“Pod Save America” began as a way to “narrow the distance” between the conversations former Obama White House staffers were having in private and the ones echoing throughout the public sphere. And since launching in 2017, it’s become a force in America’s competitive media culture. As two of the three co-founders behind Crooked Media, Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor are ushering in a new era of political communication, championing a craft many Democratic lawmakers might learn from — one that threads entertainment and information, and turns audience engagement into activism. They join Nicolle to talk about the stakes of the November 2025 election, what it would take for new Dem leaders to emerge, and what lessons they carry from their former boss, President Obama.
For more from the “Pod Save” world, be sure to revisit Nicolle’s conversation with Tommy and Jon’s co-host, Jon Lovett, over the summer.
And if you want to catch them live, tickets are on sale now for Crooked Con, happening November 6th and 7th in Washington DC!
NOTE: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
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Tommy Vietor: Part of what’s always in my head is like, especially when I talk to younger people, it’s like just reminding that politics didn’t always suck. It wasn’t always about like one guy, like the worst person in the world upsetting you every day. Like, it can be inspirational.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s getting farther and farther away, though, when it didn’t suck.
Tommy Vietor: I know, but we can do good things. You can help people. You can find some core decency. We can get back there.
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Nicolle Wallace: Welcome to “The Best People” podcast. This week’s guests are setting the bar for all of us aspiring podcasters. They don’t just cover the news, they aren’t just founders, they change the weather in our politics. Everyone looks to them when something big happens. I look to them when something big happened in my career, when I started this podcast.
It’s an honor to have on “The Best People” podcast, two of the founders of Crooked Media, two of the hosts of “Pod Save America,” Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor. Thank you, guys.
Tommy Vietor: Wow.
Jon Favreau: What an intro. You don’t get that kind of intro anywhere.
Tommy Vietor: I don’t get that in my own house.
Nicolle Wallace: See if I had to do it twice, I wouldn’t have gotten all that in there, but —
Tommy Vietor: Got the time to do it.
Nicolle Wallace: — I have my little elevator spiel. A lot of things pop up, I go and look for you guys, and listen to you guys. I guess my first question for you is how do you cut right to the bone with everything?
Jon Favreau: Well, we try to have our morning meetings before the podcast, probably like you guys do at MSNBC, to figure out what we want to cover that day. Look, we started this in 2017, not knowing that we would ever be professional podcasters.
Nicolle Wallace: Is that a word? (LAUGH)
Jon Favreau: Yeah. Guys, it shouldn’t be. It might be an oxymoron.
Tommy Vietor: Yeah. If you want to repel a woman or clear a room, only when you’re in a professional podcasting. (LAUGHTER)
Jon Favreau: But I think because we always thought it was going to be a hobby, you know, we wanted to sort of narrow the distance between how we spoke with each other and our friends who’ve been in politics, about politics in private, with how people talk about politics in public. And so, you know, in terms of like cutting to the truth of it, we just try as hard as we can to talk about it, in a way that we would talk about it off-mic.
Tommy Vietor: Yeah. I think the best episodes are when you kind of forget that this thing is going to go out.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Tommy Vietor: And sometimes that happens to me. People like friends of mine from real life will be like, oh, I heard you guys talking about blah, blah, blah. I was like, oh my God, you heard that? You know, you have that reaction.
Jon Favreau: Yeah.
Tommy Vietor: But I think that’s good. That’s healthy.
Nicolle Wallace: I would say at a mission level, we try to put on television the same things that we say on our calls or in our meetings, because as you guys know, sometimes the distance narrows, whether you want it to or not. But what is it about the intimacy or the obligation you have to someone maybe just listening to in their ears, to make sure that there’s no fluff or spin?
Tommy Vietor: I mean, I think television, I still view it as like rarefied air. These are important people who are anchors. They are well-known.
Nicolle Wallace: Where to?
Tommy Vietor: They’re famous.
Nicolle Wallace: What are you talking about?
Tommy Vietor: You, like your show. (LAUGHTER) Like, I watch TV. Look, maybe that’s muscle memory, right? And I’m of a certain age where that’s changing for people that are younger than us. But I think I still view it that way.
And I think with a podcast, you have someone literally in your ears. You feel like you know them. I both experienced this as a host, where people come up to you and they kind of like jump into a conversation that they heard you have earlier that day. And I’ve also done this to people. Like, the first time I met Bill Simmons, I was trying to be like slap happy, be like, tell me about house. And like, what’s up with Uncle Sal? It’s like, I don’t know this guy. He doesn’t know me.
So there’s something like weirdly intimate about it that I think is engaging and approachable. It should be because it’s not that impressive, because it’s a podcast. But I think it helps you build that connection.
Jon Favreau: Yeah. I’m more comfortable now doing TV, but still when I’m doing an interview, and I think it’s the time too and the format, right? Which is like you know that if you have a cable hit, that you’ve got like five minutes, seven minutes to get everything in —
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Jon Favreau: — about the questions you’re being asked. And so, you try to think, and like we’ve all coached politicians soundbites and —
Tommy Vietor: Right.
Jon Favreau: — you know, get the topic sentence at the beginning and all that. With the podcast, you stop thinking about that because it goes on for a while. You don’t necessarily see that you’re on screen all the time, and you’re just talking with your friends around a table.
Tommy Vietor: Yeah. Nicolle, you’ll appreciate this. Like, the first time I ever did TV, it was on one of those White House trips to Asia, where you’re gone for 10 days and you don’t sleep for three of them, and you’re loaded up with like Ambient and Provigil, and God knows what else. You’re trying to survive. It was my last trip and I wanted to sort of see if I could do TV. So I was like, hey, Chuck, will you interview me? You know Chuck Todd, like —
Jon Favreau: Of course.
