Pod Save America - "It's making us dumber."

Episode Date: February 27, 2017

The latest on health care, Trump's joint address to Congress, and Peter Hamby of Snapchat joins to talk about press access and the changing media landscape.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On the pod today, we have Snapchat's head of news and the host of Snapchat's Good Luck America, journalist, friend of the pod, Peter Hamby. Exciting. It's great. Okay, before we begin, a little housekeeping. Housekeeping. Housekeeping. Okay.

Pod Save the World this week. Who's on it? Who do we got? We have a friend of the pod before there were pods at all, Heather Higginbottom, who, Deputy Secretary of State, worked with all of us on a number of campaigns along the way and in the White House. She's a brilliant woman, led a lot of the refugee vetting efforts and other things. You guys are going to want to tune in. Also, please, if you haven't yet, go subscribe to Annamarie Cox's new podcast with friends like

these. Already doing great. She did a great podcast last week. It's a juggernaut riding on the juggernaut. Exactly. And also, tomorrow night, for Trump's joint session speech, we are going to do another live stream with our friends at Funny or Die, reacting to the speech.

Crooked Media Live. Crooked Media Live. So go to Funny or Die's Facebook page and also be on Crooked Media's Facebook page as well. And Anna will be there. And Anna will be there. The whole crew. The whole Crooked Media crew, guys. It's going to be great. Let's start with the Oscars.

We actually have on the pod today an accountant from PricewaterhouseCooper who's going to tell us what happened last night. Hello. It is me, Joe America. I have a new job at PricewaterhouseCooper. I love this country.

You can get a job doing anything you want. You stand beside Leonardo DiCaprio, the man who got eaten by a bear in that film last year, and you can just hand out whatever envelopes you want.

I saw Warren Beatty and this woman, well, she looked like Faye Dunaway. I think she was Faye Dunaway. And I hand the envelope and I say, let's see what happens. It was crazy. That was something, guys. Tommy left the Crooked Media Oscar party before that happened.

Boy, did you miss out. There were some gasps in the living room. I know this isn't actually true, but I do feel like this kind of an incident affects gay people more. You could hear it in West Hollywood. People were flipping over cars. There was a riot in front of Rage. I love a La La Finn. A lot of businesses recovering today.

Okay, that's enough about that. Let's start with the DNC race, which happened on Saturday. Tom Perez is our new chairman. Friend of the pod, Tom Perez. We launched his career. This is what we like to say here. Okay, so Perez wins one of the second ballot. In the first ballot, he missed winning by half a vote, which is funny.

I didn't know you could do half a vote in the DNC. Apparently, like Americans Abroad or something got a half a vote anyway so there's been a lot of angst anger disappointment among keith ellison supporters a lot of bernie supporters among the ellison supporters and so you know perez tried to stem this by immediately naming ellison as the deputy chair of the dnc but i want to talk about this because we get a lot of questions from people on Twitter that said, you know, how big of a deal is this? You know, is this splitting the party? Is the DNC chair that important? So I think we should sort of cover that quickly before we move on to the joint session stuff. Yeah, I mean, I think there's like, this became a kind of proxy fight, which it didn't have to become. And that's actually

not Keith Ellison's fault. And it's not the Bernie supporters fault. It really is the way it was handled. I don't know. If you cared a lot about who was running the DNC for your entire life, it's totally reasonable to care a lot about this race. If you haven't, you probably shouldn't. Because at the end of the day, Tom Perez is a very progressive individual. He's going to lead.

He's going to organize. He's going to raise money. He's going to recruit candidates. He's going to do a great job at this. He's not going to be on the ballot. This isn't Hillary versus Bernie all over again. That's a ridiculous way to think about it. It's totally fair to feel like the more progressive candidate didn't win, and that might be disappointing.

But Ellison's still going to be a huge part of the party going forward and part of the team. It's great that Ellison is now vice chair, and also it means that he gets to stay in the House. Deputy chair. There's a deputy chair and a vice chair. Whatever. Who gives a shit? Mike Blake that Ellison is now vice chair and also it means that he gets to stay in the House. Deputy chair. There's a deputy chair and a vice chair. Whatever. Who gives a shit? Mike Blake. Mike Blake is the vice chair. Our good friend from the campaign. It's great that Mike Blake is vice chair. I don't know the difference between a deputy chair and a vice chair.

Most people don't. That's not a problem. Right. That's my point. Here's what I'd say. Number one, the DNC chair is largely a fundraising role. Okay? And it's an organizational role. So it's not as important as you might think. But I completely understand the frustration of the Ellison supporters. What I would say to them is, it is extremely challenging to run an outsider in an election that is voted on by largely insiders, that the DNC members are insiders. So if this

is your first test on how to build a more progressive, outsider Democratic Party, it's just a tough one to do. But you did succeed by running Keith Ellison. You did succeed in making sure that there was a progressive DNC chair. Because Perez is progressive, Ellison's progressive,

and now you also have Ellison as deputy chair. He's got a very big voice on what happens in the DNC. And I would just say, you don't have to support Tom Perez, but give him a chance to prove himself. Judge him by the decisions he makes, by the policies he has. And one thing that he should do and that Ellison has promised to do, and I don't think Perez had committed to this yet, but they absolutely should reinstate the ban on donations from lobbyists in the DNC that Obama put in place. And Debbie Wasserman Schultz, for some stupid reason, took the ban on donations from lobbyists in the DNC that Obama put in place and Debbie Wasserman Schultz for some stupid reason took the ban away. If we want to argue we're better than them on

this stuff, then we have to be better than them. Better than the Republican Party. We should not accept these donations. Don't tell me that the fucking party needs the money from the lobbyists to survive and to compete against the Republicans. It's in the era of grassroots fundraising that is completely bullshit. Let's also just remember that the enemy is not Tom Perez or Keith Ellison.

It's Debbie Wasserman Schultz. John just spit out his water on his phone. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. Like, it really is a shame that this became this kind of a battle. And that really is Tom Perez's fault for when he got in the race. Absolutely true. But now it's done. We need to come together.

We can't focus on this. And all these people are saying, like, now the Democratic Party doesn't listen to us. Keith Ellison has a huge role in this party. Get now it's done. We need to come together. We can't focus on this. And all these people are saying, like, now the Democratic Party doesn't listen to us. Keith Ellison has a huge role in this party. Get over it. OK, so we have a DNC chair. Hooray. Yay. Let's move on to the joint session. Tomorrow night, Donald Trump gives his first address to a joint session of Congress. It's not called the State of the Union. You get the State of the Union after the first year.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's a joint session speech. It's exciting. That was an interesting intro. So, okay. So we have two former speech writers in here. My question for you guys is, what is it like writing a speech like this, where you know there are going to be tens of millions of people watching, lots of eyeballs, but your ability to be innovative and write something new or different

is so limited because of the structure of the speech itself. I think there is no other speech where you spend so much time and effort for a speech that has an ever-shortening shelf life. It is a complete waste of time. Do you feel like it was forgettable? Well, no. is forgettable. Well, no, I mean, as the years have gone on, it used to be that the president gives the State of the Union a joint session speech, and you could get press out of it for like a week, right?

