Breaking Bread with Tom Papa - Episode 296 - Jon Lovett

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

This week, Jon Lovett  joins us at the table! He and Tom talk politics, superheroes, and how to become funny. Enjoy! Text PAPA to 64000 to get twenty percent off all IQBAR products, plus FREE shipping. Message and data rates may apply. Secure your online data TODAY by visiting ExpressVPN.com/TOMPAPA. Take advantage of Hexclad’s Holiday Sale! Head to https://hexclad.com/PAPA for Up To 50% Off! #hexcladpartner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Take the stress out of shopping and find coverage that fits your life on your terms. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. The Bin Laden raid was happening while we were preparing for the the White House Correspondence Center. Right. So it's 2011. The president has to go give his joke speech, which for me, it's my most important.

This is the moment for the country. Yeah. This is why we have a president. As far as I'm concerned, we gotta get this right. And by the way, like this is the third time he had done it and he was crushing. Right. You know? This is now season three White House Correspondence Center.

I know. He crushes year one. He crushes year two. Fuck. Yeah. And I feel really proud of the fact that I'm in here. This is partly what I do. And he's the best at this.

We're going to crush it again. And we cannot get time to see the president because he's meeting with his national security team. Don't they know that he has this dinner? This is important. It's breaking bread. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. I did your show not too long ago. It was great. That's right. This is the quid pro quo.

Yeah. I got, yeah. You had to say yes. It's a great show. You're a really good host. Oh, thanks for saying that. Yeah. I like that show. You were great, and it's always nice to have somebody where I just, okay, you can talk for a while. Right. I don't need to.

You'll just take over. It's fine. You're very, very funny. You don't need a lot of people, no short. You know, you're not like, you don't drag it out of you. Yeah. You know? I had that once on Colbert where I came in and I just plowed through jokes.

And he said, and it went really well. And at the end, he said something like, you know, thank you for being here. It was like, I didn't even have to be there. And I didn't go back. I'm wondering, was it too much? Scheduling, just scheduling. Just scheduling. Thank you. It's timing.

Thank you. That's nice of you to say. Who wouldn't want you back? Come on. You call yourself, not yourself, the internet calls you a producer, a screenwriter, television producer, a podcast, mogul, the founder of Crooked Media, a, a, a host, a podcast host, a live host, who are you now? What would you lead with? You know, it's so funny because obviously I'm a podcast host. Right. But what a strange thing to say out loud. Right. It just, well, it just, if I, like, I'm very proud. I've known an event, I'm not insecure about that at all. Yeah. I don't think. Mm-hmm. Well, it sounds like a little.

Maybe a little. Maybe more than I thought before we got here. But I just think about it. But I just I think about the trajectory of the trajectory of my career. Yeah. I was like, I, I, like, it was a presidential speech writer. Yeah. And then I was a TV writer. Uh-huh. And then I was a podcast host.

And it feels like I've been moving up. But when you say it like that, it doesn't sound that way. It doesn't, but it actually is. I mean, you have more of an audience now. It's the podcast thing. There's still a thing about podcasts, which we are on right now. that still, if you came up during the rise of podcast, it started off as, podcast was like saying, I have a vlog.

Yes. Right. It was like saying that. But now they are really like the most powerful form of media, the largest audiences. I mean, your Pod Save America is millions of people every week. I mean, it's in the top 20, isn't it? It's, it's popular. Love it and leave it.

Love it or leave it. We can't love it and leave it. Love it or leave it. You have to choose. You could love it and leave it. That's the challenge of America. But yeah, POTS of America, we started this in 2017 because a lot of people felt a bit lost in politics. And we felt just as people that had been in political jobs on campaigns and in government and as news consumers that,

whenever you watched punditry on television, there's great journalism everywhere, print, television. There's great people doing great work. But a lot of the analysis felt it was both really serious. It took itself really seriously. And then it was also empty because it treated everybody like they were these observers. That it was the conversation around what was happening

was as if David Attenborough was describing it. You were like watching like that. like gazelles and lions chase each other. Like no, no, we're all part of this. Like we have agency. Why are you treating us like polling and who, like, how is this being perceived? Is this gonna work?

Is this not gonna work? The viewer is gonna be one of the people that is gonna be somebody that discern determines whether it works or not. They're gonna make choices. Right. And so we started Ponte of America and it really took off and there were a lot of people

who felt like we did. And so in a year since, we've been trying to build something that feel, like a home for everybody that wants to be part of a pro-democracy movement from former Republicans who are anti-Trump and anti-authoritarianism all the way to the far left, you know,

who think Mom Dani is a conservative. You know, just like basically, if you believe in small al-liberalism, just good old-fashioned democratic principles, there's a place for you with us. Right, right. Yeah, and mission accomplished. And I think you should be proud to say podcast host.

I think because they're also really great. And they are. And you kind of have this thing, just the way you described it, of like you're all going to be involved and you're going to be voting and all of that. So as a comedian, that's another thing that you're listed as a comedian. As a comedian who does not really hang out publicly in politics, the thing that we always get back, all comedians, if you ever mention anything if something happens and you have to mention something they always say like stay in your lane uh you stay out of politics that's not why we're here for you um these are all the bots writing it yeah yeah uh but the reality is we're all immersed in it all the time there is no lane if you are

living in a country that's affected by all of this yeah i think that's right well look like it's funny like stay in your lane, leave politics to the people that know what they're doing, to Andrew Shultz and Joe Rogan. Everything is political in some way or another. You're getting politics all over the Super Bowl halftimes. You're getting politics all over these spaces that I didn't think were political. But really, you know, politics is everywhere and all around it. No, that doesn't mean, like I, you know, sometimes.

you'll be watching, like I watch the real housewives and, and, you know, sometimes, like, a real housewife will be asked on a red carpet somewhere about a political situation and you feel like you're watching a new pilot land, like a prop plane in a, in a storm, like, just get on the, bitch, get on the ground. Just get out. Get out. Get out. Shorters better.

Shorter's better. Save yourself. Get on the ground. Emergency. I don't care of soft, get on the ground. It's getting worse. And so I think there's plenty of times. Me, me, me, me.

I want to turn my brain. Rocking back and forth. Like, I want to turn my brain off too. Sure. But, yeah, but it's hard for it to, I mean, even like at home, like, at home, like, we just have my parents over and for the week through the holiday. And everybody's on the same page. And my mom is just, she just, if you just want, if you.

just give her an opportunity to say something about Trump and she's on board. If too much time goes by where no one has given her, like, hey, what about ICE or whatever, she'll be watching something like the Macy's Day parade as she was with my daughters and saw a balloon and said, and it wasn't working. It was probably Trump. She'll bring it into it. You know what I mean? I'm like so, I need to turn my brain.

I'm like in this all day. and I have all these different ways of not talking about it now. And one of them is I just get up and walk away. I was like, yeah, no, it's a huge problem. And then I'm gone. And then I'm gone. And when I come back, the conversations moved on and I'm happy about it. Yeah, yeah.

