LIVE(ish) from the Obama Presidential Center

23:11And I think they're very sensitive to the idea that this is either a monument to them or about the accomplishments of the administration or about some gauzy past. and what it is supposed to be is basically like a pep talk for america yeah which which today was i

23:28Jon Favreau:think a badly needed one but yeah i look i think a lot of people are frustrated that he's not more engaged with kind of like the politics of the day-to-day and i think we've even at times expressed like wishing he was just talking about things but he talked about the twin cities and the way they stood up to ice and came together as a community i thought that was clearly about this moment yeah he talked about government is more than one that divvies up the spoils that punishes enemies that keeps those that are different from them in their place shot at george w bush he's like i do subtle leave how that's how the story of america ends like we'll talk about michelle's speech in a minute which is a little more um uh directed at uh the trump administration but i thought obama's very much commenting on the politics of trumpet today i would just say criticizing museum for being too nostalgic is just idiotic it's just our point this museum looks backwards which way does your museum face i think this all started with i think it was at a new york times he said it was a peter baker yes and it was like and i think i mean i get why reporters would write that right because we are living in this reality and then you step in here and you're like okay is this just a pining for the past kind of thing sure and i you know what they're what they're really trying to say and this goes to your point about how people complain like obama's not more involved in politics and what obama always says is like i don't want to be out there forever because I want the next generation of progressive leaders to be out there and to like have their moment.

24:51Maybe this will be the election cycle that happens. And I think the point of the center and the point of the foundation. I'm losing with the football. But even the point of the center, the point of the foundation especially is to train and inspire young leaders here and all over the world. And I think that is it finally makes sense to me now because like it is nice when Obama goes out there and he's great on the campaign trail and he gives great speeches and he motivates people. And that's important to have in democratic politics. But we do need leaders who are not Obama and who take the spotlight in the next 10 years, 20 years.

25:21Yeah. Also, I don't I agree with all that. But also, it's OK to be nostalgic. I'm not a like nostalgia doesn't do it for me in the same way. I'm not really like a hope person. I'm more of an anger and rage person. But I understand its value in the same way that Trump appeals to more of an experienced person. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And in small doses. And especially when experience plus strength. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. And obviously, as I've said, change equals one divided by no way. What is strength plus experience equals change? So change divided by strength plus experience equals one. But back to the museum, like it's OK to be nostalgic, right?

25:56Like, like, yes, this was a a moment where people were really hopeful and a lot of really good was a lot of good was done. A lot of things weren't finished, but people believed in the mission. They cared about it. They fought to make it happen. And they elected him twice. And it led to really good things. That nostalgia is a good thing to feel. And there's a way in which to like. Especially if it inspires you to act. Yes. It's good to feel. But it's also good to be like, oh, well, then I'm going to go do something. And there's a whole and there's a lot of people who are very, very hyper engaged in politics.

26:27It applies to a lot of people that are partisan. It applies to a lot of people that are nonpartisan journalists that that they see that is inherently naive, that there's something inherently naive about having that warm and good feeling about politics in any way that it's cringe. Right. I think it applies to us sometimes. Of course. I've gotten I've been in those moments all the time. But but like but I had this moment when I was watching. I think it was there was a moment where Bono was singing Michelle Mybel. And boy, I have a photo. I have a I'm cringing. I got a photo of Tommy, just a full body cringe.

26:56And I get, but why do we cringe? And I think it's sometimes because we're uncomfortable with a display of care or like a direction that we might agree with, but take something too far in a way that feels syrupy or saccharine in some way. And you were wondering, is he hitting on her?

27:10Jon Favreau:Yeah, that was a word. Well, I mean, Obama did say, leave my wife, don't with my wife. But it was a lot to your point, like the 2020 election, like, you know, it was a thing you'd hear online that people were like, oh, oh, we're just going to vote our way out of this problem. It's like, well, yeah. Yeah. Actually, that's the whole thing. That's democracy. I mean, that's not the only thing you're going to do. But at some point you do have to vote. Otherwise, if you don't do it, a lot of the other stuff you're going to try is going to do much. Well, otherwise, it's not a democracy. And then we're the other system that we say that we're against.

27:37Right. So you do have to vote at some point. So let's talk about Michelle's speech. um let's just listen to a clip because then we can then we can comment on it the native kid showing us that resilience and pride can never be stolen the 4-hers and ffa members with calluses on their hands from feeding livestock the immigrants proving what it truly means to be dreamer. These folks aren't Americans too. They are America. They are the beating heart of this country. They are us and we are them. Deep down in our hearts and souls, we all know right from wrong. We know selflessness from greed, righteousness from injustice.