Tommy Vietor: — nicest guy, like not intimidating. So they’re doing —
Nicolle Wallace: I think I made the same request. Yeah.
Tommy Vietor: But they’re doing a live shot on the roof somewhere, probably in Bali or something. My leg was shaking so hard that I’m making the cameras move and stuff. I mean, Chuck is like, it’s okay, man. You don’t have to.
Nicolle Wallace: He’s so nice. Yeah.
Tommy Vietor: I’ll edit this for you. But that is just inherent in the medium, right? There’s something that we put it on a pedestal.
Nicolle Wallace: Don’t you think the viewers are over it? I think that you guys are pushing us, at least those of us paying attention, to be more blunt, to be less produced, and to put some skin in the game, in a way that’s probably pretty healthy for television.
Jon Favreau: I think so, for sure. And I always see that when I tune in to MSNBC. We also have like Fox on in our office, just to check it out. You can tell that that’s what they do over there. I mean, it’s always been like this, but they’ve really gone full boring to like entertaining people. And so, it’s got the five, and they’re just sitting around joking. Sometimes even when it’s not about politics, it’s a little funny and it’s loose. And you guys have this on MSNBC as well. There’s like a large panel conversation of everyone in person. It’s fun. It’s light, whatever. And then it switches to an anchor reading the news, and you can just feel the difference, in a way that I don’t think you could 5, 10, 15 years ago.
Tommy Vietor: With Fox, you could tell there’s a run of show, right?
Jon Favreau: Yeah.
Tommy Vietor: Because the other day, we’re watching, and you could tell at the top of the hour, there was a memo that went down that said, at the top of the hour, we are attacking Jen Psaki for this completely benign joke about Usha Vance. And it happened over and over and over again.
Jon Favreau: Yeah.
Tommy Vietor: Like, six minutes in, they’re going to take a big whack at Jen Psaki. But Fox is more formulaic in that sense, but it’s also much more entertaining. They basically have like New York Post headlines under the screen all the time. I don’t know. I think we could all learn from it probably.
Nicolle Wallace: Well, let me ask you about that. I mean, it’s Year 9 of the Trump story, and I know Democrats hate this question, but why isn’t there something on the left or on the pro-democracy side, which is such a bigger audience? Why? Is it a bigger audience that doesn’t all agree on what is entertaining?
Tommy Vietor: You know, I think the left ecosystem is developing quickly. It didn’t exist. And now, there’s a lot of folks that have some really big accounts. We’re trying to build, you know, a counterweight to Fox News. For a long time, that was podcast-focused. But we’ve really been focused on YouTube development and growth, because that’s where we’re seeing all the numbers kind of explode.
But there is this growing ecosystem and, frankly, we’re trying to bring a lot of those people to Crooked Con, the event we’re doing, November 7th in D.C. to sort of help build it further.
Jon Favreau: I also think there’s something about the political context right now that makes it tricky, and we feel this tension all the time. There’s a ton of awful scary news to talk about every day, which makes it harder to joke around, or to present it in a way that may reach someone who is not a political junkie, like all of us.
And I do think that the Democrats challenge right now, and has been for some time, is like reaching beyond the political junkies to people who vote, but don’t necessarily pay close attention to politics. And so, you know, it’s a delicate balance, figuring out what’s going to appeal to people who aren’t necessarily paying attention all the time, while still making sure that we cover the news and talk about it in a way that is commensurate with sort of the urgency of the challenge right now.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, that is an articulation of the asymmetry, though. I think people like Tim Miller and nice people that are new to the Democratic Party’s coalition are evangelical about it, and are hurt and wounded and shocked when you see the poll numbers with the Democratic Party’s —
Jon Favreau: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: — approval rating almost as low, but you find it shock. Like, how could that be? What is that about? And how does this broader pro-democracy movement help fix that? Or do we hurt it? I mean, is that part of the problem that the base is suspicious of people like me?
Jon Favreau: No, I don’t think you hurt. I mean, my view is that you don’t hurt at all and it’s very additive, right? And I think in this moment that if you are watching the news, and watching especially the second Trump term unfold, and you are responding to it genuinely with how you feel and what you’re worried about based not only on, you know, your experience as an observer of politics, but as someone who has been in politics and been in government in the past, then I think that’s all you can really do, and that’s valuable. Right?
And I think that there’s a lot of people out there who, when they hear that former Republicans are alarmed about what Trump is doing, it’s going to matter to them. But I also think that the asymmetry also sort of manifests itself in. I always think about that, you know, in 2024, Trump said, oh, in four years, you’re not going to have to vote anymore. You can take that two ways. One, like, he’s going to cancel elections. But I think the other way is him being like, I’m going to be in there, I’m going to take care of everything, and all of you guys don’t have to pay attention to politics. And we can treat it as a joke. It’s a cynicism that sort of, you know, melts into nihilism at one point. And it’s all funny and who cares? And so, this is entertainment for you all. You can go back to your lives and don’t worry about it.
And our job is the opposite of that, right? We’re trying to tell people, you actually do need to care. You actually do need to be involved. You know that takes more sacrifice on behalf of the people who are paying attention, and so it can’t be as light and fun as the Republican side, though, we have to figure out a way to make the struggle and the movement joyful.
