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Hey, everybody.

Welcome to the Weekly Show podcast.

I always do this.

I always, whenever I say welcome to the weekly show podcast, for some reason I do a dip.

I lift myself out of the chair.

It has become a very strange tick.

And now that I have said it out loud and made all of you aware of it, I'm going to be even more self-conscious.

But I'm going to try not to.

I mean, it is a podcast, so you actually don't even know that I was levitating unless you're watching it YouTube.

This is what happens when you are an erotic individual and you want to start your podcast with a bold and exciting statement of what's going on in the world, and you end up doing two minutes on a physical tick that you have no idea where it is emanating from.

So, I apologize most sincerely.

We're taping this on Wednesday.

It's probably going to air on Thursday.

I don't know about you, but this is the first podcast taping that we've done under the protection of our glorious Golden Dome.

The new Golden Dome, the space laser missile fighting Death Star.

And it's only going to take, I think, $125 billion,

which I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say is somewhat low.

My guess is if you want to build a domed missile defense system, satellite driven, I'm sure Starlink driven,

gotta throw money to you, boys.

My guess is we're talking a trillion plus

over a long period of time.

But hey, what's money as long as poor people aren't allowed to have soda?

Anyway,

by the way, this is the end of our first season.

I know it sounds strange because it's May and there's really, I guess we typed it to the school year, but this is the end of our first season.

And obviously we'll take a week off and then I guess start the second season, for God's sakes.

But we are excited today to talk about the state of politics with some individuals who

the basis of their brand is that in its entirety.

So let's get to our guests for today.

All right, folks, this is it.

We are absolutely delighted to be joined by Jon Favreau and John Lovett, founders, Crooked Media, hosts of Pod Save

America, Love It or Leave It, and offline.

Three people talking today, not an H

in any of their names.

Thank God.

It's a J-O-N fest.

Is that even?

Yeah, I don't know.

We're Jewish.

That's our excuse.

Yes.

What happened to you?

My dad had a Jewish roommate, and he loved the name Jonathan from his, because that was the name of his roommate.

That's how I got it.

Your father named you after his roommate.

Not after him, but he liked the name from that.

He liked a Jonathan.

So that's how I became Jonathan.

It's a very interesting yet somewhat suspicious.

I am Catholic, though, sort of.

Is that an unusual for Catholics?

Is the H generally a part of, is it a sacrament?

Usually you're, yeah, I mean, John was a big deal, you know?

Really?

He was, uh, yeah, big, big, uh, big disciple.

So, right.

What would he think of Pope Leo?

That's a good question.

I'm a, I'm a Pope Leo fan.

I'm a fan of any Pope that is a like a baseball fan.

I like the idea that the Holy See, like, after doing all the homilies and spreading spreading the incense and all that, he just turns around and goes, can you fucking believe what Judge did?

Can you, this guy is like babe Ruth.

Gentlemen, I want to talk to you today about some things that are going on.

The first thing is you two are, if I may, and I don't mean this to be disrespectful, you are Democratic insiders.

And I want to know why you withheld information.

on Joe Biden's mental condition and how you left this country and the state that you left it in.

John, you can go first.

Catholic John and then Jewish John.

Is that really how I'm going to have to delineate that?

That's a good idea, yeah.

Catholic John and Jewish John.

Yeah.

And then also Jewish John.

Beginning of a joke?

I don't know what you're talking about.

I think Joe Biden has never been sharper,

never been better.

You are famously on record as saying you cannot believe.

that the Democrats ditched Joe Biden.

I actually can't believe it because it's

wait for a while there.

We didn't think he was going to step down.

But he did.

Yeah, no, look, I think, obviously, you know, I know you were saying this on your Monday show, but everyone has to start with, we're all, you know, feeling very sorry for Joe Biden's diagnosis.

Yes.

And

the fact that his family has to deal with that.

So we all, of course, wish him a speedy recovery.

But

let's dig in.

There's the butt.

And there's the butt.

Yeah, yeah.

I've been watching this now for three days.

Like, and I'm listening, I'm in the club too, like, ripping the shit out of this.

It's all, you know, we make up these sort of two-dimensional caricatures of politicians and all those sorts of things.

And then this happens, and watching everybody have to do the, it's almost like a disclaimer

or like something you see at the end of an alcohol commercial, which is like, Budweiser urges you to drink responsibly.

And you're like, Budweiser doesn't give a shit.

Yeah, it's the, it's the gambling anonymous sign inside the bathroom at the win.

But the uh,

uh, but, But

yeah, look,

I think it's, but the thing is,

it feels strange to do, but I also think maybe it's good that we do it.

It's like a little homily to remind us all that we're human beings.

And even though these are political figures, it's not for, we're not doing it for Joe Biden.

We're not saying it because we think Jill might hear this podcast.

It's a little bit of a performance of sympathy.

Because we should feel that empathy and

that concern, even though in reality, because of of what the stakes were in 2024, the truth is the actual experience of Joe Biden and his family for the country is not that important.

What mattered is what happened to the country and the decisions that were made.

That's right.

And I do think

there were a lot of reasons people were not honest about what they were seeing, some of which are, I think, for mercenary personal reasons.

Some of them are because they didn't want to, you know, lose their access or feel as though they were going against the grain.

Name names, Lovett.

I see you dancing around.

Name names.

Name names.

Everybody, everybody.

But one part of this that I do think has not been, and I, and I think I've been reflecting on this too, about, you know, because we went to the White House and saw Joe Biden, who had just come back from a trip.

And he was, I don't think it wasn't as, I think, egregious as what you hear in the audio around the Her report.

But he was April of 2020.

It was April, and he was rambling and he was hard to follow.

And he repeated a story.

But then we were assured assured by people around him that he was just exhausted.

And then we were at the fundraiser, obviously, the famous Clooney fundraiser.

And I think people inside maybe weren't being honest with themselves about what they were seeing.

But I know if like from my own point of view, part of what was a challenge was because Joe Biden seemed so hell-bent on staying in, right?

I never wanted to be dishonest about what I felt we were seeing.

And by the way, we were getting shit about talking about Joe Biden not doing enough to overcome the questions around his age long before he dropped out.

Like we were talking about it.

We were trying to be honest about it.

Sure.

Yeah, everybody talks about that this all began after the debate, but I think everybody very clearly was, you know, polls were showing a year before that.

People felt that he was not in a position to run for re-election.

People were talking about it before then.

The debate was kind of the,

we're all worried about, you know, a hurricane event and then the hurricane hit, but people were talking about it.

But I think the point I was going to make about just my own perspective on it was I remember feeling, I want to talk about this as a huge liability.

I want to talk about this as something Joe Biden can overcome.

But I'm not going to go so far as to say, I think Joe Biden must drop out.

He is too old to be president, A, because I didn't know exactly what was going on behind the scenes.

But B, if Joe Biden is the candidate, I want him to fucking win because I care about the country.

And I can't, and I don't want to be somebody suddenly having the words we're saying taken out of context and all of a sudden part of the case against Joe Biden from the right that would

use any

person criticizing Joe Biden from the left as a weapon against him.

So it was about being honest about Joe Biden's age as a liability while knowing that if he is the nominee, I want to be clear that I thought it was important to make sure we did everything we could to re-elect him.

