Inside 2024 - Preview | Favreau + Tommy Talk Election Night

Hey there, I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm Tommy Vitor.

The Pod Save America team is on holiday break, so today we're bringing you a special sneak peek of our new subscriber podcast, Inside 2024. Just one more thing to be thankful for.
On holiday. Hello.
On holiday. Each monthly episode of Inside 2024 will feature a rotating cast of former White House staffers spilling their campaign trail stories and insights as we look ahead to the 2024 election cycle.

In this episode, John and I will take you through

one of the most stressful, dramatic,

sometimes terrible days of the year, Election Day.

What you're about to hear is just part of the episode.

The whole episode and future episodes of Inside 2024

are available to our Friends of the Pod community.

If you're interested in getting access

to more great Crooked content, head over to crooked.com slash friends to learn more and sign up. Enjoy.
Pokemon go to the polls. Yes, we can.
We can now project that former Vice President Joe Biden has been elected President of the United States. We did it.
We did it, Joe. Welcome to Inside 2024, Cricket's new podcast made just for our Friends of the Pod subscribers.
Every month, this show will feature your favorite campaign and political experts, and sometimes us, who will, we're going to help you make sense of it all. We're going to talk about candidates doing debate prep.
We're gonna talk about what it's like to write convention speeches, the fun times on the campaign trail, what's annoying, what's terrifying. It's going to be great.
We're going to have lots of fun stories. Yeah, the copy says they're never before told stories.
I would say they're stories that haven't been told into a microphone, probably for good reason. But you know what? For you, the subscribers, we're going to cough it up.
Anything for content, Tommy. All the good stuff.
As you can hear, I'm here with my buddy, Tommy. Also, we both were on the Obama campaign, so we're going to talk about that.
And also here, one of our favorite Crooked Media producers who's going to be moderating these discussions, Caroline Reston. What's up? Are you a Randy Cohen? That's my dream.
I want to start today at the end and talk about election day. And I thought that was a really great place to start because, you know, this show is going to get into the nitty gritty of what it's like to be on a campaign.
But I feel like our listeners, and honestly, we need to be reminded of what's at stake, what we're fighting for, and remember the amazing glory it is to win and the gut-wrenching feeling of losing. When I mentioned this topic to you guys.
You both had like very skeptic, nervous, stressed out feelings about it. So when you hear about election day, what are the emotions that stir up for both of you? Well, the thing about election days that is weird for people who do what we did, which is communications work, is that there's nothing to do.
You just sit around and you stress out and you read exit polls and you follow the news and you vote. But like mostly you're just hurry up and waiting.
Now it's different for the field team because they're out, they're doing a huge GOTV effort. They're knocking on doors.
Yeah. You asked what election day is like and the anxiety is the first word that comes to mind.
In fact, like so much anxiety that you just saying election day, like I had the feeling again of like, oh shit, it's here. Because first of all, there's nothing to do on election day.
Like I said, if you do the work that we do. And so you're just like, but you have to go to work and you're sitting around and it's like everyone's asking everyone else, you hearing anything? You hearing anything? You got any reports? How about early vote reports? How about reports from early voting in precincts? And this, it just goes on and on and on and on.
The first exit polls were released just a short time ago. The initial survey shows the election.
These early exit poll results are based on voter interviews before election. So if you're in the White House and you're watching those numbers right now, what does it tell you and what do you do? Some brutal numbers for President Biden right there, Dan.
And like none of the information is super helpful or very illuminating about like what the final tally is because not everyone has fucking voted yet. But it does not stop you from asking people what you've heard.
Josh Earnest said that looking at exit polls is like hooking up with your ex. You know you shouldn't do it.
You do it anyway. You feel terrible afterwards.
And it's just sort of like this awful ritual that you're doomed to repeat. On election day, where, what is like a day in the life? Like you're waking up where, obviously, I would have been like, I was asleep the whole time.
Honestly, that would have been preferable. Where are the staffers? Where is the candidate? Like, so in 2008, you guys were in Chicago.
That's where Obama was too. But were you guys in the office with him for the full day? We were in the office.
Tommy and I were in the office. He was not in the office.
Well, he voted. Yeah, he was home and then he voted.
Didn't Bill Ayers come to his... So, this is the funniest part.
So, Jen Psaki is with the press pool. They're all waiting to watch Obama go in and vote.
This guy named Bill Ayers shows up. Bill Ayers was a huge point of controversy in this election because he was part of an organization called The Weather Underground back in the day.
We have a great podcast here at Crooked Media called Mother Country Radicals. That's about this.
Domestic terrorist group. Yeah.
Blew shit up, right? And they had a relationship. For the greater good.
Debatable. So anyway, moving forward.
So they knew each other back in the day. They like, were socially friends at the University of Chicago.
Some might say they were palling around. Yeah, palling around terrorists, as Sarah Palin famously said.
So he shows up, and that was like the big brouhaha of the day, is Saki emailing and being like, well, funny story, Bill Ayers is here. Was that an accident? Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, shit.
Yeah. But we, as far as I remember, just like sat in that office and were just like refreshing news websites from like 5 a.m.
until they called it.

