Jon Lovett Returns: Kamala, Biden, Trump and Surviving 2024
The Last Laugh
The Daily Beast
4.6 • 661 Ratings
🗓️ 24 July 2024
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the weeks between President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance and his decision to step aside, no one in political media was making the case against his candidacy louder than the former Obama staffers and co-hosts of Pod Save America. In his third appearance on The Last Laugh, Crooked Media co-founder Jon Lovett returns to talk about his unexpectedly prominent role in the Democratic Party’s existential crisis and how he’s feeling now that Vice President Kamala Harris has emerged as the presumptive nominee who will take on Donald Trump in the fall. We also discuss how the political comedy world handled Biden’s decline and Trump’s assassination attempt, how he navigates writing jokes for his own podcast Lovett or Leave It, and how on earth he ended up as a contestant on the upcoming season of ‘Survivor.’
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is The Last Laugh. I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast, and today on the show, back for his third appearance on this podcast, Crooked Media co-founder, Pod Save America co-host, and the co-author of the new book, Democracy or Else, How to Save America in Ten Easy Steps, John Love It. |
| 0:24.6 | I would say this is a particularly perfect time to have John back on The Last Laugh, which is not always a politically minded podcast, but it is pretty much impossible to ignore what is happening in politics right now. |
| 0:37.1 | John, who served as a speechwriter |
| 0:39.0 | and frequent joke writer for President Barack Obama, join me on Zoom from Crooked Media's |
| 0:44.6 | LA headquarters on Tuesday afternoon. Just about 48 hours after President Joe Biden finally took |
| 0:51.1 | the advice that he and the rest of the Pod Save America crew had been pushing |
| 0:55.1 | since last month's debate and decided to step aside in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris. |
| 1:01.4 | As someone who found himself in the center of the debate that had been dominating democratic |
| 1:05.9 | politics for the past couple of weeks, I really wanted to get John's perspective on how all of this went down |
| 1:11.9 | and what happens next. Of course, we also got into the current political comedy landscape, |
| 1:17.9 | and as much as I could get out of him about his upcoming stint as a contestant on Survivor. |
| 1:23.1 | Before we get into the interview, let's hear a clip of John telling jokes to a huge crowd of fans |
| 1:28.3 | at this past weekend's live episode of his podcast, Love It or Leave It, in Madison, Wisconsin. |
| 1:35.0 | Meanwhile, during a campaign speech in North Carolina on Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris |
| 1:39.1 | took aim at Trump's new running mate, J.D. Vance, who addressed the RNC the night before. |
| 1:44.0 | Frankly, what is very |
| 1:47.7 | telling is what he did not talk about on that stage. He did not talk about Project 2025. |
| 1:57.0 | Their 900-page blueprint for a second Trump term. |
| 2:03.6 | He did not talk about it because their plans are extreme. |
| 2:08.6 | And they are divisive. |
| 2:11.6 | Hmm, I like where she's going, but that she didn't change the subject or trail off with a well anyway. |
| 2:16.6 | I'm not sure it's going to cut it. change the subject or trail off with a well anyway. |
... |
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