Endless Thread - Bonus: Jon Favreau, Live At CitySpace

Episode Date: April 26, 2019

T-minus one week until Endless Thread returns with new episodes! In the meantime, let's talk politics -- because Ben recently interviewed Jon Favreau, co-host of "Pod Save America" and former speechwriter for President Barack Obama, live onstage at WBUR's CitySpace. In this bonus episode, we all have a front-row seat...

Support for endless thread comes from Mathworks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? And, of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.

Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. My dudes. We are so close to getting back to regular endless threat episodes. True. T-minus one week? Gah! Just gave me a small panic attack. We have a lot of work to do.

It'll be fine. It'll be fine. It'll be great, even. But in the meantime, We'd like to give you one more little tasty taste of some interesting things we've been up to. Is this the last tasty taste before we return? Pretty much, and it's a good one. A few weeks ago, I interviewed John Favreau, the former speechwriter for President Obama,

who makes a very popular podcast called Pod Save America. Ben did this for a live audience at WBUR's new, awesome event venue. It's called City Space. It's right here in Boston, where we make the show. And if you like politics, specifically, politics with a left-leaning perspective, which is where Pod Save America is coming from, you're probably going to enjoy this conversation.

A lot to dig into here. Definitely. But fair warning, yes, John Favro, his co-hosts, and their show come from a perspective, and yes, we are going to get pretty wonky for about 40 minutes here. But also, hopefully, fun and funny, take a listen. Check, check.

All right. Here we go. If you're, for some reason, confused and in the wrong place, this is John Favro maybe you've heard of him he hosts a very successful podcast co-hosts a podcast called

Pod Save America and also is the founder of Crooked Media a media and podcast company is that fair to say? Can I say it that way? Would you say podcast company? A media and podcast company? Perfect. Yeah, that works? Cool. I was going to ask you like Venezuela

Sudan a lot of big news stories happening right now. Right. But you're probably the big story of the morning is probably Julian Assange, right? Yeah, I've been trying to catch up on that before I

got here. No pressure, no pressure, no pressure, but he was arrested. I always do the outline for the show the night before so we have a show tonight in Boston. Right. Which did not have Julian Assange on it. But it will now.

Right? Yeah, I mean, I guess the The question going, I mean, there had been, thanks to some leak in D.C., people had known that there was sealed charges against Julian Assange as far back as November. And I think the question a lot of people had was, are they going to indict him for publishing stolen information, which is technically against the law, but something that prosecutors have in the past let go because they don't want to chill press freedoms, or will they find something else to indict him on that will not necessarily chill press freedoms? And it does seem like what they've indicted him for is helping Chelsea Manning hack or basically offering to help

Chelsea Manning hack into computers to steal the information, which, you know, is a more solid charge in terms of press freedoms, though since he didn't succeed in helping her hack, where I don't know how strong the case is that the prosecution necessarily has against Assange. So I guess we'll see. Yeah, and I guess in some ways,

it's the reason that he's finally been yanked out of the consulate is partly because his relationship with his landlords has gone south. Yes, finally. No, but I saw, you know, Mark Warner, Virginia said this morning, like, however Julian Assange started, whatever he thought he was doing when he started WikiLeaks, what he has become is an agent of the Russian government

and tried to help them interfere with our elections and also, you know, subvert Western democracy. Can you talk a little bit about the Democratic majority in the House? And just, I don't know, I'm not necessarily asking for a scorecard, but like, where, what interests you about what the, you know, the Democrats are doing in the House right now? And what are they failing at in your view? Yeah. So I think Nancy Pelosi has a very tough job because when you look back to 2018 and why we won and how we won.

um this was not some like liberal progressive super majority that swept into the uh into congress right yeah i was going to say we won yeah we yeah we did win landslide right most seats that democrats have picked up since watergate but you wouldn't know it from some of the coverage right no you would not know it once it once again the coverage really nailed it um so but a lot of these seats that we won were in very red districts um you know you had everything from winning safe seats seats and and very liberal congresspeople winning safe seats that were Democrat through primary, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. You have a bunch of Democrats who won districts that voted for Romney but voted for Clinton in

2016. And then you had some Democrats, a few of the House Democrats, win districts that voted for Trump, but had voted for Obama in the past and they came back to the Democrats. And so those last two categories of seats, you know, those people won their seats. by talking about health care and the Republican attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act over and over and over again in their districts. They made the election about that issue,

and that's why they're there, right? So these people, these representatives, when they get to Congress, and they hear that, you know, Democrats want to do a bunch of investigations of Donald Trump, that they want to get the tax returns, that they want to possibly pursue impeachment, it gets them nervous.

