← Offline with Jon Favreau
Offline with Jon Favreau
Have Our Screens Made Us Too Distracted For Democracy?
01:04:30
Ben Rhodes—bestselling author, Pod Save the World co-host, and fellow Obama administration alum—joins Offline to explain how America is being torn apart by short-term thinking and the technology that stokes it. Ben recently wrote a piece for the New York Times on the topic, and he and Jon connect the dots between big tech, the attention economy and domestic dogmas, drawing on fifty years of foreign policy to explain how we got to a place where no one can focus on the worst of what Trump’s doing—let alone agree on a national narrative.
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- [00:01]
Jon Favreau
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Ben Rhodes
You were just saying that.
- [00:30]
Jon Favreau
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- [00:57]
Ben Rhodes
We love it here.
- [00:58]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, you know, it's great. Now I have a. I used to just barely wash my face, even with soap.
- [01:03]
Ben Rhodes
Really.
- [01:03]
Jon Favreau
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- [01:07]
Ben Rhodes
Gotta use it.
- [01:08]
Jon Favreau
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- [01:31]
Ben Rhodes
I honestly think that in 2011, at the height of the Arab spring, that the autocrats were like, we can't let this happen. We gotta figure out how to make this tool work for us.
- [01:46]
Jon Favreau
Because we can't just shut it down.
- [01:47]
Ben Rhodes
You can't just shut it down.
- [01:48]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [01:48]
Ben Rhodes
2011 was a hinge point. And ever since then, the business model of these companies, which is more clicks equals more ad revenue, was seen as just the opportunity that it is by the far right or by the autocrats, that if we can just generate more content, we can both manipulate these algorithms to have our content front and center and we can also kind of divide, demoralize small D democrats everywhere.
- [02:13]
Emma Ilic
Foreign.
- [02:19]
Jon Favreau
I'm Jon Favreau and you Just heard from the one and only Ben Rhodes, Pod Save the World co host, New York Times bestselling author, and my Obama speechwriting partner in crime. For about six years, Ben spent a lot of time thinking and writing about the impact that the Internet and social media have had on democracies and autocracies. And he always has something smart to say that's usually grounded in the experience he has talking to activists and political leaders all over the world. Somehow he's also found the time to add the occasional New York Times column to his prodigious content output. And his latest is about yet another problem that's been made worse by phones and feeds. It's titled How Short Term Thinking is Destroying America, he writes. Donald Trump's rise depended on the marriage of unbridled capitalism and unregulated technology, which allowed social media to systematically demolish our attention spans. An experience of shared reality. Trump declares victory. The camera focuses on the next shiny object. Negative consequences can be obfuscated today, blamed on others tomorrow. We are all living in the disorienting present, swept along by currents we don't control. A perfect conversation piece for this show, and Ben and I covered it all, including how we got here, how we get out of this disorienting present, and what's required of the Democratic Party to have help make it happen. It's the type of conversation Ben and I have had almost every day for years now, so we figured we'd do it in front of the mics. For anyone who wants to listen, here's Ben Rhodes. Ben, what's up? Hey, it's good to have you on.
- [03:49]
Ben Rhodes
It's great to be here.
- [03:50]
Jon Favreau
It's wild that this is.
- [03:51]
Ben Rhodes
Long time. First time.
- [03:52]
Jon Favreau
I was going to say it's wild. This is your first time, considering you and I talk about the themes of the show on a daily basis. And you've also written several books that delve into the impact of social media and the Internet on democracy, which is a big thing we talk about here. Yes, but we finally found a great hook, which is your most recent New York Times piece on how short term thinking is destroying America. What inspired the piece?
- [04:17]
Ben Rhodes
Two things inspired the piece. I was on a vacation, a rare vacation for me, and during this vacation, the big beautiful bill passed and the United States bombed Iran, which I don't even really get into in the piece, but got me thinking, you know, because my brain started to churn and the big beautiful build's obvious, right? Like we are, you know, giving trillions of dollars away to people Right now to kind of juice rich people and the stock market while saddling, you know, our future generations with tremendous deficits and debt. And also, like, and we can talk about this, but probably putting at risk the dollar being the world's reserve currency, all these things. But then bombing Iran, I kind of watched the predictable news cycle reaction to this of like, did we obliterate the sites or did we just damage the sites? And no consideration as to whether this is a smart long term move, right? Whether this incentivizes Iranians to get a nuclear weapon someday, Whether every other country in the world that might think about getting a nuclear weapon is like, huh, the way to not get bombed is to get a nuclear weapon. And the complete absence of that perspective, never mind the question that we had a pretty successful coup in Iran back in 1954, and lo and behold, it led to this Iranian revolution that produced this Iranian government. So I started to think about how short term American thinking has gotten, both in terms of policy and in terms of politics and news cycle, right? And then I was thinking about the fact that I'd gone to a screening for Eddington, my favorite movie of the year. And I know you've covered this, talked about it, but like, in Eddington is the ultimate example of Americans who are just completely living in their phones to the point that they just can't even consider that the things that they are doing are, you know, potentially destroying their future. And at this screening, the director was there, Ari Oster was there, and the data center image, right? So while these people are destroying this town, destroying their own lives because of QAnon, because of black Lives Matter, because of all these different conspiracy theories online in the backdrop, there's just a data center that's getting built, and that's all that really matters. And I went up to him after, I said, you know, that's such a powerful image to me because it summed up this short term, long term thing, right? That because of social media, because of the Internet, because of Donald Trump, because of all these reasons, we can barely think past tomorrow. And yet there are these mega forces, whether it's climate change or AI or, or the kind of dissolution of the global order that are actually going to determine the long term future. And so that was like the jumping off point to me of like, I want to unpack this in a, in a piece for this kind of monthly, calm eye for the Times.