28:35All of us, all of us are created equal. That each of us is a child of God with an errant value. And no one, and I mean no one, has the right to sit in judgment of who's American enough. so i will say um i i got like a little misty when i saw the grant park uh panel at the at the center but um the the first time this whole week that i actually just like cried was during her speech oh yeah for sure i saw the um sign language interpreter wiping tears i did too i did too it was a fantastic speech like listen i mean it's like it's almost cliche to say it like

29:18Jon Favreau:michelle obama always knocks out of the park but it really was this i thought obama's speech was really good she like i can't remember the last time i didn't see her just kind of knock the cover off the ball i'm trying to think of a bad michelle there's no there's there no she the the part that also was really moving was she she says at the beginning i'm going to do what you know what brock won't want me to do and just like brag about him and and she talks about like how he carried himself um in the eight years as president and that's what like really did it for me yeah i lost it at that point it is him crying it is like like what she said about him is like what we know but just like he is such like a decent human like just truly to his core decent like he's flawed like he's a human but he's a decent human i think all the time about like the one thing and this is like at the core of what michelle was saying but he used to think all the time about how every like i'd be in meetings with Obama where it would just be like people who you saw a lot.

30:20He'd be pretty grumpy, right? Like shit is bad going on. But then someone would come in the room who'd be like a younger staff briefing on something or someone coming in for a visit. And he like instantly knew that that interaction with him, maybe that's the only time they'll ever meet a president in their life, was going to be matter. Life-changing. Life-changing for them. And he wouldn't matter how shitty the day was. He would pull it together and just treat that person with the utmost respect and make that a special moment. That to me has always summed up who he is. And it was really just powerful to hear Michelle talk about it that way.

30:55I always thought that there was an irony in the Obama campaign being about change and that that carrying him all the way to the nomination. But ultimately, he is able to defeat John McCain because in the weeks of the financial crisis, what actually carried him all the way to the presidency, which was not a quality that I think was necessary for his rise until then, was a kind of preternatural evenness, reliability, consistency, trustworthiness, a calm that was sort of in his bones that infused everything that he did. And it gave people the assurance, unspoken, that they could take a chance on him when John McCain was supposed to be the more senior and seasoned person, but had seemed erratic in the lead up to the election.

31:40And when people would say things like, which Michelle referenced, that, oh, he wasn't qualified, he wasn't this, he was that. It's like, why is he qualified? Well, look at what he is, look at how he is modeling what it means to be a senator and a candidate in a way that, say, Sarah Palin, right, who could claim a similar whatever experience in the public, in elected office that didn't have the same effect. And now we're all these years later, and it just stands in contrast to what Trump is. And the fact that there were so many Republicans who spent eight years denigrating him as a person, pretending he was some threat or some alien or some evil and socialist sort of extreme force, when, of course, the whole time, he was this even-keeled, center-left, consensus-building, reliable figure, which now, in hindsight, the country terribly misses.

32:29Jon Favreau:Yeah, I think, when I just think about why I was lucky to work for him, like, yeah, he was cool. Yes, he was a great communicator and speaker, but the thing upon like a long time of reflection that i've come to realize was the best part about working for him is that on literally anything you could go to him and he had a core belief about whatever it was and that was from a good place that was from a sense of decency and like yes politics are part of everything but it's about doing the right thing and like you just never doubted that or like their motivation of their family and it's just like i'm contrast that to like you walk in the oval office now and they're fucking day trading on the war with iran you know it's just insane where we've got my one of my favorite lines about obama ever is um that ta-nehisi coates line um at the beginning of that long piece about him at the end of the administration which was uh for eight years he walked on ice and never fell yeah um and it was about race and how he handled race and being the first black president but i also um think it's about so much more than that is that like the job president and the job of him being president and being the first black president, as Michelle also mentioned today, it requires so much care and thoughtfulness and like balance of so many different competing interests and competing desires within yourself and trying to channel your emotions and trying to suppress some emotions.

34:00And I feel like Michelle's speech was that line, that Ta-Nehisi Coates line. And I think that's why it was so affecting because I was like, you know, I think we all get that having been in politics. Like we all do that. We've all done that throughout our time in politics as you realize that so much of the job is constant thinking about like, what is the right balance of this and that? And how do I not piss this person off? And how do I persuade this person? And like so much care goes into it. And the fact that he was able to do that and and get through eight years still intact is just like, you know, it's it's inspiring.

