LIVE: Obama's speechwriter issues MUST-SEE Trump takedown

thanks everybody so uh the interesting thing was when they had first approached me to write a book I was I was nervous and hesitant to do it because I work in in digital media and the halflife for any of our content is like 12 hours basically But ultimately glad I decided to write a book and excited for you all to hear about uh my case for voting for Joe [Laughter] Biden they said it would be fine they said nothing would be obsolete and here we are yeah I don't know how we ended up like when we were thinking about writing a book uh our John love it always said that um says that uh writing is the old economy uh and he's like why would we write anything we can just talk into a microphone but you know what now we've got a New York Times best-selling author right here on S um well thank you we've also got a New York Times bestselling author here so yeah who knows give it to anyone um so I have followed uh Brian's incredibly impressive career for a long time now I've been a fan for a long time but then over the last couple years uh I I got to know him because uh he does a a YouTube show with uh my co-host and and co-founder Tommy Vitor called liberal tears um which as far as I can tell is is just sort of you and Tommy hazing each other yeah that basically the show you rank things and then you Haze each other we rank things it's yeah it's basically my excuse to to torture Tommy uh basically we have to rank anything we rank the top 10 worst politicians the top 10 worst Republicans worst convention moments and then uh and then whoever wins the ranking wins the draft has to uh Haze the other person punish the other person and Tommy's punishments are so tame and gentle and my first punishment for Tommy was that he had to get uh a Mike Pence 2020 stamp on his lower back I I like I walk I in my office and I walk into the studio and it's like one of my first experiences with just really hanging out with Brian I walk into the studio and there's Brian just just putting a stamp on the back of Tommy's back on the lower back just say Mike Pence I was like oh interest this is a cool collaboration we're doing together it's fun too for Tommy because he was the National Security uh Council spokes and then and then cut two 5 years later me putting a temporary tattoo on his lower back so okay so I want to start with um sort of how you uh got to where you are right now you were you were an actor originally who uh who started getting involved in politics I think around 2018 yeah um talk to us about those early days like what got you involved and sort of you know why did you make the leap so moved out here to be an actor my uh my first job was at equinox West Hollywood at the front desk and I specifically wanted to work nights so that I can write articles about politics freehand because there was no computers we just sat at the desk and uh and ostensibly would check people in although I worked at night and I wanted to write and so I didn't care who walked into the gym so if you were an equinox member uh in between you know 2016 and 2019 you definitely want to come in between 5:30 and 10:30 because you don't even need a membership um because I would just be standing there writing my articles freehand I would take them go home type them up and submit them to Huff poost and uh I just loved it I loved politics and uh also the thing about the entertainment industry and I'm sure people here have have some relationship to the industry um is that you have to wait for a lot of people to give you permission to do whatever it is you want to do T or hundreds of people have to say yes before you can advance anywhere and that sucked and so I wanted to uh to kind of be in charge of my own career and and luckily with content creation you you can do that and so I started um shooting my own videos basically and putting them onto Facebook and uh Facebook was was really the the main platform and then I put them onto YouTube at the same time and tens of people watch them and then hundreds of people and and then you know eventually I hit I hit a critical mass but uh but it's just a lot of keeping my head down and uh and learning how to you know make the videos not terrible uh to the point where I'm at today so have you have you always been into politics and you had always wanted to do something in politics and right or I don't think I always wanted to do something in politics I always wanted to do something in the industry actually that was my goal for a long time was to work in the entertainment industry but I've always been passionate about politics and I didn't think that I could actually do anything with it um but I remember when I started doing YouTube videos and acting my political videos and acting at the same time and and the speed with which acting felt so inconsequential like there's something about doing YouTube videos during the Trump era and and watching like democracy crumble and then going in for a cars.com commercial that just really fulfilling for exacerbated the extent to which it was like I don't think I can do this anymore and I remember after like going in for some like Doritos commercial or something I called my agent on the way out and I was like I I think I can't do this ever again when you first started your YouTube channel like did you have a theory of the case uh like how how did you decide what to post how often to post what you wanted to say and like what would differentiate you and and uh and the content you were posting so I didn't really think about my branding um and that's like a big thing everyone's like what's your brand I was like I don't know I don't know what I I don't know like I don't know what my brand is and but I think what I wanted to do was kind of rebut right-wing disinformation because a lot of what I was being being served especially on Facebook at the time there were no left of centered commentators it was just right-wing right-wing videos like like coming at me from Every Which Way and there was nothing on the left and I had a little bit of experience in front of the camera and so I was like I'll just I'll just do it I'll just start putting stuff out there and see how it does but it wasn't until um the video started catching on that I realized that there was really a dir in in in that kind of content and giving people just bite-sized responses to really basic right-wing talking points right-wing narratives and that's kind of been that's kind of been the approach all along and I think the other the other side of that so there's the combating right-wing disinformation and then just more generally making Politics as accessible as I could and that was uh I think that's just born out of the fact that I don't have a background in in DC and so for me to understand something would have to be in in layman's terms enough that that I would I would get it so that other people would get it too inherently so in uh in Shameless which is just a fantastic book um you you tell the origin story of the the current Maga iteration of the Republican party though it's an origin story that starts well before Trump uh can you talk a little bit about what that story is and where where did it start yeah so it started actually well I think it starts in a few different places I think the person in Congress most responsible would probably be n Gingrich and I think he was responsible for a lot of like the acrimony in politics as we see it today he had a list of words that he would use um to describe Democrats which are a lot of the words that we that we know today I don't have the list in front of me but it's it's in the book um he would also he was the one responsible for telling a lot of the Republican members to go home on the weekends because he didn't like the fact that by virtue of being in DC the the members could Foster relationships with members on the other side of the aisle they can't have that because then there would be a a like a degree of like symbiotic like cooperation can't possibly have that bipartisanship to break out can't have can't can't have like a rash of a spell of bipartisanship happen so um so so that's