Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible

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Speaker 6 Hello, and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
It is the last daily Bulwark podcast out of the year. I'll be back.

Speaker 6 I'm not like my guest who's taken off, who knows, a whole month, I think, working on French time.

Speaker 6 I'll be back the Monday after

Speaker 6 Christmas, but next week I'm going skiing. I need it.
And today I'm here with the co-founder of Crooked Media, co-host of Pond Save America. You might have heard of it.
He also has a podcast offline.

Speaker 6 He was Obama's speechwriter from 2005 to 2013. It's Jon Favreau.
What's going on, man? Thanks for holding space for me

Speaker 6 in this

Speaker 6 last Daily Blow Work podcast for a while. We're going to hold a lot of space together, actually.

Speaker 6 At the very end of this podcast, I'm going to endeavor to make you cry like John Lovett did when he was last on. I'm telling you, you're going to have a tough time.
His tears

Speaker 6 were on Jesse Waters' show. So if we don't have a clip from this podcast show up on Jesse Waters' show, it is going to be a disappointment.
Wait,

Speaker 6 did Jesse Waters' show Love It Crying on Your Show? Did that happen?

Speaker 6 How did I miss that? Why did you send that around? I think I did. I don't remember.
Or maybe I was sensitive about it.

Speaker 6 Maybe I felt, I might have not sent it because I felt bad for it, but it's been a few weeks. So now the scars have built up.
And no, I think it's funny. We'll find the archive.

Speaker 6 Before we get to tears, and before we get to talking about your Atlantic article about what the Democrats are doing wrong, which might also lead to tears, we need to talk about what's happening on the Hill.

Speaker 6 By the time we have this podcast up, the state of play might have changed some. But biggest picture, here's what we got.
There was a bipartisan deal between Mike Johnson and the Democrats.

Speaker 6 It was scuttled by Elon's megalomania and possibly ketamine use. We don't know.

Speaker 6 Mike Johnson attempted to fix it by stripping down the deal a little bit and getting Daddy Trump on board ahead of time, which probably should have done the first time, gotten approval from Daddy.

Speaker 6 But even still, 38 Republicans Republicans voted against it. They're taking a third swing this morning.

Speaker 6 But the last I saw, Florida rep Anna Paulina Luna said that they are not negotiating with Democrats, which means they're going to need to get every single Republican on board.

Speaker 6 And boy, I don't see that as very likely. But I'm wondering what your takeaways are from the shit show over on Capitol Hill and the possible government shutdown.

Speaker 6 I will say it's the first time since the election as I watch this unfold. I'm like, oh,

Speaker 6 you know, everything's going to be horrible for sure but

Speaker 6 kind of fun to watch funny and horrible funny and horrible I mean look they kind of like love it or leave it

Speaker 6 I've told this to friends who were like you know maybe it's maybe it's not so bad that that Donald Trump is is running the country and we have a

Speaker 6 which friends are those you know I have some I have some friends who are like I voted for Kamala Harris but the Democrats do suck you have to know that you know and maybe maybe it's I don't want four years of Donald Trump, and maybe it's not the end of the world.

Speaker 6 Maybe the other leaders of the other countries will be scared by him because he's so crazy, you know, that kind of thing. And I'm like, here's the thing.

Speaker 6 Donald Trump is, he might have some political genius to him. He's an idiot, right?

Speaker 6 And when you have a bunch of idiots running things who don't know what they're doing, that's not going to lead to good outcomes for anyone. And like, that's sort of what we're starting to see here.

Speaker 6 Like, why did Elon Musk blow up the deal? Who knows? Did he see a tweet somewhere that pissed him off? Did he see some misinformation? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 6 He's probably scrolling through his platform, saw something that got him mad, fired off a tweet, and then boom, whole deal blows up, government shuts down. For what? We don't know.

Speaker 6 There's no rhyme or reason to any of this. No ideology behind it.
There's no, it's just, you know, it's just breaking things as we go. Yeah.

Speaker 6 My big takeaway from that is that I think it says something nice about you that you have your friends that are willing to be that honest with you to tell you that they don't think it might be that bad.

Speaker 6 I think most of my friends would be scared.

Speaker 6 I think most of my friends would be scared to offer that opinion to me for fear that I'd browbeat them and we'd get into a screaming text match or that I would derail the LSU game by yelling at them about their how sanguine they are in the face of the authoritarian threat.

Speaker 6 So that's nice. I don't do that, Tim.
I have deep conversations and I have a lot of patience, which I don't know. I don't know why.

Speaker 6 I like that about you. We'll get to that more.
The lack of ideology, I also, I'm here in, I should have said this at the town, but I'm here in Phoenix for a MAGELA.

Speaker 6 And I saw Steve Bannon last night and Tucker and Ben Shapiro, all your faves. Yeah.

Speaker 6 And so I want to talk about that, but your point that relates to what I experienced last night is there is no ideological through line here. Right? Like the Republicans have voted against this.

Speaker 6 Like some of them voted against it because they wanted their little special line item that they liked that got cut out at the last second.

Speaker 6 Some of them voted against it because they don't like the debt limit.

Speaker 6 Some of them voted against it because they just like positioning themselves as the craziest son of a bitch out there that just wants to burn everything down. They think that's a good brand for them.

Speaker 6 Elon's, like the difference between the two bills, like what was it exactly that Elon didn't like about the first bill that he liked about the second bill? It's not, it's not clear.

Speaker 6 It is a motley collaboration of people that is united really only by one thing, which is like

Speaker 6 we like Donald Trump and we don't like the Libs. Yeah, I was going to say that's the best thing.

Speaker 6 Yeah, because they like Donald Trump, but they also just, they just want to win things and they, and they hate the Libs.

Speaker 6 And Mike Lee, senator senator from Utah, was on cable last night somewhere saying, Mike Johnson can't be speaker anymore. It's got to be Elon Musk or Vivek Ramaswamy should be speaker.

Speaker 6 We're like steps away from like Chancellor Musk dissolving Congress

Speaker 6 because it's just, it's too messy.

Speaker 6 It did make me realize, though, like Democrats are going to have more leverage in at least the congressional fights next year than people might think because they're going to have an even narrower majority Republicans in the House next year.

Speaker 6 And I mean, we're watching this play out now, and maybe they get the votes and maybe they do something. Maybe they keep the government open.
But they're going to have a government funding fight.

Speaker 6 They're going to have to deal with the debt ceiling. Again, it doesn't look like they're going to eliminate the debt ceiling or a debt ceiling hike in this deal.

Speaker 6 They're going to, they're trying to pass a tax package that they have to pass. Energy, immigration, all this shit.

Speaker 6 Like they can only afford to, yeah, Farm Bill, they can only afford to lose one or two or three or four Republicans at most, at least for the first couple months while they fill out those special elections.

Speaker 6 So, yeah, it's not going to be easy for them.

Speaker 6 The Musk thing, do you have thoughts on Chairman Musk? I mean, he's the shadow president, potentially the Speaker of the House, also the largest government contractor. Yep.

Speaker 6 You know, it seems like there's some potential conflicts there. I think in the same Mike Lee clip that you referenced, he talked about how Musk could drain the swamp.

Speaker 6 It's like, is there a precedent for somebody that is this deep into all of the different levers of government in addition to owning a media platform, a social media platform?

Speaker 6 And not just in our government now, either. I mean, he's announcing that he's funding Nigel Farage's Reform Party bid in the UK.

Speaker 6 This morning, he endorsed the AFP in Germany, which is the new neo-Nazi party there. The FD.
Yeah, FD, sorry. The AFD in Germany.
Tommy would be very unhappy with that. I know, I know.

Speaker 6 I missed my world up.

Speaker 6 I was railing about it this morning, and now I screwed up. He's also on the take from the Chinese.
I'm going to be bringing that up with Steve Bannon when I see him here in a couple of hours.

