Mastodawn

an interesting bean

Woodbury: “this is from a focus group of a voter who said to me, my hood didn't get any better under Obama. It didn't get any worse under Trump.
So what does Biden have to do with me? That's the cynicism that Republicans and Trump are trying to lean into. And that's what we have to combat with the progress that has actually improved their lives.”

Vietor: “And it's understandable cynicism, right? Because presidents have a lot of power, but they don't have unlimited power. Sometimes there's broader economic forces that impact your ability to improve the lives of the people you're working for.”

Wait, i thought biden had the best record on the economy ever?? What’s up with that?

an interesting bean

if you prefer to like alex garland, do *not* listen to his interview on pod save

an interesting bean

Jon Favreau: “So far in 2024, 90 percent, 90 percent of the Biden campaign's television ads have focused on abortion.
And the most aired ad is one in which Trump takes credit for killing Roe and Biden promises to pass a federal guarantee to protect the right to choose.”

When did Biden make that promise again? We’re putting the whole campaign on our belief that americans think it’s good when you fail to deliver on one of your more prominent campaign promises.

an interesting bean

JF: “How much political risks do you think this TikTok ban creates for Biden?”
Alyssa Mastramonaco, guest: “I don't think it's that much risk because it's weirdly the issue that's like United Democrats and Republicans. So I don't think it's great for Biden, but I do think that that gives him some cover.”

Hmm, dems and republicans sure do agree on Tiktok, what’s that other thing that’s going on that they agree on that americans in general absolutely despise? I’m sure it’s nothing important

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mastramonaco worked on the Kerry campaign lol. I’m so glad i can get political horse race insights like this from a Kerry staffer

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Jon Lovett: “Anonymous sources said that Attorney General Merrick Garland will formally recommend moving marijuana from the Schedule I drug to a Schedule III drug that puts it alongside testosterone and Tylenol.”

Jesse what the fuck are you talking about?

(he means tylenol + codeine obv)

an interesting bean

“I was walking into Jazz Fest last week and there was some young progressives, kind of multi-hair colored look at me and maybe think maybe I could be somebody that could win over on the issue of gay rights. I don't know. I guess I wasn't dressed gay enough that day.
And so we signed this petition to help support the gay agenda. And I was like, whoa, my old instincts came back out. And I was like, wait a minute, there's no gay agenda.”

Tim Miller, gay republican guest.

an interesting bean

this is the most unhinged episode of pod save i’ve heard in a while. Completely letting a Jeb staffer handle the framing while talking about campus protests and palestine while nodding along.

an interesting bean

Lovett let this guy use the term pro-Jewish counterprotestors, not pro-Zionist or pro-Israel. What the hell man, that’s actually a really gross thing to not push back against on your podcast.

an interesting bean

“But if there are rules and laws against that kind of protest, and if you've been warned about breaking those laws, then part of civil disobedience is accepting the penalty for that. I mean, that's what Dr. King said, right? He said that you should accept the penalty and you should do so civilly, not uncivilly, right?
That was sort of the foundation of his belief in the civil rights movement. And of course, the civil rights activists were not treated civilly, but certainly they acted civilly. Look, I don't think that means that cops should fucking fire rubber bullets at you or tase you or beat the shit out of you, but that's a whole separate problem.”

I’m not sure that really is a separate problem, Dan. (also i don’t think that’s really an accurate framing on King and the civil rights movement)

an interesting bean

“And I know they're trying to work on a deal right now, but he[Biden] has not used all the leverage that he has to try to end this war. So I think when that happens, and hopefully it does happen soon, that's when we'll start to see the protest actually go away.”

