Inside 2024 - Preview | Favreau + Tommy Talk Election Night

Hey, there, I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm Tommy Vitor.

The Posse of America team is on holiday break. So today we're bringing you a special sneak peek of our new subscriber podcast, Inside 2024.

One holiday.

Hello, One holiday. Each monthly episode of Inside 2024 will feature a rotating cast of former White House staffers spilling their campaign trail stories and insights as we look ahead to the 2024 election cycle.

In this episode, Jon and I will take you through one of the most stressful, dramatic, sometimes terrible, days of the year Election Day. What you're about to hear is just part of the episode. The whole episode and future episodes of Inside 2024 are available to our friends of the Pod community.

If you're interested in getting access to more great Crooked content, head over to Crooked.

Yes, we can.

Yes, we can.

Yes, we can, we can now project that. Former Vice President Joe Biden.

Has been elected President of the United States. We did it.

We did it, Joe.

Welcome to Inside 2024, Crooked's new podcast, made just for our friends of the Pod subscribers. Every month, this show will feature your favorite campaign and political experts. And sometimes us who will? We're gonna help you make sense of it all. We're gonna talk about candidates doing debate prep. We're gonna talk about what it's like to write convention speeches. The fun times on the campaign trail. What's annoying, what's terrifying? It's gonna be great.

Yeah, the copy says they're never before told stories. I would say they're stories that haven't been told into a microphone. Probably for good reason. But you know what, for you, the subscribers, we're gonna cough it up.

Anything for content? Tommy, All the good stuff. As you can hear, I'm here with my buddy Tommy. Also, we both were on the Obama campaign, so we're gonna talk about that. And also here, one of our favorite crooked media producers who's gonna be moderating these discussions? Caroline Reston, What's up?

Are you a Randy Cohen?

That's my dream, I wanna start today at the end and talk about Election Day. And I thought that was a really great place to start. Because this show is going to get into the nitty gritty of what it's like to be on a campaign. But I feel like our listeners. And honestly, we need to be reminded of what's at stake, what we're fighting for. And remember the amazing glory it is to win and the gut-wrenching feeling of losing. When I mentioned this topic to you guys, you both had very skeptic, nervous, stressed out feelings about it.

Well, the thing about Election Day is that it is weird for people who do. What we did, which is communications work, is that there's nothing to do. You just sit around and you stress out and you read exit polls and you follow the news and you vote, but mostly you're just hurry up and waiting. Now it's different for the field team because they're out, they're doing a huge GOTV effort, they're knocking on doors.

Yeah, you asked what Election day is like, and anxiety is the first word that comes to mind, in fact, so much anxiety that you just saying Election day. I had the feeling again of like, Oh shit, it's here, because, first of all, there's nothing to do on Election day. Like I said, if you do the work that we do. And so, you're just like, but you have to go to work and you're sitting around and it's like everyone's asking everyone else, you hearing anything, you hearing anything?

These early exit poll results are based on voter interviews before election day.

So if you were in the White House and you're watching those numbers right now.

What does it tell you and what do you do?

Some brutal numbers for President Biden right there, Dan. And like, none of the information is super helpful or very illuminating about, like, what the final tally is. Because not everyone has fucking voted yet. But it does not stop you from asking people what you've heard.

Josh Earnest said that looking at exit polls is like hooking up with your ex. You know you shouldn't do it. You do it anyway. You feel terrible afterwards, and it's just sort of like this awful ritual that you're doomed to repeat.

On election Day, what is like a day in the life like you're waking up, where is? Obviously I would have to sleep the whole time. Where are-?

I think that would have been preferable.

Where are the staffers, where is the candidate? Like? So in 2008, you guys were in Chicago, that's where Obama was too, but were you guys in the office with him for the full day?

We were in the office, Tommy and I were in the office, He was not in the office. Well, he voted.

Yeah, he was home and then he voted.

Didn't Bill Ayers come to his-?

So this is what is the funniest part. So Jen Psaki is with the press pool. They're all waiting to watch Obama go in and vote. This guy named Bill Ayers shows up. Bill Ayers was a huge point of controversy in this election because he was part of an organization called the Weather Underground back in the day.

We have a great podcast here at Crooked Media called Mother Country Radicals. That's about this.

Domestic terrorist group blew shit up, right? And they had a relationship.

For the greater good.

For the greater good, yeah.

Debatable? So anyway, move forward. So they knew each other back in the day, they, like, were socially friends at the University of Chicago.

Some might say they were palling around.

Yeah, palling around terrorists, as Sarah Palin famously said. So he shows up, and that was like the big brouhaha of the day. Is Psaki emailing and being like, Well, funny story. Bill Ayers is here?

Was that an accident?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh shit, yeah. But we, as far as I remember, just like sat in that office and we're just like refreshing news websites.

From Like 5 a.

So you're saying you're mostly doing nothing, except for reading exit polls that may or may not confirm what you don't or don't want to hear.

You're gossiping.

That's what you're doing, you're just gossiping. That's a much better analogy, It's just gossiping, which sounds, honestly, very fun. So okay, fabs, you were speech writer.

Victory speech We had three speeches.

You have three, what's the other one?

I don't know too close, inconclusive.

I didn't forget how you guys did that.

That sucks.

