00:00Our next guest went from the White House under Obama
00:03to podcaster, which is the opposite of how they do it now.
00:06He has two popular podcasts, Pod Save America
00:09and Love It or Leave It.
00:10Please welcome John Lovett.
00:24How are you?
00:26I'm doing great.
00:27It's very good to see you.
00:28I'm doing great, yes.
00:28I know you were in Washington over the weekend.
00:30That's right.
00:31But you did not go to the correspondence dinner.
00:34No.
00:35As a rule, if J.D. Vance and I are at a party at the same time,
00:40either he made a mistake or I made a mistake.
00:44No, I got out of town.
00:45I was on a plane when it all happened.
00:48The Wi-Fi wasn't working.
00:49Oh.
00:50By the time I landed, it was already about building a ballroom.
00:55That's right.
00:55Now, am I nuts in thinking that he might now have a point about this ballroom?
01:01Yeah.
01:02I am.
01:03You're nuts.
01:03Why?
01:04Because the problem with the ballroom is not the idea or concept of a philosophical ballroom.
01:11Mm-hmm.
01:12It's that he knocked down the East Room without asking anybody permission like Connery.
01:16Mm-hmm.
01:16Yeah.
01:17I forgot about that.
01:20The ballroom doesn't become more legal because someone did something evil and stupid at a different ballroom.
01:27Like, it's not how ballrooms work.
01:29It isn't?
01:30No.
01:31No.
01:31Wait a minute.
01:32Let me ask this.
01:33How do you know so much about ballrooms?
01:36What are you, spending your life at a Chuck E. Cheese?
01:38What do you know about these ballrooms?
01:40Had some fun in those bits.
01:41Yeah.
01:42You, um, uh, did you go to, like, parties and stuff?
01:45Yeah.
01:45The three parties?
01:46So, uh, I host a show called Love It or Leave It.
01:48We did a big live show.
01:50And then Crooked Media, the company that John and Tommy and I, uh, founded, uh, that does Pod Save America,
01:55we had a big party.
01:55But then the goal was for me to get John and Tommy, my, my straight, my straight boys, to the
02:00Grindr party.
02:01Ah, yeah.
02:02Because Grindr, you know, the app, had a party.
02:07And they've never had a party before.
02:08And so I'm trying to get my boys to the Grindr party, all right?
02:11And then there's a, there's a traffic jam at the Belgian embassy.
02:14And we're like, what's going on?
02:15And, and, and, oh, everybody's trying to talk to Gavin Newsom.
02:18And some reporter's like, are you trying to talk to Gavin Newsom?
02:20I'm like, I don't, I'm trying to get my boys to the Grindr party.
02:24And then we get to the Grindr party.
02:26Oh.
02:27Lindsey Graham is there.
02:28No.
02:28No, he's not.
02:32No.
02:33Oh.
02:33No.
02:34But we're at this.
02:35Wouldn't that be nice for him, though?
02:38Boy, he's there in his mind.
02:41You don't have to be a great mentalist.
02:45To figure that out.
02:46But so we're at the Grindr party.
02:49Uh-huh.
02:49All right.
02:50And they ran out of alcohol.
02:52No.
02:56Gay people have been fighting for 50 years.
02:59All right.
03:00Marsha P. Johnson threw a brick at the Stonewall Ryan.
03:04And now the gays are running out of alcohol.
03:08And it's like, you're at this thing.
03:10You're like, who do I, who do I got a to get a martini?
03:14There was no one.
03:15No one?
03:16But so, so, stop it.
03:20So, we're at, wait, we're at the Grindr party.
03:23And because my fellow Pons of America co-hosts are confident in their masculinity.
03:29Right.
03:30They're enjoying themselves at the Grindr party.
03:32But then who do we see?
03:33We see the head of the Democratic National Committee.
03:35Guy named Ken Martin.
03:37Okay.
03:37And we think, oh, that's, and I've been drinking.
03:39I was like, oh, I'll say hi to the head of the DNC.
03:42I forgot that we've been critical of the DNC.
03:44Oh.
03:45And so, all of a sudden, I'm in this super intense conversation with the head of the Democratic
03:49National Committee.
03:51Because they, they had written on a report about what went wrong in 2024, but didn't release
03:55it because it went perfectly.
03:58And, and we're like, we think the report should be released.
04:00So, I'm in this, like, kind of a little bit of an intense conversation.
04:03And I'm like, I've never seen this kind of passion from this guy before.
04:05I've had a few drinks.
04:06And I'm like, maybe the atmosphere is like, there's something going on here.
04:09No.
04:11There wasn't.
04:13But now he's going to be on Pons of America tomorrow.
04:14Oh, he is.
04:15I agree.
04:16Oh, all right.
04:17But the thing about it is, this dinner, I thought it was like a silly thing for a really
04:21long time.
04:22Like, why is everybody being so cushy?
04:23We're supposed to be, the press is supposed to hold people in power accountable.
04:26It blurs the lines, yes.
04:27It blurs the lines.
04:28But now that we've lived under Trump for so long, it's like, you know what?
04:30Maybe it's okay that people come together in one room once in a while and talk to each
04:35other and have a couple drinks and then go back to fighting again the next day.
04:38Interesting.
04:39So, you think, which is different, I think, than what a lot of people think, you think it
04:42is actually more appropriate now to be in a room for an event that supports the First
04:48Amendment with somebody who doesn't believe in the First Amendment.
04:52No, I wouldn't be caught dead at the dinner.
04:53Oh, okay.
04:55The parties, you mean.
