I won't tell you that it's gonna be okay.

I won't tell you that it's going to be okay.

Welcome to another episode of the Bakari Sellers podcast.

Today we have none other than somebody.

I've been really excited about interviewing Cody Keenan what's going on?

Hey man I'm thinking about me on the show. Yeah we so we start each one of our

episodes the same way which is having our guests walk us through the arc of their career.

So the obvious question for you is how does someone end up becoming

the presidential chief, the president's chief speech writer?

Walk us through your career arc from finishing the Kennedy School of Government

at Harvard to being the President's Speech Rider.

Yeah, there's no one path to being a Speech Writer, let alone Chief Speech Writer, which is what makes it so fun. My

arc actually began even before that after I graduated college I moved to

Washington and was hunting for a job which is difficult you know I didn't

know anybody in town and nobody you know you come in thinking you're a hot shot right

on a college you've seen every episode of the West wing like how hard can this be?

The first job I got was an internship in Ted Kennedy's mailroom, which ended up being one of the greatest educations I ever had, just really learning the ins and outs of legislation, why matters people's lives.

I gradually ended up writing a few speeches for him after four years, went to the Kennedy

School, and then a woman who mentored both me and John Favreau, who was President Obama's

first two speechwriter, connected the two of us in the early days of the 07 campaign,

he hired me as his intern,

and then I just kind of stubbornly hung on for 14 years.

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