Pod Save America - Fighting with Fox News feat. Jessica Tarlov

Episode Date: September 20, 2026

Fox News host Jessica Tarlov, the lone liberal voice on "The Five," stops by the studio to talk to Tommy about her new book "I Disagree: Winning Arguments without Losing Friends." Tarlov offers Tommy a behind the scenes look into the making of Fox's most combative show and her relationships off-screen with her conservative colleagues. She also talks about how she handles criticism from Fox News's most infamous viewer, what it's like watching her former colleagues serve in the President's cabinet, and why she thinks Democrats need to spend more time on Fox News in 2028.Hate listening to ads? Become a Friends of the Pod subscriber for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, Runaway Country, Offline with Jon Favreau, and more—plus exclusive content, including bonus episodes of Pod Save America. Subscribe now at crooked.com/friends, on Apple Podcasts, or through the Pod Save America YouTube channel.You can request a transcript by emailing [e-mail]. Include the podcast name, episode title, and air date. Please allow 48 hours for delivery.

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Vote from abroad.org. Welcome to Podsafe of America. I'm Tommy Vitor. My guest today is a political strategist, a pollster, a TV commentator, a podcast host. Those are an order of importance. You've almost certainly seen her trading barbs, throwing haymakers, cracking jokes. You pick the cliche on The Five. And now she's the author of a new book.

I disagree winning arguments without losing friends. Jessica Tarlove. Great to see you again. Yeah. Thank you for having me. This is so exciting. And in person. In person.

In L.A. A West Coast hang. A West Coast hang in an important time because the midterms are about six weeks out. hopefully the Democratic Party is going to do a little bit of a better job of just sprinting through the finish line here. Yeah, maybe like let's not kill each other. Let's just like go towards the goal. Yeah, that would be good. But the minute the midterms are over, bloodsport, and it's going to be a huge conversation and a fight over the future of the Democratic Party, the style, the substance, the political approach, the way to win, which is why I want to talk with you today.

Because you are a polster by training, a data junkie, someone who understands these argument. in sort of the cross tabs, but also like, you don't just work in a spreadsheet. You're on TV every day, kind of where the rubber meets a road, battling it out with various interlocutors and feeling, you know, figuring out what works in real time. Yes. It is a, it's like a political test kitchen. Yeah.

You know. Scraming an egg over here. It was like, oh, didn't eat that nutmeg or like, I'm not a great cook, as you could tell that I went for nutmeg, which is not an essential ingredient. Anyway, but yeah, it is fun to test your. ideas out and then to also watch them testing their ideas. They're like, what do we think? Like how easy is this to pull apart? Also, what is the counter to it? Right? Like, what do you have hanging in your arsenal that you're like, oh, you shouldn't have zigged there because my zag is way

better on that? Right. Right. There are definitely times on the show where you make a good argument and Greg and Jesse don't say something obnoxious because they know that they are just quietly owned. Yes. The silent L is my favorite. The loud... L is the worst. Yeah. When they're just, you think you're having a normal conversation

about the war in Iran and suddenly you get asked what is a woman? And you think I have one, but I also hate myself. And we're talking about this now. Well. Thank you, Marshall Blackburn,

forever. We'll get more of that. So I'm excited to, like, unpack with you. What is like to work at Fox as a Democrat, whether Democrats should go on Fox News? I think we have a little debate about that. If you go on,

how to be successful, what you do, messaging strategy, what Democrats are getting wrong, and what they're getting right. But in case listeners have not seen you on the five, first of all, their loss. But here's a little taste of the vibe and what it can be like. Let's watch. They're not putting snap benefits. They're just saying you can't buy Doritos with food stamps.

That's absolutely not true. It is true. That is not true. You can't buy candy with food stamps. That's not a cut. Even second tier senators like Josh Hawley would tell you that that talking point is invalid. We talk about the useless trade war. We talk about how you...

What's a woman? Can you define a woman? Why do you ask the woman who gave birth that all the time? You're talking about $20 billion in American goods. Well, we're going to get a deal, Jessica. It's just posturing. Just the way Carney walked out at the last second, because he didn't want to open up his economy. The president is trying to get a better deal for Americans.

This is part of the deal. When you have no toilet paper, don't complain to me about your wiping. I stopped up during the pandemic. Pandemic, yes. 40% of Donald Trump's wealth. has been accumulated since he became president because of two crypto coins. This is not even part of the segment. You're talking about a meme coin.

No, I'm talking about who's corrupt and who is profiting off the American office. Did he try to cover that up? I don't think so. You know a lot of Trump supporters. Do we need to be deprogrammed? Be careful. That's why I come to work every day. You're very good at this.

It's four on one all the time. Yes, it is four and one by design. It is funny going down memory, and I love that you randomly had the what is a woman thing in there. But then the last one, I'm heavily pregnant. So I'm like, oh, that's a cute look when I was just taking up the whole side of the desk like that. You can't comment. Of course you didn't. I did not.

No, no man would. I would never. It's good 45 extra pounds there. I would never. It's also fun to know that you are a host of the show. You get to produce the show, presumably, with the team. The one time I went on with Jesse Waters, it was going to be like, we're going to talk about Biden and pardons and this.

And I walked out onto the set and he just yelled, how many genders are there, Tommy? Like five times in my face. And I was like, okay, this is how it goes for Jessica every day, I guess. Yeah. On a special day. But you do. You loosely have the guidelines, right? So you have your topics.

But it's the same thing as knowing anyone in your life. I kind of know what everyone's pet subjects are. I know we're going to do a little trans, a little Hunter Biden, whatever it is. Yeah. Add that nutmeg and it's going to taste delicious. It tastes like the five. So let's take into the job. So we're about a decade into the Trump political era. A lot of people I know who used to read every tweet and watch, you know, MS Now every night have tuned out because they're like, I just can't take it anymore. You have done the opposite, which is you go into Fox News every day, kind of do battle.