The president goes on the road, they sell all the different parts of the agenda in the speech, there's a lot of coverage on it. You leak in advance. Now, in the age of Twitter and everything else, like by Wednesday afternoon when Trump tweets something crazy, everyone will forget about the speech, and that'll be that. Right. Unless something, I should have, I just jinxed it, something truly crazy will forget about the speech and that'll be that. I just jinxed it. Something truly crazy will happen at the State of the Union. We'll be talking about it. But the amount of

effort you put into it, to get to your question, Tom, is it's like a month before, two months before you start having the first meetings with people. It's a little less time when it's the first speech because you have to put the government together. I actually remember the first speech we gave, we did not have, like, all the cabinet nominees in place and everyone in the government. So, like, we focused on healthcare, energy, and education as, like, Obama's three priorities.

And so we largely wrote the speech with the help of Heather Higginbottom, who you're interviewing on Policy of the World, who dealt with some of the education stuff and healthcare. Heather Zichal did energy stuff. And there's, like, energy stuff. And then Ben Rhodes was working on foreign policy and national security. And that was the crew that basically wrote the first one. So would you guys divide and conquer sections? Is that how you do this? How do you weed together or something like that? Yeah. On the speech team, once we got past the opening and the ending of the State of the Union, all of the policy sections, we would sort of farm out to different speech editors. Yeah, I feel like I did an energy section.

You did. I remember doing energy sections. You would do energy, technology, and science. Adam Franklin usually did education. Yeah, and then Ben Rhodes did all the foreign policy and domestic stuff. I do think, though, even though the speech's shelf life is not what it was, there are two ways in which it's important. One is the coverage of it isn't as important as a normal speech because it is millions of people watching it and getting it without a filter. And often it's the case that the speech is quite boring, but it's only really boring

to the press corps and political people that follow everything. It actually is good. You know, people watching at home, they don't follow things as closely, actually really like it. And then the second thing is it's clarifying for the administration. It forces you to get around a set of policies. Is there one moment in any of his speeches that you guys remember that jumps out of you that was memorable man blanks i mean i remember the joke stuff yeah jokes good jokes bad jokes i remember salmon good salmon spilled milk bad joke i tried to give you something better yeah it was love it wrote the spilled milk joke I tell that to everyone. No, no, no, no, no. Now listen, the joke was something.

What was it? Don't cry. It was an obvious joke. We all know that. What? Anyway. Hey, this is awful radio. Can you explain what you're talking about? Go. There's a really bad vibe in here today, guys. It's a great vibe. He's lying. Anyway. Tommy, sometimes you remember the endings of

these things. That's about it. I remember the moments. I remember the real people in the box who'd stand up, who were highlighted, like a returning service member or whomever it might be. I mean, I remember the First Lady sort of hugging people. There were moments, but there were more human interactions than the words that came out of his mouth. I always loved the moment in Obama's one of the State of the Unions where he ended by talking about the flag that the SEALs in the Bin Laden raid gave him. He ended with that one. There's another

story about, I don't know, there's these anecdotes at the end that are more memorable. But most of that middle of that speech, no one will ever remember. It's famously boring. That flag is in the front hall of the new Obama office in D.C., by the way. It's amazing. Oh, okay. That is stark. It's amazing. You're like, oh, okay, that is stark.

Is there anything, if there's something less memorable, it might be the Democratic or Republican response to the State of the Union. Those are graveyards of up-and-coming politicians. If you're working for a politician who is asked to give the response, what you say to your boss is, don't do it. Don't do it. What you say to your boss is don't do it don't do it what you say to your boss says no they didn't call so uh do we have marco rubio with the water marco rubio drank water all the time if anyone remembers that it's almost as if the response like is really clarifying like the the pressure of it and the the fact that you have to do it at such a smaller scale than the president uh reveals who you really are. Like it just exposed Bobby Jindal and exposed Marco Rubio.

The I always thought it seems crazy to me that we don't do it like a rally. Like I don't understand why we don't do a rally. Say that in 2006. Why wouldn't you get like a governor, lieutenant governor, fill a big, you know, some local Senate chamber or something full of people and do it that way? I don't know. Because otherwise it looks like a hostage state. Right.

Bobby Jindal. Remember, he walked down the steps and he looked like Dennis the Menace and he just sort of won the eight minute speech. Was this the worst thing he's ever done in his career? Yeah. No. So the Democrats have Steve, Governor Steve Beshear from Kentucky doing it. That's interesting.

Yeah. I think part of it is, you know, red state, a lot of white working class people there. He's Democratic governor. But then he's had a lot of success enrolling people in Obamacare, which is not called, yeah, it's called KYNet. KYNet. Don't let Obama touch my KYNet.

Right. I mean, that's a real thing. That's what, I think, we could be screwing up the name there, but that's what it's called. Anyway, and a lot of people like it because it's not called Obamacare. Kentucky Connect? What did I think it's what it's called. Anyway, and a lot of people like it because it's not called Obamacare. It's like a Kinect? What did I think it was? I was wrong. Anyway, so let's talk about the backdrop, the political

backdrop for Trump's first joint session. The backdrop? The backdrop. Political. All the goings-on? Yeah, what's happening. That's my segue there. Love it. NBC Wall Street Journal poll has Trump at 44% approval, 48% disapproval. So, here's the good news for Trump in this poll. He's at 44% approval, 48% disapproval.

So here's the good news for Trump in this poll. He's at 85% approval among Republicans. Here's a tough one. He's at 55% approval from the one-third of respondents who had voted for a third-party candidate, didn't vote at all, or said that they supported Trump mostly to oppose Hillary. Those are the voters that we need to watch. So he's still a little bit above water with them. That's a bit of a catch-all category.

I know. I was going to say, the Wall Street Journal reported this, and NBC didn't in theirs, so it's funny to see the bias. But he also still has a net positive rating on changing business as usual, getting things done, and jobs in the economy. That's key. Bad news for Trump. He's the only president in the history of modern polling to begin his first term with a net negative approval rating.