04:56But, yeah, but it's nice to be around people in real life as opposed to just fighting on
05:00the internet.
05:01Because ultimately, it is supposed to be a chance to poke fun at people in power.
05:06That's what you were doing.
05:07That's what you were doing.
05:08You were using your First Amendment right to poke fun at people in power.
05:12And that's what that whole weekend used to be about before they changed comedian to mentalist.
05:19Do you have any mentalist powers that you can share with us?
05:23No, but I'm sending a message to the mentalist right now.
05:27What is the message?
05:29You canceled, you f***ing.
05:37I've been sending them that message all day.
05:40I'm telepathic.
05:41Maybe you tuned into my mentalist and then it went to the other mentalist.
05:44Maybe I'm mentalizing.
05:45Interesting.
05:46You've been a part of the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
05:49You wrote jokes for President Obama.
05:50That's right.
05:51Did you write some of the jokes that there's a story that he got so upset that Obama was
05:55making fun of him, Trump, that he ran for president?
05:59No.
06:02We were really proud because President Obama was great.
06:05He could make fun of himself.
06:06He could make fun of the press.
06:07He could make fun of Republicans.
06:09Now, we didn't yet understand just how much Donald Trump couldn't yet take a joke.
06:13But I think we know that now.
06:16We do know that.
06:17But the whole point of the dinner is, look, everybody enjoys an inoffensive joke in good
06:22taste, right?
06:23Like, Trump was supposed to perform after a mentalist.
06:26That's interesting because he's a bit of a magician.
06:28He made America's reputation disappear.
06:30Mm-hmm.
06:31But see, that's...
06:35That's fine.
06:36That's easy.
06:38Everyone...
06:38No one's going to have a problem with that.
06:39But when things are tough, you need to be able to make jokes about dark topics.
06:44Like how every...
06:45You made fun of RFK Jr. for seeming to race ahead of his wife, Cheryl Hines, as if he left
06:50her behind.
06:51But I think that's really unfair.
06:53Because if the shooter were dead, you only have 30 minutes or so to get that meat in the
06:57freezer.
07:02Now, that is in poor taste.
07:05But that's what democracy is all about, Jimmy.
07:07That's right.
07:08You couldn't be more correct on that.
07:10Now, you know things.
07:12Why do you think they make a big deal out of something like a joke, like a dumb joke,
07:18and try to make it into this...
07:20In your opinion, why do they do that?
07:22What's their purpose?
07:25It's hard to get into their minds.
07:26Mm-hmm.
07:26I'm no mentalist.
07:27But I think it is wrong.
07:31Political violence is incredibly dangerous.
07:33It can tear a society apart.
07:35There's nothing to be gained from it.
07:37I find it gross when people try to defend it, whatever the side.
07:40And I think it's gross when people try to exploit it.
07:42Because what political violence does is it doesn't just try to silence one leader, one
07:47powerful person.
07:47It tries to silence all of us.
07:49It tries to decide something for all of us.
07:51And that can't work.
07:52We can't allow that to work.
07:53So we should be able to denounce it collectively.
07:56And so they want to go after you.
07:58They want to go after everybody.
07:59Because on some level, they know that one person who has encouraged so much political violence
08:04and has caused so much division and has raised the temperature so high is the president of the United States.
08:09And there's something comforting to go after you.
08:14There's something comforting about going after their left, their typical opponents.
08:18As opposed to just facing the fact that, yeah, it's bad when anybody, a random person on the Internet,
08:25defends political violence.
08:26But it's especially dangerous when it's the most powerful person in the world.
08:30By the same token, I think it is also wrong when people compare Trump to Hitler or say that MAGA
08:37is a bunch of Nazis.
08:39Like, I saw that insurrection, okay?
08:42Nazis were Hugo Boss.
08:50So you are saying that they're not as well-dressed, yeah.
08:54Yeah.
08:54Yeah, yeah, yeah.
08:56Do you think it is the president's job to set the tone for the country?
09:02Absolutely.
09:03I think, well, whether it's his job or not, the president does set the tone for the country.
09:09And the one thing I would just say is we've already been through an episode of Donald Trump trying to
09:15get Jimmy Kimmel canceled.
09:17And gas is $6 a gallon.
09:20Open this straight to Hormuz, all right?
09:24And, by the way, you know, Jimmy, you're a lot like the Ayatollahs.
09:31Well, first of all, thank you.
09:34Yep.
09:35In what ways, John?
09:38Thanks for asking.
09:40Strike you down.
09:41There's a dozen younger, hotter, more extreme versions of Jimmy Kimmel just waiting to take power.
09:47Bearded as well.
09:48Absolutely.
09:49Maybe gay.
09:50Maybe gay.
09:51We'll find out at the Grindr party next year.
09:53Absolutely.
09:55I'll come, I'll be one of your boys.
09:57We'll get going there, yeah.
09:58That's great.
09:59It's a date.
09:59Well, good luck with Ken Martin tomorrow.
10:01That's great.
10:03I hope he's not too upset.
10:05He's not going to cancel because of this, right?
10:07We better not.
10:08We had such a great conversation.
10:09You know what?
10:10If he does, we'll bring the wrath of Melania down on him.
10:14I just want to say, in a divided time, I think it's beautiful that you could find a way for
10:19Trump and his wife to reconnect.
10:22You know what?
10:23That's a very, very good point.
10:25John Lovett, everybody.
10:27His podcast is called Remember to Remember It on Saturdays on Pod Save America on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday.
10:34Thank you, John.
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