Speaker 6 That feels like something that could potentially be a conflict to have the Speaker of the House and shadow president and biggest government contractor also being on the take from the Chinese.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, the whole thing is crazy. But what I'm trying to figure out is like Elon Musk, you know, I was talking to Ro Khanna about him this week on Pottave America.

Speaker 6 You know, and he makes the point, like, a lot of Americans look at him and they're like, this guy puts rockets into space and he's really successful and they think that's cool.

Speaker 6 And I think there's something to that. Like you look at the polls, right? Like he is not the most unpopular figure in the country right now.

Speaker 6 And so the question is how do we get people most people to realize like what's going on a that Elon is basically running the government and B that there's so many conflicts that it's just a corruption play and also he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing and so a bunch of people are gonna get hurt by it and I do think we kind of have to focus on like what he does that actually harms people and what he does to actually help himself right because I think you know it's just like dealing with Trump we can go on and on about all the crazy Elon tweets and this and that and all the shit that he says.

Speaker 6 But I think the effects of him running the country and maybe the world are going to be the most important thing for people to lift up.

Speaker 6 I want to get more into the Jon Favreau, anti-corporate populist in the Democrat section.

Speaker 6 Before I'm curious, your take on whether this is usually what you would ask me on Pod Save America, but we're going to float the mic around. Sure.
What's happened with these Republicans?

Speaker 6 Do you think Mike Johnson can survive? I want to play you a clip from my buddy Bannon last night. The political class is infected with a malignant cancer.
It's John Traverse. Cancer is bipartisanship.

Speaker 6 Clearly, Johnson's not up to the task, and he's got to go, right? He's got to go.

Speaker 6 Should Johnson be Speaker of the House?

Speaker 6 Kind of a half-hearted no there from the crowd, but it still didn't hear a lot of yeses. Do you think Mike survives? Did you see Trump last night? Trump, I was asked about this somewhere.

Speaker 6 And he was like, you know, he's a good guy. He's trying hard.
he's trying hard i hope he i hope he he's got to be strong he's got to be strong so it's not

Speaker 6 the full-throated trump endorsement but you can see this is why like mike johnson is you know like the the lame member of their clique now he's just like on board with uh on board trump's plane with musk and then he's at the he's at the army navy game with them he looks out of place like he's just

Speaker 6 in the back of the pictures he's always in the back of the picture he's like who he's the who who invited this guy you know he doesn't really fit also I mean, Elon, with the drug use and like the many why, like both Elon and Trump have the many wives, the womanizing.

Speaker 6 They, I think, like naked women, it seems like Mike Johnson, on the other hand, monitoring, monitoring each other's porn intake. Yeah, that's right.
It's just a key difference.

Speaker 6 It's not a like, it doesn't feel like, you know, if you're going to bro down, he's, he's, he's the guy at the top of the list. Steve, uh, later in that clip said, um, he doesn't have the moxie.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 he doesn't have the moxie. I mean, whether he survives for a long term or not, like he might survive the next couple of votes.
I don't see how he or anyone survives in that role.

Speaker 6 It's the role more than the person that's the problem right now, because they have no margin. And you still have the Chiproys

Speaker 6 and this wing of Republicans in the House who are just going to

Speaker 6 just be crazier than even Donald Trump and Elon Musk and the mainstream MAGA Republicans. And so I don't know how anyone survives in that position.
But did you know that

Speaker 6 if they can't elect Mike Johnson speaker, or they can't elect a speaker when Congress convenes in January, they can't count the electoral votes for Donald Trump. So if Kamala Harris has the courage?

Speaker 6 No, no, it's not even Color. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have to step aside by law.
So you know what we're going to get? We get President Chuck Grassley. Oh, Chuck Grassley.
Chuck Grassley.

Speaker 6 It's upset President of Senate pro temp. Well, if you're concerned about the gerontocracy,

Speaker 6 that would be, that actually would be an appropriate passing of the torch in the late American Republic from President Bobby to President Grassley. Yeah.

Speaker 6 It gives us something to hope for. Keep up the energy.

Speaker 6 Do you think he'll stay? Do you think he'll survive? Johnson?

Speaker 6 I think it's 50-50. And I've been saying, I think because of inertia, I'd put it a little bit above 50-50 just because it's like, you can't beat somebody with nobody.

Speaker 6 It even took a long time to get rid of Mike Evan, even though they wanted to get rid of Mike Kevin for a long time.

Speaker 6 It's an impossible job. So it's not like if there was a clear MAGA alternative with Moxie, who was an actual congressman, not Vivek Ramaswamy in his big forehead.

Speaker 6 Like, then sure, I think they could get rid of him for sure.

Speaker 6 For him to survive, his challenge now is he's going to have to squeeze out this CR with just Republican votes, unless the Dems bail him out. The Dems aren't going to bail him out, right?

Speaker 6 And I've been kind of impressed.

Speaker 6 I will say the Dems have shown some backbone on this. You could imagine a different Democratic Party that would have been a little bit wobbly.

Speaker 6 And it's like, well, all right, we don't want people to not get their paychecks at Christmas. So we'll cut a deal that we we don't really like.

Speaker 6 Even if children's cancer research, we lose, but we'll still go along with it because we got disaster relief or something. They're not doing that.

Speaker 6 Last I saw, Hakeem Jeffries did say the lines of communication with Mike Johnson are open again, and they're starting to talk to them again. Of course, this is Friday morning.

Speaker 6 That's the deathmail for Mike Johnson. Maybe that was a strategic move by Hakeem.
Maybe.

Speaker 6 So, yeah, but they're going to need some Democratic votes. And I don't know what Democrats vote for if I think they got debt ceiling out of this latest package.

Speaker 6 But if it's like, you can imagine if it's a clean CR that's just like a patch that gives that, that kicks it one more month down the road. Yeah.

Speaker 6 You know, maybe the Democrats do it so they don't have, we don't have chaos around Christmas. But

Speaker 6 I've been impressed.

Speaker 6 I wanted them to let him walk the plank, and they have been letting him walk the plank. It's an impossible job to begin with.

Speaker 6 And while we're just being happy for a second, before we kind of get into the depths of despair, I do think about like the lame duckness of Trump might limit his orbanist power somewhat.

Speaker 6 And so that's kind of a double-edged sword because on the one hand, I think, again, it will, you know, maybe prevent some of the authoritarian stuff we're worried about.

Speaker 6 On the other hand, it might make them start doing some of this. I want to play a little bit more from Bannon last night.
And one last thing. Trump 2028.

Speaker 6 MSNBC, fuck you.

Speaker 6 Nobody watches more MSNBC than that guy and your mother. I mean, like, they're the top two MSNBC viewers on the marketplace.
And he still, so, so it's a little performative there to be like, fuck you.

Speaker 6 But they're going to have to start doing this, don't you think? Like, pretending like Trump might run again in order for him to maintain his hold? Or is that wishful thinking?

Speaker 6 Or nightmare thinking? I heard Bannon say this at the New York Young Republican Club thing this week.

Speaker 6 And his view on this from Mike Davis, noted legal expert Mike Davis, because in the the Constitution it doesn't say consecutive terms that maybe Trump can run again, in which case,

Speaker 6 let's do Trump Obama 2028. Let's do it.

Speaker 6 Let's bring him back. Yeah, Mike Davis, Mike Davis wanted to put me in the women's prison, he said, which I think I was just like, I think that's a pretty good deal.
Yeah, that's what I was like.

Speaker 6 I was like, great. Why? You're great.
Yeah, thank you. Signed me up.
I think he thought that was a negative.

Speaker 6 You think they're going to put Pod Save America and the bulwark in the same prison? You think we're going to get to share? I hope so, John. I hope so, too.

Speaker 6 That would be fun for me. You know,

Speaker 6 if we're going to suffer, we might as well suffer together. My only other observation from all this, which is related from last night, is,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 the signage at this place, at this America Fest, is all confirm Trump's cabinet.

Speaker 6 It's just total Trump cultish hagiography. The speeches are all over the place.
I mean, literally, it's like Ben Shapiro gave like what could have been a Paul Ryan speech with like 20% of Mr.

