JON FAVREAU Talks Obama, Bin Laden, ICE

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by The Home Depot. The Home Depot has everything you need to launch your holiday season in style. Upgrade your yard with this year's hottest holiday decor, including the showstopping towering Santa. Oh, I like that one. And his impressive reindeer, both 8.5 feet, and both designed with incredible detail that stands out day or night. When you want decor that delivers impact, The Home Depot has it. Make your home Santa's favorite stop with the holiday decor you want, all waiting for you at The Home Depot. This episode is brought to you by Boar's Head. You know what I love about football season? It's the football, but also the football watching food. And nothing hits like a Boar's Head sandwich when I'm watching a game. Really, any game day sandwich better with Boar's Head. Philly cheesesteak, layer up buttery slider rolls with Boar's Head London broil roast beef,

• 0:45Speaker 00

  American white cheese, and picante provolone. Delicious. Then add roasted onions, peppers, and Boar's Head pub-style horseradish sauce. I love horseradish. And you've got the ultimate game day cheesesteak. They've also got a whole lineup of premium meats, cheeses, hummus and dips, condiments and more to serve up on game day. Head to your local Boar's Head deli counter to shop now. For game day sandwich inspiration and more, visit boar'shead.com. Boar's Head, committed to craft since 1905. Were you in the Situation Room? That was his, that was the moment where, where he got love from everyone.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Oh, with the Bin Laden operation?

• 1:21Speaker 00

  You were in the Situation Room?

• 1:22Speaker 01

  No, I was not right into that.

• 1:25Speaker 00

  What a loser.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Loser, no.

• 1:27Speaker 00

  What a loser. Were you outside, like, trying to listen in?

• 1:31Speaker 01

  No, because I didn't, I didn't know it happened until, I didn't know it happened until I got the draft remarks of what he was gonna say.

• 1:39Speaker 00

  They didn't tell you?

• 1:40Speaker 01

  From Ben.

• 1:41Speaker 00

  Oh, you were a fucking loser, dude.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  Well, I didn't do any of the, I wasn't the foreign policy, national security speechwriter guy.

• 1:47Speaker 00

  That sucks.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49Speaker 00

  Can you imagine how sick it was? Hillary Clinton saying, "This is my playing. I'm calling all the shots here. Shut up, Obama."

• 2:26Adam Friedland?

  Hello and welcome back to the Adam Friedland Show. It's Adam Friedland, guys. First off, going back on the road this weekend. They added a sixth show, Seattle/Washington. It's at, what's it called? Emerald City Comedy Club. Thursday night, there's one extra show. Everything else is sold out. Also, folks, I'll be in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania next month at Helium Comedy Club. Get tickets while you still can. They're gonna sell out quick. And in May, I'll be in Los Angeles, California for the Netflix Is a Joke Fest at the Regent Theater. Pre-sale begins tomorrow, or today, if you're watching on the general feed, right? Tomorrow at noon?

• 3:00Speaker 03

  Tomorrow at noon.

• 3:01Adam Friedland?

  Today at noon.

• 3:02Speaker 03

  No, pre-sale.

• 3:03Adam Friedland?

  Pre-sale.

• 3:04Speaker 03

  The general. I wonder what this feed is.

• 3:07Adam Friedland?

  Today.

• 3:08Speaker 03

  Say the date, maybe. The 21st.

• 3:10Adam Friedland?

  Pre-sale begins at the 21st of tomorrow, the 21st of January, the month right now, at noon. So that was probably earlier today. And the code is Adam.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  Pacific time.

• 3:22Adam Friedland?

  Pacific time. Noon Pacific time, 3:00.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  The code is Adam Pacific time.

• 3:25Adam Friedland?

  3:00 PM.

• 3:26Speaker 03

  Is Adam Pacific time?

• 3:29Adam Friedland?

  The code is Adam. It's noon Pacific time, and it was already today at noon Pacific time. Also, I'd like to thank our members here on youtube.com. You guys support the show. If you'd like to support us, you can select "Join" at the top of your page. And if you join at the second or third tiers, you can get your name in the credits of this fine program. There's also a link in the description of the video below. And there's also a link to a Patreon if you prefer to use Patreon. Finally, there's merch available at adamfriedlandshow. Guys, I'm not only all about money, okay? My guest this week is American political podcaster and speechwriter Jon Favreau. Favreau is known, of course, as the host of the political podcast Pod Save America. I never miss an episode.

• 4:10Adam Friedland?

  And he was previously employed as the senior speechwriter for Barack Obama, the Obama administration, the White House. What the hell have we done with our lives, huh? Funnily enough, this is not the first time our paths have crossed. What are you gonna say? No, come on.

• 4:24Speaker 04

  What? Read it.

• 4:27Speaker 04

  Read it.

• 4:27Adam Friedland?

  Funnily enough, this is not the first time our paths have crossed. In 2013, an 18-year-old Adam Friedland dropped off a packet of speeches at the front desk of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the reception. I was getting my start, writing speeches for the President of the United States. It seemed like a pretty good first job. Now, of course, I was not hired. But I'd like to share a snippet from one of my

• 4:52Adam Friedland?

  from one of the speeches that I handed over that day to imagine what life may be like had today's guest taken a chance on me. Hello, I'm President Hello. Hello, let me Hello, I'm President Barack Obama, and I'm here to talk to you today about a seriously bad problem that's destroying the core of this nation and eating away at what makes us great. America is suffering from an epidemic, an epidemic of girls who are cheating on good boyfriends. Good guys who like movies and books more than go to the club. Guys who want to stay in and be romantic instead of wearing revealing clothing.

• 5:36Adam Friedland?

  Guys who think makeup is the same as lying and prefer a natural look. Guys who hate condoms because the feeling of them is weird.

• 5:47Adam Friedland?

  These are good men, honest men who got good grades and know about music. And girls need to stop cheating on them immediately. This is a presidential order. Thanks. And can I just say, being the president is the best job I've ever had. Please enjoy my interview with Jon Favreau, everyone. Give it up for him. That's one of the best ones. Ladies and gentlemen, host of Positive America, former head speechwriter for the Obama White House, Jon Favreau, everyone. God damn it, guys. Joji, you can't pull focus and clap?

• 6:26Adam Friedland?

  How's it going?

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Pretty good.

• 6:28Adam Friedland?

  How's it, you have the same name as that guy? That's gotta suck.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  You know what?

• 6:33Adam Friedland?

  Are you boys with him?

• 6:34Speaker 01

  It's been, uh, yeah. I'm not boys with him, but I know him.

• 6:37Adam Friedland?

  You gotta know him.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  I had been in the White House for two years. And one of our staff, one of my colleagues came up to me. He's like, "Hey, I noticed at the end of Iron Man 2, like, did you work on that movie?" And I was like, "Did I work on that movie?" I'm like, "You have been with me every day, every hour for the last two years. You think I had time to work on Iron Man 2?" I'm like, "No, that wasn't me. That's the other Jon Favreau."

• 7:03Adam Friedland?

  You're making Obama look bad.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Well, it wasn't him.

• 7:07Adam Friedland?

  I'm not saying it was Barack Obama. Of course Barack Obama would know.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  He knew who I was.

• 7:11Adam Friedland?

  But, why would he hire? That person shouldn't be allowed to drive.

• 7:16Adam Friedland?

  They were, why would? You know, well, actually, I had to change my name for, because there was a guy in show business. Yeah, already, with my name.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Now you're the most famous.

• 7:25Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, there couldn't be a second Malcolm X, you know?

• 7:33Speaker 01

  I first noticed it when he was in Rudy.

• 7:36Adam Friedland?

  Malcolm X?

• 7:37Speaker 01

  No, Malcolm X wasn't Rudy.

• 7:38Adam Friedland?

  You know, he was a redhead.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  No, Jon Favreau was in Rudy.

• 7:40Adam Friedland?

  Oh, Jon Favreau.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  And I remember seeing the credits and I was like, I was a kid.

• 7:44Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. And you're like, "What the [bleep] is going on?"

• 7:47Speaker 01

  [bleep] that guy.

• 7:48Adam Friedland?

  What the [bleep]? No, but, I mean, you were in the White House and you're still number two, you think? Or you're number one?

• 7:53Speaker 01

  I mean, he's done a lot of great stuff.

• 7:55Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, but...

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Big stuff.

• 7:57Adam Friedland?

  If you run...

• 7:57Speaker 01

  He's not, he wasn't just, he was like an actor, now he's like a big director.

• 8:00Adam Friedland?

  If you run for president, you could be the number one Favreau, you think? If you win president?

• 8:04Speaker 01

  That's what I'd have to do.

• 8:05Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  That's what I'd have to do.

• 8:06Adam Friedland?

  Trudeau was the prime minister and he was this number two Justin in Canada. How pathetic is that?

• 8:13Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 8:13Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, Bieber, he's still, Bieber's bigger still.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, and now he's with Katy Perry, so it's all...

• 8:19Adam Friedland?

  Trudeau?

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:21Adam Friedland?

  What? I miss everything. He is?

• 8:24Speaker 01

  That's what I've, that's what I've seen.

• 8:30Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, do you ever feel like a plastic bag? Do you remember where you were the first time you heard of it?

• 8:37Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, my friend, actually, he went to college with a guy named Austin Powers.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  That's tough.

• 8:42Adam Friedland?

  How brutal is that?

• 8:43Speaker 01

  That's really tough.

• 8:43Adam Friedland?

  Can you imagine the first movie comes out, he's like, "Okay, it's six months of this yeah, baby, yeah" stuff? He goes to the bank and people are like, "Do I make you horny?" His life has been hell.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  That's for the rest of his life.

• 8:55Adam Friedland?

  Then there's a second one, he's like, "Oh, there's a sequel." He's like, "Well, sequels are always bad." He's like, "This is the end of this nightmare."

• 9:04Adam Friedland?

  His name is Borat.

• 9:07Adam Friedland?

  Can you imagine being named Austin Powers? Boy, oh my god, it would drive me insane. Yeah, if you're, yeah, my name is Shrek.

• 9:18Adam Friedland?

  Doesn't J.D. Vance have a stage name?

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Isn't J.D. Vance the stage name?

• 9:24Adam Friedland?

  It's, I mean, that, yeah, is the stage name.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Right. Well, he's changed his name.

• 9:29Adam Friedland?

  Three times.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:31Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  I don't even know what the original name is.

• 9:32Adam Friedland?

  You can't have a president change the name three times.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Who knows anymore?

• 9:37Adam Friedland?

  Or was he a wife guy? Was he like, "I'm taking her"?

• 9:39Speaker 01

  No, it was not that.

• 9:40Adam Friedland?

  No, he wasn't doing that?

• 9:41Speaker 01

  He's definitely not a wife guy.

• 9:41Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, because we couldn't vote for that either.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  I feel like if I read Hillbilly Elegy, I would know what the name was, but that's only a book that I pretended to have read.

• 9:51Adam Friedland?

  What was his last name? Knievel? You pretended to read Hillbilly Elegy?

• 9:55Speaker 01

  I pretended, but it's like you buy it and I'm like, I'm like, "I meant to read it."

• 9:59Adam Friedland?

  To get chicks? What were you saying?

