#407 — Can We Ever Return to Normal Politics？
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Summary
Jon Favreau is a former White House speechwriter for President Barack Obama. In this episode, Jon talks about how he got his start as a speechwriter, why he left the job, and what it was like working for the current president, Donald Trump.
Transcript
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Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're
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I am here with Jon Favreau. Jon, thanks for joining me.
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Nice to finally meet you. I've seen you work in your magic in democratic circles for many years,
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Can you summarize your background in politics and media at this point?
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Sure. I started on the Kerry campaign, on John Kerry's campaign in 2004, two weeks after I
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graduated college. I started as a press assistant there, and then I ended up becoming a speechwriter.
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And then after Kerry lost, I worked for then-Senator Barack Obama when he got to the Senate in 2005.
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I was his head speechwriter. And I stayed with him through the Senate, through the 2008 campaign,
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went on to the White House to be head speechwriter there. And I left the White House in 2013.
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And then in 2016, started a podcast about the 2016 election with some Obama colleagues as a hobby.
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And then after Donald Trump won, which we did not expect, like many others, it became a full-blown media company
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called Crooked Media. And the pod is now Pod Save America. And now we have many podcasts and a big company,
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Nice. Nice. And you're on more than one podcast at this point, right?
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Yeah. I co-host Pod Save America, and I also host Offline, a podcast about how the internet's
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breaking all of our brains, which I know you'd like to talk about as well.
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And then I also host a podcast called The Wilderness, where I do sit down and do focus
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groups with swing voters and talk about what's wrong with the Democratic Party and how to fix it,
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Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's get into it. But your experience as a speechwriter, I'm interested
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to know what that job, how is it demarcated from actually thinking about weighing in on policy?
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I mean, are you simply transcribing what the president and other advisors tell you they want
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to express? Or are you in the weeds and actually trying to think of what they should be saying and
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It's a great question. And I think there was a difference between when I was a speechwriter in
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the Senate and the campaign when I was a speechwriter in the White House, in the campaign and in the
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Senate. It's less about policy, but obviously there were a lot of policies that I was writing
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about there. But it's more poetry than prose. In the White House, there was access to every single
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policy advisor and smart person you could imagine. And we obviously started the presidency
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in the middle of the financial crisis. I am not an economic expert, but I was able to learn from
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Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, all the top advisors. And a lot of it is speechwriting is synthesizing
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policy, figuring out what parts of policy to emphasize that are going to be most politically
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effective, figuring out a way to communicate complicated policy topics and issues to the public.
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And I was also lucky to work for a president who very much was involved in the writing and
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conception of his speeches, especially the big speeches. Obviously, the president speaks many
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times a day, so sometimes we just wrote him a speech and he made a couple edits and gave the
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speech. But on the big speeches, the president and I would sit down and he would have many thoughts.
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We'd sit down with the policy advisors. We'd sit down with the political and communications
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advisors. And then, you know, I always say that speech writing is a lot of diplomacy as well.
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So it's figuring out, you know, what to put in the speech, what to cut, who to make happy,
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whose ego you have to massage, and all that stuff.
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Hmm. So given your experience in working for one president and knowing how the communication happens,
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knowing how policy gets translated into action and how it gets sold to the public politically,
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what's your experience of watching this happen in the Trump administration? I'll add you one other
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piece of not to lead the witness to fully, but I noticed President Obama the other day making a
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point that many of us have made on his behalf now for years. I don't know what the venue was,
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but he was on stage and he was saying, can you imagine if I did any of this? Right. And then
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he started to list the things and he didn't even list the most egregious, grotesque and unthinkable
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things. I mean, so we all remember the scandal that absorbed the news for at least 24 hours over
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his wearing a tan suit. I think there was a bad salute with a, you know, a latte in one hand that
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also captured us for a full news cycle. I think that there might've been a report that he asked for
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Dijon mustard somewhere or something like that was the level of scandal. And now we have a president
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and his family enriching themselves to the tune of presumably billions of dollars with a meme coin
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that is a mechanism by which they can be bribed in a covert way by anyone on earth. And that's one of
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maybe 10,000 indiscretions we could list. Give me the veteran of the Obama administration view of
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the current norm violations and what just passes. What is even beneath comment now in a news cycle?
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Yeah. I mean, it's, look, it's horrifying. And sometimes I, you know, I've been now talking about
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Donald Trump almost every day for the last, you know, since 2015. And he never ceases to, you know,
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it stops being surprising, but it is still shocking. And it's the norm violations, obviously.
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It's also just this sense of constant chaos that is, it reminds you of the fragility of not just
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democracy, but you know, the whole country. And he does things and the administration does things.
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And especially in the second term, I think, where you think, you know, everything could fall apart
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and it wouldn't take much. And what was different about the Obama administration is,
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or one of the many differences is like, I knew that there were serious people in charge and people
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who are trying to do their best. And that did not mean that they didn't make a whole lot of mistakes.
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It doesn't mean that they made the wrong judgments at some times, that people are human, they do that.
