The New Yorker Radio Hour - “Pod Save America” ’s Jon Lovett on Trump: “The Threat of Jail Time Sharpens the Mind”

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

Jon Lovett had been deep inside politics, as a speechwriter in the Obama Administration, before he joined his colleagues Tommy Vietor and Jon Favreau to launch Crooked Media, a liberal answer to the burgeoning ecosystem of right-wing news platforms. “There was too much media that treated people like cynical observers,” Lovett tells David Remnick, “and not enough that treated them like frustrated participants.” Crooked Media has gathered millions of politically engaged listeners—“nerds,” Lovett calls them—to “Pod Save America,” “Lovett or Leave It,” and other podcasts. But Lovett is more worried about voters who no longer get a steady stream of reliable political coverage at all, as local news outlets wither and platforms like Facebook downplay the sharing of news. “The vast majority of people do not know about Joe Biden’s accomplishments,” he says. “When they say to a pollster that this is not someone they view as being up to the job, they’re not . . . understanding how he performed in the job so far.” Lovett shares the widespread concerns about Biden’s apparent aging, but notes that his performance remains effective, whereas, “in Trump, the reverse: he is more energetic—I think the threat of federal jail time sharpens the mind!—but by all accounts is emotionally, psychologically, and mentally not up to the job.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. After Donald Trump won in 2016, stunned Democrats found ways to cope. Some marched, some donated, some screamed into their pillows. John Lovett launched a new podcast, and more than a podcast, a media empire. Now, Lovett had been in politics for a long time. He worked on John Kerry's campaign when he was just a new podcast. out of college, and then he went on to write speeches for Hillary Clinton, and finally, in the White

House for Barack Obama. Lovett then got together with some of his former Obama administration friends John Favreau and Tommy Vitor to launch Crooked Media. Crooked Media is an unabashedly partisan effort to counteract powerful conservative outlets like Fox. Crooked Media's flagship show is Pod Save America, which has been a huge success in a pretty crowded field. And now two elections later, Donald Trump is once again on the ballot and ahead in a lot of polls. So I called up John Lover to talk about what we learned last time and why America still needs saving. John, welcome, and I'm thrilled to be with you. I listen to you guys all the time. And I want to get into how Pod Save America came about and the thinking behind it, but I've got to get right to the big question.

the Biden campaign. The latest damage was a report about the classified documents case, and the special counsel said, okay, Joe Biden's not going to be charged with a crime, but it included the unfortunate phrase about a, quote, well-meaning elderly man with poor memory and other pot shots at Biden's mental state. So what's going to save the campaign, John?

What's going to rescue it? Yeah, they've been, I have the answer. I know. That's why I'm calling you. hear with it. Here's, yeah, look, I think unlike Joe Biden's opponent, they could not bring charges against Joe Biden after an exhaustive 15-month investigation. And because we live in hell, this is a disaster for Joe Biden. This has led to not the first, not the second, not the third, some numbered freak out about this Joe Biden liability. And it's a freak out I have.

on my own, and I recommend people do it mostly on their own, frequently. Here's where my head is at. What are we going to say about this election, assuming Joe Biden and Donald Trump are both the candidates on the ballot in November of 2024? And you do and I do, no? I do, you do. Let's assume that is the case. And by the way, one of the reasons I do with regard to Joe Biden in the wake of this report, even as it led to another round of what would happen if Joe Biden didn't run is Joe Biden's political

worldview is in part shaped by, I think, a valid sense that one of his jobs as the leader of the Democratic Party and the anti-Trump movement is to not confuse big and important political shifts with the vagaries of the news cycle. So there's two stories I think we will tell about this moment. One would be this anti-Trump coalition that formed in the wake of Trump's victory that has led to Democrats outperforming in 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023, that it may be dissatisfied, it may be frustrated, it may be angry, but it is fundamentally responsible. And that responsible coalition will reemerge and make sure that this country is protected by a Trump term. Now, that's one story. The other story is we will look back on this moment and say the system was blinking red.

What voters felt was obvious. They were shouting it from the rooftops. The fact that age was an unsurmountable liability. That's where we're at. How deep runs the analogy between 2016, but her emails, but her emails and 2024, but his, I don't know, his, his, his, his, errors, the kind of errors that all older people make. I don't think this is as much a situation where you could say the media is unfairly drawing attention to Joe Biden's age, in part because this is not a conclusion people are reaching through a

kind of like mediated. They're seeing videos and they're saying he seems old and frail. Now, I think that there's a very good argument to be made that by all accounts, behind the scenes, Joe Biden is up to the task he is. able he is you know there was a just a report i think today or yesterday in axi was kind of doing a play by play about a meeting on the border and what you see as a person maybe he was too angry in that meeting but he was in command no he gets pissed off with some frequency yeah but when you watch him on the stump especially because i think getting older has

exacerbated like a lifelong stutter he is he was not he was at times ornery and uh not exactly um tactful when he was a younger man that some of these things are exacerbated and in Trump in the reverse, right? He is more energetic. I think the threat of federal jail time, it sharpens the mind. But by all accounts is emotionally, psychologically, and mentally not up to the job.

