Popular ‘Pod Save America’ goes live
Trump resistance comedy podcast sells out in Oakland
Here’s the latest measure of the resistance to President Trump in California: Oakland’s 2,800-seat Fox Theater quickly sold out for an onstage episode of the political podcast “Pod Save America,” and tickets were scalped online for $130 — more than triple face value.
Yes, to watch a podcast. As in a show featuring five people sitting in a semicircle shooting the bull about politics in the same smart, snarky way you might with your pals.
Yet the faithful who filled the Fox on Monday, many wearing “Friends of the Pod” shirts, roared like they were at a rock concert, gushing at the stars onstage: President Obama’s longtime speechwriter Jon Favreau and three other Obama White House veterans — Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer and Tommy Vietor — along with a “Pod” newcomer, writer Erin Gloria Ryan.
In less than a year since its Trump-inspired birth, the twice-weekly “Pod Save America” has become one of the nation’s most popular podcasts, with an average of 1.5 million listeners per episode. Some context: Liberal cable network MSNBC averages about 1.3 million viewers
per day — and it’s not nearly as (intentionally) funny.
Producer Crooked Media has generated enough ad revenue — reported to be in the low seven figures — to create six new podcasts with more on the way, build a small online news site, hire 13 people, and book a national tour next year through nine states, including a stop at New York’s Radio City Music Hall.
Until now, Crooked Media has largely been about giving comfort, context and a few yuks to progressives trying to wrap their head around Trump’s America. Now comes its next move. And it’s not just about the laughs anymore.
This week the experimental mashup of a media company/political action hub announced it will take a more active role in winning elections next year, starting in California, which cofounders and Los Angeles residents Favreau, Lovett and Vietor now call home.
They launched “The Crooked 7,” a fund to raise money for the effort to flip the seats of seven California GOP House members in districts that Hillary Clinton won in the presidential election. Working with Swing Left, one of the new generation of progressive grassroots organizing groups, Crooked Media will give the money it raises to the Democratic primary winner in each of the seven districts.
The campaign answers a question that Pfeiffer, who lives in San Francisco, hears all the time: “‘I live in a blue state. What can I do?’ They get excited about stuff like this because they feel that they’ve been sitting on the sidelines and they want to do something to help.”
That said, Crooked Media’s founders aren’t quite sure how to measure success, other than the unlikely event that Democrats flip all seven seats. Questions like that still seem odd to them. A year ago, when they told me they were about to leave their West Coast consulting jobs to launch the organization, they were unsure what it would be except that it focus less on punditry and more on advocacy.
They’re still trying to figure out what they are. Entertainers? A media company? Activists? A little bit of each?
“I think it’s something new,” Favreau told me backstage at the Fox before the show, where he and his mates banter just as they do on the podcast.
“There’s no one thing we’ve done that hasn’t been done before,” Lovett said. “We’re doing podcasts — there’s been a lot of people doing podcasts. We’re trying to be funny about politics — there’s a lot of people trying to funny about politics. I think what we’re trying to do is a lot of things together to make us effective.
“We didn’t come into this thinking, ‘What’s the model?’ ” Lovett said. “We didn’t have a model. We didn’t have a PowerPoint. We had nothing.”
Favreau interjected. Chief Operating Officer Sarah Wick “had a PowerPoint.”
Lovett paused for comic’s beat. “OK, so we hired people with PowerPoints.”
The only thing they’re adamant about is that they’re not pundits. They loathe pundits — particularly the talking heads on cable TV who focus on horse race political coverage over substance.
But there isn’t much historical precedent of podcasts impacting or influencing elections.
“We don’t go into this thinking that we have the power to help flip these seats,” Favreau said. “But we looked at this platform we have and all these people who are listening and said, ‘What’s the best thing we can do to help?’ ”
Vietor said what they do is “more of a bank shot. What we can do is arm people with salient information and arguments so they can convince people they know and care about. I think it’s unlikely that ‘Pod Save America’ is being blasted through coal mines in West Virginia.”
What is attractive to many lefties about “Pod Save America” is that it’s not reflexively waving the pom-poms for the Democrats. “Honest partisanship” is something they talk about a lot. As Favreau said, they’re not going to weigh in on every topic, regardless if they have a strong opinion or not. That’s what pundits do.
“But,” Favreau said, “if we feel strongly about something ...”
Like, say, Lovett does about billionaire San Francisco activist Tom Steyer spending $20 million on advertising in an attempt to impeach Trump.
“... like the fact that Tom Steyer is setting money on fire to build name ID instead of actually helping us at a time in which the entire country is on the line, we may point that out,” Lovett said, his voice rising — as the other guys start to laugh and cheer him on.
Then, Vietor interrupted him, suddenly stone-faced. “Did you meet Tom’s daughter? She’s here.”
“Tom’s daughter’s here?” Lovett said and froze for a second before his buddies busted out laughing, giving away the gag. Lovett smiled. “That’s OK. I’ll say this to Tom.”
Vietor pointed to my recorder. “I think you just did.”
That riff is what endears the “Pod” to many listeners. Funny. Pointed. Unscripted. No BS.
Before the Fox show, Vietor, Lovett and Favreau stopped at UC Berkeley. A couple of days earlier they reached out to student organizers there, offering to answer questions and encourage them to get involved in next year’s midterm elections, which young voters have traditionally ignored.
With roughly 36 hours notice, 120 students packed a room in the student union to hear the podsters. Varsha Sarveshwar, a sophomore, likes what they’re doing “because it’s different.”
“We grew up on two people yelling at each other on cable news,” she said. “We like them because they call out Democrats, too. They’re authentic. We don’t just want another Fox News for the left.”