He's disliked, untrustworthy, wrong temperament. Those are all the negative approval ratings. 59% don't like him personally, and 52% agree his troubles are not typical growing pains, but unique to him. There were similar numbers. There was a Washington Post story out of Iowa about Iowans feeling disappointed. And any administration is going to get the one month and two month in

ex-president's voters feeling disappointed story, and it's going to drive the staff insane. But, you know, he was at 42-49, approved, disapproved with Iowans. And it was lower in eastern Iowa, which is the blue collar area, that is the reason Hillary Clinton lost. So this does not, this does not bode well for these people feeling like he's on their side, especially if they fail to go through with any of the things that create jobs or they take away their health care. Well, so here's a question. Does it matter for his legislative agenda if Trump doesn't get any support from Democrats as long as he's still popular among Republicans? What does that mean? Well, I saw Sam Stein on Twitter said, look,

as long as he's got this support among Republicans, he's going to be able to get whatever he wants done legislatively. That's totally wrong. Darrell Issa came out in favor of a special prosecutor because he's in a tough race. Darrell Issa, right close to us here in Los Angeles, only won by one percentage point. And his district was won by Hillary Clinton. First time a Democrat ever won an Orange County district like that. And he, on Friday, called for a special prosecutor to oversee investigation into Trump contacts with Russia. There are enough Republican House members in vulnerable districts to make it hard for him to pass things, full stop. And as long as that's true, his overall approval rating does matter.

Making Trump less popular does matter. I mean, we're already seeing it with health care. I mean, the fact that health care is stuck in this sort of limbo between the Paul Ryan Freedom Caucus version and the Donald Trump, I just want to not deal with this version. I want to get into this. This is fascinating, is that there is a split in the Trump administration, right, between Trump campaigned on this populist, different kind of Republican platform, right? And one side of the populism was nativism and, you know, anti-immigrant sentiment,

you know, this is where we get the travel ban from and all this. But the other side was, I'm going to be a different kind of Republican in that he promised to not cut Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. He said he's going to bring jobs back. He was anti-trade, right? All this populist stuff. And that's sort of like the Bannon wing of his administration. But his vice president is Mike Pence, traditional free market conservative. He's dealing with Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House, same thing. And so Trump's so-called different kind of Republican populist economic agenda is going to run headfirst into Pence and Ryan and all the Republicans on the Hill. headfirst into Pence and Ryan and all the Republicans on the Hill.

The problem for those guys is the constituency for tax cuts for millionaires paid for by cutting people's health care is so small right now. And the Republicans have never understood this. It's a reminder, too, that Donald Trump did not get elected on – Paul Ryan does the trump populism stuff to get to the regulatory tax agenda that's his goal donald trump is not there like donald trump's populism was the goal in and of itself he came up through the middle and so the idea that he's going to turn around and back this sort of crazy agenda which has never been popular donald trump campaigned on cutting health care for people so you could give millionaires tax cuts he wouldn't have won right that was his message so um it is interesting and you're seeing like so then trump meets with casick uh the other day and casick was like no you should not cut medicaid to all these states health care for poor people and trump's like i like his plan that's good that report was fascinating to me because you you can

tell trump has absolutely no idea what he's doing and he's flailing around for a path forward on obamacare so when casick comes in to pitch his random thing he's like. He's flailing around for a path forward on Obamacare. So when Kasich comes in to pitch his random thing, he's like calling in the HHS secretary and a bunch of aides to say, hey, jot this down. I think this guy's got some notes. It's interesting because it's a little bit of Trump bumping up against the fact that he doesn't have the right team around him, right? If you could

just sort of like swap out Stephen Miller for like Heather Higginbottom, he'd be okay. He'd be cool with that. He just doesn't have the right people giving him ideas and he's got got that spidey sense. It's like, I don't know if this is the right thing for me to be doing. And all these dead-eyed conservatives are telling me I should do it. It's the classic governing versus campaigning thing, right? I mean, being for something is really hard. And being opposed to it is very easy. He had this moment this morning where he was asked about healthcare and he said,

we're going to have a plan. It's going to be great. Man, it's complicated. Yeah. Nobody knew. Nobody knew how complicated it was. First of all, I love that because even in every small moment, it's like nobody knew means I didn't know.

But also... The one thing that every Democrat and Republican in Congress could agree on together is that healthcare is super fucking complicated. You get bipartisan agreement on that. But once again... Only someone who only fucking reads

the chyrons on cable news would think that healthcare is simple, and that is our president. But you see, these town hall protests are having an effect. Like Kasich, who's more of a moderate Republican, and then you've got,

or at least traditional conservative Republican, and then you have Representative Mo Brooks, who's like a big Trump ally from Alabama, saying that the town hall protests are actually, they're making it possible to stop Obamacare repeal from happening. Like, they think we might not be able to do it because of these protests. And these protests are being so smart. My sister went to one in Charlottesville, Virginia,

and the congressman, I think his name's Tom Garrett, refused to show up, but a thousand constituents did, And the local press did. And they're feeling the heat. And you got Marco Rubio, who out in 2009 was like, Marco Rubio in 2009 said the Tea Party is real. Hey, elites, Tea Party protesters are real and they're upset and they don't want Obamacare. Now he's saying, oh, I'm not going to these town halls because people just want to yell at me because I'm Marco and I'm sad. Marco Rubio basically admitting that he doesn't want to have a town hall because he knows it would look bad on camera when people yell at him. I mean, it's actually a completely true statement.

Points for honesty. Points for honesty for Marco Rubio. It's like, of course Marco Rubio is afraid what will happen if he looks bad on camera. There is no greater threat to Marco Rubio than that. It's amazing to me. First of all, I don't know why Rubio would be afraid of a town hall. He can shrink to any size and escape. He gave this interview, right, where he's like, why would I hold a town hall? You know, people are just going to yell at me. By the way, also, he's not a congressman, right? So it's not like he's worried about people coming in from outside of his district. It's not like people are traveling there from Georgia. He's doing it in Miami. It's a long commute to be a fake person in Florida. They're all his constituents. Anyway, Rubio sucks.

What a coward. What a coward. So we're already seeing this on the ground. Between the town hall protests, there was one other really great sign from the weekend that didn't get as much covered. Democrats won the special election in Delaware that allowed them to hold control of the state senate and all three branches of government in Delaware. It was State Senator Stephanie Hansen won in the 10th district. Here's what was interesting about it. Special election.

This district voted 51-49 Democrat in 2014. She won 58-41 with 40% turnout for a special election is like breaking records. This is a huge deal. Delaware is locked up. We is a huge deal. Delaware is locked up. But the swing was pretty big. That's a big swing. I want you to know this weekend I came over to John's house after

four hours of demoralizing house hunting and he was jumping up and down announcing this news to me. He was so pumped about Delaware. It's just something to watch. It's great. It's actual votes. We have actual votes. Votes are better than polls and analysis. So much better. Yeah, we got the Georgia special coming up.