Yep. And it gets them nervous because they think, well, that's not what people in my district care about. They care about health care. They don't pay much attention to what's going in Washington. They don't pay much attention to investigations and all that bullshit. They really care about, you know, what's going on with their lives, their wages, their jobs, their health care. And so I get that. But on the other hand, like, we now have a President of the United States who potentially committed a crime, multiple crimes.

He's federal prosecutors have already decided that there's enough evidence. to say that he is an unindicted co-conspirator in a separate crime where he paid hush money to adult film actresses. Right. And a crime, which we know is a crime because his Michael Cohen is going to jail for it and pled guilty to it. Right. Right. And if Donald Trump was not a president, he very well probably would have been indicted as well. And so, and now we have a president who is, you know, he's down at the border. He's telling customs and border patrols. agents to refuse asylum and not listen to judges to lock people up anyway. He's got his Treasury Secretary telling the IRS to not give up his tax returns, even though the law says the Treasury,

the IRS shall provide tax returns upon Congress's request of any taxpayers. It is clear as possible in the law. They're like, why are you here's, you know, Treasury Secretary? Why are you in here? You're not supposed to do this. And then you've got, you know, his hand-picked Attorney General out there saying, yeah, maybe I will look into spying and all these conspiracy theories that Donald Trump has dredged up, even though there's no evidence they occurred. And in fact, there's evidence to the contrary. So you have a president who is sort of assaulting norms, institutions, stepping up his attacks

on the rule of law itself, potentially breaking laws himself. and I think the Democrats have to ask themselves, okay, we know that voters don't really care about these issues as much as they care about sort of economic issues that affect their lives. But what is the consequence

of us just taking a pass and looking the other way as the President of the United States flouts the rule of law, potentially commits crimes, and we're not going to go after that and we're not going to spend time on that and we're not going to undergo impeachment hearings

because we're afraid of the politics. Right. Because we're worried. Like, that might get you through the next election. But what kind of precedent does that set? What does that set for future presidents? What does that set for this president? Because the more he knows he can get away with this stuff,

the further he's going to push the envelope. We've already seen that. He's also out there last night calling Democrats treasonous. Treasonous for starting the Mueller investigation, which they didn't do. treasonous treasonous for not agreeing with his immigration policy I mean you know it's not like winning the House in 2018

has checked his behavior in any way and the only reason we can't check his behavior is if the House uses the power that the voters gave them and sometimes you have to do stuff that isn't necessarily politically easy even though you have to do what's right you know and you have to think about your obligations to the Constitution and the rule of law. So what I'm hearing, and forgive me, we are at the beautiful WBUR city space,

and I am a public radio journalist, but also at least a fan of the pod. So what I hear you saying is that Democrats have to eat a shit sandwich. And that they're very good at. They've been eating them for years. Right, right. They're connoisseurs of shit sandwiches in the Democratic Party. We ate them all through eight years of the White House. served them at the mess every day one of your kind of live Q&A is that you did with listeners recently um

you guys talked a little bit about uh Mitch McConnell and um my favorite people yeah and and how he's just this kind of lynch pin even looking forward at 2020 and trying to figure out um sort of how the Democrats win

and obviously I think everyone here probably knows that your show comes from a pro-democratic perspective. It's a progressive show. We're on the fence. How should we be thinking about the Senate? Because that seems like incredibly important. Incredibly important. I think we think about it enough. Yeah. The Senate is probably, you know, there were no Donald Trump. If it had been just a traditional Republican president, the Senate would probably be the biggest obstacle in the country to progressive change right now. Yeah. So what's the reason for this, right?