34:34I think the being the first black president. Like what Michelle said, like we like anyone who worked with him or worked from the very beginning knew the historic nature of his candidacy and the different set of rules that are applied to him. And it's the same way different set of rules applied to women candidates. And he refused to complain about it. He refused to complain about it. And he could and Michelle said like that was subtext of everything that we always talked about. But Michelle made it text. Right. And said very clearly that he for eight years could not make a mistake. He could not slip up.

35:04He cannot lose his temper. He cannot lash out. He cannot send an angry tweet. He had to bear the expectations and the pressure of being the first black president because how he did it was going to dictate if and when we had a second black president. Yeah. Right.

35:18Jon Favreau:For example, literally just pointing out that Trayvon Martin looked like what his son would look like. she said that today and i was like yeah she leaned in yeah and i think that i think she got some stuff off her chest today which i liked yeah she always does yeah like it was great it was it was powerful we should talk yeah we should talk about like the sort of the the backdrop of all this invisible in the backdrop and sometimes not very visible as trump yeah um and how they all kind of how they both handled that today yeah well yeah the the i always it's funny i felt the same at the convention too that when Michelle's speeches, there's like an edge and a kind of darkness to them that I'm like, oh, I'm like, I'm always caught off guard by it.

35:58I'm like, oh, like she's pissed a little bit. Like she's going to say some things that she's feeling about what's going on right now. And it always works because I do think like she taps it. It's a very, it's, you know, it's a, it's, it matches what he does. Um, there's a compliments what, what he does because she has this, she understands how to use that feeling people have. That's all, we're living through the Trump era. We're always a little bit mad. We're always a little bit upset. It's always there. It is a cloud over our society. And she just, without saying the name, she just said, you know what?

36:29That's part of today. And it makes me upset too, not just because of what's happening right now, but because of what the other standard that was applied to Barack Obama when I saw what kind of a man he was.

36:40Jon Favreau:And the thing that I think will probably get clicky is like, you know, he actually won a peace prize, right? That was like a fun shot of Trump. The thing that I thought to your point, Lovett, about the darkness was failing to see the humanity in others puts us on a slippery slope when she's talking about immigration. Yes. Yeah. Right. She's like talking about this slide to fascism in her remarks. I can't remember who said this, but someone said about Michelle after her convention speech in 2024 that she is your friend who just tells you like it is. Does not beat around the bush, just tells you exactly what you need to hear.

37:11And her speech is always just reflective. Like there's no like there's a way to make those points that are so subtle that like maybe or you get it, but you've basically wasted a bunch of words that she just says it always. And it's what makes it so powerful. I always roll my eyes when people are like Michelle Obama should run for president because we obviously know she's never going to run for anything because she despises politics. But again today like halfway through the speech. I know. As I was crying and then Emily was also crying next to me. She was like I mean maybe she should run for something.

37:38I had the same exact thought. She's like are we crazy or was this. I had the same thought then I slapped myself. I'm like well we can want it all we want. She's not going to do it. But like she just really she can command a stage.

37:49Jon Favreau:By the way we're in a working building. You might hear some background noise.

38:19Jon Favreau:We'll see you next time. even schedule free pickups. So that letter carrier, they come right to you. How about that? Whether you're sending letters, contracts, important legal documents, or packages, stamps.com makes mailing simple for businesses of all sizes, including multi-location offices. You can even send certified mail with proof of delivery right from your desk. We love stamps.com. We've been using stamps.com for a very long time. Since we founded Crooked. We founded the company. We've been shipping stuff. We've been sending merch, sending important business things. Who doesn't love stamps?

38:53Jon Favreau:It's a way you send stuff. It's how you stamp approval. You got tramp stamps. Tommy's got stamps, tramp stamps. Briefly said Mike Pence for president. True story. Awkward. Anyway, if mailing is taking more time and more money than it should try stamps.com for free for four weeks and get a welcome kit, go to stamps.com slash PSA to get this offer today. That's S T A M P S.com slash PSA stamps.com slash PSA taxes and fees apply.

39:26One more thing before we move on, Dan, you had a message box today in honor of today. I did. About what Democrats can learn from Barack Obama, which I thought would be a nice, nice way to end this section. Well, look, I think, you know, Obama says every election cycle, he goes out, he goes on the trail and everyone says, like, why can't more Democrats look at this? And Obama's obviously, as we all know, and everyone's a generationally talented communicator. And so just telling people to be more like Obama is like not helpful advice. It's like be more like Michael Jordan. Dunk more. Yeah. But I think there are like a few things that any communicator can take from him.