Oh, yeah. We're going to get into that, guys. We're going to get into that. Anyway, all right, so let's get back to the joint session. So let's talk about how a normal president with a 44% approval rating and really only strong support among his base would approach this joint session. What would you say? What would you try to emphasize? I feel

like it would start with a long apology followed by an explanation as to how I'd been hoodwinked into hiring these evil, silly people taking out their vengeance on high school via national policymaking. But other than that, I'm not really sure. Yeah, I mean, I think you would, you would try to incorporate some contrition into your

message and with a pivot of like a brighter future. But I do think the Bannon-Steve Miller tone is one of just like absolute triumph. We were doing everything we said we were going to do. It's going to be great. Forget even contrition. I mean, that would be great. But all you have to do is some, some language about humility, language about reaching out to the other side. I want to work with Democrats. I want to work with Democrats. I want to reach out to the voters who didn't vote for me. I'm going to try to work with everyone on all these agenda items. They know they can't do this.

They're not even going to try. All their previews right now are saying, you know, Kellyanne Conway last week called him President Action, President Impact. They basically, they're trying to get over the fact that he's not going to. They'll let her back on TV? They'll let her back on. Yeah, well, it was like a Sean Hannity's town hall at CPAC. Oh, right. Well, that's not really TV.

It was training wheels. It's state TV. Training wheels. No, so what they want to do is just convey this sense of action, momentum. He's getting things done because, as we saw in the poll, people still think he's someone who gets things done. The only problem with this, he really hasn't gotten anything done. Nothing. I mean, obviously, the ban has been hugely impactful, but that's held up in the courts right now.

A lot of the other EOs have largely been symbolic. He has a lot of latitude on deportation, so he's been able to do stuff on that. But he hasn't passed any bills. I think the only bill they passed was a waiver to get Mattis as defense secretary. It's the only bill he's signed. It's all EOs. By this time, when Obama gave his first speech, he had passed like a trillion dollar stimulus act.

Right. Children's health insurance program, Wall Street reform was underway. Like all this stuff was happening by the time he did this. Right. Donald Trump has health care. There's not even a bill yet. There's no, remember the infrastructure bill? There's no infrastructure bill yet.

There's no tax reform. Those are his three things. And we don't even have a bill on any of them. That's why he's going to hang his hat on this litany of jobs he saved. He's going to talk about the pipeline, building the pipe. He's going to talk about the plants that are coming home and all that. And it's entirely fictional, but it is pretty effective. And reportedly he's going to announce a 10% increase in military spending, which is $54 billion with a B.

Oh, right. We should say this. $54 billion with a B dollars. Oh, right. We should say this. Usually these speeches, especially in the first year, the joint session speeches, are an opportunity to discuss in human accessible terms the budget that you put to Congress, that you lay out for Congress. So President Trump has a budget. They have not released the details yet. But the outlines, as Tommy said, is huge increase in defense spending, drastic, drastic cuts to domestic programs outside of Social Security and Medicare. He says he's not touching those.

But that means education, health care for poor people, transportation. The EPA. EPA. It's just not possible. It's not really possible. It's not possible. The government is a giant insurance company. If you're not going to cut the Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and you're going to increase defense, there's this tiny pool of money.

And you can't obviously cut the interest for paying on the debt. A little bull Simpson accent. So what that means is all that's left, all that's left is drastically reducing discretionary programs, which is absurd. Yeah, I don't know. It's also going to be debt on arrival. There's a lot of stuff you can do budgetarily

with just 50 votes, moving money around. But to get rid of the caps on defense spending, which were put in place by the sequester in the Obama administration, you need 60 votes in the Senate. He's not getting that for that kind of increase in defense spending. Do you think that Stephen Miller's speech writing, where he refers somehow to the red blood of patriots, is going to effectively convince the 10 Democrats he needs? Do we think the word blood will show up in the speech? The blood is red! The blood! What's the over-under of the duration of the attack on the media?

One minute? Two minutes? Oh, interesting. Three minutes? That's interesting. Also, is he going to talk about Ivanka and her company? Because she's going to be there. She'll be like, you know, my daughter's been treated terribly. It's a great ad opportunity. It's a great opportunity. He does not miss a chance. Always be selling. He's got a quick immediate philosophy. Sponsored content is being revolutionized by Donald Trump. He's going to do the ads

like we do. He's going to do SeatGeek. If you couldn't get a spot at tonight's State of the Union, you should try By Donald Trump. He's going to do the ads like we do. He's going to do SeatGeek. He's going to do SeatGeek. If you couldn't get a spot at tonight's State of the Union, you should try SeatGeek next time. No, but the rumor is that he'll be more hopeful and optimistic than the inaugural. Low bar. Very low bar. And that, yeah, and that he's going to convey action. And talk about infrastructure, an infrastructure package and tax reform, which are, you know, two things they've been talking about all along.

We've yet to see much detail here. Also, by the way, two things that run in direct opposition to one another, given that by tax reform, they mean cut taxes on the wealthy and by infrastructure, they mean spending. A trillion dollars in spending. And he's also, by the way, on several occasions in several different ways promised to balance the budget. I believe he's promised to do it instantly. It's going to be interesting because I don't think he's ever had to get this much in the detail on policy stuff. I mean, he still may not, but it's hard to fill like a 40 minute speech with just platitudes. Also occurs to me that we should brace ourselves for the gut wrenching feeling of that guy saying, ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States and in walks this devious moron. Do you think all the doofus Congress people who show up at 8 o'clock in the morning

so they can get a seat in the aisle and shake the president's hand will still be doing that this year? Yes. That was always sort of a sad... Super sad. They got their fucking selfie sticks. The worst.

Man. Members of the House. This is a bipartisan critique, by the way. Yeah, no, that guy. That's why I brought it up. Just the silliest people racing to sit on the floor like it's a i don't know like it's floor seats at the garden for something good the garden look at him the garden that's where it's the garden madison square they built it about penn station which they turned into a rat's den

anyway we've we've gone far enough off topic that we can take a break and when we come back we will have snapchats peter hamby don't go anywhere this is pod save america and there's more on the way enough off topic that we can take a break. And when we come back, we will have Snapchat's Peter Hamby. Don't go anywhere. This is Pod Save America and there's more on the way. With us on Pod Save America today, we have in studio, Peter Hamby. Hey guys. How's it going?

Good. Thanks for having me in Los Angeles. It is a pleasure to have you here, friend of the pod. So you started at CNN as a campaign embed, right? You were on the road covering campaigns. I was. Actually, my first job at CNN was in August 2005. I worked on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, which is your favorite show, right? Your favorite show. Did you do the hologram? No. I do remember the hologram.