Speaker 6 Trump, you know, God's hand is on Mr. Trump, like put on top of the Paul Ryan speech.
You know, and then Bannon is like a Reselensky Trump 2028.

Speaker 6 Then Tucker is like, you know, kind of, we need to go after the big banks. You know, and then like Ben Carson is talking, like, there's no coherent through line.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 And I do wonder, before we get to your suggestions on what the Dems could do, am I being Alan Lichtminny to just think that this might just burn itself out?

Speaker 6 Like maybe the Dems just need to let this burn itself out. It's like burned really hot and they got what they wanted.
And now, you know, they've got nothing left to fight for.

Speaker 6 I think it could burn itself out, but I also think the Dems can't just stand by and let that happen because I think we got to let people know exactly what's going on.

Speaker 6 But we have for a couple of years now talked about the challenge of like Democrats being in power and having this big heterodox coalition that extends from

Speaker 6 Liz Cheney to Bernie Sanders and AOC and how that's difficult and it's tough to keep it together. Angela Davis to Bill Kristol is the version of that I liked the best.

Speaker 6 Same idea. But like at least we have like a real platform, you know, even like Liz Cheney and the coalition.
She wasn't asking anyone to change the platform, right?

Speaker 6 She just wants to stop Donald Trump. And Joe Biden, he came into office.
He had things he wanted to do. And I don't, I think there is a split between like, I mean, there's the J.D.

Speaker 6 Vance style Republicans who might want to be a little more populist, right? You know, Josh Hawley's out there proposing like an expanded child tax credit.

Speaker 6 And then there's Elon and Vivek, the billionaires, who seem to be more libertarian. They just want to cut government, do every, you know, people to suffer.

Speaker 6 Trump doesn't know, you know, whoever the last person who talks to Trump, that's how he believes how things should go. So like, I think it's going to be a fucking mess.
I really do.

Speaker 6 And I don't think that that guarantees wins for Democrats or for all of us, or that means everything's going to be great.

Speaker 6 But I do think when we, when we look at the next four years and figure out like how to strategize, we should keep in mind that it is most likely going to be chaos and infighting and figure out how we can take advantage of that.

Speaker 6 It was just so North Korea-yesterday, even more than usual.

Speaker 6 There was just no underlying ideological message. Because they just wanted to win.
That's it. I mean, it's like own the libs and they owned the libs.
So now what do they do?

Speaker 6 They got to own them harder, you know?

Speaker 6 Well, they got to own Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson's the new lib, which is why I think he's on thin ice.
Yeah,

Speaker 6 I don't know. I mean, the happy part of me is this this kind of, we get to sit here and laugh and point and chuckle at their incompetence.

Speaker 6 The dark side of me is like, man, if it continues to be this kind of a shit show and things look really, really bad in two years and we have an 80-year-old son downing Trump, might then the cults decide that they need to turn to a darker sort of vision for the future.

Speaker 6 And like, that's the thing that really has me a little concerned about it. So there you go.
Don't be too happy. Yeah, me too.
Me too, Tim. It's possible that happens.

Speaker 6 And I, like, my philosophy on all this is we got to take it one day at a time because

Speaker 6 I,

Speaker 6 well, you know, it's taken me like 43 years to get here, but I do think that if we all spend all of our time like dooming about the future and what might happen, like, A, it's not going to change anything.

Speaker 6 And B, it's going to take our focus away from like what we can do right now to actually fight these guys and also try to take power back by convincing people that we should have it.

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Speaker 6 You wrote for the Atlantic.

Speaker 6 It's an appropriate place to write. You know, you wrote about

Speaker 6 people who aren't engaged in politics and how to reach them. And so obviously the right place to go for that was The Atlantic.
The Atlantic, yeah.

Speaker 6 Widely read by the TikTok generation and the low information by the people. Even if we don't agree, the headline was the conversation Dems Need to Have.
And so we're two white guys with podcasts.

Speaker 6 So we'll have that conversation right now. And it was, even if we don't agree with the views of leftists or liberals or never Trumpers or MAGA Republicans, we understand them, or at least think we do.

Speaker 6 The people whose views we don't understand tend to be the people who simply don't follow politics that closely, and yet that's most Americans.

Speaker 6 And you're arguing that the thing that the Dems should be focusing on is how to reach those people. And you feel like

Speaker 6 the current trajectory isn't great on that count. So why don't you talk about that?

Speaker 6 Yeah, so the thing about me in writing is I don't do it much anymore because it takes too much time. But the Atlantic reached out and they asked if I wanted to write a piece.

Speaker 6 And I was like, you know what? I should finally put some thoughts down on paper instead of just tweeting and skeeting and talking on a podcast. So I did.
Really, this was just a piece for

Speaker 6 your pal Sarah Longwell

Speaker 6 because, you know, it was inspired partly by focus groups I've done, but also focus groups that she's done that I've listened to. And also just like knocking on doors and doing canvassing.

Speaker 6 And I think. Tell the knocking on door story that you started the article with for people who are not.
We were in Vegas the Sunday before the election. We were in a

Speaker 6 very working-class neighborhood in East Las Vegas. Knocked on one door.
I was with Tommy Vitor, Nina Harris, who's on Vote Save America, and it's like 72-year-old on the list.

Speaker 6 It said, you know, 72-year-old registered Democrat. This like little old Asian woman comes to the door.
She's like sort of tough to understand, but she's very sweet. And we ask her if she's voted yet.

Speaker 6 And she says,

Speaker 6 She's kind of confused. She said, No, she hasn't voted yet.
And then she said, Trump, President Trump? And we're like, no, no, no, no, President Trump.

Speaker 6 And she's like, and she's like, and we're like, Kamala Harris. And she's like, oh, didn't she let in all those illegals who killed all those cops?

Speaker 6 I saw that and we're like, no. So then I was just like, all right, what do you say? Right.
And I imagined at the moment, if this woman had posted that on social media, right?

Speaker 6 Which is the first thing that would happen is everyone,

Speaker 6 she would be canceled. People would scream things at her.
Eventually, Trump would invite her to the State of the Union.

Speaker 6 I think she'd have to kill a black person on the subway to get invited to the State of the Union, but okay. Yep.
Yeah, well, that's true. So I stopped and I was like, here's the thing.
I'm like,

Speaker 6 actually, if Kamal Harris wins, she will pretty much close the border, especially when there's an influx of migrants that

Speaker 6 goes above a certain level. Like she's going to be tough on border.
And by the way, she's also going to make your prescriptions cheaper. And then Tommy's like, and she's going to cut your taxes.

Speaker 6 And the woman sort of just looks at all of us and she's like, okay.

Speaker 6 She goes, and we're like, what do you mean? She's like, I'll vote for Kamala. We're like, really? She's like, yeah.
She gives us a thumbs up. We give her a thumbs up and we walk away.

Speaker 6 And, you know, it was just most interactions, as you know, you've been in politics, are not like that. Most, they're not that satisfying when you talk to voters.

Speaker 6 Some voters make you, they say things that make you insane,

Speaker 6 as you know, by listening to all these focus groups. But it is an indication that people are much more complicated than those of us who pay close attention to politics think.

Speaker 6 Because like I said, like we, we know what the MAGA diehards think and we know what the leftists think. Like we encounter cohesive political identities all the time.

Speaker 6 And that's just not the case when it comes to most voters.

Speaker 6 And so I think that as we all talk about politics, as we all, you know, churn out our content or we're doing our posting and stuff like that, like at some point, we have to think that the way people perceive politics, people who don't pay attention that much, is through this like algorithmic mix of takes and opinions and pieces and cable hits and whatever else that like leaks through the bubble that we're all in to someone who's just checking out TikTok a couple days before an election.

Speaker 6 right?

Speaker 6 And there's a whole other conversation about like how we reach these people, which is obviously not just happening on Pod Save America or the bulwark or the Atlantic, right?