You have to detach at some point. His name, my God, his name. I wake up in the morning and I say... Which is great. Yeah, big plus. And I'll walk into the kitchen and start whatever I'm doing and I'll ask Alexa. And I say, what's the news today? And I always kind of laugh to myself because it's gone through these different phases of like during COVID. It was just like,

oh, what's the news today? And then like, you know, the election is, what's the news today? And then sometimes sometimes you try and just come on, what's the news today? and try and like kind of lift it up nine times out of ten his name starts the response and it is so exhausting yes it will be hard to explain i hope yes i hope it is hard to explain right one day how much space this man occupied in our collective consciousness yeah and and and i and i do hope it is also hard to convey how dangerous and stupid it all felt. That it manages to feel both really quite important and powerful and nerve-wracking and dangerous

and also as dumb as it could possibly be. And that these are somehow tied together. The danger feeds the stupidity, the stupidity feeds the danger. But I hope that's confusing. Because if they understand it, it makes perfect sense to them. Oh, no. Yeah, right. Exactly. Oh, no. We've been in a couple decades of whatever spit us out. Yeah. I know. My wife told me to ask you, when is she going to feel better?

Yeah, you know, when will it calm down? I mean, you know, during the Biden administration, say what you will about any, I don't care about any of the topics, any of the thing, him as a person. It was calm. We weren't, it wasn't, it wasn't, presidential politics was not. the first thing on everybody's mind. You could go a couple days without talking about politics. Yeah. Which was normal, which was Obama, which was Clinton, which was Bush. It was like, yeah.

This is a different, different thing. I do sometimes think that Joe Biden, who was perfect. Rare to see someone just bat a thousand. up there. Yeah. Just hit his home run. How does he do it? He makes it look easy. Look at him. Look at him out there. Look at how he moves. Look at how he moves. You know the thing about it is some athletes, they make it look like a dance. And Joe Biden made politics look like a dance. Didn't cringe once when he was answering a question. But I do think he did pay a price for this feeling. So like after the pandemic, we were all supposed to feel better and we didn't.

There was a long tale to it that, you know, we went through that, that glorious summer where everyone was like, the vaccines worked, we're free. And then we had to go back in our houses. There's a lot of resentment about that, a lot of mistrust about that. And, you know, we were a traumatized society from both the Trump years into the pandemic. and, you know, people are honking their horns more, driving crazy, people are throwing things at each other on the airplanes. You got the Secretary of Transportation now saying,

just be nice. You know, something is like really broken, and he said things were going to go back to normal. He said he was going to restore the soul of the country. And he won, why don't we all feel better? Why does it still feel so tense? Yeah. And so there was a little bit of, I think,

kind of a traumatized society, taking it out on the people in power and heading into election that turned out to be him. Because you're right, like there was a way in which Trump did fade into the background, but whatever brokenness allowed someone like him to get into power and whatever sourness

and anger and frustration followed us from the pandemic, he was held responsible for that too, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's definitely, it's, in general terms, I think it's such a, and the pandemic was one kind of, one kind of indicator of it. We're in such a flux. The world is changing. Things are changing and change is tough for everybody.

I've never sat on that side and done the podcast. And if I did, you're looking at people that'd be freaked out. It would be hard for me to sit over there and be over here. And the world is, don't move. And the world is, you know, AI's coming in. Which is great. People don't see each other anymore. And malls are weird and schools are weird.

And everything's, we are in this very traumatic period of change. And it makes it very unsettling. You throw on top of that a leader who likes to make things even more unsettling. That's why everybody's bonkers. Yeah. You really, that role at its best is just to give us someone who's going to tell us everything's going to be all right. And he has no interest in doing that. Well, he is, you know, when you're boarding a plane and there are boarding groups, and you look down at your card and you see you got boarding group four.

And the airline's enforcing the rules. And they call one and one boards. And somebody from group five goes up and the person at the gate says, gate agent says, Not yet. And then you wait. And then they call boarding group four and you go up. And you wish you were boarding group one sometimes. You're mad at those people.

But you know what? That's life and you're following the rules. But then you'll go board a plane and they'll call group one and you'll look at your thing that says group four. And then you'll see them letting group five people on. And now there are two groups, winners and suckers. And you're standing there deciding, like, am I someone who's going to try to uphold the rules-based order on behalf of an airline that's...

It doesn't give a fuck if I live or die? Or am I gonna just get on the plane because I want my back to go on the overhead? And if these people aren't following the rules, I'm not going to either. And whether it's the financial crisis, the lack of accountability there, the inequality that's spread over decades,

the way in which we're in each other's faces now, we see unfairness more, it's more, we're more present, we see that, we see people doing wrong all the time. It's like we're one small town now. Whatever that is, that idea of there are winners and their suckers is a big part of where Trump came from. And ironically, that impulse that, like, we need to tear it down and nothing's fair and everybody's corrupt, that wasn't true. Like, there are huge problems in our society, but he makes it true. Right. He pardoned a guy,

a grifter who did a $1.6 billion scam, didn't just commute a sentence, wiped away the $15.5 million in restitution. Now, there'll still be a civil case, but what on earth is that for? Why stop the restitution today? That happened today. Pardon a guy doing deals with his son on crypto. He is pardoned a drug trafficking. The Honduran leader this week. Even as he's claiming that he can blow up boats from the sky

because they're so dangerous and such a threat. So the corruption and unfairness, the sense that he's making, he somehow emerged from that feeling that nothing is fair anymore. and then makes it even more true than we could have ever feared. It's so true. When he gave that first inaugural speech and, you know, that when Bush turned to Hillary,

and he gave this dystopian, we're there to, okay, new president, future, America. And he went into dark, dark waters. And Bush turns to Hillary and goes, that was some weird shit. We're living in that weird shit. We really are. We really are, man. Really weird. I think it blows.

It's not great. I baked your bread today. You did? I did. And I made it last night, shaped it all last night, put it in the refrigerator before my radio show this morning and my little robe went up, heated up the Dutch oven around 7 o'clock this morning

with you on my mind and here's your bread. What kind of bread is it? This is a sourdough country loaf. What makes it country? I think what makes it country is putting some, whole wheat into mixing in with the all purpose. And how long have you had your starter? And I've had my starter for 11, 12 years.

Wow. Yeah. And yeah, and it came out great. So what do we go in? What do we do now? It's your bread. It's just my bread. Your bread.

You can take it home. You can throw it out. You can do whatever you want. I'm not going to throw it out. I'm going to eat it. I'm going to eat it. I just didn't know what the custom was here. I didn't know the culture here at this, with this,

an Italian place. Once in a while, here at the Tertaria, people will be really hungry and they'll look at, I'll notice they're distracted during the interview and they're like, can I eat it now? I'm like, you can do whatever you want, it's your bread. Because I wanna be a good guest,

but I also wanna be a good guest. Yeah. And in one sense, I should try it and say, my goodness, fantastic. Or you can text you later. I'll text you later. But on the other hand, you don't wanna eat while you're on the microphone.