Like the Senate has always been an anti-majoritarian institution, right? From the very beginning, that's the whole idea. Wyoming gets two senators and so does California, right? That by itself isn't the problem we're facing right now. The problem is we have had geographic polarization over the last couple decades, meaning that we are now partisan by where we live in a way that we hadn't before. So urban centers are democratic and liberal and rural areas are much more conservative and in the suburbs or the battlegrounds. But now you're seeing things like voters in Houston, in Phoenix, in Jacksonville, in Atlanta have much more in common with voters in Boston and New York and Los Angeles than they do with the people in the rural areas of their own state.

and because of that, now all the states that are sparsely populated in the rural areas are deep, deep red states for Republicans. And the states that have a lot of population are deep, deep blue states. And that wasn't always the case before we sort of moved along these geographic lines for polarization. So therefore, there is no scenario within the next two, three, four elections where the Democrats could ever capture 60 votes in the U.S. Senate, which is just a hard thing to under. And that is if we run the table on every competitive seat that is up. Speaking of tough sandwiches. Yeah. And so this is why, because everyone's like, why are you suddenly become so obsessed with the filibuster?

right? Right. It's a weird fetish for me. I realize that. Go on. But the problem is we're not, we, there's just no path for us to get 60 votes in the Senate. And, you know, aside from that, there used to be a universe where there were moderate Republicans. Right.

Even when we, probably not by the time Obama got to the presidency, but I remember when I was in the Senate with him, you know, he worked with Dick Lugar from Indiana on non-prolinson. We worked with an extremely conservative senator from Oklahoma, Tom Coburn on ethics reform. We don't have that anymore. We don't have Republicans in the Senate that are willing to work with Democrats anything. Maybe Susan Collins once in a while. Maybe Lisa Murkowski once in a while on certain issues. But that's about it. And so when I talked to all these presidential candidates, you know, a lot of them are proposing very ambitious policies, which is great.

I happen to believe we need a lot of ambitious policies. policies because you know economic inequality is at levels we haven't seen since the great depression um and yet what i want to know from them is what are your plans to get this past because if if demore even if if we run the table in the senate in 2020 which will require the following um Doug jones is up again in Alabama that is going to be a very difficult seat to keep so let's go worst case scenario let's say we we don't keep Alabama. We need to then flip four Senate seats for Democrats to win. We have Arizona, which is tough but doable.

Colorado, which we should definitely flip. Yeah. We don't flip Colorado. We have huge problems. Maine, which, you know, we should be able to flip, but Susan Collins is very, very popular up there. Well established. Well established, so it could be very hard. And then we have to flip either Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia, or Texas, which are

all very, very, very, very tricky. Right. And so even if we do those, say we flipped all of them and Doug Jones kept the seat, we would not be near 60. And then the question is you have 55, 56 seats in the Senate, and you got either President Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden or whoever. Right. And they're saying Medicare for all, Green New Deal, blah, blah. None of that's getting through if you have the filibuster in place. It's just not. Right. So how do you deal with that? I mean... How bummed out are you?

I mean, I'm... You're talking about this stuff all the time, and right now I hear you saying, like, it's never going to happen, at least in the next... I think eliminating the filibuster could be possible. Like, my hope is that we get 51 seats in the Senate or 50 seats in the Senate,

and then the tie is broken by the vice president. Right. And, you know, we have a president, at least, who is pushing for the elimination of the filibuster. But the reason I think this is so important, the bigger reason here, is what I have come to realize is that when Democrats get into power, we are the party that tells people government has the capacity

to make a positive difference in your lives. And if we don't do that when we're in power, if we can't actually pass the policies that we talked about on the campaign trail, what that does is it deepens people's cynicism in politics and government. Right. It makes people think that their politicians say a lot of stuff on the campaign trail and then don't.

actually mean it when they get into office. And then that cynicism turns into apathy and a difference and people start participating in politics. And that kind of cynicism, that's fine for the Republican Party because their philosophy is government can't run a one car

parade and everyone should be on their own and everyone should just live their own lives and we don't care about government that much. So when people don't care that much about government and politics, it redounds to the conservative sort of free market ideology. It really hurts Democrats in the progressive ideology.

And even going back to the Affordable Care Act, one of our biggest issues with that was, you know, we passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, and it doesn't really become fully implemented until years later, and it's not popular until 2017, basically, seven years later. Then it's finally popular because people start to feel the benefits

and the Republicans try to take it away, and now the ACA is very, very popular. But next time Democrats get into power, we need to start passing programs and policies that have an immediate effect on people's lives. Also make sure the website works. And make sure the website works. Use Squarespace. This talk is sponsored by Squarespace.