Nicolle Wallace: You’re getting at something that I think every one of us grapples with, which is how much of what he says do you cover as, you know, catastrophic if it comes to pass, and how much of it do you hold up against the very public display of incompetence. That is a hallmark of 2.0. I mean, to me, the trickiest thing about covering him is this collision between brazen incompetence and brazen malevolence, and I wonder how you balance those two things out.
Tommy Vietor: Yeah. I mean, I think that a lesson we all learned early on, probably I think 2017, 2018, is we can’t cover everything he says, especially if it’s outrageous, if sort of outrageous, the only outcome of what he said. We have to focus as much as we can on what he has been doing. And I think you’re starting to see why that focus is important. Look, I’ll be honest with you. When I first heard about the reports of the East Wing getting torn down, I was like, I don’t care. I just don’t care. Pay for it how you want. Let these tech guys bribe you, whatever. Build the freaking East Wing. I’m focused on other things.
But voters are really bothered by it. Like, they don’t like that he’s tearing down a house that he doesn’t own. They don’t like that it’s paid for by these private special interests. I think that should be a lesson to us. It’s surfacing stories like that, the corruption, the double dealing. I mean, he just pardoned this tech billionaire named CZ, who runs this company called Binance.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Tommy Vietor: Whose company was facilitating money laundering for ISIS, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It was doing sanctions violations with Iran. They were allowing the platform to be used with child sex abuse material, websites, like the most disgusting things you can imagine. And Trump pardoned this guy.
In any other administration, that would be a deal-breaker of a scandal probably. But for Trump, like he does so many outrageous things, that stuff like that can get washed away. And I think it’s incumbent on us to surface those things, to talk about them, to highlight them over and over again, just so people hear about it.
Jon Favreau: And here in year 400 of Trump, I try to spend less time now trying to guess what his motivations are —
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Jon Favreau: — or the motivations of the people who work for him. Like, is it incompetence? Is it malice, and just focused on the effects of what they’re doing? Because I think, ultimately, that is what’s going to matter to people who are going to be affected by these decisions. I’ve done plenty of guessing, we still do, like why is he doing this over the years? But I try to focus more on the effects of what he’s doing because, you know, you can have plenty of authoritarians who are incompetent fools.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Jon Favreau: And they can still do a lot of damage.
Nicolle Wallace: What do you sort of wake up and feel most drawn to? I mean, I, for years, have covered the assaults on the rule of law and the indictments of Comey and Tish James over the objections of sort of MAGA adjacent career prosecutors. To me, it’s so galling. And then the ICE stuff. I mean, I just can’t believe we live in a country where a person on their way to the market could be disappeared, not just arrested and questioned and brought to court, but actually like disappear before they come home with the groceries to make dinner.
And those two stories are like the two poles of what, for me, seem to be the most abrupt and jarring and dangerous pieces. But what are the sort of poles of Trump 2.0 that the pull both of you guys in first in the morning, when your eyes are open and you stare at your phone?
Tommy Vietor: It’s the ICE raids for me. Jon is a big fan. I’m a big fan. I love the ICE raids.
Jon Favreau: I’m surprised by that because it was something I was worried about. But the way he’s going about it and the way they’re going about it, I do think it connects with the Comey stuff and the political prosecutions because we’ve had this challenge over the last several years of talking to voters about attacks on democracy, attacks on the rule of law, because it doesn’t really land with people. People you see, even Jim Comey being prosecuted, and they’re like, well, that’s Comey. That’s not me. That’s not going to happen to me.
First, you start seeing the ICE stuff and you’re like, well, those are undocumented immigrants. That’s not going to happen to me. Well, you know, now they’re going after American citizens, right? It’s hard to read those stories and not think, oh, it’s going to stop with immigrants. It’s going to stop with Jim Comey and Letitia James, and all the rest of us are going to be fine. Like, I just don’t think that’s the case. What I don’t understand is why more people in the country aren’t hair on fire about this, and the very least more politicians aren’t talking about it every single day.
Nicolle Wallace: Right. Because if they do what they did to Senator Padilla, they do what they’re doing to older people in Chicago, there is obviously no line for them. And so this adaptive, mental trick that Americans understandably are engaged in, like, oh, that doesn’t affect me, has already been disproven.
Tommy Vietor: Yeah. It’s a completely lawless organization. I mean, look, the ICE stuff stuns me as well. I mean, I basically wake up on Mondays, it’s sort of entirely focused on domestic politics. Then Tuesdays, I record a show that’s about foreign policy and national security, and that’s the stuff I worked on the White House.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Tommy Vietor: And I’m old enough at this point, that your brain develops grooves that I think are like your comfort zone. So you got that stuff. I’m very focused on what’s happening in the Caribbean and off the coast of Venezuela. I mean, the strikes in these boats are shocking. It is extrajudicial murder, full stop. There is no legal authority to kill these people. You know that’s the case because when we captured two survivors the other day, we, the United States government, they returned them to their home countries rather than prosecute them. That’s how flimsy the legal case is for these murderers.
And on top of that, there is report after report, after report that Donald Trump wants Venezuela’s oil, and that Marco Rubio wants to run a regime change operation in Venezuela because he thinks that Venezuela is supporting Cuba. And the key to toppling the Cuban government as well is taking out Venezuela. I just think that is likely to be Libya 2.0 where you have a country with a lot of resources, but is split and factionalized, and there’s well-armed militia groups. And you could see a scenario where we topple the Maduro government, who’s a bad guy, but there’s a lot of bad leaders out there. And then the impact just ripples throughout South and Central America and leads to another migration crisis. So I’m very worried about that as well.
