Former President Barack Obama criticized President Donald Trump’s approach to urban crime during a podcast interview with comedian Marc Maron, saying recent actions by the administration reflect “not our idea of America.” Speaking on Maron’s podcast, Obama said, “We don’t want masked folks with rifles and machine guns patrolling our streets. We want cops on the beat who know the neighborhood and the kids around, and that’s how we keep the peace around here.”

He also warned against what he described as politicization within the justice system. “We don’t want kangaroo courts and trumped up charges. That’s what happens in other places that we used to scold for doing that,” Obama said. “We want our court system and our Justice Department and our prosecutors and our FBI to be just playing things straight and looking at the facts and not meddling in politics the way we’ve seen lately.” Obama argued that long-standing legal norms and guardrails have been eroded in recent months. “We have blown through, just in the last six months, a whole range of not simply assumptions, but rules and laws and practices that were put in place to ensure that nobody is above the law and that we don’t use the federal government to simply reward our friends and punish our enemies,” he said.

He compared the current moment to prior periods of political tension in American history, including the McCarthy era, and said public engagement is necessary.

“What’s required in these situations is a few folks standing up and giving courage to other folks,” Obama said. “And then more people stand up and kind of go, yeah, no, that’s not who we are.”