The New Yorker Radio Hour - Barack Obama in the Trump Era

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

The contributing writer Peter Slevin met with Barack Obama at the new Obama Presidential Center, which opens next month, in Chicago, and asked him the question on a lot of Democrats’ minds: Where is he, and why isn’t he doing more to help the country in a moment of crisis? Slevin shares excerpts from his interview, during which Obama explains the limits of his role, and why he should no longer be the figurehead for his party. Slevin also speaks with David Remnick about why the famously optimistic President has lost some of his confidence in the American prospect. “I would be dishonest if I didn’t acknowledge that,” Obama admitted.  Further reading:  “Barack Obama Considers His Role in the Age of Trump,” by Peter Slevin “Presidents’ Days: From Obama to Trump,” by David Remnick   New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The Obama Presidential Center opens next month on the Chicago Lakeshore. It has the usual replica of the Oval Office and many floors of art installations by some spectacular living artists. But it also describes itself not as a museum, but as a center for civic engagement. Yeah, we've got a storytelling booth. So we want every visitor to go in there and talk about their own lives and what's happening in their communities and what frustrations they have and what changes they think they could bring about. Much like working did back then, except this will be digitally recorded.

Tickets to visit went on sale this week. When Barack Obama left office in January of 2017, his approval ratings were relatively high, and yet he was handing over the reins to envisement. man whose policy and character was in every way a repudiation of what Obama meant to people. Trump promised to undo Obama's accomplishments, nearly every one. He would end the Iran nuclear deal. He would certainly go after Obamacare. And to this day, Trump insults the Obama's in blatantly racist terms. So the question of Barack Obama's legacy is clouded and complicated. Peter Slevin, who lives in Chicago and covers politics for the New Yorker, has reported on Barack Obama's post-presidency in the magazine, and he recently met with the former president.

Peter, we have been talking about Obama for a very long time. I remember very distinctly being in Chicago with you on Election Day in 2008. It's been a long time. And now Obama's in the wilderness. He's an ex-president for quite a while now, and over and over and over again, I would hear, you would hear from all kinds of people, where is Obama? And that, in some way, was the generating question of this piece. Tell me a little bit about that question and why it exists at this late date.

So the world is on fire, as an awful lot of people think. You have Donald Trump's presidency. He's running roughshod over the rule of law. He started a war in Iran. He doesn't seem to be listening to most anyone. The guardrails are down. And the question is, who will lead the opposition? Who could make a difference in leading the country forward into the midterms, into the 2028 election?

And so many people say, well, what about that Barack Obama guy? He seemed to be pretty popular. He seemed to have some ideas. What's he doing exactly? But the where is Obama question has long roots. It began immediately after he left office. And, you know, you saw a guy who, after eight years in office, was suddenly hanging around with Richard Branson and kite surfing or whatever he was doing and having a good long extended vacation, started making money in Netflix. And suddenly you started hearing, this is before the second term, suddenly you started hearing at all kinds of corners, where is Obama, why is Obama?

Why isn't he more in the thick of things? And his answer was always, I can't be a political commentator. It was a traditional response to what the post-presidency is. That's exactly right. He said he wanted to be quiet a little while, as how he put it. He said he would speak up when his values seemed to be challenged. But he really didn't expect Trump, 1.0 or 2.0, to be as bad as it was. he thought he could not exactly coast over the horizon,

but that he could just take a big step back, focus on his family, focus on some projects that he cared about, and learn how to kite surf. Yeah. And pretty quickly, people said, well, wait a minute,

why are you kite surfing and hanging out with rich people when we need you? Now, you've spent time with Obama just recently in Chicago, and one of the things he told you is that if he spent more, time on the in politics, he'd have trouble at home. He said there is genuine tension. That's how he put it, with Michelle Obama, about how involved he is in politics. He said he recognizes how many people are calling on him to ride to the rescue or do even more. And he said, look, my wife, Michelle,

didn't expect this to be happening at this point in our lives. We gave it the office for all those years. It was really hard. There's a scene in the story where she talks about flying away from Washington, D.C. on January 20th, 2017. And she gets on the plane to fly to Palm Springs, well, they'll have the beginnings of a vacation. And she said she sobbed uncontrollably for 30 minutes. She said, this was so hard. These eight years were so hard. There were so much pressure. And, of course, she was always a reluctant recruit to politics. She's never came. for it. And she wanted to get away, and she thought it only fair that her husband get to get away, too. Peter, you wrote a biography of Michelle Obama, an excellent book. Is it your impression that in some