• 10:00Speaker 01

  To get chicks. So it was like you're in politics, I'm like, "I should, everyone's talking about this book, I should probably read this book."

• 10:04Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  And you're like, read the first chapter and then you lose time.

• 10:07Adam Friedland?

  It was every lib parent, they were like, "Actually..."

• 10:09Speaker 01

  This is why we lost.

• 10:10Adam Friedland?

  And now this guy...

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Now we're gonna figure it out.

• 10:12Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  And we did.

• 10:13Adam Friedland?

  Peter Thiel, you're very slim, very smart. Yeah, okay, J.D. Vance, come on the show, but you can never be the president if you change, go back to your original name. Just David Hitler. We'll cut that, he's a friend. Okay. So wait, I looked at, I've been studying you, I know everything now.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Uh-oh.

• 10:34Adam Friedland?

  You had hot parents.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  I still do, they're still, they're still very much alive.

• 10:39Adam Friedland?

  They still look good?

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're still hot, they're still looking good.

• 10:42Adam Friedland?

  Hot parent kid is a, is a thing.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Hot parent kid, is that?

• 10:45Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, they stayed together?

• 10:46Speaker 01

  They, yeah.

• 10:47Adam Friedland?

  Okay, then that's good.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  They are.

• 10:49Adam Friedland?

  They weren't like too hot to, to be married.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  No, they're, they're, they're just hot enough to be together, so.

• 10:54Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  They're, and they, they live out in California with me now.

• 10:57Adam Friedland?

  Your dad's, your dad's kind of.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Big guy.

• 10:59Adam Friedland?

  Big guy, jacked.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Big guy.

• 11:00Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:01Adam Friedland?

  Did it make you want to be stronger than him?

• 11:03Speaker 01

  No, not really.

• 11:04Adam Friedland?

  Do you think you could beat your dad up now?

• 11:06Speaker 01

  No, for sure.

• 11:07Adam Friedland?

  Still, your dad could beat you up?

• 11:09Speaker 01

  He's six two, so he's got a few inches on me.

• 11:11Adam Friedland?

  You're making a bottle look bad. You can't.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  I don't want to beat up my dad.

• 11:16Adam Friedland?

  So he had a man be pam be son?

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 11:19Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he was never disappointed, which was nice.

• 11:21Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, but it, deep down.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Deep down?

• 11:23Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. My dad, my dad knows how to fix a car.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, uh, I think mine does.

• 11:29Adam Friedland?

  Do you, we don't.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  I don't know how to fix a car.

• 11:32Adam Friedland?

  We know how to write speeches, phenomenal speeches.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:36Adam Friedland?

  So he's like, my, my, my boy's a speech boy?

• 11:39Speaker 01

  My boy's, yeah.

• 11:39Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, he's like, he wanted you to play football, and you're like, I gotta write.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Never even pushed me for that.

• 11:45Adam Friedland?

  Did you grow up watching game tape of speeches?

• 11:47Speaker 01

  No.

• 11:48Adam Friedland?

  No?

• 11:48Speaker 01

  No, I didn't grow up in a like, my parents liked to talk politics, they weren't, I wouldn't say they were political, but they liked to talk politics. And I remember, I do remember like watching the 92 presidential debates with my dad. That was like my, one of my earliest political memories.

• 12:05Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, I remember my parents being so excited, because he was a boomer.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:11Adam Friedland?

  And the song was Fleetwood Mac.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was a big.

• 12:14Adam Friedland?

  They're like, it's one of us.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  And I remember, actually, I remember the 88 campaign, because Mike Dukakis.

• 12:19Adam Friedland?

  The helmet.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Democratic nominee, and my mother's Greek, and her maiden name is Demarcus, and, and he was from Lowell, and my mother's from like the town, like Woburn, which is right near Lowell in Massachusetts. And so like the fact that he was running for president was like the biggest deal ever.

• 12:35Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 12:35Speaker 01

  He's like a Greek.

• 12:36Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, why would the Democrats run a Greek?

• 12:38Speaker 01

  From Massachusetts.

• 12:39Adam Friedland?

  They're gonna run Staub next?

• 12:42Adam Friedland?

  What are they doing? Uh, wait, uh, yeah, it's so funny that a picture of a helmet, I mean, he really did look like a bitch ass in that picture.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, he's short too.

• 12:52Adam Friedland?

  That's the kind of thing that can sway an election. It feels like nowadays, like we forgot Trump got shot two days later, like.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:00Adam Friedland?

  And then Joe Biden dropped out two days later.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:03Adam Friedland?

  Those were the good days.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Those were wild.

• 13:05Adam Friedland?

  Those were the good.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Those are crazy summer.

• 13:07Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. It sucks that Biden did like his first funny thing before he dropped out.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Which was?

• 13:13Adam Friedland?

  He's like, when he's like, he was with Zelensky. And he was like, ladies and gentlemen, President Putin. It was like he was like doing the music guest on SNL. Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  I remember that press conference. That was a rough one.

• 13:28Adam Friedland?

  Who was forcing him to do that? The wife?

• 13:30Speaker 01

  No, him.

• 13:31Adam Friedland?

  No, it was the wife.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  I think she was.

• 13:33Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Encouraging.

• 13:34Adam Friedland?

  Jill was like, go out there.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  I think they were like, you do you. Like, we're gonna be with you no matter what you wanna do. And it was like, you want, you want some people when you're President of the United States, around you, who will tell you difficult things that you don't wanna hear.

• 13:51Adam Friedland?

  I thought you were gonna say laugh at all your jokes. Did Obama ever tell just a shit joke and you fake laughed? You definitely did.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 13:59Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. It's the president.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would definitely. I am an easy laugh anyway, but yeah, I'm sure I fake laughed at some of his jokes.

• 14:06Adam Friedland?

  And you're like, come on, Mr. President.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  That's not good.

• 14:09Adam Friedland?

  That's sexist. You can't say that about women.

• 14:13Adam Friedland?

  I shouldn't have shown you Entourage. Do you remember, your boss, he said that his favorite show was Entourage.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Did he say that?

• 14:19Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, so sick. So sick. That's so us.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  It was.

• 14:23Adam Friedland?

  It's so us.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  That is.

• 14:26Adam Friedland?

  That's so us, dude. I mean, you were 28 years old in the West Wing of the White House. You watched the show before?

• 14:33Speaker 01

  I did.

• 14:34Adam Friedland?

  So.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  I was in college, yeah, so I watched it then.

• 14:36Adam Friedland?

  So was your, you think you're Sam?

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:40Adam Friedland?

  But you wanna be Josh.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Do I?

• 14:43Adam Friedland?

  Anti-Semite. He's the anti-Semite.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  That's what it is.

• 14:45Adam Friedland?

  You wanna be Toby, the coolest guy on the show. Was there a Toby within the squad with you guys?

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Toby was communications director.

• 14:52Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, but he was a little dark.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:54Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  I don't know. All the characters were just a amalgam of people in the White House. So it's like, Toby was like David Axelrod, little Toby, you know?

• 15:04Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  But also like the communications director, I guess Pfeiffer could have been a little too.

• 15:07Adam Friedland?

  So you were like a Donna, you're saying?

• 15:08Speaker 01

  I was a Donna.

• 15:09Adam Friedland?

  You were a Donna?

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:10Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. Did you have, you were the boss of people older than you at 28?

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Uh, let's see, yeah.

• 15:15Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Couple. We were pretty young though as a group, the speechwriters.

• 15:19Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think most of them were my age or younger, but like Ben Rhodes is a couple years older than me. No one's too old, too much older than me.

• 15:27Adam Friedland?

  Was there any Harvard Lampoon guys?

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Uh, no, we didn't have any Harvard Lampoon.

• 15:32Adam Friedland?

  That's actually a serious question that I said as a joke, but it's plausible, yeah. They're everywhere.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  They are, yeah. You always run into a fucking Harvard Lampoon guy somewhere.

• 15:40Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. Do comics get hired for, as speechwriters?

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Um, I mean, Jon Lovett, he was, I guess he was, he did a little comedy before.

• 15:49Adam Friedland?

  Jon Lovett's?

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Jon Lovett's. My co-founder, co-host.

• 15:53Adam Friedland?

  We, what is, you guys bonded over having another guy with your names?

• 15:57Speaker 01

  No, cuz I didn't really like, I don't know, it took us a while to put together the Jon Lovett, Jon Lovett's thing. Because he didn't, cuz it's not like my name where it's spelled the exact same. Like...

• 16:08Adam Friedland?

  What, are you guys stupid? It's right there. Have you, Jon Lov, haven't you seen Rat Race?

• 16:15Speaker 01

  I have seen Rat Race.

• 16:16Adam Friedland?

  What, were you doing your homework?

• 16:17Speaker 01

  No, no. But yeah, no, so, uh, Lovett does comedy. He was our funny guy. He was our resident funny speechwriter.

• 16:24Adam Friedland?

  That's insulting, actually. You guys had real jobs. And now you're podcasting and doing comedy?

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:31Adam Friedland?

  It's, it's, come on. When I see NBA players, NBA players doing podcasts, I'm like, "I'm doing this cuz I'm not in the NBA." Just please, you don't want no part of this. This is a hell.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  It's a lot easier than working in the White House, what I do now.

• 16:48Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. Yeah, you're lazy and rich.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  He's good to talk about politics.

• 16:54Adam Friedland?

  You're, you went to Holy Cross?

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:56Adam Friedland?

  You and Bill Simmons, roommates?

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Uh, no.

• 16:59Adam Friedland?

  You were in a love triangle with Simmons?

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Clarence Thomas.

• 17:02Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. Do you think Simmons was power ranking girls at college?

• 17:12Speaker 01

  You'll have to ask him.

• 17:13Adam Friedland?

  Zuckerberg was, I think, yeah. The, that's the, yeah, that was the, the movie.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  That's how the whole thing started.

• 17:19Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, he was doing power rankings?

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:21Adam Friedland?

  I wonder if Zuck and Simmons ever linked that?

• 17:23Speaker 01

  It's like Hot or Not, and then like 15 years later, genocide.

• 17:26Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Going back to like comics writing for politicians. You know how like when our government lets BB just do open mic night to be mean to the president?

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:36Adam Friedland?

  We just let him go to the, to the government to give a speech and be like, "Obama's a bitch."

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Cuz the Republicans invited him. We didn't, Obama didn't even invite him.

• 17:45Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, but you're the president. You gotta be like, "I'll kill you if you..."

• 17:47Speaker 01

  He could've tried that.

• 17:48Adam Friedland?

  He had a line where I'm like... It's gotta be, it's Jerry. Jerry's, Jerry's in the writers' room, for sure. When he was like, "They say gays for Gaza, what about..." It's like saying chickens for KFC! That's gotta be a Jerry. That has to be a Jerry.

• 18:10Adam Friedland?

  Do you know, can you confirm or deny that Jerry Seinfeld's writing for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?

• 18:15Speaker 01

  I can do neither.

• 18:16Adam Friedland?

  Can you call Jerry Seinfeld and ask him?

• 18:18Speaker 01

  I don't know Jerry Seinfeld.

• 18:18Adam Friedland?

  You know Jerry Seinfeld.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 18:20Adam Friedland?

