'We've annoyed the average American': Obama issues a warning — and a solution

In stand-up comedian Marc Maron's final podcast, former President Barack Obama said that, while President Donald Trump is testing American insitutions to take a stand for the "nation's founding principles and values," Americans need to be jolted out of their complacency, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Obama told Maron that not voting at all has its consequences, and Americans are starting to feel those and hopefully they will cause them to be "shaken out of their complacency."

"If you are a Hispanic man and you’re frustrated about inflation, and so you decided, ah, you know what, all that rhetoric about Trump doesn’t matter. ‘I’m just mad about inflation,’” Obama said on Maron's podcast.

“And now your sons are being stopped in L.A. because they look Latino and maybe without the ability to call anybody, might just be locked up, well, that’s a test.”

But the former president didn't place all the blame on Trump and the Republicans. He says Democrats have to modify their messaging to fight back.

“We’ve annoyed the average American into fascism,” Obama told Maron, “You can’t just be a scold all the time.“You can’t constantly lecture people without acknowledging that you’ve got some blind spots too, and that life’s messy."

President Obama says to lose the "holier than thou" language in dealing with those with whom they disagree.

"Saying, ‘Right, I’ve got some core convictions [and] beliefs that I’m not going to compromise. But I’m also not going to assert that I am so righteous and so pure and so insightful that there’s not the possibility that maybe I’m wrong on this, or that other people, if they don’t say things exactly the way I say them or see things exactly the way I do, that somehow they’re bad people,’” he said.