she really disliked the White House years? I think she had very mixed feelings about the White House years. She certainly grew into the role after having a hard time at the beginning. she focused on issues of race and class. She focused on things that she cared about and really used her platform. I remember a moment where she was talking on stage about how first ladies are seeing and how much it's a question of their fashion. And she had bangs at the time. And she said, you know, one hopes that after a while people stop looking at the bangs

and they look at what you're standing in front of. And she felt that she, I think, used her time really well and made a bit of a difference in significant ways, but she was ready to move on. Yeah. She never liked the political part of it. She didn't like the political part of it even when, you know, Barack Obama was in the state Senate here in Illinois.

At one point, I believe, she said, you know, Barack, why are you doing this? It's not noble. No, you started asking the question of where is Obama months ago when you're reporting. And inevitably, when you start doing that, that question gets back to the subject. It gets back to Obama. It gets back to his people.

And you indicate in your piece that that question, whereas Obama, makes him very unhappy. He feels he's doing an awful lot more than any modern president has ever done or been asked to do. And he feels that people actually don't recognize, haven't recognized what it is that he's doing. and he thinks he ought to get some credit for that. The contrast is pretty clear with, for example, George W. Bush. We know that he has very strong feelings about Trump. In the reporting, someone told me of a conversation with George Bush not long ago who had, quote, scathing things to say about Donald Trump.

But he's in Dallas, he's painting, and he is keeping his own counsel, as he said he learned from his parents. Let's listen to what Barack Obama tells you about the question, where is Obama and why isn't he doing more? You brought this up in your conversation with him in Chicago. Let's listen. I understand why people feel that way. Because people aren't looking at me like a historical comparison to other presidents. They don't care of the fact that no other ex-president was the main surrogate for their party.

for four election cycles after they left office. I think the real answer there, A, I'm doing more than you think. And B, I promise you if I was out there every day, you'd be tired of me. I also think, though, that the fact that people want me to, quote, unquote, be doing more is a good sign. There has not been as decided a year. shift in American attitudes as we are making out. Let's take that answer one piece at a time.

I think what he's saying is that the fact that people are asking, where is Obama, where is Obama insofar as they do? Let's not overestimate it. But insofar as they do means that we're in a state of real crisis. But I have to point out, as you do in your piece, that when Donald Trump was elected initially, Obama said that he expected his own achievements only to get rolled back by a measure of about 15%. That was a mistake, wasn't it? He acknowledges that he underestimated the impact of Donald Trump and where Donald Trump would go from there. It's interesting. That day he met with Donald Trump, the traditional post-election meeting in the Oval Office that you reported about in your terrific piece from 2016. I was told that Obama went in to make a bit of a pitch to Trump.

don't give up on the Affordable Care Act. Don't give up on the Dreamers. Definitely do not give up on the Iran nuclear deal. And Trump said, well, you know, I'll consider that. And Obama thought, well, you know, just maybe. I wasn't going to put too much weight on that, but he thought just maybe that was true. And he essentially felt that the center would hold.

You know, as to say, he, like a lot of us, underestimated the damage that Donald Trump could do. And, you know, after he had his final parties at the White House, he went off to Chicago and he gave a speech, his farewell speech. And he talked rather optimistically about how, in very Obama form, we all need to get along. We need to recognize that everybody loves America. We've got to find a way to talk. And essentially, he was saying, it'll be okay. So I asked him about that speech and the message that he delivered in Chicago in January 2017 and whether he had lost some confidence. in the prospect, in the American prospect,

and he said, I would be dishonest if I didn't acknowledge that. A little tinge of, if not despair, that Obama's really lost some faith, at least, in where America is today. Yeah, I mean, Obama's not a despairing guy. We know that about him. Some things are so consistent with him. He's a glass-half-full man.