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Nicolle Wallace: Let’s sneak in a quick break right here. Next up, more of my conversation with Crooked Media co-founders, Tommy Vietor and Jon Favreau. Stay with us.
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Nicolle Wallace: When you look at the strategic frame around ending this period, you sort of already have the preconditions, right? So what he’s doing is already wildly unpopular. You’ve got the Republicans totally hostage to things that there are decades of tape of them, opposing all the policies. They’re now green lighting, whether it’s tariffs, whether it’s extrajudicial strikes by the military. I mean, what does the moment look like to you? Are we waiting for a leader to emerge? Are we waiting for the shock to wear off? Like, what phase of this do you think we’re in?
Tommy Vietor: I mean, I think the first phase is winning these elections in 2025, you know, Virginia, New Jersey, the New York mayoral race. And then the midterms in 2026 is going to be huge. I’m very worried about the trend on both sides, but, you know, Democrats are responding to further gerrymander these states, because I think that dynamic is what leads Republicans to refuse to ever peel off from supporting Trump, because they’re all more worried about a primary than a general election, where the vast majority of them are. But we have to win the midterms, and then Democrats need to step up.
I think that Trump’s numbers have gone down, but Democrats numbers are in the toilet. People need to understand who we are, what we’re for, what we’re fighting for. Some of that will come from the Democratic primary as we go into 2028. But some of it is just like rank and file members, doing things that matter. Like, Chris Van Hollen going to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, or speaking out on the war in Gaza, in a way that showed courage and leadership. It’s like got to be more moments like that, I think.
Jon Favreau: Yeah. I think you can understand to some extent right now, why a party with just about no power in Washington and that’s basically leaderless is struggling. The Democratic Party has lower favorable ratings than any time since I’ve been alive. And I think that, you know, people compare this to after Bush won reelection in 2004 with the Democratic Party. But even then, you know, Barack Obama had won and was giving national speeches, and was being talked about as a candidate. Hillary Clinton was being talked about as national candidate. Like, the people who are running in ’08 were out there.
I do think right now, in this context and the fact that like, you know, Trump is unpopular, but also he has a ton of power and he’s using it in ways that no president has used it. So it means that you need a leader who’s even more charismatic, or several leaders in the Democratic Party were even more charismatic than ever before. And you know, there’s a fight going on in the party about positioning and ideology, and I think that’s a good argument to have and good debates to have.
But to get people’s attention nationally, you do need charismatic leaders. And I worry that we don’t quite have that yet, or at least no one has broken through in a big way. Hopefully, that ramps up as we get closer to ’28, you get a bunch of candidates, right? But that’s what I think is holding people back right now. You can build movements, and movements are really important, but you got to have someone to follow and you got to have an alternative.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Jon Favreau: If you’re a voter who’s unhappy with Trump and the Republican Party, you got to be like, okay, well, this person seems like a good alternative. And right now, we don’t have that.
Nicolle Wallace: I guess the ex-Republican in me appreciates the psyops of what Gavin Newsom is doing. Like, you don’t fight Trump with a more optimistic vision. You fight him by kicking him. You know, I like the way Gavin Newsom is fighting, but I’m just not sure that that’s in the cellular longings of the Democratic base. I mean, who do you guys like, and what do you like that you’re seeing out there?
Tommy Vietor: I’m with you on what Gavin is doing. I think it’s been very smart and savvy, and part of it is having fun on Twitter and the tone. But then part of it is having real power and then using it with Prop 50, which will redistrict California and blunt the impact of what’s happening in Texas with their redistricting. So I think voters see that and they know, okay, this guy isn’t just full of it. Like, he’s actually really doing something. You know, look bigger picture, I don’t know, no one is blowing me away. I feel like it’s my job to sometimes pump people up.
Nicolle Wallace: I hate that answer. I was hoping you’d be like —
Tommy Vietor: I know.
Nicolle Wallace: — you just have your head in the sand. You don’t cable host.
Tommy Vietor: No, you don’t.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s this and that.
Tommy Vietor: You are better informed than like 99.99% of people. And I think all of us are waiting for that moment of inspiration. It doesn’t mean people are bad. Like, I think there’s great candidates out there.
Jon Favreau: Yeah.
Tommy Vietor: Like, Pete Buttigieg is a great guy. He’s really smart, doing important things. I don’t know, I don’t want to start listing because then you get in big trouble.
Jon Favreau: I think we set up what I’ve come to think is a false choice between a fighter or someone who’s hopeful, and positive, and inspirational. And I don’t even know if that’s the access. I think you need both. I think you can be both, right? I mean, Barack Obama was known for sort of hope and inspiration, he could be pretty tough.
Nicolle Wallace: Oh, I know. (LAUGH)
Jon Favreau: I was going to say, in fact, you could tell. Yeah. Anyone on the Clinton campaign, anyone on the McCain campaign —
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Jon Favreau: — people who’ve run against him can be like, oh, he’s —
Nicolle Wallace: He’s a competitor. Yeah.
Jon Favreau: — known as like hope and change and inspiration, but he can be really tough. And I think you can do both, and I think actually a Democratic leader needs to do both, because if all you’re doing is you’re out there kicking the shit out of Donald Trump every day, that is going to get you attention. It is going to excite people who are already Democrats. It’s not necessarily going to excite people who voted for Donald Trump or who, you know, thought about voting for Donald Trump, but are unhappy and are open to Democrats, right? Like, they want more. They want a vision of where you want to take the country.