Speaker 6 But there's also a conversation to be had, not just in how we reach them, but when we reach them, how we argue and how we talk about politics.

Speaker 6 And I think that those of us who talk about politics a lot are a little more, we're not using language that most people use.

Speaker 6 We don't have a style of argument or debate that most people find persuasive. And if we don't persuade people, we're not going to win.

Speaker 6 And the way that a lot of us talk about politics is

Speaker 6 we're trying to fight battles in order to make ourselves feel right about being right.

Speaker 6 And politics is not just about being right. It is about persuading people to think differently and behave differently.
And that's how you win an election. An election is how you govern.

Speaker 6 You know, you wrote about kind of in 2016 that there was a lot of like, well,

Speaker 6 there's misogyny at play here. And

Speaker 6 that there's obviously this conversation about how there's this misinformation and the disinformation of the Russians. And this time it's like, well, there could be racism and misogyny.

Speaker 6 And inflation was a problem. And Biden was too old.
We're going to get to that. And like, all those things are kind of true, right? But they also are alibis.

Speaker 6 You know, they also are alibis to having to actually

Speaker 6 go out there and convince people that the other alternative for governing is superior. It is an entirely human reaction to look for simple, easy explanations and simple, easy answers.

Speaker 6 And so it is very easy and maybe somewhat satisfying to be like, okay, the problem is we need, you know, I've seen this a lot, we need more independent media. I got a lot of this from the piece.

Speaker 6 People are like, don't you know the real problem is the information ecosystem and we need to build up independent progressive media. And I was like, you know, I do know that or central media? I do.

Speaker 6 I'm like, you know, I do know that.

Speaker 6 I did start a progressive media company seven years ago. So I am aware of that point, that that is necessary.

Speaker 6 But like, it's all this search for, okay, well, you know, Hillary lost because of misogyny and racism. And everyone mocked, you know, working class voters for economic anxiety after Trump won in 2016.

Speaker 6 And it was like, oh, well, actually, they were just racist. And it's like, yeah, well, the complicated truth is racial resentment definitely fueled a lot of Trump voters.

Speaker 6 Okay, then we had a bunch of Latino voters who voted for Trump. And now Asian American voters are voting for Trump.
And black men, some black men are voting for Trump. And young people, right?

Speaker 6 So it's like, we're out of excuses at this point. And unfortunately, we're also out of very easy answers on how to move forward and beat him.
And the real work of democracy is like.

Speaker 6 talking to and persuading people that you don't agree with on everything. And like, I know that's a hard thing to hear.

Speaker 6 And it's not meant to be like, we should all be centrist and moderate and all that, because some people who are classified as like moderate, as you know, have like extremely left views on some issues and extremely right views on other issues.

Speaker 6 Like people don't have political identities that make sense to partisans. That's just the whole, that's most of the electorate.

Speaker 6 You know, it's a message to, that's part of the reason it was written in The Atlantic. It is a message to all of us who pay close attention to politics.

Speaker 6 Do you have any thoughts on the media side of things, though?

Speaker 6 Is the answer to create more left media or pro-democracy media, whatever you want to call it, or is it actually trying to engage in other media bubbles and having people that have non-mAGA views represented in other spaces.

Speaker 6 I think I played the audio from my friend, from our guy Stavros, who's a comedian from

Speaker 6 I think his podcast was called Come Town. And

Speaker 6 he went on one of these bro podcasts and crushed it. Like gave the best answer that I've heard yet for not voting for Trump.

Speaker 6 I'll put it in the show notes for people if you haven't seen it. But like, what is the right balance of like, like, where's your focus on that? I think three things we need to do.

Speaker 6 Ben Wickler, who's running for DNC chair, was just talking about this the other day. I thought it was really.
You're such a Wickler stand. I'm a Wickler stand.

Speaker 6 I'm neutral on the DNC race.

Speaker 6 Nobody's knocked my socks off yet. No, we're going to have, you know, whoever wants to come on Potsey America.
I think I'm supposed to talk to Ken Martin when we get back from the break.

Speaker 6 There was a bald guy on MSNBC talking about how the Democrats should learn more from Trump and how they should do tax cuts. The Trump tax cuts were really great, and he's running for DNC chair.

Speaker 6 I thought it was performance art. I saw it on the plane yesterday.

Speaker 6 Is that that state senator from New York? I don't know. Maryland.
I have no idea. I'm going to get him booked on Potsdam America.
He has some interesting points.

Speaker 6 Definitely more corporate tax cuts, I think, is the path back for the adoption. No, that's what the people want.
More corporate tax cuts, less funding for childhood cancer. So three steps.

Speaker 6 One, and the third is the hardest. But one, I do think like I would love more independent media.

Speaker 6 And when I say progressive, great, but also, you know, I think of liberalism now as small L liberalism stretching from the far left to the center right.

Speaker 6 Any kind of independent media along that ideological spectrum, I'm for. I think we we need more of it.

Speaker 6 I think number two is to absolutely go into these other spaces, you know, with people that we don't necessarily agree with, go on their shows, talk to them, try to expose their audiences to other views since they're not necessarily being exposed to other political views.

Speaker 6 So I think that's important. And then I think the big challenge here is like we have to figure out a way to reach the

Speaker 6 people who don't consume news that much, not just political news, any kind of news.

Speaker 6 And that is the tough one that no one is, the nut that no one's cracked yet and um i think we need to focus a lot more on that we think about that a lot here at curriculum media like how do we go beyond our own audiences uh i'm sure you guys think about that too yeah all the answers for that have been in the from the political class have been awful awful awful every every ad that i've seen trying to target low info voters is like a parody of a attempt to do it.

Speaker 6 So like all of the ad wizards out there working on this, like you just got to start like throw everything in the trash and start start from square zero.

Speaker 6 Because the people thinking about it aren't low info voters.

Speaker 6 Right. We like Democrats,

Speaker 6 we lean on identity as an explanation for all kinds of things, but we forget to lean on identity as an explanation for like why low information voters don't think like us.

Speaker 6 Because we're not in their shoes. And so you actually need to talk to people who don't consume a lot of news and politics about politics to figure out what might persuade them.

Speaker 6 Yeah, you got to bring some people in the room that are like, forget about Tony Blinken. Like, I don't know who Dan Quayle is.
I don't even know what you're talking about.

Speaker 6 I've never heard of Jake Tapper. Like, if you've heard of Jake Tapper, get him out of the room.
Right.

Speaker 6 No, I talked to, I did a focus group with a bunch of young people in Orange County before the midterms in 22. And it was right after Dobbs.
And one young woman was like, she was outraged by Dobbs.

Speaker 6 And she was outraged by the Supreme Court. And she couldn't believe it.
And then so she finishes her whole tirade about this. And I'm like, so were you registered to vote in the midterms?

Speaker 6 And she said, what's a midterm?

Speaker 6 What's a midterm? And I was like, okay, well, there we are.

Speaker 6 Upset about Dobbs.

Speaker 6 We like the sentiment there. Don't know if you register or not.
Don't know what a midterm is. So we got some work to do.

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Speaker 6 Here's another concern I have about the low-info ecosystem, particularly on the left, that some of the folks are getting radicalized in a way that I find concerning. I would, as a former Republican.

Speaker 6 So, you know, maybe some libs can dismiss my views, but you're a Democrat in good standing. So I want to talk to you about this.
I had a friend that texted me. I'm good in good-ish standing.

Speaker 6 I had a friend that texted me, and I don't know why they were on the Pod Save America Red A page. I don't know if you are ever, but I am not.

Speaker 6 Apparently, it was in shambles over your lack of support for vigilante assassinations.

Speaker 6 I had another person message me about how you, John Favreau, your Twitter replies were filled with people outraged that you Twittered a tweet about how the Democrats might want to moderate on immigration.

Speaker 6 I'm wondering what your sense is of the extent right now of the backlash on the left and whether some of the lessons might be to move into a place that's a little

Speaker 6 concerning. Oh, really?