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Discover how the magic is made at WBUR. org slash creative studio. Can you talk a little bit about how you guys are going to talk to every single Democratic candidate, even with the number of shows you put out because there's, I think there were like 10 more this morning. That's not true, but it feels that way. Probably another five while we're speaking right now. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Coming out of the wordwork. I mean, is that a problem? Unclear. We don't know yet. I think, look, there are definitely benefits and drawbacks to having everyone who's ever registered as a Democrat running for president. Today I'd like to announce, but now. Yeah, right. I think on balance, it is a good thing for the party that we have this many people out there talking about the issues we care about, getting people excited and people.

And, you know, the one thing about this field is, I've never seen a field that is so diverse and so talented. you sometimes have a few stars at the top and then a bunch of people where you're like, why are they running? I think you have five, six, seven, eight candidates who all have some really, really excited supporters and followers. And I think that's a good thing. Yeah, we are going to try to interview every single candidate.

The way that we're doing it is basically how the DNC is doing it, the people who get 65,000 donors or are zero to 1% in the polling. you know, we're going to try to have on the show. Archetypes? Any archetypes right now among the candidates? Dark Horse, Darling, frontrunner, air parent. I don't know. Here's the way I look at the field right now.

I think Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are, you have to call them front runners. I don't think they're not quite traditional front runners in the sense that I don't think they're, their leads are overwhelming. Yeah. Although... But they're running against a pretty

untraditional president potentially. That is correct. Although I don't think that their leads are just about name ID either. Fair. At this point, I think it's something about name ID, but, you know, there was a pullout from California Democrats and of course, you know,

Kamala Harris' name ID in California is got to be very, very, very high, massive. And Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders still had their leads in that state. So they're front runners, but they both have their issues as well, so I don't think they're strong, strong front runners.

And then I think you now have a pack in the middle, a tier in the middle that's Kamala, Warren, Beto, Buttigieg. Yep. Maybe, and then like

maybe right beneath that is like Booker and Klobuchar. Okay. And that seems to me the, that's how the field looks to me right now. And there's a whole bunch of people below them who may not stay below them either. Right. Like this, nothing would surprise me. Right. And I mean, you know, a couple months ago, no one really knew who Pete Buttigieg was and now he's... The new hotness. Yeah, now he's the new hotness.

And so could that happen to some of the other candidates who are currently polling at 0, 1, 2%, possibly? And there's a whole bunch of candidates who still aren't in the race yet. You guys recently interviewed Buttigieg. And I think soon after that there was a piece in current affairs that was pretty unflattering. And I only read part of it, but

it was essentially at the... It was very long. I couldn't get through it all. I'll be honest. It was very long. What do you think about that piece? What's your reaction? I mean, the biggest criticism that I saw in the piece was essentially like you know, when you ask him about policy,

he's like, oh, we're too focused on policy, but he doesn't really have any policy. That was kind of the argument being made in the section that I read. But how are you feeling about him as a candidate and especially after reading part of that piece? It's been very cool to watch. I met Mayor Pete about a year ago.

Okay. And he came to L.A. and we had coffee. What was his haircut like then? Same. Okay. Same. Will it get better? I don't know.

Okay. I don't know. I don't know. Fair. But it's funny because he, when I met him, I recognized him. And he was like, yeah, the last time I saw you, we were, it was during the 08 campaign in Chicago, and I was doing a stint at the DNC as a staffer. He's like, and we were at some party together.

And I was like, oh, that's where I know you from. And we had this, this great chat. And I liked him a lot. But I'll be completely honest, I left that chat not having an inkling of an idea that he would ever be a presidential candidate. But I do think he is, I think what has excited people about him is he is super thoughtful, particularly in diagnosing some of the problems, especially structural problems that we've had in politics. And basically some of the framing that has been done about the Democratic Party, basically, by the Republican Party, right? And so he talks about freedom in a different way.

And he talks about community in a different way. And so I think he's been very adept at sort of diagnosing some of the problems that we face in politics right now, and particularly the Democrats face. Look, I think if he goes through the entire campaign like that and doesn't come out with any policies, then, yeah, of course that criticism is valid. But it is April of 2019. and I can remember being on the Obama campaign at this time. Right.

And the knock against us was Barack Obama has no policies. It's all hope and change. It's all platitudes. Hillary Clinton's rolling out a policy every new day. That's the way to win this thing. And Barack Obama is never going to go anywhere. How'd that work out? Yeah, right.

Right. But I will also say, and I think I said this on the pod sometime, I can remember an SEIU form on health care early on. probably around April of 2007. And Hillary Clinton goes out there and is brilliant and lays out her health care policy in detail. John Edwards goes out there, is very smart, has his policy all laid out. Barack Obama goes out there and speaks in platitudes and sort of big picture about what we need to do in health care. And he came off that stage and was like, I never want to be that unprepared again.