Dan Pfeiffer thinks Genocide Joe is gonna start really putting the screws to Benny from Cheltenham any day now. What an absolute fucking goober

an interesting bean

“And our friends at FiveThirtyEight now finally have the averages, the polling averages for states, just so everyone knows. They have North Carolina at 6.6, so Trump's up by 6.6.
Georgia, he's up by 6. Nevada, he's up by 5. And then Arizona's 3, Wisconsin's 3, Pennsylvania's 2.
And Michigan is actually the closest now. And yet Trump's only up by a point and a half there. So tight race, tight race.”

hmm noticing a trend here that would probably be pretty alarming for a certain sitting president, but i’m not the polls geneous

an interesting bean

the Noem soundbite is actually unbelievable

Interviewer: “At the end of the book, you say the very first thing you would do if you got to the White House that was different from Joe Biden, is you'd make sure Joe Biden's dog was nowhere on the grounds, commanders say hello to cricket. Are you doing this to try to look tough? Do you still think that you have a shot at being a VP?”
Kristi Noem: “Well, number one, Joe Biden's dog has attacked 24 secret service people. So how many people is enough people to be attacked and dangerously hurt before you make a decision on a dog and what to do with it? That's the question that the president should be held accountable to.”
I:“You're saying he should be shot?”
KN:“That's what the president should be accountable to, which is, what is the number?”

an interesting bean

Tommy Vietor: “They let Trump ignore its policies on COVID testing and masking, which nearly infected President Biden.
And if people watch that video now, it will just throw you off because Trump looks unwell.”
Jen Psaki: “He looks unwell and also Melania just strolls in with the kids. They're all unmasked. Melania tested positive five days later.”
TV:” So like they could have killed the current president in the United States before he was elected.”

someone get trump on that h5n1 raw milk before the next debate

an interesting bean

Bad episode of pod save today. Dan Pfeiffer and Tommy Vietor demonstrated not understanding the gun show loophole (thinking it applied to online gun sales, which do require an in-person at a FFL and background check) and mixing up Yoav Gallant and Benny Gantz

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“I think the ICC needs to call balls and strikes. And if they see someone they think has committed war crimes, they should prosecute that person. But I think what you're hearing from the administration is concerned that at a time when they're seeing fractures within the governing coalition in Israel and hope that would create political pressure on Netanyahu, that this ICC process might actually bring the coalition back together and put some wind in Netanyahu's back politically.”

This is a conclusion you could only come to by ignoring what the administration has actually said. They have, for weeks now, said that the ICC has no jurisdiction in clear deference to the Israeli regime

an interesting bean

“What is her [Martha Alito] 4chan username?”

I would make fun of them for not knowing how 4chan works but knowing how 4chan works is a clear moral failing so you get a pass there

an interesting bean

“So really, this may amount to essentially a messaging effort by the Biden administration to show voters that he is concerned about immigration, that he's willing to shift his own policy views to address those concerns that he's hearing from voters.”

oh, this is a thing he can do? ah, only when it’s a run to the right, i see

an interesting bean

pod save boys talking about the possibility that trump would seek a third term to protect himself from prosecution. Buddy most of the electorate is pretty sure one or both of the candidates for president won’t be alive 4 years from now

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“And I would account this Russ Vogt guy as among them, who not only have very scary and extreme views, but are willing to do things that are extra-constitutional to fully erode our democracy and push us into a situation where we're more like a country like Hungary, where our courts are packed with right-wing judges, districts are gerrymandered to entrench Republican control, the DOJ is going after the press, they're going after opposition leaders. And we're talking about fundamental changes to the character of America that will be very, very difficult to walk back.”

hey pod save guys, i got some real bad news about the current “character of america” as you’ve framed it in most of this country

an interesting bean

pod save is having a blast quizzing lovett on all the news he missed during the past month because he was on the survivor island. They should put pod save hosts on islands without access to the news more often, for a variety of reasons

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“And by the way, democracy or else, look at this book. Look at this beautiful hardcover book.

Here's the deal. I saw that on Amazon. You know who's ahead of us on the list?

I'm like the political humor list, Bill Maher. Come on.

Come on.