- [07:00]
Jon Favreau
And I'm sure he told you, because he told me here that it was very intentional. Like, that's exactly how he was thinking, yeah, when he, when he, when he chose the data center as sort of this like background thing that like people weren't really talking about was just like. But it went through the movie.
- [07:13]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah.
- [07:15]
Jon Favreau
So it is funny too, you mentioned bombing Iran because like even the simplistic question of did we obliterate it, did we not? That was like a controversy for a couple days and there were a couple reports and I'm like, I, I'm like, did we obliterate? I don't even know. I feel like in this Trump term, the episodes of America are getting even shorter than they used to be, which I guess is fitting because no one watches long anything anymore. But it does feel like we're just, we're just moving on to the next thing. Like we can't hold on to anything for more than a couple news cycles.
- [07:49]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, that's right. And that's why this is like a great offline topic. Right? Because some of this is a Trump or policy critique.
- [07:56]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [07:56]
Ben Rhodes
Like we don't plan for the future anymore.
- [07:58]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [07:58]
Ben Rhodes
We're not planning for AI. How are we going to regulate that? How are we going to protect our economy and jobs against that? How are we going to protect our security against that? We kind of gave up on climate change. Like even Democrats barely talk about it anymore. Like we kind of get gave up on these long term issues. But what was interesting in writing the piece and connecting it to Eddington at the beginning was realizing it's much, much bigger than a political problem. It is a societal and cultural problem too. And our brains have literally been reprogrammed to think about the next post or the next thing I see on my phone and that you can be completely consumed with the question of whether Iran's nuclear sites were obliterated or not for like two days. And then when the algorithm just stops feeding you anything about that and Trump stops talking about it, it's like it never happened. It just kind of gets memory hold somewhere. But guess what? In the real world, it doesn't stop. Like, the Iranians are probably rebuilding covertly their nuclear facilities and they have centrifuges out there somewhere.
- [08:59]
Emma Ilic
Right?
- [09:00]
Ben Rhodes
And so just because we're not looking and just because social media has captured our attention so comprehensively and kind of shortened our attention spans and capacity to like think about long term issues, it doesn't mean they're not happening. And that again, that's the genius of Eddington, that it doesn't mean the data center is not getting built and that AI is not coming for your Job, you know, and if you think social media was disruptive, wait till AI, you know?
- [09:23]
Jon Favreau
I know.
- [09:24]
Ben Rhodes
And by the way, just one funny. I think I told you this, but it's worth sharing. In the screening I was at. You don't even have to see Eddington to think this is funny. It takes this kind of bizarre, dark, violent turn in the last third of the movie where there's like huge shootouts and kind of almost comical violence. And I don't think I'm, you know, betraying any confidence that Bill Hader was at this screening and he was laughing in that, like, Bill Hader way, so uproariously, which was funny because, like, people are getting, like, massacred. But it's like Barry. If anybody watched Barry, like, I went.
- [09:55]
Jon Favreau
To the, to a premiere with my brother and the two of us were laughing through most of the movie and a lot some people weren't. And I think they were like taking something like they didn't get the joke, but it was just, it was like skewering everything about our society right now. So you and I have, have joked and complained, I think, as recently as this morning about the tendency of a lot of Democrats to call everything Trump does a distraction.
- [10:18]
Ben Rhodes
Yes, yes.
- [10:19]
Jon Favreau
You know, and you get to something in your piece that I think is underappreciated, which is that whatever Trump's intentions may be to distract or not to distract, we are an easily distracted country and our phones and feeds have, like, have made that even, even harder to focus on anything that he does for more than a few days. And like, I don't want to blame everything on technology, but I do feel like Trump or no Trump, I don't know how any society maintains a functional democracy in this information environment. It does feel to me like, like if we don't solve that, it doesn't matter if we get rid of Trump or not. Like, we're always gonna have this problem.