And I'm mad. that I don't have this stuff ready. I do think these candidates need their own policies. You want you to put your own stamp on the debate we're having, the policy debate we're having. Elizabeth Warren comes out with a new policy every single day. So this was going to be my next question, right? Elizabeth Warren, we're in Massachusetts.

Right. Like Elizabeth Warren, like, you know, the gif of the cat mashing the keyboard, like I feel like that cat is writing for her medium account. her policies have really I mean she's been like putting them out and she's got a ton of policy ideas and I think at one point

at least a couple of years ago I'll just say this anecdotally a couple of years ago like everyone I talked to was super pumped about her and I guess that's kind of weird because that's when Hillary Clinton was running I remember like a New Yorker piece about the meeting and this sort of strange theater of that for both of them.

But just anecdotally, a lot of the people I talk to now are like not as hot on her. And it seems like a lot of people point to her fight with Trump about her ancestry and how she handled that. So I don't know. Where do you think she's at in the race? and yeah so i love elizabeth warren um i do not love her just because she puts out a ton of policy i like her because she is incredibly wonky but when she talks she does she turns all that

wonk into a very compelling narrative about what's wrong with our economy and what we have to do to fix it yeah and she has stories that she tells it goes with it and by the way she has a strategy for how she's going to get this stuff passed so i i definitely do not subscribe to the elizabeth Elizabeth Warren rolls out a policy every day, and yet the media hates that. And so that's why she's not winning, like, no. And that's not the reason that I'm really compelled by her. I'm compelled by her because she is a very compelling speaker. She has a theory of the case.

She has a message. She has policies to back that up. And then she has a strategy to achieve those policies. So why is she not leading the field right now? It's possible that the fight with Trump had something to do with that. But I think we forget that before that fight with Trump, Trump, she was a Democratic Party. She was like the boogeyman of the Democratic Party, along with Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama,

and some of the other figures for a very long time since she first came into politics. You mean by like forcing them left or just being? Republicans just, well, so Republicans decided nationally that they would run ads back in 2012, even before that maybe, that would include Elizabeth Warren. Right. Because she was, you know. crazy she was scaring off wall street and i've met you know i've met democrats since now the democratic party has a bunch of rich finance people yeah in it um who are more socially liberal and fiscally

conservative and you talk to people on wall street and they are very scared that elizabeth warren is coming after their you know 100 billion dollar profits so i do think that that that she has been her name when you look at the the polls her name id is almost as high as bernies and by which is unusual for someone who is not run for national office. So it's thanks to the Republicans. I think Republicans have been beating up on Elizabeth Warren for years. Not as long as, I mean, Hillary Clinton had the problem that Republicans have been beating up on her for like 30, 40 years.

Right. Elizabeth Warren hasn't had that problem. But I do think, you know, there's a lot of people who, when they think Elizabeth Warren, they think of the person they've seen in some awful RNC ad or a Fox News segment. Right. I think that she is the candidate most likely to, well, there's a couple like this, but when people meet her in person, and Iowa is the perfect state for that, and I think that's why she's invested a ton in Iowa.

When people meet her in person, they're going to say, oh, that's not the Elizabeth Warren that I've heard about or read about. She's warm and she's compelling, and I really like what she had to say. I would wager that that's happening a lot on the ground in Iowa in a way that's not quite breaking through in the national narrative just yet. Did you study classical piano as I read Wow. Deep dive. Yeah, your college paper.

I studied music theory. Yeah, the first two years I was at Holy Cross. Okay. Because I had taken piano lessons and sort of played competitively all through high school. So I thought that maybe I would do that in college. And then I realized I probably wasn't quite good enough to do that. And then I was also getting too interested in politics by my sophomore year at college.