that's really where it came about I mean he's still very active on the right but I think in large part it was it was n Gingrich on the media side um you know Roger alses worked for Richard Nixon uh saw what happened to Nixon in 1974 uh where there was no media backup to basically serve as a a protective shield against a criminal Republican president and so he created the als's memo which would eventually become what Fox News is today and the natural conclusion of that is 20 or uh what is it uh 50 years after Nixon resigned because of Watergate uh we have another Republican criminal president who did something way worse than Watergate and Not only was he not excommunicated from the party but they rallied around him and he's the Republican nominee for president now so this is the realization of what Roger als's sought to do and and to their credit Republicans are very good about laying down their plans and seeing them out you know seeing them realized over the course of years or decades I thought it was so interesting in the book you talked about that that als's memo just him being so open about what the plan was there's not a lot of like hiding it at that point this was like in 1970 he did this memo what was the what could you give us a little taste of what the memo was like yeah I mean it was it was it was basically it was basically uh him I mean it was basically him saying that we need we need some we need to control the media we need to control the media yeah I mean it was him looking and seeing that that the media was too overtly liberal for his taste and and that there needs to be a republican answer to that and even today uh you look at how the media comports itself in the aftermath of that which is basically bending over backwards to to to prove to the right to prove to the fox newses of the world that it's not liberal and so that's how we end up with 69 cover stories about Hillary's emails yeah what did you learn uh over the course of writing the book and just throughout your time in politics about how and and why right-wing media works I think the most important thing is well there is an asymmetry at play with with right rightwing media and that is that right-wing media is overtly overtly aligned with the Republican party and what we would call Legacy Media mainstream media what what they would call the liberal media is is like overtly hostile to being associated with the Democratic party and that asymmetry would never be corrected because because the left you know the mainstream media always wanted to to always distance distance itself from the left and so they could always lean into that difference and and basically you know you would have the foxes and Newsmax and O and Steve Bannon show and Alex Jones's show um that could do over right-wing propaganda knowing full well that if the left didn't or the mainstream media didn't take its cues from the right that they would be branded the liberal media and so there was always that asymmetry at play and and the right was very good about embracing Independent Media sources as well and Trump was really good about this too about laying hands on any any outlet that would basically give him confer upon Him positive coverage and it validated a lot of outlets and the left never really did that because we always viewed CNN ABC NBC CBS as as enough for us even though again these people will bend over backwards trying to prove that they're not liberal and so again it just exacerbated that asymmetry and now finally you know all the way up to most recently at the DNC we've seen the left realiz ize very quickly how important it is to embrace Independent Media Progressive media media that actually um isn't afraid to like well doesn't run away from Progressive values or Democratic Values but you know we created this this huge um Gap that we have to overcome because there are a lot of really big validated outlets on the right and and not that many on the left something I've wrestled with for a while is how much of the power of right-wing media is um a supply issue or a demand issue meaning how much of it is if you watch a lot of right-wing media like it can make you become more conservative and more right-wing because of what you're watching and because more propaganda and how much is that they are finding an audience of people who are already sort of conservative or sort of willing to or looking for what they're offering well there's different there's different jump in points right like so you have you have basically Gateway figures on the right who's like a mild figure on the right that would be like the Gateway gatean right yeah exactly a lot of a lot for these like for these like young guys who like nek boys for these like young men in America right uh that's who they'll they'll get into like right-wing comedy and and the way that the algorithms work is like the next thing that you'll be uh served is is a suggestion for something a little bit deeper down the the rabbit hole cut two like 6 months later you're talking about the frogs being gay on Alex Jones's show yeah and goes goes pretty happens pretty fast happens pretty fast it's it's a steep descent down ask Elon Musk yeah I mean you look at someone like Elon Musk and he dude red pilled himself like he did yeah um no no I I always think about that too is that like it the P what's changed right in from the age of we know when people were just watching Fox and Fox News is now the algorithms actually can push you or at least like offer you different Pathways and that becomes you know sort of harder to avoid because you're like oh I like that I'm going to read that I'm going to read that yeah I mean uh you know it's it's powerful I mean that the whoever I mean there's a reason that Elon Musk bought Twitter because he recognizes how how important like how important media is in terms of grafting or molding everybody's political um persuasion ideology in this country yeah you talked about uh number of really smart people for the book uh my co-host Dan feifer and uh one thing Dan said in your book that he talks about all the time is you know Democrats over the years people think Democrats are like bad at messaging there's actually a lot of work done in the Democratic party to figure out what the message is but there's not as much work or traditionally there hasn't been as much work to figure out how the message is delivered and how it gets to people because we are no longer in the age of like politicians giving a speech or putting out a press release and then you know also Dan was saying that Democrats think okay here's the message and now if I deliver the message to CNN or the New York Times or the Washington Post it's just going to get to people and the right realized long ago that that's not a good way to get their message to people and I think Democrats have been you know frustrated at times that like the message isn't delivered better but also it's like you know their job is not to elect Democrats the media right that's not they're not supposed to be on our team and so it has been this and and and you've come to this realization as well where it's it's if if we want to deliver our message in a very fractured media environment like the one we live in right now we have to find these independent and and fund and and create these independent sources of media to get them to get our message out yeah I mean Dan's Dan's uh point is that Democrats spend so so much time crafting the perfect message getting the perfect Messengers and and you know building these ads everything has to be perfect and then we hand it to Media entities that that aren't aligned with our party and in fact sometimes are hostile to our party or are bending over backwards to prove to the right that they're not on the left and so of course the message is going to get perverted and so the point is that Democrats more broadly do have to embrace Independent Media Progressive media because that's the only way the message is going to get two people in a way both where people are watching because more and more it's not even in traditional media Outlets it's not on Legacy Media but beyond that in a way that's going