40:04I'll just give you a couple. One is like in Tommy, you mentioned this is that there is this inherent patriotism in everything he says. Like he owns it. He will not let Republicans take patriotism. He is not. He will, you know, and often does talk about all the flaws in this country, but makes the point about what a special place is. You heard that today. The other one is that he, you know, I remember this early on the administration, we were going to do a YouTube town hall, which was like very innovative at the time, which was just a town hall that streamed on the Internet. And but YouTube was hosting and we were taking we're doing a YouTube podcast and they were taking questions over the over, I guess, in YouTube comments.

40:42I can remember. But the number one topic by far was legalization of marijuana. and so we went in to say like this is number one question but you don't like we don't have to take it and he's like you always have to talk he's like well if it's the number one question we're going to talk about it yeah talk about everything because he like he will always say it's like you always have to talk about the thing right the elephant in the room you cannot avoid it just take it head on you know and then the last thing i think is really powerful is we talk all the time about like how democrats need a better affordability message uh economic message all this And what Obama always understood is that the discussion of the economy is not really about policy.

41:22It's not about how many times you say affordability. It's not whether you say bottom up or middle out. It is a story about values, about who you're fighting for and who you're fighting against. And like that is the frame to bring to all of this. And this is like ultimately I think the biggest thing to take from Obama over the whole time is that politics and messaging is a storytelling exercise. It's not a slogan. It's not a soundbite. It's not a tweet. It is an overall narrative about the country, about why you are the person who should be elected, why the other side should not be elected, and fitting things into those stories.

41:56What do you have to say about this moment that we're in right now and the country and where you want to take us? What do you have to say about it? And everything has to flow from there. Message flows from there. Policy flows from there. That's where you have to start. And Michelle and Barack Obama had something to say today, right? And people can have something completely different to say, but you still need to run for president having something to say about this moment that is beyond just Donald Trump and what policies you want to enact when you're president. OK, let's get to some news before we leave, because I guess news has been happening.

42:27We've not had access to it, but we hear it's happening. We got the we got the text of the Iran deal, apparently the MOU. And boy, is it a stinker? Tommy, was the Treaty of Versailles an MOU? I don't know That's a good question Yeah so we have Atrugia Versailles He signed it In Versailles With Macron Which is an insane choice Wait a second Didn't they auto pen it? I'm sorry I'm learning this in real time You're telling me They signed this Piece of paper In literal Versailles? Yes

42:55Jon Favreau:Dude he stayed an extra day Just to go have dinner In Versailles He's like it's real gold And it's not even The signing ceremony It was just like He decided to just Sign it in Versailles That's crazy Yeah And it's like Wow It's like the 20th crazy thing about the text. Versailles. Did an administration official read all the text of the MOU? You couldn't just copy-paste? Why? Bloomberg got it and then CNN got it, I think. But then the administration, Stephen Chang, was like, they're just wrong. That's not the text. Dude, I got it from the president of Iran's Twitter. And the real one ended up being like a couple words were different, but not by anything significant.

43:31So the Memorandum of Understanding, the MOU, the Treaty of Versailles. The MOU of Versailles. Yeah. Yeah, we got episode title. The memo calls for the suspension of the naval blockade of Iran's ports and for Iran to use its best efforts to allow traffic through the Strait of Hormuz without tolls. Try your best. For 60 days. It calls for a permanent end to war in Israel and Lebanon. Iran is allowed to resume exporting oil. We'll get access to a 300 billion dollar redevelopment and reconstruction fund. The MOU creates a 60 day window for negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. And in the meantime, Iran reaffirms its longstanding commitment not to procure or develop nukes.

44:12So it's not playing super well. No. You got your Bill Cassidy's, John Cornyn's, all the people who feel liberated now that Trump has defeated them. They have been voicing some criticism. Other Republicans are just sort of hiding. So funny, these guys, he threw off a mountain. And then while you're rolling down towards your demise over a cliff. It's bad. Yeah. Actually, I never liked you. The Iran Hawks are very mad. You've probably consumed a lot more of Mark Levin content. Are those Ben Shapiro's tears in there?