So let's talk about that because this is what I think is the crux of this.

And it's something I've been trying to wrap my head around, is that, you know, everyone talks about the cover-up without talking about the system that is designed now around politics.

And it's always been this way to some extent.

I don't think the cloaking mechanism that they, you know, now it's that coat from Harry Potter.

But politics and media in its symbiotic relationship, it...

It all seems like cover-up now.

You know, Watergate, the big thing was it's not the crime, it's the cover-up.

First of all, it's the fucking crime.

But second of all, I think now the lesson that came out of Watergate is we really then just have to be better with the cover-up.

And it's all don't, in some extent, and you guys know enough about the inside part of this to maybe help me out, but even that.

What you're just talking about, John, is I want to be careful about the truth that I see and speak

because I know the machinery so well that they will weaponize my insight.

Yeah.

So I think that there's,

I think that a big problem with the Democratic Party over the last several years, decade maybe, maybe even back to the Iraq War,

we have a hard time

hearing hard truths and admitting hard truths to ourselves.

And then we have a hard time telling hard truths to the voters.

By the way, it's not like the Republicans are like, we're an open book.

Yeah, of course.

We're very reflective.

Right.

Like, that's what I'm saying.

Politics is all that now.

Yes.

And I think throughout Biden's term, you had it with the age issue.

You also had it with inflation, right?

And the Biden administration and a lot of elected Democrats were like, oh, look at all the statistics and the numbers.

And then poll after poll and focus group after focus group would people would be like, no, actually, prices are high and it's really bothering me.

And we'd just be like,

that's just the media or that's just Republicans.

And the same thing happened around Joe Biden's age.

I think the, the, the, the closer you got to Joe Biden, the closer the advisor or the family member, um, the more I think they were not just lying to the American people, but lying to themselves.

uh about Joe Biden.

And I think, I think it was a little bit like a, for some people in the White House, I know it was like a boiling frog kind of thing.

And so they would be, you know, they'd be close to Joe Biden.

They'd they'd see something that was a little weird, but then he'd have some good days.

And then people who left the White House and then would come back like six months later, a year later and see Joe Biden would be like, oh my God, it's gotten so much worse.

So I do think, and that's not to excuse it at all.

No, I want to talk about like, what are these mechanisms now?

How much of it is the way that

these, the political machine is sort of, it's so designed to protect the power

that it no longer functions.

It really functions as a reality distortion field, as opposed to like

let's, and we're using Biden as an example, and we'll move beyond that to get to a broader case, I think.

But going back to the Biden case, it's a pretty simple kind of

debugging, which is, so everybody goes on television and goes, you don't understand.

I sit with this guy.

He's the smartest one in the room.

I can't keep up with him.

I went to a meeting with him and he was using words.

I didn't even know were words.

They were fantastic.

I had to look them up.

He's the smartest man in the world.

You know, Kamala Harris comes out and says, I sit, this man, you don't understand.

You don't see it.

And I'm like, oh, has anyone filmed that?

Because you should show that.

Because

it was a very simple case to puncture.

People are saying, I'm a little concerned about his stamina and cognitive ability.

Here's how we can dispel that.

Just put him out there and let him show us how fucking smart and stamina.

and they wouldn't do it because they knew they couldn't all right we're going to take a quick break and we will be right back

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Hey, everyone.

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And we are right back.

Look, you know, this is where it's like, you know, you talk about the machine, talk about like, I think this is a much more human.

I think the sad and maybe frightening part about all of it is that it wasn't really designed.

It was just a bunch of people making decisions day to day.

You know, in the months, I mean, there was the state of the union.

John, you don't think that they said, you don't think that the PR people and the press people and Donnellin and all his advisors sat and designed a strategy to make sure that the president was not put in harm's way?

Like didn't they didn't design teleprompters and keep him out of press briefing?

Oh, I think they're slowly managing.

I think they're slowly.

Look, there's no day you are competent and

up to the job of president and then a day where you're suddenly not.

It's a slow degradation.

We know that they were, that some of this was just,

I think there's a lot of, yes, I think there's

some effort to delude the public, but also people deluding themselves.

We know that because they put him out there for that debate, right?

The debate.

was supposed to be the moment he proved all of his critics wrong.

Now, there were a lot of signs that they did not trust Joe Biden in interview settings.

He was doing fewer and fewer interviews.

His schedule was being contained, but they put him out there for that debate.

They said he was using teleprompters in like small gatherings.

I think

what they say to people and what they said to people even then was if there was an acknowledgement that he had slowed down, they would say, you know what?

He might, from the performance angle, right?

Like him, his his ability to communicate.

Yeah, he's maybe slowed down.

He shuffles a little more, all that kind of stuff.

But in terms of decision-making as president, he's never been sharper.

And of course, that's something that's difficult for people outside the inner circle to judge because all of us can see that performance-wise, he's not so great, but we can't really be second-guessing the decisions he makes.

Or we can if we disagree with the decisions, but there's nothing obvious there.

And so, no, to your point, like, yes, they were trying to hide him from the public as much as possible during the campaign.

Like, the prompters, the schedule, the making sure he doesn't do too many events, making sure his speeches were short, because they knew he wasn't a good performer and couldn't do that part of the job.

But they just tell people he could do the other part of the job, you know.

Right.

But it wasn't those things for the presidency

are not performances.

They're a crucial aspect.

Yes.

It was a huge fucking disaster.

I just woke Lovett up.

Well, here we go.

Earlier than he's usually.

Jeez.

Yeah.

No,

but it's early for me.

But

this is where it's sort of like

all of this was playing out in public.

You know, it is a little bit like, what if in Iran-Contra, Reagan had exchanged the guns for cash and brought some Sandinistas out on stage at his debate.

at the presidential debate, right?

Like a lot of the cover-up is of what we were all were seeing.

The American people had decided Joe Biden was too old.

And I, look, I, to me, what I try to, I'm trying to, like, I think back on 2024, and it starts with Joe Biden actually performing adequately at a state of the union.

And I found that reassuring.

And looking back on it, I think, you know what?

That was fine.

But I realize now that my own baseline had moved and what I had come to be hoping for from Joe Biden in a public setting was fighting to a draw.

And looking back now,

I think I underestimated just how much of a price we were paying for having a bully pulpit occupied by someone who at their best did okay and at their worst

raised even more questions about whether or not they were up to the job.

Or even if the questions that came out of a Joe Biden appearance weren't around age, they were about gaff saying the wrong thing, not delivering a message effectively.

That also, I think, came to a head in part because I remember when Dean Phillips was running, one of the challenges he had.

Don't just invent names, John.

Don't just make up fictional characters.

Steve?

His name is Dean.

Steve.

I remember when generic white man selling gardening equipment ran.

Right, I was about to say, I think it was a, or it was a budget suit company.

I can't really remember.

But anyway,

there was a man named Dean Phillips.

And one of the challenges he had,

which any candidate would have, is that before I think some of the kind of the like blowback against uh Joe Biden's politics and policies in Israel and Gaza,

it was a fair argument that he had played his hand as president as well as any person could.

That's how I felt, certainly in the first two years.

He did an extraordinary job.

And I think, like, right now, we're not talking about that.

Uh, he had the slimmest of majorities, he got bills through that people said he couldn't get through.