to be delivered how it's supposed to be delivered I mean like I I would I would consider myself an activist before anything else and so I have a vested interest in making sure that the agenda I want to see pass gets passed and so if I see a message that's good I I want to deliver that to people in the way that it's supposed to be delivered instead of distorting it in a way that like will bolster my like like uh journalistic bonafides and look how I can like you know like be be hostile to Democrats to show everybody how like how judicious I can be yeah well I mean I always think of this too because it's like you know what everyone knows that we're uh like four former staffers of Barack Obama so I'm not pretending anything yeah but I think that I don't I don't think that means that you can't deliver people information that is true and honest and factual and useful you're part of this new you know Progressive Independent Media infrastructure out there what is what is your like main goal when you're creating content every day and who are you trying to reach so my goal is and there's a reason that I'm on YouTube mo more than any other platform my my goal is just persuasion and my goal is to just I mean this is actually a point that Dan feifer has made as well in in his book but the goal here is to both arm people who are watching my videos with useful tools that they can bring out to their circles and and I think the point is that the end audience the the people who are watching my videos aren't who I would perceive as being the end the end audience like my goal is so that everybody watching the videos can find one or two people Beyond those who are just watching the video and make those people your responsibility and use what you heard in my video and you know in my videos and when you listen or watch to PO Safe America or any other Progressive media Outlet use that information to then reach other people and influence or persuade them so really the if you're in a position where you're getting served my content it's probably because you're you're bought in like you're you're on the left or or you're you're sympathetic to the cause but the goal here can't just be that it can't just be talking to the same people over and over and and expecting that to somehow grow our Coalition the goal has to be persuasion and it has to be using the information that you hear to then be able to reach those one or two people in your lives and that's really the goal in terms of what I'm doing yeah cuz it's funny the me the most common question I always get from reporters about what we're doing is like aren't you just preaching to the choir and you know it's there's two different goals here one is exactly what you're saying right which is we know that our audience is uh most likely already liberal or going to vote for Democrats or is anti-trump at least and so we want to arm them with information and messages that they can go use in their volunte tearing but I I do think we spend a lot of time thinking it at Crooked like how do we actually broaden the audience of people who um you know consume this content and engage with this content um and you know you think about maybe one of the biggest divides in politics today isn't between people who uh consume a lot of progressive media and people who consume a lot of right-wing media it's between people who follow politics closely at all and consume political coverage at all and the majority of Americans who actually don't follow politics that closely have you thought about like how to reach those people well I think just by virtue of the sheer amount of content that I put out hopefully each video brings in a few people I mean even reaching millions of people per day the the people who email me and say that I wasn't interested in politics before you know before this year I never voted before um th those are the most impactful that that's really the point of what of of being on YouTube and being able to reach so many people it's that hopefully each video bring dra draws a few more people in or that in some way I serve as a Gateway for them to get to you know more Progressive content or or from more conservative content into more you know like whatever it is that that that is like in large part the goal and you would hope that that just by virtue of continuing to reach these people that that's the effect that it would have yeah uh early on in the book you uh you write about having to endure a truly overwhelming amount of garbage from Radical Republicans how how nasty has that gotten for you personally like do you get crazy messages what's if if only if only I could show you my my inbox right now is it really oh yeah I mean like you'll also get Whiplash by looking at my email inbox because one email will will be like thank you so much for what you do I'll be like that's nice and then I'll scroll to the next one and it's like you should die now um I mean it's horrid stuff horrid stuff but you get you get kind of desensitized to it um and that comes with like with the breakdown of of your mental health and everything it's like eventually years of therapy yeah eventually you you you get really numb to all of it and everything and um and uh but it's okay I mean like you know at this point I'll tell you when when I first started I I think I wrote some article back in 2017 about Trump's crowd size and and this was like early days was like the first article I ever wrote and put it online and uh the torrential downpour of emails that I got I almost quit after one day in politics I was like this is Hell triggering huh yeah I was like this is hell and I think I'm going to die I think and uh and this was early days and so like I didn't I I mean now I have to make sure that my you know I have to go through take all these steps to make sure that my address isn't out there but like this was early day the internet was like the Wild Wild West in 2017 and anything went and uh yeah people get nasty people get nasty yeah uh you made a really great point you talk about in the book about sort of trump laying his hands on right-wing media yeah um which is you know he'll go on these shows not just because he can help he can reach an audience to those shows but because by him going on those shows it legitimizes them and then builds the ecosystem um talk about how on our side of this you've seen that change over the years because I think that I think it's probably it's still not at a place where Trump and their brightwing media is but it's getting better yeah I do think I mean look you know I've I've had my interview series since 20120 uh since the summer of 2020 and it's increasingly easy to to get um to get people to come on the shows I mean to come on my show I I've seen also the progressive media EOS system especially in the last few months really kind of blow up and there's a lot more influencers and they're getting people like Pete Budaj jedge they're getting people like I mean President Biden was doing a ton of uh of like Tik toks and stuff like that lot of lot of different Outlets lot of different Progressive Outlets he did and they should he should and like that's exactly what they should be doing well it's weird that he didn't yeah that's a that one really that was a real heads scratcher but I think you're going to get that b interview any any minute now after the debate um Brian walks into our office and sees me in time and he's like wow you guys are really going for that Biden interview huh you guys are guys going hard for that one um yeah didn't get it one of these days yeah one of these days um but it is it is super important and I don't think that people understand that it's not just the audience it's that like if you know joee Biden did this show or KLA Harris to the show then more people know what that show is and then more people go there and then it sort of broadens the people go there and and now you have another platform where you have a host talking about Progressive issues talking about liberal issues and and it it doesn't just help the people BEC like it doesn't just help the politicians because now you're reaching people where they are but it