  You know Jerry Seinfeld. You're a college valedictorian, right? And then you go into the Kerry campaign shortly thereafter. Okay, you were a speechwriter, you were probably the youngest person in the room a lot of the time. But you were like, kind of a fly on the wall for like, history. So like, what was it like, like that arrival of Barack Obama?

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was, I was at the DNC in Boston. And I was a junior speechwriter at that point in the Kerry campaign. I was backstage and all the speakers would like, send their speeches to the Kerry campaign team. And so I was supposed to like, make sure that all the speeches were on message for the Kerry campaign.

• 18:58Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  And then, my boss, the head speechwriter at the time, now Congressman Josh Gottheimer from New Jersey.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  He called me, he was on the road with Kerry and he was like, "Hey, there is a, there's a line in Barack Obama's speech, who's giving the keynote, that John Kerry wants to use in his speech." And I was like, "All right." And he's like, "Well, they both can't use the same line."

• 19:24Adam Friedland?

  He stole his bit?

• 19:26Speaker 01

  So he was like, well, I'm like, "What are you talking, what are you telling me for?" He's like, "You have to get the line out of Obama's speech." I was like, "What?" So I have to go down the hall to where Obama's practicing the speech for the first time on teleprompter.

• 19:40Adam Friedland?

  Wait, go into the practice? I wanted, how did he do that?

• 19:44Speaker 01

  He, how did he?

• 19:45Adam Friedland?

  How's Barack Obama like, "I'm about to kill it." Yeah, like what?

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Well, he'd never-

• 19:49Adam Friedland?

  Does he have a mirror?

• 19:50Speaker 01

  He had never read off a prompter before. So he had to learn to use a teleprompter, because he had never like, given a prepared speech. He was like a state senator, you know?

• 19:58Adam Friedland?

  So he was an idiot too? So that entire White House are idiots?

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure, for sure. And so he's practicing and I have to go in, I'm like, 21 at the time, 22? And-

• 20:11Adam Friedland?

  And hot, you're a piece of, piece of ass.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  I was so hot.

• 20:14Adam Friedland?

  I've been looking at pics. Shaved head?

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Like 10 pounds heavier buzz cut.

• 20:20Adam Friedland?

  Kind of yoked. Trying to beat your dad up.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Trying to beat my dad up.

• 20:24Adam Friedland?

  This summer break?

• 20:27Speaker 01

  When I'm not in the campaign, I'm just trying to get Jack to beat my dad up. So then I, um, so I tell him about the line and he's so mad.

• 20:36Adam Friedland?

  Obama?

• 20:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. He like came up to like, he's like this close to me and he's like looking down. And, uh, and I think I like blacked out for a few seconds, but, uh, at that point, um, this very nice man, David Axelrod, comes up to me and he was like, hey, son, let's walk outside and we'll rewrite the line together. And so we, Axe and I, that's my first introduction to him, we go outside, we rewrite the line and...

• 21:00Adam Friedland?

  Do you remember the line?

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the, it's the end of the red state, blue state riff. Where he says like, there are no red states.

• 21:07Adam Friedland?

  He stole red state, blue state?

• 21:09Speaker 01

  He wanted to say, there are the, uh, the United States, all of us pledging allegiance to the red, white and blue.

• 21:15Adam Friedland?

  Oh, really?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  And Kerry wanted red, white and blue. And so instead Obama changed it to like, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, I think we did. So anyway.

• 21:23Adam Friedland?

  To the green and yellow of Hezbollah.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:26Adam Friedland?

  The Hezbollah, green and yellow.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  That was the alt.

• 21:30Adam Friedland?

  Obama.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  And, um, and I figured like that was, that was it. That was the last time that I would, uh, see Obama again. But then when Kerry lost and Obama won the senate, um, Robert Gibbs, who was his communications director, had been my boss, um, when I was a press assistant on the Kerry campaign, was like, hey, he needs a speechwriter. Would you be interested, now that he's in the senate, would you be interested in just like, sitting down with him? And, and I was like, why does he need a speechwriter? He's like, that's what he thinks. He doesn't want a speechwriter either.

• 21:58Adam Friedland?

  The guy he was mean to?

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's like...

• 22:00Adam Friedland?

  He's like, get that bitch from Kerry.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Well, so he didn't know it was me.

• 22:04Adam Friedland?

  Oh, no.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  So I sat down with him his first week in the senate. We have breakfast and we do the job interview. He was so nice, great job interview. He was like, "Where'd you grow up? What's life like? What's your theory of speech writing? Why do you like..."

• 22:22Adam Friedland?

  What'd you say, "Theory of speech writing"? You gotta bullshit that.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  I was like, "I don't have a theory of speech writing." But I talked about his convention speech in 2004 and why I loved it. And then he was like, "All right, well, I don't think I need a speech writer, but Gibbs tells me I do and you seem nice enough, so let's give this a whirl."

• 22:39Adam Friedland?

  Whoa.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  And then, like, a year later, we're sitting around reminiscing about the 2004 convention and Obama's like, "Remember that little [bleep] who tried to take from the Kerry campaign or tried to get..." And I was like, "That was me." He's like, "I would've never hired you." And he started laughing.

• 22:56Adam Friedland?

  He knew it was you.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  At that point, he did, yeah.

• 22:58Adam Friedland?

  Oh, he was doing a bit that he didn't remember.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. He found out at that moment, like, a year later.

• 23:04Adam Friedland?

  Have you told this story before? This is great stuff.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  I can't remember.

• 23:08Adam Friedland?

  We gotta tell Zorkin. We gotta get Zorkin on this.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:11Adam Friedland?

  Oh, my god.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. For the reboot.

• 23:16Adam Friedland?

  How mean was he to you?

• 23:18Speaker 01

  When he found out, he was... No, he was laughing. He just couldn't believe it. Now, he loved it.

• 23:21Adam Friedland?

  The first time.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  He was just like...

• 23:23Adam Friedland?

  And you were like, "Whatever, you fucking state senator. Well, you're a bitch, dude."

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, I'm working for...

• 23:27Adam Friedland?

  You're going nowhere.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  I'm working for the next president, John Kerry.

• 23:31Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. Okay, here's a serious question, actually.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 23:35Adam Friedland?

  I had floating in my head. And I don't know if you've been asked this before. Did you guys kinda... To what extent was Will Ferrell to blame?

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Why? Because of his George Bush impression?

• 23:46Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, the funniest guy in the world was playing like a war criminal. I mean, I think it's actually like, there's something... I'm not saying it's the reason John Kerry lost.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:57Adam Friedland?

  You know, it was because of what he did on that damn swift boat, okay?

• 24:00Speaker 01

  It was the swift boat.

• 24:01Adam Friedland?

  We all know about that goddamn swift boat. And that's what Obama put in his speech? He's like, "John Kerry? I heard he was on the swift boat."

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that's right. We did do a Kerry section.

• 24:11Adam Friedland?

  Don't tell him I did an impression.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  I promise, I won't. I promise. Bush didn't get really unpopular until '05, '06, 2005, 2006.

• 24:18Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  When Iraq went really south.

• 24:21Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. What happened in that?

• 24:26Adam Friedland?

  What happened over there?

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, nothing good. But we've learned our lesson, so that's important.

• 24:31Adam Friedland?

  So you, so then you were working in his senate office?

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was working in the senate office. And part of the reason I took that job is like my parents wanted me to go to law school. You know, they're like, alright, you're not making, you didn't make any money on the Kerry campaign. And we're not supporting you forever, like, go, go to law school.

• 24:49Adam Friedland?

  Shut the fuck up. He's running for president, like...

• 24:51Speaker 01

  But I was like, well, I'll go work for Barack Obama in the senate office because he's, he just got there. He's obviously not gonna run for president in 2008. And so I'll just do a year there. And then once the 08 campaign starts, I'll go to law school and I'll be done with politics for a little while.

• 25:06Adam Friedland?

  So you lied to your parents?

• 25:07Speaker 01

  So I lied to them.

• 25:08Adam Friedland?

  That was a good lie.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:09Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. This guy's a total lightweight. It was one speech.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  And then that was that.

• 25:15Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 25:15Speaker 01

  And then he decided to run.

• 25:16Adam Friedland?

  And then you dropped "Yes, we can"? That's you?

• 25:19Speaker 01

  "Yes, we can" was in the, uh, his 2004 senate race. It was a tagline in one of his ads. And then I and the other speechwriters brought it back for the New Hampshire speech, the night of the New Hampshire primary in the, in 07.

• 25:35Adam Friedland?

  Oh, so you copied "Yes, we can" from Obama?

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, just lifted it from...

• 25:38Adam Friedland?

  Who copied it, from the farm laborers?

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Yes, from, from, from Cesar Chavez.

• 25:43Adam Friedland?

  Is there like, uh, like in comedy, if you steal a bit, it's like a bad thing? You're like, you're, like, is there the concept of that in speechwriting?

• 25:52Speaker 01

  No.

• 25:53Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  No, you just steal liberally.

• 25:55Adam Friedland?

  When you, so like, when you like, uh, were developing a skill in your, your job, like, did you watch game tape of people, like, previous speeches?

• 26:05Speaker 01

  I did a little bit of that. I, I read old speeches, but I think the key, I think what a lot of politicians do now, which is a mistake, is like, they try to copy, like, the style of a politician in the past to give a speech. And then it sounds phony because it's like, like, for a while you had politicians trying to like, all copy John F. Kennedy.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  And now, now you get that with Obama, right?

• 26:31Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  So it's like-

• 26:33Adam Friedland?

  Gavin was trying Obama a little bit there.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Who?

• 26:35Adam Friedland?

  Gavin Newsom.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit.

• 26:36Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Josh Shapiro sounds a little Barack Obama sometimes.

• 26:39Adam Friedland?

  Let me be clear, yeah.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  There's a little, it's that generation of politicians.

• 26:42Adam Friedland?

  Beto O'Rourke was kind of ripping it up.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Beto's a little bit. And so, I did a little bit of that, but mostly I just got to know Obama. Like, he also, he had written, by the time he ran for president, two books. I helped him edit the second book, Audacity of Hope, so he would like, he wrote that in the senate office. And so, he would come in in the morning, he'd been up to like 3 a.m. the night before, writing.

• 27:06Adam Friedland?

  Partying.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Partying. He'd give this long chapter, and then I would like, so it's like, I became, like, I was in his head at that point.

• 27:15Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Like, I knew how he thought, I knew how he-

• 27:17Adam Friedland?

  The rhythm, yeah.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  So that's how I-

• 27:18Adam Friedland?

  So Obama invented that shit?

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Invented what?

• 27:20Adam Friedland?

  Like, the Obama, I mean, that was him.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Yeah?

• 27:25Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:26Adam Friedland?

  I thought it was central casting.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  It was-

• 27:28Adam Friedland?

  I thought it was, I thought it was the Illuminati, no?

• 27:31Speaker 01

  No.

• 27:31Adam Friedland?

  So that's, I mean, so then you had to like, learn the cadence and kind of the rhythm of an Obama speech.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Yes, and then I would sort of travel with him and make sure that I'd go to a lot of his speeches. I'd listen to all of his interviews, I would just, and then I'd just spend time with him. Like, every time we were about to give a speech, I would just sit down and say like, "What do you want to say?" And we would like, chat for an hour.

• 27:50Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, about life?