He had a really strong record.

It was hard to imagine anybody doing better than how Joe Biden did,

certainly on domestic policy with his achievements.

Even though ultimately a lot of those achievements turned out like broadband, a lot of the stuff turned out to not, like, I'd say chip-sack, absolutely, some of the infrastructure stuff, but

a lot of it wasn't resonating and people were not feeling.

Even the successes.

Which is why you needed a president who could communicate to the

but even in the idea of it's it felt like the last gasp of the status quo Democratic Party, who would come out and go, we just got the opportunity to negotiate 10 drugs with the pharmaceutical companies.

This is a major victory.

Like, this is, I think this is the last gasp of that incrementalist kind of, I think there's going to be a rethinking about the possible.

Well, to your point about the larger system

surrounding this that makes it possible, I think more than anything, it is these, a lot of these politicians are driven by fear and by caution.

And Donald Trump has only added to that because he represents an existential threat to everyone.

Right.

And so the way this all went down is, you know, we weren't, Joe Biden wasn't our first choice in 2020, right?

And then he wins the primary and we're like, okay, we're getting behind Joe Biden.

We got to beat Donald Trump.

And then he does it.

And then he has a good first year.

And then

I sort of expected that he would step aside and after one term and like let other people run.

And then when he wasn't, when it didn't seem like like he was going to, you know, the conversation started like, why isn't he stepping aside?

What are we going to do?

Why doesn't someone challenge him?

And then everyone would say, okay, well, even though most voters think he's too old to run again, his approval rating among Democratic voters is quite high.

And they weren't getting that there could be that both things could be true.

Voters could be like, yes, I support him and I like the job he's done as president, but also I don't think he should run again.

And so then it becomes, okay, who's going to challenge him?

Who's going to challenge an incumbent president who has an 80% approval rating among Democrats?

And then everyone would say, oh, this is like with Carter and Kennedy, right?

And we it'll wound him.

It'll wound him.

It would have to be with his, he would have to have organized and

accepted it and helped it and cultivated it as opposed to resisted it, which is what he did.

And that speaks to like, it's also the fault of the other potential Democratic contenders who chose not to run against him in a primary or to say something, not because they wanted to do a cover-up, but because they were too afraid that if they challenged him, they would lose and it would hurt their careers down the road.

So like, I do hold a lot of the, you know, potential 2028ers right now who might want to run for president accountable for some of this because no one had the courage, except for Dean Phillips,

late, very late, to stand up and say, like, no, you know what?

I think he's been a good president too, but he's too old and we just need a new generation.

And I don't have a lot of other problems with Joe Biden, but that's a big enough one that I'm running.

And if you don't, if you want to vote for me, Grant, if you don't, that's fine.

So this reminds me of, you know, to flip it, because we've talked a lot about the Democrats and Biden.

The Iraq war for the Republicans turned out to be, in some respects, an extinction event.

You know, if you remember correctly, like they were all behind.

A lot of Democrats voted for it too, but that whole global war on terror and the way that it was begun and the weapons of mass destruction and all those things, without them realizing it, I think, was the last gasp of that status quo Republicanism and really set the stage for Donald Trump.

And I think this event for Democrats will have a similar effect in that it has sown the seeds for a real, and it's an opportunity for an interesting reinvention of what this Democratic Party can be.

I actually think there should be excitement, not trepidation, around what this is.

But it's going to come from someone outside of it.

I think anybody that has any of that stink on them is not going to be particularly successful.

It's interesting.

Donald Trump, when he started being critical of George W.

Bush, it was, I think it represented two things.

I think one, it represented what you're talking about, which is

I'm going to, I'm gonna this this sort of this this sort of consensus was very bad for republicans it was stupid and i don't agree with it but it also was him saying i'm gonna say things that other people are afraid to say i'm gonna be somebody like there's all these consensus people it's all these institutional people i'm an anti-institutionalist and i say the unsayable and i think on the democratic side part of

we got a lot of front of the classroom uh raise their hand please the teacher types we got a lot of, we do.

We got a lot of, we got a lot of teachers pets.

The Democratic Party is teachers' pets.

A lot of front of the classrooms.

A lot of hall monitors.

Yeah.

And like the front of the classroom kids, the front of the classroom kids, they are the people you want running the student council, right?

You do.

Are they though?

They take it.

They can be frustrating.

They can be annoying, but they show up.

They do the work.

They generally do what the teachers want, but not what the students want.

But like Donald Trump Republicans have kind of captured this sort of back of the classroom energy.

And I think what John's talking about, about like none of these Democrats are willing to step forward and run.

Look, I think about Barack Obama deciding to challenge Hillary Clinton, even though she had been racking up endorsements, even though she was sort of marching towards the nomination.

And it was, and, and, and, and the Iraq War was part of it as well, which I think is interesting.

But part of it was he's saying, you know what?

I'm looking at the world and I think there's space that I don't, I just, not only do I think I

have an argument to make, I think this argument's going to resonate with people.

And even though there are people telling me it's stupid, even though it's a long shot, there's something inside of me that's telling me this is my time.

And the fact that there was no Democrat.

willing to do that other than Dean Phillips who did that late in part because none of the more

kind of larger figures are willing to do it.

The fact that none of them had that thing, that fire that said, I can be president and I can do it right now, is an indictment.

And it points to a kind of lack of assuredness in their own worldview.

It points to this kind of,

I don't know, consensus establishment mentality.

And I don't know that none of them can be the person to defy that, but it speaks to the fact that so far they haven't been able to, because it's not just that we need to overcome, I think, the stink.

It's that, but

by the way, if that is not a Democrats slogan in 2028, something has gone terribly wrong.

Overcome the stink.

If I don't have that on a bumper sticker.

It's compelling.

But it's that the

right person is the kind of person to say, you know what?

We got a bunch of shit wrong.

But I see, again, that's pro forma performance.

I think.

what you're saying is exactly right, but it's it's the previous thing you said about Obama.

He had an argument to make that resonated.

Everybody is so concerned about what is the strategy through?

How do I do the thing we did at the top, which was, first of all, I just want to send my hopes and prayers out to the family.

And

it's that part that is what's throwing this whole fucking game off.

It's the pro forma.

These are the steps you have to take to gain the trust of people for an argument.

I think it's going to come from, and you're right, it could very much come from somebody in that group, but it's somebody who just has a case to prosecute it's a litigation that hopefully can resonate uh with people and by the way i think the opportunity is going to be great because the republicans right now boy if you think the democrats circled the wagons to create a reality distortion field what's happening now is we live in

oz

like that what what the republicans are doing i mean for god's sakes how many times have we heard them go Donald Trump,

the reason why he can accept trillions of dollars is because he can't be bought.

And you're like, no, I think, I think you just named, I think that's the price.

Yeah, they, they have almost, they have transitioned from like trying

to tell lies that maybe people believe to now sort of being, just basking in how bullshit their lies are.

Like they don't even, they're not even trying anymore.

Well, I remember the early days were this.

Look, you know, I don't necessarily like the way he tweets.

Right.

And I'm not necessarily co-signing on some of his personal failings, but I do believe in some of his policies.

And now they're just like, nope, he's the most ethical person that I've ever worked with.

And you're like, all right.

Well, and now they're doing it themselves.