Are there any similarities between like theory and speech writing? Yeah, there's, I mean, I sort of learned this. I didn't really learn it. It just sort of happened when I was learning to write speeches, particularly for Obama, is that there is a rhythm that's important to speeches. and it's not, I guess it's something that you can be taught, but I wasn't. It just sort of picked it up. I remember, like, after the New Hampshire speech, which was the yes we can speech,

a reporter reached out to me and was like, did you realize that some of that speech was in iambic pentameter? And did you plan that? And I was like, yes, definitely. And I was like Googling iambic pentameter. No, I didn't. So it's sort of by osmosis, but I think my music background probably helped in that regard. Can you just briefly tell this story that I feel like is part of your story about this thing that happened, I think, backstage at the DNC with you, Obama? So you had been working for John Kerry.

you had been, as I understand it, actually collecting radio samples to provide to him. Is that right? I was a press assistant for a while. And that involved, you know, taking press calls, doing press clips. Part of it was something called radio actualities, which is getting sound from the candidate. And then you'd send that to like rural radio station. Oh, got it. Okay.

It probably doesn't happen anymore. Sure. It was an Iowa thing. And then you, you know, he, you know, he, his, the campaign kind of faltered and you, there was a dearth in speechwriting talent and you kind of stepped into that role for him. Yeah. They couldn't, they couldn't afford to hire a deputy speechwriter because the campaign was losing money and was maybe going to lose to Howard Dean. Fair. So they let me step into the role. They were like, hey, how about for no more money,

you come do this now? This thing is got a shelf life of a couple months anyway, so let's give it a world. So tell me about this thing that happens backstage at D&C. So I was the deputy speechwriter. Chief speech writer was on the road with John Kerry preparing for his convention speech. My job was to come to Boston and sit backstage and then make sure that all the speeches that were being delivered at the convention were on message with the Kerry campaign's message. So I was editing a bunch of people's speeches. And I get a call from the road from my boss, Josh Gottheimer, who's now a congressman in New Jersey. And he was the chief speech writer.

and he said, okay, there's a problem with the draft of the speech being delivered by state senator Barack Obama. It's the keynote. And I'm like, what's the problem? I read over that speech. It's amazing, you know? And he's like, well, there's a line in that speech that John Kerry wants to use in his speech.

And I was like, so. And he's like, well, he has to change it. And I'm like, okay. Well, again, why are you calling me? And he's like, well, we want you to ask him to change it. Whoa. And I was, I was 21 at the time. So, uh, who's 21?

All right. So you have to go to the president or do a future president. Anyway, sorry. Go ahead. I walked down the hall and, you know, because apparently Obama is practicing his speech on teleprompter for the very first time. And I walk into the room and I see Robert Gibbs there. Robert Gibbs had been my boss in the carry campaign when I was press assistant. He quit.

during the shakeup and then went to go work for state senator Barack Obama. And so I was like, oh, this will be easy. So I said, hey, Gibbs, I just got a call from the road. Can you tell him to change the line? And Gibbs is like, no. I'm not telling him that. He's like, that's one of his favorite lines. He's like, you go tell him.

So now Obama sees there's some commotion. And he's like, what's going on? And I introduce myself and I walk up to him. And I tell him everything that I was supposed to tell him. And then he sort of got up within an inch of my face. and he looked down at me and I don't know what he said because I think I blacked out

at that moment. Wasn't great. So wait, is that because Kerry or his people read Obama's speech and then wanted to take a line? This is the dispute. Okay.

The Kerry people will tell you it just happened to be that both lines ended up in both speeches. The Obama people will tell you, no, no, no. I don't know because the way that Josh said it to me

was there was, there's a line in the speech he wants to use. Right. So who knows? Does that work in college? Yeah, right. So Obama was not happy. And then a man, a mustached man, came over to me and said,

son, let's step outside and rewrite the line together. It was David Oxrhod. It was the first time I met him. And so Axe and I step out into the hall and we rewrite the line. And all was well. And I thought to myself, well, it's too bad. that I will never speak to Barack Obama again because I think that's a really fantastic speech.

And then, you know, a year later, when he sat down to interview me for the job, the interview went well because he did not remember it was me. And then fast forward a year later, when I was in the Senate office, we were all sort of sitting around, chatting, and reminiscing,

and the convention speech came up, and Obama turned to Gibbs, and he's like, do you remember that little shit who came up to me? And you're like... He asked me to change the line and I was like, that was me. He's like, I would have never hired you, but... And then he laughed so hard.

He thought it was the funniest thing. Yeah. So he had a good sense of humor about it. Trump, the way that Trump talks is really interesting to me. Yeah, he can say that. I'll put it that way. And I, as a speechwriter, I would assume that you've thought about this a little bit.