- [10:56]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, the point I make right in the piece is that Trump is the ultimate short term guy, right? He wants the next news cycle, he wants to dominate that news cycle. It's not about distraction. It's things he's doing, it's being the center of attention. It's kind of commanding the conversation. And Democrats are stuck in this trap where we have to respond to what Trump does, and we should, but that means that we're not kind of putting forward any kind of long term vision. But like, to, to, to answer your, your very smart point with like a story of my own, I remember I was at, you know, I'll admit, one of these kind of conferences where different people are brought in and meant to talk about different things. And they had a dinner and we were talking about AI And I said, hey, I think. And this is like a, you know, two, three years ago. I was like, I think we're underestimating how disruptive this is going to be. This is going to make it, you know, it's going to disrupt our economy. It's going to create these new security challenges with deepfakes and all these things. And this other guy chimes in, he's like, you know what? That's not true. You know, people said the same thing about the Internet, and the Internet didn't destroy our democracy. Like, we were able to absorb that. And everybody kind of went on as if that was true. And later in the dinner, I was like, can I just go back to, like, something that guy said? Because actually, I think the Internet did destroy our democracy. But what's interesting about it is I think particularly Lyfters of offline can accept the fact that the Internet has kind of fundamentally broken something in our democracy. It's, you know, social media algorithms have sorted us into these fractured realities. Traditional media that offers context has been destroyed, all the rest of that. But because it didn't happen like overnight, it's like that guy. Like, we don't think of that as having happened. It took like a decade for the Internet to break American democracy, but it did. And I think this is the challenge for us. And it's going to get even harder with AI because these things don't happen on our short time attention spans. We don't notice. I mean, this is the cliche would be the frog boiling. We don't notice that the democracy has been destroyed until after it's been destroyed. And now we're looking up and we're like, how do we get here? My last book was about the rise of authoritarianism. And I remember I sent it to our old boss, Barack Obama, and he read the book and it's about basically the authoritarian playbook in Hungary and Russia and the US And China. And I was like, what do you think? He's like, well, it's pretty dark, you know. And I was like, you know, it's pretty dark out there. And he goes, I want you to think about something. I want you to think about what's different now. There's always been a competition between democracy and autocracy. There's always been nationalism. The forces you talk about as you Kind of do your revision, think about what's different. And what I realized is what. What's different is the Internet and social media. And without the Internet and social media, there is no Donald Trump. There is no capacity for Vladimir Putin to just kind of completely dominate the information space in Russia the way that he does. There's no capacity for this playbook where you use the tools of the Internet either for surveillance purposes or for just kind of demoralization and dehumanization purposes or trolling purposes.
- [14:00]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [14:01]
Jon Favreau
And.
- [14:01]
Ben Rhodes
And that's the new factor that tipped the scales in the direction of authoritarians. It gave them this tool that they didn't have. I often think about the fact that more people thought Barack Obama was born outside of the United States at the end of the Obama administration than the beginning. Well, why is that? That's not just because the Republicans are crazy. That's because they had the Internet where you could mainline these conspiracy theories. And so I think we have to come to terms before we can fix democracy with the fact that it's technology that broke it.
- [14:31]
Jon Favreau
I think it's a. It's especially hard for us to realize this because I think there's a human tendency to not want to believe that technology or our information environment is affecting us in a way that it's like that. Like, we like to think that propaganda works on other people, that it doesn't work on us. And I kind of think there were, you know, there was a. An emphasis for a while in the first Trump era about misinformation. And, and the, and the theory was, okay, a bunch of right wingers or people who are vulnerable to this. And, you know, there's a tendency to think, oh, not smart people, they'd go on the Internet, they'd find conspiracies, and then these dummies would buy the conspiracies, and we just got to fix the misinformation. But it's not just about. I mean, misinformation is a huge part of it, and we don't have shared reality anymore. But. But it's also like, it is changing our brains. And, like, every one of us is vulnerable to this. And we don't like to admit it, we don't like to see it, but our attention spans, we're more distractible. We can't focus on things. And I do think it's a more invisible force for people to say, oh, yeah, this feed that I'm going every day, it's just about other people that it's screwing up. It's not about me?
- [15:44]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, I think we have a problem as human beings in that we equate technology with progress.
- [15:52]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [15:52]
Ben Rhodes
So we see new innovations as inherently like a progressive force, not like a politically progressive, but like a. We're making progress as a species because we invented this new technology, whether it's the Internet or the phone or AI.
- [16:07]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [16:08]
Ben Rhodes
And we don't consider the ways in which technology might actually not be progress.
- [16:13]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [16:13]
Ben Rhodes
That's, that's the first point. Like, so we miss that. I think you're dead on in the sense that I remember talking for my last book to, to Maria Raisa, someone you know, I know we've talked about as potential offline guests, but she has this whole presentation about. We have not considered the manner in which our brains as a species have literally been reprogrammed in the last decade by the Internet and phones, that if you are staring at a device enough, if you're consuming information in such a different way than human beings have consumed information for thousands of years, inevitably you're actually kind of reprogramming yourself to have that shorter attention span, to seek that dopamine, to sort into tribes, to dehumanize the people you disagree with. All these different ways in which these technologies are changing us. And the last thing I'd say that makes you fully appreciate this, John, and I know you. I'm curious your experience of this having kids really drives us home because my kids are 8 and 10 wonderful, smart, good people. And it's scary when you see, when they're on the iPad for too long, they literally change.
- [17:31]
Jon Favreau
They become irritable.
- [17:32]
Ben Rhodes
They become irritable. They come anxious when you take it away from them. They're kind of out of sorts for like an hour. And it's like watching an experiment and they're less able to do a puzzle or play a board game. And so all these different ways we have all this information, all this evidence now that this is not progress, not for individuals, not for children, and certainly not for the body politicians. And yet we've done nothing to meaningfully put guardrails around this or to think about the ways in which, hey, we can't fix our democracy. HR1.
- [18:12]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [18:12]
Ben Rhodes
Like, sure, I'd like to see additional voting rights protections, but for some reason, we don't think about, like, regulation of social media as part of fixing democracy. We see it as kind of a tech issue.
- [18:23]
Emma Ilic
Right?
- [18:23]
Ben Rhodes
And in fact, it's both a societal, political, economic. It's connected to everything.