John, as somebody who's been inside campaigns, inside administrations, and now very much inside the media world, how would you rate Joe Biden's election campaign so far? What's he doing wrong? What are they doing right? maybe not the best podcasting, but I am in a place of just sort of, I have no fucking idea. I just feel a little bit lost in part because, so late last week, meta announces that they are going to

not show people political content in their feeds. Now, you could say, well, maybe that's good, right? Because there'll be fewer conspiracy theorists spouting political nonsense in people's feeds. But then at the same time, will that mean, you know, the feed that shares the New Yorker stories or the Times of stories or crooked media stories are less likely by osmosis to get in front of less informed people? What I see is a media environment in which it is harder and harder to get information in front of people. Joe Biden starts this campaign where the beginning of 2024. Most people on the whole do not know that he capped insulin costs, passed the chips bill, past an infrastructure bill, past a gun bill, past a climate bill. the vast majority of people do not know about Joe Biden's accomplishments.

So when they say to a pollster that this is not someone they view as being up to the job, they're not coming at that from a basis of understanding how he performed in the job so far. What are we going to ask of the Joe Biden campaign? All right. And what does it have to do as the kind of last line of defense against this sort of fascistic authoritarian Trump second term? And then where is it that we are asking of the campaign to take on the job of making up for a fundamentally broken information system? I think what we're asking is that Joe Biden be a much more present, energetic explainer of his own case. Yes. Well, I would say here's what I think.

I want to – what is the campaign going to do over the next year to make sure more people understand what he did? and that people understand the choice, right? Now, there's been a lot of sort of discourse, hand-wringing. Like, where is that campaign? It's been slow to get started. Smart people say that's true. Other smart people disagree with it. What do you say?

Now it is 2024. I think now's the time. I think we have the State of the Union coming up. That is an opportunity. Now, you think Joe Biden would go on with you guys? He has before. I think he will again. I think he should.

I think over the last couple of, years what we have seen is that one of the reasons Democrats have overperformed in special elections is because there is a very engaged politically aware coalition of nerds and they listen you know and these are the people they're already voting for joe biden you know a lot of our audience is already voting for joe Biden. But these are the people that need to not just do, not just understand why they need to vote for Joe Biden, but feel in their bones that they understand why this is worth not just voting, but giving up their weekends knocking on doors for, donating for, volunteering for, and feel as though they are armed with a persuasive and a story that they can share with their friends and family in a

passionate way. You talked about a broken information system. Part of that anxiety has got to be about who you're speaking to and who you can't reach. Who are you reaching and who you're not reaching? And what do you do about it? Obviously, we talk about being a polarized country, but just as important a divide is the divide between hyper-engaged people that are paying attention to politics

and people who don't. The difference in how they think and talk about politics between someone who knows who John Thune is and someone who doesn't know who John Thun is is is extraordinary. Yeah. And if you are engaged, what you're feeling is kind of an onslaught of political and non-political content. You're seeing

tons of news, tons of stories, tons of information. If you're not, you're encountering politics by accident much less than you used to. And I do really worry about that big group of people who aren't seeking out the news because the ways in which the news would have come to them are slowly vanishing, right? Local papers are dying. People are cutting the court and not watching the local news. They're their, even their algorithms are sharing less information. And so what is more likely to reach somebody who isn't paying daily attention to politics? Who is a Democrat? What is a voice from the left they're going to see? And what is a voice from the right they're going to see? It is more likely that they are going to see Marjorie Taylor Green or a story about Lauren

Bobert given a handy of Beetlejuice than they are about Chris Murphy and Langford working on a bipartisan border deal. And if you're someone on the right, are you more likely to encounter by happenstance a smart column about Joe Biden and what he's achieved? Are you more likely to see video of a college professor saying that October 7th was not just justified but good? What is politics going to seem like to you? It's going to seem ugly.