I'm a professional. It's true. And one thing I've learned over the eight, nine years of podcasting is people hate when you're eating during it. They really do. And there's been a couple of people, even recently, that have come out with shows where they're trying to do the eating. And I've seen it looking back through YouTube, the other iterations of, we're going to have lunch and we're going to talk. You can't. You can't. You just give someone a gift and keep talking.

You know, right. It's, there is something. It comes along. There is this great pull towards the, we're gonna record a great dinner conversation. But it turns out it's totally fine as long as you're also eating. Right. Yeah, exactly.

But if you're not. No. No. No. No. Mouth noises. And my parents came to visit, as I said. It was a lovely visit. They're 80 years old. It's so nice to have them for the week. And I really, you know, you want to be. want to do right by your folks. Of course. And you've got to show patience. And this time I did not

have to show patience. It was just happening. It was very nice. Wow. Until the last night. When my father, I don't know how he's able to do it, but he turned all of his mouth noises up past 11. And as we were trying to watch the last show together before they went to bed and then took off for the airport in the morning, just a lot of... Now, what... Do you think? So how old are you right now? I'm 54. So I'm 43.

Your parents are 80-ish. Yeah. You're not making a lot of mouth noises. Certainly not right now. Not right now. I'm pretty sure I'm not, even when I'm watching television. I haven't heard one. And especially when I'm alone watching a show or with my partner watching something,

I don't think I'm doing that. So, yeah. I love where you're going to happen. inside of us. Or is it, there's two, there's two things going on. Okay. Okay. One is not caring. Yes.

And so, but I don't think I'm stopping myself from making all kinds of noises out of manners or decorum. So at some point, something is gonna start decaying inside the corpus, inside the machine. The gears are gonna start, the teeth are gonna wear away a little bit. The gnashing will begin and then- throat closing. And then noises emerge.

Mm-hmm. I know. I said this to my wife last night. I said, because I'm in this weird spot where my daughters were there for the beginning of the week as well, and they're like 20. And so I'm in between. So I'm watching my parents make the noise festival and trying to not get angry. And then I'm also being watched by the 20-year-olds who, if I breathe weird, I can feel them going, oh, dead. Right. But you don't, but that, that's a lot. so interesting because whatever that is, I don't clock it anymore. Whatever that thing that I must have had at one point, that 20 year old brain, that's, what are they attuned to that we lose? All right. You want to know what it is? Yeah, I do. They, when you're in your 20s and you're looking at your parents and you're getting really annoyed at them for the way they chew, the way they breathe, the way they talk, the way they can't handle the remote, how slow they are on

their phone. What you don't realize why you're annoyed when you're in your 20s is because for the first time, the rocks of your life, the God and goddess of your life, are starting to die. And you may not clock it, but it's making you unsettled to see flaws in these people. And it comes out as just them acting like douchy teenagers, like, will you please just give me your phone and let me just do the thing, but really deep down, it's that you're seeing these people for the first time starting to show their mortality and it's uncomfortable. Do you think? That was good. I think that was good. I think that I'm sure that if your daughter was here, she'd say, yes, yes, I thought you were perfect till I was in my 20s. Now on the head, dad. Wow, not perfect. That was when I realized.

I thought you were a god till then, till those, till that phone thing. So you didn't know how to get the PDF to print that time. Interesting, interesting. Certainly a lot to think about. Yeah, because I think there's, it's a complicated thing because you love your, I love my parents. They're the best. There's no part of me that should be annoyed by them making little noises, but it starts to annoy you in a weird way that's got to be deeper than just a noise.

When do you think you started shed? So when you leave the house and come back, you do, what's it called, when you kind of go back to your child behaviors. You regress. And you kind of get in, you can, you stay a finicky kind of teenager with your parents well into your 30s.

It just happens, you kind of, you, it's a strange feeling. I think it's because like, especially when you're single and go, I was, I remember I went with my parents and my sister and brother-in-law and nephew to Disney World. And one kid to five adults is not the ratio.

You need more kids. It's good that there's a kid there. It justifies the whole enterprise, but the ratio isn't where you want it. There should have been more children because I should have children, according to the rules, but I don't. And I'm realizing I'm a Disney world with my parents. I'm a 40-year-old man. And topologically, this is the same shape that our relationship was when I was seven years old,

12 years old, 20 years old, right? Like you could, yes, I'm older and it changes in all the ways, but mathematically you could deform it back into what it was. That hierarchy remains. Yeah, there's no new dynamics here. It's that shape. It's something also about getting older to,

because now my family will visit me in Los Angeles and I'll be hosting, and there's something about hosting and the being in control or at least organizing everything that makes it more natural to not regress a bit. And you feel a little bit more like you're responsible. And I like that feeling. I like hosting and cooking.

And then now we're kind of, it's in my space. And it's good for them too. I think it was nice for my parents when they got to just be the guests and not feel like they had to be the parents in the old role. Yeah. Which is nice. And now imagine if they were president. because these people that you're trying to be patient with

are a little bit younger or about the age of, the president. And then think about how their efforts to book flights are about 50% successful. It's like, okay, you're coming to Los Angeles in May because it sure looks like you're going to San Francisco in June. And if that's a plan you want to have, that's great, but you have 24 hours to fix this. Yeah, I love that his whole thing was Sleepy Joe, and now he can't keep his eyes open.

Well, he's up too late on his computer. Buddy, you're up too late on your computer. Go to sleep. Go to sleep. I told you to turn it off. You got two hours of, you can't have the screen. You've got to get you a blue light thing. You have a Diet Coke's and you're on your computer till late.

Of course you're tuckered out, buddy. Of course you're in a bad mood. We told you this. Next thing you know, you're saying horrible things about whole countries. It's too, this is not you. This is not you. This is not you. It's so you.

There's a pardon czar, right? There's a guy who is kind of in charge of the pardons. That's right. And I know this because I was cool last week when I knew his name, but the rapper who he let out. What? Not young thug. The one about, the one.

He's huge. He's like the biggest thing on Spotify now. DOB, NBA, NBA. NBA young boy. I was like, why did he care about letting this rapper out? That doesn't, I don't get it. And it was because the czar, whoever isn't making the deals to get people out. His lawyer, it was just a matter of this rapper, getting a lawyer, changing lawyers, to the lawyer who could deal with this lawyer, who could get him out.