- [18:30]
Jon Favreau
Well, I mean, I think some people on the left have, have Decided to make getting the phones out of the classrooms and banning the phones. Yeah, like, it's a right wing issue and like, kids need the phones. The darkest thing is, like, the kids need the phones in case there's a school shooting, which is like, is the phone going to help the, in the, in that situation? Like, no. And some, a lot of police officers, law enforcement will say no. It's actually harmful to have a bunch of people calling at that time. But also, like, it's a tough one too. My view on this with my kids is it's impossible to just get the screens away from them. Right. Like, that's just, that's not plausible. I try to watch with them. So I'm talking about what we're watching together. And it's why I've been fucking building I don't know how many Lego sets with Charlie, because I'm like, okay, if we're building Legos together, then he's not watching the screen and we can talk while we do that. But I also feel like I'm just sort of, I'm like treading water on this because at some point, I mean, you know, your kids are a little older. Like, at some point I'm just gonna have to let go and they're gonna have their screens.
- [19:30]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah. You know, this is something I'm curious your take on, because I was thinking about this in doing, doing my own research.
- [19:37]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [19:38]
Ben Rhodes
But you're right, like, it's a losing battle ultimately. Cause guess what? Their friends have screens. So even if you had like a no screen policy, they're gonna go to their friend's house and. And then they're mad because their friend is playing some video game and they want to play it and all these things. So it's more about a management issue. But I've seen in the research that at least, and I've tried to explain to them the value of story.
- [20:03]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [20:04]
Ben Rhodes
Like as part of what the information that they're consuming. And same thing with us. It's lost story. You know, like if you are looking at a post, if you're looking at a tweet, if you're looking at even a short YouTube clip, that's not using that muscle in your brain of digesting a story. And actually if you were to extrapolate out from that to the broader national identity, and I mentioned this in the Times piece I wrote, we have no shared national story anymore. I remember growing up, there was a pretty clear story about America and not just about history, but about like where we were. Like, we were for these values. You know, like we were for freedom and open societies and democracy. And we had a villain. It was the Soviet Union. And the Soviet Union was for communism and autocracy and these bad things. And look, it was obviously like any story like, you know, had some truth, but some, you know, we weren't always the good guys and the Soviets weren't all bad. But actually it helped impose a values construction where I had something in common with somebody from West Virginia.
- [21:15]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [21:16]
Ben Rhodes
Like we watched Rocky IV and we felt the same emotion, you know, like we were participants in the same story. And the Cold War was really fundamental to that story. And I kind of have one theory of everything, that when we lost that story, like we kind of turned into like fighting each other. The enemy to the, certainly to the right wing in this country, the enemy became the enemy within instead of, you know, for a little minute there it was the terrorist overseas. But then we got bored with that because we weren't winning those wars. And so the enemy in the war on terror almost became you and me and libs and immigrants and George Soros and all these other villains on the right. But I think technology has deprived us of any sense of a shared national story. And if you don't have a shared national story, I mean, a lot of the policies that guys like you and I like that are going away, like research and higher education and usaid, these are all Cold War constructions. Civil rights was a Cold War policy. I mean, let's face it, it was not just the moral authority of that. What even Martin Luther King understood and the appeal he made to Kennedy was how are we going to win the Cold War if we're hypocrites and we're saying we're for freedom abroad and we're against it here. And I think part of the reason why it's so easy for Trump to dismantle all these things is because there's no buy in to a long term national story.
- [22:39]
Jon Favreau
Well, and what he's targeting, universities, science, these are all institutions that try to discover and amplify the truth. Yeah, right. And he doesn't want to share truth. Yeah, right. Like authoritarians don't want. That's that truth that's threatening to them. Offline is brought to you by naked wines. You need naked wines.
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Ben Rhodes
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Jon Favreau
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Ben Rhodes
That's a good deal. Good deal.
- [23:29]
Jon Favreau
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Emma Ilic
Yeah.
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Jon Favreau
And you just, you just say what kind of wine's your favorite? So I, I'm a Sauvignon Blanc guy.
- [23:37]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah. That's how I, I got Sauvignon Blanc, too.
- [23:39]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. I think we, I think. I think you were in here.
- [23:41]
Ben Rhodes
So we said about.
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Jon Favreau
Yeah, for all of us.
- [23:42]
Ben Rhodes
I don't really know much about. About wine. I know there's white and there's red.
- [23:45]
Jon Favreau
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- [24:35]
Andy Richter
Hi there, it's Andy Richter, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast, the three Questions with Andy Richter. Each week I invite friends, comedians, actors and musicians to discuss these three where do you come from, where are you going, and what have you learned? New episodes are out every Tuesday with guests like Julie Bowe and Ted Danson, Tig Notaro, Will Arnett, Phoebe Bridgers, and more. You can also tune in for my weekly Andy Richter call in show episodes where me and a special guest invite callers to weigh in on topics like dating, disasters, bad teachers, and lots more. Listen to the three Questions with Andy Richter. Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [25:22]
Jon Favreau
Do you have thoughts on. Because I think about this all the time. When we were in the White House, first couple years, social media was going to help democratic movements all over the world. Arab Spring, I'm thinking of, you know, and also in Iran, Right. And we were like, excited that Twitter and other platforms like that were going to help bring down authoritarians. How did it go from that to becoming a tool for authoritarians to suppress, confuse, divide their publics?
- [25:54]
Ben Rhodes
So I have a very specific answer to that, and it comes from my national security perspective. And I this. I kind of really spent some time on my last book too. But essentially the high water mark, I think, for social media was 2008 to 2011.