We don't want Bill Maher ahead of us. That's ridiculous.”

Your buddy Obama would have to personally waterboard me to get me to admit to this L

an interesting bean

“I had a friend tell me who's like very unhappy with Joe Biden and been at protests over Gaza to say like, you know what, you're protesting Joe Biden right now. Voting for Joe Biden gives you the opportunity to keep protesting.”

the protests aren’t because people like to go out and protest genocide, they are against that genocide. If Joe Biden were the first president since Nixon to condemn student protests, would that be fucked up or what? We got NYPD rounding up students, protestors against cop city are facing rico charges for organizing protests. i don’t think the state of protest in america is quite as strong under the Biden administration as they are making it out to be

an interesting bean

i’m so glad they scheduled a midnight pod sesh, this episode is so good. lovett sounds like he’s on the verge of tears

an interesting bean

the pod jons are all in on biden bowing out. he’s lost the pod save constituency, truly grim position for the Biden campaign

an interesting bean

how’s the pod going? well:

JF: “You're yelling at like four Twitter users.”

JL: “Well, no, I'm not because-“

TV: “He's having a nice conversation.”

an interesting bean

lovett gets ro khanna on, and opens by chiding his campaign for texting him incessantly from various numbers despite being reported as junk repeatedly, and khanna just laughs. I personally think this is a real problem for the democratic party. sending out texts that are misleading, or continuing after people have asked you to stop is not an acceptable way to run a campaign and they just don’t give a shit.

an interesting bean

“Dean Phillips, you son of a bitch! Fuck you for being right too early!”

I’m pretty sure the pod save boys are joking about saying this to him, but it’s worth remembering that Dean Phillips had horrible policy positions. The only thing he was right about was that biden didn’t have the juice

an interesting bean

pod save had Gretchen Witmer on. Jon kept teeing her up to say something she very didn’t want to. He basically asked what the voters who come out for her but don’t vote for Kamala are concerned about. Obviously it’s Gaza but she wasn’t touching that one, then he asked her about Gaza specifically and she danced around it.

an interesting bean

Pod Save’s guest host, Symone Sanders-Townsend went off this week. Lovett asked how to reach young white male voters. She said don’t go on joe rogan, he’s problematic, go on howard stern. Yeah your average 19-25 white male has sirius xm on in the car, sure.

an interesting bean

I looked this up when biden went on Stern. His top demo is 35-44 males who make $100k a year, I cannot imagine thinking his show reaches young white male voters effectively. Logan Paul invited Biden on his podcast back when trump was on, that’s something to actually consider. Rogan is probably good idk.

an interesting bean

“this podcast is supported by comedy central’s the daily show…”

i am somewhat fascinated by comedy central buying pod save ad reads

an interesting bean

thank you pod save for letting me know that this is a thing that happened

https://youtu.be/1uuyTggFWYc

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

an interesting bean

it’s a good thing ellen is off the air now, she can’t kill another woman’s presidential campaign https://youtu.be/WkNL_cfVyWU?si=OEWWGPAu8gZdHgdY

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

an interesting bean

“This was not a scheduled golf outing, this was what’s called an OTR”

it’s called going golfing. it’s not off-the-record.

an interesting bean

pod save is doing a “trek the vote” event with wilw. shut up wesley et al

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“Yeah, it's sort of, if Trump were on a unicycle saying, I'm gonna imprison my enemies, it's still dangerous, even though it's pretty funny that he's on a unicycle.”