Happening now. I was in the press file at McCain's party on election night in 2008 when Yellen appeared by a hologram in a cavernous room of hundreds of journalists just died laughing.

I would imagine so. It was never explained why the hologram was a better way to get the news. It was cool. I'm all for exploring the value of holograms. It seems like Jessica's available to just be on set.

You've got to use the hologram for something. That's the strength of CNN. It's just resources everywhere around the world. We have one bajillion satellite trucks and camera people. We can just do whatever. For the throaty yelling. But yeah, no, I started CNN in 2005, but then got into campaign reporting. I was an embed, a traveling producer on the OA campaign.

And I covered the state of South Carolina, Romney, Huckabee, Hillary, McCain, and Palin. So I covered like everyone who lost it's a great beat never covered Obama although Tommy used to call me all the time on the press bus pitching terrible oppo

terrible oppo we had a list of 10 reporters we had to call every day and Hanby was one of my guys so he would just hand the phone around to all the other people

on the bus I had to call he's like I'm not biting anyone else Tommy's garbage there was a stick we'd be on the bus and like Tommy or Hari would call we'd be on the bus. And Tommy or Hari would call all the reporters on the bus.

And my Blackberry would ring. Remember Blackberries? My Blackberry would ring. Then I'd be like, nah. And then the guy in front of me, his Blackberry would ring. And Tommy would pitch in the same garbage. Nah. Tommy's oppo is, I have this story from the future that Hillary Clinton is going to lose to Donald Trump.

It seems impossible. How about Stephanopoulos actually floating to Tom Perez? Like, are you ruling out a Hillary 2020 bid? That's so ridiculous. Why are we talking about that? I hate that question. It's so awful. And everyone should just, I mean, it's like such a silly, she's not going to do it. You know what?

Well, no, no, but they said it. I'm ruling it out. It's ruled out. I'm ruling it out. It's out. It's it out. They said it. I'm ruling it out. It's ruled out. I'm ruling it out. It's out. It's ruled out. But then Hillary, who John Lovett used to work for, came on. Mentor and protege. Yeah.

Came on. Or they played this video clip that I missed this, but I guess she did a video for the DNC meeting in Atlanta where she said, the future is resistance meets persistence. Stop. Stop it. Please go away. Stop. Stop it. Please go away. Just stop writing things. She should just talk.

Correct. She should just talk, right? Who are you being careful for? Don't have lines like that. Who are you going to upset? Literally no one. Just say whatever you want. Doesn't matter.

There's no consequences. What's going to happen? Just say whatever you want. Stop it. It's enough. Oh my God. It's like how much of this do we have to take? Just say whatever you want! Stop it! It's enough! Oh my god! It's like how much of this do we have to take? Just say whatever you want! You're free now! You're free, Hillary! Say whatever comes to your mind! It doesn't matter! Nothing's gonna happen! Just go! It's your chance! This is the only way!

The only way you can come back from this is just to let go. The most endearing thing about Hillary in the last two years was after she lost and all these sort of like social media pictures of her at like delis in Westchester surfaced where people are just taking selfies with her and she looks like a normal human being. She's been in the woods for months now. She's going to plays on Broadway, having fun. Good for her. Good for her. Good for her.

So Peter, you left CNN, what year? 2015. 2015. And that's when you went to Snapchat. Yes, Peter, you left CNN what year? 2015. 2015, and that's when you went to Snapchat. Yes, I joined Snapchat then to run news. You run news at Snapchat. You host an outstanding show called Good Luck America, which everyone should check out if you haven't on Snapchat. It's coming back soon.

It's coming back. March. What date? March 7th. March 7th? And what channel is it on? Oh, it's on your phone. It's on your internet-enabled mobile phone.

Got it. So I would imagine that being head of news at Snapchat and doing this show has given you a lot more freedom to cover politics the way you want to cover it, right? Totally. What's different about, like, what are some of the main differences you've learned since leaving CNN with? Part of it is a little bit like what you guys are trying to accomplish with this, which is to not be wedded to, not that you guys are journalists, even though Lovett thinks he's a journalist. I'm a journalist and you know what I've learned? Journalism is easy. We can dispute that. To sort of float above the news cycle, not be attached or wedded to the day-to-day Twitter back and forth. Like at CNN for so long, I was on a beat and every day you had to, you were, you know, incentivized to break news and, you know, prove you were the smartest

in the industry. Here, you know, because we're reaching an audience of, you know, 18 to 30 year olds who are just not watching cable news, right? And God bless them for that. Our goal is to kind of have a, to use one of your words, like a relatable conversation about politics, to explain the process, to get even deeper than so-and-so's going to Iowa today and even, you know, go, why Iowa? Like, why is Iowa first? Like, I think a lot of people don't even know the basics about this stuff. And the goal is to do it, you know, with a sense of humor and be smart about it. We book interviews, we interviewed President Obama, we interviewed Bernie, Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, all these major players who want to reach an audience of people who are not engaged in the day-to-day Twitter jousting.

We're trying to get Bernie. So it also seems like you guys do a cool job of incorporating footage from real people at events. How do you find that stuff? How do you incorporate that to your man-on-the-scene footage? I think there are a lot of tropes in television news that are just sort of tiresome, right?

The, you know, part of it is just listening. You know, instead of going out to fulfill a narrative, just going out and, like, listening to people and see what they have to say. You know, when we interviewed President Obama, one of the best things he said in that interview was every good thing that's happened in this country is because young people drove it.

Millennials are the largest demographic generation in this country. And I do think that in the sort of mainstream media conversation, young people are kind of left out of it. So it's amazing how smart and capable and interesting young people are when we go talk to them and listen it's like it's kind of simple um and then part of it part of it one other thing to tommy's point is you know we don't rely on any of the same old tropes the sort of stand up uh you know to track to whatever like we're just inventing things on the fly we're shooting with like a vertical uh camera so we can get vertical video for the phone. We're just, it's liberating to be creative. And I don't think that in TV news, you're given that freedom. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more great show

coming your way. Why do you think traditional media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, Fox have such a hard time reaching young people? That's a good question. Part of it is just habit. But is it content? Is it form? Sometimes I just think, we say this a lot, that when you watch CNN or MSsnbc it's a little bit of a dead language that they speak right that they're just it seems it sounds very officious it sounds like you know it's just hard they don't talk like normal human beings that's the point and authenticity is a fetish in politics but it it should be in media as well um you know uh especially when you're talking to a 19 year old you know I love wolf like wolf is super nice wolf

gave me his wizard tickets when I worked at CNN like the best dude but not the most sort of credible person for you know a teenager or 20 something like they want to hear someone who looks and talks and thinks like them I think the political inclinations of people under the age of 30 are very, almost radically different from people over the age of 30 these days. And then part of it is just like, people don't have time. Like I talk about this all the time with my friends. Like, this was the first year I didn't watch a whole baseball game. Like, in my whole life. Because people increasingly just like spending their time on their phones. They're busy. And people are getting news about sports and politics and whatever on the fly, on their way to their next thing, when they're online at Starbucks.