- [26:10]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [26:11]
Ben Rhodes
So 2008, Obama gets elected, and it's in part because of the Social Media 1.0. Right. Facebook is essentially a connector, right? Like our organizers can use it to, like, meet up with each other, essentially.
- [26:21]
Emma Ilic
Yeah.
- [26:21]
Ben Rhodes
And then we. What you saw is this tremendous momentum into the Arab Spring, where social media is suddenly being used not just to organize people, but to broadcast protest, to get the eyes of the world on Tahrir Square in Egypt, right? To hold dictators to account. So if there's an effort to kind of quash the protests, the whole world sees it, and the world is outraged and other citizens are outraged, and the crowds grow in the streets and you start dictators starting to fall, like Mubarak in Egypt, but others in the Arab world. And I honestly think that in 2011, at the height of the Arab Spring, that the autocrats were like, we can't let this happen. We gotta figure out how to make this tool work for us, because we.
- [27:12]
Jon Favreau
Can'T just shut it down.
- [27:13]
Ben Rhodes
We can't just shut it down.
- [27:14]
Emma Ilic
Right?
- [27:15]
Ben Rhodes
And there I think you see a very concerted effort again with Vladimir Putin at the vanguard in Russia and the Chinese Communist Party doing their own flavor of this in Beijing, essentially saying, we gotta get our arms around this thing. And so all of a sudden, you know, the Chinese had already built what was called the great firewall, where they kind of walled off the Internet in China, but they're like, wait a second, maybe we want people to be on platforms because then we can monitor everything that they do.
- [27:39]
Emma Ilic
Right?
- [27:40]
Ben Rhodes
And so the Chinese kind of pioneer this form of mass surveillance where they're like, we're going to basically kind of make it known that we're going to see every post. And this is our tool of actually thought control. Because if you're thinking and self censoring about what you might say on social media, you're beginning to change how you think, because you're just certain places you don't go, right? But then what Putin starts to do is he's like, wait a second. This is the perfect tool of disinformation. And I think What Putin was the first to figure out, but right wingers in this country and other places soon after found out, is that these algorithms are manipulatable. Because if I flood content, I can manipulate the algorithm to thinking that content is more important. And when this really struck me was in 2014 or 15, there was a plane that was shot down over Ukraine, right? So the Russians had already kind of had their Russian backed separatists in Eastern Ukraine. They moved some military advisors in there and a Dutch plane was flying over Ukraine. It was MH17, I remember, and it got shot down. And it was very clear that the Russians did this or the Russian backed guys because it was right above the area where they were operating. But the Russians had so many bots creating so much information on every platform that if you searched on Google, like forget Twitter, if you searched on Google, MH17, all these theories came up. The Ukrainians shot it down. It didn't actually crash. Like it didn't matter that it would be one theory, it just had to be a flood, right? And I realized at that point, like shit, since the Arab Spring height, these guys have figured out how to use these platforms to surveil people, to monitor people, but also to flood them with their content, to divide people, to just create uncertainty, to create a sense of chaos. And I think that that was it. I think after 2011 was a hinge point. And ever since then, the business model of these companies, which is more clicks equals more ad revenue, was seen as just the opportunity that it is by the far right or by the autocrats, that if we can just generate more content, we can both manipulate these algorithms to have our content front and center. And we can also kind of divide, demoralize, small D democrats everywhere and distract.
- [29:53]
Jon Favreau
People with all the information. And they're all just like having a good time on their feeds. I mean you just talking about China versus Russia on this is. It reminds me of like 1984 versus Brave New World, right? Yeah, that 1984 is command control surveillance. We're going to, that's how we're going to control public opinion. And Brave New World is like, oh well, it's just going to be people, people being distracted, doing their own thing, enjoying like the hollowness of life.
- [30:17]
Ben Rhodes
Well, I remember there was like a, I had coffee with a journalist in D.C. like right after the Obama years and we were talking about Russian interference. You know there was Russian interference in election. And I was saying like I realized shit, like they're doing this and this is their playbook and that they're, you know, meant to demoralize people. And then I was like, you know, and I was getting all these death threats online and there are these Russians threatening me. And he said, yeah, and probably a bunch of bots. And I was like, oh, yeah, I guess those were some bots threatening me. And he's like, yeah, to, to demoralize you. And I was like, shit, that's true. That. And that worked.
- [30:59]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [30:59]
Ben Rhodes
You know, I got, I mean, I got. I mean, you know me, I put on this kind of brave face and. But underneath it, I'm a softy, right? Like, I was sad, like about the mean things people were saying, but I realized having coffee, this guy, like, I've been sad probably because of non human beings criticizing me online.
- [31:16]
Jon Favreau
Well, and like, it doesn't even have to be bots at this point now though, right? Because if some rando on Twitter who you don't know what their name is, you know, they just have some random Twitter handle and they've got like 10 followers and they're going back and forth with you and they're saying mean things, they could be a real person and not even a bot. And you're just like, now this has ruined my day, this random person. Yeah, it's like we're all susceptible to it.
- [31:41]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, yeah, we're all susceptible to it. And it affects us, like, emotionally and psychologically. And again, just to kind of connect it to where we started. Like, what you're not doing is thinking. You're not thinking, like, what are the best long term policies for this country? What's the story that we can all get behind? What's not just like the tactic to win the next fight in the news cycle or the next online fight, what's the vision that people are going to get behind?