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It did mean that you could trust that when something happened in the world, when news broke,
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when there was a crisis, when there was a disaster, that there were going to be civil servants and
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political appointees who wanted to do their very best and work very hard to solve as many problems
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as they could and help as many people as they could. And in the Trump administration, and we saw
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this in the first White House and now in the second White House, you know, it's all about him.
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And people's views that they have going into the administration doesn't matter if they have
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their own views or they think a policy is crazy or they think something's bad. Everything is about
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making sure that Trump is happy. Everything is about trying to retrofit your views to whatever Trump
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is thinking at the moment. Entire policy processes are processes, sorry, are basically, you know,
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I don't get the sense that there are many. I get the sense that it's just sitting around and
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whatever Trump wants, they do. And, you know, I was just like watching Scott Besant on TV this week
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as we're talking about tariffs. And, you know, you can tell that Scott Besant had a view of tariffs
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before he came into the Trump administration where he said, yeah, I guess they can be used as a tool for
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negotiation. And now we're getting reports that, you know, Besant doesn't necessarily agree with how far
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they've gone on tariffs and wants the president to be making more deals and negotiate. But he can't
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say any of that because he's probably thinking to himself, all right, I'm an adult. I'm going to try
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to push policy in the right direction here. But if I go too hard or I make him too angry, then I'm going
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to get fired and the person who replaces me is going to be worse. And he's right about that. And so this is
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the dynamic you have, which is it's a cult of personality. And when you have a cult of personality
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and that's responsible for running the entire country and relations with the entire world,
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it's pretty scary. What are your biggest concerns for the next few years?
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I'm, of course, concerned about what's going to happen with the economy here at home and globally
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with if this trade war continues. What I've been really concerned about over the last several weeks
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is the fact that they are, the government is disappearing people to this prison in El Salvador
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with no due process. And I say this as someone who, after the last election, thought, you know what,
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Democrats from 2020 on, our position on immigration at times was too far to the left. I think Joe Biden
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made real mistakes on border security. And so, you know, and I spoke out about that after the election
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and, you know, I got some shit from the left on that. But it is so beyond immigration policy,
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what is happening right now. Because if they can, if the government can, as the government thinks it
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can and is arguing in court that it can, round someone up with no due process, ship them off to
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El Salvador. And even if they make a mistake, now they're arguing that they can't bring them back.
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They can't bring the person back from a prison that is known for human rights abuses.
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Yeah. That's an astonishing detail. I mean, and I haven't frankly followed it to its source,
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but they've admitted that they got the wrong guy. They've sent an innocent person into a gulag,
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essentially. And that, why, how, why are they saying they can't bring this person back?
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Like, they're saying they don't want to. They're also saying they have, well, so we're paying,
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we, the United States government is paying $6 million a year to El Salvador, to the government.
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And this is, you know, Bukele runs El Salvador. He's a dictator, calls himself a dictator.
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And so we're paying $6 million to this dictator a year to house these detainees under what authority?
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I don't know what authority the United States has to not, of course, the president has wide
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authority to deport people who aren't here legally. Even people, even legal residents and green card
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holders, if they really want, they can figure out a way to deport with due process. But under what law
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can they just lock someone away in a prison who hasn't been convicted of anything? We don't know.
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That issue remains to be adjudicated. But this, this man from Maryland, he had legal protections
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from being deported back to El Salvador because there was a credible threat to his life. And so a judge
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gave him legal protections. There was, um, uh, years before in 2019, he was caught up with police
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and because he had a, was wearing a bull's hoodie. And because some informant thought that he was part
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of a chapter of MS-13 in a state where he never lived in Western New York. And that based on one
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anonymous informant that never came forward, they decided that he was MS-13. And that is now what the
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government is arguing, that that is all the evidence they need, that this man who has committed
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no crimes and has been in no trouble since he got here in 2011, father of three has a job protections
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from being deported back to El Salvador is now in prison in El Salvador indefinitely, no access to a
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lawyer, nothing else. And that's, and they admitted in court that they, that they sent him there in
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error because of, he had this legal protection, but they're saying, well, we can't order a foreign
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government to do anything. And the courts, by the way, shouldn't get involved in what is a national
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security foreign policy matter. And the courts have asked, okay, we'll provide some evidence
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and they won't do it. Okay. So I, again, I mean, this is, it's a, um, it's one of those stories where
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it's the details are so awful. It convinces you that it's a kind of moral emergency and yet it's just
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one story. And, and I think it's appearing against a background of so many indiscretions and norm
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violations and accruals of risk of a sort that we find very difficult to price into our vision of the
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future that it's, it's very hard to focus on, right? It's like, it's, this is the problem we
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started with, with Trump. I mean, if all he did was wear a tan suit, well, then maybe we could talk
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about that. Right. But he's, since he's done 10,000 things, there's no, no thing really survives the,
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the contest with all the other things to, to sustain our attention. Again, like the,
