Latest / Pod Save America / "Best Wishes > Death Wishes."

Transcript

"Best Wishes > Death Wishes." · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: On today's show.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: On today's show, Donald Trump asks if Mitch McConnell has
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: a death wish. Republican Senate candidates are polling better. The
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: House is still in play. And later, we sit down
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: with our old friend and colleague, Cody Keenan, to talk
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Obama's speech writing and his new book, Grace. A few
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: quick housekeeping notes before we start. Tommy, you've got a
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: new series.
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: Oh, I do. That's right.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Tell us all about it.
• 0:50
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I've been working on a limited series for a
• 0:53
  Speaker 5: few weeks with a guy named Roger Bennett, who hosts
• 0:55
  Speaker 5: a fantastic soccer podcast called Men in Blazers. And we're
• 0:58
  Speaker 5: going to talk about the 2022 World Cup, which is
• 1:01
  Speaker 5: being held this year in Qatar. And that is problematic
• 1:05
  Speaker 5: for a lot of reasons. It was awarded based on
• 1:08
  Speaker 5: rampant corruption up and down FIFA, the body that governs
• 1:12
  Speaker 5: international soccer. Qatar is a horrible place to live if
• 1:16
  Speaker 5: you are a woman or an LGBT person. And it's
• 1:21
  Speaker 5: intolerable if you are a foreign worker who are the
• 1:24
  Speaker 5: people who are building all the infrastructure that went into
• 1:27
  Speaker 5: the games when they were awarded in 2010. So we're
• 1:29
  Speaker 5: trying to figure out what do you do as a
• 1:31
  Speaker 5: sports fan when the game you love has been corrupted
• 1:34
  Speaker 5: by money and these autocrats, especially in the Gulf, that
• 1:37
  Speaker 5: try to do something called sports washing, which has burnished
• 1:39
  Speaker 5: their reputation by getting involved in international soccer. And what
• 1:43
  Speaker 5: can we as fans do about it? What can players
• 1:45
  Speaker 5: do about it? And what can clubs do about it?
• 1:47
  Speaker 5: So it's a lot of fun. It's going to be
• 1:49
  Speaker 5: released on the Pod Save the World feed and then
• 1:51
  Speaker 5: in Blazer's feed. So check it out, starting this Saturday.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: This Saturday? This Saturday.
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: Excellent.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: And the trailer's out now. Everyone go check out the trailer.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: The trailer's out.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Right on the Pod Save the World feed.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: It'll be fun.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Also, this is your last chance, everyone, to buy a
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: pair of Crooked Kariyama shoes. You can order your favorite
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: today in the Crooked store. And as always, a portion
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: of the proceeds will go to VoteRiders, the leading organization
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: focused on helping people navigate voter ID laws. We have
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: two designs. They're both great. Check it out at crooked.com
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: slash kicks and grab your pair today. It's one of
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: our best URLs we've done. Yeah, it's so simple. It's easy, yeah.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the news. So one storyline
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: of these midterms has been the will they or won't
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: they dynamic between Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell. The latest
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: chapter started when Trump truthed. So many things start when
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Trump truths. He's really truthing a lot these days. He's
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: truthing his ass off. All right, so Trump truthed that
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: McConnell's support for the Democrats' continuing resolution to fund the
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: government means that he has a death wish and, quote,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: must immediately seek help and advise from his China-loving wife,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Coco Chow, which is Trump's racist nickname for former Trump
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. So McConnell and most Republicans have
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: said nothing in response, though Senator Rick Scott was asked
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: about the comment during the Sunday shows. Here's what he said.
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: You're a member of the Senate GOP leadership.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: Are you OK with this?
• 3:17
  Speaker 6: Well, I can never talk about, respond to why anybody
• 3:21
  Speaker 6: else says what they said. But here's what is the
• 3:23
  Speaker 6: way I looked at it is I think, you know,
• 3:25
  Speaker 6: what the president is saying is, you know, there's been
• 3:29
  Speaker 6: a lot of money spent over the last two years.
• 3:31
  Speaker 6: We've got to make sure we don't keep caving to Democrats.
• 3:34
  Speaker 6: It's causing unbelievable inflation and causing more and more debt.
• 3:37
  Speaker 6: As you know, you know, the president likes to give
• 3:40
  Speaker 6: people nicknames. You can ask him how he came up
• 3:42
  Speaker 6: with the nickname. I'm sure he has a nickname for me.
• 3:46
  Speaker 6: It's never, ever okay to be a racist. I think
• 3:51
  Speaker 6: you always have to be careful if you're in the
• 3:54
  Speaker 6: public eye how you say things. You want to make
• 3:57
  Speaker 6: sure you're inclusive. I hope no one is racist. I
• 4:00
  Speaker 6: hope no one says anything that's inappropriate. So I'm going
• 4:04
  Speaker 6: to do everything I can.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: I know this is down the list here, but do
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: you like the birds chirping in the background as he's
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: just dissembling on live television?
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: Here's the thing. Look.
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: I think it's sad based on this clip that I
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: want Mitch McConnell to be murdered less than Rick Scott does.
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: And I think it's especially troubling because if someone does
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: follow what Trump wants and Trump does want someone to
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: try to kill Mitch McConnell, if that does end up happening,
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: it's even worse for Rick Scott now because this clip
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: will fucking exist.
• 4:38
  Speaker 5: He's got a silver tongue, though. No wonder they made
• 4:41
  Speaker 5: him the spokesman for the NRC.
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: So smooth.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: Did we put that at like 1.5x?
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, like, again, this is low
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: on the list of problems with that. But just like, yeah,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Rick Scott, he should be the public face of the
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Republican Party. Get him out more. I want more Rick
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Scott from the Republican Party.
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: And just a quick note to Rick Staff.
• 5:00
  Speaker 5: When the presumptive nominee and former president of your party
• 5:03
  Speaker 5: threatens to kill the minority leader of your own party, you.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: Should probably prep that answer.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Prep that answer. Think that that might be coming. Might
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: come up. That might be a question. Are you guys
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: a little surprised that elected Republicans couldn't bring themselves to
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: criticize their party's 2024 frontrunner for threatening their Senate minority
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: leader's life and calling his wife a racist slur? No surprises?
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: Sadly, no.
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: I think this all goes back to 2016 in the
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: primary when we watched Marco Rubio flail around and try
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: to make dick jokes. And then Ted Cruz called Trump
• 5:32
  Speaker 5: a sniveling coward for criticizing his wife and then phone
• 5:34
  Speaker 5: banked for him a few weeks later. So, I mean,
• 5:37
  Speaker 5: like these guys have all decided just to never pick
• 5:38
  Speaker 5: a public flight because they know Trump will go harder.
• 5:41
  Speaker 5: and will never stop. So, look, McConnell doesn't care, really, probably,
• 5:46
  Speaker 5: but he doesn't care about defending his wife. He doesn't
• 5:48
  Speaker 5: care about his honor or looking pathetic. He wants power
• 5:50
  Speaker 5: and lobbyist checks and to support candidates that will help
• 5:54
  Speaker 5: Senate Republicans. So, no, I expect nothing from these guys.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Well, but why do you think they're being so quiet?
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: What would have been the problem of Mitch McConnell saying, no,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: I don't think that it was a good idea for
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: the president to say that I have a death wish,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: and I don't like that he called my wife a
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: racist name? You don't think that's what's going to happen then?
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: Well, I feel like they've abandoned. So the reason to
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: do that, obviously, is because Trump's reprehensible.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: And it's also just the most natural thing, natural response
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: when someone threatens your life. Threatens your life and calls
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: your wife a racist.
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: Racial epithets at your family. Yeah, you'd think. But look,
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: I don't know if you've noticed, but Mitch McConnell's a
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: pretty cynical guy. And I feel like if you're going
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: to rationalize the amount of things these people have rationalized
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: over the past, Six years. What's one more time? And,
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: you know, they know that picking a fight with Trump,
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: it won't it won't change Trump. It'll make the story bigger.
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: And obviously they care more about getting back to focusing
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: on bullshit crime related political attacks or immigration related political
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: attacks or anti-trans related political attacks. They'd rather get back
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: to that than have a news cycle. about Trump and
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: his awful rhetoric because they've sort of accepted that this
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: is the status quo ante with Trump. They have no
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: hope of changing it. And the only thing they're afraid
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: of is being on the losing end of it.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: I do like the Washington Post reported on this story
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: and the way they described it was just perfect. The
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Post marked a further escalation in an increasingly strained relationship
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: between the two Republican.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: Leaders.
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: It's also like, you know, he did try to have
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: Mike Pence hanged outside the Capitol.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I know, I know.
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: So they're sort of, you know, this is not, it's
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: not a new escalation. It's just that this is his
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: natural resting place at this point.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, even though Wall Street Journal editorial board said
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: they were concerned that someone might take Trump seriously and
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: try to kill Mitch McConnell.