It's going to seem cynical. It's going to seem pointless. And that is going to reaffirm their preconceived. notion about why they're not paying attention in the first place. I think we have a pretty good idea what you and your colleagues on POTSave America think about right-wing media. I think it's pretty clear and it's often hilarious and entertaining. What also comes out of listening to POTSave America is a certain wise-up skepticism about what people would call the mainstream media or liberal media.

and a real, well, just very skeptical about lots of individuals and institutions that come under that umbrella. Break that down for me a little bit and how you came to that view while being a speech writer, while working in the White House, while working on political campaigns. That's a very particular angle of vision. What were you seeing and why did it cause you such distress that last to this day? Well, I think that there's a cynicism in political news coverage. And that basically is treating what happens in Washington the way in Attenborough treats watching animals on the Serengeti. You know, observing from afar, providing explanations and contest for other humans watching. watching these animals battle.

And what we felt when we started cricket media was that there was too much media that treated people like cynical observers and not enough that treated them as frustrated participants. Give me an epitome of the first part. What would be, whether it's in the Times or the Post or the New York

or network television or cable TV, what's the epitome of the kind of thing that was driving you crazy. When in 2009 or 10, President Obama went to the correspondence dinner, and we made a series of fake headlines. And one of the headlines was something like, and they were fake historical headlines. And one of them was something like... Lincoln saves union, but can he save House majority?

I don't know if you can see. There's a little portion there. He's lost the Southern White Bres. vote. And that was a specific moment where Barack Obama is president in the midst of a financial crisis. He's presented with no good options, only bad options. He's trying to prevent a deeper panic. And I don't even remember at this point what political or legislative victory this followed. Maybe it was the Recovery Act. But there was a story that followed it that said something like, President Obama passes this bill. Where's the bounce, right? Oh, if he did.

did something so good, why isn't it showing up in the polls? There is plenty of room for political analysis that so did this policy work? What did people think about this? What are people's perceptions? But that has swamped coverage of the thing itself. And I'm not saying there isn't space for the icing, but there's got to be cake underneath the icing that gives people a broader sense of what's happening in the country. And so even right now, we have story after story about why people find, why people believe Joe Biden is ineffective, but very little coverage that explains to people what Joe Biden did in his first term to be effective. Now, that is the lot of the Biden campaign to overcome. Isn't there an alternate interpretation of that is that it's,

that it's provided over and over again. It's just that it doesn't penetrate the way you want it to. 100%. Yeah. Absolutely. And I do think a lot of media criticism, I am. I am certainly not above this. How many times we have the argument about against horse race coverage? Of course. You know what, though? Sometimes boring and hackneyed arguments are still true. We're just fucking sick of them.

You know, like, that's part of the problem. Sometimes journalism is desperate to find something new to say. But you know what? Sometimes the truth is boring and still worth being said. All of that is the case. I do sometimes think, and I think I do this, that my problem is not supply. is demand. I think sometimes that's a broader problem. We visit on the media are criticisms that we really would rather level against people, but it feels elitist or negative or unhelpful or ugly to say,

oh, people don't care, people aren't paying attention. You could tell them a million times they wouldn't notice. And you see this, by the way, you see this in political coverage, which is, oh, people have no idea what Biden achieved. It's very rare that a story says something like, and therefore we're deeply frustrated with the American voter for not doing a better job of being informed. There's no equity in that. There's no money to be insane. And so we put the criticism on the media. Even the phrase sometimes used, the low-information voter reeks of a suspicious elitism. For sure.

Yeah. For sure. And you remember the Trump moment where he bellowed from the podium. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated. Information-efficient voters. What did Trump understand about the media

that others did not and take advantage of it? He understood this conversation instinctively. There's something I always think about with Donald Trump, and it was from Mad Men. There's this guy Pete Campbell, and he's a hustler, and he's ambitious, and he's kind of unctuous, and nobody likes them, but he works hard, he fights, and there's this smooth-talking other guy

that seems to get all the gigs. And he can't understand it. And finally, his boss says to him, look, Pete, you make the clients feel as if their needs are met. But Cosgrove, he makes the client feel as if they have no needs. And I've never seen a better encapsulation of the difference between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. Ron DeSantis is desperate to prove he meets your needs. But Donald Trump gets up there and they don't have any needs anymore. And when he says, oh, back in the day we used to bat these people around or, you know, these NATO countries, they're not going to get a free ride anymore.

It sends a message that he's on their side no matter what, that he's going to say whatever he feels he needs to say and that they can trust him when they don't see him because he's their guy. Even if they know that he doesn't mean it, even if they know that this is going too far, that, that, that it's a signal that he cares about what they think and not what anybody else thinks. John Lovett is a former White House aide and the co-host of Pod Save America. We'll continue in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Ramnik, and I've been speaking today with John Lovett.