Speaker 6 This might make me cry, actually.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 I really thought a lot about the Luigi Mangioni assassination thing, and it really bothered me. And I was trying to figure out why it really bothered me.

Speaker 6 The assassination bothered you or the responsibility of

Speaker 6 the response. Because

Speaker 6 I am someone who

Speaker 6 got into politics 20 years ago because of healthcare. It's like it's the issue I am most passionate about.
And I obviously worked for Barack Obama, went through the whole Affordable Care Act debate.

Speaker 6 I also think that insurance companies are awful. I would like something, if not Medicare for All, close to it.

Speaker 6 I like Pete Buttigieg's plan in 2020 about Medicare for all who want it, where you can, you know, choose Medicare.

Speaker 6 So I believe in all that. And then when I saw people who were like excusing or glorifying or celebrating vigilante justice, vigilante violence, extrajudicial killings, I was just like, what?

Speaker 6 At first, I didn't believe that it was. I was like, oh, it's probably like a few Twitter people.
And then it just like, it grew. And then, I mean, you mentioned the Pets of America Reddit.

Speaker 6 There were some people on our subscribers on our discord who were like angry with me for my takes on this which again my my centrist my super centrist take is vigilante murder bad insurance companies also bad

Speaker 6 so that's my that's my crazy take um and people were not happy with me but i so i jumped into the into our discord and talked to our subscribers for a couple hours on sunday because like you said just past sunday yeah because like you said this is the kind of person i just i just go right in there and i didn't yell at at anyone.

Speaker 6 We had a good time. And by the end, everyone was like, of course we don't want this.
Of course, we don't excuse this murder, but you're not understanding like the rage that's out there.

Speaker 6 And they were mad that they think I called it performative at some point. And what I was calling performative was not people's rage.

Speaker 6 towards the insurance industry at all or their anger towards the healthcare system.

Speaker 6 What I thought was performative was people like, you know, Taylor Lorenz, who's supposed to be a journalist, you know, posting memes, CEO down.

Speaker 6 and, you know, she's got a headline, why we want executives dead. I'm like, okay, that you, you're supposed to be in a position of responsibility.

Speaker 6 That I don't think that's, I don't think that's really wise. And I think that part of this is about trying to draw attention to yourself.
Right.

Speaker 6 But someone out there who has been denied by an insurance company and has watched a loved one die or suffer or has faced bankruptcy, like, I get why they're mad.

Speaker 6 But my concern, and I'm sure it's your concern too, is starting to excuse this or starting to think that maybe the political system is so broken and we're never going to get healthcare reform and we're never going to fix this that you can understand why people would do this.

Speaker 6 That leads us down a path, I think, where the alternative to the right-wing authoritarianism that we are fighting right now is left-wing authoritarianism, where it's not about trying to persuade people or trying to make democracy work as broken as democracy is.

Speaker 6 It is about just, you know, force. It's about might makes right.
And we can use force to do what we want.

Speaker 6 And if we believe something, it doesn't, and we believe it so strongly, it doesn't matter if someone else doesn't believe it.

Speaker 6 It doesn't matter if someone, if it's complicated, if the issue's complicated, you know, we need to be right and we need to be right at any cost. And so it doesn't matter.

Speaker 6 what we do because, you know, that's just, it's more, the belief and the ideology is more important than actually bringing people along.

Speaker 6 And like, look, I get, I get the impulse, I get the frustration, but that path has never worked.

Speaker 6 That path has never worked. It doesn't lead to a good place.

Speaker 6 Like, when you start excusing political violence, that means that other people with political views that are very different than yours will also start excusing political violence and they'll be able to start committing political violence too.

Speaker 6 And then we have violence. Everyone's like, well, America's a violent country.
I'm like, yeah, America is a violent country. We don't need to make it more violent.
That's not the answer.

Speaker 6 One exception. I mean, Bill Ayers' puppet, Barack Obama, did get into the presidency.
So maybe it has worked one time.

Speaker 6 And then I used the civil rights movement as an example, and people are like, what are you talking about? The civil rights movement was incredibly violent.

Speaker 6 Like the state used violence against the activists and the protesters in the civil rights movement. I'm like, yeah, I know, of course.

Speaker 6 And you know what John Lewis did as he was getting his fucking head beat in on the Edmund Pettus Bridge?

Speaker 6 He just sat there because he knew, and Martin Luther King knew that nonviolence, which takes incredible discipline, also has the power to persuade people to say, oh my gosh, these civil rights protesters, they are just like the state, they are getting beaten to within an inch of their lives, and this is awful, blah, blah.

Speaker 6 And then suddenly the tide of opinion changes and you pass the Civil Rights Act and you pass the Voting Rights Act. And does it fix everything? Absolutely not.
Is the system still fucked? Yes.

Speaker 6 But like that's how change actually happens in this country. That's how progress happens.
And the nonviolence of that movement that was the heart of the civil rights movement was a strategy.

Speaker 6 It wasn't, it didn't just happen. It was a strategy.
It took discipline. It took like, you know, responding to beatings and violence with peaceful protests.
It's really fucking hard.

Speaker 6 And it took a long time, but it's a lot better than descending into civil war.

Speaker 6 I'm going to be a little less generous to your critics than you are because there's a poll that came out recently about approval of Luigi's actions in this murder, assassination.

Speaker 6 And if you break it down by age,

Speaker 6 it's just reverse. Like Like it's just reverse.
Like the oldest, it has the lowest approval among the elderly, you know, slightly more, but not really very much among Gen X.

Speaker 6 Slightly more,

Speaker 6 concerningly, slightly more, but still not very high among our people, the Millennials.

Speaker 6 And then, well, not Tommy, he's Gen X. And then

Speaker 6 a big amount of support, like a third to 40%, depending on the poll, among Gen Z.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 the people that have

Speaker 6 the least actual exposure to the healthcare system are the ones.

Speaker 6 If you're under 26, you can be on your parents' health insurance thanks to the Affordable Care Act. Yeah, that's right.
Right. They're the ones with the most righteous rage.

Speaker 6 That just... doesn't fucking square for me.

Speaker 6 I know that there are people under 26 or under 30 that have had horrible experiences with the healthcare system through their parents or through themselves, with their friends. Certainly some.

Speaker 6 But like, like just the math doesn't work.

Speaker 6 Like at scale, if the healthcare system is so horrible and oppressive and we're at such a horrendous state that vigilante assassinations are necessary, then you would think that the people that have had to experience

Speaker 6 the trauma of that for the longest and the most acutely, the people who have the most health problems, old people, would share the view, right?

Speaker 6 Like, so like to me, it seems like there is at least some bandwagon effect. Maybe there's some genuine rage among Gen Z, but then there is a bandwagon effect that is very real and alarming.

Speaker 6 A few things. One,

Speaker 6 I saw those polls, and

Speaker 6 first it could be the polling, right? Like sometimes people give trollish responses to pollsters. Sure.
And like, so you could have a polling issue there, right? And it's a sub-sample.

Speaker 6 Gen Z is most likely to be to troll.

Speaker 6 Right. Well, it's like you got an Emerson poll and it's a sub-sample of how many voters and an Emerson poll that's 18 to 29.
So like, whatever.

Speaker 6 But what is different about Gen Z from all the other generations in that poll, which is those older generations, like they remember domestic disorder and chaos and even violence in this country and elsewhere, right?

Speaker 6 Like they lived through, the oldest lived through World War II. Then there was the Cold War.
Then there was, you know, the civil rights movement in this country, right? In the late 60s and the 70s.

Speaker 6 So like older people, like they know, they know what violence can do. They know what chaos can do.
I think the younger folks, they're also like social media and their phones is a big part of this.

Speaker 6 And first of all, that generation is, they are struggling with affordability and costs in a way that makes them feel a lot of despair, right?

Speaker 6 When you layer onto that, that everything they see on their phones is outrageous taking to an 11. Everything's at an 11 all the time.
It's doom. It's climate existentialism, right?