44:46Jon Favreau:I've been watching some fan clips. I might have downloaded a commentary podcast from John Podhorts. Tommy's got the Daily Wire open in an incognito window. He's in the bathroom. Yeah.

45:01Here's we have a clip of Trump talking about the MOU of Versailles in France. And it's a memorandum of understanding. If it doesn't get done in 60 days, that's all right. We go back to bombing. Unlike Barack Hussein Obama, who sent Iran pallets of cash and any relief they receive under this deal, they'll have to get based on merit. And it won't be from us. We don't have to give them anything. But some people may want to invest. I said, well, what am I going to do? Am I going to let Saudi Arabia have missiles, but they can't have them? Yes, sir. Missiles aren't the problem. Missiles, they hurt a little location, but they don't blow up the planet.

45:40And in all fairness to Bibi Netanyahu, who happens to be a good man, gets a little excited sometimes. We have a little dispute over Lebanon. I say you can do a little softer touch, Bibi. You don't have to knock down a building every time somebody walks into it that's from Hezbollah. yeah it's true that was that that got me i'm sorry that got another one too is like well every time the best uh best case the other line was uh you shoot a couple missiles down they don't hurt you by the desert you're knocking down a building in beirut it was like imagine the the the shit a democrat said the shit that we brought down on these people and i'm sorry no i just the idea the number of times these fucking anti-jcpoa people were like this doesn't even address ballistic missiles ballistic missiles ballistic missiles proxies this is rubio said it a million times at the beginning of this.

46:24This is why the deal is so shameful. You're going to give them money, but they're not addressing the core problem of the ballistic missiles and Hezbollah and their proxies. And then Trump gives up completely. And$300 billion is what? Twice? Three times? Four times as much as what was ever contemplated by the Iran deal?

46:41Jon Favreau:They got an immediate license to sell oil and gas. So they're going to be making money off of that. Then they're clearly planning to, you know, they call it fees, but they're going to be toll ships in the straight over Homoose. Iran's going to make so much money off of this. I mean, look, big picture, the best outcome is the war being over. So like, I'm happy that the original sin here is this war starting. And the best thing that come out of this is that the fucking Lindsey Graham Foundation for the Defense of Democracies neocon hawk worldview is smothered to death, right? And that Trump hates these people and that he runs them out of DC.

47:13Jon Favreau:But they cleaned his clock in this deal. And then just hearing him just on this on this ballistic missile thing, clearly, like the reason you go to the core national security priority with Iran is the preventing them from getting a nuclear weapon, right? Like nonproliferation is a good thing. Generally, I think the way you do that is through negotiations, not bombing them. We did, you know, fuck up a lot of their infrastructure, but whatever, they can rebuild that. But to hear Trump from going from these maximalist positions to being like, eh, who cares about the nuclear dust? We got eyes on it.

47:43Jon Favreau:Maybe we'll get it out. Maybe we won't. It's like head spinning. And then on the ballistic missiles, like remember when Rubio went up to Capitol Hill and he did that press conference where he blamed Israel and then ran away and didn't talk to the press for two months. The core argument they were making there is that Iran was on the cusp of having a ballistic missile arsenal that would make their nuclear weapons program like impregnable and we couldn't go after. Oh, right. I forgot. Right. And now Trump is like, eh, who gives a fuck? They can have some ballistic missiles. It's no big deal. The Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia, Rubio also is like this.

48:13Our goal is to stop them from their ability to project power in the region. Ballistic missiles is how you project power. It is the definition of their power in the region. Having read the MOU this morning, the text, I was like, did we get anything from this? No, the strait. The theoretical opening of the strait for 60 days. The theoretical opening of the strait that Iran and Oman are going to jointly control and can charge fees whenever they want. And before the war, the strait used to be open and controlled by no one because it was international waters. Right. And there were no tolls. So like, I don't think we got anything.

48:45Jon Favreau:And the theory of the case on the nuclear negotiations is that your leverage is military action and sanctions. And he just gave up both of those in advance of the 60 days of talks over the nuclear program. And he says like, oh, we can just go back to bombing them. But no, you won't. Iran knows that as we get closer to the midterms, he's not going to go back to bombing them. And he shouldn't go back to bombing them. They're not going to get bombed out of, you know, their nuclear know-how. We just unleashed a bombing campaign for weeks. It costs us tens of billions of dollars. And the end result is an unconditional surrender in Versailles.

