Former President Barack Obama is calling out Vice President JD Vance for his nativist, anti-immigrant rhetoric — but also offered a tiny sliver of hope.

Speaking with author Malcolm Gladwell for a podcast interview Thursday, Obama noted that “we’ve been having the same arguments” about who should be considered a “real” American since the end of the Civil War.

He then pointed out the irony of Vance spreading white nationalist-coded rhetoric about birthright citizenship while married to the daughter of Indian immigrants.

“At least one of our major parties has been captured by politics that is not that subtle about suggesting that ‘We the people’ means a certain kind of people,” Obama noted to Gladwell.

“When you have the vice president — the current vice president — making a speech that is basically a blood-and-soil version of ‘We the people,’ that it matters who your parents were, how long they’ve been here, despite him being married to… a daughter of an immigrant himself, that echoes, then, ideas about who can be a citizen, who belongs, who gets to make decisions.”

It’s unclear which of Vance’s speeches Obama was referring to, but while speaking to a conservative think tank last year, the vice president heavily implied that real Americans are, well… a particular sort of people.

“Social bonds form among people who have something in common. They share the same neighborhood. They share the same church. They send their kids to the same school. And what we’re doing is recognizing that if you stop importing millions of foreigners into the country, you allow that social cohesion to form naturally,’” Vance said.

Griping about the “modern left,” he continued: “I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong.”

Vance later added, “America is not just an idea. We’re a particular place, with a particular people, and a particular set of beliefs and way of life.”

Obama’s point about “who your parents were, how long they’ve been here” was also echoed in Vance’s acceptance speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention, in which he romanticized his own heritage while talking about the people who live near his “ancestral home” in Eastern Kentucky.

Vance described them as “good,” “very hardworking people” who would “give you the shirt off their back even if they can’t afford enough to eat.”

“And our media calls them privileged and looks down on them,” Vance said. “But they love this country, not only because it’s a good idea, but because in their bones they know that this is their home, and it will be their children’s home, and they would die fighting to protect it. That is the source of America’s greatness.”

In response to Obama’s comment about JD and Usha Vance, Gladwell made a slightly optimistic, if cynical, point.

“A hundred years ago, a vice president could not stand up and make a nativist argument if he was married to the daughter of an Indian immigrant — but today he can,” Gladwell said. “So, we’ve moved on from malice to hypocrisy — that’s progress!”

Obama laughed in response.

“Listen, hypocrisy is progress,” he agreed. “Because it means that… you feel guilty enough to either lie to yourself or others. And that is better than not even thinking about the idea that maybe you’re doing something wrong.”