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is not a right-wing editorial board.
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: And not only were they concerned, look, for the Wall
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: Street Journal editorial board, there are two big problems. One
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: is somebody may kill Mitch McConnell. And the other is
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: it's a distraction from their midterm message. They actually was like,
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: Trump shouldn't be threatening Mitch McConnell's life. He should be
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: out there campaigning for these Republicans.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: For deregulation, threatening a Democrat. So Rick Scott was also
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: asked about Marjorie Taylor Greene's comments at this weekend's Trump
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: rally in Michigan, where she said. I'm not going to
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: mince words. Democrats want Republicans dead and they've already started
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: the killings. New York Times just ran a piece on
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: political violence where Susan Collins was quoted as saying, I
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised if a senator or house member were killed.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: What do you guys think about that? Do you think
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: it's important to highlight these threats? Is this a.
• 8:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, look, the fact that the Times had
• 8:41
  Speaker 5: to do like a trend piece on this does show
• 8:43
  Speaker 5: that we have the memories of goldfish in politics. Like,
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: remember the insurrection that happened... last year. But I mean,
• 8:48
  Speaker 5: I think Marjorie Taylor Greene is a genuinely stupid person.
• 8:53
  Speaker 5: She's seized on lots of conspiracy theories that are wacky,
• 8:57
  Speaker 5: the Jewish space lasers, QAnon, like broken brain Facebook group stuff.
• 9:02
  Speaker 5: The allegations here, just so people know, seem to be baseless.
• 9:05
  Speaker 5: They're clearly baseless, that there's some sort of broader fight
• 9:08
  Speaker 5: against Republicans from Democrats. But even these individual cases she's referencing,
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: like there's a North Dakota man who was drunk, had
• 9:14
  Speaker 5: mental health issues, hit someone with their car. There's no
• 9:17
  Speaker 5: there's no evidence of a political motive. And this Michigan
• 9:20
  Speaker 5: shooter says he was an accident and apparently he's a
• 9:23
  Speaker 5: Republican or has voted in Republican primary. So just made
• 9:26
  Speaker 5: up nonsense. It is incredibly dangerous though, because we've seen
• 9:29
  Speaker 5: how the great replacement theory has led to violence. We've
• 9:33
  Speaker 5: seen language about quote unquote white genocide and the way
• 9:36
  Speaker 5: that has motivated some really disturbed people. And I think
• 9:40
  Speaker 5: even an idiot like MTG can convince other people that
• 9:44
  Speaker 5: they're at risk or under threat And inspired them to
• 9:47
  Speaker 5: do things. And Trump has also been talking about this
• 9:49
  Speaker 5: North Dakota incident at some of his rallies, too. So
• 9:52
  Speaker 5: I think this stuff is you should take it seriously.
• 9:56
  Speaker 5: It scares me a lot. I do think there's also
• 9:58
  Speaker 5: an asymmetric increase. of like apocalyptic messaging on the Democratic side.
• 10:03
  Speaker 5: There was a long, I think, post piece about that
• 10:05
  Speaker 5: over the weekend. I'm not saying they're the same thing,
• 10:07
  Speaker 5: but you know, you can just see how the sides
• 10:09
  Speaker 5: get driven further apart. And we've like, you know, back
• 10:11
  Speaker 5: in the day after elections, you would have this moment
• 10:14
  Speaker 5: where everyone involved says, okay, now we need to come
• 10:17
  Speaker 5: together and Let's sort of like put these fights aside.
• 10:19
  Speaker 5: That just has not happened in the last half decade
• 10:22
  Speaker 5: or more. And it's scary.
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: Love it.
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: Right wing political violence is rising. Right wing political extremism
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: is rising. We've already had a series of mass shootings
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: that were based in right wing hate and misinformation and.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: Bigotry.
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: There will probably be more. it is, I think, luck
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: that a member of Congress wasn't killed on January 6th.
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: It is luck that others haven't been killed so far. And,
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: you know, Trump doesn't care.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: He views it as useful.
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: It's why he enjoys the support of QAnon. He likes
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: that he has the backings of the most radical and
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: dangerous elements of the right-wing fringe. And the fact that
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: the Even the supposedly serious parts of the Republican Party
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: are too afraid to speak out against it means that
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: all the signaling and all the rhetoric and all the
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: extremism is sort of untempered and not being kind of–
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: and the elites of the Republican Party aren't doing enough
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: to signal to the base and beyond that this is
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: unacceptable and not part of their movement. And so they're
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: playing with fire and we live in a dangerous country
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: and it's only going to get worse.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of guns out there.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, well, I was going to say, not only
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: are they not signaling that it's unacceptable, the Center for
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: American Progress did an analysis and identified 104 political ads
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: from Republicans this cycle that feature guns or weapons in
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: the ads. We've talked about some of these on this show.
• 11:57
  Speaker 5: Wasn't Eric Wright into it? Rhino hunting in one of
• 11:59
  Speaker 5: his ads? A kick down the door searching for rhinos?
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Or there's like whole families holding, you know, AK-47s in
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: a Christmas car kind of thing. That bullshit. Um, look,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: I think we have to keep talking about this because
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: it is easy to get numb to this, to forget
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: about it. Like you said, we are, our memories are
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: too short on this. Um, I was, when I was
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: talking to the voters in Pittsburgh for the wilderness, I
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: asked about, you know, what issues the media covers too much.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: And a lot of them talked about January 6th. And
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: I said, well, are you, are you not worried that
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: something like that could happen again? And a couple of
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: people said, well, it's just an isolated incident, right? Like
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: it's just a one-off and it seems like that could
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: happen anytime, but that's not like a real trend. And
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: I think you read that, that New York times story.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: It's like, you know, Pramila Jayapal has a guy with
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: a gun outside of her house, like, screaming things, you know?
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Look, members of Congress have had to spend hundreds of
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: thousands of dollars on security because of death threats.
• 12:50
  Speaker 5: And it's more likely that you will be threatened if
• 12:52
  Speaker 5: you're a person of color or a woman in elected office.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think they had... Warnock had spent, like, $ 900, 000
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: since 2021 on security. There's a plot to kidnap....
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Gretchen Whitmer.
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: Which her opponent, Tudor Dixon, recently joked about.
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: And like, and then the 2018 midterms, even before January 6th,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: remember the pipe bombs that were sent? I mean, this is,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: it's been since 2016, specifically when Trump, you know, came
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: down that fucking escalator, it has been on the rise.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: And I do think that, you know, the way this is,
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: the way this works now is you have the the
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: most extreme members of the Republican Party with platforms kind
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: of spewing this stuff out into the world. And what
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: is scary, what's dangerous about this is they kind of
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: excite this radicalized base that reaches the subset of that
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: radicalized base that's willing to do political violence, that's willing
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: to take what people like MTG and Trump say to
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: its logical conclusion.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: And then basically it puts.
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: our political system in those people's hands, because at any moment,
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: those people can decide today's the day that we're going
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: to have a violent episode in this country. Today's the
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: day that I'm going to be in charge of the news.
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: Like today's the day we're going to have a random
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: act of violence. And that kind of like stochastic terrorism
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: that these people are inspiring and pumping into the world, um,
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: means it just, it, it's destabilizing.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: It's dangerous. And, um, That's it.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: Also makes people not want to be involved in politics.
• 14:24
  Speaker 5: Like why on earth would you run for office to
• 14:27
  Speaker 5: have some nut job show up at your house with
• 14:29
  Speaker 5: a gun? You're trying to pass like universal healthcare.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: And run for office or just be like a nonpartisan
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: election worker and get threats as well.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: You know? All right.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Speaking of the election, let's talk about the final month
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: of the midterm campaign. Over the last few weeks, Republican
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: candidates have started gaining on Democrats in the four big
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Senate races that could decide control. In Pennsylvania, John Fetterman's
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: double digit lead over Dr. Oz is down to a
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: few points. In Georgia, Raphael Warnock is about two points
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: ahead of Herschel Walker. In Nevada, Catherine Cortez Masto is
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: trailing Adam Laxalt by about a point. And in Wisconsin,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Mandela Barnes has lost his lead over Ron Johnson and
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: is now trailing by about two points. Just for reference,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Democrats need to win at least two of these races
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: to hold the Senate. If they lose three, they lose
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: the Senate most likely. What do you guys think is
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: happening here? Why are these Republican candidates doing better? Tommy?
• 15:30
  Speaker 5: I think it's probably a bunch of different factors. Some
• 15:34
  Speaker 5: of it is probably just kind of mean reversion. We
• 15:37
  Speaker 5: live in a divided country. The numbers are going to
• 15:39
  Speaker 5: move around, but ultimately these races are.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: Going to be tight.
