You may be tempted to skip this ad, but don't marketers want their audience to stick around? And with Paramount ads manager, you can advertise your business on the biggest shows on tv for 30 unskippable seconds. Run your ads in premium content on Paramount plus and over 15 major networks with hits, shows, movies, sports and more, all on the biggest screen in the house. Put your business in show business with Paramount ads manager. Go to adsmanager dot paramount.com. that's adsmanager Dot paramount.com to learn more.

Finding great candidates to hire can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. You might get a lot of resumes, but not enough candidates with the right skills or experience. But not with Ziprecruiter. Ziprecruiter finds amazing candidates for you fast, and right now you can try it for free@ziprecruiter.com. zip Ziprecruiter's smart technology identifies top talent for your roles quickly. Immediately after you post your job, Ziprecruiter's powerful matching technology starts showing you qualified people for it. And you can use Ziprecruiter's pre written invite to apply message to personally reach out to your favorite candidates and encourage them to apply sooner. Ditch the other hiring sites and let Ziprecruiter find what you're looking for. The needle in the haystack four out of five employers who post on Ziprecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at this exclusive web address. Ziprecruiter.com zip again, that's ziprecruiter.com. zip Ziprecruiter the smartest way to hire.

Hey, it's Jon Stewart here. Daily Show's off today means we're going to drop an episode of the weekly show right here for is a concern that the confidence in the current commander in chief may be waning somewhat. And so we thought, well, shit, we should probably talk about that. Have you had. Have either of you had conversations with family, colleagues, coworkers? Was this in terms of triaging your conversations? Top of the list. Bottom of the list, middle of the list. Where was it?I was doing what I watched my dad do during Mets games growing up, which was, like, lots of pacing and screaming, and I didn't really look at my phone.So you're suggesting that this debate was the Mets game of political intrigue? Yes. You know, in terms of post debate, what's been the general tenor of the conversations?This is the first time I've come out from under my covers. No. I feel like I doom scroll on Twitter, which makes me sad. And then, you know, conversations are split. Honestly, there are people that are very much like, stop talking about it. Stop asking questions. Just get in line. Support. You know, we're voting for an administration. Not a single person is what I get told a lot.It is interesting, though. They keep saying, you know, I keep hearing back when they were only talking about Trump, they were like, stop talking about Trump. And now that we're talking about Biden, they're like, fucking shut up. Yeah, talk about Trump. But we do have a good conversation today. We got some guys for it. So I'm going to jump in there and let's see where we go. So let's jump right in with our guest for the week, Jon Favreau and Tommy Viter. They're founders of crooked Media, hosts of Pod Save America, authors of Democracy, or else how to save America in ten easy steps. And Bakari Sellers, CNN political commentator and author of the moment. Hello, everybody.Hello.Hey there.Hello. Hello.It is so nice to see all of you. Thank you so much for joining us. I think we should discuss maybe obviously, the kind of the elephant in the room that's been occurring. Skydance has bought paramount. Why would they do something like that?Let me Google.No, we're going to discuss the fallout from Joe Biden's debate performance and the general sense of the Twitter commentary that I should shut the fuck up. Tommy and John should shut the fuck up, and Bakari's a very nice man who should continue talking. Would that about summarize the fallout from these situations? So, Tommy and John, I'm gonna start with you. I think that the debate so shocked my conscience on what my expectation was that it felt to not speak out would be malpractice at some level. Is that what you were feeling as you watched it? What was your sense?Yeah, I mean, I think we all watched it together. I think five minutes in, we were all watching from, you know, hands over our face, between our fingers. It was so much worse than I ever imagined it could have been. And it wasn't just bad, like a one off performance bad. It was bad in the way that highlighted, I think, Joe Biden's single biggest vulnerability, which is his age and concerns about his ability to, to complete four more years, you know, would have been like Mitt Romney driving onto the 2012 debate stage in a Ferrari and just like chucking cash out of people.Right.Like highlighting your vulnerability.And then I would have been. So, it would have been cool, awesome if he just walked out and, like, making it run.I know. Was that the first debate when he kicked you guys ass or not? Which debate are we talking about? Kicked our ass.Kicked our ass. But that was a, that was, but that's a good point, Picard, because that was an ass kicking in the sense that, like, by Obama wasn't sharp. He didn't have his message down. He didn't seem like he came ready to fight and make a case against Romney. This was bad in that, you know, Biden struggled to speak coherently and get sentences out and make an argument. And that to me was, was chilling.It would have been like if in that first debate with Romney, Barack Obama went out and said, look, I wasn't born here, but let me tell you something. That's, you know, I've just, you know, I'm not from here. I'm not from here. It wasn't a gaffe I'm not from this country. Everyone who's been wondering.But Corey, I imagine you didn't watch the debate and think to yourself, he's killing it, but you had a very different response to what you were seeing. Do you want to talk about that?Yeah. No, I think he got his ass kicked up, down, left, right and sideways. I also don't think elections are won in June. can totally use to buy burritos, Avon has a credit card that can help you do that. Avon works like a regular credit card, but taps into your home equity to get you really low interest rates. It's the convenience of a credit card with the savings of a home equity line of credit. And just like any other cardinal, you can make everyday purchases and earn unlimited 2% cash back. Plus now avon lets you use your rental or investment properties towards that home equity line of credit. You just need to verify employment and rental income, upload your tax return, verify your home is in good condition and you're on your way to having a credit card with an interest rate that doesn't eat up all your burrito money. Head to Aven.com to learn more. That's av e n.com to learn more.Finding great candidates to hire can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. You might get a lot of resumes, but not enough candidates with the right skills or experience. But not with Ziprecruiter. Ziprecruiter finds amazing candidates for you fast, and right now you can try it for free@ziprecruiter.com. zip Ziprecruiter's smart technology identifies top talent for your roles quickly. Immediately after you post your job, Ziprecruiter's powerful matching technology starts showing you qualified people for it. And you can use Ziprecruiter's pre written invite to apply message to personally reach out to your favorite candidates and encourage them to apply sooner. Ditch the other hiring sites and let Ziprecruiter find what you're looking for. The needle in the haystack four out of five employers who post on Ziprecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at this exclusive web address. Ziprecruiter.com.Zip.Again, that's ziprecruiter.com. zip ziprecruiter. The smartest way to hire.A okay, we're back. And that's my point, Bakari. We are complacent, and that complacency sets in a cynicism with the american public. And I think you're giving us a binary choice that's not real. I don't necessarily agree. Oh, Biden can't win or Kamala can't win. We just don't know. And the world changes so quickly, and we don't know about those things. But here's what I do know. It's not a binary choice. President Biden's defiance, I don't think, is the right strategy. I think the idea of not acknowledging the progressive and degenerative nature of what he's dealing with is gaslighting anybody who supports him. And this of him going out there with bromides about Joey, my dad said to me, Joey, it's not about how you get knocked down. It's about how you get up. And you're like, I don't know that you can get up, sir, I think that's really not the metaphor you want to go with. And there's no shame in that. We all get there. So I don't understand. There is an opportunity here to have a more honest, adult, sophisticated, fuck the media, fuck whatever they're going to say. You are in control of how this goes down.And I don't, I think they're bungling even the response. Bakari, no.And so I don't, I've never said this choice has been binary. In fact, I think people who analyze as race as being binary, and I may have missed your point, have it wrong, because I've always said that. And where large threat, there's two things that you define. You define the threat, and then you define your defenses. All I'm saying is if we are taking an honest look at what our best chance to defend ourselves against a perceived threat, I think we are selling ourselves short and in a lot of ways, using, as Tommy put it, Omerta to stifle what could be an incredibly productive, at least conversation. Even if Joe Biden came out and said, look, I understand where I'm at in my lifespan and cycle and what I do. Here's how this government works, rather than coming out and becoming trumpian and saying, you think someone else could hold NATO together? They could never. Only God can tell me to get out of the race. Like, if he were to come out and say, here's my team, here's how we hold the line. But we're not seeing any of that. Nothing that's been done inspires any confidence other than the fatalism of it is what it is, and this is what we're stuck with. And that's the part that I think has degraded people's trust in institutions and the government from the get go.That's a problem.I'm a blend of both. So it is what it is, and I'm working towards what I believe to be the ultimate goal, which is to defeat Donald Trump. While others are having discussions about the visceral reaction they add to the debate and alternatives. But I also think those discussions are decently healthy. Again, I don't, I'm not trying to excommunicate the pod boys. I'm mad they were listed in the email, a blast email, right? I'm not pod. Damn them. Jesus Christ. I actually have a sticker that says pricks for Biden.Me, too. I got one. You gave me one of those, too.So, like, I'm not, I think. I think the discussion is healthy, because I'm going to need all of you all if I'm going to win this race. And I'm going to need all of you all to want to put every ounce of your being in. Although we disagree on who the nominee is or who we believe the nominee will be, I am still working towards that same goal, which is to rid ourselves of fascism, because I believe after November, if Donald Trump is reelected, it can go really bad really quickly.Guys, let me ask you this. When you talk about ridding ourselves, that what do I do with my anger at a democratic party that honestly has put us in this, this rock in a hard place position that wasn't honest over this past year about what was happening internally at the White House, was not in any way preparing the public for Kamala Harris, wasn't doing any of that. There was a, I don't know if it's complacency or deceit or whatever it was, but a democratic party that missed all of the threats that were coming their way and has left us vulnerable here.I just think, you know, I hear you there. I think Bakari is right that normally incumbent presidents run again. And I think President Biden said he would. Speaker one, there was a suggestion that he would not run for reelection, that he would be the bridge the next generation. I believe that he made it, by.The way, not a suggestion.He said yes, but he never said, I will not run again anyway. Step that aside. I think President Biden and his advisors took the wrong message from the 2022 midterms that this was somehow about support for the White House, when in reality it was Donald Trump helping elevate some really terrible candidates, like Doctor Oz, who got their clocks cleaned. Right. And then he made his decision to run again. And it sounds like, I don't know, I'm not around Joe Biden ever. I've seen him two or three times in the last six months, but it sounds like the wait.That's a lot, Tommy. That's humble.Humble. Humble, Brad.Well, listen, we saw him in the LA fundraiser out here, just around the.President a few times. We had a couple of beers. Light, though. Cool was light.Let me, let me, let me contextualize that. I saw him in person at a fundraiser, and then I watched him on the debate. And the in person fundraiser I saw in Los Angeles a couple of weeks before the debate was as bad as the debate. Everyone I walked out of the debate with, John was there. We were talking to people around us in seats in the fundraiser, people we didn't know in this fundraiser. And we were like, that was chilling.In fact, George Clooney just wrote an op ed about how we need a new nominee. And he hosted the fundraiser. And he just said the same thing in the New York Times, which is what everyone at the fundraiser thought. Everyone was there. Like, what happened?He had just flown back from Italy, right? So everyone was like, oh, he must just be so unbelievably jet lagged. But obviously, there is a more systemic problem.Well, and that's why I don't think it was some, it's not some conspiracy. Like, I saw him, I was at the White House and I saw him in December of 22, and I thought he was fine. He, like, remember he recognized my mother in law from meeting her in 2018. I was like, oh, he's not, he's not. I mean, he looks older and he sounds older, but he's fine. And then I saw him the, the night before the correspondence dinner, and he looked like he did at this LA fundraiser and at the debate, and I was very worried. And then the next night at the correspondence dinner, he gave a good speech. And I was like, okay, maybe he was just tired. So I do think people were wrestling with this. Like, maybe he's tired, maybe. But, like, to your point, question about the Democratic Party. This is a decision that Joe Biden and his closest advisors have made, and no one else like Joe Biden could have stepped aside. Like no Democrat wanted to challenge a sitting president during a primary because they usually, you don't beat a sitting president. Right. Joe Biden made the decision to run.He and his advisors made the decision to run again, even though he said he'd be a bridge, even though he selected Kamala Harris, who they could have built up, and said, okay, now I'm going to pass the baton to you. He made the decision to run. And so we were all left to say, okay, the rest of the Democratic Party was like, all right, you guys are telling us you're the best chance, you're our best chance to, to beat Donald Trump again, to stave off fascism. We trust you. This is, it's on you guys. And then we got that debate, and then we got all the interviews afterwards. So it's like, I'm only interested in beating Donald Trump, too. Like, we are all are. That's like the, that's the number. I'm terrified of what will happen if Donald Trump win. I just don't know that Joe Biden is our best shot to do that anymore.When have we put points on the board? When was the last time Joe Biden put points on the board? The State of the union. You know what I mean? Like, what is the last good moment you guys remember?Well, state of the union, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I try not to. Just stay tuned into the Washington Post in New York Times.Yeah, listen, it's, you know, the needle's gonna move here and there. And I think this is, this is.What drives me crazy about Democrats, though. The frame by which we like, you know, I remember in October, right, access Hollywood came out, Donald Trump was grabbing women by the pussy, right? And then soon thereafter, the bottom fell out. Polls were showing that Donald Trump