So you're saying you're mostly doing nothing except for reading exit polls that may or may not confirm what you don't or don't want to hear. Correct.
You're gossiping. You're just gossiping.
That's a much better analogy. It's just gossiping, which sounds honestly very fun.
So, okay, Fabs, you were a speechwriter. Where in the timeline have you written a concession or what's the other word oh no victory speech i'm like we had three speeches you have three what's the other one i don't know too close inconclusive yeah inconclusive um i didn't forgot you guys did that that sucks yeah there's a lot of um different watch veep yes you know uh selena meyer's best friend who's that's a good question.
I mean, I can see how it can go one way, but what if it went the other way? Do you remember her? Yes. Rebecca? She was so annoying.
That's what I imagine that's speeches. And really models like a candidate friend quite well, by the way.
Yeah, 100%. So are there any times during that day where you're editing speeches based off of what's happening? How does that process work? Are you on the phone with Obama? Are you working with your team? Like, how does that work? So maybe a week before Election Day, we started to write the drafts of the election night speeches.
Now, you guys may argue with me on this, but again, I'm just trying to give a little bit of a... I want this to be pocketless, but I want a little bit of a flavor of forward-looking stuff.
And the way it went was I took the lead on the victory speech. I think Sarah Hurwitz wrote, who was one of our speechwriters.

She had been Hillary Clinton's speechwriter.

Then we hired her.

And then she came with us to the White House and became Michelle Obama's speechwriter.

She's a fantastic speechwriter.

She took the lead on the concession speech.

And then I forget who did the too-close-to-call speech, but that was similar to the—

Is that just a short one?

It was a very short one, yeah. It was like, we're excited about the results.
We still got to wait for all the votes to be counted we'll talk to you tomorrow kind of thing um and so we had all the speeches done i'd sent obama had them like days before the election on election day but he was like i don't want to edit i don't want to jinx anything and i'm like too nervous everyone's so superstitious everyone's so. So no one gave us edits.
So Obama did not give me edits to the victory speech until it seemed like we won Ohio and he won the presidency. And then he called with just a couple edits.
Okay. Yeah.
So we actually have a clip from that moment. And so what you're about to hear is from the documentary by the people and and it's Obama calling Favreau with a few last-minute edits.

Oh, and one paragraph up, Axe had one edit, when it says there will be setbacks and false starts.

He has, there are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president, and we know that government can't solve every problem.

Okay.

Who gets say over that speech?

And why did I see you change the word that to those? Are those the important edits you're doing? Yeah. Well, he, Obama would make sort of nitpicky edits like that just because he's a writer.
And so he got into that kind of stuff. The only, I think I sent that, and I sent it around to everyone.
The people who would really make edits, the most edits were Axelrod, David Axelrod, who's our chief strategist. And once in a while, Robert Gibbs would make an edit.
David Plouffe, the campaign manager, would make an edit. But really no one else dug in.
Unless it was a policy speech. That was not a policy speech.
So that was just, most of that was just me and him. Do you remember any like specific part of, that was a victory speech, but is there a specific part you remember that you like really loved or was your idea? Well, a couple of days before when I was trying to figure out an ending to the speech, I read a CNN story about this woman named Anne Nixon Cooper who had waited in line in Atlanta to vote for three hours.
And which is crazy that she had to wait three hours to vote,

but also it was notable because she was 105 years old.

This election had many firsts and many stories

that will be told for generations,

but one that's on my mind tonight is about a woman

who cast her ballot in Atlanta.

She is a lot like the millions of others

who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election,

except for one thing.

Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

And so I thought about, I thought this was a great way to end the speech.

To talk about like when she was born, right?

She couldn't vote because she was black and because she was a woman.