- [32:06]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [32:06]
Ben Rhodes
It traps you in this loop of caring about things that when you really think about it, are not that important.
- [32:13]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [32:13]
Ben Rhodes
Like the outcome of the Twitter fight is not that important. The news cycle is less important than climate change or AI. The fact that Trump, even from our perspective or ours being the left, like, the fact that he walked funny across the red carpet is not really as important as, you know, him validating Russia's annexation of Ukraine. Like, we just get so focused on these small things that we don't think about big things.
- [32:44]
Jon Favreau
I've been thinking about this a lot because I'm like, I almost need one document that is a story of what has happened since Trump took office again. And if you were to write that story for history so that people can understand what the big things were. What would you put in there and what wouldn't you, you know, and like, I don't know that I'd put the Epstein files in there. Even though we've talked about it for. It was probably one of the longest running stories. But, like, compared to what's happening with ICE raids and rounding up immigrants and the tariffs and everything else, like, these things that are gonna have huge effects on millions of people, you're like, oh, that actually helps you weed up. But we don't have big stories anymore.
- [33:27]
Ben Rhodes
I mean, if you think about it, in 10 years or 20 years, right, the complete failure and refusal to regulate AI in any way, shape or form is going to have mattered. And like, Biden was building regulations, certainly on how it moves out in the world, but also how it's used here. Those have all been lifted, right? That's why those guys were at the inauguration. That's why Sam Altman announced like, what, $500 billion in maybe not real investment in the U.S. but whatever. We have dismantled any climate action in this country, right? No regulation. Literally a finding that greenhouse gases don't pose a threat to public health.
- [34:08]
Emma Ilic
Right?
- [34:08]
Ben Rhodes
That's going to matter, right? Usaid, which seemed like this, kind of like, wow, well, we could look up in 20 years and maybe tens of millions of people would have died. So if you just value human life, that's a big story. But then, yeah, you get into the big beautiful bill, and even there's the Medicaid cuts and the cuts to nutrition assistance, which are going to be profound. There's also just. We may be looking up in 20 years. And the entire global trading system is geared towards China because they're a predictable trading partner and we're not. And the US Dollar is no longer the reserve currency, which means Americans cannot afford to borrow. I mean, America is running a credit card. That's how we pay for things. We spend more money. And I'm not just talking about the deficit. I'm talking about individual Americans ability to afford goods at the prices that we pay, that we already think are too high are because of the dollar being the reserve currency that could go away. And suddenly, I don't know if it's the RMB or the euro or the Swiss franc or the yen or some amalgam of them. But these are the structural things, the climate, technology, the lives of people through usaid, the way the global economy works, you're like, never mind what's happening, whether we have a democracy at all. And that's where ICE raids and having a kind of SS type ice police force here. Those are tectonic shifts that are happening and yet we kind of consume them as these short term, you know, news cycle things that we engage with, you know.
- [35:44]
Jon Favreau
More of my conversation with Ben Rhodes after this break. But first, two quick housekeeping notes. America's labor fight began long before Starbucks and Amazon and was a lot more violent in season two of Shadow Coal Survivor host Niccolo Minoni looks back at one of the most infamous and gruesome labor crimes in American history in the band of kids who took over the country's richest union and transformed America. With exclusive home tapes, original reporting, and firsthand interviews with those who lived it, this season reveals how a union meant to protect workers became their greatest threat. Listen to the trailer now on the Shadow Kingdom feed and tune in to the premiere on August 25th. Wherever you get your podcasts or better yet, Friends of the Pod subscribers can listen to the full season of Shadow Kingdom on the 25th. Join Friendsofthepod@crooked.com friends or subscribe through the Shadow Kingdom Apple for feed. Also, in case you missed it, Crooked subscription content is now available on Substack. If you're already a subscriber, don't worry, this won't change anything for you. But if you love using Substack and prefer accessing things there, you can now find Crickets content on Substack. When you subscribe, you'll unlock ad free episodes of your favorite Crooked shows like this one, plus exclusive content like Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer for expert insights into the polls and media and more perfect perks. It's one more way to stay up to date on Internet culture, insanity and the latest developments in AI. We're everywhere you are, so you can subscribe on the platform that works best for you. Visit qriket.com friends to learn more. Offline is brought to you by Acorns. Acorns helps you grow towards the money goals you have today and the ones you'll have tomorrow. Acorns is the financial wellness app that helps you invest for your future, safer tomorrow and spend smarter today. Acorns makes it easy to start doing more with your money. In fact, you can start automatically investing with just your spare change. You don't need to be a finance whiz. Acorns puts your money into an expert built portfolio to make sure you're investing wisely, not wildly. Plus, Acorns can support your money goals in life. A new car, a first home, investing for your kids, saving up for retirement and so much more. Acorns even has a checking account account that automatically invests for you, an emergency fund that grows your money and it's all in one easy to use app. Very important to invest and plan financially. Wish we had Acorns when you know, I was just a kid out of college and didn't really think about putting any money away at all.
- [38:10]
Ben Rhodes
You know, I didn't know anything about this stuff.