It was just a transactional. We have, we just, the amount of corruption in this pardon process now, it, first of all, the pardon power has always been kind of dumb. Like I think it's always been kind of weird. It makes, it sort of the justification for it is strange. I think it's good if a president uses it to clemency for people that were convicted of nonviolent drug offenses,

people that have extraordinary stories that, that, that have made amends in some, way, but the logic of it is confusing. Why does the president have this specific power? Also, it's from a time when the country was a tenth of less smaller. And so you could actually kind of deal like, what's? Like, 330 million people got the biggest prison population on earth. What is the process by which this, like the finger of God comes down and presses the release button? I do think there's something also, like Trump gets off on it a little bit. There's something like vaguely psychosexual about like the power of the pardon, you know?

his finger lingering above the paper. He's- You are free now. Yeah, it's a very emperor, a gladiator. Yeah. And we did that, that, it is totally possible for Trump to pardon anybody involved in these lawless strikes against these boats, which gives them the impunity to tweet trolley memes about murdering people

on the high seas. It's so weird. It's like we should have a constitutional amendment to fix the pardon power, it's, it is so egregious. We've never had it abused this way, but the fear that it could be was always there. There was a, right, which is the way that it's all going,

is these things always existed, all these, and no one's exploited it all to this level, and it makes you have to go back and check all things and put, like, a new code on. We have to change the alarm system on all parts of government now. Totally, and, you know, part of, well, there's two things. Like, one, yes, we got to go through and make sure we get all the locks checked,

and we have to do all of that. But also, on some level, yeah, people have bent the rules. And presidential power was growing under both parties for decades in a way that I do think was dangerous and put us at risk. And all these lawyers with their fancy pedigrees writing memos to justify some dusty old laws, a justification for some policy that we all understood days earlier, only Congress could do. That's true.

Both parties have done that. It all laid the groundwork for this moment where the president claims he can do basically anything he wants and then it plays out in the courts and there's no real broad consensus on what the limits are. We all think they should be more, but there's a lot of disagreement about it. But part of that is because whatever the gray areas,

there was a basic idea. It's very earnest, but it's called forbearance, which is, everybody knows that at some point, like we gotta chill out a little bit. Yeah. You can't go too far, even if you want to,

because A, you're not always gonna be empowered, the other side will be, and B, you govern the people that don't like you as much as you do, the people who do. And so we would just respect each other and so we don't go full bore every time. Right. We hold back just a little bit,

we respect each other just enough to not try to use the rules to their maximum. Right. And that is gone. It's gone. And it doesn't matter what, if that is the world we live in,

you can make the law say whatever, you want. You can write a memo that says whatever you want. There is a lawyer out there who will say whatever you need that lawyer to say. And so really, like, you can, you can put new dead bolts anywhere you want on the Constitution. It's not going to stop someone from driving a car through the 7-Eleven, you know? That is the worst, the worst part of it in real general terms is the making half of the country the enemy, not someone you disagree with. Like the idea that we're not, it was always the, yeah, that side we're against them for that reason, whatever. But ultimately, we all live here.

This is, we all have, we're all going to rise or fall. And that that has gone away and it is F the other side. And they're the enemy, they're vermin, whatever, horrible terms that they want to, splitting America in two that way, making us all the enemy of each other. Yeah. To me, that is the thing that's the most unsettling. Yeah, I like that part of it, but. Yeah.

That part of it, I actually think is really good, but we can disagree. That's part of it. We can just disagree on that. I get it, I get it. But again, see, you're making me your enemy. Are you ticklish? I don't like that question.

But yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Well, of course. I don't know why I said that. I guess I just think, isn't pretty much everybody ticklish? No, no. My father's not ticklish, and boy do I try.

What a strange thing being ticklish is. It's what also a strange part of childhood where, hey, there's this funny thing we do, which is non-consensual touching. You laugh, but you hate it. It's basically a horror movie. It really is. It's pretty great, though. And now a word from our sponsors.

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for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash Papa. So sort of my mother, occasionally my father would claim he was going to make sauce. But really, that was somehow taking jarred sauce and every pan in the house. Somehow, but mostly my mom, yeah. Most of your mom. And you, were they political? Not really. Were they smart?

Yeah. They were smart. My mother would read the newspaper every day. politics would come up, but I mean, we, it just wasn't. It wasn't the time. It wasn't, it was just a, it was a few inches further back. Right. In our lives.

Yeah. It was. It was. News it between 6 and 630, the paper, if you read it. And there was still the idea of movies like Dave and the American president. That was more political. But in the 90s, there was this, you know, were post history. Soviet Union's gone.

There could be this ideology-free president in the minds of the imagination of the public. Right? The president was just a respected figure. And by the way, not even just in kind of whatever, romantic comedies, I think of like the clear and present danger universe in those kinds of movies where the president is just a very powerful figure

with some kind of agenda. But it's not, you don't necessarily need to know what the politics are. No, it was more like a human leadership role. Yeah. Yeah. than an agenda. At that, so when, when do you become politically,

because you're of that era? Yeah, so. Were you forced into it by the times as we all were? No. Because when do you write speeches for Obama? How old are you? 27, 26, 27, yeah. That's when I started.

So I care, I got into politics. Look, looking back on it, I was, I was, I was so long before I really thought about what do I care about? What do I like to do? What's fun for me? It was much more like my own experience. I didn't know how to make it important in that kind of way. I really was about what am I good at?

What will lead to success, which really meant what would lead to praise and prestige and recognition for my being so such a smart little boy. Right. Yeah, I just wanted to be praised a little smart little boy. Yeah. And politics was a way to do that because I could do these after school activities where I could write little speeches or do what an event in speech and debate called extemporaneous speaking, where you take on a political topic and make an argument and I was good at that.

It was actually a perfect event for me because you're given a topic, you have 30 minutes, you must prepare it on the fly. So all the ways in which I was an undisciplined careening mess fell by the wayside because I 30 minutes and I could just use the good parts of my brain, which is the part that could very quickly assemble things. I'm a very quick writer when I get into it. I just do a lot of meandering and ADHD avoidance

before the pressure inside rises to the point where my fingers touch the keyboard. It needs to be aggressive. There were moments where, I am a speechwriter in the White House, ostensibly a job, as serious a version of that job as could exist, one might say. And it would be the moment where I must start

this speech right now, or I am completely fucked. I must deliver something to the literal president. I gotta take a little nap. I gotta lay down and close my eyes so that when I wake up in 15 minutes, I am filled with such dread. And I am, and the time is so, tight that there is nothing that can stop me from putting aside my fears of that I'm not

going to do a good job or that I will won't well screw it up in some way and just I have to do this so I will do this right but that was my way all the way through crazy crazy and you were always that way like with school assignments and all that always are you funny at the time also as a kid when you're in high school is to an eye on comedy at all? A little bit. I feel, I think it is hard. You know, there's something about, I don't know if you feel this way about moments of stand up when you're much younger, but there's a feeling where you cringe and look back on your oldest stuff because you see yourself trying too hard and it's just not good enough to justify how hard you just, you just don't have it yet. And, but you're trying so hard.

but the fake confidence, you're putting on this show of confidence. You're not asking for help. You don't know what you don't know, but you're powering through and you're trying so hard. I think that was my way. And I think with interpersonally as a writer,

that was very true of what it meant for me to be funny or not funny. I just wasn't comfortable with myself. And so just too much. You're just doing too much. But then you think, well, maybe you have to be the try hard version of yourself to get through that period of maturity,

and an experience to get to the parts where you're gonna try the right amount or still part, well too hard. You should always maybe try, better try too hard than not enough. But are you funny with your friends? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I didn't, man, I didn't, I went,

having friends for me were, there was an archipelago in an ocean of not having friends. Uh-huh. There was a lot of no friends time for me. I struggled, I mean, I was really, I was very, I think I was a, pretty sad kid. And I was closeted.