Speaker 6 Like we're not going to have a planet anymore. We shouldn't have kids.
And like, this is, this is what's showing up in people's feeds over and over and over again.

Speaker 6 And I think that puts you in a place of nihilism where you think, fuck it, you know, whatever problem there is in your life, it's magnified by what you see on your phone.

Speaker 6 And then you think, okay, well, I have this problem. And also everything seems dark.
Everything seems terrible. Like,

Speaker 6 you know, we're all doomed. The apocalypse is coming.
So, like, you know, some insurance executive gets killed. Who the fuck cares? I like like that.
I think that's the sentiment.

Speaker 6 Okay, one more thing on this for you. It relates back to Elon.

Speaker 6 And this is something I really struggle with as the norms-loving, never Trumper.

Speaker 6 I think one thing that is objectively true is that the Democrats cannot continue to be the party of the status quo. It's like we have to protect these institutions.
We've got to save and defend them.

Speaker 6 This hurts me. because I think the institutions are working pretty good.
They're not perfect. They're pretty good.

Speaker 6 I still have my small C conservative inside me somewhere, which is like, maybe we should just keep the good stuff and not rock the boat too much, you know, because what comes next might be worse, you know.

Speaker 6 And yet I recognize that politically

Speaker 6 that's not very potent right now, to say the least.

Speaker 6 So how can the Democrats regain this mantle of challenging the status quo, of being rebellious without becoming the party of vigilante assassination?

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 6 we ran a campaign like this in 2008 that worked really well.

Speaker 6 You know, people look back on it as hope and change and all that, but there was a huge reform element to the way that Obama talked, his agenda. We talked about lobbyist money, corporate PAC money.

Speaker 6 We talked about fixing Washington, Washington being broken.

Speaker 6 And I think that we can be a party that wants to reform and fix a broken system as opposed to the other party that seems intent on tearing the system down and then, you know, presiding over the ashes.

Speaker 6 And because I don't think that's going to work for anyone. Like, it's going to feel good to just destroy the whole system.

Speaker 6 Maybe that's what you want, but in its place, you're not going to get anything. You're just going to get a bunch of people who are going to make themselves rich and do a bunch of corruption.

Speaker 6 You'll get some cool coins. Get some cool coins.
Yeah, right. Yeah.
And maybe it's going to be fun for people like Elon to watch the whole thing, right? Maybe it's going to be entertaining for you.

Speaker 6 It's going to be entertaining for them. Certainly.
They're going to get rich. You're going to be pretty fucked.

Speaker 6 So I think the alternative is like just acknowledging what is broken about the system and pledging to fight relentlessly to fix it and to reform it. And this is what I think we have to do.

Speaker 6 And I think we've, we've, you know, walked away from that at times. Like we have not had the last four years, the message was not the system is broken and we're doing everything we can to fix it.

Speaker 6 That was just, that was not the message of the Biden administration. It wasn't the message of the 2020 primary, really, except for like Bernie and Warren and people like that.

Speaker 6 But that's not, it wasn't, it wasn't focused on the system and it wasn't focused on like, okay, how do we reform this so that it actually works for everyone?

Speaker 6 Speaking of Joe Biden, the Wall Street Journal had a story yesterday talking about how they were managing his age inside the administration.

Speaker 6 Early in the administration, there was a directive that meetings should be short. They tried to make them later in the day.

Speaker 6 The Democratic chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith, said he never got Biden on the phone one time, said he talked to Obama several times when he was a much less senior congressman.

Speaker 6 Jim Himes said the same. So these are Democrats on the record.
Cabinet meetings were tightly scripted and barely happened. Donors noticed a decline on calls.
Staff wouldn't show him bad news, I guess.

Speaker 6 We're showing him clips, so it was only good news, according to the story. I'm mad about this.

Speaker 6 I was thinking this morning, when I think about the biggest political fuck-ups of my life, non-Donald Trump category, I was really thinking about this. And I decided that George W.

Speaker 6 going into Iraq was the one, two, and three. It has the entire podium on the biggest fuck-ups of my life.
Mitch McConnell not convicting Donald Trump in January of 2021 was number four.

Speaker 6 And Biden's selfish behavior this year is number five or number three, depending on how you want to count it. I think it was just absolutely catastrophic.
And I'm pretty enraged by it.

Speaker 6 I'm wondering what you thought reading the Wall Street Journal story. I completely agree with your ranking.
I'm actually, I'm glad that you, you know, put Iraq and McConnell first and second.

Speaker 6 That was that, you know, you did some thinking there. I'm glad I didn't just fire off.
Yeah, of course it was the worst of my lifetime because I might have. I'm so mad that I might have.

Speaker 6 You might have been a number one. I went through every administration in my mind.
I was like, I didn't really count. I was eight, I was six for Reagan when he raised that.
So I was like, H.W.

Speaker 6 Clinton. I was like, Monica.
No, this is worse than

Speaker 6 that. Obama.
I was like, go for it.

Speaker 6 This is right after, yeah, right after Bush and McConnell. The key in that piece to everyone knows how I feel about Joe Biden at this point.

Speaker 6 I have been very open about that and his decisions over the last several years.

Speaker 6 The key line in that piece to me was, is, oh, he has some good days and bad days.

Speaker 6 And I do think that the good day, bad day thing is why there was no moment where everyone was like, he's got to step down, he can't run again.

Speaker 6 Because every time he would freak people out close to him that dealt with him all the time, then the next time they see him, he would be fine.

Speaker 6 And then they would tell themselves, okay, well, it's okay, you know, we should just, we should just keep moving forward.

Speaker 6 But the people, look, there's a lot of people in the White House, a lot of people in the administration. The vast majority of them did not have a lot of contact with Joe Biden.

Speaker 6 You got to remember, too, even the first two years of his administration, like they were all working. A lot of them were working remotely.
They weren't even in the White House because of COVID.

Speaker 6 But the small circle, and the piece talks about this, the small circle of people around Joe Biden that did not push him and were not honest with him about how he was diminishing, about how he was making a selfish decision, about how he should have, look what the polling says, look what the bad news says.

Speaker 6 Like, that's who I'm

Speaker 6 most angry at, really.

Speaker 6 You know, when you are the president, you are sort of ensconced in this little bubble, and you do rely on your advisors to tell you the truth about you, the truth about what the country thinks about you, what's going on out there.

Speaker 6 And those people did not do that. They just didn't do it.
And now we're all going to, now we have Trump again. I sat and thought about this too, their advisors this morning for a little bit.

Speaker 6 And I was like, like, I thought about myself. I put myself in their shoes.
It's hard to put myself in the shoes of people that were with them for 30 years. I never had that type of relationship.
But

Speaker 6 there was a second layer of people too. And I was like, I probably would have, you know, tried to position him as best as possible up until that debate.

Speaker 6 I probably would have done the same things up until that debate, I think. I probably would have been wrong to do it, but I think I probably would have.

Speaker 6 But there's no way that, and I can say this because I did it in 2012. I went out and I said to a boss, I was like, no, I'm not going to go out and do this.

Speaker 6 I I was like, I would not have gone out and spun like, oh,

Speaker 6 did you see

Speaker 6 the rally in Norfolk? Like, how vigorous he was. I wouldn't have done it.
I wouldn't have done it. I would have quit.
And

Speaker 6 nobody quit. Like, nobody quit.
Nobody pushed him. Nobody forced it.
Like, some of them spoke on background of the New York Times. I guess it was maybe the best thing you could do.

Speaker 6 You know, from that. And then to me, like, the grave sin of all this is that the thing that makes me the most upset, really, is that he, the selfishness continued, continues to now, right now, right?

Speaker 6 It continues right now to December 20th.

Speaker 6 Like that when he finally came to terms with the fact that he needed to drop out, he needed to bring the vice president into the Oval Office or wherever they meet to Delaware and be like, kid, you do what you need to fucking do.

Speaker 6 All right. You push the old guy onto the train.
Like, we got to save this country. You do what you need to do.
That's what he needed to do. And he did the opposite.