49:15So I don't know what additional bombs are going to do for anybody. The other thing is, I don't know if you're going to go to it, but you had Vance sort of brushing back the Iran hawks and specifically referring to pro-Israel Iran hawks saying, Trump is the only leader on earth that is sympathetic to Israel's point of view. And we're the leader of the world's superpower, which I'm glad Vance said that, Right. It's like, look at what for all these people that claim to be so pro-Israel, right, that have been that have that have turned AIPAC into this partisan weapon that have alienated Democrats that have that have turned Israel into pariah state.

49:55Do you feel good about where where Israel is at now? Alone in the world, beholden on Donald Trump, a guy that does not give a fuck what happens, who could turn on a dime that do you think this was a long term? great play now the democratic party uh is uh uh uh opposed to the to the netanyahu government israel has never been uh more unpopular in its entire history it's never been more isolated you guys feel good about where you landed after all this while calling everybody out there anti-semites and anti-israel you think the people that might have been saying that benjamin yahoo was terrible for israel might have had a fucking point rather than calling us all what uh self-hating jews like

50:29Jon Favreau:anyway that's a little point i wanted to make about that well it just won't very quickly like Like, I want Democrats to just stand up and support the JCPOA and say that it was better. Stop all the fucking throat clearing about its flaws and what was omitted. The JCPOA is better than what Trump may eventually get here. Because with the JCPOA, Iran shipped out 97 % of its stockpile, it was out of the country and went to Russia. In this case, we're talking about downblending it to making it less usable for nuclear weapons. In the JCPOA, that went through the UN Security Council, right? So this was dead sanctions and the backing of all their closest allies, like the P5 plus one, et cetera.

51:07Jon Favreau:This will have none of that. And now this$300 billion slush fund, like what are we doing here? All these Gulf countries are now going to be told they're on the hook to rebuild Iran when Iran was firing ballistic missiles at them. Can we talk about, before we move on to this, you mentioned JD Vance. I want to sort of ask a hacky political question, which is I read in playbook this morning, I think, that a lot of J.D. Vance's opponents or detractors are trying to hang this deal around his neck and say, oh, it's J.D. Vance's deal. And there's people from J.D. Vance's office that basically pushed back and said, those people obviously can't read a poll because this war was very unpopular.

51:50And the idea that this is going to be bad for J.D. Vance to be associated with this deal, this treaty is crazy because people don't want war anyway. And so it's not going to be a real political risk for him at all. What do you guys make of that? Because I think it brings up the question of how this war and how it ended sort of plays out politically or whether it even does, whether it has a lasting political impact as we head towards the midterms and beyond that. I think on a substantive political level, No one is going to remember the war by the time that voting happens in November. And well, not in this November.

52:27I think the question is about J.D. Vance's presidential race. So by the time we get to. Yeah, I think the war will matter this November in a couple of ways we can talk about when it comes to the Republican primary or the general election of 2020. J.D. Vance and I think anyone's going to remember it. I think the damage of the war to J.D. Vance is I think it has ensured that Donald Trump will be a very unpopular president when J.D. Vance is possibly trying to be the third term of that very unpopular president. I think that is bad for him.

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54:04Speaking of Vance, he's been on a book tour about his conversion to Catholicism. Tough timing, man. Tough timing, yeah. This ruined the tour. He went to The View We went into the lion's den on The View. They did a great job. I haven't watched any of it. The questions are really good. You're learning it for the first time. Yeah, this clip will be my first experience with J.D. on The View. So let's take a look. Everybody knows that Americans are struggling. What is he spending all this money for? Well, I got to defend the president on the hoax point. What the president said is the idea that Republicans cause the affordability problem is a hoax.

54:36He said he loves the inflation. What he said, Anna, what he said is that he loves the fact that the inflation is going to come down when this war is over. That's what he said. That's not what he said. That wasn't a duress. Wait, are you his interpreter or are you his vice president? I believe, as a Christian, I can tell my kids why it's important to have borders. I get that. There are laws, there are resources. I get all that things. It's much harder to explain when I see someone dragged out of a house or wrongly taken to a thing that isn't a violent criminal. That is, it's a little more nuanced as a parent to try to say when someone's referred to as vermin or scum.

55:13When I teach them in school about people that have done that before, but this is different. It's very hard as a parent and a Christian to say both things. I would urge you as a Christian and as a father to visit those detention centers where the children are being held.