I think most listeners just want to know what is the experience like? How do you prepare for that? Do you have producers kind of doing a, you know, like a moot court with you? Or like, how does it go? So we get the rundown every morning at 11 a.m. So you have six hours, essentially, to prepare. And I usually record Raging Moderates.

My podcast was Scott Galloway around that time, 11, 11.30. And a lot of times the topics intersect, which is great. Because you're doing prep as you go. and then I can also audition the long-form answer, because I'm not going to get interrupted. And you just have more time in pop world, obviously. So that's nice and that there's some carryover there. But I do what based upon your tweeting behavior you're doing, too,

it's just a constant doom scrolling that I'm sure is going to have very bad implications for our future. Right. when Elon Musk fully owns all of our brains. And I have a strange algorithm that's very right-brained and left-brained, politically speaking, because I prepare for what I'm interested in or what I think I want to advance is my argument. And then I also try to prepare for them and where I think they're going to go based on also what sources I know that they find interesting, you know, who they might be reading. You're reading the New York Post every morning, I assume. Well, yeah.

Yeah, as you should be. Well, for all the covers are undefeated. So that is fun. Absolutely. But, yeah, looking there, looking the Daily Mail, will sometimes have stuff that you think is absurd, but then also things that other places aren't covering that end up being a story two days later for more mainstream sources.

So it's kind of fun to get the tea leaves direct from the sources. that way. And then, yeah, we have three or four topics that I would say are meatier. And I figure out what the three or four points that I absolutely have to make are, like, I'm going to white knuckle my way through whatever is coming my way to make sure that I can get it out. And then the back 20 minutes of the show is really light and easy. Right. That feels like, look at this fat bear.

And then he says, like, is that Joy Behar? And then... She's like, dude, come on. Right. Fat Bears, family photo, you know, like, it's a breezy roundtable. Yes. So there is a light side to it. And I think also people miss out.

I mean, obviously, if you never saw me, like, do the job at all in that montage was your first introduction, then you certainly wouldn't know this. But so much of our ecosystem only consumes me through clips. So they don't see what the response was or what even the setup was or those moments where there is connective tissue. between castmates, yeah, which I put a lot of that in the book quite intentionally because when people say, like, how do you do this and are, you know, how much is your therapy bill? Are you on drugs? Are you medicated? I say, actually, if you watch the whole thing, it's not as bad as it looks. Well, I want to ask you about that. You write about having what people might find to be a surprisingly close friendship with Greg Gutfelds. I was a co-host on the show, a comedian,

But Greg once called you his muse, I think, in the New York Times. And it was a stunning. It was so nice. And to do it in the Times. I was like, you went into my paper for my people. And you said this lovely thing about me. That's nice. And then there's Jesse Waters.

Who has not called me his muse. And like, you know, I've always assumed that on Earth, too, there's like a version of me and Jesse that went to the same college. And like, we could be friends and never talk about politics, but like make fun of the Patriots or the Jets or like whatever team. he likes. Eagles. Eagles guy. Okay, Philly guy, yes. We definitely fight it out about that. But he seems like he's in on the joke and that he's trying to be entertaining and provocative.

And like, sure. Dana Perino just seems like a nice person. So I like almost don't raise her. But then like even in the book you write about a surprising interaction with Roger Ails of all people. Can you just talk about like the relationships you have inside Fox and what might surprise viewers of, you know, people listening to Pot Save America who, you know, probably don't consume a lot of Fox. It's a really good place to work. And it's always ranked as one of the top places to work. It is a TV network, and there are lots of liberals working there, lots of moderates.

I mean, Roger Ailes himself was a John Kasich supporter. So his programming choices, obviously at times were in more of the extremes, but he was hyper aware of where elections are won, and they're one in the middle. So I think that that would surprise people. You know, I have lots of friends. I don't sit alone in a corner. They're also. They're nice to you.

They're like there are memes of that, like Jessica in the corner of the cafeteria and no one will talk to me. That's not true. Very popular with hair and makeup. Those folks are great, by the way. They're incredible. The hair and makeup folks at Fox are particularly friendly, I found. Yes. I mean, I'm not trying to turn this into some sort of infomercial, but like, they're also well-compensated and there's great health care.

and maternity leave and all of these things. That's why when we get into fights about things like vaccines or whatever it is, you just think, like, we had a vaccine mandate. Everyone did it. Right. I mean, there were a few exemptions for it, which was normal and happened most places. But it is in a lot of ways just a very nice, normal place to work. Ponce of America is brought to you by Joe Lee.

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And listeners to our show get 20% off their purchase when using the code Crooked at checkout. That's an additional 20% off better plants and growing at Trees.com using the code crooked at checkout. Trees.com code crooked. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. The fact that you're friends with Greg or Jesse, like that doesn't surprise you. me because there's human beings you interact with every day. If you weren't friends, you would leave. The Roger Ales thing is weird because he is famously a creep. He was a horrible person, accused of

assault and all sorts of things. But your interaction with him, he was like surprisingly kind. It was just a surprising story. Well, it was early on in my appearing on Fox. So I started doing cable news hits on top of my day job. I was working in polling on Mike Bloomberg's team, which is the dream job in polling because there's infinite money and he believes in all of the good things. So he says, go find candidates that believe in gun safety and go find people who are for, you know, smart education reforms. Remember climate change? Yeah. That was good when people cared about that. Well, also when there was a consensus that people respected, now I don't even know if there

is a consensus. Once Bill Gates went and said. Kind of backed off a little bit. Yeah. Well, the hyperbole on that wasn't the world supposed to end in 2028 because of climate change. So. Can't deal with that shit. Anyway, sorry. So it's 2032. Anyway, Mike Bloomberg is great.