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the meme coin, I just can't believe the world didn't stop spinning when they launched the meme
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coin, right? Like that's like, we should have been talking about nothing else for the last
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60 days or whenever that. And look, and that, and that is still very much relevant and it could be
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even more relevant now that the president has decided he's going to negotiate one-off deals with
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every country over these tariffs, right? So you can imagine any one of these countries trying to
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curry favor with Donald Trump in multiple ways. The government itself has put, the White House put out
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a policy sheet that said, yeah, you can reduce tariffs as part of a deal. You can reduce non-tariff
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barriers. And also the last, last option they gave other countries is you can just cut a check to the
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United States government that we can spend on the public good. That's, that was actually in a White
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House, a White House fact sheet. So it's, it, you know, the, the, the whole tariff regime, who knows
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exactly why he's doing it? Cause it's hard to get inside his head. But one consequence of that is he
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is going to be able to, you know, scam people, you know, scheme like he always does. He's just do
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the mob boss thing and he can, you know, if someone wants to invest in his meme coin, uh, as some
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foreign leader in some country, they'll be able to do that. Yeah. I mean, it's, I don't know what to
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think about the people who see all this and find these details totally uninteresting. I mean, did you,
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do you have any friends who voted for Trump? My close friends? Not cool. Yeah. I have some family
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members who did. And I do have some really close friends who didn't vote for Trump, but couldn't
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bring themselves to vote for Kamala Harris and, and thought that was okay. Cause they're in blue
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States. And it's interesting. Cause you know, one of my close friends did this and lately he's been
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like, this is crazy. Donald Trump is crazy. I can't believe this. He's like, but you know what?
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I just can't, I can't pay attention to it. I can't get myself worried about it. I followed it for so
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many years in the first term and I can't get exercised about this. I got to just focus on my job
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in my family and not pay attention to it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's more verbose than, uh, I get
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from my Trump voting friends. I mean, on this point alone, like the, the corruption thing is just,
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is so obvious. It's such an obvious liability. It's such a, it's just an X-ray into the character
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of the president and the prospect of the, the unraveling of democracy. And it's, you know,
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started immediately. I mean, it started before the meme coin or before the, actually the, I guess the
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meme coin happened right before inauguration, but the, um, right in that week, I think Amazon paid,
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uh, Melania $40 million for the film rights to her, uh, presumably unreadable memoir. I mean,
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just, you know, that's totally legal. It's totally like, I'm sure there's someone at Amazon who can
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defend that with a, with a straight face, but it's so obviously box sheesh to a, uh, you know,
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the, the Trump crime family. And it's, it's, it's now it's one of hundreds of things. I mean,
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it's just the, the spend that is happening at his golf courses by the, you know, the Saudi funded
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golf association. It's just, you know, we should be able to dimly remember a time where presidents
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and other politicians were expected to have no conflicts of interest financially. Right. And this
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is just like, like there's only conflicts of interest. I think a challenge is, and, and this is
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what may make this ultimately quite politically damaging for Trump is when you talk to voters,
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voters have, most voters have for some time believed that all politicians are corrupt and
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that both parties are corrupt. And even when you had a very ethical administration that wasn't
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corrupt, I think like, as you pointed out the Obama administration, we didn't have, we didn't
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have corruption scandals, uh, in our administration. And the, that was because the president worked very
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hard to make sure that we had no corruption scandals and that people would be fired if
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there were, and had all the right ethics lawyers in place and all that. But regardless, because of
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the media environment, because of politics, because of a loss of faith in institutions, that is a much
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bigger issue that we've been dealing with for the last several decades. People think that everyone's
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corrupt. So if you ask people, is, is Trump corrupt? Is Trump making himself money on the job? You
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probably get a lot of people, including people who voted for Trump say, yeah, I think that's true,
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but it's okay if he's going to make himself rich as long as he makes me rich too, or as long as he,
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he, he, I'm making money, you know? And I think if that's sort of like the, the corrupt bargain
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that Trump, that some Trump voters have struck. And I think that if the economy goes south and if
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this trade war continues and we have a recession or worse, then people are going to start looking at
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all of the corruption and all of like the Trump family enriching themselves over and over again
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at every chance they get. I mean, as the markets were wiping away trillions of dollars of wealth
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over the weekend, you know, he's hosting the Saudi backed golf tournament in his, in his beach club,
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making a bunch of money on that while the markets are tanking. I do think that has the potential to be
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quite damaging because then people say, all right, you're getting rich, but I'm getting poorer and
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that's not the deal. Do we know how much exposure he and his family have to the stock market? Is
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that something that is journalistically findable? I mean, I think they, they had to put everything
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into blind trust when he took office, but I don't know how much exposure they actually have.
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Right. Right. That would be interesting to know. Well, so what should the Democrats do at this
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point? Yeah. I mean, this is, I think this is probably the most difficult spot that the Democratic
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Party has been in as long as I can remember, because the last time we had this little power,
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it was when I started working for Obama in 2005.
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