Speaker 6 Like the whole year that he was like, they were whining to people that Kamala wasn't giving him enough credit.

Speaker 6 And like now, after the election, he seems like they've been nicer to Trump than they've been to Kamala in the post-election. Fundamentally, I don't think he gets it.

Speaker 6 And I just saw his interview with Midas Touch. He sat down with that podcast, Midas Touch, on the big podcast on the left.
It was a tough interview, but it was also

Speaker 6 like even if you get past the performance in the interview or what, you know, did he do whatever, just his message is like nothing has changed, right?

Speaker 6 Which is just, in his mind, I did some good things and I wanted to have America be more respected in the world. Check, really? I wanted to unite the country.

Speaker 6 He gave himself a check on uniting the country. Unite the country.
I want to just give working people an opportunity, more opportunity, check.

Speaker 6 And they've convinced themselves that the CHIPS Act and the infrastructure bill fixed the entire economy. And now there's, you know, it's just, it's wild to me.

Speaker 6 And like, I think that legislatively, they did some really great things, but it's before the debate.

Speaker 6 And it's, it's like, there was a time early on in that administration where they were like, compare, they were already comparing him to FDR.

Speaker 6 And they were like, we have learned the lessons of the Obama administration. And we're not going to make those mistakes.
We're going to make the stimulus even bigger this time.

Speaker 6 We're going to sell it, unlike those guys. And, you know, they did all that.

Speaker 6 And the thing that really got me was after the midterms, they looked at the midterm results and they thought that those midterm results pointed to Joe Biden winning in 2024 because Democrats did better than expected.

Speaker 6 The Democrats lost the House popular vote and the Metropolitan. Lost the House popular vote, but because we hung on to a bunch of Senate seats and

Speaker 6 lost, you're right, lost those. But because we lost by less, it wasn't a red wave, right? Because we lost by less.
It must be because Joe Biden is such a popular president that the polls are wrong.

Speaker 6 And then we're going to run him again in 2024. And it is one thing for blue-in-on libs on Twitter to believe that.
Whatever. Don't fault them for it because they don't have all the data.

Speaker 6 The people people who have the data, who know, who know that a midterm electorate is nothing like a general electorate, they should have fucking known.

Speaker 6 And instead, they took those results as like, no, no, no, these results prove that Joe Biden should run again. I mean, that to me was the, that was the original sense.

Speaker 6 Do you wish you would have ranted about it more earlier? Do you think that would have helped? We were talking about this on our last Podsday of America yesterday. And it's like,

Speaker 6 you know, you go back and we would, the way that we would talk about it is no one is challenging him.

Speaker 6 You know, Lovett and I had a pretty tough conversation with Dean Phillips here. Yeah, I had an apology to Dean Phillips.
I did a public apology. I did too, and I saw him at the convention.

Speaker 6 But, you know, my point to Dean Phillips was like, your diagnosis of the problem is correct. I do not think that you are the solution

Speaker 6 because I just don't think that would have worked either. But like.
I said to Dean, I'm like, I share your concerns about his age, but like, look around. No one else is stepping up.

Speaker 6 And it's Joe Biden's decision to make. We can blame a whole bunch of other people.
And I do blame like the, again, the close, close advisors.

Speaker 6 But like, at the end of the day, Joe Biden had a decision to make. He's the president of the United States.
He has free will. He has agency.
He could have decided not to run. He chose to run.

Speaker 6 That's, that's, that's it. You're right.
The message in that Midas Touch interview was just like,

Speaker 6 again,

Speaker 6 I think that's maybe the frustrating thing. It's like, I just, I think I cared more.

Speaker 6 Like, I can't care. I think I believed it like more, the democracy stuff than he actually believed it.
I think that he cared more about his legacy than that. And that's very disappointing.

Speaker 6 And I think. Well,

Speaker 6 you know what was most revealing was during that George Stephanopoulos interview after the terrible debate when Stephanopoulos was like, well, if you don't drop out and you run and you lose, how are you going to feel if Donald Trump wins again?

Speaker 6 He's going to say. And Biden said, I'll feel like I did

Speaker 6 my goodest. I did my best.
Oh, yeah. And when he said that, I was like, oh, fuck.
Really? That's not, you did your best?

Speaker 6 Oh, brother, Favreau. Yeah, it's tough.
And then people are like, well, I don't, you know, I get it. So people are like, I don't want to hear about this.
I don't want to talk about this.

Speaker 6 But I'm like, I'm still, you know, probably when I'm 80 years old, I'm still going to be talking about all three of the things on the list there. Yep.
You know, like

Speaker 6 Iraq was quite a while ago as well. It still comes up from time to time.
The Mitch McConnell thing.

Speaker 6 I mean, if I see Josh Holmes at age 75 walking down the street, I'm going to be pointing my bony little finger in his chest. They're like, you did this.
So, you know, that's just me.

Speaker 6 Maybe that's not it. Some people move on.
That's just me. All right.
I've set you up for the crying now. Okay.
You're emotional. You're mad with Joe Biden.
You're thinking about the healthcare murder.

Speaker 6 When you started keeping it at 1600, Barack Obama was still president. Yeah.
So that was a while ago.

Speaker 6 How are you feeling about all this?

Speaker 6 You know, like, you know,

Speaker 6 if George Stephen Hoppe has asked Joe Biden, how would you feel at the end of the election? How do you, how did you feel? How do you feel about doing all this every day? I feel

Speaker 6 pretty bad. Pretty bad.
No,

Speaker 6 I really did do some thinking because this wasn't a surprise, right? Not that I expected Donald Trump to win, but because we all knew that it was a very real possibility.

Speaker 6 I genuinely believe this was a coin toss. I had an opportunity to really think about the reaction and what my reaction would be and how I would feel.
And

Speaker 6 I'm an Obama person through and through, and so I will always be hopeful.

Speaker 6 But I am much less hopeful than I was when I started that campaign or when I left the White House or even when I started keeping it 1600.

Speaker 6 And that is a hard thing to wrestle with the state of the world right now. But it's sort of like, you know, what I was saying to you before.
It's

Speaker 6 the only way

Speaker 6 I can see through this is to take everything one day at a time and to believe

Speaker 6 that we still have the capacity to change. change our minds, change the way we behave, change the country.
And that is, it's very possible that's just not true.

Speaker 6 But deciding it's not true now, like sends us into this nihilistic place, which I can't go to. There's no appeal to that for you? There's no appeal to that for me.

Speaker 6 Like, look, I have, I think, since I was a child, I was always been like the, I've tried to be the diplomat and the, and the peacemaker. I was like that in my family.

Speaker 6 It's probably why I worked for Barack Obama. Being a speechwriter requires a lot of diplomacy and a lot of bring it.

Speaker 6 This person wants this edit. This wants the other edit.
How are people going to think about the speech? How's it going to land with this group and that group?

Speaker 6 So like, that's just like, it's in my DNA. And if I give that up,

Speaker 6 I don't know what I have, man.

Speaker 6 I don't have much else. It's been like, it's been like a guiding principle of my entire life and career.
And I feel like, I don't know.

Speaker 6 I feel like the idea of America is, this will sound extremely cheesy, but like, I think it's worth, it's still worth fighting for. And it is an idea.
It's an idea. For sure.

Speaker 6 You haven't had a moment of doubt in the last month that the American idea is an American idea worth fighting for? I mean, look, the founders, you know, we're all created equal, right?

Speaker 6 The idea that everyone is created equal, that everyone deserves life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, like it sounds cheesy, whatever. It is a radical idea.
It is a radical idea.

Speaker 6 And one of the reasons it's a radical idea is because the people who wrote it had slaves. And so like, so right off the bat, we didn't start off too well in this country.

Speaker 6 We had this like, we had this great ideal and it was not matched in practice in any way. And throughout our history, we have fucked up time and time and time again.

Speaker 6 But there are also times when we have moved forward and made progress. It has happened over and over and over again.

Speaker 6 And the idea that this founding principle is still the best way to organize society and organize a country, which I do believe, I still think it's worth fighting for.