Lovett is a veteran of democratic politics and a former speechwriter for Barack Obama. He's also one of the co-hosts of the liberal podcast, Pod Save America, alongside John Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer, and Tommy Vitor. The New York Times called them The Voices in Blue America's Head. He also hosts the show Love It or Leave It, which is more of a pure comedy show about politics. We'll continue our conversation now. John Stewart is returning to television.

Yeah, yeah. You are easily the funniest person on your show, and extremely funny. What power does humor have in it? in a political circumstance. Yeah, so I think now what humor does more than anything else is it has the ability to pierce through, right? A very funny joke or a monologue or an argument, it can, it can make it across the information escape better than basically anything.

That if John Stewart does something that's truly funny, if John Oliver does something, if Colbert does something, if a random comedian does something, if a politician does something, that actually is funny and makes people laugh in a way that makes an argument, that can go everywhere. Can Joe Biden pull off funny? You know, he had a funny moment with Steve Deucy, right? Steve Deucey said, you have a problem with your memory? And it's like, yeah, it's so bad I called on you. That was pretty funny.

That was pretty funny. Do I think Joe Biden has the timing that Barack Obama had when he did the correspondent's dinner? I did not. But I think he has his moments. I think he has his moments. How was it possible that after his, losing in 2020. After January 6th, after the

dozens and dozens of indictments and so on, he is not leading the race in the Republican Party. He's crushed it in a way as if he were an incumbent sitting in the Oval Office. Yeah, I mean, it's worth going back to what Republicans were saying just after the insurrection.

there was this fleeting moment where it seemed as though Republicans on mass were going to do what they were afraid to do before, which is all come together and say we have to move on. John, that lasted less than a night. I know, and what a night. And what a night. Mitch McConnell's out there. They're all out there. One after another. Oh, my, it was, it was, like, it was happening.

And then, you know, it's, um, it's. It was the end of the movie, and all they had to do was just get in their car and drive away. And we're saying, drive, drive, drive, you can do it, you can do it, you can do it. And they just all went back in the fucking house. And what happened? Why? Because their voters are telling them. Their polls are telling them.

Their constituencies are telling them what to do know. That's certainly a big part of it. It's also one thing that people have said. Yes, people are politically very affront. afraid of turning on the base or drawing the evil eye from Donald Trump. But there were also people that said, you know what, my voice isn't going to change anything. And if I get out there and say that Donald Trump is unfit, if I tell the truth about Donald Trump, they're going to docks my family, they're going to come to my house. Political violence is already warping our politics. We've seen

this over and over again. Republicans tell us that they are worried about what this base would do. Romney has security. It's not just about keeping their jobs. It's not about if I lose my job as a middling representative, I go home and I've got some dull job doing whatever. No, yes, I do think that that the worry that people will come after them is real. And then beyond that, it is a little bit a lack of political imagination, right? This is what the polls say. Therefore, I can't change. it, right? But a real, you know, real leaders understand that their job at times is to reflect back what their supporters are telling them. But at times it is to have built enough of a relationship with that group of people to change their minds or to push them, right? But none of these people

had the imagination to believe it was possible or that they could be successful in making that happen. And you know what? They might be right because they're all a bunch of weenies. So, you know, I don't know. Well, you had an interview. with a member of that tribe. You had an interview with Chris Christie. Yeah. It was kind of hilarious. Look, this is a guy

was totally inside with Trump and wanted to be even more inside if he could have gotten there. And then he turned, suddenly had a fit of conscience. So as a practical matter, too, I'm not using this as a way to get out of answering.

But I'm just saying, also, as I make this decision, I may decide come election day and November, November that it's more important for me to make a statement about how broken the two-party system is and how bad these two candidates are by voting for a Joe Manchin, for instance, because it won't matter in my state anyway for the practical reason you just talked about. It's not a popular vote system. It's an electoral system, right? Yeah, well, I'm not, obviously your vote in New Jersey,

you know, it's a, it's a moral victory. But, but your vote, matters insofar as that this moment requires me to do something I don't find particularly tasteful but is necessary to save the country. And I'm not telling you that I won't. I'm just telling you I'm not there yet. You know, I mean, the only thing that I have decided firmly is that I will not vote for Trump under any circumstances. How do you analyze a political creature like Chris Christie? Do you give him credit? Absolutely. You do give him credit. I do give him credit. And like I have serious disagreements with Chris Christie. And I have, and I pushed him on a lot of this stuff. I don't think we should just say, oh, because you abandoned Trump, therefore we forget what you did

before. Same thing goes for Liz Cheney. But when people show political courage in the direction we have been urging them to show it, we of course ought to give them. That's fair. To give them credit. He, in his speech that he gave when he dropped out of the race, I thought he was more open and vulnerable about his feelings of having gone along with Donald Trump than he was, even in the conversation I got to have with him. The way he talked about, it sticks with you. You know, these decisions, they don't go away. They follow you, right?