There's a lot of. Did you ever watch Veep? Yes, you know, Selina Meyer's best friend, who's like, Well, that's a good question. I mean, I can see how it can go one way, but what if it went the other way? Do you remember her, Rebecca?

She was so annoying and really models like a candidate friend quite well, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

So are there any times during that day where you're editing speeches based off of what's happening? How does that process work? Are you on the phone with Obama? are you working with your team, like?

So maybe a week before Election day, we started to write the drafts of the election night speeches. Now you guys may argue with me on this, but again, I'm just trying to give a little bit of a.

I want this to be populist.

But I want a little bit of a flavor of forward looking stuff. And the way it went was I took the lead on the victory speech. I think Sarah Hurwitz wrote, Who was one of our speechwriters? She had been Hillary Clinton's speechwriter, then we hired her, and then she came with us to the White House and became Michelle Obama's speechwriter.

Everyone's so superstitious.

Everyone's so superstitious. So no one gave us edits, so Obama did not give me edits to the victory speech. Until it seemed like we won Ohio and he won the presidency, and then he called with just a couple of edits.

Okay, yeah, so we actually have a clip from that moment. And so what you're about to hear is from the documentary by the People. And it's Obama calling Favreau with a few last minute edits.

Oh, and one paragraph up, Axe had one edit when it says there will be setbacks and false starts he has. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president, and we know that government can't solve every problem. Okay?

Who gets, say, over that speech? And why did I see you change the word that to those?

Yeah, well, he Obama would make sort of nitpicky edits like that just because he's a writer and so he got into that kind of stuff. The only I think I sent that, I mean, I sent it right to everyone. The people who would really make edits, the most edits were Axelrod, David Axelrod, who's our chief strategist. And once in a while, Robert Gibbs would make an edit, David Plouffe, the campaign manager, would make an edit. But really, no one else dug in.

Do you remember any like, specific part of that was a victory speech? But is there a specific part you remember that you like, really loved, or was your idea?

Well, a couple of days before, when I was trying to figure out an ending to the speech, I read a CNN story about this woman named Anne Nixon Cooper, who had waited in line in Atlanta to vote for three hours, and which is crazy, that she had to wait three hours to vote. But also, it was notable because she was 105 years old.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight's about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta.

And so I thought about, I thought this was a great way to end the speech to talk about. Like, when she was born, right, she couldn't vote because she was Black and because she was a woman.

She was born just a generation past slavery, a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky. When someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And then, like all the things she'd seen in the century that she was in America, and all the progress she'd seen.

And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America the heartache and the hope, the struggle and the progress.

So we figured that's how we'd end the speech, and then, after talking about all the things she'd seen, we do the yes, we can refrain.

And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen and cast her vote. Because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes, we can.

So wrote this whole thing. He called me like, we just saw in that clip. And as soon as I hung up, Tommy, who was right next to me, was like, Oh, you should like, call in Nixon Cooper and like, let this woman know that she's gonna be in this speech. So it was like, Oh right, I didn't even think about that.

11 p.m. on the East Coast. And we have news.

Barack Obama will be the 44th president of the United States. And so everyone's like cheering and yelling and clapping. And I was like, under the desk trying to, like, talk to Ann Nixon Cooper before he went into it. It was really it was a cool moment.

Kind of like, emotional thing about all this shit, you know?

Yeah, I know.

It was a long time ago, but I always.

It's an emotional moment.

I mean, I wasn't even there and I felt like I wanted, I wish I was there, like it just felt really emotional and special. Talking a little bit more about the day, Tommy, I know you worked with the press on that day, like, what's the relationship like between the campaign and this press?

Well, so my job in Iowa, I was the Iowa Press secretary. And then they said, come back to Chicago headquarters. We're about to beat Hillary. We need you to do a rapid response against John McCain, Ha ha, ha.

We found this one clip of you, and I believe this is when you're working in Iowa, it's you and a reporter. And I always had an idea that there was a very formal relationship between campaign people and reporters, and the chumminess was very shocking.

Yeah, Scott Elwin from the Boston Globe, Hey man, how are you?

I've been reading you forever, I've been swearing about Boston Sports. Come on, can we just stick it to us?

On that crap lobbying story, Yeah, I knew you wouldn't like that. That's such bullshit.

When are we gonna move past the Gotcha story?

Oh, come on, can I just say what a good spokesman Tommy was? And that like highlighted it. That clip, he like, goes up to Scott Elwin. He's like, super friendly. Oh, from Boston, Rita River.

What was it?

Oh, the Colonel counting contest, yeah, brings over to the colonel counting contest. To get the like local hit in Iowa, which is way more important than whatever the Boston globe.

That was the only thing I cared about. Yeah, my job was like, what does the Iowa Press need, and how can I beg, borrow and steal to get it? And it just meant like, getting the reporter campaign relationship is politics like anything else. They're not like a special breed of people.

So we're at, you know, the polls are closing. Everything's too close to call. What are you guys doing? But most importantly, what are you drinking?

Here's what I remember. Thanks for checking out our special sneak peek inside 2024. To hear the rest of this episode and future episodes, plus a ton of other great exclusive content, consider joining the Friends of the Pod subscriber community. Go to Crooked.com Slash Friends to learn more.