Speaker 6 I still think that you can change people's minds. I do.
Are your hopes not capped, though? Here you say, okay, sure. Yeah, us, sir.
I still have hope. I still have hope things are better.
But like,

Speaker 6 is there not something fundamentally changed about your, like, do you feel like you've lost some of your capacity for it? We just baptized my, my one-year-old, our one-year-old, Teddy.

Speaker 6 We got really lucky. The person who baptized Teddy is a guy by the name of Father Greg Boyle, runs Homeboy Industries here in Los Angeles.

Speaker 6 He's a Jesuit. A Jesuit, a great Jesuit.
It's a rehabilitation program for former gang members and people who are incarcerated. I forgot we have that in common.

Speaker 6 You're a Jebby too. Yeah, I'm a Jesuit.
And so is Father Greg. So is the Pope now, right? We got a Jesuit Pope.
It's great.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 Father Greg, who, by the way, is a huge Bulwark fan afterwards that we were talking, and he said he's a big Bulwark fan. So, well, yeah.
What's up, Father Greg?

Speaker 6 But the saying that he loves is: we are more than the worst thing we've ever done.

Speaker 6 And that is a

Speaker 6 deep belief in the possibility of redemption, of change, of grace, of being able to, like, we all have the capacity for good and the capacity for evil. I do believe that.

Speaker 6 And so I think there are evil acts, but like, you know, people can always have their minds changed. And some people might never have their minds changed.
You're going to get your Donald Trump's.

Speaker 6 You're going to get your Elon Musk's, right? That's humanity. But I also think it is is entirely possible to go out there and talk to people and change their minds.

Speaker 6 And by the way, that is the only option. To me, it's just, there's just two choices, right? There's giving up or there's trying.
And trying might lead you to failure.

Speaker 6 And if you asked me to predict, is it more likely to lead to failure in this political environment in our country right now? I would say yes, for sure.

Speaker 6 But like, what does that prediction matter at this point? It doesn't matter. What matters is whether you decide to try or not try.
That's all that matters.

Speaker 6 It doesn't matter what you think is going to happen or what you predict. All that matters is what you're doing right now.
A more fabric,

Speaker 6 hopeful podcast host would end on Grace. That'd be a good place to end.

Speaker 6 But I want to take one more pass at you about trying to, I want to try to rip this hope from your soul one more time before we go to Christmas. Okay, cool, cool.
So, Teddy, I'm good.

Speaker 6 Just something I just thought about for the first time this week. Teddy,

Speaker 6 when he goes to school in like five years, and they're going to have the, they have the, on the wall, they got the picture of the presidents.

Speaker 6 Donald Trump's going to be on there two times. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah, he is. Two times.

Speaker 6 And so, like, it's going to look up there and it's going to be like, look at this. Look at this great list of white men who fought for everybody's right for

Speaker 6 liberty and pursuit of happiness, equality, these sort of great people

Speaker 6 that you're supposed to aspire to. And the worst person in the country, like really America's worst human, will be two of the last three.
Yeah. And you know what I'm going to say? I'm going to say

Speaker 6 that is America. And this other guy

Speaker 6 in between there, Barack Obama, he's America too. And John Lewis is America and so is George Wallace.
And we are a, we contain multitudes.

Speaker 6 And this is a country that has never lived up to the ideals of its founding. that are still worth fighting for.
And there is pain in this country, and there is misery and suffering and evil.

Speaker 6 And there is also good and kindness and compassion. And that is the country we are in.
And by the way, you have a say in what happens because we have agency.

Speaker 6 And no matter how dark it gets, we have agency. And so that's what I want to teach my kids.
That's the best you can go.

Speaker 6 You're a good dad. Seriously.
I was hoping, though. in unseriousness to get you to downgrade america to in like the obama spirit to like we're just belgians think that belgian is Belgium is great too.

Speaker 6 You know, Malaysians think Malaysia is great too. Like we're just not actually that special.
I was trying to get you to downgrade us in kind of, you know, in the spirit of what from whence you came.

Speaker 6 But no, you're still feeling the American exceptionalism in there. The exceptionalism, I feel, is more for the ideals than it is for the country itself.

Speaker 6 And I think that those are ideals are, it should be universal, right? In other countries as well.

Speaker 6 Treat your neighbor like you want to treat yourself is like a precept of almost every single religion through human history. Can't be a coincidence that they all came around to that one.

Speaker 6 And so I think that these are like universal principles that aren't just about America. That's about like how we organize the world.
And so that's what that's what keeps me going.

Speaker 6 What are you and Teddy doing for Christmas? We're here. We're here in Los Angeles.
Charlie, Teddy,

Speaker 6 Emily, Emily's parents are in town. They're staying with us.
My parents live here. So my brother lives here.
So we're all going to do Christmas at the Favreau's. A Favreau family Christmas.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 where are you going you're gonna i'm going to vale you're gonna go skiing i'm gonna be off it's gonna be offline with tim miller that's great we'll see are you i was gonna say you're not gonna be you're like you're as bad as the worst you're the only one of all the people at pod save americo baller all the people we talk to you and i we're the we're the most online we're the most online how many times has somebody sent you a text that was like hey have you seen this or you haven't seen it

Speaker 6 never never

Speaker 6 i appreciate all of you all my friends out there they're like ooh have you seen this story yes have you seen this meeting yes i've seen it. Okay.

Speaker 6 I'm online. All right.

Speaker 6 Pfeiffer is close. Pfeiffer is close to us.
But he's been sort of falling off in recent weeks. So it's really me and you.
I'm going to tell you this. This is what I'm going to do.

Speaker 6 And this is a step up for me. I'm not going to bring it onto the mountain.
That's good. How about that? Like, I'm not, like, like at lunch when I'm skiing,

Speaker 6 I'm not going to be on Twitter. So that's it.
I still will probably be tweeting on

Speaker 6 Christmas night after I've had a few drinks. We're looking for progress there.
We're not looking for we're not looking for big swings, just progress. All right.
Jon Favreau, thank you so much for

Speaker 6 a good show, long show, kind of a meaty show for everybody. Since I'm gone next week,

Speaker 6 people needed every single second of this, and I hope they enjoyed it. Everybody else, you have a Merry Christmas.
We'll see you back here Monday. What will it be? Monday, December 29th.

Speaker 6 Because of the bulwark, we work. You know, okay, this is America.
We work here. We have the good old fashioned Republican work ethic.
Jon Favreau will be back for you with Pods of America.

Speaker 6 I don't know, what, February 14th or something? After a special little French

Speaker 6 January 6th, we're back. January 6th,

Speaker 6 celebration. Yeah.
It will be wild. Bye-bye.
We'll see you all later.

Speaker 12 If we make it through December,

Speaker 7 everything's gonna be all right, I know.

Speaker 7 It's the coldest time of winter.

Speaker 12 And I shiver when I see the falling snow

Speaker 12 If we make it through December

Speaker 7 Got plans to be in a warmer town come summertime

Speaker 7 Maybe even California

Speaker 7 If we make it through December, we'll be fine

Speaker 7 Got laid off at the factory

Speaker 7 Their timing's not the greatest in the world

Speaker 7 Heaven knows I've been working hard

Speaker 7 Wanted Christmas to be right for my girl

Speaker 12 I don't mean to hate December

Speaker 7 It's meant to be the happy time of year.

Speaker 7 And my little girl don't understand

Speaker 7 why we can't afford no Christmas here.

Speaker 7 If we make it through December,

Speaker 7 everything's gonna be alright, I know

Speaker 7 It's the coldest time of winter

Speaker 12 And I shiver when I see the falling snow

Speaker 12 If we make it through December

Speaker 7 Got plans to be in a warmer town come summertime

Speaker 7 Maybe even California.

Speaker 7 If we make it through December, we'll be fine.

Speaker 7 Maybe even California.

Speaker 7 If we make it through December, we'll be fine.

Speaker 6 The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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