was getting his behind kick, that all the Senate candidates were like, oh, my God. Like, this man cannot be at the top of the ticket. Rance Priebus actually walked up to the top of Trump Tower to try to convince him to drop out the race. Rance, at the time, was the chair of the RNC, and Donald Trump told him to go kick rocks. Right. Go pound, Sam.Right.But what we saw after that, after he was resolved to stay in the race, we saw everyone then. I mean, and Republicans do this so well. They just fall in line. They don't fall in love. They gathered around, they got behind this guy who is a narcissistic sociopath, and they ushered him into the White House. Right.But Kerry, do you think that would have happened had the access Hollywood tape come out a month before the republican convention back in 2016? And Reince Priebus and all those Republicans, Ted Cruz, who spoke at that convention and was like, spoke out against Trump at the convention, even though he later fell in line. This is, it's a different scenario.I was like, where are you going with this? Where you go with the Ted Cruz.It's a different scenario. Like, if we were, if this was October, this was the third week in October, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. Right? Like, we wouldn't be having this conversation.And Bakari, I would also suggest, you know, Bill Clinton, on the eve of it all, it came out he had had an affair. I can't remember Jennifer Flowers, I think it was, and then it was the Paula Jones situation, and then there was the Monica Lewinsky situation. And Democrats did fall in line. I mean, people made, oh, this is terrible. And I'm disappointed with the president. But ultimately, the Democrats did fall in line. I think that you are soft selling the more fundamental aspect of people viewing somebody who, I'll be perfectly honest with you, I don't know of a job interview that you could have gone on and delivered the performance that was delivered by Joe Biden and gotten a job. And I'm not talking about the presidency. I'm talking about, like, cashier at Home Depot, like a job that you would not think, okay, that that is the hardest job in the entire world.The only problem with that, John, and the only problem with framing it as such is the fact that you discount everything that he's accomplished in the first three and a half years.No, I don't. I don't. But he's not running for, for what he did three and a half years. He's running for the next four.But nothing happens in a vacuum. And what we have to do is people just want to, my friends, my friends on the left, we want to only magnify what we saw at the debate, which is fine, I get it. We're talking about age, but I'm also talking about the accomplishments prior to and the threat that is right down the road. And I think. I mean, we do ourself a disservice by saying our guy is old. We know that. He shuffles.We know that old. It's not Bakari. I think.What is it?It is cognitive decline. It's not just age. It's cognitive decline.At the very least. It's an inability to communicate. Right? Like, I'm not a doctor, but, like, he can't. We need, the candidate that we run for president needs to be able to communicate effectively. And people just, they are concerned. Swing voters, undecided voters, young black voters, young people, latino voters. They say over and over again, they're worried that Joe Biden's too old to be president. And they, they respect him. They don't like Donald Trump very much. They think Donald Trump's a liar. Some of them think Donald Trump's quite dangerous. But they're like, I don't think Joe Biden's up for it. And they've been telling us this for three years now.I can tell you anecdotally, the individuals like my mom and her friends who were all in, responded to that debate with tears and with fears and with reality. And the administration's inability to deal with that honestly and forthrightly, to me, is almost more damaging than the actual debate itself. And it shows a disconnect with, or an inability to be agile and honest. And that's more troublesome to me than almost anything else.Don't disagree with anything you said. My only point would be that my mom and her friends, who usually are the ones who determine who the Democratic Party nominee is, like the black women in her chat group, they refer to themselves as, quote unquote, posse. They were, they were, they were hurt. They were saddened. They said he got his ass kicked. They said he was old as hell.Yeah.But at the end of the day, they were more resolved than ever to call their girlfriends and say, we gonna vote for him. And then one thing they admonished us or modest me about was, we don't need any more chaos. They don't want any more chaos. They're gonna ride with Joe Biden and they don't want, they don't want an open convention. They don't want a prop. They don't want any of that.But you don't think, you don't think white knuckling it with Joe Biden is gaos.But it's the chaos we know.I mean, I think that's a fair argument.That is a fair, that's fair.I'll take one thing. You mentioned, you mentioned, like, we're not talking about Joe Biden's accomplishments. And like, look, we, we do a show a couple times a week. So we've talked about those accomplishments constantly. And I give Joe Biden a ton of credit.I mean, the global we, not, I.Give him credit for climate change, the infrastructure bill, Ukraine. Right. All the things he's done.Great.But what is really glaring about this White House and Joe Biden himself is he does not have a message about the next four years. They are not talking about what he's going to do, why he's the only person he's going to do it. He is just like pointing to things he's done kind of angrily and being like, why am I not getting credit for holding NATO together? And AuKus, which no one knows what that is, by the way, the nuclear submarine deal with the Australians. How the fuck is that coming up in these conversations? Like, that's not your talk.I have voted in every election the past 20 years on a caucus where.The Aukus caucus, the ship has sailed.On getting credit from these things, voters are like, we don't care.Speaker one, I wholeheartedly agree with you. And so, prior to the debate, my main line was that I very rarely talk about Donald Trump and Joe Biden in the same sentence per se as I characterize them, other than the fact that I felt both of them were prisoners of yesterday, I felt both of them just like it was for a different reason. Like, Joe Biden has this weird nostalgia for, like, swimming in pools with pop pop. Right? It's kind of freaky. And then Donald Trump. Donald Trump has this. He's like. He's like the king of white grievance from yesteryear.Yes.But I think that both of them have a fundamentally. Project 25 is what it is. But you take that away. Both of them have a hard time articulating a vision for the future. And that's when I think age matters, because one is 78 and the other is 81. And it's very difficult when you're 81 or 78 to talk about a future that you may not be a part of, and that is the prisoner of age. And so I agree with you wholeheartedly that I've been pushing them to lay out a vision for the future. And I don't know when they're gonna start doing that other than our, you know. Cause right now, they're kind of fighting front and back, side to side. I mean, they're so busy beating up on y'all and Jon Stewart that they don't really have time.By the way, I'll wrap it up with this, because I know everybody's got to get going, and I'm going to say this, Tommy, John, and then, Bakari, you can have the last word. With all the headwinds and obstacles in front of us, I remain incredibly optimistic about the resilience of the system that we're fighting over. I do believe that the challenges that are in front of us are some of them intractable. But also, you know, I never. There's never despair in any of this. It is always all right. I guess it's. It's. It's buckling down. So I would ask you guys to maybe answer the question what about the resilience of this system still gives you a hope in that?I mean, I do think you make an important point that it's, we can't all speak in apocalyptic terms. And the left and the right does this, the country will exist the day after the election. If Donald Trump is president, I do think he might change core things about our democracy that we can't undo and just fundamentally change the character of this country. And so that's why I am happy to be the stupid pod bro cracker talking about this now, because I do think the risk is real. And it's, if Barack Obama lost to Mitt Romney, there would have been a different policy agenda implemented. I think Donald Trump could change the character of the country in a fundamental and dangerous way.Speaker one, right.Speaker one. I think we have, there's two choices, right? You, you quit and then bad shit happens or you try and fight, right? And I think that's what we're all trying to do right now and trying to stave off the threat of Donald Trump again. And I think what makes me optimistic is, like when you talk to voters, right? Voters, I know they drive everyone crazy. They're complicated. They don't follow politics very closely or the news, but they're sensible and smart and know what they see. And when you make a persuasive case that is rooted in honesty and reality to voters, you do have a chance to change minds. And change minds, meaning get people off the couch to the polls or get people to change who they're going to vote for. And so I never want to give up on that. And that, that makes me hopeful. But I do think you have to make an argument to voters that meets them where they are and is based in reality of what they saw, which is why the Biden, maintaining Biden as a nominee worries me. That said, if he makes the decision, if he refuses to step down and he makes the decision, then, like, we will make an honest case to voters, which is like, yeah, Joe Biden's too old to run for president, but Donald Trump is too dangerous to be president.Lucari yeah, I feel like I'm kind of there. But I think what gives me hope, and I think what we underestimate sometimes as we are evaluating this is, King used to talk about, he talked about it in I have a dream speech. And everybody remembers, like, that rhythmic cadence of I have a dream that one day we shall, but we forget about the most important part of that speech when he talks about the fierce urgency of now. And I think a lot of times we discount the urgency that many people in the electorate voters have. As we talked about, as you talked about your mama and her friends, or your parents and their friends and my mom and her friends, the sense of urgency that people have. And my hope comes from the fact that I believe that there are more people who want to see this country move forward than take it back to a place that is dangerous for us all. It's dangerous because of who you love. It's dangerous because you're jewish. It's dangerous because you're black. It's dangerous because you're a woman. And I think that there are enough people who have that fierce urgency of now that after we get through this little inter squad squabble that we're going through right now, whoever comes out the tent on the other side, his name would be Joe Biden, will rally around and we'll carry him to the finish line like the old great man that he is.It always reminds me, you know, they say that what's the quote, the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. And what we all have to remember is, and there's a good percentage of people trying to bend it back the other way. And it's a lunch pail job to keep it bent. And no matter what happens, I don't think that job goes away. And I think that's probably where we end. But gentlemen, I want to thank you all very much for joining us. Of course, we have Bakari sellers from CNN and political commentator and author of the moment. And Jon Favreau and Tommy Viet are founders of Crooked Media, hosts of Pod Save America and authors of democracy. Or else how to save America in ten easy steps. So thank you guys very much.Thank you.Thanks for having us.Thank you, guys.Oh, man, that's feisty. Yeah, there was a good amount of feisty.That was hot.Bukhari wasn't. He wasn't having it. We're lucky that we were in separate studios. I was afraid one of the pod guys was going to get wedgie. I think he was going heavy on the. Listen, you nerds, you pod boys, you pod boys. They was coming after me. The administration is so angry with the pod boys and Jon Stewart Picari. But I actually thought it was a good articulation of kind of the, the position's there. And I think the. It really is that it is what it is, is the part that I think I find so difficult, like that idea that if you're not it is what it is, then you are somehow fantasy fanfic. West wing toady. I don't know how else to put it.Well, when you do go down to the logistics of actually switching the candidate, you start wondering, would this happen?Right? But it can. And you remember, oh, right, conventions, they used to not actually have a candidate sometimes until after the convention. There is this idea that I think they are discounting just how much in a modern media environment, how long four months actually is.The four months is not the same anymore.And by the way, Republicans wouldn't throw up their hands. They would just fucking bear down and get done the thing they wanted to get done and apologize later. Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. And they would get it done and somehow end up at the Supreme Court with it being fined. It's the complacency. And that's the part that just buries my soul.Yeah, it makes me very sad. I just. We've stopped being able to have conversations at teams or even just like, raise our hand to be like, this feels uncomfortable. It's just very much like, shut the fuck up and get in line.Right. And which, by the way, it's interesting they brought up. He said, you know, there's a pressure campaign to get Biden to drop out. I would say the opposite. I think the pressure campaign is way boys. More like a power washer coming the other way. Like, hey, I don't know if this guy can. Yeah, yeah, it's a bad scene, but I think it would be a healthier outcome for democracy if it showed some ability and flexibility and did not continue around this feeling that it's very rigid and disconnected from real concerns. But we will get to all the topics, though. Oh, go ahead.Oh, yeah.I was just gonna say if the campaign recognized reality and, you know, addressed it. Addressed it exactly. We would be in a different place.But to all the people that are concerned about some of those issues that we had raised that are going to be coming up on the podcast, they will. We do this every week. Every fucking week out here, day in and day or day one a week and day one a week, we're going to get to all those Thank you. The Weekly show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions.Paramount podcasts. You may be tempted to skip this ad, but don't marketers want their audience to stick around? And with Paramount ads manager, you can advertise your business on the biggest shows on tv for 30 unskippable seconds. Run your ads in premium content on Paramount plus and over 15 major networks with hit shows, movies, sports, more, all on the biggest screen in the house. Put your business in show business with Paramount ads manager. Go to adsmanager Dot Paramount.com. that's adsmanager dot paramount.com to learn more.It's been a three year wait, but the Olympics are back, and the CB's sports podcast network has you covered. With everything happening in Paris, it's a new era for the us women's national team. An attacking third will tackle all the women's soccer action. First cut will keep close to tabs on golf, while beyond the arc will follow the us men's basketball team on a quest for another gold. And we need to talk now. We'll provide comprehensive coverage of women's athletes at the Olympic Games. Follow and listen to all CB's sports podcasts for free on the Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.

is a concern that the confidence in the current commander in chief may be waning somewhat. And so we thought, well, shit, we should probably talk about that. Have you had. Have either of you had conversations with family, colleagues, coworkers? Was this in terms of triaging your conversations? Top of the list. Bottom of the list, middle of the list. Where was it?