55:27Jon Favreau:So you guys have thrown a lot at me and I see we've got 30 seconds left here. But let me say, number one. Sounds like that went well. What did you guys think? That was great. anyone watch more of it? I watched a bunch of it. They did a great job. And what they did that I think we heard there was the questions weren't like from a like a shitty liberal perspective. It was like as a Christian, as a human being, how can you as a parent like see what's happening at the Dilley Detention Center and be OK with that? And I think J.D. Vance credits him, I guess, for going there. Right. That's he's clearly trying to make an argument that he's the kind of candidate that can build bridges and reach new voters by going on the view, right?

56:04Jon Favreau:Like that's like a thing you tell people you did. He answered the questions, but I don't think he did a good job. And he also just cannot help but sound like a whiny little bitch who thinks he is the victim of everything. Yeah. He also says Democrats are terrible at one point. I do. It's just it's just not possible to be it's not possible to fairly answer questions, defend Donald Trump and Bill Day and sort of be tilting at any kind of broader sort of a nonpartisan coalition. Like it says that those things, there's no talent on earth that could both defend Donald Trump and pretend to be some kind of broader, more appealing figure.

56:38It's just not can't be done. And so I don't think he could do it. But I don't think I think there are people that are far more talented than J.D. Vance that would make it look a little bit easier. He's just so bad. He's terrible. Like in those answers, like he thinks he's being smart by basically just gaslighting about what it is Trump actually said. And he just doesn't like there's a way like defending Donald Trump is an impossible task it just you cannot do that and remain any sort of dignity or seriousness to the human being you just can't um but there's ways to do it with more charm or humor yeah he just had he just has no he says no charisma yeah and i mean you know and i think i think he goes on the view and i think he was i think in his mind maybe he wants to show that he can go to this place i also think he wants to show that he can go on the libs remember he went on blue sky for like a hot minute to take people off.

57:27Well, you just referenced a little bit that he calls Democrats terrible people. So he did that on the Fox show later. It was Gutfeld at night. Yeah, it was Gutfeld. You're right. Because I saw that clip. And I realized that, yeah, his whole play was, I'll go on The View and then they'll beat me up and then I'll go to the right wing outlets and I'll be like, oh, I survived The View and they were such assholes and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But he did this thing. And they didn't even beat him up, though. They were like very substantive. And the way he said that, too, it was such a, he's like, and the thing about Democrats, that I don't like.

57:57It's not the policies necessarily. It's that they're terrible people. Right. And they're not grateful to the country. He did the grateful thing again. Well, the thing that's even worse than that is he couldn't stop himself. He started by saying like, the thing that bothers me about Democrats is it's not their policies. It's not this. It's that they're not. I think the grateful thing, I think in this context, what he was trying to awkwardly do was that like to try to suggest we run down America, but he knew he was on Fox. We couldn't just say that. So he had to say, It also bothers me that some of them are terrible people.

58:27Like, he looks like an aside. It wasn't even some. It was just they're just terrible people. Terrible people. And I was like, that is a wild thing. Like, does he think that he can just, I mean, I know he's going to run in a primary here, but does he realize that kind of undermines the whole softening your image effort? It's crazy. He has no deafness. He has no deafness.

58:45Jon Favreau:I really think he was on a book tour. It is crazy that Marco Rubio has just gone into witness protection. He's the national security advisor and the secretary of state. Has he done a single interview about the Serrano? There's a picture of him over Trump when Trump's signing the treaty in Versailles. And he looks like. Did you guys watch him behind Trump in the press conference? He's like shifting back and forth, like dead eyed. He looked like he'd taken like 6 ,000 pro V and hadn't slept in a month. Like just looked miserable. Well, before we go, I do think we should talk about briefly the reflecting pool.

59:14I guess that's a that's the thing in the news now because the reflecting pool. So let me get this straight. Please correct me if I've got this is important to me because I've been on vacation for two weeks. So in my lat trying to avoid learning something, this is the thing that I know very little about. I'm excited to learn. I very love it. Fashion explain it to Dan. Here's what I think. Obviously, Trump decided to paint the reflecting pool. Yes. He did the American flag blue. Then they refilled. How do you describe the paint? It was like thick rubber, rubber, rubber, rubber, rubber, rubber, robbing.

59:43And then and then he so they painted it. They filled it up again. And then it quickly turned green because of algae. And so then there was a green reflecting pool after spending however much he spent to make it blue. And then they just quickly had parks people or interior people or whatever run over there and start dumping hydrogen peroxide or chloride or whatever. Hydrogen peroxide. Yeah. Into the just dumping it into the reflecting pool as if like like this reflecting pool is quite large, as Donald Trump showed us on his chart. And just like doing a couple of buckets was not really going to do anything.