And I, so I've looked at, I've looked at, I've been really struck by the difference in video footage I see of the president and descriptions of how he speaks in private. I feel like the way he speaks in public is a very certain thing. Yeah. But I don't, sorry, I don't know. makes sense. I guess I don't know how he speaks in private and how different that is.

I mean, because you get all of this from sources and I think the sources might make him sound smarter than he is. Yeah, they're not directly quoting him, usually. They're sort of describing an interaction

or something, yeah. I'm most struck by, if you watch videos of Trump 20 years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago, it does seem like he has clearly lost a step.

You know, there was a very, video of him, one of his first interviews, I think he was being interviewed by Tom Broca and he's talking about real estate on the Today Show. And he was very articulate. And now maybe it was because the subject is real estate and that's the one thing he knows. But I just couldn't believe it was the same person as the guy we hear now who now just walks, I mean, walks up to the press corps outside the White House. And instead of saying hello, it just goes, no collusion, no collusion, no collusion.

Yeah, it's strange. And it's also, I mean, as a speech writer, you also, there's this funny thing where when he does have prepared remarks, and the few times he actually reads off prepared remarks, it does sound like he's reading a hostage statement. And he seems very uncomfortable, and it's not great delivery. And that happens with all public figures, right? The difference between reading prepared remarks and speaking off the cuff. That's why, you know, you try to memorize your remarks or you try to read

to read off a prompter because that helps. And with Trump, it's particularly noticeable because Trump off the cuff, which is what we usually get, is so distinct that when he's forced to read like Stephen Miller's horrible writing, it very much feels like he is trapped and unhappy with that speech. Cool. I was just curious about that.

Yeah, no, it's interesting. Just really quickly, lightning round, pod save and cruise. crooked media. Why did you create the company? You know, part of it was obviously spurred on by Trump winning, and we thought we were retired from politics, and, you know, Hillary Clinton would be president,

and we could all just write off into the sunset. And that didn't happen, so we felt like we really needed to be involved. But prior to Trump winning, you know, while we were in the Obama administration, Dan, Tommy, Lovett, myself, were all very big media critics, as you can hear. And part of that critique was not even necessarily ideological or partisan. My belief is when you get to the end of watching the nightly news,

you're oftentimes loved feeling pretty helpless. You just covered a lot of really tough problems in the world, really bad news. And because a lot of good news doesn't make the nightly news. and just having all that wash over you and having this feeling of helplessness that you can't do anything about it, I think it feeds apathy, it feeds cynicism, it feeds all the things that hurt our politics.

And as someone who cares about politics so much and cares about change and social change, I thought, wouldn't it be great to have a media company where you can diagnose the problem, but then also tell people, here's what you can do to change it, that you actually have agency to change the world around you,

to organize, to become active. And that's sort of the basis for the company. And can we do it in an entertaining way? So it's not just feeding people a bunch of boring statistics and information or having people yell at each other all day long. Everyone's like, well, don't you want to have a bunch of Republicans on? I'm like, yeah, absolutely.

I'd love to have conservatives on and have like an interesting conversation. I'm not interested in recreating a CNN panel where people are screaming at each other because you might call that bipartisanship. I don't think that's helping anyone, having people yell at each other. I'd rather have a thoughtful conversation with someone for 30 minutes on a podcast

than scream talking points at each other for five minutes on cable. So that's sort of the fundamental idea behind the company. I learned recently that maybe you guys picked the theme music for the show in part because of its similarity to the Top Gun theme song or the Top Gun anthem,

which I then looked up and I was like, wow, this is really, it's not the same, It's not a... Very similar. It's very similar. It's not a David Bowie vanilla ice situation, but it is very similar.

Is that true? It's not because, no. We love it. New some people. Can anyone sing it? We're gonna... Can you sing it? I'm not going to.

Okay. It's like, do, do, do do do do, do something like that. And we had someone send us a bunch of potential theme songs, and we heard that one. We're like, Oh, this sounds great.

And then the more we heard it, we're like, this kind of sounds like the Top Gun theme song. And we were like, well, we have a little podcast, so who cares? Yeah. And then it just kept it. Now we love it. It's great. Give it up for this man here. That was Ben talking with podcast radio host and speechwriter for President Barack Obama, John Favro.

And you should totally check out all of the Crooked Media podcasts if you like humor and politics and plain talk about politics. You can find Crooked Media stuff at Crooked Media. or wherever you get your podcasts. And we are back, baby, next week. Woo! Woo! Yes! Talk to you soon.