I mean, Marco Rubio was in a hearing this week and Senator Van Hollen from Maryland was grilling him on deportations and disappearances.

And he's like, well, these students come and they're burning down buildings and they're causing.

And then, and Van Holland's like, okay, but what about the one who just, she just wrote an op-ed and then she was thrown in jail for a month?

And he just, just went right past it.

Didn't even attempt to answer the question.

It's even worse.

He'll say things, so I guess you want rapists and murderers in the country.

And you're like, wait, what?

Right.

And you're like, no, no, I'm asking about the woman who wrote the op-ed.

And they're like, and then he just pretends you didn't say that.

And they all do that now.

It's a little bit like, you know, Trump is like the clown from it.

He's like pennywise and he's in the sewer.

And all these Republicans, all these Republicans are like crawl down next to the sewer.

And they're like, I don't want to go down there.

I don't want to go down there.

And he's like, come, we all float down here.

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we're right back

i do think there is a liberation that they feel once they let go of that tether to their former selves like you look at marco rubio and he is you know hating donald trump we can do that all day right like going along with donald trump is a hell of a lot easier than the balancing act.

A lot of these people tried to strike for a long time.

Now, they were trying to strike that because there was some core of some lingering fucking Jiminy cricket trying to tell them to do the right thing.

But once you let go of that, oh, wow, what a high it must be.

What a high to instead of kind of dealing with the nuances of reality,

telling Van Hollen that he's supporting gangbangers and criminals.

Drinking margaritas.

Drinking margaritas and Seacot.

You had a margarita.

Knowing that that's not what was happening.

Of course, he knows.

He knows.

Jackie Rosen.

Yeah.

Jackie Rosen had this moment where she's like, as a Jewish, I'm going to be a Jewish mother.

I'm not mad.

I'm disappointed.

I know you know better.

I know you know better.

Now, I don't.

I know everybody liked that moment, but to me, I was just like, come on, dude.

Well, I know, but I...

I don't know if it's valuable.

And I think that like, there's a certain point at which we have to accept that, hey, the real person isn't the conflicted soul behind the scenes.

The real person is the person sitting there making the decisions.

But I appreciated that that is what she genuinely feels because she knew him before and she knew what he was like as a senator and knows he doesn't believe these things.

And maybe there's not political value to saying those things, but every once in a while, let's take a moment to acknowledge that these people, a lot of them, are willfully, knowingly lying to the American people.

You have Dan Bongino and Cash Battelle, the head and deputy head of the FB fucking I,

going out crazy.

Hell of an interview.

Going out on television and going on television and being like, actually,

turns out.

I haven't seen Drink Fum Solve.

And you think, well, it seems like these people do know what the truth is.

You know, they can find it.

They can dig around and they can actually come forward and say, actually, this conspiracy theory isn't correct.

So they have the muscle.

Yeah.

It really exposes.

And that to me is, and kind of getting back to what we're talking about, which is, has the game gotten so out of hand that we can't gain control of it.

I've always said, you know, and I'll refer this to the news networks, the 24-hour news networks, I've always said, the most truth you will hear on CNN and MSNBC and Fox is in the green room.

The green room is where the truth is.

The green room is where political leaders and anchors say the real shit.

What are you doing?

You know, I got to fucking, I got to go up there and sort of carry it for Trump because he's done this crazy thing with this fucking plane.

And then they go on and go, there is no corruption here.

There is no, this is an unimpeachable.

Should we have turned down the Statue of Liberty, John?

Right, right.

And they know it's nonsense.

And in the green room, they're saying,

how the fuck am I supposed to make the Statue of Liberty thing work?

There's no way.

That's where they tell the truth.

It's the green room.

There's one other moment that they tell the truth that is instructive, I think, which is, and this happens a lot on Fox.

Say there's some scandal involving a Republican or Trump or he goes over the line.

He does something really, really bad.

In those first couple minutes, when they have not had time to talk to each other or figure out what the talking points are, every once, that's when you get a criticism of Donald Trump or the party, like a stray criticism on Fox.

And look, and it happens among Democrats too with Biden, right?

Like that, that happened after the debate, right?

You had some people who were critical, some people immediately did, oh, he's amazing.

That was fine.

But I do think for Democratic politicians who want to win, who want to be successful in the future, what I've been urging them to do like in the Trump era, especially now, especially as things have gotten so unbelievably bad.

When something happens, when Trump sends someone to Libya or Sudan or Sikot and El Salvador or defies a court order, like don't look at the news.

Don't talk to your advisors.

Don't look at a poll.

Just talk about for five minutes.

How that makes you feel.

Just do, just go with that.

That's interesting.

And then and then see how that feels.

And then go say that publicly.

And you know what?

Maybe you're going to be off.

Maybe other people aren't going to agree with you.

Maybe you go too far.

Maybe you don't go far enough.

But the value will be, it's what you truly believe.

And I do think that there's, because of the information environment we're in, and we're all, we're getting everyone's takes every five seconds.

Everyone's takes become sort of shaped by everyone else's online and everyone else is in the party.

And it's a, it's a real groupthink issue.

And I think if you want to be successful um and you want to really you just have to go with what you believe and that the best way to do that is to just say what's on your mind as opposed to like talking to everyone around you that's such an interesting point to me and it it really resonates because so

when i was hosting the show before uh the hey before the one day a week old man schedule that i've been handed which is lovely uh

We used to do a thing every year where we would invite, because it was hard to get political people on on the show at that time.

You get some written in a book, but mostly it was difficult.

They were nervous about it.

So we would invite all the press people from

senators' offices and congressional people's offices to come to the show in the afternoon.

And we would do like a panel with them.

I would talk to them and they would ask questions.

So it was all the, you know, whoever the press person was for this senator and the press person for this representative.

And they inevitably, you know, so I, I, my boss, I'd love to have him have a successful appearance on the daily show.

I think that would be really helpful for my boss.

What's your advice on what would make a successful appearance?

And I'd go, oh, well, I, you know, your boss could come on the show and tell me what they think.

And then what I'll do is like, I'll say what I think about what they said.

And then...

And then we'll talk about that.

And they'd be like, so the strategy is authenticity.

Yeah.

And I'm like, no, it's not a strategy.

I'm not telling you a strategy.

I'm saying just fucking talk like a person.

That's it.

But it was as though it reminded me of like when Magic Johnson first had a talk show, like he didn't know the mechanics.

So you like could watch in real time Arsinio's advice to him, like, be enthusiastic about share.

Share.

Like,

do you get my point?

Yeah.

No, yeah.

It comes from a place of,

okay, in this environment, if my boss says something, even if they say what they believe,

but they're taken out of context and there's a clip that doesn't make it, they could, you know, they can get in trouble.

And they are right, of course, that you could say what you believe and it could be unpopular because people don't like it or because someone takes it out of context or because

there's extenuating circumstances of why you're not supposed to reveal negotiation, whatever, right?

There's all kinds of reasons.

But I think you have to trust that the shit you get from saying what you believe, even if people don't agree with it, is not as bad as the credibility you lose by sounding like a bullshit artist all the time.

Yeah.

I think like what ties all this together is like, why do the Republicans now feel so comfortable going out there and brazenly lying?

They're counting on the fact that...

The people that won this election for them are not the people that are paying attention to the news day to day.

