Los Angeles, California - Former President Barack Obama used an appearance on a podcast to slam businesses, colleges and law firms for capitulating to his successor, Donald Trump.

Obama told comedian Marc Maron, host of the WTF podcast, that "we all have this capacity... to take a stand."

He demanded a different approach to pressures being exerted by the Trump administration.

"We're not going to be bullied into saying that we can only hire people or promote people based on some criteria that's been cooked up by Stephen Miller," Obama said, according to an advance transcript obtained by CNN.

"We're not at the stage where you have to be like Nelson Mandela and be in a 10-by-12 jail cell for 27 years and break rocks."

Obama's appearance marked Maron's final-ever episode of WTF, which launched in 2009 and ran for over 1,600 episodes.

The Trump administration has repeatedly targeted his perceived political and ideological enemies.

In September, talk show host Jimmy Kimmel was briefly taken off-air after Trump's FCC Chairman Brendan Carr hinted at withdrawing ABC's broadcasting license over the comedian comments in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder.

Institutions like Harvard University have faced increasing pressure to submit to government control and massive funding cuts, while Trump has even tried to ban law firms that represented his political foes from federal buildings, effectively removing their access to courtrooms.