much juice. And so his clarification kind of confirmed exactly what I thought in the room and everybody else thought in the room. But yeah, I mean, look, in retrospect, would I have handled that differently? Yes, I would have nixed the entire speed round

where I asked other burning questions like, is Tupac alive? I would have nixed the whole thing and just asked him about aliens, asked him about UAPs, and just done a deep dive. And look, hindsight is 2020. We always, you know,

God knows I've interviewed thousands of people, people. God knows you've interviewed thousands of people. I'm sure, you know, you wish you can go back to certain interviews and ask certain people different questions that you come up with in the shower, you know, six hours later. But so that that's something that I'm going to have to live with. But I have learned that the alien slash UAP community is no joke. As they say, they're out there and in really big numbers. They are out there. And let me tell you why. So you have your cooks, okay, your little green men people, okay, as I call them. That has never been the thing for me.

For me, it is transparency. Almost nobody gives a shit about that. But it does put you as an ally to what is the most precious commodity right now, which is what is giving you APs the resurgence. Once truth is off the table, once you no longer trust, now anything is possible. And little green men is a, as real to people about what you may have been bullshit about,

as much as who killed Kennedy, as much as what the job number is this month. Once they don't trust, they can go anywhere because everything's on the table now. Because, well, then what is real? Well, then what are you guys not lying about? And now you have the FBI saying, look at these great crime numbers,

since when is the FBI involved in local crime? reducing efforts. You know, it's obviously a local issue. And once it's all bullshit, then it's limitless. So what I've tried to do with the UAP is say, I don't know about any little green men in a basement. And frankly, I don't give a shit. I am open to the arrogance that why would we be the only people who figured out life with the only thing that Neil deGrasse Tyson tells us every time they get a measurement of the universe is it's twice as big as they thought it was. But this is about transparency and you were genius to get Obama on the record about it and have him be playful because it proves that this is something that they just don't tell us what they spend our money

on, what they've collected, because you know what it's all about. It's about drones. It's about weapons that people have in technologies that people have on this planet and corporations have on this planet that are way ahead of where we are. That's why they're quiet about it. You saw what just happened in El Paso, right? That ain't from Mars. That's the cartels. They've been working with the Chinese. They sent over a fleet of drones. We had to close the airport, Brian. That's what's going on. And that's what you plugged into. And I was so happy for you to get the spray on that. I wanted the spray also, and it's catching up now, but it's positive. So it's not going to be is conspiratorial, obviously, or as conductive.

The way Obama explained the disgust of Trump's people putting that jungle video out. I thought was perfect of this is what they're about. This is the clown show that they're about. They knew exactly what they were doing. And this is what they play with because this is who they are. And I got to tell you, listen to the mag of folk that I have, a modicum of respect for, pretend that that wasn't what it was. It's kind of like when they did

the thing about Trump moving his hands like this and saying he always does that, you know, and all the other bullshit. That video was another example that they will defend this guy to the death because they're more afraid of the other side. I think, I think from Obama's vantage, it was also a little bit of a blueprint, like a clarion call to Democrats, to say, to remind them to not be scoldy, to remind them not to be luxury, to remind them to embrace the idea of hope. It's not even just him saying, this is who we are. It's a nudge to people who kind of fall off that wagon

because, you know, the party is a living thing. It moves and it evolves, and it's, you know, it can be, it can veer off one side or the other. And so, look, he's got a lot of cachet. He's got no skin in the game now because, as he says, he's not a politician anymore. And so for him to be able to use that and say, not only as the most popular figure on the left,

but somebody who won two election cycles that included places like Indiana, I think for him to come out and say that is like a little bit of a kick in the ass to people who could afford to hear from Barack Obama what a winning formula looks like, what the winning blueprint looks like. I agree 100%.

I also think that, you know, you've been good about that scolding, point. You've made that several times here and elsewhere, and I hear it, and I hope it's well received. I can't say that it is, looking at how the left is getting more and more into the rage game. They're a bunch of scoldy people, even in the reaction to the journalist being arrested. I really wish you guys had rallied around Georgia Ford as much as you did Don Lemon, because it's going to be a lot easier to own what Georgia Ford says and does going forward than Don Lemon, but now once he's your mascot, now you've got to own them.