• 15:41
  Speaker 5: And even when these polls were showing the Fetterman team
• 15:45
  Speaker 5: up 10, they would be the first ones to tell you,
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: we ain't winning this race by 10. There's just no
• 15:50
  Speaker 5: chance of that. I do think some of the best
• 15:52
  Speaker 5: polls that we saw over the summer came when the
• 15:56
  Speaker 5: Dobbs decision was fresh and when people were really focused
• 15:59
  Speaker 5: on and concerned about Abortion rights, you know, those headlines fade.
• 16:03
  Speaker 5: Hopefully the concern about that risk has not gone away,
• 16:07
  Speaker 5: but it's out there. I think, you know, people are
• 16:10
  Speaker 5: the news cycle has moved on. People were, I think,
• 16:14
  Speaker 5: probably feeling a little better about gas prices consistently falling.
• 16:17
  Speaker 5: There was a better economic sentiment. And then, you know,
• 16:20
  Speaker 5: Mitch McConnell's super PAC has just been hammering candidates for
• 16:23
  Speaker 5: weeks now. They've been hitting them on crime. They're hitting
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: Mandela Barnes on bail. getting rid of cash bail. So
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: that's probably hurting their approvals. Biden's numbers still aren't great.
• 16:33
  Speaker 5: Like the right track, wrong track aren't great. The stock
• 16:35
  Speaker 5: market was cratering until today, basically. So we'll see. I
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: also have zero faith that the pollsters have figured out
• 16:43
  Speaker 5: how to deal with these response bias issues, but that's
• 16:45
  Speaker 5: another conversation.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: And that could be what was going on with some
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: of those polls in the summer as well, after around
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: the Dodds decision. Lovett, what do you think's going on? Yeah.
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: The other thing, the only the only thing I'd add
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: that Tommy missed was the Dobbs decision also was paired
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: with a series of legislative victories for Biden. And together,
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: it was just a moment that I think Democrats felt
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: really energized and like acutely focused. And, you know, we
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: always knew that there would be the Republicans will turn
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: out their base. Republicans will have a huge, huge number.
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: And I think the polls are bearing that out now.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: So, yeah.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: I think the challenge is that the fundamentals of this
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: election are still, you know, every single voter I talked
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: to when I asked like, what are the issues most
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: concerning to you? Inflation, right? And now gas prices are
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: the most like sensitive measure of inflation. But for most
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: of these people I talked to, housing kept coming up.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: It was just like, I can't afford my rent. And
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: I never think I'm, I think I'm never going to
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: be able to live on my own. I'm not going
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: to be able to afford a home. And for people
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: who don't follow politics closely, it's, And I'm blaming the
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: party in charge. Now, these people also brought up that
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: they were angry about Dobbs, you know, but the thing
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: that's always on their mind every single day is, can
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: I make the rent? Can I pay my bills? And
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: I think that's working against now to go race by race.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: I'd say like in Pennsylvania, some of these polls, like
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: you said, Tommy, they never thought they were going to
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: win by 10. The Fetterman folks, some of the polls
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: just show basically Oz consolidating Republicans.
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Right.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: So that's why he's sort of moving up.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: And that was always going to happen.
• 18:19
  Speaker 5: They're always going to come home. Now, have you guys
• 18:20
  Speaker 5: heard about the scandal rocking the polling nerd world?
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Which one? Go ahead. Give it to us.
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: It has to do with the gang at Trafalgar. No.
• 18:29
  Speaker 5: Apparently, someone on Twitter noticed that their response rates in
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: their polls across states and demographics are always the same,
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: which is just very weird because usually they vary from
• 18:37
  Speaker 5: poll to poll or across different demographic groups.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: Like, do you need 10,000 people to reach 100? Do
• 18:43
  Speaker 5: you need to call 15,000 people to reach 100? Like,
• 18:45
  Speaker 5: it can vary dramatically. And some outlet called splitticket.org wrote
• 18:50
  Speaker 5: it up. And they found that the Trafalgar response rate
• 18:53
  Speaker 5: was almost always identical. It was between 1.43 and 1.46.
• 18:57
  Speaker 5: I don't know what that means at all. But that
• 18:59
  Speaker 5: was not the case in their 2016 polling that everyone mocked.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: So, big scandal.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Can we unskew some polls? We got to get some
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Nates to unskew this, whatever happened here.
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: Isn't the real scandal that all of these pollsters now
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: are trying to figure out how to poll and so
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: they get some terribly small response rate and then just
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: adjust the numbers to some expectation or party registration or
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: some model for what they think the electorate will look like?
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: So in reality, the model is dictating the outcome of
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: the poll and not the poll model.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: You're here.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: No matter what, you're guessing on turnout at some point
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: and that's what's going to– that's what's going to– to
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: sort of influence your poll more than anything else, which
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: is why we don't take individual polls. Polls are snapshots
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: in time and they're not always all that accurate. The
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: trends of polls are usually more accurate. and helpful.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: And that's the conversation we're having.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: That's the conversation we're having, noticing that the trend is
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: getting a little tight.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: We're talking about trends.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: But you're right. So I think a lot of money
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: on crime attacks, especially that's been hurting Fetterman and Barnes
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: a little bit. And then in Georgia... Georgia is a
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: case where there's just very few swing voters left in
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: that state. And Raphael Warnock is going to have to hit.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: And same thing with Stacey Abrams. They're going to have
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: to make sure that the electorate ends up being 30%
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: black and that they get really high black turnout. And
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: it was really hard to do that. And they shattered
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: all kinds of records in the Senate runoff in 2021.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: But to repeat that again is very, very tricky. So
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: that's going to be close. And then in Nevada... talk
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: about like places where the pandemic hit the economy hard,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: like Nevada is one of the hardest hit states because
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: of the tourism industry there and housing has been a
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: disaster there for a long, long time. And so you have,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: you know, Cortez Masto sort of struggling as the incumbent there.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: And there's also a lot of independent voters in Nevada
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: as to also.
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: And she's unfortunately not running against someone like Mastriano or
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: Oz or Ron Johnson, who on the on the on
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: a daily basis or herschel walker that on a daily
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: basis are saying something embarrassing ridiculous terrible so it's just
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: not getting the same level of attention yeah no not
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: at all.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Which is ridiculous because like adam laxalt uh embraces the
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: big lie and is a big trump guy but it's
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: all relative at this point now.
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: Right well just it's not the same level of gaps
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: coming out of it's just not getting the same same
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: level of attention well in.
• 21:30
  Speaker 5: The in the the um Confederate folks have just done
• 21:33
  Speaker 5: a good job of like making ads that are catchy, fun,
• 21:37
  Speaker 5: go super viral. Now their closing message seems to be
• 21:40
  Speaker 5: focusing on the fact that Dr. Oz is a snake
• 21:42
  Speaker 5: oil salesman and he sold like bogus miracle cures to
• 21:46
  Speaker 5: people to make money for himself. And it folds into
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: that broader message about how he can't represent Pennsylvania well
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: because he does not care about you and doesn't even
• 21:54
  Speaker 5: live anywhere near you.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Should we talk about the dogs too?
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: Apparently this guy did a bunch of– It's tough. Evil
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: testing on animals. It's the worst. I can't even read it.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: There was a whistleblower.
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: There was a report today that a whistleblower basically said that, like,
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: as part of the research he was conducting, there were
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: a lot of dogs that were terribly mistreated. And the
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: details are horrific.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: Horrific. Yeah.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: When he was at Columbia, Columbia ended up cutting ties
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: with Oz. Um, over like 300 dogs were killed and
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: it's just, it's, it was hard to read the story.
• 22:34
  Speaker 5: And violated the animal welfare act. And obviously like, I
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: don't want to be, you know, listen, it's gross.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Don't read it. It's, it's pretty bad.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: Sport betterment.
• 22:42
  Speaker 5: It's interesting to me watching Georgia too, because Warnock, I mean,
• 22:45
  Speaker 5: I think he's clearly going to try to keep disqualifying
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: Herschel Walker. And boy, if you need more information to
• 22:50
  Speaker 5: do that, like I'm a little worried about you, but Walker,
• 22:53
  Speaker 5: I was listening, I was reading, um, some stuff in
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: the AJC. And Walker apparently seems to be worried about
• 23:00
  Speaker 5: his lack of support from Republican voters. So he's kind
• 23:02
  Speaker 5: of tacking to the right in these closing months. He
• 23:04
  Speaker 5: said like the other day, he said, Jesus might not
• 23:06
  Speaker 5: recognize you when you get to heaven. If you're a
• 23:09
  Speaker 5: transgender person, like crazy shit. He also endorsed Lindsey Graham's
• 23:13
  Speaker 5: 15 week federal abortion ban. He's been criticizing Medicaid expansion,
• 23:18
  Speaker 5: whereas Warnock is still taking a much more traditional campaign path.
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: He's talking about bipartisanship, working with Ted Cruz on things.