I was doing what I watched my dad do during Mets games growing up, which was, like, lots of pacing and screaming, and I didn't really look at my phone.

So you're suggesting that this debate was the Mets game of political intrigue? Yes. You know, in terms of post debate, what's been the general tenor of the conversations?

This is the first time I've come out from under my covers. No. I feel like I doom scroll on Twitter, which makes me sad. And then, you know, conversations are split. Honestly, there are people that are very much like, stop talking about it. Stop asking questions. Just get in line. Support. You know, we're voting for an administration. Not a single person is what I get told a lot.

It is interesting, though. They keep saying, you know, I keep hearing back when they were only talking about Trump, they were like, stop talking about Trump. And now that we're talking about Biden, they're like, fucking shut up. Yeah, talk about Trump. But we do have a good conversation today. We got some guys for it. So I'm going to jump in there and let's see where we go. So let's jump right in with our guest for the week, Jon Favreau and Tommy Viter. They're founders of crooked Media, hosts of Pod Save America, authors of Democracy, or else how to save America in ten easy steps. And Bakari Sellers, CNN political commentator and author of the moment. Hello, everybody.

Hello.

Hey there.

Hello. Hello.

It is so nice to see all of you. Thank you so much for joining us. I think we should discuss maybe obviously, the kind of the elephant in the room that's been occurring. Skydance has bought paramount. Why would they do something like that?

Let me Google.

No, we're going to discuss the fallout from Joe Biden's debate performance and the general sense of the Twitter commentary that I should shut the fuck up. Tommy and John should shut the fuck up, and Bakari's a very nice man who should continue talking. Would that about summarize the fallout from these situations? So, Tommy and John, I'm gonna start with you. I think that the debate so shocked my conscience on what my expectation was that it felt to not speak out would be malpractice at some level. Is that what you were feeling as you watched it? What was your sense?

Yeah, I mean, I think we all watched it together. I think five minutes in, we were all watching from, you know, hands over our face, between our fingers. It was so much worse than I ever imagined it could have been. And it wasn't just bad, like a one off performance bad. It was bad in the way that highlighted, I think, Joe Biden's single biggest vulnerability, which is his age and concerns about his ability to, to complete four more years, you know, would have been like Mitt Romney driving onto the 2012 debate stage in a Ferrari and just like chucking cash out of people.

Right.

Like highlighting your vulnerability.

And then I would have been. So, it would have been cool, awesome if he just walked out and, like, making it run.

I know. Was that the first debate when he kicked you guys ass or not? Which debate are we talking about? Kicked our ass.

Kicked our ass. But that was a, that was, but that's a good point, Picard, because that was an ass kicking in the sense that, like, by Obama wasn't sharp. He didn't have his message down. He didn't seem like he came ready to fight and make a case against Romney. This was bad in that, you know, Biden struggled to speak coherently and get sentences out and make an argument. And that to me was, was chilling.

It would have been like if in that first debate with Romney, Barack Obama went out and said, look, I wasn't born here, but let me tell you something. That's, you know, I've just, you know, I'm not from here. I'm not from here. It wasn't a gaffe I'm not from this country. Everyone who's been wondering.

But Corey, I imagine you didn't watch the debate and think to yourself, he's killing it, but you had a very different response to what you were seeing. Do you want to talk about that?