There are polls out

just this week that showed that if you know some of the details about what's happened with Mahmoud Khalil or some of these deportations to El Salvador, you don't support the policy.

But if you haven't heard about Donald Trump, haven't heard the specifics, you still support Donald Trump on immigration.

That we see over and over again.

And so we have this huge problem, which is we have Democrats have lost credibility with a ton of people we need.

The people we need to win back are now voting Republican, and they're really hard for Democrats to get through through the traditional channels that they've trained themselves on.

And And so all these Democrats that have now kind of over many years stopped asking themselves, what do I think?

And instead said, what am I supposed to say right now to get through this five-minute interview?

are kind of unprepared and no longer comfortable in a setting where they're going to talk to somebody for 30 minutes, 40 minutes, an hour, where they have the next sentence, right?

They don't even feel comfortable enough with their own kind of worldview, deeper kind of ideological motivations to just shoot the shit about politics.

There are a few people who can, right?

Like Bernie Sanders can do it.

I think AOC can do it.

I think Chris Murphy can, there's a lot of Democrats who can do it, but there are more and more Democrats who can do it.

Generally, they're the ones, though, that believe in shit.

Yes.

Yeah.

And so, and I think so, what happens, right, is instead of saying, I'm going to go out and just say what I think, and if I'm the right person for this moment, that's how we'll find out.

They think, I must be the right person for this moment.

What must I say to be the right person for this moment?

Oh, that's so smart.

Yes.

And that works.

That works for a press hit.

That works for a post.

That works for a short interview on CNN.

That works on the floor.

That works when you're in control.

But it doesn't work when you need the next paragraph.

When you need to start tying things together, that requires.

And you can smell it.

I mean, you can always smell.

Yes.

And so the kind of people we need are the kind of people that can kind of just sort of

wax for a long time on what they actually think and care about.

And that, by the way, that can meander from topics they're more comfortable with, like on the economy or healthcare, over to more difficult issues where

trans issues, immigration, wherever.

I believe the phrase is weave.

I believe the official phrase is the weave.

It is the weave, but that's where he's successful.

I think you're right.

Trump can talk for eight hours about shit because it is,

it really love it or hate it.

I think.

A lot of times politicians, they think, I'm going to go through a process where I sand down the rough edges and what they end up with is a cup of sawdust because they've just, they've, there's ultimately they erode anything about themselves that would have been compelling or would have made, as you said about Obama, the case for why this is his moment.

I also think that in the Trump era, Democrats have stopped trusting their instinct on what is right and what's going to work because Donald Trump keeps winning and people still can't believe that we're 10 years into this and he's president again.

And so they're looking even more to polls, what works, what media strategies work, where is our Joe Rogan?

We must know.

That was one of the craziest things.

Craziest.

Rogan fucking supported Bernie Sanders.

They're like, where's the left's Joe Rogan?

And you're like, he was a Sanders guy.

Like, what are you talking about?

It's wild.

Or, you know, like.

They're sending people to

El Salvador to lock them away forever.

And they're not even having a court hearing.

And they're violating the court order.

And it's like, well, how can we use this to talk about Medicaid cuts?

Because Medicaid cuts are the most unpopular thing and we know that.

And it's like, yeah, they are.

Oh, wow.

Do they really do that?

Like, they'll try and they'll look at polling about what people respond to.

That's so interesting.

Let me ask you, what do you think about the moralizing?

I've always felt like one of the biggest mistakes that the Democrats made is they so focused on the moral case against Trump that they forgot the incompetence case against Trump, that they forgot the this doesn't work case.

Like, and even now, with, you know, I think the Republicans are very comfortable having the Democrats fly down to El Salvador to talk to a guy that may or may not be an MS-13, but it still comes off as

that same, like, this is not who we are.

And like, every time I hear that, I go, what are you, what do you mean?

It's, we had slaves.

Like,

not who we are.

Yeah.

So on the like, the Democrats willing to go, I think you're right that Republicans like, they want the debate about immigration, right?

They want that fight.

They think that saying that Van Helen had Margaritas in El Salvador is good politics for them.

And maybe on some level, especially as we get closer to the midterms, if we're talking about immigration instead of Medicaid, maybe there is an argument to be made that that's not what the, that's not what the politics dictates.

So we actually need to really focus focus on these issues to get this set of voters fine.

I think sometimes what we miss is, like, look at Donald Trump's ability.

He can put a Kennedy at HHS, right?

He can do all of these things that violate orthodoxy.

Why?

Because he's built a reservoir of trust

with his base.

He has space to operate because he has such credit.

Well, whatever he thinks becomes orthodoxy.

It becomes orthodoxy.

Whatever he says

is now the orthodoxy.

Totally.

But like, what gave this fucking doofus i mean like god damn it like what gave the like we got beaten by the dumbest motherfuckers on earth right like what gave this this sort of like kind of gut instinct operator this work we viewed them as the dumbest motherfuckers on earth that was the mistake but what my my point is only that he built credibility on issues on so in in ways that people would have said was unpopular, right?

Like the way he talked about immigration was broadly unpopular and is, right?

Remains, right?

But it sent a message to the people he felt needed to be his loyal defenders and base that he was on their side, come what may, to the point where he can put a pro-choice Kennedy at the Department of Health and Human Service.

Imagine Mike Pence as Kamala Harris's Secretary of Health and Human Service.

Inconceivable, right?

And so you look at some of these issues and it's like, are they the,

is this the issue that is going to drive voters in the midterm?

No, but if you go to El Salvador, you demonstrate you care about something, you demonstrate you're passionate about something, you've built credibility with a subset of your base so they'll have your back in the big fights to come.

So I think that's like a big part of why it's important.

But I don't think that's true.

And I also don't think, and again, that's a strategy.

That's not what you think.

I'm describing what happens when you, when you are passionate

on behalf of this cause.

No, I understand.

I'm not saying, and therefore this must be the strategy.

I'm just talking about what happens when you demonstrate real and sincere conviction and passion.

You show to people who you are.

that gives you trust to maybe defy orthodoxy here, push further here, try for something there.

I think it's, I don't even think it's

a question of, are we making a moral case versus an incompetence case?

I think that the case that you need to make to Americans who care first and foremost about their own lives and their own families.

As anybody does.

Any country.

Any country.

Like, how does this affect you?

How is what Donald Trump's doing affect you and how what Democrats would do affect you?

So the case for going to El Salvador is not like, this poor guy, we're going to stand up for him.

The case is if he can do that to this guy, he can do this to anyone, whether they're a citizen or a non-citizen.

But even that feels distant.

You know, even that feels distant.

Like when Donald Trump in the beginning of it, you know, at Madison Square Garden says, I'm going to invoke the Alien Enemies Act.

And everybody's just like, I don't even fucking know what, like, who told that guy?

Who told him about that?

Like, nobody even knew.

But you had Hispanic communities voting for him going like, yeah, get those people out of here, even though

everybody thinks it's not going to be us.

But here's the argument I've not heard much of.

What immigration does for us economically?

What does, if we have a large undocumented community, what does it do?

Is it a drain on our resources?

Is it, do they all go to the emergency room and Medicaid is depleted?

Is it a net loss?

Is it a net gain?