And so, I do think you have to do both. But to your point, like how can you keep up and sustain the conversation? That is like table stakes now for a nominee or for a candidate, right? Because we have now come of age with a president, Donald Trump, who was for better or worse, mostly worse, just tweeting all day long. You hear from him all day. He’s in our faces constantly, right? And everyone is on social media. They get their news from social media, YouTube, everywhere else, where you are just seeing people talk like themselves all day long. They’re authentic. They are casual. They’re informal.
People now, I think, have come to expect from their politicians, from their leaders. You’ve got to be yourself. You’ve got to sound like you’re just having a conversation with a friend, and you’ve got to be in our faces all the time.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Jon Favreau: Otherwise, I don’t know who you are. And so, I do think that whoever is going to emerge in 2028 is someone who’s going to be so comfortable in every kind of setting themselves and not sound like a talking point robot machine.
Tommy Vietor: And Nicolle, you were a former comms professional too, like we were.
Nicolle Wallace: What does that mean anymore? Right?
Tommy Vietor: God only knows. I mean, think about all the meetings we all sat through, where it’s like —
Nicolle Wallace: Pointless.
Tommy Vietor: — there’s a grid, and there’s like message discipline on Monday.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Tommy Vietor: Right. Don’t repeat the attacks.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Tommy Vietor: Trump will do like three ad hoc press conferences per day and it’s all live, and he rifts and he does it like when times are good, and he does it in the middle of the Epstein debacle.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Tommy Vietor: That’s just how he rolls —
Jon Favreau: Yeah.
Tommy Vietor: — and it’s highly effective.
Nicolle Wallace: What do you make of the fact that there’s this slow burn around and it’s serious. I mean, you hear that Trump and Leavitt seem to be trying to get us to cover it. But pulling President Barack Obama into their efforts to investigate the investigation into Russia’s attack on the 2016 election, is that the way to talk about it? I mean, I’ve heard I think his name is Mike Davis, this right-wing agitator, talking about a grand jury in Florida.
Tommy Vietor: Totally. Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, Leavitt has this diatribe from the podium in July, I think, laying out this grand conspiracy. She’s reading from a piece of paper. I mean, do you think that they will present evidence to a grand jury against President Barack Obama?
Tommy Vietor: I mean, I think sometimes Democrats, we call too many things a distraction, when really it’s just like Trump talk about what he wants to talk about. That to me was the ultimate moment of distraction. This was like in the worst moments of the Epstein fiasco, all of a sudden, they rolled out the Obama did treason button and started hitting it for a couple weeks. Like, I don’t know that we’ve heard about it much since. Maybe they will go after him. I think it’s a lot easier for them to go after lesser known, less popular political figures —
Jon Favreau: Yes.
Tommy Vietor: — than the extremely popular former president, who literally known in this country, except for the most brainwashed lunatic think actually rigged an election against Donald Trump. But, I mean, I guess they could try.
Jon Favreau: They’re scared. I think some of them realize, enough of them realize that that is politically stupid. You’re right. John Bolton is a great example, right? Which is like, who’s coming to John Bolton’s defense? Not Democrats and liberals necessarily. He wasn’t a favorite there, right? Same with Comey, right? And so, you can pick on people like that and start. But they go to try to arrest Barack Obama or indict Barack Obama. He’s been the most popular politician, living politician in the country.
Nicolle Wallace: Do you think there are enough people around him to slow that down?
Jon Favreau: I mean, slow down, I don’t know. I mean, I do think that some people in the Obama administration that they’re investigating, they will certainly try to go after them, John Brennan, people like that. And the question there is like, can you even get an indictment? Can you get it that far? Since some of these indictments, James Comey, are incredibly weak. So, you know, they have to go about getting an indictment, and indicting them on something.
Tommy Vietor: Yeah
Jon Favreau: Which some of this stuff, it’s like there’s just nothing there.
Tommy Vietor: And most of these indictments are based on congressional testimony that was within five years to get past the statute of limitations questions. I mean, look, Trump is like kind of a feral political genius, right? Every rally is a focus group. He figures out what plays and what doesn’t.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Tommy Vietor: I suspect he’s smart enough to know that indicting Barack Obama probably wouldn’t go well for him and he’ll avoid it. But we’ll find out. I shouldn’t predict.
Nicolle Wallace: Do you welcome your old boss’ role in helping in California with Prop 50? I mean, his voice is so missed, and I know he’s choosing his spots carefully. But what do you make of the choices he’s making about when and how to speak out?
Tommy Vietor: I’m glad he did the Prop 50 thing. I think that was great. I’m glad he’s campaigning in these final weeks. I do hope that he and his organization will make a bit of a strategic shift, which is, I understand like picking your spots, not weighing on everything, like that is a trap. But I think there’s a challenge around elections, but then there’s a Democratic Party brand problem that we are failing to address, and I would love to see him part of the solution to that brand problem. And that could include like Barack Obama go on Joe Rogan. Why not? He could hang for three hours. It might not be a good time. You might get some weird questions about how actually the polio vaccine didn’t work or something. But, like, I don’t know, go do it.
Nicolle Wallace: No. He’d have to talk about the pyramids. The thing is like once you start listening to Joe Rogan, you realize that the politics is such little. I started listening to it.
Tommy Vietor: A smidge (ph). Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace:It’s like a smidge (ph). I listened for three hours. The pyramid thing is like as big —
Tommy Vietor: Totally.
Nicolle Wallace: — as politics.
Tommy Vietor: And prep would be funny.
Nicolle Wallace: It would be funny, right? Like, you could just imagine any normal person saying —
Tommy Vietor: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: — he’s going to ask me about what?
