The Daily Beast Podcast - James Carville on Kamala and Trump on Joe Rogan

Episode Date: October 24, 2024

With less than two weeks until Election Day, Joanna Coles and Samantha Bee are joned by political strategist James Carville for intel—and an insider’s take—on the state of the presidential race. They speak with Daily Beast Special Correspondent Harry Lambert about media kingpin Joe Rogan as well as would-be political kingpin RKF Jr., and bemoan the state of “shrill” women in media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, just pop it in to share an excerpt from the newest episode of the Daily Beast podcast hosted by our chief creative and content officer Joanna Coles and late night legend Samantha B. brought to you by 5'9. Meantime, Joanna, you're in New York Magazine this week. You power player. Oh, please. You mogul. Please. It's not a very flattering photo of me. I did see the photo.

And I did. I had a curiosity in my heart. And I said, does Joanna like this photo? Often, when there are photos of me in a thing, I think that was the one you chose. Thank you so kindly. It's funny because I've got, I think, 13 texts from people saying, why did they choose that photo? A, it doesn't look like you. And B, it couldn't be more unattractive.

It does not actually look like you. Yes, it does not look like you at all. And you know what? I did notice that the women, I'm going to say it, I'm going to say that this is, it's kind of a little bit gendered, the women's photos in the issue are not, um, there's all mouths open. That's a choice. A choice was made. Well, two or three people pointed out to me that the photos of the women were much less

flattering than the photos of the men. Yeah, the men sort of get to look serious and pensive, just like looking into the middle distance, thinking a big thought. Yes. And the women all sort of look like they're chewing gum at various stages of masticating or something or just like being shrill. Being shrill. Shrilly shrieking something at an underling.

This is so typical. There have been so many times when I've been done a photo shoot or whatever, and they're like, why don't you just make, okay, I think this would be so fun. If you just made like a really mean face, like you're just like that, you're so grim. And I'm like, I will never do that. In fact, now that I know that you want that photo, I'm going to sit here with a frozen smile on my face until this session is over.

You will not catch me grimace. So what is that? It's just the cliche of trying to make women who are powerful, less powerful. I mean, Gail King, who is an exceptionally beautiful woman, looked really bad in it. It's fine. It's just a stern, you know, there's just something to it.

They just love, you know, everybody loves it. It's like funny in the moment. Everybody's like, wouldn't it be funny in the moment if you just looked really stern? And then that photo lives forever and it just looked like, demonic. Well, I'm happy to look demonic from time to time. I'm not saying that you look demonic. I'm just saying that I think they could have chosen a better photograph. And I think that's a very

typical situation that I relate to. Well, you've been, you've had way more photo shoots than I have. Do you find that the whole thing is set up to somehow undermine your success? I don't think so. I think that it is more like in the moment everybody's trying to think of a fun new angle. And I know from just being personally very experienced that if you put a clown wig on me because you think it's like a funny joke, it's not going to seem, it's not going to be funny at all in two years when everyone uses that photo for other things. It just comes back, like anything you try to do that has a certain tone just comes back

and haunts you later in life and literally lives forever. There's a photograph of, okay, let me just, this is, I'm going on too long. We're getting there. When I first started working at the Daily Show in the year 2003, nobody really, it wasn't, you know, it was, it was, everything was very casual. We bought our own outfits, we've talked about that. It was totally fine. But one day they were like, can you go down to the studio because they want to take a picture or something? And I didn't really have any outfits and I didn't have any makeup and I put on a lipstick or something.

It was just like really very casual. It was just a very casual experience. Went downstairs, took a photo, and then that photo was my headshot for years for the show. And continues to exist. It's still out there. And all I've ever wanted to do is get rid of it.

It's awful. My hands are doing something weird. I don't have any makeup on. It's not lit. And so, you know, it's like something that you have to kind of, of think about, unfortunately, and I hate it, actually. Yeah, it's interesting.

And it's very different for women than it is for men, obviously. It's very different. It's very different. Very, very different. But you had a very good shot outside the Mineta Lane Theater for your menopause show, which I loved last week. It was really, really fun. And it was a bit like being in line with, I don't know, 350.

What is a good collective noun for 350 menopausal women? It's a community. Is it a Jill Stein of women? Don't even say the word Jill Stein to me. It gets me, it gives me a hot flash. I just got a burbling in my dummy like Vesuvius. Can't even say her name. Just call her Joan Stern.

That's what we used to call her on my show. We would not give her even the oxygen of saying her name. Jill Stein would never come to my show. She hates me. And I dislike her so intensely. Well, there were a lot of women that looked like. Jill Stein standing in line. That's fair.

But I've never been to a show where there was such a level of excitement and energy both before and after. Thank you. And many congrats. Thank you so much. It was so fun to do. It was incredibly satisfying. I feel like only doing three of those feels sad to me.

I think I should do it more. Can't you take it on the road? I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but I do need to do something because it was so incredibly satisfying to perform, just so personally fulfilling. And I actually think that talking in a really direct way about perimenopause is something that is so needed and is actually remarkably rare. I also went to Naomi Watts's symposium on Women in Midlife. That was good. And Stacey London came to my show and she gave me a gift bag filled with sacks of products.

I saw Stacey. I saw Stacey. But one of the things I liked about the show was that it talks about. about the snake oil that's being sold to women going through this particular stage of their life, which as we know, 51% of the population go through, if, you know, as long as they get to the age of it. And it seems to me that almost every Hollywood celebrity now has a vaginal cream they're trying to sell. My children, I've been granted a lot of gift boxes, so for the last little while. And honestly, my children are like, another vagina cream.

Oh my God, because they're always trying to go through my products in the bathroom. And I'm like, don't touch those dusty old creams. Mommy doesn't use those. I love my HRT and I love my food-grade coconut oil and that's good for me. Want to hear more? Subscribe to the Daily Beast Podcasts wherever you're listening to this to catch a new episode every Thursday.