I didn't totally understand that. I was struggled and I think that made me hard to be around. I also, so, and you know, you're coming on strong. You don't, I'm not very good in, and my social graces to this day remain work in progress. And so I had periods of time where I had like great friendships, but there were also a lot of times where I felt pretty lonely as a kid. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And so then all that energy kind of goes into reading and work and your pot. Yeah, politics. Yeah. Like all of that stuff. You just, yeah, you thrive when you get to college because now you can actually do work and. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think I started coming out of my shell and getting more comfortable on my own skin. I came out of the closet. I made. What age? I started like between 17 and 18. So I was starting as I was going to college. Yeah. But it still took me time. And even coming out, you're still grappling with a lot of the feelings that you had, that you didn't process. I remember I was actually in the White House, and President Obama was giving Ellen DeGeneres the Medal of Freedom because of how she treats her staff.

And I'm now having thought, it's been, I don't know how 15 years since, or maybe one, more than a decade since she'd come out on the Ellen show. And I all of a sudden, like, had tears at my eyes. And I realized, wow, when Ellen came out of the closet on television, that was so important to me. And I never said a word out loud about it. Because it was a completely private experience of how much that meant to me and how much she meant to me and how emotional I was.

Experienced it alone, told no one. Moved on with my life. Right. heard several, she's then the joy in of the morning. Yeah. I'm going on with my life doing and had thought about it. And then I see Ellen getting this award and I realized that meant a lot to me.

Right. Never even talked about it. Amazing. And so there's a lot of things. Yeah, there's a lot of things like that for gay people, I think. Yeah. It's so guarded for such a long time. Mm-hmm.

And it's amazing just talking with people now, like, as a straight person, I'm like, oh, but now it's easy, right? Now it's like, now you can just, the world is so open now. And it's like, eh. Well, it's funny, what I realize now, too, looking back on it, and I do think this is something

where we're still not fully aware of it. Yeah. Is, it's also around, like, it's, we call it a sexual orientation. It's about attraction and romantic relationships, but what are you prevented, when you're in the closet. Like when I was a 15-year-old in the closet, I promise you, telling people I was gay

was not what stood between me and having a boyfriend. I was an undatable menace. Like I had no, and I was not, I was like no capacity for any kind of romance, like what? So what was I actually hiding? And it was, yes, that I thought that, I thought male movie stars were hot and I didn't care much for the female movie stars.

That's not important in your day to day. It's that my voice has a little lilt to it. And I like Broadway music. And, you know, I want to wear pink sneakers. Like the ways in which really what a lot of being in in the closet is for boys is hiding, not that you're gay, but that you want to be a bit feminine. Right. You change your voice. And we still do that.

Right. Like, there's still a stigma around being feminine as a man. And you look, you get over that. You are the most feminine man I've ever met. And that's a beautiful thing about you. That's often, see, even saying that, there's like a, even just making that kind of a joke, it's like, yeah, calling, like saying like, you know,

like, it's like a, ha ha. You know, like there's. Yeah, right? Right. So there's this idea around being, I mean, when you go, even to this day, it was just, So as we're recording this, we were mere days after, of course, a signature event for all of us, which is Cyber Monday.

Oh. We all. It was big. No Cyber Monday. Big this year, yeah. You go look at the big online brands that sell clothes and you go look at the colors that are available to women. And it's the rainbow. You can have any color you want.

If you want to buy clothes as a man from these big companies that are trying to be national, new national brands. All of them. Nobody's carving a niche. You go to any of these like males, you know, man clothes, man underwear. Are you, you can get black, you can have gray, you can have navy. If you're excited, we'll have a green. It's not going to be a bright green.

It's going to be an olive green because you're a boy. That's right. You're a boy. Red, fuck you, maroon. You can have maroon. What are you going to nance about? You come-guzzling freak in a red shirt? Absolutely not.

You can have maroon. That's the rainbow of the straight wardrobe. That's the golden gate bridge. Keep it close, keep it tight. Yeah, and that still is present. Yeah, I have one pair of stretchy boxers that is green, white, and I don't even know what the other colors, probably tan.

And boy, when I put them on, I'm going wild. That's exciting. That's exciting. And so the, like, look who's coming out today. The stretcher. Yeah. Your wife's season was like, oh, where are you going? It's going to be one of those nights.

It's really true. So, you know, and it's funny, right? Because it's so, it's such an ingrained part of us. Like on Fox News, they'll be like, men don't drinks from straws. You know, men don't have soup. Right. Men don't celebrate their birthdays. Men don't dance.

And like, okay. Yeah. So the strong thing is all the things you can't do. Right. But to be tough is to be, say, I'm afraid of all these activities for fear of being perceived, perceived as feminine in any way. But the weak ones, they can do whatever they want.

Right. What? What kind of rule is that? Everyone's just bawled up. So when, so you go, you volunteer. What were we talking about? Wait, so you volunteer at, for Carrie. Yeah. At what night, 20?

20. 21. 21, you're graduating. 21, you're graduating. Yeah, 21-ish. I volunteer in the Kerry campaign. I am there through the election. John Kerry lost, if you're a history guy, but yeah, John Kerry loses that one.

Close. Then I ends up getting a junior job on Capitol Hill, but because I had done open mics in New York after college, I was a paralegal during the day. I was also doing math. I had been a math major, and I was writing a math paper. Can I stop you there for a second? that to me is intimidating as all hell.

Because I know you as super funny, articulate, smart, language, Johnny. To know that you had this, the language Johnny, that's where we go all you around here. To know that there's also math in there at a very high level, I was like, holy shit, I'm not prepared for this interview. Yeah, it's, that really, There's not a lot of people to have that brain.

Well, I, so I loved math. And part of it is I do think I actually wasn't a good writer until I had studied math because math is, math is, you can bullshit your way through a lot in school, not math. Mm-hmm. You can write an essay and it's gonna be graded subjectively and there's no right or wrong.

There's good and bad. Yeah. Let's not throw out, let's not be fully morally relativistic. You can write a bad essay that deserves to be failed, but you're gonna, even if you don't totally understand it, you can fake your way through it. Yeah. Get a B or C.

In math, you get or you don't. You can't fake it. And you have to take the time. You can stare at something and get it quickly. You can stare at something, you can take a while. You can need help to get it. It can be a while before you see it, but you gotta stick with it

until you can explain it back. Yeah. And you have to be incredibly precise. You have to know each step and you can't skip a step. And that is really useful in political writing. And when you're first a speech writer and you don't know what you're doing, you're doing an impression of what you think

a speechwriter should write like. And so what is that? It's movies, it's the Federalist papers, You think, oh, good writing is flowery and big, and you're saying, you're crossing the Delaware every time you open up the laptop. That's what you think good writing is. And you remember big lines, you know,

ask not what your country can do for you. We hold these truths to be self-evident. And you try to write like that, and it just doesn't work. And you realize, oh, wait, sure, you'd love to have a memorable phrase and something beautiful. But what is excellent writing? It's getting rid of all that. Those are tricks.