So I was working for him and started doing TV hits to build my public speaking skills and my boss at the time who was Bill Clinton's pollster in the 90s and had been a Fox contributor since the early 2000 said, you should do this. And so I just said yes to everything. And I was doing, remember cheddar? Yes. Yeah. Like Yobu Live.

station? No. But they were set up. Is there a... I just used to see their feeds everywhere, like on gas pumps literally. Maybe I'm making this up. No. Honestly, from doing it, that wouldn't surprise me.

But they did have a little desk at the stock exchange. So I started to learn how to talk about issue areas that weren't necessarily my wheelhouse, which I feel like makes cable news go around where you show up and you're supposed to be talking about something that you should be talking about. And then they're like, we bombed a nuclear enrichment facility in Iran. Could you talk about that too? The first time I did TV when I left the White House, I was a, I think it was a five-minute hit. I think I prepped for eight hours.

Oh, my God. I was calling, like, the former head of the NCTC, like National Counterterrorism Center. I'm like digging. It was like, Barack Obama shut off White House tours. What do you make of that? I was like, oh, okay, this is a good lesson to just maybe chill out a little bit, Tommy. But yeah, though that can also go badly. Knowing to study too much.

Well, sometimes you sit down from someone, like across from someone who has taken the exact opposite approach. I hate that shit. People are like, what are we even talking about? It's like, you know what? Like, let's have some respect for the audience and just try to care. Yes. And that five minutes, it's such a weird amount of time because it's so fast on the one hand. But in TV time, if you can say something incredible for.

45 seconds, it can be really meaningful and it can stick with you also for the rest of your career. So not eight hours, but not no minutes in terms of prep. So I had been doing Fox, I would say for about a year or so. And Roger asked an executive to come get me. I had just finished a hit. And the sky comes up to me or I didn't have much of a relationship with him. And he said, Roger Ailes would like to see you.

are you free now? So like obviously you clear your schedule. And I went and I spent an hour with him in his office and he asked about everything, you know, how I grew up, what my family was like, what my relationships were like, professional career. I had lived abroad in London for six years, what was school like, the campaign I did over there. And then we started talking about TV. And I brought up that I was aware of the fact that a lot of people who watched didn't love my voice, which has a certain croaking quality to it, as my dad used to put it. And I said, but I started taking voice lessons. And he was like, no, you have to stop. And I said, well, that's strange coming from someone who's so big in TV programming and coaching, you know, the message, you know.

and he asked me who had the most real estate on the network. So who was on the most hours of the day? And it was this guy Neil Cavuto who's not at the network anymore. And he said, what does Neil's voice sound like? I know it was not good on a comparative melodious basis. And he said, Neil's voice sounds like a truck driving over gravel. But the goal of TV and the goal of programming is that, for people who are watching to be able to know it's you,

no matter what room they're in in the house. And so giving up the distinctiveness will hurt you more than you think. Especially when all TV people kind of train themselves to say news at six. Right. Well, I think it's also anchor versus commentator. Right.

Like he was not offering me that job, right, to do the news from 9 to 11 a.m. Fair. But it was an incredible lesson. and also one of those instances where you can get something so positive from such a horrible human being. Yeah. Speaking of which, I mean, you write about handling kind of the feedback from the Fox audience, especially one particularly nasty viewer who like obsessively consumes Fox.

And of course, talking about Donald Trump, the President of the United States. How fun is it having the president kind of grade your performance on social media in real time? Well, he has never given me a good grade. Which to a type A high achiever, it's pretty brutal. It's just, it's so weird, and you know this from working in this world. Why is this man not busier? Yeah, yeah. You know, there are better things to do.

I understand that I occupy space on his favorite show, and we are thankful for the ratings. Are you the favorite? Is the five? Yeah. Yeah, number one show for four and a half years. No, I just mean that. Oh, of his. His personal.

Has he announced this? Does he rank you? Does he put out a list? He hasn't done that. Of the great Americans and then that horrible liberal shrew that sits there. No, I think that it is, it's a good time slot for him. But it has a lot of his favorites on one program. So you get to see like Jesse Waters and Greg together.

And Janine Piro used to be on the show before she became the U.S. attorney for D.C. Got it. And I think he's gone after Dana before. You know, Dana was Bush. his press secretary. So obviously that feels like some kind of betrayal to him. Sure. But yeah, I think it's his favorite. He tweets like it's his favorite. I don't know. There are great Americans on other programs too. Maybe Hannity's like a best friend, but it's a And it's fun to be criticized by him on social media, both for what you said and how you look doing it.

That's an appropriate, nice, normal thing for the president. Totally. If I had a son, I would definitely teach him that when you grow up, you should write about how a woman looks on television and sounds and then call her a big dummy. Yeah. We've all gotten so used to it, but it's horrible when you really say it like that. Well, you also watch how other people who don't live here and haven't grown accustomed to it, react to it. Or you see, like, Mark Carney giving a speech.

Right. And you think, why can't we have nice things? I know that feeling, too. I mean, when he does that, like, I assume that Jesse and Greg and all these people can, like, call Trump. Are they ever like, hey, man, lay off my friend? You're kind of just being a dick? When he called in and said that the show was better without me, I was off that day.

Jesse pushed back. I was like, we love her. But everyone just got quiet, which is actually the best way to handle him because you don't want to get into a big back and forth. And I've never responded to any of it online. It's just not worth it. And it invites such vitriol. It invites threats.