Jon Favreau: Knowing him, every time he gets back out on the trail to campaign, he’s really into it. He does not seem like a person who feels like he’s been forced to go there.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Jon Favreau: And so, I think he realized, he’s like, I’m very successful Democratic politician. I care a lot about these issues. I care a lot about the country. I care a lot about what’s happening to the country right now. I know he’s very alarmed at what’s happening right now, and I don’t think the choice has to be, do nothing or get out there every single day and be in Trump’s face. Like, there’s a whole lot of space in between.
And to Tommy’s point that the Democratic branding and where the party should go, he’s like particularly useful to talk about that. His argument is, or one of his arguments is like, he’s a big figure, right? And every time he gets out there and speaks, it doesn’t allow for a new generation of Democrats to go out there and sort of grab the spotlight. And that is true in a sense. But in a vacuum, which is when we’re in right now, I think every voice that has a huge platform, a lot of followers that people really respect, I think should be out there right now, talking about this, because any way to break through to a lot of people who aren’t political junkies, which Barack Obama speaking will do, I think could have a really important effect.
Nicolle Wallace: Well, you guys know better than me, but my sense is that his two of the red lines that might get him back out there were the military and the Department of Justice. And those lines have been crossed back and forth and back and forth. It seems that the things that he warned about and some of those most urgent speeches ahead of election day have come to pass.
Tommy Vietor: That’s a fair point.
Jon Favreau: Yeah. I would imagine, it’ll be interesting to see what his events with Spanberger and Sherill are like, because he tends to have a lot of the thoughts that, you know, we’re all talking about. And then he just sort of uncorks at a campaign event, you know, when he’s just out there feeling it. And so —
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Jon Favreau: — I’m interested to see if he goes off on those events.
Nicolle Wallace: How much of your time with him, for both of you, is sort of in your brain when you’re either trying to pull things out of other people and the way that he pulled things out of you guys, or just in the way you see the world?
Tommy Vietor: So I worked for him for nine years. I started in the 2004 Senate race, and I left in 2013. Jon and I left at the same time. So, you know, I’m sure you dealt with this too. Like, I had to deprogram myself. I had to remember how to think for myself because, like, my entire —
Nicolle Wallace: Spokesperson. Yeah.
Tommy Vietor: Yeah. It was in my DNA. It was like, this guy’s political views became mine and that overlap became very real. It took some time, I got better at it. I think what that experience does is it gives you empathy for how hard the job of governing is. It’s very easy to take shots from the sidelines, and I do a lot of it. But, you know, you also realize like actually implementing these things, actually breaking through, actually convincing voters and winning elections and governing is really, really hard. And I think that comes through, I hope it does.
Jon Favreau: I’ve tried to deprogram myself and I don’t know if I’ve done it completely successfully. And it’s not necessarily about the political views, like I, you know, look at a news story and form my own opinion, but in the way that I think about arguing, I think about persuading people, I think about like topics to choose, stories to tell. The way he talks and thinks, you know, I think because I spent so long with them and wrote with them, it’s just like a part of me.
There’s still times these days where we have made a point on the pod or said something, and then he says something, and I’m like, oh yeah, without knowing it, I’m like, we’re still sort of channeling him without knowing it.
Nicolle Wallace: Isn’t that a good thing though? I mean, I guess what’s funny coming from the other side is, you guys are talking about deprogramming yourself from the greatest political athlete of our lifetimes, I would love to like program myself.
Tommy Vietor: Yeah. Look, he’s an extraordinary communicator, speaker, decent human being, like never yelled at me in nine years. Kind of insane when you think of other people’s political experiences. I do think it’s valuable to be able to say, with the benefit of hindsight, these were mistakes. You know what I mean? Like, the war in Libya, not the best idea. Surging a bunch of extra troops to Afghanistan, given the results we saw in 2021, in hindsight, like, was not the right thing to do. Right? So I think just like being able to be candid about those things gives you credibility or just perspective to be smarter about stuff today.
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Nicolle Wallace: My conversation with “Pod Save America’s” Tommy Vietor and Jon Favreau continues right after the break. We’ll be back in one minute.
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Nicolle Wallace: What do you guys think about your own roles as sort of public figures? Like, it’s clear that covering a public figure, and Charlie Kirk who paid with his life for being in the arena really shook everybody. It shook all of us. You guys didn’t try to hide that experience of being shaken by seeing political violence.
Jon Favreau: Yeah, it’s interesting. I think part of podcasting is, you know, we’re in a studio, we’re with each other, and you just talk all day and you don’t really see yourself as a public figure all the time. And then something like that happens, and you realize like, you know, we do live shows and we go on the road, and it makes you think twice.
In terms of the public figure stuff, I feel like I have an obligation to people to, like I said, give them factual information and correct myself when I don’t. And I feel like I have an obligation to use the platform I have to continue trying to persuade people who are with us, to get involved and stay involved, and persuade other people, and people who may not be with us to change their minds, you know.
And I wake up every day thinking about, when I read the news, okay, well, how can I convince that person that this is a big deal and that we should do —
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Jon Favreau: — something about it, who might not be completely on board. Like, what is the best way to persuade?
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, I think that might be like the mental illness of being former government workers or political operatives, right? I never feel like I’m just reading the news. Like, I instill at my core, a partisan, and now I don’t even know a partisan, I guess a pro-democracy partisan. But I want to bring people along. And if I can find this little kernel that I think might bring them along, I want to make sure that that part is abundantly clear.