• 27:52Speaker 01

  About life, about politics, about speeches.

• 27:53Adam Friedland?

  Did you guys ever watch a movie together?

• 27:56Speaker 01

  I don't think we've watched, maybe, I don't think so.

• 27:59Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 27:59Speaker 01

  No, we didn't really have a lot of time for movies.

• 28:02Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, but one day, like, let's kind of just, let's watch a movie. I did it with these boys.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  He did at one point start, I like, have never seen any of the classics movies. And like, someone, they were talking about it on the plane once, and he was like, "You've never seen Chinatown? You've never seen..." And then he's like, "Don't come into work Monday unless you've like, seen some of these classic movies. Like, I'm ordering you to see some of these movies."

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 28:25Adam Friedland?

  That's your commander in chief.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:27Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz he's a movie buff, but.

• 28:29Adam Friedland?

  So he told you to watch like.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  I went home and I watched.

• 28:32Adam Friedland?

  Good movies?

• 28:33Speaker 01

  It was fine.

• 28:34Adam Friedland?

  Dude, it's so sick. Your life is sick.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  It was.

• 28:39Adam Friedland?

  And you were hot the whole time?

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Debatable.

• 28:41Adam Friedland?

  Dude, I've been looking at pigs. You gotta go, okay, can I tell you, guys, I'm gonna be a little Jewish mother here?

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:47Adam Friedland?

  But with good taste, not bad taste.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 28:49Adam Friedland?

  Not go to Banana Republic and buy me a fucking shirt and like. You should go back to the buzz cut.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  You think so?

• 28:54Adam Friedland?

  Aviators. Messenger bag buzz cut aviators? This is way worse. And you got your hair still.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  I do have my hair still.

• 29:01Adam Friedland?

  Where you went to Turkey?

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Well.

• 29:03Adam Friedland?

  You went with Eric Adams to Turkey?

• 29:05Speaker 01

  I did, yeah.

• 29:05Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, the Istanbul in New York, yeah.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Um, no, Obama said to me, we were, once he was like.

• 29:10Adam Friedland?

  He gave you a style tip?

• 29:11Speaker 01

  He was like, um, I'm just saying, he's like, you're, you're like a good looking guy with your hair. I think you could, I think you could grow it out.

• 29:19Adam Friedland?

  Oh, so you listened to him?

• 29:20Speaker 01

  He goes, I don't think you need to be.

• 29:22Adam Friedland?

  We gotta call Obama right now. I don't know, you're.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  It was easy. That was why I did it, cuz I was so busy and I had never had time to do anything. So I like buzzed my hair myself.

• 29:32Adam Friedland?

  Um, let's go back to speech crafts. So you read a lot of speeches. Can I ask you a question?

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 29:37Adam Friedland?

  And this is not political, okay? Like, was Hitler good?

• 29:44Adam Friedland?

  Like, I don't know German, so.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  I do not, I do not spend a lot of time with Hitler speeches.

• 29:51Adam Friedland?

  The chops, like Bill Cosby was a great comic. We, I could, I'll say it, okay? Was Hitler good?

• 29:58Speaker 01

  You know, I just haven't listened to enough of his speeches.

• 30:01Adam Friedland?

  Wait.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  I presume.

• 30:03Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  There was, there was some charisma there.

• 30:05Adam Friedland?

  Did Hitler do like a yes we can, what was it?

• 30:12Speaker 01

  This is actually.

• 30:12Adam Friedland?

  Where do you stand in the goat debate?

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Okay, so this is.

• 30:14Adam Friedland?

  Do you think Hitler or Martin Luther King? Where are you?

• 30:18Speaker 01

  This is a good, this is a.

• 30:19Adam Friedland?

  You've been a Hitler guy for a while.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  This is a good story. His first, like, foreign trip in the middle of the 2008 campaign. And he goes to Germany. And so Ben Rhodes and I work on the speech. And Ben goes on the trip with them. I'm back in Chicago. And it's like, an hour before the speech. And Ben had the foresight of being like, I'm just going to run it by some Germans. Just to make sure we're not, there's no like, tripwires, you know? And we have this phrase at the end of the speech. Where we say something about like, a community of fate, or something, I don't know.

• 30:56Adam Friedland?

  Fire.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  And Ben's like, yeah, we have a problem. That that is a Nazi, that's a Hitler phrase. That's a Hitler line. We lifted a Hitler line.

• 31:05Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. It was a Hitler bar.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  It was a Hitler bar. And so we changed it. We figured it out and changed it like, right before the speech.

• 31:14Adam Friedland?

  You had had an ich bin ein Berliner.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:17Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:18Adam Friedland?

  Do you think Kennedy was actually that hot?

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Kennedy?

• 31:21Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, people are like, that's the hot president. Obama should be...

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:26Adam Friedland?

  Obama's like, that smile.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, he's probably hotter.

• 31:30Adam Friedland?

  Did you write the lines that were like, for a skinny kid with big ears?

• 31:34Speaker 01

  No, that's him.

• 31:34Adam Friedland?

  And a funny name?

• 31:35Speaker 01

  That's him.

• 31:36Adam Friedland?

  Oh, God, I loved when he did that. When he talked about, I was like, I got a funny name and big ears. That's him?

• 31:43Speaker 01

  That's him.

• 31:43Adam Friedland?

  Oh my-

• 31:44Speaker 01

  He loved talking, he loved making fun of his big ears.

• 31:46Adam Friedland?

  Oh my God, it's so cute, the way he did it. Oh my God. There was one about, what, Lincoln, though, right?

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Lincoln.

• 31:53Adam Friedland?

  A gangly...

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's right.

• 31:57Adam Friedland?

  Wait, cuz I-

• 31:57Speaker 01

  He likes some Lincoln references.

• 32:01Adam Friedland?

  Obama's into Lincoln?

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Big time.

• 32:04Adam Friedland?

  Really, but he's a Republican. I love when they say part-

• 32:07Speaker 01

  That's why he's bipartisan.

• 32:08Adam Friedland?

  They say "party of Lincoln"? Like, they would have been in that party.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 32:12Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We just had this primary in New York, in this general, where- A Democrat was being attacked by a Democrat. And it was like, in retrospect, it's Islamophobia. Yeah, like it is.

• 32:30Adam Friedland?

  Zohar Maldani is from the Upper West Side. I mean, he's basically Jewish. I mean, like, he is, you know? And then they were like, this is Osama bin Laden.

• 32:40Adam Friedland?

  You were in a pretty vicious primary where your boss was attacked and there were Islamophobic attacks launched.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  All kinds of attacks.

• 32:53Adam Friedland?

  I guess like, and that candidate became the next candidate for president. Why is there a space for that in the Democratic Party? I mean, if we want to be like, the Republicans are racist. Like, why is this happening in the Democratic Party?

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Well, like, in that O8 primary, it was subtle, right? Mark Penn, her chief strategist, had written a memo that was like, we got to talk about how, you know, that you're American and your American roots. And that he's not as American. It was like something, I'm paraphrasing, but yeah, it was pretty bad. It got worse when, obviously, in the general, when Sarah Palin did her thing, but...

• 33:35Adam Friedland?

  What was her thing?

• 33:36Speaker 01

  You know, just being...

• 33:37Adam Friedland?

  She made that movie.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  She did make that movie. That reality show.

• 33:42Adam Friedland?

  Oh, never mind. I'm talking about that different thing.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that movie.

• 33:45Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  That's a good one.

• 33:46Adam Friedland?

  But I found out it wasn't Sarah Palin. It was Lisa Ann.

• 33:52Adam Friedland?

  It's called Naylin Palin. It's a pornography. Was the guy in it Barack Obama?

• 33:59Speaker 01

  No, I don't think so.

• 34:00Adam Friedland?

  No. Was it McCain?

• 34:01Speaker 01

  No, it couldn't have been McCain.

• 34:03Adam Friedland?

  Was it Putin because she saw him from the house?

• 34:05Speaker 01

  That would have been good.

• 34:06Adam Friedland?

  That would have been good, if he like, crossed the Bering Strait.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  We should do a remake.

• 34:09Adam Friedland?

  If they fell in love across the Bering Strait. Yeah, we just made it just a beautiful story. And then just hardcore sex. Anyway, has Barack Obama ever seen porn? We'll cut that. Okay, cut that. That's just, come on, we're having fun. Cut that. You ever hoop with Obama?

• 34:25Speaker 01

  No, they never asked me to hoop.

• 34:27Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, but you were telling...

• 34:28Speaker 01

  They did what? You know what? We were on the... We were in the campaign once, like at some stop, and they were like, "Do you wanna, do you wanna play tomorrow?" And I'm like, "No, I don't wanna play tomorrow morning."

• 34:36Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  I'm hor- I'm gonna be horrible. I'm gonna be in my- I could like-

• 34:40Adam Friedland?

  In your head.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  I could barely play when I was like a freshman in high school. So I can't imagine embarrassing myself and like being in my head when I was with the, with the president.

• 34:48Adam Friedland?

  But you said that, you were saying before the show, I mean, I don't know if this was off the record, but that Obama calls bullshit fouls in pickup games?

• 34:58Adam Friedland?

  And people are like, "Fucking...

• 35:01Adam Friedland?

  Come on, dude. Come on." This is a bad line, though. I wanna criticize this.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 35:07Adam Friedland?

  "Our children are gonna have to turn off the TV set once in a while and put away the video games and start hitting the books."

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:14Adam Friedland?

  You wrote that at, what, 24 for Obama?

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:16Adam Friedland?

  What a fucking loser.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Loser.

• 35:18Adam Friedland?

  You wrote, like, "Turn off the damn-" You wrote, "Pull up your damn pants."

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Pants.

• 35:22Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  He was big on all that.

• 35:24Adam Friedland?

  He was a "pull up your damn pants" guy?

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:26Adam Friedland?

  Where'd he say- He stole that from Cosby, though.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  He did.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  One of, one of many.

• 35:33Adam Friedland?

  All right. I, I went to school in DC.

• 35:38Adam Friedland?

  I remember the night, we were talking about this on the phone yesterday, but the night Obama won, it was like, it was incredible.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  My, my experience from that night, which I'll always remember, so I was working on the speech, like, the couple of days before, and I was trying to figure out an ending to the speech-

• 35:56Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  If we won. And I'd seen some story on CNN about how there was like a three-hour line to vote in Atlanta. And there was this woman who waited in line for three hours, and she was 102 years old. And, her name is Ann Nixon Cooper.

• 36:14Adam Friedland?

  And Obama killed her.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  And Obama killed her. And, and so I was like, "Oh, this is a great way to end the speech, because I can talk about all the things she saw in the century that she's lived in America and like all the progress." Like, when she was born, like, she couldn't vote because she was a woman, because she was black, and then you could talk through all the- And so, right up the ending, Obama likes it, and then he calls me right before they call the final state, and he's like, "All right, I'm gonna give you final edits." Gives me the final edits to the speech, and then my friend Tommy was like, "You should probably, we should like call Ann Nixon Cooper and like let her know she's gonna be in the speech."

• 36:54Adam Friedland?