But the reason that the left failed with the virtue signaling is you are not virtuous. You guys steal. You hang out with Epstein. You get nothing done in government. You trade stocks. You do all the things that you're complaining about the other side. And it's not enough that they're worse. That's the problem with the Trump sucks strategy is it's not enough.

You have to be better. And it's not just that, well, not as bad. the reason you succeed, Brian Tyler Cohen, is you're good. You're better than other guys out there. It's not that, yeah, Brian sucks, but he doesn't suck as bad as that other guy. Yeah. No, you're good. You guys have to get back to better, which is we have a better idea. We do a better job. We handle ourselves better. You can feel better about us as being your agents. You can feel better about us. We don't talk the way they talk. We know how to fight, but we know how to be bigger than a fight too.

And that's what the biggest man in the room does, by the way. Biggest man in the room is never doing this. Biggest man in the room is never talking shit to somebody else. He doesn't have to because if you really want to knuckle up, it's going to go the wrong way. And until then, that man or woman is decent. And they're trying to set their own standard. That has to be a part of the puzzle for you guys. I know these podcasts and stuff are popping.

Not yours, because again, you're a fair broker, you're a lefty, but you're a critical thinker and you're good and you're cogent with your arguments. I've always said that, always a fan. But now you've got people who are just fucking angry, right? They're just as angry as the other side was and they're mean. And they want to see people go down.

You've got to be careful about that because that makes you just like MAGA. You are no better. Yeah, I mean, look, I actually asked about this exact point with Obama about this idea that for so long, it feels like Democrats just are perfectly content to allow the football

to be pulled away over and over and over a la Charlie Brown and Lucy and that we can always expect Mitch McConnell to get it done and we can never expect Democrats to get it done and that I think is the anger

that people are tapping into right now it's not necessarily it's not necessarily the anger over like the degradation of the discourse although I think that's certainly present I think it's just there is a sense of like disillusionment

with what the Democratic Party is able to accomplish or lack thereof. And we need, we do need people who are going to be fighters. And we need people just as important as that, who are going to fight for something virtuous. And I think that Obama made that point really well when he was speaking with me. But, you know, there is this insistent reliance,

this stubborn reliance on the left that we are here, that if we want to protect democracy, we have to protect all of the institutions that are a part of it. All of the norms, all of the process, the filibuster, all that bullshit. And those things can't be an end. They have to be a means to the end. Like we have to remember the actual end

is the people that they're there to serve, the American people, and not the institutions or the processes or the filibuster, wherever it may be. And so I think a lot of the anger at the party is born out of this idea that we're doing the wrong thing in government right now by protecting these broken institutions

at a time where people feel so like despairing. And so yes, we need to have a party that's willing to fight, but then B, the second part of that, which is just as important, is to make sure that once you have that power and once you're ready to wield that power, that you don't turn into the very thing that you are fighting against.

And I'm actually not worried about that. I think that in this next generation of Democrats who are going to come into office, there is a sense that if you want to be able to succeed in today's Democratic Party, it has to be that you are laser fucking focused on delivering for regular people. I don't see the way you do

when it comes to AOC and the squad is I see them as scolds. I see them as populists, sure, but it's all talk, no walk. No meaningful legislation under Biden. Obviously, you're not in power. You're not going to be the same, but nobody wants to work with them.

And that's not what you guys are at your best. I don't think it's fair to say there was no meaningful legislation under Biden. I mean, you had, you had, you know, they halved child poverty in this country. We're able to deliver the infrastructure law in this country. We're able to. I know.

It's just that the squad didn't, that wasn't the squad's bill. They didn't. What they did, which was stupid, was they fought for the name. The Inflation Reduction Act. Should have never called it that. You should have never called it that. It wasn't even what it was geared towards. You should have just focused on the CHIP Act.

But infrastructure is very important in the country. I'm not saying nothing. I'm saying the squad. AOC doesn't have her name as the sponsor and any major piece of legislation that ever got done. Same thing with Bernie Sanders. Why? They can't form a consensus. They can't get one. They're dividers. And sometimes they fight the good fight. I think there's a lot of virtue to what Bernie Sanders is about with the oligarchy. He's also really intelligent. He also doesn't make a lot of mistakes. AOC doesn't check those boxes. But she does come across as a whiner and a gotcha person. And I don't think that gets you where you want to be. I think that the metaphor is, Barack Obama had this. In a way, Hillary Clinton was a real

insider, but she kind of had Spanberger has it. Mikey Sherrill has it, okay, especially with their military backgrounds. They throw a punch, okay? I'm not telling you to take the punch. I'm not telling you to duck. What happens in the movie when it's a real tough man or woman? somebody throws the punch, what do they do? They catch it. Yeah. And I could see Mikey Sherrill, Governor Sherrill or Governor Spanberger, someone throws a punch, and they catch it. And they say, enough.