And they're not taking the time to sit down and watch an hour of a cable news panel where people are having mindless debate and corroding facts because you're injecting someone in there who's just making stuff up. I mean, the notable exception is people sitting listening to 45-minute podcasts. Well, but the difference, though, is that you can do that on your own time whenever you choose. Right, right, right. You can do this at the gym. You can do it in the shower. You can do it on your commute. There's a lot of places where you can listen to Pod Save America, and they're all great.

Yeah. I do it at the gym when I'm deadlifting and doing squats and working on my lats. That's right. Yeah. I thought you were more of a core guy. So, Peter, can we ask you about some of these? I heard you had a chance to talk to Sean Spicer recently. I'm wondering how he— Sean Spicer, friend of the pod.

How is our friend of the pod, Sean Spicer, doing? There's a lot of reports out there. Sean, open invitation. You know that you're welcome here. There's a lot of squirrely reports out there. There's reports that Sean Spicer is bringing his staff into meetings, going through their phones, accusing them of leaks, and then that meeting immediately leaked. There's reports about him locking media outlets of press briefings.

There's locks. There's, you know, they're putting out the deputy press secretary instead of Sean on the Sunday shows. Like, is he okay? Look, Sean is such a, it's so funny to see him become a famous person. Like, I forget the poll and I forget the number, but I think it was some poll had sean spicer's name id among americans at like 40 percent like how many like that's crazy john spicer is a household name you are so famous come on the pod he loves being famous he loves it but that's the thing so sean is such a confounding character especially right now because he has such long relationships with people in Washington, especially on the political side.

People who covered him at the RNC or during the campaign and well before that. And he craves the party circuit in Washington. He loves seeing his name in print. He just loves it. He loves it. He loves it. name in print. He just loves it. He loves it. He loves it. Totally. DC scene guy. The people who defend Sean Spicer when he's criticized in print are

like Doug High. I love you, Doug. But like Ron Bonjean. The same names that have been around Washington. People who've been sending playbooks spotted for years. Correct. That's the demo. He loves being in Playbook. If you were at Cafe Milano

with Tammy Haddad, you're a simp after Sean Spicer. We should have said hi to Sean when we were at PJ Clark's with him. Anyway. You should have. He would have loved it. He'll probably come on the pod

at some point. We'll get him. As long as he doesn't listen. So we were filming Good Luck America at CPAC. My eighth straight CPAC, by the way. I've been to eight CPACs in a row. That's the wood anniversary.

Was this the craziest one so far? It was weird. It was the weirdest one so far. No governors, senators, members of Congress, maybe like one or two. And Trump's taken over the Republican Party. But also like CPAC has taken over the White House. Like they run the world. Yeah.

Right. Like Sebastian Gorka, who one, two, three years ago at CPAC would wander around begging for interviews, was now saying, no interviews. It's got to be pre-cleared by the White House. Like, stay away from me. Like. Was that some accent work? Yeah. I thought it was great.

Did you like it? It was great. Thanks. I'm good at impressions. Good. I'll do a Bernie one for you later. Ooh. Hello.

That sounds like my Russian accent. Hello. Hello. So we interviewed Spicer, and he'll bash you and lash the media and criticize you. He talked about his thing about how the First Amendment is a two-way street, and it's the president's first- That's not true. That's not a fact. That's not actually what it is.

It's actually a one-way street. It is literally one way. Well, he said it's the President's right to call the media fake news. That's his First Amendment right. But he'll do this with a scowl and he'll point your finger at you and then when you're done, he's like, hey, thanks, man.

I'll see you later. Let's hang out. And I suspect that's a lot of the dynamic at play in the white house briefing room um and i've never been a white house reporter and i'm really actually happy about that because it does seem like a hot house of horrors in there yeah um but look the the media outlets who who rage about the end of democracy because Spicer is saying that Politico and Buzzfeed can't come in the gaggle today. Like, I don't think those are the battles to pick. I mean, I think it's troublesome, but at the same time, like this is the, this is the, the battlefield they're choosing to play on. Um, you know, John Harris and Ben Smith both put out statements

after that, that were just like, we're just not going to get distracted by this. And that's the right way to say it. Like, it's not like we have never seen anything like this in the history of our democracy. Well, you know, we actually have. Like, Nixon actually threatened local news stations and national TV networks saying, hey, you know, be ashamed of something happening to your FCC license. You know, think that's not happening. And it's a different world now. But I don't think that most people care about these day-to-day journalism wars. I think they matter deeply, and I care about journalism.

I love being a journalist. But trust in the media has dropped in its biggest drop since the Iraq War But I do agree. I feel like there's a little bit of when they're kicked out of, say, the gaggle. And basically, you know, Sean Spicer didn't let a few outlets that have been critical of the White House into this daily gaggle where he talks to reporters, which is what, you know, not something that happened in a long time. Anyway, it feels almost as if they're trying to set a marker down because there's so much fear as to how bad it could get, that it could get to FCC licenses, that it could get much more hostile to the press. They're kind of over-twerking because they're afraid of what this could be a month or two months or six months from now. I think that's right. And like we still don't know. And I think... Has anything alarmed you that Trump has said or done towards the press? Yes. I think the scrambling of what is true, like generally every single day, even at CPAC.

This is a small thing he does. I mean, he did it and Peter Alexander did such a good job calling him on at that time when he was just like about the electoral college thing. The electoral college victory is not relevant to people getting higher wages or health care. And in that sense, it's like, can we just stop talking about this? But calling him out on just making stuff up on the fly, like, that was great. And he did it at CPAC. He said, we were in the speech, and he said, there's a line outside of CPAC that goes six blocks for people waiting to get in.

Not only was there no line, there are not six blocks in National Harbor. Like, we literally went outside and walked around. There's four blocks. And so like the casual lying is very scary to me and that there is an entire ecosystem that welcomes it. Like there were people at CPAC that we talked to who might not be inclined to love Trump. Like maybe they were for Cruz or maybe they were for Marco Rubio, like who's John Lovett's favorite Republican. But like the media attacks, they love. It makes him stronger. He's like an evil superhero villain who gets stronger when you attack him.

They just love, love, love when he attacks the media. So there's always people rushing to defend him on that. And the media likes talking about the media. Well, that's the other thing. But that's my question. It's very frustrating to see reporters take the bait and start tweeting alternate Jefferson quotes at Trump because he misquoted. That stuff is silly.