  Uh-huh.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  So I have our research people find her number, I call her up- It's like frail woman answers the phone and I was like, tell her the whole story. And I was like, and he's gonna, he's gonna give the speech soon. And she goes, he, is it, will it be on television? And I was like, yeah, it'll be on television. She's like, what channel will it be on? And I was like, uh, all the channels. And she's like, I'm, and she's like, I'm so, I'm so happy, I'm so proud, finally. And then, right as she said that, they call Ohio and it's the election and like, everyone's just cheering and I'm like, sitting there talking to Ann Nixon Cooper on the phone for a couple more minutes. It was, it was pretty cool.

• 37:40Adam Friedland?

  I wanna cry right now. I thought she was gonna say she voted for McCain.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  And then she was like, anyway.

• 37:45Adam Friedland?

  She's like, I, she's like.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  When he runs again in four years, let me know.

• 37:50Adam Friedland?

  I'm 102, you think I voted for Obama? You fucking idiot.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  That Muslim, Muslim socialist, he's kidding me?

• 37:58Adam Friedland?

  What is wrong with you? My dad was kinda like that with Bernie. He's like, they won't let us be the president. They'll kill him. He's like, yeah, just like, my dad would not, he's like, I'm not voting for him because he's Jewish, Adam. They're not gonna let us. He's like, I agree with pretty much everything he says for, but Adam, come on. They let us be Supreme Court. They let, they only let two Catholics. It's kinda, it's kind of a proper Protestant country.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  It is.

• 38:30Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, Obama's Muslim, I guess, but, yeah. And, and Trump is a Baha'i. I love when he talks about how much he loves the Bible. Like, he's like, the Bible is great. It's like, I know all the parts. Yeah. It's like when LeBron was talking about the autobiography of Malcolm X, he's like, and he was on page one, he's like. It's just the how smart he was.

• 39:01Adam Friedland?

  You're like in the middle of history, right? Did your mom still tell you to go to law school that night?

• 39:05Speaker 01

  No, they were.

• 39:06Adam Friedland?

  They're okay?

• 39:07Speaker 01

  They let go of the law school.

• 39:08Adam Friedland?

  They're like, now you're making 35.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  This is great. You're off to the White House.

• 39:11Adam Friedland?

  35K, you're the richest guy ever. Loser. It was like a moment where it's like, America, things could get better. Because I think, I remember 9/11, and then things started getting sad. Maybe shit's gonna be better. And I can't imagine what it was like for you guys.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  That's what we, we did, there was like an echo at the beginning of the speech about how change has come to America.

• 39:34Adam Friedland?

  That was you?

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Which was intentionally from the Sam Cooke song.

• 39:39Adam Friedland?

  Oh, I thought you were gonna say Hitler.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  From Magana, Hitler, right? Because we thought like we needed a good, like, American anthem, but that was also about, not just triumphant, but about like injustice being, you know,

• 39:54Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  solved a little bit, or at least improved. But even then, I will say, as wonderful as that night was, and it was like, you know, we were all excited, because the financial crisis had already begun, we all sort of knew that we were walking into a shitstorm. And that like, we could enjoy, we could enjoy election night, but that like, this was gonna be even harder than we imagined when we started the campaign, because things were getting, things were pretty bad.

• 40:22Adam Friedland?

  You should have told me.

• 40:26Adam Friedland?

  I mean, that's, it's an interesting thing to bring up, because like, that was, I did feel like idealism, but like, I do remember very early on where I was like, they broke the economy, right? There were people that, that ruined people's lives. And I was, I remember going home, I was like graduating college 2009, so like, the job market was terrible, like, and I go to visit my parents, and like, there were lights off in our neighborhood. People had been like foreclosed on. And I remember like, I did feel like that idealism kind of was extinguished. When, like, they didn't go to jail, and in fact, they got richer, a lot of them.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Well, so, there weren't, there weren't laws on the books, which is part of the problem, part of the whole reason the crisis happened, that you could prosecute some of these people for. I remember there was like, two **** Bear Stearns traders who were prosecuted, got off. Then they had a, then there was like, a civil suit against them, I remember like, years later. They settled that, and one of the reasons we passed, or worked to pass Wall Street Reform, Dodd-Frank, was both to make sure that that never happened again, but also to put laws on the books so that people couldn't get away with that ****. And it was, but like, I remember-

• 41:44Adam Friedland?

  But I, sorry to cut you off, but like, I do remember that, like, Larry Summers was like, saying like, "We need evictions to save the banking crisis," you know, like, that was a major influence in the administration. And I was like, "Fuck," it's like, "Why are they letting these guys do that?" Like-

• 41:59Speaker 01

  I remember when the, when the assholes that ran AIG were gonna get their bonuses. And we, I was like, "Well, obviously, we can stop them from getting their bonuses, right?" And they were like, "No, no, we're gonna have to, he's gonna have to give a statement saying, 'We can't.'" And I sat down with Larry, and I'm like, "Okay, explain this to me like I'm an idiot."

• 42:26Adam Friedland?

  And he had a flight, he had a flight.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 42:29Adam Friedland?

  He had a flight to get.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  To the island.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  And I was like, "Explain this to me like I'm an idiot," because I was, who doesn't know anything about the economy, which I didn't.

• 42:37Adam Friedland?

  I'm neither, I don't know anything.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  And I was like, "Why, why are they getting the bonuses?" "Well, it's contract law, and if we take the bonuses and claw them back, it's against the law, and then they could sub-" And I was like, "Here's the thing, there's people with **** pitchforks, like, outside the White House right now, for good reason." And, like, this is a just, and it's just like indicative of those first couple of years, where there was just like, unsatisfying decision after unsatisfying decision, that we had to take, or couldn't do anything about, because-

• 43:11Speaker 01

  The economy, what was set in motion that destroyed the economy was already set in motion. So all we could, now, I do think if we went back, like, we probably, we should have done more on housing.

• 43:23Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  And, for sure, because the foreclosures just like continued for way too long. And it was much worse than anyone thought at the beginning.

• 43:31Adam Friedland?

  Um, did you ever like voice like vigorous like opposition to a decision? Because the thing is, you're a speechwriter, right? So you're not like, you kind of were like, Obama was like, what do you think? Did you ever say, what do you think?

• 43:44Speaker 01

  Not really, because I was the 20 something year old speechwriter.

• 43:47Adam Friedland?

  Okay, so.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  But I got to see, I get to, I didn't really participate, but I get to see a lot of the policy debates unfold.

• 43:53Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  So because you see that and hear it, you start to realize, okay, well, there's a reason that they're making this unsatisfactory decision.

• 44:03Adam Friedland?

  Right.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  And so you sort of understand it. But people, like, the most common question I always get is like, was there anything that you just completely disagreed with? Like, you had a political view?

• 44:10Adam Friedland?

  Right, that's what.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  The only one really was like, I, you know, he didn't come out for gay marriage until the reelection in 2012. And I was for gay marriage long before that.

• 44:21Adam Friedland?

  Was he against Sharia law?

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Sharia law.

• 44:23Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  I think a lot of us sort of imagined that he was actually for gay marriage, but the politics prevented him.

• 44:30Adam Friedland?

  He probably said it. He was probably like, I'm for gay marriage.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  He never said it. Um, I think he's, you know, he's also, he's, he's old school in that regard, which is like, he's, I think it took him a little bit to get there, too. I think he got there before he actually said he was for it. But I think that the politics got in the way, if I had to guess.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  But that was the only issue that I was really.

• 44:51Adam Friedland?

  So you never had to write a speech for something that you were opposed to?

• 44:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 44:54Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  No.

• 44:55Adam Friedland?

  You're never like, gay people shouldn't get married, the speech?

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Right, because there was, there wasn't like a speech like that.

• 45:01Adam Friedland?

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• 45:44Adam Friedland?

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• 46:27Adam Friedland?

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• 46:59Adam Friedland?

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• 48:25Adam Friedland?

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• 49:07Adam Friedland?

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• 49:51Adam Friedland?

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• 50:30Adam Friedland?

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• 51:12Adam Friedland?

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• 51:28Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, I think those first two years, the understanding is that you guys had a rough one, right? And what, like, did you get yelled at?

• 51:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 51:39Adam Friedland?

  Rom? You never, you never?

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Oh, Rom.

• 51:41Adam Friedland?

  Did Rom, you got Rommed?

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:44Adam Friedland?

  He seemed a scary guy.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you know what? He was a scary guy, but I finally realized that when he yells at you, you just have to yell back at him.

• 51:53Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 51:53Speaker 01

  And then, then it's fine.

• 51:54Adam Friedland?

  You yell back?

• 51:56Speaker 01

  I finally did, because he would.

• 51:57Adam Friedland?

  Fuck you!

• 51:58Speaker 01

  He would once in a while, he would just like, once in a while, call and weigh in and be like, "I got this great line for the speech that like Carville sent me or Begala sent me," you know? And I was like, and I'm like, "Okay, cool, what's the line?" And it's a line that sounds like it's from the 90s. And, uh, and I was like, "Ehhhh." And then he was like, "Come on, why, why, why?" And he was like yelling at me. And then finally, I was just like, "No!"

• 52:17Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, and he's missing a finger.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  Rahm was a yeller, but we like, the Obama campaign didn't have like yellers. That wasn't like, ax rod wasn't like that, pluff wasn't like that. It really was when we got to the White House, some of the old Clinton era people that came on. Rahm mostly, Rahm was like a, Rahm was a figure that was different than the typical Obama.

• 52:37Adam Friedland?

  Do you think that there was a resentment amongst those Clinton people? Like, cause in DC, my understanding is that like, he didn't serve a full term in the senate even, Obama. He was like, you know, skipping the line pisses people off.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 52:49Adam Friedland?

  And do you think that in the party, there was like a resentment that kind of lasted?

• 52:54Speaker 01

  I don't know. I think that, all I know is that when Hillary came on as Secretary of State, there, like, we were all very skeptical. All of us on the staff level who'd been on the campaign. I think her staff was also probably skeptical. I think that Obama and Hillary genuinely developed a good relationship. And so that wasn't, that wasn't much of an issue.

• 53:17Adam Friedland?

  Yep.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  I think the more, I think the resentment probably came more from Congress. Like, Democrats in Congress did not think, like, they were very happy that Barack Obama was president. They loved him, but they did not think that like, they owed him everything and had to do whatever he said. Cause I think a lot of them thought, well, I've been here for a lot longer than you have.

• 53:36Adam Friedland?

  Is it true that like, the vice president is like the loser? Like the total fucking loser? I think that's what my understanding is, is that you get a vice president, you're fucking, you fucking just abuse them. You're like, go figure out this impossible thing, loser.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  There's a little bit of that.

• 53:53Adam Friedland?

  You'll be the czar of the impossible thing.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  No, Biden got to be, like, like help manage the recovery act. That was his, that was his first job.

• 54:02Adam Friedland?

  Why'd you give him a good one?

• 54:04Speaker 01

  He liked it too. Yeah, I don't know, it was a good, he was-

• 54:06Adam Friedland?

  No, I think you're lying, dude. You can't have the vice-

• 54:07Speaker 01

  He probably got a bad job at some point.

• 54:08Adam Friedland?

  The vice president's head can't get too big, right?

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, no. No, the vice president, it's just tough, cause it's like, it's a job where you don't have any official responsibilities. So like, every new vice president has to like make up- And with the president, what their job is.