also validates yet another Independent Media platform validates another Progressive media platform and it grows our whole ecosystem so those people are legitimized those people are validated in the eyes of The View because well if if Biden's going to go on there if Pete Budaj is going to go on there if if Jen or John and Tommy if those guys are going to go on there then this place must be legit and so now I can get my news from there and that's just one more outlet that just helps spread our message uh what' you think of the convention I thought the convention well first of all that was the first convention I'd ever been to but I've watched the rest of them I thought it was fantastic I mean it it showed it showed two things I think one it put on full display how how Trump and Republicans really up with the RNC because I mean it was like like somewhere in between kind of a kind of like a a a funeral and like a king's coronation it was like air it was like a begrudging acceptance of like of like a totalitarian leader I mean it was real self-indulgent self-indulgent yeah uh and and that's because they were against Biden and Biden wasn't able to to affirmatively prosecute the case against Trump and so it was a testament to like we can be we can just lean into the fascism if we want to because like we're running against Biden he's not beating us in polls in New Mexico like if you're losing in New Mexico you're not going to get to 270 and and it gave an opening for Democrats to to to reclaim so many of the Republican branding points that they'd benefited for so long you had more American flags at the DNC than the RNC that's that's nuts you had you had Democrats chanting USA USA USA and our vice presidential candidate is a a Midwestern like a Midwestern guy who wears camo there was an entire there was an entire football team on stage there was a I looked up at very retired from high SCH up one point and a sheriff was up there yeah it was and Adam kininger and Jeff Duncan yeah it was real but good on them good on them because Bernie Sanders railing against billionaires and then a billionaire and then JB britzer yeah we had it all uh but good on them because because the Republicans were so cocky when they were running against Biden that they didn't bother having a uh they didn't bother moving toward any semblance of a platform where they where their goal was to expand the Coalition it was just let's double triple quadruple down on the base let's choose someone in JD Vance who is not a different religion or race or ethnicity he's not from a Battleground State uh uh he's just Trump 2.0 he's a carbon copy of the guy and and yet and yet the the DNC was basically just scientifically engineered to expand our Coalition that was the whole point of it it was giving a permission structure to everyone from people who are fans of Bernie and a to people who listen to Jeff Duncan when he says if you vote for Democrats it doesn't make you a Democrat it makes you a patriot and and and it was and so that disparity on full display was exactly exactly the the tone that we needed to hit so uh Democrats irrational exuberance or deservedly rational exuberance what do you think I think it's the ladder you think it's the latter yeah which is hard for me to say because because you know uh much like being Jewish uh being a Democrat is just expecting the worst you know I'm not expecting the worst I'm just preparing for it in trying to avoid it I think that's who we should you know it's if you were Jewish you would expect um you know Bill Clinton had a line in his speech that made me think of uh what we all do which is he's like next time Trump speaks don't count the lies count the eyes um and basically to make the point that Trump is so selfish and the real you know the most effective message against Trump is you know he is someone who's only in for himself and only cares about himself and KLA Harris is very much for the people um and I thought about that because we all spend a lot of time trying to like debunk Trump's lies I think one of the lines after the debate with Biden was like but look how many times he lied and obviously there's like a that's really important to do but how do you think about sort of the balance between you know calling out his lies and calling out Republican lies which a lot of the the book is about and not doing it so much that that's the only message and and it sort of crowds everything else out yeah I think I think um you know there comes a point where it's clear well I think it's a good question I think um there comes a point where it's clear that he's a liar and so you don't want to just bring sand to the beach and so you got to think about what's the most effective message at the point of time that you're in I think right now contrasting that uh contrasting Trump with Harris in terms of who's going to actually work for you is going to be more effective because it's already baked in that Trump is a liar and so there's messages that I think are going to be more important that's one of them another one that I think is important right now is um this idea that you know we spend a lot of time talking about how dangerous Donald Trump is but I do think while that's very obviously true what's also true right now is that more than focusing completely on how dangerous he is there is also power in focusing on how weak he is and and I think that pointing that out that he's dangerous redounds to his benefit because it it kind of lends itself to the idea that he's a strong man but that's where he derives a lot of his power he likes to be called a strong man and so us saying look how dangerous he is look how scary he is he he he like that feeds him and so us pointing out that in fact you know he's also he's he's dude's a like he's an idiot he thinks Nikki Haley was in charge of the capital on January 6th that's important and so I've taken to this to to pointing out more and more that like that like he he is a confused you know like illiterate idiot and and like and like you know he he he spends more like he's made it a part of his stump speech that that Hannibal Lecter is a great American and that yeah I mean I I thought thought that kamla Harris squared the circle on this really well in her speech where she said Donald Trump is an unserious man but electing him can have very serious consequences and I think that when we talk about him you can do both right you can talk about the consequences as very serious but you can he you can't call him a serious man because he's not right and and I think we're looking at that and when we've leaned into this idea that actually he's a joke I think how he reacts to it is is he hates he hates and and it's cusing him to to completely dissemble and uh and we're seeing that right now like when he when he realizes he's behind he kind of reverts back to what worked in 2016 which is okay let's just get the cameras on me and I'll fix it only I can fix it like we'll just get the cameras on me the cameras are on me 24 hours a day 7 days a week in 2016 I got elected so I've been conditioned to believe that that's all I need to do and I'll just say some crazy and like that's step one step two is just I'll get elected president and more Trump the better more trp people want more Trump and so instead what he does is he ends up on stage at the national National Association of black journalists and denies kamla Harris's biracial when the exact demographic group that he has to go after are people of color and and then his next event was the maralago press conference uh what did he do at the marago press conference what didn't he do uh oh yeah he said he said that uh he bragged that his January 6 Insurrection crowd was bigger than Martin Luther King Jr's I have a dream Dream speech crowd like yeah I could just see with like a with like a shot of like Honey Bunches of Oats and some other groceries front of his golf club talking about infl it was just a great rotting meat behind him yeah a lot of rotting meat so so I've I've actually come around because I was of the mind that Donald Trump was getting we were heaping too much attention onto him uh previously but now