We have kids around the same age. It's a scary world. out there. But the reason that I wanted to write about it for the book was because it has pushed me to really think about how to process criticism and what lessons you can take from it. And I wanted the book to be like that, like actually useful for people. And so by the president coming after me and looking at the content of the criticism, I actually got to a place where I genuinely feel like when people pick on you because of style that you've just done really well on substance. And that feels good. The inner monologue feels good. It's still sad and crazy.

So if Trump attacked my appearance, I think it would break me. I'd love if he thought my ideas were stupid. But if he was like, that dumb blonde is a five head and I hate him, I would crumble. One thing that sort of frustrates me about the Trump era is there's all these famous people, like comedians and athletes and others, like who kind of intellectually know that what he is doing is wrong. Right. It had a personal interaction with him at the club, golfing, whatever, and just sort of like slot him into nice to me. Well, he's nice to me. Like, I find him great. And it's like on some level, that's very human. On another, it's like politics 101. Every politician ingratiates him or herself with people. And there's value in that. But I think like the delta between Trump's charm and harm is greater than maybe any president in history, right? So it's harder here. And so I wonder if you ever struggle with that same. kind of feeling at Fox because there's all these people who are wonderful colleagues, kind to you, nice to your kids, and then you watch them later at night, and it's like this invective that you know is damaging or like exacerbating all the tensions in our politics that you hate.

It's definitely frustrating. And we've had those conversations on air and off air. Greg and I have had a number of back and forth where he said, I just don't understand why you care so much that I like him. And I always put it in terms of this is not like your annoying friend that you're bringing to my birthday party, right? This is someone who is deciding the trajectory of our country for 330 million Americans. There are people who are dead now because of policy decisions that he has made. They're here and abroad. You know, when they minimize USAID funding and things like that, you just say, okay, like, I get it.

It doesn't hit as close to Homeview, but if there are African kids, that are dead now. That still counts as a negative. A school of Iranian girls that we bombed. Because we also had, like, Claude had a bad day for whichever was a Claude. It was one of their, it was some sort of AI enabled targeting something

that the Pentagon uses. So I don't want to, don't sue me. Claude, I use Claude. I mean, someone, some program messed up and went on old coordinates. They fucked up. And 140 girls are dead. And we never talk about it.

And if a reporter asked about it in the press brief it's... Trump pretends they're still reviewing it or something. No, just dismisses it. Like, how dare you? I mean, Pete Heggseth is definitely not reviewing it. So that is frustrating for me, but it has led me to understand something, which I think we all intellectually know about how seriously conservatives take politics versus liberals.

We know that there's a big delta between that, that it feels like much more of our our identity than it does to them. I'm not talking about the deep maga face. No, I'm not talking on someone who has like Trump tattooed on their face. I'm talking about the average Republican who likes Trump fine. But in 2016, you know, maybe they like someone else that come around or even liked him from the start. But the other things that are going on and their lives matter more. And that has been a big lesson for me to learn intellectually, but also to feel it. And I see that in the commercial breaks. You know, we could be having a really tense debate about something that matters a lot, you know, Dobbs decision, war, peace, you know, big scandal, whatever it is. And it does not carry over

for them. So it has become, I feel really up to me to decide what that dynamic is going to look like. And I want those friendships, not only because I want to go to work and I want to work in a good environment. But because I also know that if you are going to be able to reach people and connect with them, you have to do it to a large degree on their terms. You have to find a way to make, I call it in the book, the truth safe to hear. And so I've really reframed how I think about my job as the liberal voice on those days. And Harold Ford Jr. does it half the week as well. So that is part of how my mental health is sort of intact. Swap in.

Bring the left, right. Good luck to you. But if you think about your advocacy or the kinds of arguments that you're making as being focused actually on opening minds versus changing them, you can be a lot more successful. And I think that was something Obama understood, too, how you pick up some of these states that we had no business winning, which maybe will win again this time around, because Rob Sand knows that that's the case as well. Right.

Yeah, no, there's definitely, I think people running for office have a whole other level of grace or need to to be politically successful. Pod Save America is brought you by Sundays. We are what we eat, and believe it or not, so are our dogs. A long, healthy act of life starts with clean, real food nutrition every day. That's what Sundays for dogs is all about. It's human grade real food. Sunday's recipes contain 80% plus all. all-natural meat, roughly twice the meat content of some leading frozen brands,

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Now available in Canada and the UK, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash crooked. You write in the book about Judge Janine Piro being a very kind and supportive colleague, for example. I'm just wondering, like, what it's like then to watch her get this U.S. attorney job and then go into this new role where she is using the power she was given by the Trump administration to conduct this vindictive prosecution against David Hearn, the Olympian, who was accused of... Well, at least then she undid it. At least she undid it.

But it's like, I was just wondering if like that's been hard for you. It is just like, there's all these, when we talked about Pete Hagsap, I don't know if you knew him. He was a weekend guy, so you probably didn't get to shine you did. I knew Pete. Yeah. I'm always having a little cocktail on Sunday mornings or whatever. But like watching that clown go from. That is, that's much tougher for me.

Yeah. Because I think also, and I imagine your audience has very specific opinions about. Janine, and I'm sure that most of them aren't good. But Janine Piro is actually technically qualified for that job. Right. She was a prosecutor and a legal analyst. And she has a great relationship with Muriel Bowser. That was one of the first things that changed when she got to that office, that she started spending all of this time with her. And Mayor Bowser has talked about that. And when you look at how she handled, like the Jewish couple who were murdered outside of the museum, in the anti-Semitic attack.

Like, no one would say, oh, that's a TV host who has no business doing this job. And so I'm not defending all of it. You know, the subway guy going after the canoeist in the first place. Obviously, you know, attempted prosecutions of Powell, Tish James. I know not all of that was her, but this is how the DOJ is operating now under Trump. I think her story is much more layered. I think unequivocally that Pete, clearly not.