• 54:21Adam Friedland?

  Obama would never be the vice president, right? Because he's too, he's too, he's got too much sauce. He's gonna give a speech that's too good that John Kerry is gonna wanna steal.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 54:32Adam Friedland?

  Like, so you can't get a guy that's like, gonna, gonna like, look good.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:37Adam Friedland?

  You can't get, you have to get a guy that's like, you know.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  Well, we thought with Joe Biden, we're like, well, and he's not gonna run for president because he's like.

• 54:44Adam Friedland?

  He ran every time? Did he run every time for president?

• 54:48Speaker 01

  Since 88?

• 54:49Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  No, but he ran, he ran twice.

• 54:52Adam Friedland?

  Did he skip one?

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, he did skip, he skipped a couple. He ran in 2008. I think before 2008, he hadn't run since 88.

• 54:58Adam Friedland?

  He loves running for president.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Loves running for president.

• 55:01Adam Friedland?

  I mean, he loved, he even, he even did it last time, too. He did it, he loved it so much, he did it last time. He couldn't stop, he was addicted. Were you guys worried about his addiction to running for president? We're like, we love you, we're here for you. Yeah, this is an intervention. George Clooney, take it away. Yeah, like, America felt like there was, it was getting sadder and sadder. And then there was this moment where it was like, what if it's better? Right? And then we saw, you know, a guy that was super young and has like, left office super young, who is the first black president, and it was, that's amazing. We got rid of slavery at the shot clock. That was a buzzer beater, getting rid of slavery.

• 55:44Adam Friedland?

  I mean, like, and in America, like, we, you know, it was like, holy shit. And then we, then we kinda saw his, then make his life of kinda hell, no?

• 55:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 55:55Adam Friedland?

  You know? I mean, there was a real moment where I, that I was, where he, like, after Sandy Hook, and he's like crying.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:03Adam Friedland?

  And he's like, I, just fucking, just ban bazookas. Like, please, they're ba, like, babies just died? You had to have seen him like, fuck. What is the most bummed out you saw the boy?

• 56:16Speaker 01

  I think then, uh, after, after Sandy Hook, when we tried to pass, because remember, we tried to pass. Background checks. Like the most basic incremental. Just make sure it's not Charles Manson. Right, so there's a background check bill. This horrific shooting of children just happened. It was babies. It is, the sponsors of the bill are fucking Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey, conservative Republican from Pennsylvania. Yeah. So you're like, it's not like a bunch of libs, right? And. Now, Joe Manchin is a soft, a woke. Yeah, and with those two as sponsors and doing the bill and Barack Obama and the tragedy, no, it just fails. Just don't, we don't get, and then he's like, if we can't, if we can't get background checks

• 57:00Speaker 01

  at this moment with these people, like, what, what are we doing? Did you ever cheer, cheer him up? Were you like, can we watch a movie finally? He honestly, like, he would cheer us up. Really? Oh, yeah, he was like. He was nice to you? I remember after the, it was in 2012 with the reelection. And he gives us his convention speech in North Carolina. And I thought the speech, we all thought the speech went well, we were all happy. And it got some like terrible reviews from a few places and like Politico is like just saying it's a terrible speech and Bill Clinton gave the better speech at the convention. And we're, we're on Air Force One, like leaving, going back to DC. And I'm sitting there and I'm just like reading the Politico piece to him and other people.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  And I'm just like mad and yelling and he's like, hey. He goes, how do you think I feel? I wake up every day. You humiliated me. He goes, he goes. I wake up every day knowing that half the country hates me. And doesn't want it, doesn't, hates everything that I'm doing, doesn't like what I'm doing. He's like, and I just, you gotta keep going. He's like, this whole job is like making sure you listen to people, that you listen to criticism, that you take in all the right information, that you really sit with the thoughts. But like, once you make a decision, you make the decision, you let the chips fall where they may, and if people are angry or people criticize you, you just gotta keep moving. Because otherwise, he's like, we're never gonna get anything done and you're gonna get in your head.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  He's like, and my job is not to sit here and be like upset all the time and in my head and worried about criticism. My job is to do everything I can do to like help the country and make people's lives better. It's like, that, and then it made me feel like an asshole for complaining about a political piece.

• 58:44Adam Friedland?

  Why are you complaining about Obama?

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Grow up.

• 58:46Adam Friedland?

  Dude, everyone hates him. He's wearing a tan suit and eating a burger with like, French crap on it.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:53Adam Friedland?

  Those were his scandals?

• 58:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, the tan suit.

• 58:56Adam Friedland?

  He's eating a gay burger?

• 58:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Dijon mustard.

• 59:00Adam Friedland?

  He had Dijon mustard?

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Forgot about that.

• 59:02Adam Friedland?

  You fucking, like, that was on the news? Yeah. Were you in the Situation Room? That was his, that was the moment where, where he got love from everyone.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  Oh, with the Bin Laden operation?

• 59:15Adam Friedland?

  You were in the Situation Room?

• 59:16Speaker 01

  No. I was not right into that.

• 59:19Adam Friedland?

  What a loser.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  Loser, no.

• 59:21Adam Friedland?

  What a loser. Were you outside, like, trying to listen in?

• 59:25Speaker 01

  No, cuz I didn't, I didn't know it happened until, I didn't know it happened until I got the draft remarks of what he was gonna say.

• 59:33Adam Friedland?

  They didn't tell you?

• 59:34Speaker 01

  From then.

• 59:35Adam Friedland?

  Oh, you were a fucking loser, dude.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  Loser, well, I didn't do any of the, I wasn't the foreign policy, national security speechwriter guy.

• 59:41Adam Friedland?

  That sucks.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:43Adam Friedland?

  Can you imagine how sick it was? Hillary Clinton saying, "This is my plan, I'm calling all the shots here, shut up Obama." SEAL Team Six, yeah.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  No, I was, it was the night after the Correspondence Dinner where he gave a big joke speech and he made fun of Donald Trump. And, uh, so we were very focused on that speech, and I remember the day of that speech.

• 1:00:08Adam Friedland?

  Oh, he ruined the.

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  Well, we were like, yeah.

• 1:00:10Adam Friedland?

  He ruined the world.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  He weren't.

• 1:00:12Adam Friedland?

  And then he killed Bin Laden the next day?

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  He was, so.

• 1:00:14Adam Friedland?

  Oh, my god!

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  We're like, we're gonna, so it's like, John Lovett and David Axelrod and I, we're like, alright, we're gonna go into the Oval and just get last-minute edits on the, on the Correspondent's Speech, great, and they're like, oh, he's meeting with some general, "The speech is in five hours, we gotta make all the edits," let us in, you know?

• 1:00:28Adam Friedland?

  No, he's talking to Jeff Ross, the roastmaster general, obviously getting better jokes than your [bleep] ass. He's talking to Lisa Lampanelli.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  This is all of it.

• 1:00:37Adam Friedland?

  The Harvard Lampoon guy.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  We go in there, and he's like...

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Chilling, throwing a football around, just in a good mood.

• 1:00:45Adam Friedland?

  No.

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then he was like, alright, I like the speech, everything's great. There's this one line where the joke is about Bin Laden. He's like, and I would just make it some other, like, you know, bad guy or Middle Eastern sounding guy. Cause it was about, anyway. And so he's like, what about, what about Hosni Mubarak? And I was like, that's a terrible joke.

• 1:01:10Adam Friedland?

  It's like saying Mussolini is a Hitler.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  Bin Laden is so much, and he's like, trust me, trust me. And the meeting before us was he was on the phone with General McRaven. That was like his last call before the, before the mission.

• 1:01:21Adam Friedland?

  Okay, first of all, let's go back. He's bragging, he's doing a wink, cause he knows that's a better line, right? Second of all, or maybe he doesn't want to disparage the dead. He's like, I don't want to-

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  Also possible.

• 1:01:33Adam Friedland?

  What, he's trying to be nice to Osama?

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  He wasn't dead yet.

• 1:01:35Adam Friedland?

  The terrorist Osama Bin Laden? What is he, what is he doing?

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  He was worried about getting sued.

• 1:01:40Adam Friedland?

  It wouldn't be, it wouldn't be purple of me, it wouldn't be purple of me to disparage, his body's barely cold. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go in there, he's gonna be watching porno, and I'm gonna shoot him. He had a lot of pornography, right?

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Lot of pornography.

• 1:01:56Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, it's pretty cool.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:57Adam Friedland?

  I wonder if he had-

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Palin, Palin? Yeah.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  Full circle.

• 1:02:07Adam Friedland?

  That was a good call. You got jobs, brother. You got jobs, brother. Alright. You left, what year did you leave the White House?

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  Uh, 2013.

• 1:02:18Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. And how'd you feel heading out there in that world? You felt like, kinda?

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  Like I could go like-

• 1:02:25Adam Friedland?

  I'm gonna take on the world.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Like I could live life a little bit?

• 1:02:28Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:28Speaker 01

  Take a break?

• 1:02:29Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  And then I moved out here, moved to, moved to LA, not out here.

• 1:02:34Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, you tried to get in the biz?

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I thought I was gonna-

• 1:02:37Adam Friedland?

  You were like, Rahm, can your brother, can I get your brother a-

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  I did, I did, well, I, I met, I met with Ari when I went out to LA. And it was like, he was exactly like his brother.

• 1:02:48Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. Oh, I thought he was gonna be like Ari Gold.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  And that too.

• 1:02:52Adam Friedland?

  He had a Lloyd?

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  I walk into his office and he's like on a treadmill, on the phone, walking treadmill, yelling on the phone. And I was like, is this real? Is this just like, this is like entourage?

• 1:03:05Adam Friedland?

  So you were writing like really important speeches for the President of the United States? And then you were writing like a 30 Rock spec script for your packet?

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Basically.

• 1:03:14Adam Friedland?

  What's wrong with you?

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  Well, then we-

• 1:03:15Adam Friedland?

  Your mom, your parents should be disappointed. It's a disappointment.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  It was a disappointment.

• 1:03:20Adam Friedland?

  I'm gonna be a little bit of a Jewish mother, like, what are you doing?

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it didn't go anywhere.

• 1:03:23Adam Friedland?

  I have to do this. I have no skills.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  Then we started, then we started writing speeches. My now co-host and co-founder, Tommy Vitor and I, we started writing speeches for hire. So we did that for a little bit.

• 1:03:37Adam Friedland?

  Did you ever get pissed? You're like, it's not like-

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  Yes, all the time. That's why I ended up, I couldn't do that job.

• 1:03:42Adam Friedland?

  You're like-

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  We did it for like two years.

• 1:03:43Adam Friedland?

  Did you write a Zuckerberg? You dropped a Zuckerberg?

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:03:46Adam Friedland?

  No. You did. You wrote one and he was like, "This is the change that we believe in! For a, for a gangly kid with big ears and a funny name." You're like, what are you doing?

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  It was just hard to take, like, any company that was like, oh, the CEO really needs a speech urgently in a month, and it's so important because, you know, I'm like, this is not that important.

• 1:04:09Adam Friedland?

  Would you write a speech for Donald Trump?

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:04:12Adam Friedland?

  What if it was like, he gave you 1 million dollars?