Yeah. No, I think he got his ass kicked up, down, left, right and sideways. I also don't think elections are won in June. can totally use to buy burritos, Avon has a credit card that can help you do that. Avon works like a regular credit card, but taps into your home equity to get you really low interest rates. It's the convenience of a credit card with the savings of a home equity line of credit. And just like any other cardinal, you can make everyday purchases and earn unlimited 2% cash back. Plus now avon lets you use your rental or investment properties towards that home equity line of credit. You just need to verify employment and rental income, upload your tax return, verify your home is in good condition and you're on your way to having a credit card with an interest rate that doesn't eat up all your burrito money. Head to Aven.com to learn more. That's av e n.com to learn more.Finding great candidates to hire can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. You might get a lot of resumes, but not enough candidates with the right skills or experience. But not with Ziprecruiter. Ziprecruiter finds amazing candidates for you fast, and right now you can try it for free@ziprecruiter.com. zip Ziprecruiter's smart technology identifies top talent for your roles quickly. Immediately after you post your job, Ziprecruiter's powerful matching technology starts showing you qualified people for it. And you can use Ziprecruiter's pre written invite to apply message to personally reach out to your favorite candidates and encourage them to apply sooner. Ditch the other hiring sites and let Ziprecruiter find what you're looking for. The needle in the haystack four out of five employers who post on Ziprecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at this exclusive web address. Ziprecruiter.com.Zip.Again, that's ziprecruiter.com. zip ziprecruiter. The smartest way to hire.A okay, we're back. And that's my point, Bakari. We are complacent, and that complacency sets in a cynicism with the american public. And I think you're giving us a binary choice that's not real. I don't necessarily agree. Oh, Biden can't win or Kamala can't win. We just don't know. And the world changes so quickly, and we don't know about those things. But here's what I do know. It's not a binary choice. President Biden's defiance, I don't think, is the right strategy. I think the idea of not acknowledging the progressive and degenerative nature of what he's dealing with is gaslighting anybody who supports him. And this of him going out there with bromides about Joey, my dad said to me, Joey, it's not about how you get knocked down. It's about how you get up. And you're like, I don't know that you can get up, sir, I think that's really not the metaphor you want to go with. And there's no shame in that. We all get there. So I don't understand. There is an opportunity here to have a more honest, adult, sophisticated, fuck the media, fuck whatever they're going to say. You are in control of how this goes down.And I don't, I think they're bungling even the response. Bakari, no.And so I don't, I've never said this choice has been binary. In fact, I think people who analyze as race as being binary, and I may have missed your point, have it wrong, because I've always said that. And where large threat, there's two things that you define. You define the threat, and then you define your defenses. All I'm saying is if we are taking an honest look at what our best chance to defend ourselves against a perceived threat, I think we are selling ourselves short and in a lot of ways, using, as Tommy put it, Omerta to stifle what could be an incredibly productive, at least conversation. Even if Joe Biden came out and said, look, I understand where I'm at in my lifespan and cycle and what I do. Here's how this government works, rather than coming out and becoming trumpian and saying, you think someone else could hold NATO together? They could never. Only God can tell me to get out of the race. Like, if he were to come out and say, here's my team, here's how we hold the line. But we're not seeing any of that. Nothing that's been done inspires any confidence other than the fatalism of it is what it is, and this is what we're stuck with. And that's the part that I think has degraded people's trust in institutions and the government from the get go.That's a problem.I'm a blend of both. So it is what it is, and I'm working towards what I believe to be the ultimate goal, which is to defeat Donald Trump. While others are having discussions about the visceral reaction they add to the debate and alternatives. But I also think those discussions are decently healthy. Again, I don't, I'm not trying to excommunicate the pod boys. I'm mad they were listed in the email, a blast email, right? I'm not pod. Damn them. Jesus Christ. I actually have a sticker that says pricks for Biden.Me, too. I got one. You gave me one of those, too.So, like, I'm not, I think. I think the discussion is healthy, because I'm going to need all of you all if I'm going to win this race. And I'm going to need all of you all to want to put every ounce of your being in. Although we disagree on who the nominee is or who we believe the nominee will be, I am still working towards that same goal, which is to rid ourselves of fascism, because I believe after November, if Donald Trump is reelected, it can go really bad really quickly.Guys, let me ask you this. When you talk about ridding ourselves, that what do I do with my anger at a democratic party that honestly has put us in this, this rock in a hard place position that wasn't honest over this past year about what was happening internally at the White House, was not in any way preparing the public for Kamala Harris, wasn't doing any of that. There was a, I don't know if it's complacency or deceit or whatever it was, but a democratic party that missed all of the threats that were coming their way and has left us vulnerable here.I just think, you know, I hear you there. I think Bakari is right that normally incumbent presidents run again. And I think President Biden said he would. Speaker one, there was a suggestion that he would not run for reelection, that he would be the bridge the next generation. I believe that he made it, by.The way, not a suggestion.He said yes, but he never said, I will not run again anyway. Step that aside. I think President Biden and his advisors took the wrong message from the 2022 midterms that this was somehow about support for the White House, when in reality it was Donald Trump helping elevate some really terrible candidates, like Doctor Oz, who got their clocks cleaned. Right. And then he made his decision to run again. And it sounds like, I don't know, I'm not around Joe Biden ever. I've seen him two or three times in the last six months, but it sounds like the wait.That's a lot, Tommy. That's humble.Humble. Humble, Brad.Well, listen, we saw him in the LA fundraiser out here, just around the.President a few times. We had a couple of beers. Light, though. Cool was light.Let me, let me, let me contextualize that. I saw him in person at a fundraiser, and then I watched him on the debate. And the in person fundraiser I saw in Los Angeles a couple of weeks before the debate was as bad as the debate. Everyone I walked out of the debate with, John was there. We were talking to people around us in seats in the fundraiser, people we didn't know in this fundraiser. And we were like, that was chilling.In fact, George Clooney just wrote an op ed about how we need a new nominee. And he hosted the fundraiser. And he just said the same thing in the New York Times, which is what everyone at the fundraiser thought. Everyone was there. Like, what happened?He had just flown back from Italy, right? So everyone was like, oh, he must just be so unbelievably jet lagged. But obviously, there is a more systemic problem.Well, and that's why I don't think it was some, it's not some conspiracy. Like, I saw him, I was at the White House and I saw him in December of 22, and I thought he was fine. He, like, remember he recognized my mother in law from meeting her in 2018. I was like, oh, he's not, he's not. I mean, he looks older and he sounds older, but he's fine. And then I saw him the, the night before the correspondence dinner, and he looked like he did at this LA fundraiser and at the debate, and I was very worried. And then the next night at the correspondence dinner, he gave a good speech. And I was like, okay, maybe he was just tired. So I do think people were wrestling with this. Like, maybe he's tired, maybe. But, like, to your point, question about the Democratic Party. This is a decision that Joe Biden and his closest advisors have made, and no one else like Joe Biden could have stepped aside. Like no Democrat wanted to challenge a sitting president during a primary because they usually, you don't beat a sitting president. Right. Joe Biden made the decision to run.He and his advisors made the decision to run again, even though he said he'd be a bridge, even though he selected Kamala Harris, who they could have built up, and said, okay, now I'm going to pass the baton to you. He made the decision to run. And so we were all left to say, okay, the rest of the Democratic Party was like, all right, you guys are telling us you're the best chance, you're our best chance to, to beat Donald Trump again, to stave off fascism. We trust you. This is, it's on you guys. And then we got that debate, and then we got all the interviews afterwards. So it's like, I'm only interested in beating Donald Trump, too. Like, we are all are. That's like the, that's the number. I'm terrified of what will happen if Donald Trump win. I just don't know that Joe Biden is our best shot to do that anymore.When have we put points on the board? When was the last time Joe Biden put points on the board? The State of the union. You know what I mean? Like, what is the last good moment you guys remember?Well, state of the union, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I try not to. Just stay tuned into the Washington Post in New York Times.Yeah, listen, it's, you know, the needle's gonna move here and there. And I think this is, this is.What drives me crazy about Democrats, though. The frame by which we like, you know, I remember in October, right, access Hollywood came out, Donald Trump was grabbing women by the pussy, right? And then soon thereafter, the bottom fell out. Polls were showing that Donald Trump was getting his behind kick, that all the Senate candidates were like, oh, my God. Like, this man cannot be at the top of the ticket. Rance Priebus actually walked up to the top of Trump Tower to try to convince him to drop out the race. Rance, at the time, was the chair of the RNC, and Donald Trump told him to go kick rocks. Right. Go pound, Sam.Right.But what we saw after that, after he was resolved to stay in the race, we saw everyone then. I mean, and Republicans do this so well. They just fall in line. They don't fall in love. They gathered around, they got behind this guy who is a narcissistic sociopath, and they ushered him into the White House. Right.But Kerry, do you think that would have happened had the access Hollywood tape come out a month before the republican convention back in 2016? And Reince Priebus and all those Republicans, Ted Cruz, who spoke at that convention and was like, spoke out against Trump at the convention, even though he later fell in line. This is, it's a different scenario.I was like, where are you going with this? Where you go with the Ted Cruz.It's a different scenario. Like, if we were, if this was October, this was the third week in October, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. Right? Like, we wouldn't be having this conversation.And Bakari, I would also suggest, you know, Bill Clinton, on the eve of it all, it came out he had had an affair. I can't remember Jennifer Flowers, I think it was, and then it was the Paula Jones situation, and then there was the Monica Lewinsky situation. And Democrats did fall in line. I mean, people made, oh, this is terrible. And I'm disappointed with the president. But ultimately, the Democrats did fall in line. I think that you are soft selling the more fundamental aspect of people viewing somebody who, I'll be perfectly honest with you, I don't know of a job interview that you could have gone on and delivered the performance that was delivered by Joe Biden and gotten a job. And I'm not talking about the presidency. I'm talking about, like, cashier at Home Depot, like a job that you would not think, okay, that that is the hardest job in the entire world.The only problem with that, John, and the only problem with framing it as such is the fact that you discount everything that he's accomplished in the first three and a half years.No, I don't. I don't. But he's not running for, for what he did three and a half years. He's running for the next four.But nothing happens in a vacuum. And what we have to do is people just want to, my friends, my friends on the left, we want to only magnify what we saw at the debate, which is fine, I get it. We're talking about age, but I'm also talking about the accomplishments prior to and the threat that is right down the road. And I think. I mean, we do ourself a disservice by saying our guy is old. We know that. He shuffles.We know that old. It's not Bakari. I think.What is it?It is cognitive decline. It's not just age. It's cognitive decline.At the very least. It's an inability to communicate. Right? Like, I'm not a doctor, but, like, he can't. We need, the candidate that we run for president needs to be able to communicate effectively. And people just, they are concerned. Swing voters, undecided voters, young black voters, young people, latino voters. They say over and over again, they're worried that Joe Biden's too old to be president. And they, they respect him. They don't like Donald Trump very much. They think Donald Trump's a liar. Some of them think Donald Trump's quite dangerous. But they're like, I don't think Joe Biden's up for it. And they've been telling us this for three years now.I can tell you anecdotally, the individuals like my mom and her friends who were all in, responded to that debate with tears and with fears and with reality. And the administration's inability to deal with that honestly and forthrightly, to me, is almost more damaging than the actual debate itself. And it shows a disconnect with, or an inability to be agile and honest. And that's more troublesome to me than almost anything else.Don't disagree with anything you said. My only point would be that my mom and her friends, who usually are the ones who determine who the Democratic Party nominee is, like the black women in her chat group, they refer to themselves as, quote unquote, posse. They were, they were, they were hurt. They were saddened. They said he got his ass kicked. They said he was old as hell.Yeah.But at the end of the day, they were more resolved than ever to call their girlfriends and say, we gonna vote for him. And then one thing they admonished us or modest me about was, we don't need any more chaos. They don't want any more chaos. They're gonna ride with Joe Biden and they don't want, they don't want an open convention. They don't want a prop. They don't want any of that.But you don't think, you don't think white knuckling it with Joe Biden is gaos.But it's the chaos we know.I mean, I think that's a fair argument.That is a fair, that's fair.I'll take one thing. You mentioned, you mentioned, like, we're not talking about Joe Biden's accomplishments. And like, look, we, we do a show a couple times a week. So we've talked about those accomplishments constantly. And I give Joe Biden a ton of credit.I mean, the global we, not, I.Give him credit for climate change, the infrastructure bill, Ukraine. Right. All the things he's done.Great.But what is really glaring about this White House and Joe Biden himself is he does not have a message about the next four years. They are not talking about what he's going to do, why he's the only person he's going to do it. He is just like pointing to things he's done kind of angrily and being like, why am I not getting credit for holding NATO together? And AuKus, which no one knows what that is, by the way, the nuclear submarine deal with the Australians. How the fuck is that coming up in these conversations? Like, that's not your talk.I have voted in every election the past 20 years on a caucus where.The Aukus caucus, the ship has sailed.On getting credit from these things, voters are like, we don't care.Speaker one, I wholeheartedly agree with you. And so, prior to the debate, my main line was that I very rarely talk about Donald Trump and Joe Biden in the same sentence per se as I characterize them, other than the fact that I felt both of them were prisoners of yesterday, I felt both of them just like it was for a different reason. Like, Joe Biden has this weird nostalgia for, like, swimming in pools with pop pop. Right? It's kind of freaky. And then Donald Trump. Donald Trump has this. He's like. He's like the king of white grievance from yesteryear.Yes.But I think that both of them have a fundamentally. Project 25 is what it is. But you take that away. Both of them have a hard time articulating a vision for the future. And that's when I think age matters, because one is 78 and the other is 81. And it's very difficult when you're 81 or 78 to talk about a future that you may not be a part of, and that is the prisoner of age. And so I agree with you wholeheartedly that I've been pushing them to lay out a vision for the future. And I don't know when they're gonna start doing that other than our, you know. Cause right now, they're kind of fighting front and back, side to side. I mean, they're so busy beating up on y'all and Jon Stewart that they don't really have time.By the way, I'll wrap it up with this, because I know everybody's got to get going, and I'm going to say this, Tommy, John, and then, Bakari, you can have the last word. With all the headwinds and obstacles in front of us, I remain incredibly optimistic about the resilience of the system that we're fighting over. I do believe that the challenges that are in front of us are some of them intractable. But also, you know, I never. There's never despair in any of this. It is always all right. I guess it's. It's. It's buckling down. So I would ask you guys to maybe answer the question what about the resilience of this system still gives you a hope in that?I mean, I do think you make an important point that it's, we can't all speak in apocalyptic terms. And the left and the right does this, the country will exist the day after the election. If Donald Trump is president, I do think he might change core things about our democracy that we can't undo and just fundamentally change the character of this country. And so that's why I am happy to be the stupid pod bro cracker talking about this now, because I do think the risk is real. And it's, if Barack Obama lost to Mitt Romney, there would have been a different policy agenda implemented. I think Donald Trump could change the character of the country in a fundamental and dangerous way.Speaker one, right.Speaker one. I think we have, there's two choices, right? You, you quit and then bad shit happens or you try and fight, right? And I think that's what we're all trying to do right now and trying to stave off the threat of Donald Trump again. And I think what makes me optimistic is, like when you talk to voters, right? Voters, I know they drive everyone crazy. They're complicated. They don't follow politics very closely or the news, but they're sensible and smart and know what they see. And when you make a persuasive case that is rooted in honesty and reality to voters, you do have a chance to change minds. And change minds, meaning get people off the couch to the polls or get people to change who they're going to vote for. And so I never want to give up on that. And that, that makes me hopeful. But I do think you have to make an argument to voters that meets them where they are and is based in reality of what they saw, which is why the Biden, maintaining Biden as a nominee worries me. That said, if he makes the decision, if he refuses to step down and he makes the decision, then, like, we will make an honest case to voters, which is like, yeah, Joe Biden's too old to run for president, but Donald Trump is too dangerous to be president.Lucari yeah, I feel like I'm kind of there. But I think what gives me hope, and I think what we underestimate sometimes as we are evaluating this is, King used to talk about, he talked about it in I have a dream speech. And everybody remembers, like, that rhythmic cadence of I have a dream that one day we shall, but we forget about the most important part of that speech when he talks about the fierce urgency of now. And I think a lot of times we discount the urgency that many people in the electorate voters have. As we talked about, as you talked about your mama and her friends, or your parents and their friends and my mom and her friends, the sense of urgency that people have. And my hope comes from the fact that I believe that there are more people who want to see this country move forward than take it back to a place that is dangerous for us all. It's dangerous because of who you love. It's dangerous because you're jewish. It's dangerous because you're black. It's dangerous because you're a woman. And I think that there are enough people who have that fierce urgency of now that after we get through this little inter squad squabble that we're going through right now, whoever comes out the tent on the other side, his name would be Joe Biden, will rally around and we'll carry him to the finish line like the old great man that he is.It always reminds me, you know, they say that what's the quote, the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. And what we all have to remember is, and there's a good percentage of people trying to bend it back the other way. And it's a lunch pail job to keep it bent. And no matter what happens, I don't think that job goes away. And I think that's probably where we end. But gentlemen, I want to thank you all very much for joining us. Of course, we have Bakari sellers from CNN and political commentator and author of the moment. And Jon Favreau and Tommy Viet are founders of Crooked Media, hosts of Pod Save America and authors of democracy. Or else how to save America in ten easy steps. So thank you guys very much.Thank you.Thanks for having us.Thank you, guys.Oh, man, that's feisty. Yeah, there was a good amount of feisty.That was hot.Bukhari wasn't. He wasn't having it. We're lucky that we were in separate studios. I was afraid one of the pod guys was going to get wedgie. I think he was going heavy on the. Listen, you nerds, you pod boys, you pod boys. They was coming after me. The administration is so angry with the pod boys and Jon Stewart Picari. But I actually thought it was a good articulation of kind of the, the position's there. And I think the. It really is that it is what it is, is the part that I think I find so difficult, like that idea that if you're not it is what it is, then you are somehow fantasy fanfic. West wing toady. I don't know how else to put it.Well, when you do go down to the logistics of actually switching the candidate, you start wondering, would this happen?Right? But it can. And you remember, oh, right, conventions, they used to not actually have a candidate sometimes until after the convention. There is this idea that I think they are discounting just how much in a modern media environment, how long four months actually is.The four months is not the same anymore.And by the way, Republicans wouldn't throw up their hands. They would just fucking bear down and get done the thing they wanted to get done and apologize later. Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. And they would get it done and somehow end up at the Supreme Court with it being fined. It's the complacency. And that's the part that just buries my soul.Yeah, it makes me very sad. I just. We've stopped being able to have conversations at teams or even just like, raise our hand to be like, this feels uncomfortable. It's just very much like, shut the fuck up and get in line.Right. And which, by the way, it's interesting they brought up. He said, you know, there's a pressure campaign to get Biden to drop out. I would say the opposite. I think the pressure campaign is way boys. More like a power washer coming the other way. Like, hey, I don't know if this guy can. Yeah, yeah, it's a bad scene, but I think it would be a healthier outcome for democracy if it showed some ability and flexibility and did not continue around this feeling that it's very rigid and disconnected from real concerns. But we will get to all the topics, though. Oh, go ahead.Oh, yeah.I was just gonna say if the campaign recognized reality and, you know, addressed it. Addressed it exactly. We would be in a different place.But to all the people that are concerned about some of those issues that we had raised that are going to be coming up on the podcast, they will. We do this every week. Every fucking week out here, day in and day or day one a week and day one a week, we're going to get to all those Thank you. The Weekly show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions.Paramount podcasts. You may be tempted to skip this ad, but don't marketers want their audience to stick around? And with Paramount ads manager, you can advertise your business on the biggest shows on tv for 30 unskippable seconds. Run your ads in premium content on Paramount plus and over 15 major networks with hit shows, movies, sports, more, all on the biggest screen in the house. Put your business in show business with Paramount ads manager. Go to adsmanager Dot Paramount.com. that's adsmanager dot paramount.com to learn more.It's been a three year wait, but the Olympics are back, and the CB's sports podcast network has you covered. With everything happening in Paris, it's a new era for the us women's national team. An attacking third will tackle all the women's soccer action. First cut will keep close to tabs on golf, while beyond the arc will follow the us men's basketball team on a quest for another gold. And we need to talk now. We'll provide comprehensive coverage of women's athletes at the Olympic Games. Follow and listen to all CB's sports podcasts for free on the Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.

can totally use to buy burritos, Avon has a credit card that can help you do that. Avon works like a regular credit card, but taps into your home equity to get you really low interest rates. It's the convenience of a credit card with the savings of a home equity line of credit. And just like any other cardinal, you can make everyday purchases and earn unlimited 2% cash back. Plus now avon lets you use your rental or investment properties towards that home equity line of credit. You just need to verify employment and rental income, upload your tax return, verify your home is in good condition and you're on your way to having a credit card with an interest rate that doesn't eat up all your burrito money. Head to Aven.com to learn more. That's av e n.com to learn more.