Do you think that’s a weakness in the media bubble, that we should all have a stake in whether we remain? I mean, only in a democracy is the First Amendment the First Amendment, and is it honored? Like, do you think the sort of old models of neutrality are outdated?
Tommy Vietor: Probably a little bit. But, I mean, I think there’s real value to it. You know, I mean, I have so much respect for reporters who wake up every day and file like 700 FOIAs and, you know, like grind it out and call sources, and bring the information that we then talk about. And I always want to just be honest about that and have some reverence for the fact that our work and like punditry basically is built off the backs of reporters who are nonpartisan or like just the facts, and trying to do that work.
I do think there’s space though, in a broader media ecosystem, for people that are partisan and who are activists. And in addition to thinking about the need to persuade people, part of what’s always in my head is like, especially when I talk to younger people, it’s like just reminding that politics didn’t always suck. It wasn’t always about like one guy, like the worst person in the world upsetting you every day. Like, it can be inspirational.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s getting farther and farther away, though, when it didn’t suck.
Tommy Vietor: I know, but we can do good things. You can help people. You can find some core decency. We can get back there. And just like, you know, Tim Miller once called us cloyingly optimistic or something along that line. But, you know, you need a little of that.
Jon Favreau: Yeah. I have come to appreciate the value of objective reporting even more over the years. Like, I think I was more of a media critic right after I got out of the White House, which I guess people in the White House, that’s probably common.
Tommy Vietor: It’s what we did. Yeah.
Jon Favreau: But over the years, I’ve become less of a media critic, especially for sort of straight news reporting because we just desperately need that information now, and we need people in the country to trust that it is truthful and real. And that’s obviously a huge problem. And I think if there weren’t people who also felt comfortable offering opinion and analysis on television and everywhere else that we watch and consume news now, that would be a problem. But there’s no shortage of pundits out there like us who are offering people’s opinions. So I do think that people who work for The Times, The Post, CNN, MSNBC, wherever it may be, like, we really, really need some original reporting right now because people don’t trust anything anymore.
Nicolle Wallace: What do you think about when you look at your kids? Like, my kid is old enough. Well, I have a teenager and I have a baby. I’ve got one who President Obama was the first person he knew as president. And then when Trump won in ‘16, he said, but we still have President Obama, right? It was true. Like, it was a transition. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he was just too young for the first Trump years. But I do think like they might know kids who die of measles. What do you think about as parents?
Tommy Vietor: I mean, it changes everything. It’s completely cliche, but it does. I mean, I have a 2-year-old and a 1-year-old. So after the Charlie Kirk assassination, I mean, I saw all these videos of, you know, him and his daughter and it just absolutely gutted me because I just imagined the loss that those kids were experiencing, that his wife was experiencing, what it would be like to be in his shoes. And that, honestly, drove my entire reaction. I understand the politics of it, but like, to me, that was the thing that hit me first.
In terms of how it influences politics, it makes you rethink everything. Like, what are these kids going to study? What are these kids going to do for a living? What kind of country are they going to grow up in? The RFK stuff, like you, like it genuinely freaked me out. We had to have a conversation with our pediatrician because there was some measles outbreak. Like, should we move James’ schedule up? Is that a bad idea? Is that unsafe? I have close family members that frankly have been swayed by the RFK, kind of MAHA anti-vax movement and the impact there. So, you know, it changes everything, and it just ups the stakes of everything we do and talk about every day, because I want them to grow up in this country too and feel safe, and be healthy, and have a meaningful life out of them.
Jon Favreau: I have almost 2-year-old and a very precocious 5-year-old.
Nicolle Wallace: I think in a cast, right?
Jon Favreau: Yeah. The younger one was in a cast. The older one also just had a forehead injury.
Tommy Vietor: And Jon had a week.
Jon Favreau: Yeah. Both of them were in the hospital the last couple of weeks.
Tommy Vietor: Overheard two calls from my desk, I’m like, he’s in the ER again? (LAUGHTER) Okay.
Jon Favreau: Yeah. It was quite a week in our household. But, Charlie, my eldest is like just constantly asking questions, he’s at that age. And it is really challenging trying to explain what is going on in the world to a 5-year-old who is starting to get it. You know, we live in Los Angeles, the ICE raids are everywhere, and I am like dreading the moment when he asks about that, and he hasn’t yet.
He’s very obsessed with the weather and storms, and so he’s asking all about Hurricane Melissa that was hitting Jamaica, and he’s asking all about hurricanes and what happens. And he goes, well, if the people in Jamaica needed help, he’s like, maybe they could come here. He’s like, would we have them here? And I’m like, you know, in the past, we would.
Tommy Vietor: Yeah.
Jon Favreau: But I’m like, we don’t now. And he’s like, why not? I’m like, Donald Trump doesn’t really like offering people the chance to come here anymore. He’s like, well, why is that? I try to avoid too being like, he’s a bad person, maybe like, he does bad things, right? Because I’m also cognizant, in fact, that I want to raise kids who are generous and kind, and see like a different conception of what it means to be strong and what it means to love their country, you know, than what they’re seeing from Donald Trump. So I don’t want to be like, oh, here’s the orange man, he’s awful. But it’s hard to explain why —
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Jon Favreau: — these people do the things they do and the decisions that they make.
Nicolle Wallace: I think a lot about how is he doing all this, like how are their ICE agents fronting around L.A., disappearing people. And some of it is the success of Republicans operationalizing the dehumanization. And what was promised to their voters was the worst of the worst would be deported, people who would commit violent crimes. It takes them like 20 minutes to do much, much, much more than that.