I'm like let dude talk he's I mean I think that's why the Harris walls campaign wants want to make sure that the mics at the next debate are on the entire time cuz it's like you know more Trump more Trump the better they're like make sure he has an unlimited supply of Diet Cokes keep him awake and caffeinated I mean what he spoke today at the uh National Guards conference in Detroit and I was like who gave him the horse tranquilizer it very we need it more Diet Coke you it was like a melatonin commercial it was wild it should have come it should have come with a warning not to operate heavy machinery while you're so uh before we take questions you end the book with this uh great story about your mom and you say that your mom has has never really followed politics closely in fact doesn't usually vote hadn't voted she hadn't voted her entire life and even even when you were uh had your YouTube show had your stuff and were like posting videos and you were into this and you were trying to get her to pay attention and she she still was resisting I would have better luck convincing the sun to rise at night than convincing my Jewish mother from Brooklyn to do anything against her will but she finally she finally voted in 2020 could you tell the story of how that came about yeah so um so again like I had been trying for years to explain to her you know my mom is a labor and delivery nurse and uh and you know goes to work 13 hour shifts at the hospital and I'm sitting here like Doe explaining to her how important it is to like to like be involved and and civic duty and climate change and she's like this I have to get up for work at 5:00 in the morning I don't have time for any of this by the way that was the exact quote that's not the quote that's not the quote she would let me put in the book I was going to say I didn't see that in the book no this is the the real quote was that I have to get up for work in the morning I don't have time for this and I I actually asked her permission like somewhere around so the book has you write the book and you submit it and then you get like a first pass and a second pass and a maybe a third pass and then it goes into print and I asked her I was like maybe I should ask her after the second pass if it's okay that I use these quotes and and I told her and she's like she's like if you if you use those if you know she like it's not okay so that was quickly rectified um but in any case uh in any case she uh yeah I mean she would she never voted for 60 years and um and then and I gave up trying to proze her because it was it was you know I would spend all my time doing that other than other than just reaching out to to everybody else and uh I got a text during the 2020 election and it was a picture of her at the Dropbox in my uh Hometown in New Jersey and I know I was writing this and I was worried because I'm like this this seems so like it seems so ridiculous to be like to be like and here's my accomplishment I got my own mom to vote but like it was because I would I like this is not an easy person to convince to do anything and so uh but but in any case it just shows that like even if I am able to reach a lot of people through my YouTube videos just being knowing that I was actually able to impact the vote the the specific vote of one or two people getting emails like that where it's like somebody who said you know uh I I wouldn't have voted in this election or or I hadn't voted before um those are actually the most impactful even if it's somebody that that gave birth to me so all right uh on that note I think we'll uh I think we have time for some questions do I'm here I have a mic but I want to start the questions off I'm taking prerogative um Brian told me when he got here when I congratulated him for the book landing on the bestseller list the New York Times best best seller list at number one that he kicked JD Vance out of that slot okay so this is a softball Brian talk to us about that that feeling when you bounced well I immediately back to the couch I I I'll tell you what I did I immediately went to the closest dut shop and yeah that was that was a really nice feeling um I think it's good too because it it you know one thing that Donald Trump did really well was he pointed to a lot of books about him and he promoted them and I think that bolstered the right-wing ecosystem uh their authors in terms of oh if I write a book about if I if I write a book about um you know somebody on the right it'll get promoted by somebody on the right if I write a book about Trump it'll get promoted by Trump and so there's a lot of incentive structure on the right to write these books because they get promoted by people on the right and so it's the same thing as the rest of the progressive media ecosystem um to see stuff on the left do well I I I hope serves the purpose of giving more of an incentive structure for for for Progressive or Democratic authors to see that and say like okay like let's write more books there's obviously an audience for that and so you know it's it's a huge Testament to to to our our audience out there um to hopefully give give like a a kick in the ass to other Progressive authors to keep writing okay so I'm on this side right now and then I'll make my way over there because there's only one mic all right I'm gonna go to this guy right here hey Brent nice to meet you um you too pleasure being here congratulations on your book again thank you um being that I'm I wasn't political I became political looking at your videos and all that and I be just just couldn't do it anymore the left the right all of that stuff it got me like down and I stopped what do you do to comfort yourself or to get your mind off of it and to ease it being that you do it every day oh boy oh I think you asked the wrong person that question um well I think so this is not what I would do but this is what I would recommend is just to take the time off that you need um I mean I can't because for my job I have to I have to always stay on top of it even when I do feel it tearing away at the shreds of my um mental health and and Sanity but but generally I mean just taking time off uh so that it doesn't feel like you're immersed in something I I I mean I think politics is is fun I love politics I'm passionate about it but just like with anything if you are if you get too much of it it can lose its appeal so take the time that you need off from it um so that it so that it doesn't lose that like that that appeal that it has I mean I also think that um doing politics in person is is one way to uh to make yourself feel better about it and it doesn't necessarily have to be you know going out there and persuading people who don't agree with you but just like being among people who are like-minded and talking to politics with them just it gives you a different feeling than just being online all the time and consuming it that way or watching TV all the time I mean I was just thinking like last week at the convention I loveed the convention because we're out here La we do our podcast right you know we we see each other once in a while but like seeing a whole bunch of people thousands of people at that convention and getting to like talk to people about politics in person it just gives you this like happier more fulfilled feeling than just like being by yourself and like looking at the screen all day hi Brian uh great to meet you um I really appreciate the Democracy docket SE segments of your show and your efforts to inform people about uh election deniers plans to block certification so despite how scary all that stuff is uh like are you optimistic that the Democrats are on top of that yes uh so I I do that series with Mark Elias who is a hero um a lot of this everything held up when we didn't know that it was coming in 2020 um now we know everything that's coming uh Mark Elias himself is now on uh kamla Harris's senior legal team um we have we have I think a a legal team that's that's 10 times the size of the legal team on the right and the legal team on the right is is just full of it's a band of Misfits of people who keep keep getting disbarred in different