I am obviously stronger. I am obviously able to just negate what you did. But I am not you. And I think that that is so important. And Obama was so good at that. Clinton was so good at that. And you got to remember that. One of the things that hurt Biden was angry old man, I'll take him in the back.

I'll smack him around. Harsh talk, bully talk. Shut up. If you're going to do it, do it. But Democrats can be that. Mario Cuomo was that. Jesse Jackson was that. You know what's going to help that is having people who have that cultural cachet in the way that Joe Biden didn't.

Because, you know, to your point, he was too old to be. able to have these arguments effectively. Look, I actually do think that AOC is a really, really, really effective communicator because she is of the generation that she speaks to. Yeah, she's only 36. Yeah, yeah. I mean, she's basically my age. And so I think that when you have, look, you can have people saying the right thing,

but they're not, there's only so much juice that Chuck Schumer is going to have when he tries to deliver a message because it's Chuck Schumer. He's got to go. You got to get rid of him. You have to get rid of him. You have to. Otherwise, you're going to wind up blowing the filibuster. Because that's going to be the proxy for having leadership on that side is you're going to say, oh, it's got to go.

Let's just win it and just pass everything. Yeah, but then you're going to be in the minority and you're going to get fucked. You know, the filibuster, I used to be against it. I think it's completely undemocratic. But we're not good enough for simple majority. You know how much crazy shit would happen if we had a 50 plus one in the Senate? Yeah. You and I might be in prison right now.

If they had a 50 plus one. I mean, for right now, 50 plus more in the Senate right now, yes. But look, I've been a long advocate of eliminating the filibuster, and I wouldn't stop now. Look, I think that when you have these messages being conveyed by people who actually have some cultural cachet as Obama did, as AOC does, as Chris Murphy do, and these people who are of the, as Zormandani does, like, these people are of the generation that they speak to,

And their words carry so much weight, so much more weight than somebody who, yes, does feel like an old man yelling at clouds, right? And so I think that just by virtue of new messengers coming in, who understand the technology, who are more dynamic in how they can communicate with people, that is going to solve a lot of the problems that we're contending with.

Because right now, when you have our existing officials, most of our existing officials talking, it's like a tree falling in the woods, right? Because they don't have platforms. Nobody wants to listen to somebody who's 85 years old getting on a front-facing camera who doesn't know what the fuck they're doing, doesn't know where to look on the screen

and clearly is doing it because they've been prodded into doing it by their staffer. That problem is going to fix itself when we have people who are younger and more dynamic and who are of this generation who fill the ranks of these people who are too old to be serving right now. I don't disagree.

I'm more of about a stage than age. I learn this lesson the hard way. betting against Regis Philbin when he did Who Wants to be a Millionaire and it wound up being five nights a week because sure he was old

but he was cool because he was more outsider than insider and that's the key outsider versus insider Now I have a generational bias also I don't want

one of you punk motherfuckers as president I don't I don't want some 30 nothing who's never run anything real and has a lot of big ideas that they've never tested I want my generation

Generation X somewhere between 45 and 60. They're at the height of their powers. They're not going to beat you in a sprint, but they're at the height of their powers. They've run things. They've parented. They've lived. They've bought. They understand purchasing power because purchasing power is everything in the midterms and in the general election. Unless you let yourselves get hoodwinked, purchasing power is everything. Restoring the balance between what people are paid and what they produce. That is the existence. That is the battle in America.

And whoever seizes on that and gets the people behind them wins, not the party, the people. Well, amen. And look, we should be so lucky to be able to have a conversation like its politics as usual as we head toward 2028

and figure out who the standard bear is going to be with the Democratic Party. We've got a lot of work to do between now and then on two different fronts, on making sure that midterms go smoothly and on making sure that democracy is shored up enough

so that we have free and fair elections against an administration, you know, that that is trying to seize voter rolls and put boots on the ground and all of these different swing states and, you know, engage in whatever nefarious behavior they think is going to help them in the upcoming election. So a lot of work to be done. But look, I think that hearing from Obama to kind of bookend this is a good reminder that there is still a formula for optimism and hopefully a lot of people in this party sees on the blueprint that he's laid down as we figure out who that is. Look, he's the perfect formula.