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  I could. I mean, I could at this point, I could easily write a speech-

• 1:04:20Adam Friedland?

  In his voice?

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  Exactly in his voice.

• 1:04:22Adam Friedland?

  In his voice, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  But I would not do that, no.

• 1:04:27Adam Friedland?

  Arnold Palmer's dick! I wish I did a good one. What was your spec, your state com spec script? You did 30 Rock?

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  No, it was called, it was called Early States. And it was gonna be about a bunch of, bunch of young people in Iowa. It's supposed to be like a funnier, more like, you know, raunchier, sort of west wing kind of thing.

• 1:04:50Adam Friedland?

  Oh, and they're like on the campaign trail? They're hooking up?

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, basically.

• 1:04:53Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, and there's a little, it's like a Veep. A little more V.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, before V.

• 1:04:58Adam Friedland?

  Alright, alright. I wrote a 9/11 Sex and the City spec.

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  Was that, yeah.

• 1:05:04Adam Friedland?

  Carrie was upset, because like-

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  That's still in development.

• 1:05:08Adam Friedland?

  No, they're not gonna make it, because in this political whatever, but yeah. Carrie, because Carrie's dating New York City, so she's really sad. But Samantha has to get south on 14th Street, because she needs to go have sex.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:20Adam Friedland?

  And then Steven, or Steven Miranda are trying to spice things up in their relationship. They're not really paying attention to 9/11. And then Charlotte realizes, she's watching TV, that she had sex with Mohammed Atta the night before.

• 1:05:38Adam Friedland?

  What? I think it was kind of a serious episode.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:41Adam Friedland?

  I don't know if that's meant to be funny.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  More of a dramedy.

• 1:05:45Adam Friedland?

  You founded a company Fenway Strategies?

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was it.

• 1:05:47Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, what the [bleep] like a Boston-

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, Boston guy.

• 1:05:52Adam Friedland?

  What were your strategies? Like, you should blind a Vietnamese guy in one eye in a street fight?

• 1:05:59Adam Friedland?

  What were your strategies? Keeping minorities in a neighborhood called Jamaica? That's a little bit on the nose. What were your strategies? Mispronouncing car? Who put that in here?

• 1:06:11Adam Friedland?

  Was it just pure exhaustion leaving the White House? Or like, is there like a- Do you want to get off the bench?

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  Now?

• 1:06:16Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. You kind of like possess a very valuable perspective on things. Do you feel like perhaps like an obligation to- I mean, look at this [bleep] right now. I mean, like, you should- What are you-

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  I do, I do feel an obligation, but I think that the reason we started Crooked Media, and Pod Save America, and all the rest, and Vote Save America was to- Because our theory was, we need- Like, the way people consume news about politics now is broken, and people don't want to participate in politics.

• 1:06:47Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  And people are unsure of like, how to persuade people to, you know, vote the way we want them to vote. And so, we figured, let's start a media company. And also, let's make sure that there's part of the company, which is Vote Save America, that like registers people to vote, gets people to organize, gets people to run for office themselves. So, right now, I feel like that is me doing-

• 1:07:12Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, but look how stupid they are. The guys, the guys now.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  The guys in the White House.

• 1:07:18Adam Friedland?

  In the, no, just in the, in, in the show.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  In the show.

• 1:07:22Adam Friedland?

  The guys in the league right now are, you're smarter than the guys in the league right now. You know that.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  Now we need a good candidate. Now we need a good candidate for 28.

• 1:07:30Adam Friedland?

  Why you do?

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 1:07:32Adam Friedland?

  Why not? Why not? You're a good looking guy. You buzz the hair.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  You think I should buzz the hair?

• 1:07:36Adam Friedland?

  You get the aviators, you buzz the hair.

• 1:07:38Speaker 01

  Put the aviators back on.

• 1:07:39Adam Friedland?

  Oh my god.

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  Less hair.

• 1:07:40Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. What would JD, what would JD bin Laden do about it? What would he even do? He would have no shot against the buzz cut kid. With a gangly ear and whatever. With a, a skinny kid with a huge dick and big ears. Did you ever have to, did he ever write the huge dick and you're like, Mr. President?

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  You can't just, yeah.

• 1:08:01Adam Friedland?

  You can't just say that.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  It's show not tell.

• 1:08:03Adam Friedland?

  It's, come on. A skinny kid with big shoe, big feet. You know what that, uh, we all know what that means. I mean, like, yeah, I guess, like, um, yeah, starting a media company, obviously you have access to a lot of people. You know, that's, you have a huge platform now, of course. But like, is there a motivation, like, is there something inside of you where you're like, I kind of like, especially like seeing so, how wackadoo it is now.

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:29Adam Friedland?

  Where it's like, I could have a direct involvement or I could have like a, you're doing analysis now, right?

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't shut the door on it, but like, I'm always trying to figure out like, how am I being of most use? And right now, I think I am of better use doing what we're doing.

• 1:08:47Adam Friedland?

  You're doing a humble thing right now.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no, no, this is just like.

• 1:08:50Adam Friedland?

  Look how, they're dumb guys. They're dumb guys now.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  There's a ton of, there's a ton of smart people.

• 1:08:55Adam Friedland?

  Who's the smartest?

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:08:57Adam Friedland?

  Besides Bernie, obviously.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  Besides Bernie, right. No, there just needs to be, but like, you need a candidate, right? Like, you need a, you can get a movement, that's good. You get organizers, you get staffers. You need a candidate who can inspire the country. Um, and.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 1:09:13Adam Friedland?

  Stop.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  Right now.

• 1:09:14Adam Friedland?

  Stop. Yeah, it's probably gonna have to be stop or me. I think a lot about your old boss and obviously, you know, but I think about him in like Martha's Vineyard watching TV. And like, it was just like, what the, like, there has to be a small inkling or like fear where it's like, is it my fault? Did I do something? You know, or like, right, like, it's like the world fell apart. Like, uh, like, right after.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, he doesn't think it's his fault, but I think he spends a lot of time thinking about, how do we get out of this? How can I help? Um, and he spends a lot of time talking to a lot of candidates, a lot of people in the party.

• 1:09:54Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Trying to figure out, sort of, but he, I think he also knows that, and he said this, he's like, I, you know, I can't be, they can't be like dragging me out on stage forever.

• 1:10:05Adam Friedland?

  But he's the GOAT.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  There needs to be a new, a new, younger leader in the party.

• 1:10:08Adam Friedland?

  I was at the election night, um, at Zoran's speech, and I believe that they asked the speechwriter, uh, you know, there's, there were a lot of parallels with Obama's speeches and, uh, that was like something that they modeled after.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  No, I talked to those guys. They're, they're fantastic.

• 1:10:23Adam Friedland?

  That must feel cool. I mean, it does feel like there's a young, handsome, charismatic guy in the party again.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  When we were, um.

• 1:10:29Adam Friedland?

  And they're calling him a Muslim again, and it's like, wow, we're back.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  We were, we were in DC a few weeks ago, and a bunch of us from the Obama world, got to hang out with a bunch of the Mamdani staff. And, uh, it was great. We were like the old guys, like reminiscing and so proud of them. And, you know, it's like, we're all like different parts of the ideological spectrum, but there's, there is a real connection there in the, well, this was one of the first campaigns we can remember in a while, where people were so excited and it was genuinely grassroots. And that like it got people off their couch and off their fucking phones. And meeting up and knocking on doors and yes, it was about Zoran, but it was also about like, these kids, the young people in like a really tough time, actually allowing themselves to be hopeful again.

• 1:11:17Adam Friedland?

  It sucks, dude. It sucks because you, it's like, it's like supporting Arsenal. I was talking about it with Zoran. It's the hope that kills you.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  It is the hope that kills you.

• 1:11:26Adam Friedland?

  The first time it was your fault, and then it was when they knifed Bernie twice.

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  But this is why it's like, hope. Difference between hope and optimism, not the first one to say this, but like, I like hope. Optimism I don't like because it's like, optimism is just guessing, or hope, or saying like, maybe the future will be better now. And, and so now we elected Zoron and like, he'll either do great, or he'll disappoint us, and that's it. But, having hope is like, alright, what are we all gonna do, if you're living in New York City, to help make sure Mamdani is a successful mayor?

• 1:11:57Adam Friedland?

  Well, you personally, I'm going back to like, you and feeling a sense of obligation, like, you had a firsthand experience on like, a popular grassroots movement that didn't, that had trouble translating into legislative success a lot of the time. Like, you, more than anyone I would imagine, could impart those lessons, you know, to an administration like that. Maybe you should be like an intern, or PA, or something.

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  I take calls from, from anyone who wants advice, I'm always happy to offer advice. I do a lot of, I do a lot of free work in my time.

• 1:12:37Adam Friedland?

  No, you're like, I'm on the phone with Zuckerberg, I can't take his call right now. I have to, I have to teach him how to-

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  Buddy Mark.

• 1:12:46Adam Friedland?

  I guess, like, at this moment, like, there's, the Democratic Party kind of, it still hasn't coalesced around like-

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  Platform, agenda-

• 1:12:54Adam Friedland?

  Platform, agenda, you know, opposition to- What is that coalition at this point?

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  I think back to that first video that Mamdani did in his race, when he went to the Bronx and, and a few neighborhoods and was asking voters who, like, voted for Trump for the first time. They, they told him why, and he wasn't judgmental, and they talked how it was like, well, it's too expensive, and that's why I did it. I do think that, whatever the coalition is for the Democrats, it's gonna be like, hey-

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  The purpose of a political party, the purpose of government, is to make sure that you can do whatever possible to improve people's lives, improve people's financial well-being. And if we, you have to be willing to, first of all, talk to everyone, talk to people who didn't even vote your way. Leave out the possibility that, I mean, hold open the possibility that you can persuade people and that people aren't unreachable just because they voted for Donald Trump, and build a coalition of working-class people in this country. And we, like, the Democrats will never win an election if we are a coalition of college-educated, mostly white people.

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  And, which is where it's heading towards. And, you know, for a while, we thought, okay, we're the more diverse coalition, and then we started losing working-class Hispanic voters, and started losing some

• 1:14:27Adam Friedland?

  Rappers, too.

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  working-class black men.

• 1:14:29Adam Friedland?

  You're losing rappers.

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  Losing rappers.

• 1:14:31Adam Friedland?

  It's not good.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  And so, you know, we're still a diverse coalition, but the way it's going is it's getting more college-educated. And you've just, you know, two-thirds of the people in the country don't have a college degree, one-third do. And so, do the fucking math, like, we're not gonna be a majority coalition that way. And so, you've gotta find a way to, you know, reach out and win working-class people again. And the way to do that is to, it's really hard because you wanna have an agenda that would tangibly improve their lives, but also, you have to deliver on that agenda, and you have to be able to, like, Zoran is going to have to figure out how to get a big part of his agenda passed, or else you're gonna get

• 1:15:11Adam Friedland?

  It's a messy thing, too.

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  It's a messy thing, and it's not all gonna get done. And so, then you've gotta figure out, like, okay, I mean, we dealt with this with the Affordable Care Act. It's not everything we wanted, it's not everything we needed, but we got 20 million people health insurance, and we still need to build on it, and now we need to, you know, expand it and all that. But it's hard to say All right, it's super difficult to pass a piece of legislation this big. We did it, that's great, but now people are still not happy because, for good reason, they don't have enough. And so now, vote for us again, and we'll do the rest. Like, even saying it, like, it sounds so piecemeal and incremental, and the reality is,

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  that's politics, and that's the way the fucking system of government is set up.