jurisdictions So like um so look U if we lose it will not be for lack of lawyers that's right that's for sure so look you know the the usual caveats apply that anything can happen and we do have a supreme court that has been overtly hostile to democracy but at the same time this is the same Supreme Court that refused to hear the Texas lawsuit in 2020 that sought to invalidate the election results in four other states it's the same Supreme Court so um so you know cautiously optimistic uh in terms of in terms of the legal stuff here hey guys um what do you think are the key drivers causing people to lose faith in Democratic institutions and thus being open to these neolis post-truth populists like Trump and farage um you know we might not necessarily understand this because we haven't lost that trust but they fall into the hands of these people why do you think that is um so look I think there's a there's a number of like sort of broader socioeconomic factors right I think you can go back back as far as like the beginning of globalization to realize like wealth inequality um and just sort of rapidly changing culture um Mass immigration right there's all these factors but I think what has supercharged it over the last couple decades is sort of the way that we consume information and I think that um the fact that we get most of our information online and I don't just think that it is misinformation disinformation is a huge part of this but I think it's something deeper than that which is this technology that was supposed to bring us together has instead really pushed us apart and made us even lonlier in a way and I think there's been sort of social alienation and isolation and so if you live in uh if you live in a community that has sort of been left behind by globalization then what do you see every day on your screen you see images and videos of of celebrities and people who are wealthy and all kinds of people just living these these great lives right and when you interact with people online again like we were talking about you also have these algorithms that are sort of driving you towards content that makes you more afraid more Angry more envious of other people and when you can't see the person that that you're arguing with in real life you tend to sort of De it makes dehumanizing that person easier and I think all of this sort of redounds to the benefit of strong men autocrats dictators who have like been able to hold Sway and and and Whit people up over centuries but I just think it is it is easier now in the information environment we're in and that's why look we see it here with Trump but of course we've seen it in Europe we've seen it in South America we've seen it all over the world and I think that that trying to get past this moment is going to be figuring out how we interact with one another and in a way that in a way where like we can debate we can disagree we we might not even come to like some kind of you know Common understanding but we can at least figure out a way to live to live together in relative peace and prosperity because if we can't figure that out then the people people like the people like Trump and the people like Orban and and people like Bolson right they are going to be able to they have the easier job here right which is to say you know if this democracy is not working for you what has it really done for you and all your problems are the fault of people who don't look like you or speak like you or come from where you do and you know what if it's not working I'm just going to go in there and blow the whole thing up that's the easy message right our our job is much harder because because our job is trying to prove that democracy can actually deliver in a way that improves people's lives and to do that requires patience and understanding and empathy and Grace and all of that is so much harder in a world where so many people are struggling so you know people say oh you know it's harder for Democrats harder for liberals progressives it's just it's just a tougher job that we have because it's really easy to burn down the barn but it's much harder to build okay one one more from over here and then I'm moving to another part of the theater and by the way if you're interested in hearing more stuff like that offline John show offline is is very much along those same lines if you uh haven't yet subscribed to that it's a a show about how to how to uh be less online from someone who is completely addicted so uh hi guys um about 8 weeks ago we were all really depressed ready to Slit our wrist some of us and it's my understanding Nancy Loi went to the Oval Office and basically told Joe you have no way of winning this damn thing at this point and so you need to leave and we can do this the easy way or the hard way I'm seeing like no coverage of exactly what went on behind the scenes and we're all just saying he magnanimously slept down stepped down what's your understanding of what actually transpired there well no I Nancy py did not actually go to the Oval Office uh to You know despite all the reporting I think she she did have a call with Biden there was a report that she had a call with Biden at one point where she where he said no there's a path to Victory and I'm seeing it in some of the polls and then she said put Mike donellan on the phone I want to hear about the polls and Mike Donan is is it was Joe Biden's sort of Chief advisor message strategy polling um now later Pelosi said that she didn't actually say put donalan on the phone but it it was reported many different places anyway I think that the best reporting we have from the times from the post from other places like that is that it was Mike Donan and Steve rete another close adviser who finally came to Biden in that final weekend and and sort of laid out how difficult the path ahead would be and um I mean because I think there was a New York Times report that even as as late as Friday night Biden had talked to Ron Clan as former Chief of Staff and Ron finished that conversation thinking that Biden would continue and so I think it was like between literally like Friday night and Saturday um when Donald and ret came that Biden sort of slept on it and woke up and thought like really sort of got into the polling and I think when we talk about the polling it's not just like oh a few bad polls here and there like they you know we just talked to the uh Biden Harris Battleground States director uh Dan Canan and and and Dan feifer actually asked him like do you guys have confidence in the in the data and the polling you're doing the difference between what campaigns do on polling and what you see in public polls is like campaigns and this was true as far back as the Obama campaign in 2008 we call like thousands of Voters a night in different in the swing States right so it's not just like you see a poll with a sample of 600 people right um the the campaigns pay for like really deep research thousands of Voters and I think that it by the time that Biden dropped out I think that it wasn't just he was losing just about every swing state by like 3 four five six more points I mean you were seeing you know New Mexico close and Virginia close and Minnesota close right and it was just a it was just an entirely different scenario than pre-debate where Biden was down but down by a margin that you could imagine a candidate um you know Overcoming By the fall and I think it just it was so bad that he realized and understood that if he stayed in you know maybe he still thought he could win but I think that the party and particularly members of Congress who had their own internal polling just saw that it was getting so bad in their districts that he he would have lost and also a lot we would have lost the house and probably lost and lost the Senate as well so there was also polling that showed uh where they would ask the same respondents whether they would support the Senate candidates and the president and you would have uh I think the most the latest poll that that Biden was still in the race showed Bob Casey in Pennsylvania up like up like eight points and Joe Biden down five and so you have 13 Point