I can't believe, I know you guys covered it a lot. We certainly talked about it on raging moderates, but I feel like Dan Driscoll's resignation should be such a bigger deal. The former Army Secretary. Yes, who had to go to Trump directly to tell him that Pete was taking actions that undermined our military readiness and preparation for the future. future. I mean, when it leaked out that we had gotten under that drone unit, I thought, okay, that's kind of strange. And we knew the story about how the Ukrainians had come and said,

we'll teach you how to do this, because you might get into a jam, and we'd love to help you out. And we apparently shooed them away and said, go home. But the drone unit goes, and then Dan Driscoll sends up the flare, where he says, this guy's firing all of the people who are in charge of the things that we need to become this modern fighting force. Yeah. That story sticks out to me a lot more. Yeah. Pete is a disaster, and he's currently losing the war to Iran. So for as long as I've been in politics, there's been a debate about whether Democrats

should go on Fox News. Right. I personally have argued it both ways, which means I'm always wrong. I think it would be fun to debate it with you, specifically, though, want to scope it to whether a Democrat running for president in 2028, but before they've secured the president. the nomination should go on Fox News. So I think after the general, it's like kind of a no-brainer, right? You have to reach the broadest audience you should.

But in the primary process before you secure the nomination, do you want to go first or second? I'm good either way. You choose? I don't usually get it. I'm used to at work having no choice as to- I'm just scream and interrupt you either way. So what's the case for going on Fox News?

That's where the eyeballs are. I honestly, I think you would be insane not to do it. In a primary? Yeah, in a primary. You can pick your host, right? No one's saying that you have, you can figure out what kind of interview you're going to have with each person. And then you decide what you want to do. We could look at Abdul Al-Sayad from a few weeks ago going on with Jesse Waters.

That was a selection. They certainly thought about where should we go to do this. Got 25 minutes of air time, which is enormously valuable, right? Three, four viral clips out of it. for each of them. That's one thing that is important about doing this medium is that most of the time it's mutually beneficial. And that is how I think the system should work. So if I have a great day on the five, it's completely feasible that Jesse also had a great day. And different algorithms are rejoicing. Oh, I see. Right. Right. And so Abdul got to land his punches. He got what he wanted. He had,

you know, the fun, the fun clip, the circumcision clip, but he also had the, why are we not talking about crisis? As all circumcisions are, just a great time. Yeah. It was fun. I was off the day after, but coming back and getting to say to Jesse that I was sad that I missed Circumcision Day was a really special moment. And you think, like, this is why you go get a PhD, right?

You can say these things on TV. Well, Jesse fell in love, too, with Abdul afterwards. He kept talking about how great he was. Yeah, he didn't want to like him, but he did. And that's why you go on Foxy's. And it's also why you spend time talking to people who feel differently than you, because the little things that you say when they like you, seep in. Like, I've been talking about in breaks or just around, you know, in the green room,

how John Ossoff is all about constituency work. Because there were the two big Republican mayors that came out and endorsed him. And the idea is, if you want to talk to John Ossoff, you can get him on the phone. Not just someone in his office. You can literally talk to the senator. And that makes people want to vote for you because all politics is local, et cetera. And then I'm not there one day. It's Harold who's in the liberal scene. And Jesse just says, John Ossoff's great, a constituency work. You accepted him. I did. That's good stuff. Yeah, I injected it. So there's opportunity for that. So what I do? Eyeballs, mutually beneficial, the opportunity to persuade. It also, it's a test. Going back to what Greg said about me, that I'm his muse, what he added to that, which I think is important for any sort of political conversation, he's talking about how you want to make sure that your ideas can lift weights, proverbially speaking. And too much of media today does not force us to see if our ideas can lift weights. Like, how many times have you?

you thought, oh, I'm going to make this point. And it sounds really good, right? You're preparing. And you say it out loud and think, oh, that's terrible. That was dumb. It's most days of my life, to be honest. I have them too. And then I'm like, did four million people just hear me say that?

You're a bit of a tightrope act. But it pushes you to see what kind of weights your ideas can lift. And the most successful politicians do that, either in their constituency work or when they're out campaigning. And then they decide what venue to take those ideas to. It's how someone like in Andy Bashir, who doesn't light the room on fire, right, when he is giving an interview. But he has the data to back it up, which is an enormously important part of, I think, advocacy, especially if you're doing it on the TV medium. But it gives a layer of strength to your arguments that you can't find in a debate prep room, right? You can have the best people play acting, whoever the other characters are.

But it's not the same as sitting down across from, well, sit down with Brett Baer and see where he's going to go with your talking point. Yeah. Right. And what he's thinking about. Because they're also, they're telling you every day what the adjudy. agenda is. They're showing the holes in the agenda, which they're trying to plug in different ways. You know, when you start, like, what of my least favorite things is is when we're talking about something like the war in Iran. And the argument is it's just Democrats, right? And Democrats are,

you know, unpatriotic Democrats are just criticizing us and actually we're winning, et cetera, et cetera. And then I like to use people's own words and I like to use conservatives because that's how you really make the case. Don't take it from me. Right. I'm a liberal. I know I'm an it, and you don't believe a word I say, but. Overeducated, limousine liberal, whatever. Like, let's roll the tape, right, of Mike McCall or whoever. I mean, Don Bacon now probably doesn't count to people. Thomas Nassie.

Some are conservatives. No, but even non-real ones to them, right? Or you see a conservative host or influence or whatever. Yeah. So I just think there's tremendous opportunity to it. And I really, I don't think that 2028 is going to happen in a liberal echo chamber. That was one of the biggest messages from 2024. We do love an echo chamber.