- [38:12]
Jon Favreau
Me neither. Now Acorns can just pretty much do it for you. And it's super helpful. Sign up now and Acorns will boost your new account with a $5 bonus investment. Join the over 14 million all time customers who've already saved and invested over $25 billion with Acorns. Head to acorns.com offline or download the Acorns app to get started. Paid non client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns tier 2 compensation provided investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor view important disclosures@acorns.com offline sometimes an identity threat is a ring of professional hackers, and sometimes it's an overworked accountant who forgot to encrypt their connection while sending bank details. I need a coffee and you need Lifelock because your info is in endless places. It only takes one mistake to expose you to identity theft. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second. If your identity is stolen, we'll fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year at lifelock.com specialoffer turn terms apply this brings me to another concern I have, which is I worry that the politics of short termism are more attractive and they're easier than trying to get people to care about a future that they cannot yet see. And, and so even if you take the technology out of it, climate change, the debt and deficits, AI now even in sort of a more short term context, the Medicaid cuts from the big beautiful bill, you know, they cynically push them out until after the election.
- [39:54]
Ben Rhodes
Yes.
- [39:54]
Jon Favreau
So it's, it's like harder for Democrats to run on. And you know, we've been on campaigns and we've seen polls and every time you ask people to try to sacrifice now or think about the future, that's always a bigger loser than elect me and I'll immediately give you a tax cut or a rebate or I don't know. We passed the Affordable Care act and it wasn't popular for three or four years because it took that long to get it together and implement it, you know, and so I do wonder how Democrats and just the larger opposition to Trump sort of counter the people's instincts to not want to think long term, or at least to say they want to think long term, but not really vote like they want to think long term. Like, it feels like a hack that Donald Trump and his movement have really figured out.
- [40:41]
Ben Rhodes
It is a hack. And I don't claim to have the answers to this, and I really struggled to suggest some answers. The answers I suggested, first of all, it was easier to get people to think long term again when you had a long term proposition like the Cold War. So the era that the Republicans are currently undoing is still the Kennedy Johnson era, right? Because you had civil rights, you had Medicaid, Medicare, you had. But also the space program, you had uscid, you had the Peace Corps. These are all long term investments that were somehow tied back to, again, to the Cold War. It helped that you had a very charismatic young leader who presented it. And this, I do think, applies today. Kennedy sold it and Johnson passed a lot of it.
- [41:27]
Emma Ilic
Right?
- [41:27]
Ben Rhodes
But in selling it, one thing Kennedy did do is he brought everybody. It was not just government. It was like a mission that the whole society needed to participate in. You know, we need universities at the table. We need business and labor to figure out, you know, how to do this in the economy. We need the best researchers and scientists from around the world to come do this with us. Like, we need culture, right? We need. I mean, that's why there's a Kennedy center, right? But, like, I do think Democrats have kind of narrowly become a party of Washington and they're not kind of wrapping their arms around allies who have interests, you know, universities, businesses, they actually do think somewhat longer term.
- [42:11]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [42:12]
Ben Rhodes
And so by enlisting allies who are not just, you know, and this is like, I criticize Biden, where, like, even the things I liked that he passed, it was like the parts were like more than the sum. There was no vision communicated. There was no sense of national or societal mission. Even when they tried in the context of a campaign to sell it, they called it Bidenomics. Talk about an exclusionary story. So let's put aside the kind of vanity involved in that Anyway, so I do think you need to kind of make it feel like it's not just a Washington game. And Trump does this too, by the way. Like, you know, he's got different people at the White House every day. Like, I think we need to get back to, like, you know, big national goals that we're enlisting, you know, other people in. And not just that we're passing bills in Washington.
- [43:03]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [43:04]
Jon Favreau
But I also think, I mean, you just said it like, I think we need charismatic leaders.
- [43:09]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah.
- [43:10]
Jon Favreau
And I realize that, you know, we are not in an information environment anymore where, like a charismatic leader giving a big speech is even gonna get through to a lot of people. But. And I know there's always this debate about, you know, is it the movement or is it the leader? Like, what's more important? And, you know, there's a lot of no one's coming to save us and we all gotta do it ourselves and we gotta work together. And I totally believe that. But I do think the technology and the information environment have made actually having a charismatic leader who can break through so much more important than it ever has been.
- [43:45]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah. And first of all, I think that's right. I think the leader has to be younger too, because you can't be future oriented with like Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer. And no offense, this is not me even rehashing that they could be different people with different names. But I just think you need younger people. I highlighted Zoram Hamdani in my piece. And again, I'm not trying to wade into some left center, left fight. What I am saying is let's just kind of look at what this guy's done that's interesting.
- [44:10]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [44:12]
Ben Rhodes
He's broken through.
- [44:13]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [44:14]
Ben Rhodes
He is young, he's different. He's doing politics in a different way. I think there's something also that's important for Democrats to think about, which is particularly when we're trying to come up with ideas. You and I talk about this all the time. We skip ahead to debating, like the final points of the bill we would pass through Congress.
- [44:33]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. You know, like 10 debates on the finer points of Medicare for all.
- [44:38]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah. Medicare for all or housing policy. And not just like, what are the goals? Like, what are we trying to do here? So what a charismatic leader can do is articulate what the big goal is. Like, what is, you know, what is the priority? Like, what do we want people to think about when they think about our party?
- [44:55]
Emma Ilic
You know?