And I wonder is dehumanization is making sure that people realize these aren’t the worst of the worst. If it were, we’d hear all about it. I mean, Trump doesn’t do anything secretly, not even the bad things. That’s why we know about the strikes. But he definitely doesn’t do anything good in secret. I mean, there would be like show deportations if they really were the worst. We would all know about it.
How do you make more people care? How do you persuade the people who are indifferent to, one, understand the facts that these are not the worst of the worst? How do you make people care at a human level about the things that are happening?
Tommy Vietor: I think it’s why the individual stories are so important. When Andry Hernandez Romero was sent to Cecot, and we saw the images and heard the story about him crying for his mom, and getting his head shaved, and slapped and beaten, I then saw photos of this man who was openly gay, makeup artist. And we were told that he was in a gang because he had a tattoo. I think that just like laid bare how idiotic, and wrong, and immoral, and frankly evil that policy was, and it shook people.
And I think you’ve seen similar things recently, like when a bunch of ICE agents in Chicago shot a priest who was asking them to pray, in the head with a pepper ball, you know, like, there’s no explaining that. There’s no spinning that away. Tricia McLaughlin can lie and go on TV and say whatever nonsense. But when ICE is cracking the ribs of a 60-year-old man, who’s just trying to drive home from a jog, like people, when they hear that story, know what’s wrong. I think the statistics just wash over your head and no one cares or undercontextualize them. It’s these individual stories that are powerful, and that’s where I think like you come in, we come in, the media comes in, just lifting these things up, so it gets to people.
Jon Favreau: But I also think Democratic leaders have to not be afraid to talk about this. And I get the polling, I have been steeped in it. I know the immigration polling. I know the politics of immigration. I know how difficult it is. But the advice from your median Democratic strategist pollster remains, you know, it’s not our best issue and cost of living is, and that’s what more people care about. I think that is true in a period of normal politics, and I think we are not in a period of normal politics anymore. And rehumanization actually needs to be a goal of ours now because we are dealing with an authoritarian threat where they are trying to dehumanize people.
Look, there’s a difference between people saying I support tighter border security, more asylum restrictions, no public benefits at all for non-citizens. I’m not surprised that those things are popular. Those things are not. Do you support masked armed federal agents in the street shooting pepper balls at priests, breaking people’s ribs and disappearing people? And I get that there’s not a lot of research about those polling questions because it hasn’t happened in the country before.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Jon Favreau: So we’re operating as if like it’s normal times and it’s not. And I do think that if the polling and the strategy started reflecting what’s actually happening, I think you would see that more people would be appalled by this, if you asked them. And then maybe that would give Democratic politicians a little bit more courage to talk about these issues, just as much as they talk about healthcare and other really important cost of living issues.
Nicolle Wallace: I guess my last question is, are you optimistic? And if you are, of what happening, like how do you think this ends?
Tommy Vietor: I don’t feel that optimistic. I can’t lie to you. It’s a little worrisome. I’m very concerned about the weaponization of the Justice Department. I’m very worried about the people in charge of election security and integrity, and what they’re planning to do, and the possibility of the Voting Rights Act getting thrown out and, you know, just Republicans gerrymandering a bunch of districts to hell, that are currently represented by Democrats.
I think, though, the only way out is through, and the only way out is all of us coming together, uniting, putting away the kind of intra-Democratic Party or intra-pro-democracy factionalism that can sometimes spill out, right? Like, we all know the frustrating feeling of the fact that the 2016 Democratic primary has never ended. We are still fighting about it today. Those scars are deep and lasting, and it is bad.
But I think when you look around the world at the way authoritarian movements are defeated, it’s by creating the biggest coalition possible, and those people organizing and marching and hitting the streets. And the No Kings protests was a start of that, but we got to keep it up.
Jon Favreau: Yeah. I think there’s only two choices, give up and keep fighting, and choosing to give up sort of guarantees if enough people do it, that the worst outcome happens. And it also means that if you give up on this, that other people are making decisions that are going to affect your life, and you’re not even part of that. And fighting gives you a chance, and it has throughout history.
And so, it’s taken me 44 years now to understand the cliche that you’re supposed to take one day at a time and sort of like live in the present. But that is what I’ve been trying to do especially in the second Trump term is not doom about the future, not dream about the future, but basically just say we are going to get through each day. We are going to try to convince more people, persuade more people, and we’re going to see what happens.
And you know, like Tommy said, you go out to No Kings and you see a bunch of other people and you’re like, okay, we’re not alone. This is good. And I think that building that muscle, that’s going to sustain us beyond just election to election because I think we are past just going from cycle to cycle right now. What will get us out of this is a movement, and a movement that is sustained, that is fearless, and that that’s not going to back down. And I think that building that movement is probably going to take way more than just one election cycle, even a presidential cycle. So I think we’re all in it for the long haul. But I think that if we keep fighting, that there’s a chance we can get out of this.
Nicolle Wallace: I think the world of everything you guys create, and I’m so honored that you had time to talk to me today. Thank you so much.
Jon Favreau: Thank you.
Tommy Vietor: Thank you for having us.
Jon Favreau: I feel the same about you. Thank you so much for having us on.
Nicolle Wallace: Thank you, guys.
Jon Favreau: Thanks.
Tommy Vietor: Take care.
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Nicolle Wallace: Before we wrap up, I wanted to share that Crooked Con is happening. It’s a gathering of the “smartest organizers and least annoying politicians.” They’re all strategizing, debating and commiserating about where we go from here. It’s happening November 6th and 7th in Washington, D.C. and tickets are on sale right now.
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