Like if you have a case to prosecute, that this is an important part, how much does America need in terms of that?

The Democrats don't ever make that case.

They react to the outrage and moment of the day.

Yeah.

They've got a braille.

And I've got to show that like, and now I'm going to invoke the Holocaust homily.

And then there was no MS-13 people left to speak for me.

Like, but nobody makes the fucking case of why our policies are the way they are.

And then they get caught when it turns out that they are ridiculous.

Yeah, well, because I think you're right.

For so long, because we didn't think immigration was our issue and it was a good issue for Donald Trump.

Right, I know, but the response was, oh, well, then we're just not going to talk about it.

Or we're going to say, yeah, we'll do a very tough border bill, too.

Like, we'll, instead of like laying out our own vision.

And if you just, if you start with what the truth is, right, which is there's an influx of migrants and asylum seekers during the Biden administration, partly because of COVID, partly because there's just mass migration from the global south, north, war, conflict, famine, climate change, like it's, it's going to be an issue that we're dealing with for a long time.

And partly because he just didn't do the thing that if they wanted to shut it down, could have shut it down.

And it's proven by the executive order where they shut it down.

Right.

And so what happened there is you really did have in a lot of cities migrants who had just arrived, and it was a strain on public resources for local cities, for states, ultimately the federal government as well.

And if you're living there, even if you're welcoming to immigrants, if you walk down the street and there's a bunch of people who have arrived who don't have places to live, who aren't working, or like, of course that's going to cause problems.

And to not recognize that that's going to cause problems is one of the, is the first problem for the Democrats.

But then...

You can be able to say that that is an issue and we need to have some limits on asylum seekers and some oh, just dropped my coffee.

For those of you listening at home who don't have the video here, John Lovitts just took his coffee and hurled it across the room.

Yeah, he was so mad about my pushing.

I'm so mad.

I'm

so angry.

John Combro,

just threw it across the room at John Lovitt.

Yeah.

So you can, you can, that's like the first problem.

And then

people can believe that we should have some kind of limits on immigration in this country, that we should have an immigration system that works.

We should have people who follow the laws, that people who've done everything right to become immigrants, become citizens in this country, like that they should be ahead of people who just came over the border illegally.

Like you can believe all that and still believe that you shouldn't throw people in jail in a foreign country for the rest of their lives.

But if you don't make that first case, it's very difficult.

If all you're doing, the most brilliant move the Republicans ever did was, you know, send two busloads into New York City.

New York City, where this is who we are.

We are a sanctuary.

Ellis Island, we are a city of immigrants, two buses of Venezuelans.

And they're like, yeah.

Well, you know what's interesting about that, by the way?

That was totally, to me, it was sort of misread at the time because what people took that to be was a stunt for press, right?

They took that to be a press stunt.

It wasn't.

It was a genuine long-term plan to make this a problem in a bunch of cities.

And it was actually an effective thing, right?

It wasn't just one bus.

It was bus after bus of people.

And people decried it as being,

it's wrong.

It's human trafficking.

They're all these things.

And then the press moved on and the news moved on, but those buses kept coming and it became a huge liability in those cities, right?

So, like, it wasn't a PR strategy, it was genuine policy that had like a real impact on these different cities and really kind of think changed some of the dynamics on the issue.

And by the way, brilliant in the sense of saying, like, this is what we're dealing with every day in much smaller places.

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We're right back.

But this goes back to the kind of credibility part of this, right?

Because Democrats saw it as an unwinnable issue.

By the way, in 2020, a bunch of Democrats became convinced based on some very sort of specious evidence that the way you appeal to Hispanics is by having extremely

liberal policies on border security and immigration, which was, I think, like kind of vaguely bigoted and also didn't reflect the reality of the situation.

And so

in actual kind of data, when you look at what people feel, people think there should be, even today, people believe there should be a secure border, that if you don't have control of your borders, but did we really need data for that?

No, but no, but I know I'm just saying, like, this is what the reason, this is just, it's common sense, but it's also backed by what we understand about people, right?

That people want a really secure border.

They think if you don't have a secure border, that's really dangerous and unsafe and chaotic.

But at the same time, amazingly, even as Democrats ceded a lot of ground, even as Democrats refused to talk about this issue, even if Donald Trump was demagoguing this issue, I think it's a point of hope that if you look at what people say when they're asked about it, they still want a generous immigration policy.

They want a secure border and they want a generous immigration policy.

But if Democrats were unable for a long time for their own internal politics, be honest about the need for border security, it gave them, it made them afraid and it made them lose credibility on the issue more broadly, which means that when a Democrat now espouses what is ultimately a popular position amongst the the American people, they still trust Donald Trump more on immigration, right?

Which tells you something about kind of the failure of Democrats to kind of over time earn trust with people by being honest about the actual things they're seeing with their own eyes.

But even that idea of like a generous immigration policy, unless you make a case of why that's beneficial.

I actually don't, I don't necessarily agree when, you know, it's like anything else.

Public opinion polls, I think for that to be driving, it's like when you think of economic data, soft data and hard data.

People think that a recession is coming and the hard data says, well, there's still 150,000 jobs coming every month.

You know, we lose ourselves in soft data, I think, too often because we are in a social media environment.

The distance between how you feel emotionally and reality is much larger than I think it's been maybe in the history of the country because we are inundated with an algorithmic machine that is intended to drive up the outrage.

And it can only be matched by a relentless prosecution of reality, of what those real benefits are.

I'm still shocked that there is not the case being made for a law and order progressivism in the sense of saying the people in fucking Compton have a right to live the same safe, happy lives as the people in Beverly Hills.

And how that's not at the center of every democratic policy is beyond me.

Like, what are we doing?

Well,

it's again, an example of people being unwilling to hold and communicate

slightly complicated positions or nuanced positions, right?

Which is that.

Is that nuanced?

Well, you know, it's ever, you know, ever since George Floyd in 2020, and there was a whole conversation.

I mean, it started in Ferguson, obviously, in 2014, but there's a whole conversation about, you know, police brutality and police violence.

It is possible that you can be against police brutality and police violence and still believe that police are very much necessary to protect the communities.

Yes.

And people who live in those communities, by the way, are very like oftentimes like, hey, we're the police.

Yes.

Like they would like the police to be.

Yeah.

And the fact that we assumed, or a lot of the, a lot of the activists assumed in the party that it was all racial, that it was all like, obviously the police are bad.

All of them are bad.

And we shouldn't have, we should have less police.

And that's the whole thing.

Instead of being like, okay, well, we've got to figure out reforms to get rid of the really bad cops, to protect people, to make sure that cops aren't discriminating against people, that they're not committing violence.

But also, we want to make sure that cops are around to protect these communities, especially the communities that need protecting the most.

Right.

Do you remember

one of my favorite parts of, I can't remember if it was the, I think it might have been the last election cycle, but a lot of the commercials were like, you know, protect abortion and blah, blah, blah.

But there was, there was a great, like, very small vein of commercials that was people going when I said get rid of the police it was in a moment of

I was like there was a it was like a Democratic Congress and now they're in a general election and they're like when I said

burn down the police department what I meant by burn was a metaphorical you know it was just

yeah yeah

a great walkback.

Do do you guys see in your, you know,

you saw a little bit behind the curtain.