Those are tricks and smoke and mirror. really what good writing is is as concisely and carefully and simply as possible making an argument. And that's what you do in math. And so I found it really useful. It really changed my brain. It made me smarter. And then I, because I, look, I was not ever gonna,

I remember there was a guy who I was studying math with at Williams who could do a Rubik's cube behind his back. And I just thought, this is in my field. Right. And anyway, I think math does train you to be a writer. It does. There's definitely, I'm not well versed in math.

And, but when I'm writing, like when I'm in the throes of a book or like really trying to dial down, stand up and to distill it, it is mathematical. I love that part of it. It is, it becomes a, it to the point of. where I'll find myself after writing like a bunch during that day or whatever, putting things in its place. It's like doing a Tetris with like my closet or my, your brain is dialed in that way.

And it's funny too, like that there can be jokes that, whatever, the proof works, right? Like mathematically it's sound and it'll die. It's just not that funny. The argument was correct, like the, it should have followed. It all flowed, it worked, like it, Like, you know, I get why is joke shaped.

And it won't work and that's fine. But I will say a lot of times, if a joke is not working, if you dig into it, you're like actually, even though it's imperceptible, this is not exactly what if you're, you can break the rules. But if you're not doing it on purpose, often it's because, oh, this punchline isn't doing what you think it's doing because it's not actually logically. Clear. Right. Exactly. Correct. It's right. Exactly. And you're asking the audience to solve something that's not solvable. And they may not even know why they're not clicking into it. But it's because what you're claiming is the surprise isn't happening for them because it's not correct.

That's right. Exactly. Yeah, there's many times I'm like, wait a minute. You think, what I think I'm presenting is completely off of what I. So what's the weirdest thing you did in the White House? Are you alone in the White House at times? Never really alone. Can you wander the halls? You can wander the halls. And I, because I've, as before mentioned, ridiculous writing behavior, I would often come in just so early to finish something or stay really late. And then you could kind of wander through. But for the most part, you're not really alone there.

I have this sort of strange dual roles where, especially early on, we're in the middle of financial crisis. Right. The president is needing to give pretty frequent remarks to reassure the markets or explain some decision. And that required pretty quick, detailed writing, which I'm good. That was something I was good at. And so there were a lot of moments where I was helping finish these statements, you know, jobs report had come out an hour before the market's going to open an hour from now.

You're talking to the Treasury Secretary and the head of the end National Economic Council, and they're giving you notes and you're getting advice on the message and you're trying to cobble it all together and have it make sense and do all this feedback and still make sure the argument is working. And then you're running it into the Oval and he's edit, the president's editing it and giving you changes. You're running back and you're fixing it on the computer. And the screen has CNN on there with the podium. And once you're done, he goes like that was. And high pressure, exciting.

Yeah. I felt like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. because this is how I thought about it. Other speechwriters may think about it differently. My job is not to know all the policies and my job is not to know what the country needs to hear. My job is to work with the team that the president assembled to give the president,

the principal, the person you're working for, give them what they need. And if you give them what they need and what they need is correct, you'll have done your job. Right, right. You help them say what they would have wanted to have said if they had the infinite time

to write every speech what they don't. Right. So that's how I dealt with that kind of pressure. And I felt like, oh, this is a, like, it's similar to honestly to doing the extemporaneous event when I was in high school. Yeah. The time limit means I can't fuck this up.

And I'm quick and that's a skill. And I know math and I can help think these things through. Right. And that was, I felt very valuable. I felt like I was proud of myself. Like, good job. You were in the right place, the right time to be helpful in the way that you could be helpful. Then I'm also writing the dumbest

jokes that I could possibly come up with for like the White House correspondence dinner. Right. And that was also part of my responsibility. And when I, I was, before I had worked for President Obama, I had been a speechwriter for Hillary Clinton. That was, man, I was so in over my head. Just wild that was in that job, wild I survived. Right. But part of the reason I got that job is because people had heard to the grapevine that I had done stand-up, and you're already done open mics, but it's sort of, you know.

It's like a unicorn just walked in. Well, it's like comedy in D.C. It's like the old joke. Like when you're a painter, show up sober, they make you foreman. That's the old joke. And so, you know, I can write jokes. I'm in D.C.

Like, through the ranks, I go. Yeah. And there are a lot of funny people, but, you know, it's a, it's not. There's a kind of collection of people that have been writing jokes that are great. But yeah, for the most part, Yeah.

You can write a joke? Yeah. Get in here. But so I had written jokes for Hillary Clinton, and so then I started writing jokes when I became a speech writer in the White House for President Obama. And my – President Obama had incredible timing during these dinners. And so it was me, John Faber, who was the head speechwriter, who's my co-host of Ponce America now, David Axarad, longtime advisor to President Obama.

And then a bunch of other people would submit material. Right. But the balance was Axelrod, who you might know from CNN, he's this evuncular guy. Yep. And he would write these aw shucks kind of dad-style jokes, which are great, and I like. And he's actually very funny. Yeah. But they were kind of Reagan, almost Reagan-style jokes.

Yeah. You know, sweet. Uh-huh. And I used to say that the plodonic ideal of a joke for me was President Obama knocking the podium off over and saying, fuck all of you. And the balance between that and the vuncular and the anger, the kind of self-deprecating and the mean with John in the middle kind of navigating it and helping shape it.

I really, that was some of the most fun and stupid shit I got to do in the White House, including like the visual aids. We made a Hulk Hogan video when his birth certificate came out, a Lion King video when his birth certificate came out. And so we were, When the bin Laden raid was happening while we were preparing for the White House correspondence dinner. Right. So it's 2011. The president has to go give his joke speech, which for me, it's my most important. This is the moment for the country. Yeah. This is why we have a president. Yeah. As far as I'm concerned, we got to get this right. And by the way, like, this is the third time he had done it. And he was,

crushing. Right. You know, this is now season three White House Correspondent Center. He crushes year one. He crushes year two. Fuck. Yeah. And I feel really proud of the fact that I'm in here. This is partly what I do. And he's the best at this. We're going to crush it again. And we cannot get time to see the president because he's meeting with his national security team. And we are standing outside the Oval offense. It's me and John and and Axelrod, I believe, and we're standing outside the Oval. I can't get time. It's like, don't they know that he has this dinner? This is important.

And there was a guy from the National Security Council. Right outside the Oval Office. And I'm like, do you want to hear our jokes? He's like, no. He did no reaction. I told him some, nothing seemed very tense. Yeah. And then we get in.