differentials between between the Senate candidate and the president of the same party and that kind of stuff because a regular poll you can just write off as like oh well you don't know like what the pollster is doing but if they're asking these people will you vote for Bob Casey will you vote for Joe Biden will you vote for Ruben gyo will you vote for Joe Biden Tammy Baldwin Joe Biden and and the difference is like seven eight nine points between all of these people then it becomes clear that the albatross around Democrats next is Biden yeah okay over here I'm wondering we haven't heard much from the Republican scream Queens marjerie Taylor green uh mace and bobert um have they been gagged told not to uh are you accusing the Republicans of censorship I am just wondering if and we haven't heard from any of those you know I think I think they probably somebody up there recognizes that she that they are not good for Republican prospects at winning any elections I mean margerie t green did a great job of making herself basically the face of the Republican party all of these people did and when you have these Maga when you have these Maga people who just continue to Bubble up to the top it's not helping their brand at all and in fact if you look at I believe it was the 2022 midterms when these people really the people who got the most coverage Hershel Walker Dr Oz Carri Lake Doug mastriano all those people lost they actually underperformed the rest of the Republicans who who ran in these elections and so maybe there's some begrudging acceptance that the more you elevate The Crazies to the top of the party the more it hurts the Republicans but then again they're running Trump so what do I know hi Brian hi John hey Alex congratulations we're so proud of you number one fox LA's Alex Michaelson thank you um so basically now the race is back to where it should be right it's basically a 5050 race and the question is what's the message to get your mom in the swing state what is the message to get these people that may be going deciding between voting and the couch and we're not talking about JD Vance's couch right how do you get them what is that short concise message that you guys were able to do so well in 2008 John for this electorate in this media environment to convince those people um I do think it's that when you when you talk to voters who um are open to voting for Trump and open to voting for KLA Harris uh and who might not vote for either right this is sort of the group that we're talking about here they uh especially recently since since KL Harris has been the nominee they'll say things like well you know I I wasn't going to vote for Biden I'm definitely open to her now but I feel like I don't know enough about her and I don't know what she stands for and I don't know what she'll do and you know I see the media making a big deal of her and everyone's really excited and it's all this excitement and but like is it real what's she actually going to do they have mostly made up their minds about Donald Trump but they've made up their minds on him based on his character most of them do not like him the ones who are open to voting for him will say things like uh I don't like him I think he's really annoying I'm exhausted by him but maybe I like some of his policies maybe things were better when he was president they have this fake I heard one focus group voter say um you know maybe I'll just uh I'll just vote for Donald Trump turn off the TV for the next four years and just enjoy the Trump economy that's what they were yeah that was that was when Biden it was still Trump and Biden so those are the kind of Voters and so when you know that that's the universe right of Voters that you're trying to you're trying to reach I do think that the message from kamla Harris that I am going to fight for you I have fought for people my entire life when I was and and you know she had a great number of proof points uh during her uh convention speech we talked about being Attorney General of California and taking on the big Banks and when they had the homeowner set the uh the homeowner settlement she you know kept pushing the Obama Administration for more money for homeowners who were defrauded and she helped veterans who were defrauded and college students who were defrauded so I think she has this record of fighting for people and then I think we've heard her put out policies about bring down Pro the cost of housing uh child tax credit middle class tax cut like I think that I'm for you and Donald Trump is only for himself and by the way if he gets another term here are some of the things he's planning and even if he says he's not planning these things he's going to have this group of people around him project 2025 and you have to ask yourself like has Donald of course Donald Trump will do whatever people around him tell him to do not because he's weak but because if if it helps him Donald Trump will do it right and this is why for example he you know did he care that much about overturning roie Wade doesn't really matter he is the one who selected the three Supreme Court Justices that did it because he thought that would be politically advantageous for him so whatever is politically advantageous for Trump or advantageous in terms of like helping him uh stay out of jail or make more money like he's probably going to do and so the basic message there is this guy's for himself he only cares about himself he's only going to help himself he's only going to use power to help himself and kamla Harris has a history of using it to help other people and that's what she's going to do as President we have time we have time for a few more questions and in all the years I've been doing writers block I have to say I don't think I remember so many audience questions so much you know engagement so here a few bear with me we got a lot of we have questions hi guys I love both of you I watch and I mean watch and listen every day I'm here with my daughter it's the first time she's going to vote this year amazing trying to get her engaged um I I I'm very informed I watch and listen all the time I have my points I have my facts I know you guys always say go out and talk to the people that are in your community around you and your family and get them to vote so I got all my information I was ready I was at a family gathering brought up the the information and they look at me like I'm crazy like why are you bringing politics into this how do I talk to people um close to me who aren't informed and get them informed to vote without coming off like that crazy person just making them pay attention yeah sure um yeah that's tough right because uh we've all been there um cuz we're all crazy uh I think that sometimes the best approach is you know have you paid much attention to the election crazy campaign have youve been following the news at all and they'll probably say no or maybe just a little bit and then I I do think it sounds TR but asking them like like what's bothering you what do you care about what what issues would make you vote what issues do you vote on and then really like listening to their concerns and what they care about and not and so like you know you got all your points and your talk your information and all that and your fact checks and all that but just like yeah keeping those close to the vest for a while um while you have a conversation with them just like a normal person right and figure out what's on their mind and then try to try to use that as a way in to talk about politics because I do think when we come to people as you know uh as Democrats or liberals or watch out Donald Trump is so scary and you've got to vote or else like you know we're going to lose democracy like it's just it's it's hard to start that way and so I think that people appreciate when you hear them when you listen to them like I have plenty of family members who are Republican and conservative and I at family gatherings I'm usually not the first one to talk about politics they usually start talking to me about politics and I always take the posture of I'm just going to listen and if they want to like yell about Barack