but the events since then on many fronts shook his confidence in, well, in his confidence. I'm speaking with contributing writer Peter Slevin, who's reporting on Obama's legacy is at New Yorker.com and part of the recent issue on America at 250 years. Our conversation continues in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Remnick. In The New Yorker this week, we published a long piece of reporting by Peter Slevin about Barack Obama and his legacy in the age of Donald Trump. And I've been speaking today with Peter Slevin about that reporting. Peter spoke with the former president and dozens of people around him. And he tended to start with this question. If Obama remains one of the most popular politicians in this country and the Democrats are failing to mount an effective opposition to the Trump presidency, what exactly are Obama's obligations? What exactly can he do

almost a decade after leaving the White House? We'll continue our conversation now. How does Obama's day-to-day life compared to other presidents? Is there really a typical model for an ex-president? Is Obama doing more than others had in their years out of office? I mean, a lot of people will point to Jimmy Carter

and say, well, he was the ultimate idealist and to such a degree that he was probably a better ex-president than he was a president. And then you have somebody like George W. Bush, who's a kind of invisible man as an ex-president. He's not making any mark at all. It's striking that Obama is younger than a lot of former ex-presidents. You know, he was elected when he was 47 years old. He's only 64 now turning 65.

And he does enjoy his time away from the White House. He used to joke even before he left the White House that the best job in the country is ex-price. president. So there's a certain reveling in that leisure time. But at the same time, he has a whole raft of projects that he has embarked upon that do seem distinctive, that are different from certainly any recent ex-president. He is mentoring other people. He got deeply involved in the redistricting fights in California and Virginia, where he, in fact, became the face of the Democratic move to carve out. more Democratic seats in those two states after Donald Trump called Greg Abbott in Texas last summer and said,

hey, give me five more Republican seats in Texas. And of course, he plays a lot of golf. He plays a hell of a lot of golf. But he also, in fairness, when election time comes around, he throws himself into it. Why does any of this matter? Why does an ex-presidency matter at all? In fact, are we being sentimental here? You know, his variety of center-left liberalism, I think probably would strike a lot of young people in the Democratic Party as something of the past and may not be an answer for a lot of people about what's necessary now.

I think that's right. And these are questions that he asks himself. He himself doesn't think that he's necessarily the right avatar for the party. He relishes the role of being an elder, of mentoring younger leader, And yet at this moment, there is this not insignificant sense of desperation on the left and among Democrats for a leader, for momentum and even a movement to drive past Trump and Trumpism in the MAGA world. And Obama, as we learned in the reporting, is seen as someone who can still mobilize an awful lot of people.

So in your interview, Obama pushes back on the idea that he could. somehow be the savior for the Democratic Party. First of all, he's not positioning, but Constitution tells me he can't run for president again. And he clearly doesn't want to be. What I strongly believe is that my highest and best use now is to help find the next set of leaders who are going to move us forward. And part of it is because I think the very best leaders can tap into these the geist of the moment. There's a element of lived experience. I can understand things intellectually

that I haven't gone through. When I was running, I could talk about student loans that Michelle and I had because I just paid them off. We could talk about Michelle's challenges when I was on the road and we're thinking about child care. And some of those things still exist, but...

But you sort of feel like you're the wrong person for the moment. Generationally, you get rooted in what you went through. And so the freshness with which you can speak to some of these issues I think is important. Look, you know, you take somebody like a mom down there. Who I gather you still talk to something. Yeah. His authenticity and his authenticity and and facility in communicating digitally is very much a part of the fact that he's 33, maybe he's 34 now. That's really an interesting moment because I think of Mamdani's ideological views as to the left of Obama. and yet here Obama went out of his way to name-check him singularly in his conversation with you.

What did you think of that moment, Peter? It's striking in two ways. He sees Mamdani as an extraordinary communicator. He's able to connect. We all remember those fabulous Instagram posts and those little short videos, the halal guys, the taxi guys, out at the airport, LaGuardia and so on. He's charming and he's effective as a communicator in a way that maybe echoes Obama and his great success, particularly in the 2008 campaign, which was in some ways the first digital campaign.

But the other thing is this point of Obama's that there really does need to be a new generation. And he said in the interview that this next generation of leaders is going to have to, as he put it, pretty substantially reform, revise, refresh, update our institutions so that they can work in this new age. And he feels that this next generation is the best position to do that. What does that mean? What it means is moving on past maybe sort of a more establishment view of where we are as a country. And it means not just going back to, let's say, pre-Maga, but moving on maybe more assertively to find ways that where institutions, particularly government, something Obama cares about, is connecting far better

with people, what they need, what it can do for them. You talked to Obama at his new presidential center on the south side of Chicago before it opened. And he sees this as some sort of campus to help develop new leaders, a kind of training site almost as well as a tourist attraction. And part of that is a museum there of American history. It's not just about Obama and his career in politics.

