{"id":25377,"date":"2026-05-06T19:39:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T19:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/25377\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T19:39:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T19:39:15","slug":"obama-talks-trump-mamdani-aliens-and-more-in-colbert-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/25377\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Talks Trump, Mamdani, Aliens and More in Colbert Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late-night talk shows are facing pressure from President Trump and the Federal Communications Commission, who accuse them of tilting left in their jokes and guests. But that did not stop Stephen Colbert from airing an interview with former President Barack Obama on Tuesday night as Mr. Colbert\u2019s canceled CBS show heads toward its final episode this month<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mr. Obama used the interview to go after Mr. Trump, but never mentioned him by name. He urged Democrats to avoid sounding like academics when talking to voters. And he talked about aliens.<\/p>\n

Here are five notable moments from Mr. Colbert\u2019s interview<\/a> with Mr. Obama<\/a>, which was filmed in early April at Mr. Obama\u2019s soon-to-open presidential center on the South Side of Chicago and aired on \u201cThe Late Show With Stephen Colbert.\u201d (A White House spokesman, Davis Ingle, responded to the interview by issuing a statement insulting Mr. Obama and Mr. Colbert, saying, \u201cOnly pathetic trainwrecks like Stephen Colbert would waste their time interviewing one of the worst presidents in history.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Running for president? \u2018The bar has changed.\u2019<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump did not come up by name in the interview, but Mr. Obama made a series of not-so-subtle critiques of the current president and his administration. After Mr. Colbert jokingly raised the possibility of running for president, Mr. Obama suggested it was not so ridiculous for the comic to run for the White House.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bar has changed,\u201d Mr. Obama said, holding back laughter. \u201cLet me put it this way: I think that you could perform significantly better than some folks that we\u2019ve seen. I have great confidence in that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Colbert asked, \u201cIs that an endorsement?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not,\u201d Mr. Obama said.<\/p>\n

Advice for Democrats: Speak in \u2018plain English\u2019<\/p>\n

At a moment when many Democrats are concerned that their party lacks leadership and is too divided to stand up effectively to the Trump administration, Mr. Obama expressed confidence that most Democrats remained united on core principles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not as worried about this so-called rift,\u201d Mr. Obama told Mr. Colbert.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a bunch of things that we agree on,\u201d Mr. Obama said. \u201cIt\u2019s really more of a question of, All right, what are the specific things that we have to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

The former president said he was more focused on how his party was communicating with voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019m more interested in for Democrats is: Do you know how to just talk to regular people like we\u2019re not in a college seminar,\u201d Mr. Obama said. \u201cCan you talk plain English to folks?\u201d<\/p>\n

Mamdani and the practice of no \u2018gobbledygook\u2019<\/p>\n

Mr. Obama pointed to Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York, a democratic socialist whose politics are far to the left of the former president but whom Mr. Obama has embraced<\/a>, describing him as an effective communicator. He said successful Democrats would, like Mr. Mamdani, not speak in \u201cgobbledygook.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Obama called Mr. Mamdani \u201can extraordinary talent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Justice Department concerns<\/p>\n

Mr. Obama also appeared to lay out some specific concerns about Mr. Trump\u2019s second term.<\/p>\n

Asked by Mr. Colbert what powers he did not believe a U.S. president should have, Mr. Obama said that the Justice Department should remain independent from the White House and not be used as a tool to go after foes.<\/p>\n

The country\u2019s democracy can \u201csurvive a lot,\u201d the former president said, but \u201cwe can\u2019t overcome the politicization of the criminal justice system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without directly raising Mr. Trump, who has used the Justice Department<\/a> to target his perceived enemies during his second term, Mr. Obama said that the attorney general must be able to operate independently from the whims of a president.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea is that the attorney general is the people\u2019s lawyer,\u201d Mr. Obama said. \u201cIt\u2019s not the president\u2019s consigliere.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former president also said it is important that presidents \u201cdon\u2019t politicize our military.\u201d And he added that presidents should not have a \u201cbunch of side hustles.\u201d Mr. Trump has merged<\/a> partisan politics with his role as commander in chief, and his family and allies have retained or built stakes<\/a> in industries that the government oversees.<\/p>\n

An addendum \u2026 on aliens<\/p>\n

Pressed by Mr. Colbert on whether the government is concealing secrets about extraterrestrial life, a chuckling Mr. Obama insisted that it was not.<\/p>\n

Mr. Obama, who recently generated headlines by telling the podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen<\/a> that he believed aliens were \u201creal,\u201d told Mr. Colbert that his position was not based on any secret government intelligence. If there were any such government secrets, the former president said, \u201cIt would leak.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things you learn as president is government is terrible at keeping secrets,\u201d Mr. Obama said. He added: \u201cIf there were aliens, or alien spaceships, or anything under the control of the United States government that we knew about, seen, photographs, what have you, I promise you, some guy guarding the installation would have taken a selfie with one of the aliens and sent it to his girlfriend.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late-night talk shows are facing pressure from President Trump and the Federal Communications Commission, who accuse them of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[12573,15236,6238,8,9,12572,15237,7,1071,11259],"class_list":{"0":"post-25377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-barack","9":"tag-colbert","10":"tag-donald-j","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-obama","14":"tag-stephen","15":"tag-top-stories","16":"tag-trump","17":"tag-united-states-politics-and-government"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116529329769648321","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}