She was born just a generation past slavery. A time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky.
When someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons, because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin. And then like all the things she'd seen in the century that she was an American, all the progress she'd seen.
And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America. The heartache and the hope, the struggle and the progress.
So we figured that's how we'd end the speech. And then after talking about all the things she'd seen, we'd do the yes, we can refrain.
And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a scream and cast her vote. because after 106 years in america through the best of times and the darkest of hours she knows how america can change yes we can so wrote this whole thing he called me like we just saw in that clip and as soon as i hung up Tommy, who was right next to me, was like, oh, you should like call in Nixon Cooper and like let this woman know that she's gonna be in this speech.
So it was like, oh, right. I didn't even think about that.
And so we had our researchers like find, locate her, find her number. And so I called her and it's like a very frail woman picks up the phone and i was like hi and i like explained to her who i was and blah blah blah and i'm like and senator obama is going to mention you in the speech and because he's really moved by her story and she's like uh is it gonna be on tv and i was like oh yeah it's gonna be on tv and then she was like she stopped and she thought and she was like uh what channel is it gonna be on and i was like it's going to be on TV? And I was like, oh yeah, it's going to be on TV.
And then she was like, she stopped and she thought, and she was like, what channel is it going to be on? And I was like, it's going to be on all the channels. And then she stopped and she was like, I'm so happy, I'm so proud.
And it was like right at that moment that they called the race. 11 p.m.
on the East Coast, and we have news. Barack Obama will be the 44th president of the United States.
And so everyone's, like, cheering and yelling and clapping, and I was, like, under the desk trying to, like, talk to Ann Nixon Cooper before he went and did it. It was really, it was a cool moment.
Kind of, like, emotional to think about all this shit, you know? Yeah, I know. It was a long time ago.
It's's an emotional moment. I mean, I wasn't even there and I felt like I wanted, I wish I was there.
Like it just felt really emotional and special. Talking a little bit more about the day, Tommy, I know you worked with the press on that day.
Like what's the relationship like between the campaign and this press? How much are you guys speaking to each other? How much are you kind of leaking temperament in the headquarters? What does that look like? Well, so my job in Iowa, I was the Iowa press secretary. And then they said, come back to Chicago headquarters.
We're about to beat Hillary. We need you to do rapid response against John McCain.
Ha ha ha. What, like four or five months later, we're still campaigning as Hillary.
Eventually we win the primary. So then I become a rapid response person.
And my job was like, go after the McCain campaign all day, every day. So that's just a way of saying like, my job was kind of done in terms of press.
So I'm just gossiping with people. I'm just trading information, right? There's a pool of reporters that follow Obama around wherever he goes.
Jen Psaki was usually with them. So she's like in a van with them following his movements and then hanging out.
We found this one clip of you. And I believe this is when you're working in Iowa.
It's you and a reporter. And I always, I always had an idea that there was a very formal relationship between campaign people and reporters and the chumminess was very shocking.
Yeah. Scott, I'm one from the Boston Globe.

Amen. There was a very formal relationship between campaign people and reporters.
And the chumminess was very shocking.

Yeah, Scott Dunn went from the Boston Grove. Hey, man.

How are you?

I've been reading you forever.

I've been, you know, swearing about Boston sports.

Come on.

The way to stick it to us on that crap lobbying story.

Yeah, I knew you wouldn't like that.

That's such bullshit.

When are we going to move past the gotcha story?

Oh, come on.

That was probably not.

Here's the reason it's a bullshit story.

Can I just say what a good spokesman Tommy was and that highlighted it, that clip? He goes up to Scott Coleman. He's super friendly.
Oh, from Boston, Ritter River. What the fuck with that story? Blah, blah, blah.
And then grabs the candidate and brings him to the local Iowa, like, fucking...

Dave Price.

Yeah, what was the counting contest? The Colonel. Oh, the Colonel counting contest, yeah.
Brings him over to the Colonel contest to get the, like, local hit in Iowa, which is way more important than whatever the Boston Globe... That was the only thing I cared about, yeah.
My job was, like, what does the Iowa press need, and how can I beg, borrow, and steal to get it? And it just meant like getting the reporter campaign relationship is politics like anything else. They're not like a special breed of people.
They're human beings. You know what I mean? Like none of them wake up in the morning wanting to do a bad job.
None of them wake up biased, but like we all make mistakes. We all have our biases.
So like if you're friendly to people, if you're nice to them, if you give them access, treat them like a human being, you're going to do better. And Obama got that intuitively and was like, yes, I want to make time for them.
But a lot of other candidates refused to. Hillary wouldn't take questions for months.
They planted questions at one point. We sourced that out and planted some stories about it.
So we're at, you know, the polls are closing.

Everything's too close to call.

What are you guys doing?

But most importantly, what are you drinking?

Here's what I remember.

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