Obama or yell about Poli whatever I just going to like let them do it and then I'm going to find out why they're saying that and are there any points of commonality and are there any issues that they care about where we might be on the same side and then I kind of just go that way and look it doesn't it doesn't always work it doesn't even often work but every once in a while you can start making some inrs with folks and um and you know that's how you eventually get Brian's mom to vote it's it's a it's a great point though I I have I have conservative friends long long-standing friends and I know what issues they care about I know what issues are just you know dying on the wrong Hill but I know what issues they care about and that's the stuff that I that I talk to them about frequently and uh sometimes it won't work but sometimes I know that it resonates and it's going to not be something that I'm going to expect to do in one Fell Swoop but if I can work on somebody for a long time uh maybe I can get them to vote from like straight Republican ticket to not voting for a republican this time or or voting for you know a moderate Democrat whatever it is but I know certain issues and so I'll cater my arguments to specific people for whatever the issue is that they care about hi my name is David and I'm looking forward to reading your book so that'll be awesome um so two questions first of all do you ever sleep no not not enough and what do you do for your mental health I mean because you you do this so often and every day and you know how do you take care of yourself I don't I don't take care of myself um well I uh I I [Laughter] uh I uh I I I do have my dog and I love my dog that that poor dog is just like is just like uh the the receptacle of of just you know so much love and uh and and uh so there's that I I also try to go to the gym although it's been a it's been a minute um but uh but yeah I mean it's it's something I'm very much looking forward to uh to December well I guess I guess I would be looking forward when the Insurrection schedule for January I was going to say post we had to do Post Insurrection so probably yeah probably like mid mid January after the want to be scheduling any vacations for December and January I'll tell you what um speaking of scheduling vacations I I worked like a 100 days straight and I was and and then uh a couple weeks back I was like I'm going to just take a weekend go to Palm Springs go visit some friends in Palm Springs and so it was Saturday I got in the car and I I shot a bunch of videos um the previous day like worked like like 14 hours the previous day got a bunch of videos stacked for the weekend and got in my car drove to Palm Springs I was in the car for 2 hours I was about 15 minutes away and then my phone started blowing up because somebody tried to kill Donald Trump and I was like God damn it I it it was like the thing I joke about where it's like well I can I'll be able to go unless somebody tries to assassinate the president you know and they did it I had the exact same I had a very similar experience where um my wife and and two kids were away they were still in in Maine at my in-laws and I had gotten home and I was like this is the real vacation now and it's like it's just me you know and I'm like all right the debate stuff everything else I'm like I am just I took Twitter off my phone and I went to one of my favorite places The Grove and I and I walked around and I was like big rck Caruso shout out R Caruso yeah and I'm sitting there and I just having a I'm having like a cocktail at 4:00 cuz it's a Saturday afternoon and this is like my only day off and then Tommy texts me and he was like did you are you watching television right now did you did you see Donald Trump SP shot I was like a I put everything down C my car went home and I was just by myself staring at the you you if you had been driving behind me on whatever Road it is to Palm Springs you would think that that the person in the driver's seat just just like passed out the car was all over the road the first text I got was Trump assassinated and I thought it was a joke and then I got a lot more attacks and so me on Twitter going 80 M hour on my way to Palm Springs and just like it was almost almost two two near deaths that day yeah hey guys my question is more for John it's about speech writing um I love the Democrat a Convention as you guys did and was noticing that it felt like a lot of the speakers hit the same themes um and they also sort of took down Trump in the same way they were like you were talking about they sort of made him seem small and there seemed to be a Unity about it and I wondered is there a head speech writer excuse me is there a head speech writer does anybody look over all those speeches and try to make sure they don't tell the same stories or that they hit the same themes that's a good question it's a great question uh so there is a there a a speech writing room at the convention with some of the best speech writers in the party and basically so if you if you're an elected official who has a speech writer then you know they'll work with you and and write your speech and then you uh you try to send the speech to the speech writers room so they can figure out timing which you know uh they do their best um so how long the speech is and so they can like you know take a look at it to see if it reflects the overall message but a lot of elected officials and a lot of people who speak don't have their own speech writers and so in those cases the room will like you'll get assigned to a different speech writer and then they'll work with you on the speech um but like in terms of thematics you know they have direction from the Harris campaign about like broad themes but I do think that the reason everyone ended up on on a similar theme is just because sort of the it's just just like through osmosis right like everyone's reading the news they're consuming a lot of content they all have staffers that are talking to each other saying the same thing uh and so I think it just happens in a much more organic way than you might imagine than it being than it's planned you know but like for example I know Obama obviously in his speech like took on Trump as as a clown and a fool and you know I like I'm I'm friends with uh the person who worked on KL Harris speech and he was like he worked with me in the white house he's my first hire in the Obama campaign and we were talking about that and he was like you know she thinks he's unserious but she is genuinely worried about the threat of Donald Trump and does want to talk about the consequences of a second term and so as we heard she sort of laid that out in Her speech so it really just depends on the speaker and if you know when you have elected officials who care deeply about their speeches and and and and are involved heavily in writing of the speeches which is Barack Obama Michelle Obama kamla Harris Doug mhof is like that as well um just off AOC right this is just Bill Clinton for sure um like th they're going to say what they want to say even if it's not necessarily on the exact message of The Campaign which is a good thing which is what we should want in our you know public officials uh uh is that they sort of speak from the heart so it's a it's it's an organic process with just sort of like broad guard rails I would say well we could go on for hours and hours because there are like 40 people that want to ask questions but we can't because the theater is going to kick me out so I want to thank everybody for coming and um and I the best audience ever with so many questions Brian huge congratulations huge thanks and and John I need to have you on speed dial you're so great anyway thank you to and um Book Soup has some books available that are already signed so buy them because like you're going to go somewhere for Labor Day get get them as presents and stuff like that so A big thank you to Andrea writers block thank you so much for hosting thank you and thank you to John a very much appreciate it and thank you all thank you all so much for coming and taking time out of your day appreciate it thank you