Barack Obama planned to keep his distance from politics after leaving office—until Democrats’ failure to hit Trump forced him off the sidelines.

“I actually found myself drawn back into day-to-day politics or commentary more than I had wanted to be,” Obama told Marc Maron on the final episode of Maron’s WTF podcast Monday, describing the “weird situation” that compelled him to speak out against Trump. “I leave office and there’s no obvious person who’s now the shadow prime minister, the leader of the party for the Democrats.”

“There were a lot of terrific people who were doing good work, but, you know, we have this weird situation where you don’t have a designated person who’s speaking on behalf of the whole party.”

“I thought I was gonna be able to remove myself more from being out the

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