Lovett, stay in your fuckin lane. It’d be pretty funny if trump went out at the first vote on survivor

an interesting bean

Harris underperformed in swing states by 1.5% and in non-swing states by 3%. Pod save boys say that means the campaign’s ad spend had value, but i’d point to a political apathy because harris didn’t make a compelling case for her admin has exactly the same impact. people in swing states will vote harm reduction or whatever horseshit, and people in non-swing states don’t have to sweat that

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i’m enjoying their despair. yes more weeping, gnash them teeth

an interesting bean

their takeaway is that, despite running a great campaign, with only 100 days to differentiate herself from biden it was simply impossible to make that case. except before the election, when they talked about how she might differentiate herself they said she should just say she’s different but not actually differ anywhere. which is exactly what she did. Imagine remembering what you said a month ago

an interesting bean

“there's going to be a lot of takes already, like, you know, is door knocking and organizing useless and all this kind of, like, I do not regret at all. And we'll still look back fondly on the two days we spent in Arizona and Nevada just this last weekend, even though we are dealing with this horrific result today.

Because talking to all of you that have come out to these events, Pod Save America, everyone else who's volunteered, and like just being with people in person, talking about politics, getting energized, and then knocking on those doors, right?”

the friends we made along the fuckin way, right guys???

an interesting bean

“on the UN piece, like the UN relies on the US for about a third of its budget. There's all these component parts to it that matter a lot to people like us.

We do half the funding for the World Food Program. They'll probably pull out of the Paris Climate Accords. UNRWA, which does all the humanitarian relief in Gaza and the surrounding areas for Palestinians, will probably get gutted again.”

excuse me but isn’t the US fully barred by statute from sending money to UNRWA? imagine how bad it could be under trump when we currently give $0. fuckin ghoulish

an interesting bean

how do libs consistently say that a ceo has no agency over the actions of the company. that’s literally their whole deal.

an interesting bean

“I’m gonna take the neoliberal, squishy, centrist position that murder is bad. also denying people lifesaving healthcare because they can’t afford it, bad.[…] hope all the murderers are caught and punished. also hope we pass more laws to make sure that everyone can get the healthcare they need without insurance company putting them through hell, which insurance companies frequently do.”

that’d be a hell of a platform, maybe someone should try to do that

an interesting bean

jon lovett admits that he doesn’t know what kamala stands for, but that’s not even what i’m mad about this episode. lovett is very wrong about time zones. you cannot leave it up to states fuck off you’re so wrong

an interesting bean

i honestly assumed just everyone hates matt yglesias so i was caught off guard when pod save was talking about his newsletter takes on this year’s jan 6th

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jon lovett reads kissinger’s last book about ai, i listen to steve albini’s last single about baseball, we are not the same

an interesting bean

tv: (regarding the seal super bowl commercial) “it made me a communist on the spot, that was it for capitalism”

welcome to the winning team tommy

an interesting bean

i’m 10 minutes in and they’re talking about how it’s not fair that trump went to the superbowl when conservatives got mad that the Obamas went to a broadway show

an interesting bean

i just listened to 5-4 talk about the breakdown of rule of law before our eyes and the jarring shift in tone to the pod save boys is really something. they’re now talking about people saying gulf of america is just a distraction. “distraction from what?” they seem to be missing the half dozen unconstitutional and impactful things that are happening before our eyes. libs are on a different planet

an interesting bean

the pod save boys don’t seem to realize that a *lot* of cars are manufactured in canada, as well as a bunch of tier 2 suppliers. canada is deeply integrated into the us auto industry, and trump says he can move production back to detroit with the stroke of a pen (he can’t, i’ve seen what that sort of move looks like. wanna build a couple brand new factories in Detroit? it’ll take 5 years before the first car is off the line)

an interesting bean

lovett had Leah Litman of Strict Scrutiny on, to talk about what would happen when the supreme court says some trump policies are unconstitutional. really a striking differentiation from 5-4 who clearly believe that the supreme court will act to further their own ideology rather than on the merits in cases like that

an interesting bean

i specifically believe that the two forces pulling against one another are conservative justices desire to push forward their ideology, and those same justices desire to make sure that power remains in their hands. if trump challenges the SC they can quickly be rendered irrelevant, or they can render themselves irrelevant immediately by bending to trump from day 1. we probably only have a few months where an SC/executive fight would have republicans in congress support the SC enough to matter.

an interesting bean

“I got some more data from echelon on this right before we recorded, […] Elon’s approval is uhh, 45/50. So he is under water”

you’re talking about the guy who hit a seig heil on national television. what the fuck is even going on in this country

an interesting bean

“Pod Save America is brought to you by Policy Genius. Look, it's important to plan for the future and to ensure what, Tommy? Your legacy.