I'm going to try to steal a man the counter argument. And then we can talk about kind of where we both land. Because I feel like we actually agree. We probably do. So I think there is a legitimate argument against it, which is that the hardcore Democratic primary voters who are going to decide the early contests, they are older, more liberal. and they're just not watching Fox News. They're probably watching MS now. And then when you're a candidate,

like every minute of your life is scheduled, so there is a real opportunity cost of doing one thing as opposed to another. I would also argue that when the chips are really down, Fox News is going to take a Republican line. I think we saw that in the Dominion case where the commentary on air about January 6th was very different from what was behind the scenes, right?

And I think you have to go in clear-eyed about that. I also think that Fox is very good. driving a narrative that they want to talk about, right? Like you and I, we have Foxxon in our office all day long. It has been a month of roadblocked Hassan Piker coverage far more than the war in Iran. And right, so they're going to take you in a way you want to go. It's much easier to win about Hassan than it is to win about what's going on in the Middle East. Yep. Biden skipped the Fox News town halls in 2020. He won the nomination. He also skipped a podcast Save America interview. So the guy knew something. He was doing something right.

And, you know, big picture, I do think Democrats, we need to build our own media ecosystem. We don't have a Fox News. We're trying to build one humbly over here. We're way behind you guys. Well, it's a different, a different beast. Right. It's a different beast. Now, I do think, like, ultimately, you are getting at the dynamic that really, really matters,

which is this, like, clipping economy dynamic. Because in 2028 or 2026, whatever year it is, the full interview doesn't matter. What matters is the piece you pluck out and you share and you blast as fast as humanly possible. And so that Abdul interview, I watched the whole thing. I cheered it a couple punches. I cringed it a lot of it. I actually didn't love the circumcision thing. Okay.

So I came away, like, I want to ask you about this. Because I was like, after the thing was over, I texted some people that work for him. And I was like, I don't know about that. What are you thinking? And they were like, are people just want a fighter? They saw him fight. And then I went to Michigan last week. And I went to his event.

And he mentioned Jesse and this lady in the audience was like, you whooped his ass, you know? And you could tell, like, they loved it. Right. But your pollster, it's like, isn't that that version of like, you know, at loggerheads politics, isn't that what the average voter hates? Like, the partisans love it. They say that they do, but the fighter mode is the most important thing. I mean, even the quote unquote, dullest on a policy level of Democrats are now fighters, right? I have a podcast called Raging Moderates.

So, like, it is built into how I see the political. political moment, which is even if you are an Alyssa Slokkin or a John Ossoff, that you need to be landing punches nonstop. Because the last thing that you want is for people to actually think that you're a moderate. I'm like, what is going to happen when they figure out actually that these people would support bipartisan legislation or that they have middle of the road beliefs? And we are in a system that is demanding viral clobiles. and punches haymakers. Attention.

And, yeah, the attention economy. I think about the Abdul part again, because I didn't love the circumcision versus castration conversation, because that's what Jesse was talking about. He's talking about trans kids. And I think in general, talking about trans issues is a bit of a red herring, and it's a way to try to trap us in a culture war issue that doesn't really affect people's lives.

And they're only 10 trans athletes on the, the NCAA level, et cetera. There's been tons of legislation, anti-trans legislation that has been born out of, you know, if you give an inch, they take a mile. And I've gotten that criticism because I've said from the jump, there's an obvious biological advantage to someone who went through puberty as a boy and then is competing as a woman later on in life. And Jesse was trying to like go down that road.

We're trying to go down that road. I think he's trying to maybe children getting. Well, there's a false narrative. kids can get care without their parents knowing. And then sometimes it just gets reduced to. Well, sometimes a teacher will call the kid by the name that they want to be called at school and doesn't tell the parents. I don't know.

Your point is that Jesse's trying to get like this tiny edge case of instances that never happened that he thinks is politically challenging for Abdul, right? And naked about that. Yes. And Abdul wants to land a line that will live in infamy, which it does. and now we talk about circumcision day for Jesse, and he has to admit that he's circumcised on TV, and like it's a whole thing.

But I am from the camp and actually talked about this when you guys so generously had me at CrookedCon last year that I don't believe in the liberal perspective or the Democratic Party perspective that you don't have to answer questions about that. Because there are going to be some people, not the woman at the town hall, who's like you whooped him or the event that you went to for Abdul.

But there are going to be voters that are sitting on the fence or if you are running in a red or a purple place, people would genuinely flip-flop depending on the election who they like. Right. They say, this year, this person's great. Otherwise, and I use Jared Golden as the example. You know, you don't win that seat if you just tell people, oh, this has been, because you've been brainwashed. Right.

That's why you're asking about this. This is a really important point. I'm glad to bringing this up. because there's a lot of, like, consultants will say, if you get a question about X thing, you don't like, pivot to Y thing that's safer territory. This is about gas prices. I'm totally with you. And Barack Obama is very much this way.

Like, if people are asking you about a thing, they're concerned about the thing, and you need to answer it directly and take it head on. And if they don't like your answer, maybe they'll respect you for giving it honestly. Which you did hear, actually, in a lot of the exit polls for people who voted for Kamala Harris, who didn't like her on a lot of issues. But they felt that she had answered questions about them. And they at least knew where she stood. Obviously, it was not enough people to win an election.

But I was struck by that because I had felt that she was too evasive on a lot of stuff. Or just not out enough. Well, yeah. But out too much sometimes. Like out too much on the view, but not out enough with Brett Baer. The Brett Baer interview was so much better than her interview on The View. Oh, yeah. And that's another in the case for going on Fox News.

but we try to spin or transform politics into something that suits our sensibilities. And we're just not in control anymore. We're not the gatekeepers on media. We don't get to decide who's legitimate. This argument of, well, do you want a platform so-and-so? Odds are so-and-so has a bigger platform than you. I know. I hate that argument so much.

