Former President Barack Obama took to scolding Hispanic voters on a podcast episode with Marc Maron, which was released on Monday, for supporting Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election over inflation concerns.
The former president said the country and its progressive wing are being tested currently.
"It was easy, I think, to say, well, yeah, I'm a progressive. But it didn't really cost us anything," Obama said.
"We could take positions on things that we thought were correct, but they were never really tested," he continued. "We're being tested right now. I think people, and that includes young people, understand there are consequences to the choices that we're making. If you decide not to vote, that's a consequence. If you are a Hispanic man, and you're frustrated about inflation and so you decided, eh, you know what, all that rhetoric about Trump doesn't matter, I'm just mad about inflation. And now, your sons are being stopped in LA because they look Latino. That's a test."
A test progressives have failed recently. Apparently, it has been difficult to learn that very few people care at all about fringe social issues, something like "unconscious bias" or "indigenous land," if they are struggling to feed their family and save money in their day-to-day life. All issues President Trump vowed to fix during his campaign.
"There's some clarity that's coming about right now that I wish it'd be great if we weren't tested this way, but you know what, we probably need to be shaken out of our complacency anyway," he added.
Former President Obama made similar remarks in June, during a conversation with historian Heather Cox Richardson. He had argued that liberals "felt comfortable in their righteousness" during his presidency because their views were never challenged. "You could be as progressive and socially conscious as you wanted, and you did not have to pay a price," he said at the time.
"You could still make a lot of money. You could still hang out in Aspen and Milan and travel and have a house in the Hamptons and still think of yourself as a progressive," Obama said. "We now have a situation in which all of us are going to be tested in some way, and we are going to have to decide what our commitments will be."
"You might lose some of your donors if you’re a university and if you’re a law firm, your billings might drop a little bit, which means you cannot remodel that kitchen in your house in the Hamptons this summer," he continued.