Finding great candidates to hire can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. You might get a lot of resumes, but not enough candidates with the right skills or experience. But not with Ziprecruiter. Ziprecruiter finds amazing candidates for you fast, and right now you can try it for free@ziprecruiter.com. zip Ziprecruiter's smart technology identifies top talent for your roles quickly. Immediately after you post your job, Ziprecruiter's powerful matching technology starts showing you qualified people for it. And you can use Ziprecruiter's pre written invite to apply message to personally reach out to your favorite candidates and encourage them to apply sooner. Ditch the other hiring sites and let Ziprecruiter find what you're looking for. The needle in the haystack four out of five employers who post on Ziprecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at this exclusive web address. Ziprecruiter.com.

Zip.

Again, that's ziprecruiter.com. zip ziprecruiter. The smartest way to hire.

A okay, we're back. And that's my point, Bakari. We are complacent, and that complacency sets in a cynicism with the american public. And I think you're giving us a binary choice that's not real. I don't necessarily agree. Oh, Biden can't win or Kamala can't win. We just don't know. And the world changes so quickly, and we don't know about those things. But here's what I do know. It's not a binary choice. President Biden's defiance, I don't think, is the right strategy. I think the idea of not acknowledging the progressive and degenerative nature of what he's dealing with is gaslighting anybody who supports him. And this of him going out there with bromides about Joey, my dad said to me, Joey, it's not about how you get knocked down. It's about how you get up. And you're like, I don't know that you can get up, sir, I think that's really not the metaphor you want to go with. And there's no shame in that. We all get there. So I don't understand. There is an opportunity here to have a more honest, adult, sophisticated, fuck the media, fuck whatever they're going to say. You are in control of how this goes down.

And I don't, I think they're bungling even the response. Bakari, no.

And so I don't, I've never said this choice has been binary. In fact, I think people who analyze as race as being binary, and I may have missed your point, have it wrong, because I've always said that. And where large threat, there's two things that you define. You define the threat, and then you define your defenses. All I'm saying is if we are taking an honest look at what our best chance to defend ourselves against a perceived threat, I think we are selling ourselves short and in a lot of ways, using, as Tommy put it, Omerta to stifle what could be an incredibly productive, at least conversation. Even if Joe Biden came out and said, look, I understand where I'm at in my lifespan and cycle and what I do. Here's how this government works, rather than coming out and becoming trumpian and saying, you think someone else could hold NATO together? They could never. Only God can tell me to get out of the race. Like, if he were to come out and say, here's my team, here's how we hold the line. But we're not seeing any of that. Nothing that's been done inspires any confidence other than the fatalism of it is what it is, and this is what we're stuck with. And that's the part that I think has degraded people's trust in institutions and the government from the get go.That's a problem.I'm a blend of both. So it is what it is, and I'm working towards what I believe to be the ultimate goal, which is to defeat Donald Trump. While others are having discussions about the visceral reaction they add to the debate and alternatives. But I also think those discussions are decently healthy. Again, I don't, I'm not trying to excommunicate the pod boys. I'm mad they were listed in the email, a blast email, right? I'm not pod. Damn them. Jesus Christ. I actually have a sticker that says pricks for Biden.Me, too. I got one. You gave me one of those, too.So, like, I'm not, I think. I think the discussion is healthy, because I'm going to need all of you all if I'm going to win this race. And I'm going to need all of you all to want to put every ounce of your being in. Although we disagree on who the nominee is or who we believe the nominee will be, I am still working towards that same goal, which is to rid ourselves of fascism, because I believe after November, if Donald Trump is reelected, it can go really bad really quickly.Guys, let me ask you this. When you talk about ridding ourselves, that what do I do with my anger at a democratic party that honestly has put us in this, this rock in a hard place position that wasn't honest over this past year about what was happening internally at the White House, was not in any way preparing the public for Kamala Harris, wasn't doing any of that. There was a, I don't know if it's complacency or deceit or whatever it was, but a democratic party that missed all of the threats that were coming their way and has left us vulnerable here.I just think, you know, I hear you there. I think Bakari is right that normally incumbent presidents run again. And I think President Biden said he would. Speaker one, there was a suggestion that he would not run for reelection, that he would be the bridge the next generation. I believe that he made it, by.The way, not a suggestion.He said yes, but he never said, I will not run again anyway. Step that aside. I think President Biden and his advisors took the wrong message from the 2022 midterms that this was somehow about support for the White House, when in reality it was Donald Trump helping elevate some really terrible candidates, like Doctor Oz, who got their clocks cleaned. Right. And then he made his decision to run again. And it sounds like, I don't know, I'm not around Joe Biden ever. I've seen him two or three times in the last six months, but it sounds like the wait.That's a lot, Tommy. That's humble.Humble. Humble, Brad.Well, listen, we saw him in the LA fundraiser out here, just around the.President a few times. We had a couple of beers. Light, though. Cool was light.Let me, let me, let me contextualize that. I saw him in person at a fundraiser, and then I watched him on the debate. And the in person fundraiser I saw in Los Angeles a couple of weeks before the debate was as bad as the debate. Everyone I walked out of the debate with, John was there. We were talking to people around us in seats in the fundraiser, people we didn't know in this fundraiser. And we were like, that was chilling.In fact, George Clooney just wrote an op ed about how we need a new nominee. And he hosted the fundraiser. And he just said the same thing in the New York Times, which is what everyone at the fundraiser thought. Everyone was there. Like, what happened?He had just flown back from Italy, right? So everyone was like, oh, he must just be so unbelievably jet lagged. But obviously, there is a more systemic problem.Well, and that's why I don't think it was some, it's not some conspiracy. Like, I saw him, I was at the White House and I saw him in December of 22, and I thought he was fine. He, like, remember he recognized my mother in law from meeting her in 2018. I was like, oh, he's not, he's not. I mean, he looks older and he sounds older, but he's fine. And then I saw him the, the night before the correspondence dinner, and he looked like he did at this LA fundraiser and at the debate, and I was very worried. And then the next night at the correspondence dinner, he gave a good speech. And I was like, okay, maybe he was just tired. So I do think people were wrestling with this. Like, maybe he's tired, maybe. But, like, to your point, question about the Democratic Party. This is a decision that Joe Biden and his closest advisors have made, and no one else like Joe Biden could have stepped aside. Like no Democrat wanted to challenge a sitting president during a primary because they usually, you don't beat a sitting president. Right. Joe Biden made the decision to run.He and his advisors made the decision to run again, even though he said he'd be a bridge, even though he selected Kamala Harris, who they could have built up, and said, okay, now I'm going to pass the baton to you. He made the decision to run. And so we were all left to say, okay, the rest of the Democratic Party was like, all right, you guys are telling us you're the best chance, you're our best chance to, to beat Donald Trump again, to stave off fascism. We trust you. This is, it's on you guys. And then we got that debate, and then we got all the interviews afterwards. So it's like, I'm only interested in beating Donald Trump, too. Like, we are all are. That's like the, that's the number. I'm terrified of what will happen if Donald Trump win. I just don't know that Joe Biden is our best shot to do that anymore.When have we put points on the board? When was the last time Joe Biden put points on the board? The State of the union. You know what I mean? Like, what is the last good moment you guys remember?Well, state of the union, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I try not to. Just stay tuned into the Washington Post in New York Times.Yeah, listen, it's, you know, the needle's gonna move here and there. And I think this is, this is.What drives me crazy about Democrats, though. The frame by which we like, you know, I remember in October, right, access Hollywood came out, Donald Trump was grabbing women by the pussy, right? And then soon thereafter, the bottom fell out. Polls were showing that Donald Trump was getting his behind kick, that all the Senate candidates were like, oh, my God. Like, this man cannot be at the top of the ticket. Rance Priebus actually walked up to the top of Trump Tower to try to convince him to drop out the race. Rance, at the time, was the chair of the RNC, and Donald Trump told him to go kick rocks. Right. Go pound, Sam.Right.But what we saw after that, after he was resolved to stay in the race, we saw everyone then. I mean, and Republicans do this so well. They just fall in line. They don't fall in love. They gathered around, they got behind this guy who is a narcissistic sociopath, and they ushered him into the White House. Right.But Kerry, do you think that would have happened had the access Hollywood tape come out a month before the republican convention back in 2016? And Reince Priebus and all those Republicans, Ted Cruz, who spoke at that convention and was like, spoke out against Trump at the convention, even though he later fell in line. This is, it's a different scenario.I was like, where are you going with this? Where you go with the Ted Cruz.It's a different scenario. Like, if we were, if this was October, this was the third week in October, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. Right? Like, we wouldn't be having this conversation.And Bakari, I would also suggest, you know, Bill Clinton, on the eve of it all, it came out he had had an affair. I can't remember Jennifer Flowers, I think it was, and then it was the Paula Jones situation, and then there was the Monica Lewinsky situation. And Democrats did fall in line. I mean, people made, oh, this is terrible. And I'm disappointed with the president. But ultimately, the Democrats did fall in line. I think that you are soft selling the more fundamental aspect of people viewing somebody who, I'll be perfectly honest with you, I don't know of a job interview that you could have gone on and delivered the performance that was delivered by Joe Biden and gotten a job. And I'm not talking about the presidency. I'm talking about, like, cashier at Home Depot, like a job that you would not think, okay, that that is the hardest job in the entire world.The only problem with that, John, and the only problem with framing it as such is the fact that you discount everything that he's accomplished in the first three and a half years.No, I don't. I don't. But he's not running for, for what he did three and a half years. He's running for the next four.But nothing happens in a vacuum. And what we have to do is people just want to, my friends, my friends on the left, we want to only magnify what we saw at the debate, which is fine, I get it. We're talking about age, but I'm also talking about the accomplishments prior to and the threat that is right down the road. And I think. I mean, we do ourself a disservice by saying our guy is old. We know that. He shuffles.We know that old. It's not Bakari. I think.What is it?It is cognitive decline. It's not just age. It's cognitive decline.At the very least. It's an inability to communicate. Right? Like, I'm not a doctor, but, like, he can't. We need, the candidate that we run for president needs to be able to communicate effectively. And people just, they are concerned. Swing voters, undecided voters, young black voters, young people, latino voters. They say over and over again, they're worried that Joe Biden's too old to be president. And they, they respect him. They don't like Donald Trump very much. They think Donald Trump's a liar. Some of them think Donald Trump's quite dangerous. But they're like, I don't think Joe Biden's up for it. And they've been telling us this for three years now.I can tell you anecdotally, the individuals like my mom and her friends who were all in, responded to that debate with tears and with fears and with reality. And the administration's inability to deal with that honestly and forthrightly, to me, is almost more damaging than the actual debate itself. And it shows a disconnect with, or an inability to be agile and honest. And that's more troublesome to me than almost anything else.Don't disagree with anything you said. My only point would be that my mom and her friends, who usually are the ones who determine who the Democratic Party nominee is, like the black women in her chat group, they refer to themselves as, quote unquote, posse. They were, they were, they were hurt. They were saddened. They said he got his ass kicked. They said he was old as hell.Yeah.But at the end of the day, they were more resolved than ever to call their girlfriends and say, we gonna vote for him. And then one thing they admonished us or modest me about was, we don't need any more chaos. They don't want any more chaos. They're gonna ride with Joe Biden and they don't want, they don't want an open convention. They don't want a prop. They don't want any of that.But you don't think, you don't think white knuckling it with Joe Biden is gaos.But it's the chaos we know.I mean, I think that's a fair argument.That is a fair, that's fair.I'll take one thing. You mentioned, you mentioned, like, we're not talking about Joe Biden's accomplishments. And like, look, we, we do a show a couple times a week. So we've talked about those accomplishments constantly. And I give Joe Biden a ton of credit.I mean, the global we, not, I.Give him credit for climate change, the infrastructure bill, Ukraine. Right. All the things he's done.Great.But what is really glaring about this White House and Joe Biden himself is he does not have a message about the next four years. They are not talking about what he's going to do, why he's the only person he's going to do it. He is just like pointing to things he's done kind of angrily and being like, why am I not getting credit for holding NATO together? And AuKus, which no one knows what that is, by the way, the nuclear submarine deal with the Australians. How the fuck is that coming up in these conversations? Like, that's not your talk.I have voted in every election the past 20 years on a caucus where.The Aukus caucus, the ship has sailed.On getting credit from these things, voters are like, we don't care.Speaker one, I wholeheartedly agree with you. And so, prior to the debate, my main line was that I very rarely talk about Donald Trump and Joe Biden in the same sentence per se as I characterize them, other than the fact that I felt both of them were prisoners of yesterday, I felt both of them just like it was for a different reason. Like, Joe Biden has this weird nostalgia for, like, swimming in pools with pop pop. Right? It's kind of freaky. And then Donald Trump. Donald Trump has this. He's like. He's like the king of white grievance from yesteryear.Yes.But I think that both of them have a fundamentally. Project 25 is what it is. But you take that away. Both of them have a hard time articulating a vision for the future. And that's when I think age matters, because one is 78 and the other is 81. And it's very difficult when you're 81 or 78 to talk about a future that you may not be a part of, and that is the prisoner of age. And so I agree with you wholeheartedly that I've been pushing them to lay out a vision for the future. And I don't know when they're gonna start doing that other than our, you know. Cause right now, they're kind of fighting front and back, side to side. I mean, they're so busy beating up on y'all and Jon Stewart that they don't really have time.By the way, I'll wrap it up with this, because I know everybody's got to get going, and I'm going to say this, Tommy, John, and then, Bakari, you can have the last word. With all the headwinds and obstacles in front of us, I remain incredibly optimistic about the resilience of the system that we're fighting over. I do believe that the challenges that are in front of us are some of them intractable. But also, you know, I never. There's never despair in any of this. It is always all right. I guess it's. It's. It's buckling down. So I would ask you guys to maybe answer the question what about the resilience of this system still gives you a hope in that?I mean, I do think you make an important point that it's, we can't all speak in apocalyptic terms. And the left and the right does this, the country will exist the day after the election. If Donald Trump is president, I do think he might change core things about our democracy that we can't undo and just fundamentally change the character of this country. And so that's why I am happy to be the stupid pod bro cracker talking about this now, because I do think the risk is real. And it's, if Barack Obama lost to Mitt Romney, there would have been a different policy agenda implemented. I think Donald Trump could change the character of the country in a fundamental and dangerous way.Speaker one, right.Speaker one. I think we have, there's two choices, right? You, you quit and then bad shit happens or you try and fight, right? And I think that's what we're all trying to do right now and trying to stave off the threat of Donald Trump again. And I think what makes me optimistic is, like when you talk to voters, right? Voters, I know they drive everyone crazy. They're complicated. They don't follow politics very closely or the news, but they're sensible and smart and know what they see. And when you make a persuasive case that is rooted in honesty and reality to voters, you do have a chance to change minds. And change minds, meaning get people off the couch to the polls or get people to change who they're going to vote for. And so I never want to give up on that. And that, that makes me hopeful. But I do think you have to make an argument to voters that meets them where they are and is based in reality of what they saw, which is why the Biden, maintaining Biden as a nominee worries me. That said, if he makes the decision, if he refuses to step down and he makes the decision, then, like, we will make an honest case to voters, which is like, yeah, Joe Biden's too old to run for president, but Donald Trump is too dangerous to be president.Lucari yeah, I feel like I'm kind of there. But I think what gives me hope, and I think what we underestimate sometimes as we are evaluating this is, King used to talk about, he talked about it in I have a dream speech. And everybody remembers, like, that rhythmic cadence of I have a dream that one day we shall, but we forget about the most important part of that speech when he talks about the fierce urgency of now. And I think a lot of times we discount the urgency that many people in the electorate voters have. As we talked about, as you talked about your mama and her friends, or your parents and their friends and my mom and her friends, the sense of urgency that people have. And my hope comes from the fact that I believe that there are more people who want to see this country move forward than take it back to a place that is dangerous for us all. It's dangerous because of who you love. It's dangerous because you're jewish. It's dangerous because you're black. It's dangerous because you're a woman. And I think that there are enough people who have that fierce urgency of now that after we get through this little inter squad squabble that we're going through right now, whoever comes out the tent on the other side, his name would be Joe Biden, will rally around and we'll carry him to the finish line like the old great man that he is.It always reminds me, you know, they say that what's the quote, the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. And what we all have to remember is, and there's a good percentage of people trying to bend it back the other way. And it's a lunch pail job to keep it bent. And no matter what happens, I don't think that job goes away. And I think that's probably where we end. But gentlemen, I want to thank you all very much for joining us. Of course, we have Bakari sellers from CNN and political commentator and author of the moment. And Jon Favreau and Tommy Viet are founders of Crooked Media, hosts of Pod Save America and authors of democracy. Or else how to save America in ten easy steps. So thank you guys very much.Thank you.Thanks for having us.Thank you, guys.Oh, man, that's feisty. Yeah, there was a good amount of feisty.That was hot.Bukhari wasn't. He wasn't having it. We're lucky that we were in separate studios. I was afraid one of the pod guys was going to get wedgie. I think he was going heavy on the. Listen, you nerds, you pod boys, you pod boys. They was coming after me. The administration is so angry with the pod boys and Jon Stewart Picari. But I actually thought it was a good articulation of kind of the, the position's there. And I think the. It really is that it is what it is, is the part that I think I find so difficult, like that idea that if you're not it is what it is, then you are somehow fantasy fanfic. West wing toady. I don't know how else to put it.Well, when you do go down to the logistics of actually switching the candidate, you start wondering, would this happen?Right? But it can. And you remember, oh, right, conventions, they used to not actually have a candidate sometimes until after the convention. There is this idea that I think they are discounting just how much in a modern media environment, how long four months actually is.The four months is not the same anymore.And by the way, Republicans wouldn't throw up their hands. They would just fucking bear down and get done the thing they wanted to get done and apologize later. Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. And they would get it done and somehow end up at the Supreme Court with it being fined. It's the complacency. And that's the part that just buries my soul.Yeah, it makes me very sad. I just. We've stopped being able to have conversations at teams or even just like, raise our hand to be like, this feels uncomfortable. It's just very much like, shut the fuck up and get in line.Right. And which, by the way, it's interesting they brought up. He said, you know, there's a pressure campaign to get Biden to drop out. I would say the opposite. I think the pressure campaign is way boys. More like a power washer coming the other way. Like, hey, I don't know if this guy can. Yeah, yeah, it's a bad scene, but I think it would be a healthier outcome for democracy if it showed some ability and flexibility and did not continue around this feeling that it's very rigid and disconnected from real concerns. But we will get to all the topics, though. Oh, go ahead.Oh, yeah.I was just gonna say if the campaign recognized reality and, you know, addressed it. Addressed it exactly. We would be in a different place.But to all the people that are concerned about some of those issues that we had raised that are going to be coming up on the podcast, they will. We do this every week. Every fucking week out here, day in and day or day one a week and day one a week, we're going to get to all those Thank you. The Weekly show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions.Paramount podcasts. You may be tempted to skip this ad, but don't marketers want their audience to stick around? And with Paramount ads manager, you can advertise your business on the biggest shows on tv for 30 unskippable seconds. Run your ads in premium content on Paramount plus and over 15 major networks with hit shows, movies, sports, more, all on the biggest screen in the house. Put your business in show business with Paramount ads manager. Go to adsmanager Dot Paramount.com. that's adsmanager dot paramount.com to learn more.It's been a three year wait, but the Olympics are back, and the CB's sports podcast network has you covered. With everything happening in Paris, it's a new era for the us women's national team. An attacking third will tackle all the women's soccer action. First cut will keep close to tabs on golf, while beyond the arc will follow the us men's basketball team on a quest for another gold. And we need to talk now. We'll provide comprehensive coverage of women's athletes at the Olympic Games. Follow and listen to all CB's sports podcasts for free on the Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.