But what does kind of make me nervous is the steady erosion of access, including locking CNN or the L.A. Times and New York Times out of the gaggle and allowing in Breitbart and the Washington Times and others. And I'm wondering, the White House Correspondents Association is supposed to be the entity that stands up and fights back for this sort of access. But the head of it was in the gaggle. Jeff Mason. Jeff Mason from Reuters. What could they be doing better? Because clearly they're losing this fight every single day. Look, I think that part of it is there's not a lot you can do. And to be honest, like Obama did this as well.

I mean, remember when Obama did famously like Between Two Ferns? And like he interviewed, he did an interview with us on Snapchat. The sort of, you know, protected class of Washington media was like in an uproar because he was end running. He's talking to YouTube stars. Right. I mean, he was literally reaching, I think, like 50 million people when he did that, like across all of their social platforms. There's not a lot they can do. I mean, like, Tommy, your joke is like, what, is Jeff going to write a sternly worded letter to Mr. Trump?

The statements that the Correspondents Association puts out are so political. It's like straight from a press secretary's office. Somehow the press corps needs to figure out how they need a communications director. They need citizens to understand why this is hurting them. And that link is just not being made. I also think that it is true that this does come back to reporters showing solidarity inside the briefing. And I did like that there was some entity that was in that gaggle put out a statement saying if we had known that these other outlets were kept out, we wouldn't have gone. You know, Glenn Thrush shouted a really important question at Spicer.

So Spicer made an offhand comment about recreational marijuana versus medical marijuana. And he started shouting a question. And Sean's like, this is not a schoolroom. You're being a bad boy, whatever nonsense. And he shouted to the reporter after, like, ask my follow up, ask my follow up. And no one did. But they should. They need to start following up.

And also, by the way, in part because stop. No one gives a shit about your one question. you getting your question is is an old way of thinking about this well that's the thing a lot of a lot of i i understand the dna and the synapses of of political reporters like they want to impress their boss at their network right and it's not necessarily always about like getting the truth and sort of playing like – Wait a second. What? Yeah. I have to tell you, I'm floored.

I am floored. Continue. collective, you know, journalist upward right now is this idea that we do need to educate the population, you know, both on media literacy, but like how important information is like, I know this is a preoccupation of President Obama, but like the media isn't just like a fraction or of the political conversation. It's not just a megaphone for political leaders or a filter for political leaders. It's like almost the whole ballgame at this point. Like it is everything. How information travels in 2017 is an enormous part of a functioning, stable democracy. And people need to understand that, you know, InfoWars is not on the same plane as, you know, USA Today.

You mentioned the huge drop in media trust between 2015 and 2016. Do you think, how much of that do you think is ideological? Meaning, you know, conservatives not trusting liberal outlets, liberal outlets not trusting conservative outlets, or do you think it's something different? Where do you think the fall in trust comes from? I think a part of it is is relevance and usefulness i think that if you do turn on cable what like a lot of times just like

what is this this is not making me smarter in fact it might be making me dumber most of the time it's not giving me like the five things i need to know today i think that um it's not entertaining it's certainly not entertaining. You hate yourself. And then you end up like hate tweeting. It's just a downward spiral. I think part of it is also just the way we get information. Like I think one of my favorite media critics right now

is John Herman, who's writing the New York Times. He wrote a really great piece, so good, about how the media, to use his words, the mainstream media in Washington, the sort of a cell of New York DC media, is quote, unquote, de-centered, and they don't know how to grapple with that. In other words, the mainstream press can't even begin to fathom the margins of the conversation happening about politics today. In other words, it's not just happening on social media it's happening in like weird subreddits and it's happening in text messages and group me's this is like all over the place like i don't we can't even begin to understand how

uh fractional the white house we're on twitter and when you're on twitter you think like that's the whole universe no and it's nothing and a guy this like really smart handsome guy i know wrote a whole paper about uh twitter uh in 2013 about how i believe it was called did twitter kill the boys on the bus that's it peter hammy and we interviewed tommy vitor for that did you really it was a great it's a great paper i read that whole paper long long long thing it's long i if it's you can ask me any questions about what was on the first third of it. First third, okay. Well, one of the points in there was that which everyone knows now is only a fraction of the country

is using that and it's mostly journalists and political people and people's moms and dads aren't doing that every day and it's just a narrow conversation. I feel like one of the reasons it's so hard to watch cable news is that and and it's part of this larger problem of why it feels so unnecessary is it lost the authority, but it kept the voice of authority. Yeah, right. That's it.

It still sounds, you know, it's still somebody projecting like this is what happened today. These are the facts. But it's too silly. It's too sensational. It doesn't actually cover the vast majority of what's actually going on in the news. And it's this sort of husk competing to try to keep you engaged. Like, see, we're still important. You still need to get your news from us, right? Right? No? Okay. Well, that answers better than I did Favreau's question earlier, just like why it's not, doesn't work for young people. Fact check me on this,

loyal pod listeners, but I think the median age list viewer of CNN is like 61. The median age viewer of MSNBC is like 65. Fox is like 68 or something like that. Right. The median age of a Fox News viewer is a sarcophagus in a museum. It is King Tutankhamen.

Their median viewer. What's the equivalent for you? 18 to 34 year old. The kids are on the Snapchat, guys. 35 million people watched our Election Day live coverage on Snapchat. 35 million people.

That's a monster number. Good luck, America. Is that bigger than the Situation Room? Slightly. Is that bigger than Morning Joe? As Brian Stelzer will tell you, you cannot compare web views to TV views. It's a substantial audience.

And Good Luck America, the show that I have, reached 22 million people during the campaign last year. You were indoctrinating a lot of young people there. People don't know this. Maybe. But love its point. The whole voice of God shtick, which was viable 30 years ago, stopped being viable 10 years ago, and it still continues. We should say that there's been a bit of a resurgence in cable since Trump was elected president, right? Like CNN, I want to hear your thoughts on Jeff Zucker going from a Trump enabler to a Trump nemesis now.

But there's reporters like Jake Tapper who've been doing really tough interviews. So have they gotten better or is this just sort of temporary or what are your thoughts on that? I agree with you on Jake's show. I really like watching it. And I know you guys have had your battles with Jake over the years. Which is why we can praise him now.

We love Jake. We screamed with Jake. And we did an interview with Tapper last year during the campaign and he, you know, he said, you know, the truth isn't between, like, left and right. Like, it's not somewhere in the middle between two of these polls.

Like, it just, it is what it is and I'm going to try to get at that. Would you say that the truth is more important now than ever? Whoa. Would you say democracy dies in darkness? This is us quoting newspaper slogans. What do you think about newspaper slogans? They're so dumb.