It kills me. And that doesn't mean that, you know, I'm going to leave this studio and hop on over to Hassan's house and sit on his Twitch stream with him. You can still make choices about where you go, but there is this air of superiority about it or that you're making, you know, this is my moral declaration. And voters just don't operate that way. They're not paying this level of attention, first of all. And they want to see if your ideas can lift weights. It's also not about like the fuse of the person you're talking to. It's about communicating your ideas to the audience that listen to that person. I just think it's like such a category error of concern. And people just respect, honestly, the act of showing.

up. I hear that all the time out in the wild. We love that you're there. Yeah. I think that you're wrong, but you come to play every day. And you've made me think differently about a few things, or I have, you're just like my liberal daughter or granddaughter, you know, and if you become enmeshed in people's lives in that way as a positive force, I think it's a real net positive for us electorally and for yourself personally. Pod Save America is brought to you by the NPR Politics Podcast. If you're listening to this show, we don't have to tell you that the midterms are coming up quick, and there's a lot to keep track of. Here's a cheat code that I use to help the NPR Politics podcast. They're a daily political podcast where you can catch up on the biggest political news of the moment in 15 minutes or less every weekday.

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Hi, friends and fellow students. Americans living abroad can legally vote in the U.S. section. Register or get tailored support at vote from abroad.org. Look, state deadlines are super close, so don't waste another second. Go to vote fromabroad.org now and click request my ballot, asked to receive it by email. All you got to do is fill it out and send it back in. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. Votefromabroad.org. If you miss some of your favorite crooked pods this week, don't worry, you can now catch up

on the week's best moments on MS Now on Saturday nights. MS Now is streaming an episode of highlights from your favorite crooked pods, packing as much analysis, funny moments, and 100% correct opinions into 40 minutes as humanly possible. Crooked on MS Now airs every Saturday at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific. I want to say, thinking back to the argument that you made, where you said this is where the base for the primaries is going to be watching on an MS now. South Carolina is going first.

More conservative, yeah. Yeah. Who goes on Fox all the time? I was surprised you didn't mention. In your book, you write that the Fox audience is actually like, what is it, like 50% Republicans, like 20% independence. 20 Dems and 30 Independence. So it is a little, it's more, it's not just MAGA watching Fox, which I thought was. Definitely not.

But it's also, it's too many people for that to be the case. So the five is four million people. You're going to get. You're not to keep bragging about that. Like, it's, I'm glad you like four XR audience, but like, rubbing my face at this point. It's insane that you have that for a podcast also. I mean, they're like YouTube members, so you never know what's real anymore. Don't say that.

Yeah, that algorithm is the bane of my existence where I think, oh, my God, we just had the most interesting and thoughtful and serious conversation. And there's like an arrow on my face and it says, like, destroyed and. We laugh about it here. Like, I get an argument sometimes because it'll do these like, I do a foreign policy show called Pats of the World. We're talking about the Houthi rebels. And it would be like, Trump owned by new report. I'm like, ah, I hate the click pay titles, but they work so well. Right. And then people are happy that they got there.

Yeah. Eventually. The raging moderate's audience loves Canada. Interesting. Loves. I mean, I think everyone, not everyone, but a lot of people are in a Canadian mood. And everyone loves an underdog, but it is. We have a lot of Canadian viewers. Interesting. But then we have a lot of Americans who just want like Mark Carney porn. I know you are a Carney stand. In the limited time, I know, I really like Mark Carney.

I think he's great. He's interesting. I mean, who would have thought that like the Neo-Lib banker would be like the leader that you know the non-american world wanted but yeah he's proven to be that so again uh folks probably know you from tv in your heart you're a poll you're a political hack and a pollster like me i don't think you're better than me because you're on the five with four million of yours so sometimes it's only three and a half i want to ask you about the democratic party's messaging um you're seeing the polling you're doing the focus groups in real time on fox things the Democrats are doing well right now and what are a couple of things they're doing wrong that you think like they need to course correct on. We need to course correct on to win in 2028.

So one thing that I know that you were on the right side about, and I remember kind of following this discourse online about how much we should be discussing immigration and how far you go to bat for Kilmar-Abrego Garcia, who by all accounts is certainly not who the right is saying he was, but It doesn't seem like someone that I'm going to invite over to babysit my kids necessarily. And like, why are we not talking straight up about prices all the time? Why would you go to, you know, El Salvador on trips to, you know, check on prisoners and, like, what Chris Van Hollen was doing? And I saw Elliot Morris posted about this, looking at the data now, it's just a complete vindication.

Of the need to talk about it. Of the idea that you need to talk about these things. Trump is underwater and immigration in the New York Times poll. Seven points. Crazy. Not just underwater. I mean, this has been going on for a while. And my colleagues make fun of me.

They'll go, oh, do you have another poll for us? And I'm like, well, as a matter of fact, I do. Sure, I do. Yeah, I always have a number for you. But looking at that and that it is consistent now does prove out that if you are talking about things that build connective tissue with people, where maybe the first time they hear about it, they push it to the side, right? And they say, well, it's actually your fault, your party's fault, that the border was open, right? And that there are hundreds of thousands

of people streaming across the border. Right. You know, a few people are going to get mixed up in something bad. I hear that all the time, even if it's an American, which is interesting, because I really don't think that that's the case. I've said to Jesse, you're telling me that if you got hauled to an ICE detention center because you didn't have your ID on you, or you even had your ID, but they didn't care to look at it, even though you're yelling, I have my identification, I have my identification, that you'd be cool with it. Well, he got out. You hear that. Oh, he's out within 12 hours or out in a day. A bunch of love to Jesse, but we know he's full of shit. There, there because Milo Gonopoulos, like one of the most right-wing kind of pro-Trump guys,

was detained by DHS, deported by ICE, and has talked about what a horrific harrowing experience it was and one that he would wish on no one. And this is a person who, like, not that long ago essentially suggested that he was going to have a sexual experience washing someone getting picked up by eyes. Truly gross person. Also, there is continued grossness about him because I know that a lot of this is just to get back on TV.