large threat, there's two things that you define. You define the threat, and then you define your defenses. All I'm saying is if we are taking an honest look at what our best chance to defend ourselves against a perceived threat, I think we are selling ourselves short and in a lot of ways, using, as Tommy put it, Omerta to stifle what could be an incredibly productive, at least conversation. Even if Joe Biden came out and said, look, I understand where I'm at in my lifespan and cycle and what I do. Here's how this government works, rather than coming out and becoming trumpian and saying, you think someone else could hold NATO together? They could never. Only God can tell me to get out of the race. Like, if he were to come out and say, here's my team, here's how we hold the line. But we're not seeing any of that. Nothing that's been done inspires any confidence other than the fatalism of it is what it is, and this is what we're stuck with. And that's the part that I think has degraded people's trust in institutions and the government from the get go.

That's a problem.

I'm a blend of both. So it is what it is, and I'm working towards what I believe to be the ultimate goal, which is to defeat Donald Trump. While others are having discussions about the visceral reaction they add to the debate and alternatives. But I also think those discussions are decently healthy. Again, I don't, I'm not trying to excommunicate the pod boys. I'm mad they were listed in the email, a blast email, right? I'm not pod. Damn them. Jesus Christ. I actually have a sticker that says pricks for Biden.

Me, too. I got one. You gave me one of those, too.

So, like, I'm not, I think. I think the discussion is healthy, because I'm going to need all of you all if I'm going to win this race. And I'm going to need all of you all to want to put every ounce of your being in. Although we disagree on who the nominee is or who we believe the nominee will be, I am still working towards that same goal, which is to rid ourselves of fascism, because I believe after November, if Donald Trump is reelected, it can go really bad really quickly.

Guys, let me ask you this. When you talk about ridding ourselves, that what do I do with my anger at a democratic party that honestly has put us in this, this rock in a hard place position that wasn't honest over this past year about what was happening internally at the White House, was not in any way preparing the public for Kamala Harris, wasn't doing any of that. There was a, I don't know if it's complacency or deceit or whatever it was, but a democratic party that missed all of the threats that were coming their way and has left us vulnerable here.

I just think, you know, I hear you there. I think Bakari is right that normally incumbent presidents run again. And I think President Biden said he would. Speaker one, there was a suggestion that he would not run for reelection, that he would be the bridge the next generation. I believe that he made it, by.

The way, not a suggestion.

He said yes, but he never said, I will not run again anyway. Step that aside. I think President Biden and his advisors took the wrong message from the 2022 midterms that this was somehow about support for the White House, when in reality it was Donald Trump helping elevate some really terrible candidates, like Doctor Oz, who got their clocks cleaned. Right. And then he made his decision to run again. And it sounds like, I don't know, I'm not around Joe Biden ever. I've seen him two or three times in the last six months, but it sounds like the wait.

That's a lot, Tommy. That's humble.

Humble. Humble, Brad.

Well, listen, we saw him in the LA fundraiser out here, just around the.

President a few times. We had a couple of beers. Light, though. Cool was light.

Let me, let me, let me contextualize that. I saw him in person at a fundraiser, and then I watched him on the debate. And the in person fundraiser I saw in Los Angeles a couple of weeks before the debate was as bad as the debate. Everyone I walked out of the debate with, John was there. We were talking to people around us in seats in the fundraiser, people we didn't know in this fundraiser. And we were like, that was chilling.

In fact, George Clooney just wrote an op ed about how we need a new nominee. And he hosted the fundraiser. And he just said the same thing in the New York Times, which is what everyone at the fundraiser thought. Everyone was there. Like, what happened?

He had just flown back from Italy, right? So everyone was like, oh, he must just be so unbelievably jet lagged. But obviously, there is a more systemic problem.

Well, and that's why I don't think it was some, it's not some conspiracy. Like, I saw him, I was at the White House and I saw him in December of 22, and I thought he was fine. He, like, remember he recognized my mother in law from meeting her in 2018. I was like, oh, he's not, he's not. I mean, he looks older and he sounds older, but he's fine. And then I saw him the, the night before the correspondence dinner, and he looked like he did at this LA fundraiser and at the debate, and I was very worried. And then the next night at the correspondence dinner, he gave a good speech. And I was like, okay, maybe he was just tired. So I do think people were wrestling with this. Like, maybe he's tired, maybe. But, like, to your point, question about the Democratic Party. This is a decision that Joe Biden and his closest advisors have made, and no one else like Joe Biden could have stepped aside. Like no Democrat wanted to challenge a sitting president during a primary because they usually, you don't beat a sitting president. Right. Joe Biden made the decision to run.