I really like Democracy Dies in the Darkness. I think it's cool. I think it's super intense. I think the Times one, they were so close. They were so close to something good. Having been in communications and PR and branding meetings, you just know how it went. You know they hired a firm. You know they all sat there. There was like 25

slides. There was polls. For sure. For sure. Let's get back on track. We will. Democracy Dies in the Darkness feels like they stuck with their first idea. The Times one, that thing is by committee and it's like

the truth now more important than ever. What are you talking about? Right? Sorry. So your reach is indisputably greater than I think almost any of the news outlets we're talking about New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, CNN, one, but do you think that new entities like Snapchat are going to invest in like hardcore investigative reporting, like those outlets do? Because that to me seems to be the single most important thing to get done during the Trump era. So to that point, like the value, I think the value of old school legacy reporting, like I went to journalism school, like I know sounds weird now, but like it's more important than ever. We care about that.

now, but like, it's more important than ever. We care about that. CNN, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, all of these publishers are on Snapchat, on Discover, and they're curating and putting that content onto Snapchat every day. So you can read it on Snapchat. So yes, the short answer is we do care. Yeah. I think the tougher thing here is getting people to care, read, absorb all these great investigative pieces. Cause I think in, in this world we're in now,

it's like you see this investigative piece with like a byline of like five or six people and you can't imagine how much resources and time went into it. And because the news cycle is the way it is and there's Twitter and everything else, it like disappears after a day. It can, like it's funny. Some things take so much work.

That was another part of the Twitter paper was, you know, you could have a shoddy piece of reporting and a triple bylined like New York Times piece that went through like 75 editors in the right way, both hitting Twitter at equal weight. Right. And like a lot of times even the crappy one will take off and the other one will get ignored. And that's deeply frustrating. It's also, it actually plays into what has been a White House strategy throughout these early days of the administration, which is you, you know, you'll see a kind of a less well-sourced story that has some errors in it. And you'll have a

really excellent dead to rights story on the White House. And the White House will say, look at these two stories. These people aren't getting it right at all because they can they can hold these both things upside by side. That happened with Grinbaum's piece about how Trump sort of mastered the tabloid media. This was in The New York Times and like has is learning that Washington is a different beast. And then I think Spicer seized on this idea that he was not born in New England, but like grew up in New England.

He refused to say where he was born. And that's the challenge of covering this White House is they will literally like you could have a comma out of place and they'll be like fake news. This is terrible. They will like eviscerate the reporter. Again, that puts the onus on journalists to be sharper than ever. So what's your one piece of advice, maybe from the Twitter paper that no one has still followed yet that could improve political journalism?

I'm a campaign hack. So, I mean, it was a little frustrating, actually, that, you know, I interviewed like 70 people from the Obama campaign and the Romney campaign and people like y'all on both sides of the aisle. And they were like, I think next time we should just be a little more considered before we tweet. We should, you know, send people out into the country and not cover the bubble and whatever happens on twitter every day and that's the opposite it's literally the opposite of what

happened like go read the paper and be like oh i think we could have done better if we had just read this thing i don't want to toot my own horn it's just like yeah it was frustrating that during the primaries in the general you were just turning on cable and be like hey it's a whole unedited unchallenged uh trump uh speech once again you know and i think that like getting just getting people outside of the bubble and covering issues i know it sounds like like hokey but right a lot i think a lot of people people don't trust a lot of the reason people don't trust the media is just that it's not relevant. Right.

During the final month of the campaign, I was in Ohio all the time. And every single day, local news, front page, local news broadcast, everything that everyone down ballot was talking about was prescription painkiller abuse and what it was doing all over the state. Teenagers and young people were dying. It was a crisis. No one in the media was talking about national media no one in the trump or hillary like they weren't really talking about it and like that's the only thing people cared about and it wasn't being talked about in the political conversation so like if i if if if i'm in cuyahoga county and everyone is dying of opioids And then I turn on the news and they're talking about Don Jr. Skittles tweet.

That's so depressing. Yeah, it's so depressing. It's funny because it's not just what's being covered intelligent. There's this bifurcation inside of media outlets themselves because you look at like you look at like the major networks. They still do great investigative reporting. You look at CNN, still does great investigative reporting and great interviews. BuzzFeed, all of them, everyone is doing great investigative stuff, somewhere between the reporting in the field and the research and all that stuff and the big editorial decisions that are getting made about what's going on the front page of the site and the paper, what's leading the news tonight, those are executives and boss people back in New York or D.C. So there's this gap between the stuff that's being done and the editorial decisions about what's going to lead. And that

distance is a big challenge. I mean, that's what, yeah, it's funny. We've talked about this before, like choosing our focus of our ire and it's not the reporters. It's the, it's the decisions being made about what is actually getting airtime. 100%. The overlap of where financial considerations come into play. I mean, it's a very challenging thing. I mean, it's everything. I mean, the Moonves quote from the campaign was damning, right? Yeah, yeah. That it's been good for CBS. It's everything. I mean, like, you know, all the TV networks sold out their ad inventory, you know, well

before Election Day. People are tuning in. I mean, but that, again, that funds the six byline CNN piece. Well-sourced story. Right story right about russia right so there's a bit of a give and take there i just think the choices that are made during a campaign are are troubling is there a positive note we can end on well i do think this i do think this um you know for as kind of annoying as the kind of stelter Margaret Sullivan, like, this is what journalists need to do now thing is. I mean, and they could have written that, quite frankly, six years ago under Obama and said these things under Obama. Recommitting, this gets said over and over again, but like recommitting to the basic principles of journalism, not just taking handouts from the flax and kissing up to the administration.

Like that stuff is just more important than ever. And really just having a fealty to finding out the truth and doing and just standing up and pressing the president or Spicer or whomever about what's true and what's not. Also, to your point about millennials not turning on cable TV, I do think it's really important and helpful and useful at this age of where people are more engaged in activists than ever, that they have alternative ways of finding real political news on Snapchat, on social media. I mean, through their, you know, fake news

is obviously a problem, but like curated stuff like you're doing gives people great information in a way they want to find it. And so I think that's a hopeful note. Yeah. And on that note, Peter Hamby, thank you for joining us. Thank you guys. Sadly, this deletes in 24 hours. It's a shame.

Take care. If you enjoyed this episode of Pod Save America, there are other great new and archived episodes you should go check out. Subscribe via iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again to our sponsors. Please support them the way they support this podcast. And also, check out

Tommy Vitor's podcast, Pod Save the World. Subscribe to that one and don't miss a new episode of Pod Save the World every Wednesday. Thanks again to Peter Hamby for joining us. We will be back on Thursday with another Pod Save America.