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: Tommy Tuberville. The interesting thing that happened recently is the
• 23:30
  Speaker 5: White House, the press secretary weighed into the question of
• 23:33
  Speaker 5: whether the Atlanta Braves should change their name, which is
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: like kicked up the completely predictable culture war debate that
• 23:41
  Speaker 5: I think is probably not at all what Warnock or
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: Stacey Abrams wants to be talking about in the closing weeks. So,
• 23:46
  Speaker 5: you know, this thing is very much in flux.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Let me ask, what do you guys think Democratic candidates
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: should be doing to fight back right now, these Senate candidates? Like,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: How much are these final weeks about disqualifying your opponent
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: versus making a positive case for yourself? Tommy, you brought
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: up Warnock. Like when I was in Atlanta with those voters,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: I sat with a group of young black voters who
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: identified as moderate Democrats. And they had all heard all
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: the bad shit about Herschel Walker.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: They're like, he's crazy.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: He's crazy. And they're like, But I feel like all
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: I hear from Warnock's campaign is how bad he is.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: And I don't know what Warnock would do. And it's
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: always this tough balance, right? Because you want people to
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: know how bad Herschel Walker is, how bad Dr. Oz is,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: how bad all these candidates are. But at the same time, like,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: how do you balance that with, you know, the need
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: to have a positive agenda? Leva, what do you think?
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's also especially challenging when you're talking about Ron Johnson,
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: when you're talking about Dr. Oz, when you're talking about
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: Herschel Walker, when it's not just that... You obviously need
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: to drive this negative message along with your own positive
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: message for your campaign. It's that every day provides new fodder,
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: new negative fodder about your opponent that you do think
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: is useful while you still have to do this other
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: work of finding a way to get your positive message
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: out there too. Like, you know, the Washington Post comes
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: out with a story today. We were hearing this yesterday,
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: walking through all the different ways Dr. Oz has spent
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: years grifting and selling just completely debunked weight loss medicine,
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: Alzheimer's medicine, cancer medicine, just to make money. You obviously
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: want to drive that, but how do you get it
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: back to what Fetterman will do on voting rights, what
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: Fetterman wants to do to protect abortion access? I think that's, look,
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: that's been the challenge for the last five years of
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: dealing with these radicalized kind of goofy candidates. You have
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: to find ways to drive your positive message too.
• 25:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah, look, I think that they all are going to
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: have it's going to be case by case. They're all
• 25:41
  Speaker 5: going to have research. They're all going to know what
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: seems to work, what drives Democratic voters, what might turn
• 25:47
  Speaker 5: off Republican voters. They'll all probably know their own, you know,
• 25:50
  Speaker 5: what they think is a win number, how many voters
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: they need to turn out to win the election, how
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: many voters they think their opponent needs to turn out
• 25:58
  Speaker 5: or is currently on track to turn out. So you'll
• 26:00
  Speaker 5: make decisions accordingly. I don't know the right balance. I
• 26:03
  Speaker 5: do think it's going to be it's going to be
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: case by case. But with someone like a Dr. Oz,
• 26:07
  Speaker 5: Or Herschel Walker, you have a lot more to work with.
• 26:10
  Speaker 5: So you're probably emphasizing that an awful lot. Or at least,
• 26:12
  Speaker 5: you know, the super PACs that swoop in in the
• 26:15
  Speaker 5: last month of a campaign are going to do it
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: for you.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do think some of the ads that end
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: up being most effective are not purely positive or purely negative,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: but like comparative ads. And so with someone like Dr. Oz,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: they have now done a fantastic job framing him as
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: this out-of-touch weirdo who's a grifter. And so you say
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: that he's that and that and he's going to then,
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: you know, vote for these policies in the Senate that
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: are also out of touch. Whereas John Fetterman is going
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: to fight for working people by doing X, Y and Z.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: You know, and I do think even in the latest
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: poll in Pennsylvania that has Fetterman only up by three years, 45, 42.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: He still has an advantage. Fifty one twenty nine for
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: best understands concerns of Pennsylvanians.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Even though Oz now has an advantage on policies that
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: will improve voters economic circumstances. Thirty nine. Thirty two. So
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: it's interesting that they still think Fetterman's on their side,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: but for some reason they think that Oz.
• 27:05
  Speaker 5: There's a little bit of a backlash to all the
• 27:07
  Speaker 5: Jersey stuff, I think. People were like, you know, you
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: talk about him being from Jersey all the time. What
• 27:11
  Speaker 5: are you going to do for us?
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: Like, okay, fair. But hey, you remember the Jersey thing.
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: So it's an effective campaign strategy.
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the other piece of it is that the Oz
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: campaign is launching a bunch of negative attacks against Fetterman.
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: Some really unfair kind of fear-mongering on crime, for example.
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: And they have to find ways to push back on
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: that without giving into that. And I think they've really
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: tried The Fetterman campaign has tried to really not be
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: defensive to kind of find ways to talk about Fetterman's
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: record and what he wants to do on criminal justice
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: reform while kind of brushing back some of the more
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: outrageous assertions that these super PAC ads and these Oz
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: ads are making.
• 27:45
  Speaker 5: The person who did this best in 2020 was Warnock.
• 27:49
  Speaker 5: We're back to dogs again. He had the ad of
• 27:52
  Speaker 5: him walking that little beagle. It wasn't actually his, but
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: it worked really well. He did an ad where he
• 27:56
  Speaker 5: was like, I don't eat pizza with a fork and
• 27:59
  Speaker 5: knife or something. You know, it's just like kind of campy,
• 28:01
  Speaker 5: fun stuff being like, they're going to try to demonize me,
• 28:04
  Speaker 5: but I'm just a regular human being.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: I have a pitch. Here's a pitch.
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: We get somebody who in scrubs kind of who's meant
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: to look like Dr. Oz and we put them in
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: front of a wheat thresher and have them put puppies
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: into it.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: And then we just have, we just.
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: Have Federer next to the thresher, had the thresher just
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: being like, I'll protect abortion access. I'll, I'll protect voting rights.
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: Like I, I believe in, in decriminalizing marijuana, you know?
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think it'll go.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: Turn off the podcast.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: I think it'll go viral.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: I think it will.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: I think it'll go far.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: I agree with you on that. I agree with you
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: on that.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: Sarah Palin kind of did that.
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: Remember when there was that ad where Paul Ryan pushed
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: an old person off a cliff and they were really upset?
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: No.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: You know, you remember it.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: I do remember that.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: You remember it.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Good one. I think Dan created that ad. All right.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: On a potentially happier note, the Twitter ratios must be
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: working because one of the Nates is out with a
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: take about how it's time to take Democrats' chances in
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: the House seriously.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: Great. Look at that.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: Terrific.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Nate Cohn argues that Republicans are still favored, but that
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: redistricting didn't give them a significant structural advantage, and the
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: limited House polling we do have shows extremely close races,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: so Democrats could pull it out with a few lucky breaks. Lovett,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: what do you think of Nate's take? You buy it?
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: First of all, The take's fine.
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: I'm not critical of the take. It's a fine and
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: fulsome take.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: Let it exist. It's great.
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: The whole point of it is saying that there's actually
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: not that much polling of individual House races. And one
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: of the points he makes is... the piece is that
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: we poll Senate races much more than we poll House races.
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: Some of those Senate races have shown positive signs for Democrats. Therefore,
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: if we had the same amount of House race polls,
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: maybe we would be seeing the same positive signs, except
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: none of us believe the Senate race polls. So all
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: I take away from this article is we could win
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: the House and Senate. We can lose them both. Anything
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: beyond that is too specific to be predicted.
• 30:04
  Speaker 5: Now's the time of year when everyone makes sure they've
• 30:07
  Speaker 5: written articles taking each side of an issue so that
• 30:11
  Speaker 5: you can point to them after the fact. So I'd
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: like to make sure we do that before November. Someone
• 30:15
  Speaker 5: write that down. What is very hard, I think, for
• 30:18
  Speaker 5: all of us political junkies to internalize because we pay
• 30:21
  Speaker 5: such close attention to this stuff and the stakes are
• 30:22
  Speaker 5: so high is that most of these elections could go
• 30:25
  Speaker 5: either way. They could be decided by events that that
• 30:28
  Speaker 5: haven't happened yet. Uh, the outcome could be different if
• 30:31
  Speaker 5: it was a week or two weeks earlier, right? Like
• 30:34
  Speaker 5: I think 2016, if that presidential was a week after
• 30:37
  Speaker 5: the excess Hollywood tape, I think Hillary Clinton would have
• 30:39
  Speaker 5: been president, but it wasn't in that sort of like
• 30:41
  Speaker 5: maddening to try to come to grips with. Uh, so
• 30:45
  Speaker 5: we'll see, you know, like I'd.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: And most people aren't like us. They're not political news
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: junkies who've made up their mind one way or the other,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: either which party they're voting for, which candidate they're voting for,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: or whether they're going to vote at all.
• 30:58
  Speaker 5: My biggest anxiety is around gas prices and the fact
• 31:01
  Speaker 5: that the Saudis and OPEC are now cutting production to
• 31:05
  Speaker 5: keep prices stable and elevated and stopping the precipitous decline
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: that we had seen because we're going into a recession.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: That is very worrisome to me. Yeah.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Well, that's something that we can't control.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: I'll tell you one thing.
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: Earlier today, look, I'm in Pennsylvania right now talking to
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: the people.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Lovett's at a diner, for those of you who can't see.
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: He's at a Wawa, I think. And I was talking
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: to people at some sort of a market. I don't know,
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: where people buy produce or something.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: I don't know. It for me, it comes fully in
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: a salad already. So I don't know. I've never seen
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: some of these vegetables.
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: It's your sweet pre-cut. No, no, no.
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: This is like a market, like a supermarket. Like it
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: had lots of different vegetables, but separate little areas for
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: each one, not.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: In a salad bar independently. Okay.
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: Um, I never, and I was like, I didn't know
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: what to do there, but, but I asked somebody a
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: question and they were basically, they, they hated Mastriano, but
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: they were actually undecided about Fetterman versus Oz. And then
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: I told them about the dog thing. Uh, And that
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: was effective. People do not like hearing about the dog thing.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: They don't.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: It's, yeah.
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: So I'm going to say that the dog thing is
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: going to really matter.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Especially with normal people who don't pay close attention to politics.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: But they hear that, they're like, wait a minute, that
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: doesn't sound good. I don't want that. I don't want
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: that candidate.
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: And some of the people that already like Fetterman, they
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: said that the dog thing wasn't surprising to them about Dr. Oz,
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: which I think is a really sad thing about Dr.
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: Oz as a personal brand.
• 32:34
  Speaker 5: Because he kind of just reads as a sociopath.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: On the House issue... I thought just to get your
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: head around what it takes for the Democrats to win
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: the House, like the New York Times in September 2nd
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: had a very helpful interactive chart that was based on
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: the Cook political ratings. So like if both parties win
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: every district where they're currently favored, Democrats would have 191 seats,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: Republicans would have 213, and there would be 31 toss-ups.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: So you need 218 to win the House, right? So
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: in that scenario, Republicans only have to win five toss-ups,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: Democrats have to win 27. Now, is that possible? Well,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: that's basically what Republicans did in 2020. And of course,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Democrats kept the House, but we were we were a
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: little surprised that we didn't do better. So it's still
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: it's possible. But that just goes to show you how
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: how tricky it is for Democrats to pull the inside
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: straight here. But of course, that's possible.
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: But like another way to say that is if it
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: does turn out that we retain the Senate and the House,
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: it will mean that there was an underlying trend that
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: we just didn't see.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: So, yeah.
• 33:41
  Speaker 5: I mean, I think Georgia is going to be sort
• 33:42
  Speaker 5: of the most interesting example of this kind of happening simultaneously,
• 33:46
  Speaker 5: where it's clear that Stacey Abrams is really betting on
• 33:50
  Speaker 5: higher Democratic turnout, a more motivated Democratic base based on
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: the Dobbs decision. And Warnock is doing more of a
• 33:59
  Speaker 5: I'll work with all parties kind of bipartisan approach to
• 34:01
  Speaker 5: try to reach the middle.
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: We'll see which works.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: We don't know. They need to do both. Both of
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: them need to do both is the answer.
• 34:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but you can kind of emphasize one in the close,
• 34:10
  Speaker 5: and clearly there's a distinction there.
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: I do have a little candle I light that just says,
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: this year, we don't see the Dobbs wave coming. That's
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: the candle that I've lit. But I don't know. I
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: don't know if it's real.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: I hope so. I think the point of all this is,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: because this is going to be close, because there are
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: so many undecided voters, because there's so many people undecided
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: about voting, we can all make a difference here. Go
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: to votesaveamerica.com. Sign up. grab a region, we'll put you
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: to work, donating, volunteering, calling folks, texting folks. Like you said,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: I keep thinking, you know, the Fetterman winning Pennsylvania by
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: 10 points was never going to happen. Like all of
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: these states have now been super close for many election cycles.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: They all come down to tens of thousands of votes,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: which means that everyone can have an impact in the
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: next couple of weeks.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And check out the Vote Save America page.
• 34:58
  Speaker 5: If you click donate, there's lots of different ways you
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: can put your money to work. You can go to
• 35:02
  Speaker 5: secretaries of state and attorney generals, state legislators. The Senate,
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: the House, voter protection, abortion funds. There's lots of different
• 35:10
  Speaker 5: options out there.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: And there's one that just goes to Tommy. Don't click
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: that one.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: It's my Venmo. Yeah, please click on that. All right.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: All right. When we come back, we'll talk to our
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: old pal, Cody Keenan, about his new book, Grace. On
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: the pod today, our buddy, our pal... The former White
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: House director of speech writing and current author of a
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: brand new book that's out today called Grace, President Obama
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: and the Ten Days in the Battle for America. Cody Keenan.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the pod.
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: It's good to see you guys in the flesh.
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: Barack Obama's greatest living chief speech writer.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: Right off the bat. It's weird interviewing you. It's just like.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: People don't know this, but you're like the member of
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: our friend group.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: Our family.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: That people don't hear on the pod.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: I don't talk to anybody more than you guys, and
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: I don't ever get to see you either. These digs
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: are amazing, by the way.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: Thanks.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: The first time I did the pod, it was like
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: the fifth or sixth episode ever, and you were still
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: renting radio space.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we were some random radio place. Now we're here.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Now we're here. Look at this. All right, so you
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: wrote this book.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: Still like Pompeii out there, though. I got to trick
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: people to come in.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, it's not going to be a debate about remote work. Cody,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: tell us about the premise of the book and how
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: you landed on writing about these 10 days in the
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: White House. Of all the days you were there, which
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: we should say was all eight years.
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: Just 2,922 days.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, so when you were counting.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: So Grace is about 10 days in June 2015 that
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: are bookended by the massacre in Charleston in a black
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: church and Barack Obama's eulogy in Charleston where he sang
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: Amazing Grace. And in between, you also had this kind
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: of extraordinary series of events where the Supreme Court was
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: going to decide on Obamacare and whether or not millions
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: of people got to keep their insurance and marriage equality,
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: whether or not millions of people would be deemed second
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: class citizens or be able to get married like the
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: rest of us. After the shooting, the Confederate flag starts
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: coming down over public spaces in the South. And all
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: this happens over a span of 10 days. And it
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: was like all these kind of great unanswered questions about
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: America were coming to the fore in this exhausting and
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: exhilarating way.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: And you were in there just writing so many versions
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: of all of these.
• 37:23
  Speaker 5: That's my favorite part, like five speeches about one Supreme
• 37:26
  Speaker 5: Court case, given all the different possibilities.
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and we'd done this before. You were there in
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: 2012 when we had to do this the first time.
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: It was in front of the Supreme Court in a
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: sham decision. So we had to prepare speeches for what
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: if the Supreme Court says, no, there's not a right
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: to marriage equality. What if the Supreme Court says, no,
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: all of you are losing your health insurance right away.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: Those are pretty bleak. And then in the background, we're
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: deciding whether or not to write a eulogy.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: So your book made me deeply miss the White House,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Barack Obama, all of our former colleagues. It also made
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: me deeply grateful that I'm not a speechwriter anymore because
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: I was like tired reading what you went through that week.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: Weren't you tired?
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: Love it.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Didn't it bring back memories of how the drafts, all
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: the people, the committees, the people giving you the fucking edits.
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's very anxiety provoking. And just the fact that
• 38:14
  Speaker 4: it's never over till it's over. You never know what's
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: going to happen when you hand it in. You know,
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: I wasn't a speech writer. The thing that really jumps
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: out at me, and I remember this from you guys,
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: is the isolation.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: Because, like, we all.
• 38:25
  Speaker 5: Went home at 8 or 9 o'clock at night, and
• 38:27
  Speaker 5: you guys just sat there at your desks all night
• 38:30
  Speaker 5: long until the thing was done.
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: Until the sun came up sometimes. Yeah. Sometimes I'd go home.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: Tommy and I lived together for a few years. And, well,
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: I took love. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: When I get to Hollywood.
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: And there are a few things more depressing when I'd
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: be working at our dining table and Tommy's coming down
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: in the morning because he's awake. You know, he's just like, oh, no.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Oof.
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: You all right? Need anything? It was rough. You develop
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: a really... healthy relationship with self-loathing as a speechwriter.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: It's a horrible feeling. It's really reminding me of this.
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: Well, it's, it's, there is a thing, there is a
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: part about being a speechwriter.
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: We were white house speechwriters.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: Honestly, wouldn't take it off the resume.
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: But, but, uh, there's this part of it that I
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: think is hard to describe, which is politics is a
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: lot of hard-nosed decisions.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: It's even policy.
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: It's a lot of like, it's numbers, it's math, it's politics. It's, it's,
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: It's 30-minute meetings. It's people moving really fast and trying
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: to figure things out. And then there's this then there's
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: speech writing which sits inside of it that doesn't exist
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: in 30 minute increments it's days of thinking it's trying
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: to find art and magic and kind of beauty in
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: these moments and nobody gives a fuck about it and
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: everyone's like well this isn't as good as it should
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: be it's like no of course not it's really hard
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: yeah that part sucks.
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: It sucks and and sometimes you don't come up with
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: that art and beauty and magic and everybody's We would
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: shut our doors. I stole something from John when he
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: was chief speechwriter at State of the Union time. We'd
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: put a skull on the door that means go away.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: I forgot about that. We ended up having a lot
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: of stuff on the door to tell people do not
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: come in. They all came in anyway.
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: There was a joy meter.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: Do not come.
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: People would barge in anyway.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: Can you tell the story in that part of the
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: book where you're just sitting there and you have to
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: write the eulogy for Charleston and and you have basically
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: just the heading and a blank page, and you're trying,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: but everyone just keeps coming to the office.
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: There was a day, I think it was like day
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: seven of the book, and at the time, you're not like, okay,
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: today's day six. These days didn't really coalesce in my
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: head until later, but there was this day where I
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: was just trying to get to it, and every five minutes,
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: someone would come in with something else. It was just,
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: my assistant called it, Susanna called it a little box
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: of interruptions, and you just can't focus until everyone's gone,
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: and the email's kind of slow to a trickle.
• 40:43
  Speaker 5: Cody, there was this fundamental tension about whether President Obama
• 40:46
  Speaker 5: was going to speak at the eulogy at all. You
• 40:47
  Speaker 5: write pretty honestly about how he just didn't want to,
• 40:50
  Speaker 5: because he was so cynical about having to give eulogies.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: In the wake of gun violence.
• 40:55
  Speaker 5: And then he ultimately made the decision to sing at
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: this event. And you write in the book how you
• 41:00
  Speaker 5: were like, Mr. President, Barry, I want to see you
• 41:04
  Speaker 5: singing up there. Can you talk about how you convinced
• 41:07
  Speaker 5: him to spread his wings?
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: Well, the As you said, we almost didn't do the
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: eulogy at all because after Newtown in 2012, he kind
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: of set his second term agenda aside to go after
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: guns whatever way he could, whether background checks or whatnot.
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: And that failed in the Senate. Well, it didn't just fail.
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: It was blocked by Republicans. And after that, he said–
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: that was about as mad and cynical as I've ever
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: seen him. And he said, what do I do the
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: next time this happens? I don't want to give another
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: eulogy after this because it just– it like makes it
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: seem like this is OK and we just give a
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: eulogy and move on. Um, Charleston was different. You kind
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: of have to after that one, but, but he, he
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: still didn't want to even six days afterwards.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: Why did he have to after that one?
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: So you've got, you've got the first black president and
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: you've got this racist slaughter, you know, carried out under
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: the Confederate banner. And it just, it did sort of,
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: we didn't have a hard and fast rule as to
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: when he spoke after eulogies, but that one felt like it.
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: So he had, there were some people in the White
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: House pushing for it. He didn't want to, uh, until
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: he saw what the families did, which is they forgave
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: the killer. Um, and that was powerful and that kind
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: of brought him along, but, but to get to the singing, um,
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: He had added the lyrics to Amazing Grace the night
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: before the speech. And he tore this speech up. You know,
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: I gave him a draft and it was the only
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: time he's ever just drawn a line through two pages
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: and rewrote a long hand, which is, that was tough.
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: And I described that in full detail in Grace, which
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: is out today. And so that morning he goes out
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: to the Rose Garden and gives a speech about marriage equality.
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: The Supreme Court finds a right to it. There's these
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: joyous scenes, but we're still mindful that we're about to
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: go eulogize nine dead people. And he stands up on
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: the helicopter and he goes, you know, if it feels right,
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: I might sing it. And I was just like, okay,
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: what do you say to that? But he had a
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: healthy ego about singing, which is all because he sang
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: Al Green at some fundraiser. Everyone in the audience went insane.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: He never let people stop hearing about that. He was
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: so proud of himself.
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: But if you're watching the eulogy, which you should, it's great.
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: He pauses for 11 seconds before he starts singing. And
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: there's only five of us on earth who heard him
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: say he was going to sing. So I asked him after,
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: I was like, what was with the pause? You know,
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: was that for dramatic effect? Were you deciding? He goes, no, man,
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: you know the thing about Amazing Grace. And I was like, no.
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: He goes, you have to start really, really low or
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: by the time you get to a wretch like me,
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: your voice cracks. He's like, so I was just, I
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: was like preparing. Find that E flat. Yeah, E flat.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: When I read that, I was like, had he tried
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: to sing Amazing Grace before many times in public?
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: Toothbrush mirror.
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: Look, I don't think that was the first time. That
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: day he'd sang it. I don't think he just went
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: out there. A few practice runs in the residence before.
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: I do think in the echo of a bathroom, you
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: think this is going to work.
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: I can do this.
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: Can I ask you all a question?
• 43:46
  Speaker 5: One of my favorite parts of the book, Cody, you're
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: talking about writing the State of the Union Address one year,
• 43:51
  Speaker 5: which you all loved doing.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: That's my favorite.
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: Incredibly rewarding. It's so much fun.
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: You turn in the best draft you've ever turned in.
• 43:58
  Speaker 5: Obama calls you into his office to discuss it. The
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: note included something about Miles Davis, can you tell that
• 44:04
  Speaker 5: story and how you felt about that guidance, whether it
• 44:09
  Speaker 5: was helpful?
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: So it was the third consecutive Christmas I ruined drafting
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: a speech and I gave it to him eight days
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: early and felt great about it. And I hear nothing
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: after I give it to him, which is really frustrating
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: because he always asks for an early draft, right? And
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: then he doesn't get back to you. So his assistant
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: calls me upstairs. I go up, he's sitting in the
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: dining room off the Oval Office and he goes, sit down.
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: And I'm just like, oh God, am I going to
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: have to like redo an 8,000 word speech? He's like,
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: how are you doing? I'm like, I'm I'm fine.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: What is this?
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: How's the speech? And he goes, well, I think we're
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: in the best shape we've been eight days out. I'm like, great,
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: but we can make it better. So he goes, you
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: ever listen to Miles Davis? And I'm like, I don't know, maybe. Why?
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: He's like, so it's, everything's in here and I need
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: some quiet moments. I need some spaces. You know what
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: they say about Miles Davis? It's the notes you don't play.
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: It's the silences.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: I'm like, whatever.
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: So he goes, I want you to go home tonight,
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: have a drink, listen to some Miles Davis and find
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: me the silences. I was like, okay, I'll do it.
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: First of all, I believe that that's... Lisa Simpson says
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: that on The Simpsons at a jazz show, and it's
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: a way of her seeming pretentious.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: She goes, no, listen to the notes. He's not playing.
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: I was just.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: It's in there.
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: It says, pause here.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: Just wait a second.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: Here you go, boss. I added some pauses.
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to say who it was, but there
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: was someone like the day of that speech, too, who
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: staked out the bathroom and the ground floor of the
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: West Wing, and as soon as I came out to
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: go to the bathroom, jumped up and was like, can
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: we add this to the speech?
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: No. Something that struck me is... There's this big debate
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: in the Oval Office over whether Obama should speak at
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: the eulogy. And at one point, he goes on this
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: rant about the Confederate flag still hanging up at the
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: state capitol. And he says, it's not subtle. Black folks
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: have to walk past it every day. How would a
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: Jewish community feel if people hung a swastika somewhere? The
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: flag isn't an embrace of history. That's a talking point.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: Come on, people. And then he looks at you and
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: smirks and says, obviously, we shouldn't say that.
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: That's what I put in the book.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: But then, like, reading it in 2022... My first reaction
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: is like, why? Why wouldn't you say that? You know,
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: but at the time, I get why he wouldn't have
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: said that. But it just it felt like, wow, we
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: really have. I wonder what Obama's presidency would be like
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: right now and how his discussions about race would be
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: right now. And can you talk about like why at
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: the time he felt like he shouldn't say that?
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, it'd be impossible to know right now.
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: Everything has changed so dramatically because of the Trump years.
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: At the time, I mean, he would have gotten 12
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: red hens if he said that, right? All the DC
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: pearl clutchers would be like, oh, you can't, you can't
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: equate the Confederate flag to swastika.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: Why not?
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: You know, and in his point too, about the fact
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: that the flag was over the Charleston state house, they
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: put that up in this 1960s.
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: You know, that was like a response to civil rights.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: That was not just hanging on to the civil war,
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: but we always had to be mindful, even if it
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: was frustrating as to how different audiences would interpret what
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: the first black president said. You know, he had this,
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: he had to walk this tightrope that nobody else ever did.
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: And one of the, one of the things that ever
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: made me, that made me happiest was when Ta-Nehisi Coates
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: wrote once for eight years, Barack Obama walked on ice
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: and never fell. And it was just like a huge
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: sigh of relief.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: Cause that's exactly, that was the, I mean, it was
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: the best summation of what he had to go through
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: on race from the moment he decided to step into
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: politics until he left the white house. And, you know,
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: if you were outside the white house or you were
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: not him, You could criticize it or you could do whatever,
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: but when you're that guy, when you're the first black
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: president and you're doing it, you have to think about
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: all those audiences and the people that you haven't brought
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: along yet.
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: And that's unsatisfying because we were all young progressives and
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: wanted to shout right and wrong from the rooftop. And
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: to tell yourself that you can't is a very frustrating
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: thing to do. Yeah, I.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: Do think all that's true.
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: I do wonder how the Trump years have changed a
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: certain way of thinking about decorum and not riling people
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: up and things you can say outside of race on
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: marriage equality and a host of issues where there was
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: an expectation that mostly falls to Democrats, that there's certain
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: places you can't go, certain truths you can't tell. And
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: I do wonder if one of the, like I think
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: back now, and I wonder like if you knew someone
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: like Trump was coming, how much more honest could you
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: have been? What are the things that Trump opens up
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: that we realize were rules we actually shouldn't have been following?
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think about that all the time, what I
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: would do if we could go back and write differently,
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: knowing what was coming. But at the time, we didn't
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: have the luxury of doing that. We were constrained a
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: lot in ways that were frustrating and difficult.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: I will say that I think the whole concept of grace,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: the theme of the eulogy and the book still holds up. today.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, to me, I mean, maybe we're just former
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: Obama staffers who are, uh, who are still living in
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: that time. But like, I do think even it's funny
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: reading it after the Trump era or still in the
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: midst of the era that we're in, it still feels
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: like grace is, uh, something that's, that we're short on
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: right now, but that we probably use.
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I feel like people still want people
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: like this in the white house and everywhere in life.
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: I have to, cause what, what, what alternative is there?
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 49:13
  Speaker 5: I love in the book, I mean, look, so as
• 49:15
  Speaker 5: we mentioned at the top, Cody and I lived together
• 49:16
  Speaker 5: for several years, um, three of us in a group house,
• 49:19
  Speaker 5: we paid like three grand a month, which made government
• 49:22
  Speaker 5: salaries go a lot further. And then your now wife,
• 49:25
  Speaker 5: Kristen basically moved in. And I love how you talk
• 49:28
  Speaker 5: about Kristen's job at the white house on the research
• 49:32
  Speaker 5: team and how that rolled the occasional, uh, grenade into
• 49:36
  Speaker 5: your marriage.
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: Can you tell that story a little bit. Yeah. Kristen
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: was one of our fact checkers. That's, that's how we met.
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: She would fact check everything we wrote and it was
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: so frustrating. I already see love it ready to tee off.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: I have nothing. I'm just trying to get something.
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: We kill her. We kill ourselves on these drafts and
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: then submit them. And you know, these wonderful fact checkers,
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: including my then girlfriend, we'll just send you back here.
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: All the things you got wrong that you need to fix.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: And it's just relentlessly frustrating. And the fact that we
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: ended up getting married I think is a true testament
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: to our love.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: Let's be honest, some of those fact checks were a
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: little overly cautious.
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: This is the one I always remember, which is I
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: was writing a speech for President Obama to deliver at NASA,
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: or maybe it was just a speech about science generally,
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: but regardless, I made reference to the first photo of
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: the Earth taken from far away called Earthrise, and it
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: was a photo taken after eight revolutions of the capsule
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: in space. The capsule rotated eight times, and then the
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: astronaut took a photo And the fact checker response was, well,
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: the capsule had been facing away, which means that it
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: had to spin eight and a half times, which meant
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: it was more than eight times.
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: They're good.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: And I was like, I hear you. I hear what
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: you're saying. I receive this.
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: If we get in trouble, I'll take responsibility for not
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: adding them more than eight times.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: Which speechwriter do you guys think was the angriest in
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: the responses to the fact checker?
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: Was that the trip when you pissed off Buzz Aldrin? Uh, no,
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: I believe that was a second incident. That was a
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: separate trip where Buzz Aldrin was punching the face. And
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: in hindsight, honestly, my only regret is that I didn't
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: go further because this is an anecdote about Buzz Aldrin
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: not punching me in the face. How much better is
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: an anecdote about Buzz Aldrin actually punching me in the face?
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: I'd have loved a black eye from Buzz Aldrin. I'd be,
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: I'd speak it as eulogy. That'd be awesome. Punch me
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: in the face, Buzz Aldrin. I'll come to you now.
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: He's still around.
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: Don't you think? You were, yeah, you, you were among
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: the fact checkers, Lee's favorites, but Rhodes has a special
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: place in their hearts because he just wouldn't reply. Oh, really?
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Ben would not. Ben would just not. Just ignore them.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: You write about always feeling like you'll be exposed as
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: a fraud in the White House, which I think is
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: a feeling all of us had every day in the
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: White House.
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: What am I doing here?
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: How did you deal with that?
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: I don't know that I ever did. I dealt with
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: it by killing myself to just get every draft as
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: good as I possibly could. What right did we have
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: to be there? What right did I have to be
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: chief speechwriter for the first black president at 32 years old?
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: That's insane. Um, but I also think it is a
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: testament to our white house that I think a lot
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: of people had imposter syndrome and felt that way because
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: how many people do you think in the Trump white
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: house had imposter syndrome? They all felt like they deserve
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: to be there and you still look what that got us.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it is a, it's a, it is. I
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: think when you look around at some point, you look
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: around at everyone else you're working with and you're like, we're,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: we're it.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: There's no one else.
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: I actually think, I disagree. I think the Trump people
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: did know they were imposters and they were unfortunate. I
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: think the issue is not that they didn't have imposter syndrome.
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: I think they thought they were imposters and they were right.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: Like they were.
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: Imposters and they were, they were unqualified. They were the
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: drugs of the dregs. And they deep down, they knew it.
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: That's why they always took photos behind the Oval Office deck,
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: like tourists, you know, they knew on some level that
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: they were just visiting.
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: And, but that doesn't mean they won't be back.
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: Just saying. You know, it's on this point, one of the,
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: one of the most important emails that, that Favs ever
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: sent me, and I don't know if I've ever told
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: you this was, when we were all just struggling with,
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: with speeches, you emailed me at midnight one night on
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: a Saturday when you were working on the 2012 convention speech.
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: And it was just this really, uh, unique rant from
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: you that you don't usually do. It's like, I can't
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: do this. I don't know what I'm doing. I hate this.
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: I got a bunch of them struggling. I got a
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: bunch of those from John. And it was the first
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: time I was like, Oh my God, John feels this
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: way too. This is great. I can't do this yet. Yeah.
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: And the only time you ever, The only time you
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: ever talked to me like that is when you took
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: that edible that was too big and you called me
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: in the middle of the night.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was after the White House.
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: And I was like, you're not going to die.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: After the White House.
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: You're not going to actually be fine. I was like,
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: John's calling me?
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: Oh, something's wrong. You're not having a heart attack. You're okay.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: No, well, speech training too is all about like how
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: many people you have helping you. Like in the beginning
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: of the Obama campaign when it was just me and
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: Adam Frankel, even before we hired Rhodes, there was a
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: time where I was like, I think I have to quit.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: I can't do this. There's too many speeches. There's like
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: three sets of remarks a day. Like you just, there's
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: only so much you can write every day. And then
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: once we got to the White House and we had
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: a bigger team, it was, it was a little bit better,
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: but it never fully goes away.
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: Can I ask a question?
• 53:51
  Speaker 5: Like you guys are all genuinely humble people, at least
• 53:55
  Speaker 5: two thirds of you. But like, you know, everyone, everyone
• 54:00
  Speaker 5: sees the feedback that comes in, right? You see the, the,
• 54:02
  Speaker 5: the praise, the, the profiles of people. How did you
• 54:05
  Speaker 5: guys deal with knowing that, like, there was part of
• 54:08
  Speaker 5: a speech you could control, you could write something that's
• 54:11
  Speaker 5: really great, great prose, but then sometimes there's just a
• 54:13
  Speaker 5: moment that elevates whatever it is he says, whether it's
• 54:17
  Speaker 5: the draft you wrote or the singing.
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It's kind of out of your control, right? It's
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: totally out of your control. You know, people ask, like,
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: did you tell him to sing? Like, no, you don't write,
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: sing here, sir. What was always kind of frustrating was
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: some of the best moments came from him. You know,
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: we would try as hard as we could, and then
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: he would take it to a higher place. I.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: I guess I always liked that and was always okay
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: with it. Maybe because when I signed up to work
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: for Barack Obama, he had just done the 2004 convention speech,
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: one of the most famous convention speeches in history, wrote
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: it himself, didn't think he needed a speechwriter. And I
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: was like, I'll work for this guy, but like, I'm
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: never going to, I'm never going to be at his
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: level because he's fucking Barack Obama. He's the one running
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: for office. So it's like, if I can give him
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: drafts that are like decent and he takes them to
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: the next level, that'll be enough. And I always like,
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: one of my favorite moments in every speech writing process
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: was actually getting back his edits. Now, if the edits
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: came back and it was like a line through the
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: paper or a come see me, that was not my
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: favorite part. But when he really dug in and there'd
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: just be like a ton of writing on the page
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: and I would get excited because I'm like, all right,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: what did he do to this to make it really,
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: really good? And it's a little bit of a cheat
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: because I'm like, yeah, I guess that was my job,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: but whatever, he did it and it's great now.
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the most satisfying, right, is like small edits throughout
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: and then an arrow on the side of the page
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: and you turn it over and there's just two paragraphs
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: to go right before the end. And you're just like, oh,
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: those sound just like him. And the way that I
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: always felt about it was that like, and I think
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: part of it is, actually but it's a benefit, which
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: is that, you know, I always felt like both practically
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: and emotionally, you're not trying to please the world. You're
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: trying to please the one person.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: Which is what you write about really well in the book.
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: Their job is to know what the world needs. Their
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: job is to have spoken to many more people than
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: you ever could, been the person, been on the road,
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: talked to everyone, had the life experience. They are supposed
• 56:18
  Speaker 4: to know what goes out into the world. Your job
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: is to give them the tools they need to get
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: what they want. And so if you've done your job
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: and gotten it through this ringer for them that they
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: wouldn't have the time to do otherwise, even though I
• 56:29
  Speaker 4: feel like we all worked for people that if they
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: had all the time in the world could write the
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: speech themselves, but you're there to help them get what
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: they need. If you've given them what they wanted and
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: they know what people need, then you'll have done your job.
• 56:39
  Speaker 4: And so I felt like the most satisfying part of
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: a speech was not seeing it being delivered. It was
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: the moment it was accepted as like, oh, great, this
• 56:47
  Speaker 4: is done.
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: That was better.
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: That's what you were always playing for. I think that's
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: a little bit of a problem in politics, the kind
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: of the way inside of an organization you kind of
• 56:56
  Speaker 4: become like, you know, you serve the principle.
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: And I think that's for good and for ill.
• 56:59
  Speaker 4: But in that case, I think that's the that's the
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: that's the only way being a speechwriter is possible because
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: you're not a president.
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: You're not the person. You're there to help them.
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that was always my favorite moment in the speech process, too,
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: when I would kill myself on a draft and just
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: be a ball of stress. And then the second you
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: send it to him, everything, my body would relax because
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: I know now it's out of my hands. Right. He
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: might come back and tear it up. But, but he,
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: I write about this in the book. This was the
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: night before the eulogy and he called me back to
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: the white house at 10 PM, which you know, isn't good. Yeah. Um,
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: and this is after I've been killing, just been killing
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: myself on this. And this, this is when I go
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: in and sit down with him and he drew just
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: two lines through it. And I actually apologized to him. Um,
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: cause I really did feel like I'd let him down.
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: But he, he said kind of, you said, love it.
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: He just, he walked back down the stairs and he
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: put his hand on my shoulder, which was rare. And
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: he said, listen, brother, we're collaborators. you gave me what
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: I needed to work on this and get it done.
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: And you know, when you've been thinking about this stuff
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: and he's talking about race, um, for 40 years, you'd
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: know what you wanted to write to. And like that
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: helped a lot just to get that, just be like,
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: you're not an abject failure, uh, only a partial failure.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: No, I looked the race speech and, uh, in Philadelphia
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: during the campaign when he like sent back his edits,
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: which was like a huge rewrite of that speech. And
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: it's like, I can no more disown my pastor than
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: I can my white grandmother. I'm like, I'm not going
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: to give him that line. I wasn't going to write
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: that line for Barack Obama. Like, that's only something that
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: he could do himself, you know? All right. So what
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: was harder, sharing an office with Lovett or sharing a
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: house with Tommy? Oh, wow.
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: There we go. Giddy up. Well, they were both great joys.
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: Lovett didn't come in until noon. And when he did,
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: he'd be wearing shorts and riding his electric scooter.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: First of all, two points about this.
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: One, I was riding electric scooter and e-bikes, pedal-assisted bikes,
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: a decade before they were popular.
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: I was mocked.
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: Early adopter.
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: Rightly so.
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: I would wear a t-shirt and shorts because even on
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: an electric scooter, I would just swamp the whole thing out,
• 59:04
  Speaker 4: the whole system.
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: But would you change out of the shorts and the t-shirts.
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: Yes I would change the moment if I had to
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: leave the room again I would wear the shorts and
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: the t-shirts to cool down until I had to leave
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: again then I would change.
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: Again at this point it's noon it's almost time to
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: go home at this point I'm like Lovett is working
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: on this draft is he around do we have edits
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: the president wants to see us is he coming.
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: Lovett would ask do I have to put a suit
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: on to go to the bathroom what do you think.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: I wasn't meant, look, I honestly, look, most, I wandered
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: around that White House like a donor for years.
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: Can't believe they let me in here. I guess I paid.
• 59:45
  Speaker 5: Cody, you actually gave me great advice about what to
• 59:48
  Speaker 5: wear to work as a roommate, because on the day
• 59:51
  Speaker 5: of the Bin Laden operation, our then other roommate, Michael O'Neill,
• 59:55
  Speaker 5: For some reason, hosted a cooking class in our kitchen
• 59:57
  Speaker 5: and it was a shared kitchen and living room. And
• 59:59
  Speaker 5: you and I were like, what the fuck is going
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 5: on here? So we started watching a basketball game and
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 5: just trying to like nurse a hangover. And the Celtics
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 5: were on. So I was wearing a Celtics jersey and
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 5: I got called into the White House and I was like,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 5: I can go in like this.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: Would anybody care? And you were like, you should absolutely
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: not go in like that. Yeah, we didn't know you
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: were going in to be informed about Bin Laden, right? No,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: we did not.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: It was good advice. I was there too. And it
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: was later on the Blackberry. It's like Rhodes was like,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, here's a set of draft remarks. And I'm like,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: remarks for what? I'm like, oh, the killing of Osama
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: Bin Laden. Okay. I guess we're doing this now.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: Thank God. Like I wasn't wearing a Larry Bird jersey.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: Tommy was a great roommate. There's one of my favorite
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: pages in the book is where I compare and contrast
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: you and our other roommate, Michael O'Neill.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: There's a little much like Tommy's this monk, like early
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: to bed, early to rise Tommy. I'm like, what the fuck?
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: He was though. Excuse me, sir.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: Okay. I was a very good boy. I was a badass.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: I spent some time there. Please. The book is Grace,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: President Obama and 10 Days in the Battle for America. Cody,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: you have written a fantastic book. I love this book.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: Everyone.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America audience, you guys will absolutely love this book.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: It is inspirational. It makes you hopeful about politics. It's
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: the antidote to everything that exists in politics right now.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, read a chapter, then go knock some doors.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: So go check it out. Buy it today.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: I'm really, really proud of it. And so thank you
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: guys for having me on.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: Of course. Thanks for coming on.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: Also, yeah, do we do plugs here?
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: Plug whatever you want. We already just plugged the fuck
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: out of the book. What are you looking for?
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: No, I'm on tour. I'm on tour. Go see Cody
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: on tour. Codykeenan.com. All the events are there. Tommy and
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: I did an event in LA already. The whole V-Hive
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: showed up. It was awesome. Fabs and I are going
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: to be back here in LA next week at the
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: LA Public Library for their Loud lecture series. So please
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: come on out. It's fun. Writing a book is great.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: Selling a book is not so great. But these live
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: events are just awesome because you get to meet people
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: who are really, really wonderful.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: Codykeenan.com. Come say hi. Thanks, Cody.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: Thanks, guys.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Cody for joining us today, and we'll talk
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: to you next week.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: Love it.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: Good luck on those Pennsylvania diners.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: Say hi to the Trafalgar gang.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: You bet.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: I'm out here talking to people, and they're sick of
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: all this partisanship.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: Aren't we all? You and Selena Zito out there.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: Take me seriously, but don't take me literally.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: Our producers are Olivia Martinez and Haley Muse. It's mixed
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: sound engineer the show. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Sandy Gerard,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: Milo Kim, and Amelia Montooth. Our episodes are uploaded as
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: videos at youtube.com slash crookedmedia.