He and his advisors made the decision to run again, even though he said he'd be a bridge, even though he selected Kamala Harris, who they could have built up, and said, okay, now I'm going to pass the baton to you. He made the decision to run. And so we were all left to say, okay, the rest of the Democratic Party was like, all right, you guys are telling us you're the best chance, you're our best chance to, to beat Donald Trump again, to stave off fascism. We trust you. This is, it's on you guys. And then we got that debate, and then we got all the interviews afterwards. So it's like, I'm only interested in beating Donald Trump, too. Like, we are all are. That's like the, that's the number. I'm terrified of what will happen if Donald Trump win. I just don't know that Joe Biden is our best shot to do that anymore.

When have we put points on the board? When was the last time Joe Biden put points on the board? The State of the union. You know what I mean? Like, what is the last good moment you guys remember?

Well, state of the union, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I try not to. Just stay tuned into the Washington Post in New York Times.

Yeah, listen, it's, you know, the needle's gonna move here and there. And I think this is, this is.

What drives me crazy about Democrats, though. The frame by which we like, you know, I remember in October, right, access Hollywood came out, Donald Trump was grabbing women by the pussy, right? And then soon thereafter, the bottom fell out. Polls were showing that Donald Trump was getting his behind kick, that all the Senate candidates were like, oh, my God. Like, this man cannot be at the top of the ticket. Rance Priebus actually walked up to the top of Trump Tower to try to convince him to drop out the race. Rance, at the time, was the chair of the RNC, and Donald Trump told him to go kick rocks. Right. Go pound, Sam.

Right.

But what we saw after that, after he was resolved to stay in the race, we saw everyone then. I mean, and Republicans do this so well. They just fall in line. They don't fall in love. They gathered around, they got behind this guy who is a narcissistic sociopath, and they ushered him into the White House. Right.

But Kerry, do you think that would have happened had the access Hollywood tape come out a month before the republican convention back in 2016? And Reince Priebus and all those Republicans, Ted Cruz, who spoke at that convention and was like, spoke out against Trump at the convention, even though he later fell in line. This is, it's a different scenario.

I was like, where are you going with this? Where you go with the Ted Cruz.

It's a different scenario. Like, if we were, if this was October, this was the third week in October, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. Right? Like, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

And Bakari, I would also suggest, you know, Bill Clinton, on the eve of it all, it came out he had had an affair. I can't remember Jennifer Flowers, I think it was, and then it was the Paula Jones situation, and then there was the Monica Lewinsky situation. And Democrats did fall in line. I mean, people made, oh, this is terrible. And I'm disappointed with the president. But ultimately, the Democrats did fall in line. I think that you are soft selling the more fundamental aspect of people viewing somebody who, I'll be perfectly honest with you, I don't know of a job interview that you could have gone on and delivered the performance that was delivered by Joe Biden and gotten a job. And I'm not talking about the presidency. I'm talking about, like, cashier at Home Depot, like a job that you would not think, okay, that that is the hardest job in the entire world.

The only problem with that, John, and the only problem with framing it as such is the fact that you discount everything that he's accomplished in the first three and a half years.

No, I don't. I don't. But he's not running for, for what he did three and a half years. He's running for the next four.

But nothing happens in a vacuum. And what we have to do is people just want to, my friends, my friends on the left, we want to only magnify what we saw at the debate, which is fine, I get it. We're talking about age, but I'm also talking about the accomplishments prior to and the threat that is right down the road. And I think. I mean, we do ourself a disservice by saying our guy is old. We know that. He shuffles.

We know that old. It's not Bakari. I think.

What is it?

It is cognitive decline. It's not just age. It's cognitive decline.

At the very least. It's an inability to communicate. Right? Like, I'm not a doctor, but, like, he can't. We need, the candidate that we run for president needs to be able to communicate effectively. And people just, they are concerned. Swing voters, undecided voters, young black voters, young people, latino voters. They say over and over again, they're worried that Joe Biden's too old to be president. And they, they respect him. They don't like Donald Trump very much. They think Donald Trump's a liar. Some of them think Donald Trump's quite dangerous. But they're like, I don't think Joe Biden's up for it. And they've been telling us this for three years now.I can tell you anecdotally, the individuals like my mom and her friends who were all in, responded to that debate with tears and with fears and with reality. And the administration's inability to deal with that honestly and forthrightly, to me, is almost more damaging than the actual debate itself. And it shows a disconnect with, or an inability to be agile and honest. And that's more troublesome to me than almost anything else.Don't disagree with anything you said. My only point would be that my mom and her friends, who usually are the ones who determine who the Democratic Party nominee is, like the black women in her chat group, they refer to themselves as, quote unquote, posse. They were, they were, they were hurt. They were saddened. They said he got his ass kicked. They said he was old as hell.Yeah.But at the end of the day, they were more resolved than ever to call their girlfriends and say, we gonna vote for him. And then one thing they admonished us or modest me about was, we don't need any more chaos. They don't want any more chaos. They're gonna ride with Joe Biden and they don't want, they don't want an open convention. They don't want a prop. They don't want any of that.But you don't think, you don't think white knuckling it with Joe Biden is gaos.But it's the chaos we know.I mean, I think that's a fair argument.That is a fair, that's fair.I'll take one thing. You mentioned, you mentioned, like, we're not talking about Joe Biden's accomplishments. And like, look, we, we do a show a couple times a week. So we've talked about those accomplishments constantly. And I give Joe Biden a ton of credit.I mean, the global we, not, I.Give him credit for climate change, the infrastructure bill, Ukraine. Right. All the things he's done.Great.But what is really glaring about this White House and Joe Biden himself is he does not have a message about the next four years. They are not talking about what he's going to do, why he's the only person he's going to do it. He is just like pointing to things he's done kind of angrily and being like, why am I not getting credit for holding NATO together? And AuKus, which no one knows what that is, by the way, the nuclear submarine deal with the Australians. How the fuck is that coming up in these conversations? Like, that's not your talk.I have voted in every election the past 20 years on a caucus where.The Aukus caucus, the ship has sailed.On getting credit from these things, voters are like, we don't care.Speaker one, I wholeheartedly agree with you. And so, prior to the debate, my main line was that I very rarely talk about Donald Trump and Joe Biden in the same sentence per se as I characterize them, other than the fact that I felt both of them were prisoners of yesterday, I felt both of them just like it was for a different reason. Like, Joe Biden has this weird nostalgia for, like, swimming in pools with pop pop. Right? It's kind of freaky. And then Donald Trump. Donald Trump has this. He's like. He's like the king of white grievance from yesteryear.Yes.But I think that both of them have a fundamentally. Project 25 is what it is. But you take that away. Both of them have a hard time articulating a vision for the future. And that's when I think age matters, because one is 78 and the other is 81. And it's very difficult when you're 81 or 78 to talk about a future that you may not be a part of, and that is the prisoner of age. And so I agree with you wholeheartedly that I've been pushing them to lay out a vision for the future. And I don't know when they're gonna start doing that other than our, you know. Cause right now, they're kind of fighting front and back, side to side. I mean, they're so busy beating up on y'all and Jon Stewart that they don't really have time.By the way, I'll wrap it up with this, because I know everybody's got to get going, and I'm going to say this, Tommy, John, and then, Bakari, you can have the last word. With all the headwinds and obstacles in front of us, I remain incredibly optimistic about the resilience of the system that we're fighting over. I do believe that the challenges that are in front of us are some of them intractable. But also, you know, I never. There's never despair in any of this. It is always all right. I guess it's. It's. It's buckling down. So I would ask you guys to maybe answer the question what about the resilience of this system still gives you a hope in that?I mean, I do think you make an important point that it's, we can't all speak in apocalyptic terms. And the left and the right does this, the country will exist the day after the election. If Donald Trump is president, I do think he might change core things about our democracy that we can't undo and just fundamentally change the character of this country. And so that's why I am happy to be the stupid pod bro cracker talking about this now, because I do think the risk is real. And it's, if Barack Obama lost to Mitt Romney, there would have been a different policy agenda implemented. I think Donald Trump could change the character of the country in a fundamental and dangerous way.Speaker one, right.Speaker one. I think we have, there's two choices, right? You, you quit and then bad shit happens or you try and fight, right? And I think that's what we're all trying to do right now and trying to stave off the threat of Donald Trump again. And I think what makes me optimistic is, like when you talk to voters, right? Voters, I know they drive everyone crazy. They're complicated. They don't follow politics very closely or the news, but they're sensible and smart and know what they see. And when you make a persuasive case that is rooted in honesty and reality to voters, you do have a chance to change minds. And change minds, meaning get people off the couch to the polls or get people to change who they're going to vote for. And so I never want to give up on that. And that, that makes me hopeful. But I do think you have to make an argument to voters that meets them where they are and is based in reality of what they saw, which is why the Biden, maintaining Biden as a nominee worries me. That said, if he makes the decision, if he refuses to step down and he makes the decision, then, like, we will make an honest case to voters, which is like, yeah, Joe Biden's too old to run for president, but Donald Trump is too dangerous to be president.Lucari yeah, I feel like I'm kind of there. But I think what gives me hope, and I think what we underestimate sometimes as we are evaluating this is, King used to talk about, he talked about it in I have a dream speech. And everybody remembers, like, that rhythmic cadence of I have a dream that one day we shall, but we forget about the most important part of that speech when he talks about the fierce urgency of now. And I think a lot of times we discount the urgency that many people in the electorate voters have. As we talked about, as you talked about your mama and her friends, or your parents and their friends and my mom and her friends, the sense of urgency that people have. And my hope comes from the fact that I believe that there are more people who want to see this country move forward than take it back to a place that is dangerous for us all. It's dangerous because of who you love. It's dangerous because you're jewish. It's dangerous because you're black. It's dangerous because you're a woman. And I think that there are enough people who have that fierce urgency of now that after we get through this little inter squad squabble that we're going through right now, whoever comes out the tent on the other side, his name would be Joe Biden, will rally around and we'll carry him to the finish line like the old great man that he is.It always reminds me, you know, they say that what's the quote, the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. And what we all have to remember is, and there's a good percentage of people trying to bend it back the other way. And it's a lunch pail job to keep it bent. And no matter what happens, I don't think that job goes away. And I think that's probably where we end. But gentlemen, I want to thank you all very much for joining us. Of course, we have Bakari sellers from CNN and political commentator and author of the moment. And Jon Favreau and Tommy Viet are founders of Crooked Media, hosts of Pod Save America and authors of democracy. Or else how to save America in ten easy steps. So thank you guys very much.Thank you.Thanks for having us.Thank you, guys.Oh, man, that's feisty. Yeah, there was a good amount of feisty.That was hot.Bukhari wasn't. He wasn't having it. We're lucky that we were in separate studios. I was afraid one of the pod guys was going to get wedgie. I think he was going heavy on the. Listen, you nerds, you pod boys, you pod boys. They was coming after me. The administration is so angry with the pod boys and Jon Stewart Picari. But I actually thought it was a good articulation of kind of the, the position's there. And I think the. It really is that it is what it is, is the part that I think I find so difficult, like that idea that if you're not it is what it is, then you are somehow fantasy fanfic. West wing toady. I don't know how else to put it.Well, when you do go down to the logistics of actually switching the candidate, you start wondering, would this happen?Right? But it can. And you remember, oh, right, conventions, they used to not actually have a candidate sometimes until after the convention. There is this idea that I think they are discounting just how much in a modern media environment, how long four months actually is.The four months is not the same anymore.And by the way, Republicans wouldn't throw up their hands. They would just fucking bear down and get done the thing they wanted to get done and apologize later. Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. And they would get it done and somehow end up at the Supreme Court with it being fined. It's the complacency. And that's the part that just buries my soul.Yeah, it makes me very sad. I just. We've stopped being able to have conversations at teams or even just like, raise our hand to be like, this feels uncomfortable. It's just very much like, shut the fuck up and get in line.Right. And which, by the way, it's interesting they brought up. He said, you know, there's a pressure campaign to get Biden to drop out. I would say the opposite. I think the pressure campaign is way boys. More like a power washer coming the other way. Like, hey, I don't know if this guy can. Yeah, yeah, it's a bad scene, but I think it would be a healthier outcome for democracy if it showed some ability and flexibility and did not continue around this feeling that it's very rigid and disconnected from real concerns. But we will get to all the topics, though. Oh, go ahead.Oh, yeah.I was just gonna say if the campaign recognized reality and, you know, addressed it. Addressed it exactly. We would be in a different place.But to all the people that are concerned about some of those issues that we had raised that are going to be coming up on the podcast, they will. We do this every week. Every fucking week out here, day in and day or day one a week and day one a week, we're going to get to all those Thank you. The Weekly show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions.Paramount podcasts. You may be tempted to skip this ad, but don't marketers want their audience to stick around? And with Paramount ads manager, you can advertise your business on the biggest shows on tv for 30 unskippable seconds. Run your ads in premium content on Paramount plus and over 15 major networks with hit shows, movies, sports, more, all on the biggest screen in the house. Put your business in show business with Paramount ads manager. Go to adsmanager Dot Paramount.com. that's adsmanager dot paramount.com to learn more.It's been a three year wait, but the Olympics are back, and the CB's sports podcast network has you covered. With everything happening in Paris, it's a new era for the us women's national team. An attacking third will tackle all the women's soccer action. First cut will keep close to tabs on golf, while beyond the arc will follow the us men's basketball team on a quest for another gold. And we need to talk now. We'll provide comprehensive coverage of women's athletes at the Olympic Games. Follow and listen to all CB's sports podcasts for free on the Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.