Very clear he carried that for a long time that he made the wrong decision. But, you know, then he's on Meet the Press saying that, that right now he couldn't see himself voting for Joe Biden. And then I say, well, hold on a second. You just went through this whole exercise where you clearly understand. So maybe he gave too much credit. Maybe so. Yeah. You went through this whole exercise.

where you barnstormed across New Hampshire in the country talking about the threat Donald Trump poses. And it is clear by your behavior that you believe and are more worried, you believe Donald Trump is a grave threat and are far more worried about Donald Trump than you are about Joe Biden.

And yet you can't bring yourself now to say that you would vote for Joe Biden over Donald Trump because of your legitimate criticisms. But this is going to be the choice. And I do hope that if that is the choice, he will say that he would vote for Joe Biden, even though right now he says, He couldn't.

I can't tell from listening to you guys all the time what you're going to predict after the, you turn the microphones off and you leave the room. In other words, how worried are you about November and where do you think this is headed? Look, I would say off mic the same thing I'll say on Mike. I have no idea. The goal, right, the job of Democrats over the next year

is to make Donald Trump's liabilities insurmountable and Joe Biden's liabilities surmountable. These are the candidates that faced off four years ago, and it was extremely close. They both go into 2024 with more liabilities than they had in 2020. Both. So, both. Now, will it be close?

I don't know. Let's assume it is because if it's not, then that doesn't really matter that much what we do. But let's assume it's going to be very close. What can we do to help Joe Biden overcome his liabilities and make sure that Donald Trump's liabilities are salient, in their minds. Now, one of the challenges is that the criticism that Joe Biden is kind of older and ineffective, right? They're confronted with that in the present. Donald Trump's threat is

perspective, right? It is what he will do to democracy. It is what is what he will do to NATO, right? And so how do we make that feel real for people? How do we remind people of just how chaotic and dangerous Donald Trump when he was president and make sure they understand how much worse it would be in a second term. That is the challenge. How does that play out? I wish I felt better about it. I wish I felt better about it. But anyone who tells you they know one way or the other, I think is full of shit. And what's your role in it? What's Pod Save America's role in it? I think our job is one to talk about what is happening in a way that is honest and direct and practical. And to me, what that looks like is not avoiding or being afraid of this very conversation.

While at the same time reminding people that politics isn't really about how we feel, it's not about polling. It's really not even about Joe Biden and Donald Trump. It's about what we have agency to do in this process and what we don't. And so that leads to the second part of what we have to do, which is activate a time. of people to do as much as they can, not just on the presidential, but in the Senate races, in the House races, there are abortion ballot initiatives in places like Florida. There are a ton of very important attorney general's races and other races that will determine who is in charge of our democracy, who's in charge of our electoral system. You have a secretary of state candidate

who just sent a bunch of gay books on fire. I'd like to pull her aside and say, hey, can you just tell me other examples of where the person setting books on fire is the hero? Just Tell me one example. When is a person set in the books on fire, the hero in the story? Is this the first time? But that's our job. And one thing that I take away from 2016 that I'm trying to remind myself all the time now is, I mean, if you're hearing this, if you're listening to Ponce of America, if you're reading the news daily, you are ahead of the game. You're paying attention.

You understand the stakes in this election. and therefore how you feel kind of doesn't really matter that much, or at least it shouldn't. Your job is to know, despite how you feel day to day, how worried you are, how hopeful you are, put that aside. Your job is to remind people who aren't paying as close attention, who may be angry, frustrated, complacent, what have you, about what they can do, right? Your feelings, put them aside. How can you help somebody who may have similar feelings or who may not be paying attention at all to make sure they understand their power because you already understand yours. And to remind people that our concerns and anxieties that we feel in the run up to November will be nothing compared to how we feel the day after the election is

over. John, thanks so much. Thank you for having me. John Lovett is one of the hosts of Pod Save America, which they describe as a political podcast for people who aren't ready to give up or go insane. I'm David Remnick, and that's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for listening. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tuneiards with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Bolton, Adam Howard, Kalalia, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, and Louis Mitchell, with guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, and Alejandro Decker.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina and Nyev and Endowment Fund.