Let's listen to Obama describe what the place is all about. Well, I want to start with the Declaration Independence. and the abolitionist movement and the suffragist movement. One of the things that I spend a lot of time doing, working with younger leaders, is refuting the notion that things have never been worse. I said, no, no, you know what? Civil War, really bad. Jim Crow, tough.

And I say that not to try to pull rank on them, but rather to pull them out of any kind of sense of hopelessness about the situation. So that gets to the theme of what we were discussing earlier, but also I'd love to know what your view of that presidential center was. What's the experience like to be there? It's really striking. It is a museum in several different levels, and I asked him, well, why doesn't the story of the museum start on August 4th,

1961, when you were born? And he said, well, because of where I came from. and because of, he wants to express this view that he has that seems unchanged, that the road to progress is long and it's jagged and it's messy and there are setbacks, but it's going to be okay. And so what he does is he, in the museum, he tries to create an experience where visitors understand history at a time when the Trump administration is supposedly restoring truth and sanity to American history, as they put it, and carries the visitor through to his unlikely election as president and then beyond,

and basically asks what can I the visitor do to make a difference? Something really curious. Donald Trump clearly has terrible amnest about Obama and has for a long time since the, the birther conspiracy theory, and that was many years ago. Recently, he posted a video of the Obama's depicted as apes. He's posted other pretty terrible videos and statements about the Obamas. He constantly refers to him as Barack Hussein Obama to emphasize what in his view is his otherness. What is Obama willing to say about things like these videos and about Trump on a personal level?

He said it bugs him when people go after his wife, his kids. But as far as he's concerned, he's not particularly bothered by it. He's gotten used to it. At the same time, though, I was talking with Ben Rhodes, who was his former deputy national security advisor and still does some work with Obama. And he said, oh, yeah, there are times in the wee hours when the former president will send off an email about what Rhodes called some dumbass thing Donald Trump has just done. So it does irritate him. It does. And inevitably.

I mean, he's seeing Donald Trump run roughshod over all kinds of things that are really important to Barack Obama, that he didn't really expect to be losing. Some ex-presidents like Jimmy Carter, and he's a rarity, have thrown themselves completely into public service and money has nothing to do with their existence after the White House. some people have taken a different route. Al Gore, who is vice president, has made a fortune. He's not alone. Tell me about Barack Obama and money. Well,

they don't have to worry where their next meals come in from. They have made a whole bunch of money. I mean, their original book deal, for the two of them, seemed extraordinary at the time. A $65 million advance. Well, they have way out-earned that advance. They're reaping millions. more above that even.

I mean, Michelle Obama's first book Becoming sold more than 17 million copies, and between them, they have produced a number of other bestsellers. They've bought property in Martha's Vineyard, they have a beautiful house in Kalorama, in Washington, D.C. They have a property on the water in Hawaii.

They have these pet projects that make them, I think, pretty happy, including in Hollywood, and Michelle Obama has a very popular podcast, IMO. She even says herself, I really feel fully in myself in my 60s now. Do they see their post-White House lives in precisely the same way, Michelle and Barack Obama? Well, I think one way we know they see it differently is that he is involved in politics more than he would prefer, as he told me, and he does feel a need to get out on the campaign trail.

Whereas Michelle has moved away from politics. She never cared for it. She's not out on the campaign trail, though she did give a couple of memorable speeches at the Democratic National Convention since they left. It seems to me, Peter, in conclusion, really, that the Obamas would like to see Donald Trump and the Trump era and not only for political reasons

and for the sake of the country, but maybe for their own lives. They would love to step back and love to see Donald Trump be gone and be able to move on. with the projects that he's carved out. Peter Slevin, thanks so much. Thank you, David. Great pleasure. The Obama Presidential Center

opens in Chicago next month. Peter Slevin is a professor in the Journalism School of Northwestern University, and you can find his reporting on Obama's legacy at New Yorker.com. You can also subscribe

to the New Yorker there as well. New Yorker.com. I'm David Remnick, and that's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Next week, Pulitzer Prize winning historian Jill Lepore will join us to weigh in on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

The idea that we're sitting around waiting for the occupant of the White House to tell us what American history means, you know, that's the thing where you just kind of want to walk into traffic. I hope you'll join us. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters,

Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Summer. With guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Gwan, and Alejandra Deccett. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.