And people just, they are concerned. Swing voters, undecided voters, young black voters, young people, latino voters. They say over and over again, they're worried that Joe Biden's too old to be president. And they, they respect him. They don't like Donald Trump very much. They think Donald Trump's a liar. Some of them think Donald Trump's quite dangerous. But they're like, I don't think Joe Biden's up for it. And they've been telling us this for three years now.

I can tell you anecdotally, the individuals like my mom and her friends who were all in, responded to that debate with tears and with fears and with reality. And the administration's inability to deal with that honestly and forthrightly, to me, is almost more damaging than the actual debate itself. And it shows a disconnect with, or an inability to be agile and honest. And that's more troublesome to me than almost anything else.

Don't disagree with anything you said. My only point would be that my mom and her friends, who usually are the ones who determine who the Democratic Party nominee is, like the black women in her chat group, they refer to themselves as, quote unquote, posse. They were, they were, they were hurt. They were saddened. They said he got his ass kicked. They said he was old as hell.

Yeah.

But at the end of the day, they were more resolved than ever to call their girlfriends and say, we gonna vote for him. And then one thing they admonished us or modest me about was, we don't need any more chaos. They don't want any more chaos. They're gonna ride with Joe Biden and they don't want, they don't want an open convention. They don't want a prop. They don't want any of that.

But you don't think, you don't think white knuckling it with Joe Biden is gaos.

But it's the chaos we know.

I mean, I think that's a fair argument.

That is a fair, that's fair.

I'll take one thing. You mentioned, you mentioned, like, we're not talking about Joe Biden's accomplishments. And like, look, we, we do a show a couple times a week. So we've talked about those accomplishments constantly. And I give Joe Biden a ton of credit.

I mean, the global we, not, I.

Give him credit for climate change, the infrastructure bill, Ukraine. Right. All the things he's done.

Great.

But what is really glaring about this White House and Joe Biden himself is he does not have a message about the next four years. They are not talking about what he's going to do, why he's the only person he's going to do it. He is just like pointing to things he's done kind of angrily and being like, why am I not getting credit for holding NATO together? And AuKus, which no one knows what that is, by the way, the nuclear submarine deal with the Australians. How the fuck is that coming up in these conversations? Like, that's not your talk.

I have voted in every election the past 20 years on a caucus where.

The Aukus caucus, the ship has sailed.

On getting credit from these things, voters are like, we don't care.

Speaker one, I wholeheartedly agree with you. And so, prior to the debate, my main line was that I very rarely talk about Donald Trump and Joe Biden in the same sentence per se as I characterize them, other than the fact that I felt both of them were prisoners of yesterday, I felt both of them just like it was for a different reason. Like, Joe Biden has this weird nostalgia for, like, swimming in pools with pop pop. Right? It's kind of freaky. And then Donald Trump. Donald Trump has this. He's like. He's like the king of white grievance from yesteryear.

Yes.

But I think that both of them have a fundamentally. Project 25 is what it is. But you take that away. Both of them have a hard time articulating a vision for the future. And that's when I think age matters, because one is 78 and the other is 81. And it's very difficult when you're 81 or 78 to talk about a future that you may not be a part of, and that is the prisoner of age. And so I agree with you wholeheartedly that I've been pushing them to lay out a vision for the future. And I don't know when they're gonna start doing that other than our, you know. Cause right now, they're kind of fighting front and back, side to side. I mean, they're so busy beating up on y'all and Jon Stewart that they don't really have time.

By the way, I'll wrap it up with this, because I know everybody's got to get going, and I'm going to say this, Tommy, John, and then, Bakari, you can have the last word. With all the headwinds and obstacles in front of us, I remain incredibly optimistic about the resilience of the system that we're fighting over. I do believe that the challenges that are in front of us are some of them intractable. But also, you know, I never. There's never despair in any of this. It is always all right. I guess it's. It's. It's buckling down. So I would ask you guys to maybe answer the question what about the resilience of this system still gives you a hope in that?

I mean, I do think you make an important point that it's, we can't all speak in apocalyptic terms. And the left and the right does this, the country will exist the day after the election. If Donald Trump is president, I do think he might change core things about our democracy that we can't undo and just fundamentally change the character of this country. And so that's why I am happy to be the stupid pod bro cracker talking about this now, because I do think the risk is real. And it's, if Barack Obama lost to Mitt Romney, there would have been a different policy agenda implemented. I think Donald Trump could change the character of the country in a fundamental and dangerous way.

Speaker one, right.

Speaker one. I think we have, there's two choices, right? You, you quit and then bad shit happens or you try and fight, right? And I think that's what we're all trying to do right now and trying to stave off the threat of Donald Trump again. And I think what makes me optimistic is, like when you talk to voters, right? Voters, I know they drive everyone crazy. They're complicated. They don't follow politics very closely or the news, but they're sensible and smart and know what they see. And when you make a persuasive case that is rooted in honesty and reality to voters, you do have a chance to change minds. And change minds, meaning get people off the couch to the polls or get people to change who they're going to vote for. And so I never want to give up on that. And that, that makes me hopeful. But I do think you have to make an argument to voters that meets them where they are and is based in reality of what they saw, which is why the Biden, maintaining Biden as a nominee worries me. That said, if he makes the decision, if he refuses to step down and he makes the decision, then, like, we will make an honest case to voters, which is like, yeah, Joe Biden's too old to run for president, but Donald Trump is too dangerous to be president.

Lucari yeah, I feel like I'm kind of there. But I think what gives me hope, and I think what we underestimate sometimes as we are evaluating this is, King used to talk about, he talked about it in I have a dream speech. And everybody remembers, like, that rhythmic cadence of I have a dream that one day we shall, but we forget about the most important part of that speech when he talks about the fierce urgency of now. And I think a lot of times we discount the urgency that many people in the electorate voters have. As we talked about, as you talked about your mama and her friends, or your parents and their friends and my mom and her friends, the sense of urgency that people have. And my hope comes from the fact that I believe that there are more people who want to see this country move forward than take it back to a place that is dangerous for us all. It's dangerous because of who you love. It's dangerous because you're jewish. It's dangerous because you're black. It's dangerous because you're a woman. And I think that there are enough people who have that fierce urgency of now that after we get through this little inter squad squabble that we're going through right now, whoever comes out the tent on the other side, his name would be Joe Biden, will rally around and we'll carry him to the finish line like the old great man that he is.

It always reminds me, you know, they say that what's the quote, the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. And what we all have to remember is, and there's a good percentage of people trying to bend it back the other way. And it's a lunch pail job to keep it bent. And no matter what happens, I don't think that job goes away. And I think that's probably where we end. But gentlemen, I want to thank you all very much for joining us. Of course, we have Bakari sellers from CNN and political commentator and author of the moment. And Jon Favreau and Tommy Viet are founders of Crooked Media, hosts of Pod Save America and authors of democracy. Or else how to save America in ten easy steps. So thank you guys very much.

Thank you.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you, guys.

Oh, man, that's feisty. Yeah, there was a good amount of feisty.

That was hot.

Bukhari wasn't. He wasn't having it. We're lucky that we were in separate studios. I was afraid one of the pod guys was going to get wedgie. I think he was going heavy on the. Listen, you nerds, you pod boys, you pod boys. They was coming after me. The administration is so angry with the pod boys and Jon Stewart Picari. But I actually thought it was a good articulation of kind of the, the position's there. And I think the. It really is that it is what it is, is the part that I think I find so difficult, like that idea that if you're not it is what it is, then you are somehow fantasy fanfic. West wing toady. I don't know how else to put it.

Well, when you do go down to the logistics of actually switching the candidate, you start wondering, would this happen?

Right? But it can. And you remember, oh, right, conventions, they used to not actually have a candidate sometimes until after the convention. There is this idea that I think they are discounting just how much in a modern media environment, how long four months actually is.

The four months is not the same anymore.

And by the way, Republicans wouldn't throw up their hands. They would just fucking bear down and get done the thing they wanted to get done and apologize later. Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. And they would get it done and somehow end up at the Supreme Court with it being fined. It's the complacency. And that's the part that just buries my soul.

Yeah, it makes me very sad. I just. We've stopped being able to have conversations at teams or even just like, raise our hand to be like, this feels uncomfortable. It's just very much like, shut the fuck up and get in line.

Right. And which, by the way, it's interesting they brought up. He said, you know, there's a pressure campaign to get Biden to drop out. I would say the opposite. I think the pressure campaign is way boys. More like a power washer coming the other way. Like, hey, I don't know if this guy can. Yeah, yeah, it's a bad scene, but I think it would be a healthier outcome for democracy if it showed some ability and flexibility and did not continue around this feeling that it's very rigid and disconnected from real concerns. But we will get to all the topics, though. Oh, go ahead.

Oh, yeah.

I was just gonna say if the campaign recognized reality and, you know, addressed it. Addressed it exactly. We would be in a different place.

But to all the people that are concerned about some of those issues that we had raised that are going to be coming up on the podcast, they will. We do this every week. Every fucking week out here, day in and day or day one a week and day one a week, we're going to get to all those Thank you. The Weekly show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions.Paramount podcasts. You may be tempted to skip this ad, but don't marketers want their audience to stick around? And with Paramount ads manager, you can advertise your business on the biggest shows on tv for 30 unskippable seconds. Run your ads in premium content on Paramount plus and over 15 major networks with hit shows, movies, sports, more, all on the biggest screen in the house. Put your business in show business with Paramount ads manager. Go to adsmanager Dot Paramount.com. that's adsmanager dot paramount.com to learn more.It's been a three year wait, but the Olympics are back, and the CB's sports podcast network has you covered. With everything happening in Paris, it's a new era for the us women's national team. An attacking third will tackle all the women's soccer action. First cut will keep close to tabs on golf, while beyond the arc will follow the us men's basketball team on a quest for another gold. And we need to talk now. We'll provide comprehensive coverage of women's athletes at the Olympic Games. Follow and listen to all CB's sports podcasts for free on the Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you. The Weekly show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions.

Paramount podcasts. You may be tempted to skip this ad, but don't marketers want their audience to stick around? And with Paramount ads manager, you can advertise your business on the biggest shows on tv for 30 unskippable seconds. Run your ads in premium content on Paramount plus and over 15 major networks with hit shows, movies, sports, more, all on the biggest screen in the house. Put your business in show business with Paramount ads manager. Go to adsmanager Dot Paramount.com. that's adsmanager dot paramount.com to learn more.

It's been a three year wait, but the Olympics are back, and the CB's sports podcast network has you covered. With everything happening in Paris, it's a new era for the us women's national team. An attacking third will tackle all the women's soccer action. First cut will keep close to tabs on golf, while beyond the arc will follow the us men's basketball team on a quest for another gold. And we need to talk now. We'll provide comprehensive coverage of women's athletes at the Olympic Games. Follow and listen to all CB's sports podcasts for free on the Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.