And people are giving that to him, and I understand it, and it makes for good, we always go back to the clips. But the way that we actually talked about immigration, I think, worked. and that it set up a position where people could live with and understand, which is it's a good thing that the border is closed. The way that immigration enforcement is taking place in this country is not what they promised. And that this is a Stephen Miller, you know, porn scenario versus what good immigration enforcement would be. Right.

Close the border, deport criminals. Like, that's what you promised. Why are we getting rid of this mom who's been in my community for 35 years? Yeah, by extension, and this never makes me that popular with liberal audiences, but I do think it's important. We're still not landing the plane on how to talk about ice and enforcement in blue cities and states, especially sanctuary cities. Okay. Because those stories about Americans, mostly women who have been murdered by illegals like Sheridan, Gorman, Chicago, or Lake and Riley, where we had, it was a 13 Democrat sign. onto the Lake and Riley Act, even though it had poison pills in it.

Yeah. But when we just stand up there and say abolish ICE, which can poll at 50%, you can get 50% of people to say that, but if you unpack it, they, no one thinks that law enforcement shouldn't be cooperating with ICE to turn over people who are committing crimes on American soil. So that, that's my one caveat, because depending on the survey, Republicans are still ahead on crime and policing. And that's a feelings issue, right? If you are walking around and you feel unsafe. And then we're like, actually, crime is down by 0.24% year over year. It's like the low, I live in New York City. I think it has been so smart of Mom Donnie that he stands shoulder to

shoulder with our police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, whenever he can. We had the lowest level of murders in the city in decades. But you're still telling people a stat about something that they just feel. So that's my little caveat there. What we're doing super, super well, and this was also in the New York Times-Sienna poll and kind of blew my mind, is that now the words that people associate with the Republican Party corrupt, elitist, and extreme. Love that. That feels like the sea change to me. I'm used to being plus 24 on health care. They've never had a health care plan, except that you shouldn't have health care and that they don't care. Except ObamaCare is bad, Except ObamaCare is bad and we have no real solution.

Actually, I would love to get inside their minds to understand how they think that that has ever been okay. Yeah, it's bizarre. Though they've gotten away with it in one election since. So I guess that's how they think it. But yeah, you know, you go down the list of issues and you say, oh, this feels good. Like, you know, plus up 49 on the economy, you know, inflation, cost of living, foreign wars, still down on artificial intelligence, which I thought was interesting. That was really a weird number. That was the only number of that poll that just jumped out.

It was within the margin of error. But I do wonder if Trump is actually just taking that and trashing it. Because what Americans want is for you to tell them that there will be some sort of regulation. Yeah, just do something. Just do something. Like my kid is in love with a chat bot. Do something. Right?

Oh my God. And now I am too. And I am too. But up to my kid is asking Claude or mostly chat GPT about how to hurt him or herself. Or even like, what is my kid? kid going to do for a living when he or she graduates because these chatbots are supposedly going to take all the jobs they're saying. Everything, blue collar to white collar. Yeah. But to your point, though, on the corrupting thing, it jumped out of me too, because

I was probably getting the same briefings you were in the first Trump term where there was like DNC polling. They were like, don't make these corruption arguments. Voters don't buy it. They think he's a rich guy who is taking a salary. He's already rich. He's uncorruptible. Like, don't even touch this. And now John Ossoff hammers him every day on a new corruption thing, and it goes super viral. And it's like that kind of argument is really penetrated. Yeah, it's amazing to see it. I think John Ossoff is definitely a part of this. I was just in Fort Worth with Talarico.

He talks about it too. You know, they understood early on that the structure of this election is us versus them. And the them can be people of all political parties, right? That we are actually, we're running against the machine. generally speaking. But I think it's also been just how little President Trump has cared about what's going on for people in their regular lives. And that he talks about things like the ballroom so often. So the grift is so obvious.

Right. And how little he is prioritizing you. It is permeating about the kids, the Trump kids. I mean, not just hundreds of thousands of dollars for a funfetti cake or whatever from a Russian oligarch. The Russian oligarch funding your wedding is like, Yeah, but the contracts, you know, the drone companies, the crypto scams, all of it. The culture of corruption has finally hit. And that, to me, felt like what you can really bank in an election.

Yeah. And to me, I think that is the message that we need to focus on when we're going against Trump because, you know, you see, like, strong man want to be fascists all over the world to get taken down on these sort of corruption narratives. Even Putin, right? Like the biggest threat to his rule was when Navalny was like flying drones over his mansions and releasing YouTube videos of his billion-dollar house and off the Black Sea or whatever it was. He solved that.

Yeah. Yeah. Couldn't take care of that one the hard way. Jessica Tarlov, again, the book is I disagree winning arguments without losing friends. Great to see you. It's a very fun read. And you'll learn some things. It's some fun stories.

So everyone should check it out. Well, I would love that, and thanks for having me. It was great to be here in Crooked HQ. That's it for us for today. We will be back in your feed on Tuesday. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari, with Reed Jirlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill.

Our team includes Matt DeGroote, Ben Heffcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. If you miss some of your favorite crooked pods this week, don't worry, you can now catch up on the week's best moments on MS Now on Saturday nights. MS Now is streaming an episode of highlights from your favorite Crooked pods, packing as much analysis, funny moments, and 100% correct opinions into 40 minutes as humanly possible. Crooked on MS Now airs every Saturday at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific.