Pod Save America Warren Interview

In retrospect, Jon Stewart probably quit the business at just the right time. The current era has banjaxed the late-night comedy set, serving up explosions of absurdity that soar beyond the reach of the kind of parody that thrived in the Bush and Obama years. The surviving bits of his

Sensibility and aesthetic have often filtered into the space between straight news and outright comedy, paired with a strand of earnest, outright activism to deliver mainstream liberals the news and action items they need in a way that does not make people want to shut the blinds and house some Xanax. It’s the old combo of broccoli and desert, delivered via podcast. If you’re looking for the center of this brand of political communication in the year 2020, you might find it in and around Pod Save America.

It’s the flagship podcast from Crooked Media, founded by three Obama administration alums—Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor—after their spell hosting a 2016 campaign program on Bill Simmons’ podcast network. They set out on their own after Trump’s election, and since the early days of 2017, the project has evolved substantially. They’ve assembled a formidable slate of podcasts featuring projects like Hysteria!, a pod hosted by Erin Gloria Ryan and another Obama alum, Alyssa Mastromonaco, which features exclusively women guests. The outfit has also become a genuine proposition when it comes to political organizing.

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Their campaign to stop the deranged Republican pursuit of Obamacare repeal—they called one iteration “Repeal and Go Fuck Yourself”—kicked off a now characteristic strategy to forward progressive goals: bring attention to a cause with catchy byphrases, get people motivated to take action, and raise some money. Ahead of the 2020 cycle, they’ve certainly done that: under the umbrella of Vote Save America, they raised $32 million last quarter, the lion’s share of which flowed into their Get Mitch or Die Trying fund backing Democratic candidates in competitive races who, together, could flip the Senate and pull Mitch McConnell out of the Majority Leader’s chair. 300, 000 people have checked their voter registration through the initiative, and 50, 000 have registered to vote. Their Fuck Gerry(mandering) program also reflects the Democratic Party’s newfound focus on downballot races after the party lost 900 state legislature seats throughout the Obama era.

I spoke with Favreau, Lovett, and Vietor about what kind of changes they’ve seen in the party since their old boss left office, and the key factors in the looming 2020 contest. But first, we had to tackle Donald Trump’s no good, very bad week. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

: As former White House staffers, could you ever have conceived of a week like the one we've just seen, and the succession of fuck-ups that we have witnessed?

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Jon Favreau: No! Like, not as former White House staffers, as current human beings. I cannot, I'm at a loss for words over the last week. Just when you think things can't get any fucking weirder, Trump comes through.

: Obviously the COVID outbreak is an issue, but also Wednesday, he announced that there would be no stimulus deal and seemed almost eager to take the credit for that.

. I think killing the stimulus bill might have been one of the dumbest moves in politics that I have seen in a long time. Like, not that I expected that they would come to a deal, but I expected that maybe the deal would fall apart and then Republicans and Democrats would both blame each other. And then he just like jumped in and was like,

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I'm to blame! I'm to blame for making sure that nobody gets any additional assistance between now and the election in the middle of a fucking recession. I'm to blame!

The White House is now making noise that Trump is once again interested in striking a deal with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The Republican Senate is less interested.

. Well, it's not like his tweets are normally cogent, but I will say, jumping up to raise his hand to say, “It's my fault there's no stimulus, ” is not very like him. He's not a big fan of taking responsibility, so maybe it is the steroids.

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TV: It's a big deal that he has COVID, but I think it's almost getting lost that the White House has hosted multiple superspreader events that have now not only gotten the president sick, it's also gotten the First Lady sick, although he never mentions her. It got like, what, a dozen or more White House staffers, like almost, like nine military leaders, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, they all have to quarantine because of this superspreader event that he did with Gold Star Families. There's just many different levels of irresponsibility here.

: I think one of the underrated parts of this administration is the total lack of professionalism. When you worked in this setup, there must have been a tightly managed structure. What do you see now?

JF: I mean, chaos. There could be a whole bunch of professional people who work there, but it all comes from the top, right? You have a bunch of fucking goobers from the Fox News universe who work there, you have some like traditional establishment Republicans, you have some non-partisans, career staff that are there. But none of them can do anything without Donald Trump approving it, and he's a mess, right?

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JL: There was some Trump campaign goon on background [quoted anonymously] who yelled at Axios about Mark Meadows screwing it up as if this is like some finely honed operation until butter fingers Mark Meadows messed it all up. What are they talking about? Like, we've been through so many Chiefs of Staff, so many different members of the team. It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. There's a malevolent incompetent goober at the top, and everything is in chaos.

: We talk about the disaster of the last, well, years, but also the last week or so. But four years ago today, the Access Hollywood tape dropped and the whole world concluded Trump was finished. There are a lot of differences now, but what can we learn from what happened after that?

JF: In 2016, the the story was Donald Trump was out on the campaign trail saying a bunch of racist, sexist, horribly offensive things almost every day, and I think that offensive words have a different effect on voters than when you're president, and as a result of your policies, and as a result of your neglect as a leader, the entire country is suffering through a pandemic that's out of control and a very deep recession. I don’t think Trump getting COVID himself is necessarily going to affect voters’ lives, but it reminds voters that this man has not paid attention to or taken seriously a pandemic that we're still suffering through right now. Now who knows what will happen in the election, of course, but I do think it's very different to be upset at him because of an offensive thing he said or did in the past.

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TV: Certainly, there’s a big group of Democrats who are seething with this election, and who are doing things they've never done before, like donating money to candidates up and down the ballot, to volunteering their time on a regular basis. I mean, not to pivot to Vote Save America, but you know, raising $35 million online for US Senate candidates doesn't just happen because of Trump. It's because you have an electorate that has been paying incredibly close attention to this race for four years. You know, like we didn't get 300, 000 people in our Adopt-A-State program because people just suddenly woke up to him. We've all been suffering through this for so long, and I do think people are more motivated this cycle. There was a lot of complacency at the end of 2016 because everyone just assumed she was gonna win. Myself included.

JF: You can see from the polls this time around, when you ask the question, “Who do you expect to win?” In 2016, many, many, many more people expected Hillary Clinton to win, which says something about the complacency. Now, even with the polls the way they are, people are still more likely to say that Donald Trump is gonna win, or at least it's much closer.

: Yeah, I think James Comey thought she was going to win. Critics pointed to the 900 state legislature seats lost under Obama and said Democrats don’t look down-ballot. It seems like with campaigns like Fuck Gerry(mandering), you’re encouraging people to see those smaller races as part of a larger project.

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TV: I think that's well put. It is a larger project. This is the second Fuck Gerrymandering fund we have put together. The first was focused on Virginia. We were also able to raise $2 million for Fair Fight, which is Stacey Abrams’ organization to stop voter suppression and help people get to the polls. I think people understand that there's a lot of pieces to

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