I mean, just looking at the guy, right? Trump calls him Barack Hussein Obama. But that mattered, not because we're ready for a Muslim president, because I don't have any problem with Muslims any more than Jews or Christians or Buddhists, really. It's Islamists. They're trying to make him like Saddam Hussein. So he had to deal with that. He was half black, half white.

That is the conflict in America. He was from Hawaii. He had been a drug addict. He was more outside than inside. Even his politics, he came into it through community organizing in Illinois, and that balanced out the Harvard Law School, editor of the Law Review. So he was the inside-outside game. Even his basketball game was inside outside.

That cat was always dribbling into the paint and taking a step back and shooting. And that's what you have to remember. The candidate that you pick has to. to be more outside than inside, at least in terms of feel. You don't remember. Why did Clinton go on MTV with Tabitha Soren? Because he was afraid that would beat him in 1988, would beat him again in 92, which was what? This is another white guy governor from the South. Maybe a cracker. Maybe a bigot. And he wanted to show people, no, no, no, no. You got the wrong guy. I'm not that guy. I know I'm Arkansas. But you don't know me.

I wear boxers, not briefs. I play the saxophone. That's why he did it. Everybody told him not to do it. But he did it because he wanted to show I'm not one of them. Outside, inside balance. I know how to do it, but I'm not from there. I'm not one of them.

That's the key. It's just not easy to find it. Yeah, well, from your lips to God's ears. That's why Barack Obama's blowing up everybody's feed. Brian Tyler Cohen showed a few things in that. I'll end on this. One, BTC was ready. Two, BTC had good rapport with Obama.

I've interviewed him. I've been around him. He was happy talking to you. That is not always the case. Third, he recognized in you that you are a real one. You are a soldier in the army of the left and you believe in it. And you're there for the right reasons. And I loved the success that came with it.

You deserve it and I was happy for you. I appreciate that. Thanks, Chris. Are you kidding me? Love talking to you. Love going back and forth about these things. You're always welcome anywhere I am, and I wish you continued success, brother.

Thanks, man. And I mean it. Congratulations to BTC, getting that big interview with Obama, making news, making news in the right ways, showing what a vacuum, what a desperation for leadership there is, and not just within the Democratic Party,

just to be able to listen to somebody where you don't have to cover your eyes in your ears half the time. We've gotten to a bad place. And you recognize that when you're served up something better. You can forget you're eating Alpo until somebody gives you a steak. And then you remember, things can be better. Does that mean Obama was perfect?

Hell no. Of course not. No one is. Everyone has problems. You don't get Trump without Obama. And that's not just about race. It's about politics and perception. But it was really interesting to hear why Brian.

did it, how it resonated, what it means, and where his head is as a very, very vital member of shaping what the Democratic Party will be about in the midterms and in the general. And we did it, even though we don't agree why. Because as an independent, I'm about critical thinking and fairness and being open because I don't need one side to be worse. I'm different. That's why we're selling all the merch, for you to extend your brand and your message just like these two parties do, to say, no, no, I wear my independence. I'm a free agent. I'm listening to you, but I'm not just going to capitulate.

I'm not going to give my head to you. You're going to have to earn it. So check out the merch, subscribe and follow. Appreciate you. See you in SXM, SiriusXM Radio, Channel 124, POTUS in the morning, 7 and 9 Eastern. That's a feedback mechanism. We're going to do lots of phone calls there. You want to talk to me.

It's a good place to get me. Go to YouTube. Subscribe. You can get this podcast ad free. You can get different levels of access to me in groups, even one-on-one negotiable, but we can do it. And News Nation 8P and midnight every week, day, night. My friends, the challenges are real. Let's get after it.

I'm Dr. Christina Chen, a geriatrician at Mayo Clinic, and host of Aging Forward, a podcast highlighting unique topics in geriatric medicine and the science of healthy aging, helping all of us live longer and fuller lives. Whether you're a caregiver for someone or learning how to care for your own health, we're here to help you feel informed, inspired, and empowered. Mayo Clinics Aging Forward, new episodes every other week, wherever you get your podcasts.