• 1:16:00Adam Friedland?

  I mean, I think, like, I was obviously a big supporter, I was a big supporter of the Bernie Sanders campaign, but I think one of the advantages is, like, you go to the doctor is a thing that you can understand.

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:11Adam Friedland?

  And it is a tangible exchange of, like, if you vote for me, you go to the doctor. There's a transactional aspect to it, right?

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  Right. Like, it is, it is a very simple, and I would imagine, compelling platform to say, everyone in this country should be able to find a job, and if you have a job, you should be able to see a doctor.

• 1:16:33Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  Live somewhere.

• 1:16:34Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  And have enough money to raise a family and have some free time in your life.

• 1:16:39Adam Friedland?

  Only if you have a job?

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  And if you don't have a job?

• 1:16:42Adam Friedland?

  You can't go to the doctor.

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  Then you can't go, no. And if you don't have, if there's not a job available to you, then we'll help you as well.

• 1:16:48Adam Friedland?

  Is there a feeling amongst members of the administration of regret after seeing what's happening with ICE right now?

• 1:16:56Speaker 01

  I don't know, because it was-

• 1:16:58Adam Friedland?

  My understanding was a small program in DHS that was expanded under Obama, yeah.

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  We, no, we fucked up was the first couple of years. That's where, like, most of the deportations happened, and then by the time, I think, like, Obama and the administration got their hands around it, they changed the, because if you're president, you have a lot of latitude there, and so you can sort of change the enforcement priorities. So then you can say, all right, ICE can only go after people who are criminal, like, violent criminals, or the most recent arrivals, right? And so, I think by the time, like, 12, 13, 14, got around to that, but, again, you're dealing with this, with ICE, which is like, has a mind of its own, and got pretty vague under the, end of the Bush administration, so those first two years, you saw, like, a ton of deportations.

• 1:17:48Adam Friedland?

  So the expansion was under Bush, or was it?

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  Bush, and then, when then-

• 1:17:51Adam Friedland?

  I thought Bush was trying to do the, he was trying to do amnesty, wasn't he?

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  And so were we. The president can do a whole bunch of stuff on enforcement and either enforce more, as Trump is doing now, or enforce less, as we did by the end of Obama's second term. But you're never going to actually fix the system unless you change the laws and say, "Okay, the people who are here, who are undocumented, you all get a path to citizenship. You get protection from deportation, and we're not just going to say that you get protection under one president, and then if Donald Trump wins again, you lose it. We're going to write it into law."

• 1:18:26Adam Friedland?

  I had Lena Kahn on the show, and she was talking about how there is like an inquest or like some tribunal after World War II in Congress, like into like, "How does a country become the Nazis?" And I'm like, "Whoa." I was like, "They tried to learn a lesson?" I'm like, "That's..." I mean, that sounds baffling in this day and age, right? But then in the abstract, I understood kind of what was going on with the detainments. But there are, in effect, concentration camps in America right now. And like, I've tried to say this before, but I think the most succinct way of saying it is like, "How does a country become Nazis?" Like, not every German person became a Nazi

• 1:19:10Adam Friedland?

  or started hating Jews. They just... It was largely invisible a lot of the time. They would see people get snatched, and then they'd go to the office the next day. And like, they were sent to the East. And I think like, I can see the Democratic Party sometimes being like, "We got to protect Social Security." You know? I can see them be like, "We don't have time. This is happening, but like, what's more important is protecting Social Security."

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  We got to talk about kitchen table issues.

• 1:19:39Adam Friedland?

  That is, I think, what's really scary to me right now.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  It's scary, it also is...

• 1:19:45Adam Friedland?

  It's human beings.

• 1:19:46Speaker 01

  It's like what keeps me awake at night. It's infuriating to me. And part of this is like, we've been talking about Germany and all that. Like, you don't even need to do any of the historical parallels, because then you get into all these conversations. Is it like that? Is it not like that? Just go from the level of like, individual human beings. There are hundreds, thousands of people in this country. Like, many of whom are here legally. Had, did everything right. Didn't just like cross the border illegally. Were here legally. Some of them US citizens. Snatched away, taken from their families.

• 1:20:19Adam Friedland?

  From their kids.

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  From their kids. Pregnant women, who like aren't getting the food they need. Like, that is happening in this country. And all I can think about is like, you can, show me the fucking poll that tells me, well, people don't care as much about immigration and if you talk more about healthcare and social security, that's gonna... I get that. I'm, I'm a student of polling, I like polling, I've done it, yeah. But like, you can't tell me that if someone hears the story of the pregnant woman who was snatched from her family and imprisoned for three days with no due process, that that's not gonna get them angry? And maybe, and if it doesn't, then I guess that's our country. But at least we can try to make sure that people know that those are the, that those are the stories that are happening right now.

• 1:21:00Adam Friedland?

  It seems like now is a time where we kind of need to take some lessons. Not from just Trump being crazy, but from like, what led us to this point?

• 1:21:09Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 1:21:09Adam Friedland?

  And what is like the first, most important thing that we should be investigating and, uh... Or, or what is the biggest lesson we have to take for the runway that led us here? I mean, because you were there eight, for the, for that, for the runway.

• 1:21:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:25Adam Friedland?

  Initial time, like, what?

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  I think we need leaders in this country who, and you brought this up when you talked about like, how the policies can sometimes feel small or incremental. But I think that, um, Democrats for a while now have campaigned with a list of policies that poll well and also have campaigned sort of based on a sense of, of fear that either they're gonna lose the election or that the other side is gonna win and the other side is so bad that they can't say anything that would help the other side win, you know? And so, everyone is campaigning very cautiously

• 1:22:10Speaker 01

  and speaking cautiously and giving their poll-tested lines and their poll-tested lists of policies that work well. And I think... One thing that I've learned from the Trump years and from the Obama years is if you want people to pay attention to politics, to be engaged in politics, and to fight for the country that I think we know that we are better than, sorry, if you want people to fight for the country that we believe in, that you have to, you have to do more than that. You have to like say what you actually believe.

• 1:22:48Adam Friedland?

  Also, sometimes you have to pass the Civil Rights Act.

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  You have to pass the Civil Rights Act.

• 1:22:51Adam Friedland?

  And sometimes you might lose the South like forever.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  You have to pass the Civil Rights Act, but even think like, think of what it took to get.

• 1:22:58Adam Friedland?

  I mean, Johnson should be that example. That's what you were reminding me of. It's like, I'm not going to get re-elected, you know? And it's not fair because I killed the guy from before and like, that is, that is not true. George Bush's dad did that.

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, we know.

• 1:23:14Adam Friedland?

  But, okay, no, no, but like Johnson, you know, he made a massive sacrifice for the party and for his own political career and to do something that was right.

• 1:23:26Speaker 01

  And it took 10 years of people marching in the streets, getting the shit beat out of them, dying, and also leaders like Martin Luther King, who like spoke in a way that was not just political, but like spiritual and moral about the country's like best ideals that we have never reached, but they're out there.

• 1:23:47Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  And we need leaders who are going to speak like that again in like moral and spiritual terms about, I mean, look, this is a country that like was founded on the most radical idea in history.

• 1:24:01Adam Friedland?

  Not.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  That everyone's created equal.

• 1:24:03Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, not fucking.

• 1:24:04Speaker 01

  Not fucking.

• 1:24:05Adam Friedland?

  Wasn't that it?

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  And like, you've got to have that like set of values that you speak about. You've got to tell a story about the country, about what it's been at its best. What it is at its worst and like where it needs to go. And you have, and that story has to be told over and over again. It has to be told with confidence. It has to be told without some kind of a fear that people are going to attack you or yell at you over it. And, um, and I just think like that's the kind of, those are the kind of leaders we need in the party right now. And I worry that people are thinking too small right now. Not just from a policy perspective, but in a rhetorical perspective. Like what, what is the story you're going to tell about where this country needs to go? And past Trump, we've now dealt with Trump for 10 years. We've all heard about Trump enough.

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  Like, we don't need a whole primary in 2028 that's all about Donald Trump. There was a lot of George Bush when we ran in 2008, but like, we didn't spend a ton of time in every speech talking about George Bush. Cause everyone was like, George Bush is done. It's been two terms. We know that he fucked up the country and now we're going to talk about what's next. And I do hope that as we start getting towards 2026, 27 and 28, more Democrats are talking about like where they want to take this country.

• 1:25:17Adam Friedland?

  Would he like me, Obama?

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 1:25:19Adam Friedland?

  Would he like me?

• 1:25:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, he would like you.

• 1:25:21Adam Friedland?

  No, shut up, like, he likes jokes?

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  He does like jokes.

• 1:25:25Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. Have you ever told him that Kendrick Lamar isn't that good?

• 1:25:30Adam Friedland?

  He should put, stop putting it on the list.

• 1:25:33Speaker 01

  I've never told him that, no.

• 1:25:34Adam Friedland?

  I wonder, yeah, like, have you heard Future is way better?

• 1:25:38Adam Friedland?

  It's the society, the institution of society. Come on, dude, it's not smart. It's freshman year. As a writer, you could admit, it's a little bit showing, not telling, or telling, not showing.

• 1:25:48Speaker 01

  A little bit.

• 1:25:48Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. You're just saying the society, the institution of the societize. You're not, you're not showing an image. You're not painting, oh, come on, dude.

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  You more of a Drake guy?

• 1:25:59Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, me and Obama are, Obama just can't admit it. Cause he's Canadian. And he's anti Semitic.

• 1:26:08Adam Friedland?

  Has Obama ever sent you a selfie?

• 1:26:11Speaker 01

  No, he's never sent me a selfie.

• 1:26:12Adam Friedland?

  Have you sent him one?

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:26:14Adam Friedland?

  You definitely. Can you, why don't you just send him your first, just say, I realize I never sent you a selfie before.

• 1:26:23Adam Friedland?

  It's crazy.

• 1:26:24Speaker 01

  Hey, boss.

• 1:26:25Adam Friedland?

  You still think he's your boss? He's your boss for life?

• 1:26:29Speaker 01

  You know.

• 1:26:29Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  If he needs something, I'm always, you know, he needs help with something, I was like, sure, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:26:35Adam Friedland?

  Sir?

• 1:26:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:36Adam Friedland?

  You like drop a baby? You're like, what?

• 1:26:39Adam Friedland?

  Can you just, can we, can we face Obama? Just real quick. Joe G., Joe G.'s favorite president is Obama. Joe G. is a 26-year-old boy from Los Angeles, California, and his favorite president is Obama.

• 1:26:54Adam Friedland?

  And he wants to...

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  He wants to, who wants to face him?

• 1:26:56Adam Friedland?

  And he's dying.

• 1:26:59Adam Friedland?

  He has a terminal illness. Shut up. Joe G.'s very sick. And this is his life?

• 1:27:04Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:27:08Adam Friedland?

  Thanks a lot. Everybody, give it up.

• 1:27:53Speaker 00

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• 1:28:21Speaker 06

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