He's as calm as could be. We have a conversation. He changes one joke because it references Osama bin Laden, which he cuts without telling us why, comes up with some reason, Like that's stupid, but all right, you're the president. Yeah. He's just making an excuse because he does not want to reference Osama bin Laden

while the raid is literally ongoing while he's at the fucking dinner. And so. So cool. So we go through the material with him. We show him our Lion King video or Hulk Hogan video. We run through the jokes. He doesn't make a lot of changes. What a relief.

He's approved it. We didn't know how much writing we'd have to do in a crunch that day. And then he gives the speech. It's great. Do people respond? Trump is there. We do our Trump material that year, which obviously vanquished him forever.

And the next day, we're all kind of hung over from the correspondence dinner, correspondence dinner weekend. We're sitting on the couch and we start getting notices that the president's going to speak because there's going to be some national security events.

Some people are getting called back to the office on Sunday. That we're getting kind of read into what had happened because it's about to become public. Yeah. And we find out that basically we were, we thought we were doing Seinfeld, but we were in a Tom Clancy movie and nobody told us.

Like we were, we wanted to run through our yucks. And he's like giving the go order to the general. Sitting in that room waiting for the results. Crazy job. God, what a crazy job. What a job. What a job. Imagine that.

God. Imagine you walked out of here and decided things about Social Security, and nuclear stuff. Jokes plus that. Insane. Insane. I think you'd be better out than the current guy.

I'm thinking, the big thing on my mind right now is that I've got to get these Christmas lights up on the front of the house and it's impossible. I'm not doing it today because we're sitting down.

Yeah, you can't do, can't do two things in a day. No way. Well, it's also, it gets dark so early. Yeah, and then you're 80. How high are these lights? You're putting up Christmas lights.

Yeah. How high are these lights going? Well, they're not, they're high if you pull into the driveway because the house is up there, but I can come out on this ledge and just walk it. Okay. So. Hmm. Yeah.

So you're kind of putting them down. Kind of putting them down. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So gravity's doing a lot of it for you. Please don't, but you're feeding on my anxiety. I can't think about this now. You have time.

You have time. What is it? It's December, as we record this is December 3rd. Yeah. When's it's it too late? Um, probably the 10th. Okay. Okay.

It is a crazy, crazy job. When you watch what's going on now in that house, uh, do you think it is resembles in any way the way things were run when Obama was there and you young speech writers were running around and all those people were there and there was like how different do you think it is? So I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But you see the results.

You see the result. I think it in many ways looks from the outside similarly. Right. I know that there are people working insane hours. Right. For whom their job is their lives. I know they're doing their super early morning meetings and reacting to all the news. And then they're going to go take it to the president to get his reaction.

Like I, the shape of it. is probably in a lot of ways similar. Yeah. And I do think beneath the outward ways, which it doesn't look like any previous White House, because it's not like any previous White House, I do think there are serious people there who put on a show of we don't give a fuck

what the press thinks, but they're still talking to those reporters, right? They're still doing some of the blocking and tackling that normal White House would have done. Right. By the way, they still do a lot of mainstream press. Donald Trump, it's a contradiction, it is, that partly because he does what is useful to him. It's not value base, it's not like he's like,

well, I maybe kick them out in this sense, but I care about journalism. Now, he thinks they're useful to them. So, but whatever the reason and rationale, he's done more mainstream interviews and taking far more questions, not just from the cooks and the goons and the sycophants, but from real reporters.

Yeah. Then Joe Biden never did. Joe Biden was far less accessible, right? That's, that is interesting. Mm-hmm. So there are ways in which I think it ultimately, does have some normal aspects to it. Yeah.

But, but there is such a, there was such a reverence. And this was true, by the way, of Republicans, talked to Nicole Wallace, who's now at MS now. Yeah. She would say the same.

And I'd like really big disagreements. And I remember I was talking to her on her show and we having great conversation. And then the conversation of George W. Bush, who she works for and I think deeply respects and admires and is proud to, to have worked for it. And I said like, not there yet.

Right. Not going to be part of the rehabilitation. Still terrible. Second worse. Would have stayed worse, but we fucked everything up. The painting's not cute. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a lot of pathos. They're more beautiful than they have any right to be. Both, by the way, I'll say this. All right. I'll just be honest. I'll say it to the camera. Hunter Biden and George Lovie Bush are better artist than I expected. I don't know what to do with that information, but it's the truth.

but there was a respect for the office and there was a respect for the power that it has and the daunting nature of being part of it that is just not present. I think they did come in to the second term ready. Yeah. Right? Oh, yeah.

All presidents, when the first term, the White House can sometimes run the president and in the second term of the president more runs the White House. They learn the role. they learn where they don't need to do it the way the others did it. They can do it their way. It's true of any leader, right?

Yeah, yeah. Any CEO will say, this is how I do it, maybe how you didn't do it, but I know myself and I'm gonna do it my way. Yeah. But they had this advantage of a four-year interregnum where they could prep and all the biggest ideologues and right-wing freaks could write their little memos and get them all to be part of a plan because they know Trump is not gonna, not details guy. So they came in ready to go.

And in some way that is actually what you want. that you treat every day like it's limited, so they're gonna go really hard. I think what they're doing is heinous, but that is in some sense respect for the role. But there was an understanding that you had lawyers who you listened to, that you had procedures that you followed, that if you're gonna make,

and if you're gonna make a decision as important as tariffs, that affect whole economies, and also determine whether a business you've never heard of, heard of lives or dies somewhere, that the power of that meant you were, took some time. Yeah. And you didn't show up one random morning with a bunch of printed out signs with mistakes on them. Right. There was integrity in, there was respect for power. Yeah. Maybe not enough. And certainly there was corruption and abuses and pardons and lies and dissembling and disastrous decisions and wars we shouldn't have fought. All of that. But man, there was a, there was a, there was a

a respect that is gone. And now the, the, the, we talk a lot about the ways in which, um, the way Trump feeling threatened and unraveling leads to him being more dangerous, right? Like he loses a vote on the Epstein. So then all of a sudden he's going to go after immigrants even harder. Right. Like there's, there's a way in which the worse he, the, the, the more threatened he feels, the worse he gets.

But there is another kind of feedback loop, which is the more dangerous and, you know, unhinged and aggressive they become, the more it unravels, right? That the system does push back. There are people inside that are not, they're not Republicans, but they're not mega loyalists. And so there is a feedback loop where their aggressiveness and lack of seriousness

does cause them to lose ground a bit. For the first time it starts, it's starting to feel that way a little bit where I was quietly thinking, oh no, the system's actually still intact. Like there's, they're, I mean, not with great speed, and I don't know if it's where it ends up,

but it seemed like there was more at play than just him. I think there's no, I don't think there's intact or not intact. I think the fact that a president has already gotten away with this level of corruption without being impeached and removed is staggering and shocking and would surprise, I think people even 20 years ago, 15 years ago, maybe five years ago.