And so I imagine you know the conversations behind the curtain.

How confident are you that this paradigm that we've been living in, this consultant polling media politician-industrial complex, is that someone can come through and pierce that?

Here's what I see happening right now, which is

I think I see a lot of politicians experimenting in different ways or kind of modeling what they think they should be doing.

And for some of them, it's working really well.

And some of them are out there all the time just trying to give voice to how they're feeling in this moment, what they think is happening.

There are others that I think are playing a kind of more traditional game.

They're hanging back.

They're working on their books.

They're gaming it out.

Right.

And

to me,

when I see Trump,

you know, we talk about how he's threatening free press and he's against dissent.

He's done more press in the first 150 days than Joe Biden did in four years, right?

He's out there every day, relentless.

And what I see is there is, you cannot disappear from public view and create a plan for how to fight back against this.

You build it in the air.

You have to be out there every day trying things, figuring out things.

And there's a relentlessness to it.

And because the right people to respond to Donald Trump, this was, by the way, Trueview, you talked to people about what Donald Trump was like in real estate long before he was in politics.

He was relentless.

And if you weren't exhaustible, if you weren't relentless, he would win.

And by the way, relentless at the edge of ethical acceptability.

Like he has, you know, when your lawyer is Roy Cohn, you don't hire that dude because you're like, I just want it to be buttoned up.

Hey, Roy.

I just want to make sure that everything that we file is on time.

Like, that's not why you go with that dude.

And so to me, it's like,

I am excited by the people that are out out there trying things because I think the way you fight back about Trump is proving that you can be out there every day fighting back at Trump.

I am worried about the people that have kind of pulled back and pop up every once in a long while to deliver a speech or express a message.

The careful ones,

the polished ones, the measured ones, where are they?

They're nowhere.

I see people out every day.

I think, okay, these are the people that are fighting.

I want to know what people, I'm like, I'm going to, for me, if someone's going to pop up in a year from now to tell me that they're the warrior to take on the MAGA

Republican Party, I'll have a lot of questions about where they were this year.

I want to see people out there every single day.

I really hope that we are still a year from now not in warrior mode because I can't watch any more commercials of Josh Gottenheimer with fake boxing gloves on

punching Donald Trump in an AI ring.

The most deeply embarrassing ad I have seen.

Dude,

I like every single ad on the Democrats.

It's like, I'm the fighter.

I'm the one who'll get in the ring.

I've got a knife.

I will hit him in the face with a ball peen hammer.

Like, Like it's all the same.

It's tautological too.

It's like, I'm a fighter because I fight and I fight the things because I am a fighter.

Because I fight.

It's so fucking ridiculous.

To your question, like I am confident that there is a, as you are, a huge opportunity for someone to break out of this.

Like I can, I can hear it in my mind.

I can see it, right?

I don't see it in any of the people that are out there right now.

Do you think the infrastructure will be, because right now we're talking about individuals.

Do you think that the Democratic Party infrastructure, which the Republicans, I mean, they've got their billionaires that understand how to go in and give a million dollars to voters on this shit?

They've got their media lined up in lockstep.

They've got their social media lined up.

Do you think the Democratic infrastructure will be up to the task and smart enough to be put in the employ of a real message, not some like Fococta strategy?

No, but I think that's actually the opportunity for this campaign.

I think that's the opportunity for this candidate, right?

These kind of candidates, because I think the Democratic Party infrastructure is so weak, as the Republican Party infrastructure was when Donald Trump came along, that if someone comes along and captures the imagination of not just Democrats, but like the broader electorate, the Democratic infrastructure will

change or the person who does this will build a new one.

Right.

And so I actually think that the fact that the infrastructure is so weak and inequipped is even more of an opportunity for someone to come along and shake things up.

No, I think that's absolutely right.

Love it, you agreeing with this?

Yeah, the, the, look, no infrastructure in the world can make up for a lack of

a story that makes sense to millions of people, right?

And a story that can play anywhere.

I remember a friend of mine was doing consulting for a zoo.

And the zoo was

for a zoo.

And the zoo had a terrible image.

It had a terrible image.

And they got all these consultants together, paid a lot of money to figure out a brand strategy for the zoo.

And they're all going around the table.

You got to do interviews.

You got to do this.

You got to do, you got to figure out a new slogan.

You got to change the name of the zoo.

And it gets to my friend and my friend's like, hey, you got to stop killing the animals.

You know, we got to like message.

Like a scene out of mad men.

Yeah.

You got to stop killing the animals.

So I think like for infrastructure, all of this, we're trying to solve a lot of problems where we feel like we have agency.

Fundamentally, Democrats need a

they need a message and they need a messenger that resonates with the country that builds back from the hole that we're in.

All of the other parts of it can follow, but without that, there's no amount of ad money in the world.

There's no billionaire in the world can solve for the fact that we got an empty chair.

Yo, that to me, that's it.

You just dropped down the knowledge.

And I think that's exactly right.

And let's hope that

that's the way to go.

What do you foresee now for the next now?

The

Biden conversation will fade and we'll be right back into the budget thing.

That should pass through, I would imagine, because all the news media ever says is it's going to be so difficult.

You know, the hardliners on the Republican side, and yet they get through whatever they want to get through.

And Democrats will continue to die at an alarming rate in the Congress.

So it's now, I think the House, they were like, it's got a thin margin.

And now they're like, wait, it's bigger.

We got to find the serial killer taking out all these Democrats.

It's, well, I think we know

Target Time.

For some reason, they're only targeting the 80-plus.

Yeah, I know.

It's sinister.

Sinister.

Yeah.

No,

I think as we get closer to the midterms,

I'm hoping that we have a crop of candidates in the midterms who are younger, different.

Look, as we have.

I've seen some really interesting ones actually online that have popped up.

And I do think, like, you know, we've been doing this for a while now, but like the class of 18, the class of 20, the class of 20, there's a lot of like younger members that are out there.

And I hope that continues in 2026

just because the party needs a new conversation, right?

And we need some new voices in the party, too.

So that's what I'm hoping for as we head to 26.

John?

Yeah, I look, just to go back to where you started, like, you know,

I think this fear, right, is that like Donald Trump was a door that locked behind us, right?

And that we can't communicate, that

the truth no longer matters, that they're going to undermine election security, that like they have all the levers of power, including the media.

And I just don't believe it.

It may be, but I I just don't believe we know.

And I don't believe it's true yet.

And I think now we have to start figuring out, let's fight as if we can win.

And understand what an opportunity is before us.

Yeah.

I mean, that to me is the thing I'm most optimistic about, which is, boy, is this really looks like a moment for something wonderful to begin to happen.

And if we can take one thing from Donald Trump

is

who's tapping over there?

Somebody's tapping over there.

Sorry, we have a

window washers.

We got window washers.

Oh, is that true?

Yeah.

Are you in a skyscraper?

It's a five, is it for LA?

It's five stories.

Yeah, we're in the top floor.

Yeah, but

can I ask a question?

Uh-huh.

Why would the window washer, if I may, and I, you know, again, I'm not necessarily versed in the beauty of window washing, but very rarely is it done like this?

It's a good question.

It's a really great question.

It should be more of a shoop.

It should be more of a shoop.

I thought I could not.

I can just, I can make the point quick, which is I think we can take one thing from Donald Trump.