My legacy.

We all have life goals, we all have financial goals, and Policy Genius can help make them a reality. Protect your family by securing their future with life insurance from Policy Genius.”

This is like one of those humiliation rituals the q folk always talk about, but from the right. Making the pod save boys do an ad read that sound dangerously close to the 14 words

an interesting bean

“his administration thus far has the patina of competency and success that his first did not”

are you watching the same administration? none of his agencies have ever shown any competency this time around, and he staffed them with bottom of the barrel guys. his first admin was full of republicans who thought they could work with him who resigned later because he’s a petulant old man

an interesting bean

susan rice, the former ambassador to the un for obama, called the president of el salvadore "trumps butt-boy" on pod save. sincerely what the fuck

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pod save is doing an episode about biden’s cancer diagnosis. fascinating angles in this one

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I don’t really think the white house covered up a cancer diagnosis, but if they did because grandpa didn’t wanna give up his car keys i’m gonna become the freakin joker

an interesting bean

tommy endorsed some sort of reform that allows greater transparency into presidential candidate health. finally, let’s pass the stable genius act

an interesting bean

i have said in the past that the worst pod save episodes are live recordings because they get a little too excited in front of a crowd but it gets worse. lovett and two gay republicans, sarah longwell and tim miller, did a show at worldpride and it is painful

みやくモード May 20, 2025

@timmy i can already imagine so many types of guys who are going to say biden dying in a 2nd term was already incorporated into their support of him in their 2024 election 64-dimensional chess strategy

Sid 🇵🇸Apr 6, 2025

@timmy liberals being conservative 🩵🩵🩵

@timmy liberals don't be casually homophobic challenge (impossible)

@timmy yeah they're getting more done this time not because they're more competent, but because they're much more willing to blatantly ignore the law and even completely disobey judicial rulings

if anything they're significantly less competent than they were the first time

an interesting bean

@jiub i just scanned over his first cabinet and the military advisors all have experience at upper levels of the military. His HHS secretary was a surgeon turned politician, his financial guys were all wall street goons. a lot of them are ghouls, but none of them were on the real world or fox news. RFK jr didn’t study medicine at all

@timmy yeah that's a good point, the first trump term had a lot of people in the cabinet who could have been in any republican administration. ghouls like you say but relatively competent ones

but now it's almost all people who trump saw on fox news and who are personally loyal to him without even giving a slight shit about the country. and because that kind of loyalty isn't that easy to find, the quality of these appointees is much worse

Mr. Q The Pizza Demon Dec 10, 2024

@timmy "Hope all the murderers are caught and punished"

So you agree, the people that run the U.S. healthcare system should be imprisoned and punished for murdering people?

an interesting bean

@radicalrobit no, you see, ceos don’t have any power whatsoever. they’re just smol beans who get paid millions of dollars to maximize shareholder value, but the way they do it? that’s not their fault

unlofl [Promoted Toot]Dec 10, 2024

@timmy @radicalrobit the liberal belief that absolutely no one is responsible for what happens in society and markets are a force of nature

Mr. Q The Pizza Demon Nov 12, 2024

@timmy I do believe every single government that initially pulled funding for UNRWA over israel's lies have all restarted funding. Except for U.S. of course.

IntrepidVector Nov 7, 2024

@timmy is there a program to send guys like this to some kind of farm upstate?

an interesting bean

@IntrepidVector they briefly sent lovett to an island with no internet access and contact with the outside world but then he got voted off the show in the first episode.