So the breakdown is real and will take a long time to repair, but you see, you know, Pete Hegsteth kicks a bunch of journalists out of the briefing room at the Pentagon. And what happens from outside the Pentagon? They do reporting that puts him on his heels. And so he gets to go march into the briefing room with a bunch of allies to kind of prove he can answer questions. Meanwhile, the real journalism is still happening, but he's no longer determining where they sit. Do you, are you surprised or... I'm having a hard time squaring the complete lack of humanity going after with these ice raids and the communities that it's affecting.

Am I just not hearing that those communities and that the those people, are they outraged? Are they shocked? Are they? Like, what is happening in those communities that came out for him? him. Like, it doesn't seem to me, it seems to, there doesn't seem to be a backlash. And maybe it's just not being reported or maybe it's not happening. Do you have a take on that? So I think there is a backlash and polls are polls and they're hard to trust. And we just haven't had that many genuine, democratic places to register discontent. But where we have had them, people are

voicing that discontent. They're huge swings in these 2025 elections, not just around turnout, right? You knew that you'd expect that Democrats would turn out in one of these elections, but it's not just turnout. People have switched. The idea of cracking down an immigration and the reality of it does feel different to people. One heartening poll came out.

that's found a massive swing towards simply viewing immigration as good. So, Joe Biden is president and due to an incident with a witch, he lost the ability to speak. I don't know what the trade was. But that was, I think it was, he didn't kiss Jill Biden within three days. And so Ursula got the boys. Something with a rooster feather. Yeah, something like that.

I can't they think he switched? And we're not saying it's, yeah. So, but, so he's not really able to kind of hold a bully pulpit and defend his immigration policies. There is a genuine crisis at the border. Trump is hammering, Republicans are hammering Biden and Democrats for years on this. And what happens? Trump does capitalize on it. But even with all that agit prop and misinformation and also genuine concern, the country shifted.

to become more generous on immigration once they saw what Trump had done. So I think that is at least a hopeful sign. But we just had an election in Tennessee, this special election, and the Democrat lost. But we had the- It was the best kind of Democratic victory, a moral victory. And it's our favorite kind. But it does show a big swing towards Democrats.

That's probably making a lot of House Republicans squirm. So we don't know. But look, there were signs for mass deportation on the floor of the Republican convention, but also Trump was going around the country saying they're going to go after the worst of the worst. And if people's information environments are so chaotic and confusing. But I don't think it is unreasonable to have drawn the conclusion that Trump is going to go after criminals and the worst of the worst and then be caught off guard that he's not doing that. Look, I would say the information was out there, but okay, I'm glad people are, like, what do we do now?

Well, we just make the case that he's not doing what he said he would do, and he's going after people that are just working and building a life in a system we all collectively built. But the myth underneath all this is this idea that the broken immigration system is something undocumented people are doing to us. Right.

That is ridiculous. That is ridiculous. We built this system. Yeah. We have not done anything to fix it for decades. We built a whole economy on the backs of people who had to come here illegally. And every incentive, every policy said you won't be, come.

Yeah. You won't be able to call the police if you're scared. You won't get recourse if your boss steals your money. If you're abused, you'll be afraid to call the police. if you're in danger, if your family's in danger, you'll be a second-class citizen. We won't fix that. Yeah.

And by the way, if you're ever caught, all the pain will be visit on you and your family. You'll be punished. In all likelihood, the company will go on just fine. Yeah. You're the only criminal here. Yeah. So take that chance, but we need you.

Yeah. And it's probably better than where you are. And the hardship is making you want to take this chance. And if you keep your head down, you can build a life and build a life for your family that is better than anything you could have hoped for. Oh, but bad news. We've changed our mind.

And we're going to undo all that and make it and make you pay. Right. Not all the people that have benefited in restaurants or had their homes, like had gardeners and landscapers that have been undocumented or houses built by undocumented labor or food harvested by undocumented labor. The benefits you've accrued, you'll keep that cheaper product, the benefits of that cheaper food in life. Yeah.

But now we're going to visit all the pain on these people because this, because it's your fault. Yeah. Your show, you're doing like a little version of, is it a spinoff of your podcast? We're just doing a mini series. Yeah, it's a mini series. But it's called Bravo America. Bravo America, where you're talking to about a, reality stars and stuff.

It's amazing how much that is a mirror to just the culture. Yes. And we've talked to a bunch of real housewives, talk to people on Survivor, talked to Olivia Plath from Welcome to Plathville, who escaped right-wing, just like really cloistered right-wing community.

Talk to Rachel Lindsay, who was the first black bachelorette. They've been incredible conversations. It's on the love or leave it. feed, you know, we interviewed Sarah McBride, who's a congresswoman from Delaware for a trans member of Congress. And she's been really villainized by her colleagues in the Congress. Yeah.

And for her, how she described it is that it feels like real housewives. That these people come to the committee hearing and they just want to have a fight because they want the fight to get coverage and they want the attention that comes with it. And the ways in which politics has taken some of the lessons of reality television is, I think, important. And people say, oh, you know, reality television is the downfall society. I don't agree with that.

It does reflect something about us, why we like it and why it's so popular. But fundamentally, it's a Trump lesson too, which is the only thing worse than being hated is being boring. Right. And in an attention starved, sorry, in an attention craving,

media environment, you have to pick fights even if they're frivolous, even if they're silly, even if you don't want to. It's how you break through. And that's for good and for ill the way politics works. So there's a lot you can learn from these conversations. And by the way, like, you know, we built a whole culture where there is so much reward if you can get famous. There's money in being famous.

I mean, look, like, even now, like a movie star, oh, you made it. a big movie, good for you. What's your tequila? Right. That's where the money is. Right. If you star in a movie, the fame is worth more than the money. Right. And so we made a society where fame is so valuable. Joe Biden got to be president in part because he was famous from before. Right. He had good old fashion 90s style fame, pre-internet fame, Trump too. Trump too, yeah. And so we tell everybody how valuable fame is, but then it's embarrassing to want it. But not on, not in this world. Right. Right. Right.

They're going to be a bit more honest about it. So they've been really good conversations about celebrity and attention and competition and the difference between performance and being authentic. Yeah. So that's why I wanted to do it. No, you're really onto something. There's lessons in it. Yeah, because at first glance, you're like, why would he do this?

Like, what's the, and it's like, once you have a little deep dive in it, it's like, oh, this makes perfect sense. Yeah. It really lines up. Well, this was really fantastic. It's good to talk to you. Yeah, really great. I really admire everything that you.

you're doing. I listen all the time. And I hope you like the bread. I hope so too. Yeah. I really do. And, you know, there have been guests who come on and they say they're going to tell me how they like the bread and then we don't hear from them. So we have to take that as a they didn't like it. So I am going to make sure I'm going to eat this bread tonight. Okay. I'm going to have it with three other people. Okay. I'm going to have it on a table with four people. Okay, we're all going to have it. And I'm thinking about how to make it central to the meal. I'm thinking about how to make it central to the meal. I'm thinking about how this can not just be bread on the table, but unavoidable, indispensable.

Oh, jeez. This is the carb. This is it. All right. There's a lot of pressure. Is this over now? Oh, it is now, baby. Thanks again.

Thanks for having me.