1:00:18And then they had like algae scoopers in there. They're getting the algae off the bottom. And then the Department of Interior this morning decided to post a series of tweets that was like, it's back. And they have a picture of the water is blue again, which I think is just a fake picture. And they said, and the algae is gone from the algae is now just at the bottom of the reflecting pool, just like the Iranian Navy. Yeah. They didn't really say that. The Department of Interior, which in a previous era might have posted a picture of, say, Zion National Park. Boy, check out Zion National Park. We think everybody's going to love it.

1:00:52They're like, you fucking cuck bitches. This thing is blue now. It's crazy. So they drained the pool. They painted it a darker color, but a bluer color, whatever. OK, they claim because, oh, you know, Obama and Biden, they didn't have the stuff to fix the repair. They couldn't get that. Couldn't get it done. But as we all complained about for years, the big thing we really cared about. So they're going to do it. They're going to fix it. And then the algae comes back. Why? Well, maybe because Donald Trump isn't magic and it is an eight acre short fucking swamp painted black in the middle of one of the like in the middle of a swamp.

1:01:27And there's algae. And maybe maybe the paint color American flag blue doesn't have magical properties that get rid of algae.

1:01:33Jon Favreau:I regret to say that I read a long Washington Post article about this because there's all this like drainage and filtration infrastructure that they didn't actually choose to fix. And that's the core problem. Well, so painted it. So the other part of this is a perfect metaphor for the entire fucking. So I'm going to drain the swamp, if you will. Yeah. But so, of course, the algae goes back. Now, the Interior Department then puts out a statement saying, actually, this is residual algae. And it's like, hey, it's not. We don't believe in spontaneous creation of life anymore. We're not Lamarckians or whatever it was.

1:02:04Who are the fucking people? That's evolving quickly. Who's the ones that thought the maggots became the that maggots spontaneously arise? Yes. Yes. Thank you, Reed. How do you know this? Because we didn't have sports. Nobody invited us to flip cups, so we learned about these things. But so, yeah, it's always residual algae. That's where the algae fucking comes from. Now, they did, now, hydrogen peroxide can shock a pool. However, the percent - A pool, a pool. The kind they were using, the 12%, that's for a hot tub. This is a 7 million gallon tank. You would need at least 5 ,000 to 7 ,000 gallons of this stuff.

1:02:44And that's just to get it clean for a week. And then they're like, well, the new nano rubber tubes are going to work. It's like there is runoff because this is a park in the middle of a city that is like from the Potomac and all the rest. So the algae is just going to keep coming back. And it is a great metaphor for Donald Trump thinking for people thinking the only problem has been that our leaders were stupid or didn't care or didn't break enough rules. Donald Trump does something cheap and easy that he thinks is a magic solution. It's not. And then he pretends it is anyway. And newsflash, Donald Trump Jr.

1:03:12now owns a hydrogen peroxide company.

1:03:15Jon Favreau:Did you guys see like the Newsmax guy who was down at the reflecting pool doing interviews suggesting that the Democrats had like sabotaged him? Oh, sabotage is everywhere. Everyone thinks we've been pouring phosphates. We've been fertilizing the fuck. Yes. And then Jesse Waters sent his like baby dork goon down there to be like, well, at least our president cared enough to fix it and try. What are we doing here? Also, yes, the Washington Post did report, by the way, that the ballroom that there's they found an invoice to a contractor that for like six hundred million dollars and that half of it was going to be taxpayer.

1:03:48And so they've been lying the whole time. And then notice reported, I believe, that they found out that OMB has been moving money from the Secret Service budget into Purdue because they couldn't get it passed through Congress. So so it is like we are paying for the ballroom after all. Well, famously, Secret Service has had a great run recently. So they earned more resources. They had some loose change. So that's happened. Anyway, we started very... You used that money to buy a couple pairs of binoculars, boys. Well, we started very inspiring. We ended up with algae in the pool. So it's a tale for our times.

1:04:22This has been fun, guys. Everyone have a great weekend. That's our show for today. Alex Wagner will be back in the feed on Sunday with a conversation with historian and substack titan, Heather Cox Richardson. And thanks to the Obama Library for letting us in here. Yeah, absolutely. That's great. Now let's go find our book somewhere. Pods of America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farrah Safari with Ree Cherlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kirill Pellaviv, David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single.

1:04:51Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.