It's

look at how much more was possible than Republicans believed, than Democrats believed, right?

Like, we can imagine politics can, I think sometimes Democrats were a little bit too afraid of power and a little bit afraid of how much could change.

And I think we should be less afraid of that.

And we should look at what Donald Trump was able to do and say, wow, look at how much more was possible in politics than they believed.

You just brought to me that, what a wonderful place to stop because that's, I think you're exactly right.

The Democrats were afraid of power, yet, as we saw with Biden, would do everything to protect it.

And if you're going to go that far out of your fucking way to protect power, you better have used it to do something positive.

Don't that they took all the parts of power that are corrupt and held on to that.

but didn't use the parts of it and the the levers of it that they could to be more

forward and effective.

So I think that's a great lesson to come out of there.

Gentlemen, the Johns,

without H's, Catholic, Jewish alike,

have provided us today with a great deal to think about.

Jon Favreau, John Lovett, Crooked Media, they are the hosts of Pod Save America.

And of course, Jon Favreau has Offline and John Lovett has Love It or Leave It.

Clever.

Very excited.

Nicely done.

Thank you so much, fellas.

See you guys next time.

Thanks for having us.

Thanks for having us.

Look at those guys getting up early and having the largest coffee you could possibly have.

John, John, and John.

John, John, and John.

I don't think I could drink a cold brew during a podcast.

That's a little intense.

They were thrown down.

Favreau got so excited, he almost threw his across the room.

His Duncan.

Yeah, one was a Duncan and one was a Starbucks boy.

Oh, you guys were looking at brands?

Yeah.

Yeah, always.

So here's what I'm hoping isn't happening there.

I'm hoping that on their way to work, they're stopping at Duncan or stopping and they don't come in and the interns like, does anybody want coffee?

And they're like, I'll take Duncan.

I'll take Starbucks.

And then they're like, it's Los Angeles.

Each one of those places is going to take me 20 fucking minutes.

Weirdly, that ended on a really hopeful note, though.

Yeah.

I felt that way.

In this economy,

that counts as hopeful.

I thought it it was so interesting because they kept going, like, here's what the Democrat, and they still talk like political strategists.

If that makes sense.

I mean, once a strategist, you know, that's where your brain's at.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I really liked what Lovett said about the back of the class kids.

We've been talking about how politics has been organized as of recent.

And, you know, we're no longer at left, right.

You've talked about woke, unwoke, but the front of the class kids and the back of the class kids

like a pretty good and also with that realignment, I had Doris in my head of like, nothing's predetermined.

And, you know, there is opportunity in these shifts.

I like though when he said, like, we want the front of the class kids.

And I'm like, do we?

Is that what we want?

Said by a back of the class kid.

They're famously annoying, speaking from experience.

I don't know if those guys had the best ideas.

They just wanted to have the best resume

getting their CV.

And they wanted the teachers to like them and it was sweet.

But I do think you're right.

I think there was was some hopefulness on there.

And then there were a couple of moments like they'd say something.

I'd go, is it though?

And they'd be like, yeah, I guess you're right.

It's not.

Coffee hadn't hit yet.

Right.

The coffee hadn't hit.

What do we got from listeners there?

Anything?

Yeah.

We got two this week.

All right.

What are we doing?

I've been striking out.

What's your best first date idea?

They're asking me.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm.

Not me.

I'm not good at dating.

My best first date.

Like, I've been married now for 25 years, been with my wife for 30 years.

So like my first dates would be like, go to an arcade.

Like, it's, you know, I, like, I don't even know what people do now.

Like, I don't know what, where do people go to?

Like, go to the Matrix Center where they put rave music directly into the back of your head and you just hover and move around each other.

Like, is it strike?

Striking out.

Can people strike out when in the dating app world?

Yeah.

Doesn't that just mean you just fucking swipes out?

Come on.

No.

Oh, how sweet.

Yes.

Really?

You, You guys answer that because I'm out of the game.

I'm the wrong person to talk to.

I mean, I guess I'm the single one on this podcast.

But like, yeah, there is, there's definitely a possibility of striking out.

I once went on a date where a guy, our first date, he took me to a bowling alley, but all of his friends were there.

And I was like, so

what's going on here?

He took you to his bowling league.

Can I ask a question?

And you thought your experience was old, John?

So, so when you went to the bowling alley with his friends, like, were you there to be the official scorer at the table?

Like, it was basically a bowling night for him and his boys.

And they're like, I don't want to keep scoring.

He's like, Let me get this girl.

We need a neutral party.

Yeah.

What if, and this is just a thing, but like, if a person said that to you, like, hey, man, here's what I'd like to do.

Let's go out and I'll set an alarm for a half hour.

And at the end of the half hour, we'll vote.

Oh, I like that terms, agreed upon terms before the day.

I like the idea of that, like setting upon agreed upon terms of engagement, but the terms of engagement are you have an absolute out

and you're a free agent again.

Nothing says romance like terms.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We we assess 25 minutes in if we're both wanting to stay.

That's right.

And there's a five minute period where you can make your argumentation.

Right.

Yeah.

And then you vote on it.

Your five minutes starts now.

You're closing arguments.

Can I tell you something?

I don't know why we're not doing a dating podcast because I'm fucking on fire.

Season two, baby.

Democracy.

Who needs it?

Yeah.

Do it on the dating.

What else we got?

Elon Musk has said he's going to do a lot less political spending in the future.

Do you believe him?

No, I do not believe him.

I do not in any way believe him.

Anybody who

understands the value that he now will he do it publicly?

That I don't think will be, but it's very easy to, nobody who has gained that kind of influence and power through money that is meaningless to them just willingly cedes it because it's a bit of a PR problem for their car company.

Like he'll find a way because that's, you know, look,

you saw it in there.

Republicans were pressuring all of Africa.

to make Starlink contracts.

You know, the Department of Defense is going to buy maybe his for the missile defense stuff like nobody's given that up so will he give it up to the point where we all know about it perhaps

but come on

a yeah he always tells the truth so yeah i was gonna say like i don't know how much his word means to me at this point my favorite thing though is how upset he get like how dare you ask a question how dare you ask me a question about whether or not Doge has saved $2 trillion.

You don't know what you're talking about.

That's a good impression.

Yeah, not bad.

Oh, thank you.

I appreciate that.

Brittany, how are people going to get a hold of us?

Twitter, we are Weekly Show Pod, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, Blue Sky, we are Weekly Show Podcast.

And you can like, subscribe, and comment on our YouTube channel, The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart.

Boom.

And thank you all, everybody, for a fine and dandy season one.

It has been most enjoyable, but most importantly, thanks to the staff and crew.

You guys from Jump, by the way.

Like normally you start one of these things and your staff, they take a little while to like get up to speed or to get or to become practice in it.

You guys have been crushing it day one, hour one, and continue to just keep this thing firing on in every cylinder.

So thank you guys very much.

Lead producer Lauren Walker, producer Brittany Mamedovic, video editor and engineer Rob Vitola, audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce, researcher and associate producer Jillian Spear, and our executive producers, Chris McShane and Katie Gray, kicking ass, taking names, bringing it back for season two, folks.

Thank you guys so much for being a part of it.

And we shall talk to you not next week, but the week after.

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