- [44:56]
Ben Rhodes
But then I think the other thing about Mamdani that's interesting is I think cities are increasingly going to be these laboratories for trying out policies that you scale and policies for how you deploy artificial intelligence, policies for how you have low cost clean energy solutions, policies around affordability. So I'm not saying every idea he's proposed is right. But the point is, if you see Something that can work. The Democrats should be getting ideas from outside of Washington and like, hey, here's a story that we can tell about how this policy worked in this place. And we want to scale it up, you know, because we try to kind of develop our policies in, like, think tanks and, you know, in Congress. And I think that that's the wrong place for them to originate, you know, So I think you need younger, charismatic leaders. You need kind of this kind of whole society view of. Of how to work for the future. And you need to kind of find solutions outside of Washington and try to, like, build out, like, California state legislature.
- [46:06]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [46:06]
Ben Rhodes
Does a lot of interesting fucking things. You know, our Buffy Wicks is, you know, on tech, regulation, housing, on energy and housing, like, make, you know, Sacramento being a lab. That's a cool idea that, you know, you can then try to grow those ideas.
- [46:21]
Jon Favreau
You mentioned that Mamdani, like, went out into the communities. You know, it's interesting because it's almost a. It's a fusion of sort of old school organizing and meeting people and talking to people and campaigning with technology. The technology we have, not the platforms we wish we had, but what we have. And so it's like he's going out there, he's talking to people, but then he's broadcasting that to everyone from his channels. And I do think that this is a problem with a lot of the older politicians, but it's not just their age. They grew up in politics at a time where you could be separate from the people that you're trying to get the votes from, and you could be behind the podium and you could be looking like you're, you know, you're wearing your suit, you're all official and stuff like that. And, I mean, you run television commercials, right? And I think that, you know, one thing even I think Trump did well in the first term is like, Trump being on Twitter all the time. It's like, oh, he's communicating constantly. And now there's obviously bad parts of that. Not just for the content of the tweets, but I think there is an expectation now by voters that if you're going to lead us, you have to be talking to us all the time about everything. Yeah, I think that hurt Joe Biden.
- [47:35]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [47:35]
Jon Favreau
I think it's hurt a lot of other Democrats, too, who are great leaders, have great ideas, but if you're not out there talking about them in a way that is, you know, authentic and can connect with people, then, like, that's it. No one's gonna listen to you.
- [47:50]
Ben Rhodes
It's game over. Yeah. Yeah. I think. What? Look, two things. I mean, the first is Viktor Orban, you know, the autocratic right wing CPAC darling leader of Hungary.
- [48:02]
Jon Favreau
He was gonna host the Trilat.
- [48:04]
Emma Ilic
Yeah.
- [48:04]
Ben Rhodes
Oh, shit.
- [48:05]
Emma Ilic
Yeah.
- [48:05]
Ben Rhodes
That's a real home game for Zelensky.
- [48:07]
Jon Favreau
Right.
- [48:08]
Ben Rhodes
He was a prime minister Hungary once before, Right. Pretty conventional center, right guy. And then he was voted out in 2002 and he was in the wilderness for eight years. And he did these things called civic circles, where he built a new identity for his party by going out, not just him, but organizers and having these meetings in communities about identity, like, what is Hungarian identity? What do you care about? What do you want this party to stand for? And he did it in churches, he did it in communities, and very grassroots, bottom up stuff. So that by the time he ran this populist campaign as a more populist right wing, autocrat type guy in 2010, there was this bottom up buy in. He'd been out in the communities kind of listening and like, like I was saying, like developing a laboratory for his ideas. I think Democrats have to do something similar where they're just getting out in communities listening to people communicating, not from Washington, but out in the country. But to your point, to give a specific example again on Mamdani, did you see the video of him when he was still a nobody at the halal cart?
- [49:13]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [49:14]
Ben Rhodes
So Zora Mamdani is at the halal cart and he's trying to explain to New Yorkers why like, chicken and rice cost over 10 bucks or something and it never should. Now, there are two things that are interesting about that. One is I'm a New Yorker by birth. I'm there a lot. I'm struck by the fact that it's like 15 bucks for chicken and rice at the cart. And yeah, any New Yorker has been like, why the fuck is it so expensive? But secondly, he just explained it like this, in a very snappy way about where all these costs were coming from. And he had the visual of being at the halal cart with some guy who runs the cart. And I was like, and this again, no offense, because I did these conference calls when I was in the White House as the expert. But that was 100 times more impactful than our friend Brian Deese as National Economic Council director doing a press call to explain why supply chains had driven up costs.
- [50:08]
Jon Favreau
And that's a great example because it's also not really an ideological example in that he's a democratic socialist, but it turns out it's an abundance type reason. And one of the things he's like, he wants to make it easier to get permits if you're running the halal card. And that's crazy. And so it's like it doesn't even have to be an ideologically, you know, left or center left or whatever policy if you can just explain it like a normal fucking human being.
- [50:33]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah. So there he is, he looks like a normal guy. He's with a cart vendor who's a normal guy. He's using the new technologies, right? This is gonna be on TikTok, it's gonna be on Instagram. And he's explaining things to people in ways they can understand. And he's talking about things that anybody can understand, like why the fuck is the chicken and rice so expensive? And there's policy solutions that flow from it, right. And that's getting in the communities, finding the solutions in the communities. Right. So his solutions are informed by. And this is something Democrats don't do a good job. You have to show that your solutions are informed by the conversations that you have. You did this very well with our old boss in 2008 and I learned a lot about speechwriting from you. Much better to use a story that Obama learned on the campaign trail from when he's running for president. It was like, I met this person and she had these healthcare problems and her costs were like this and I'm going to fix it like that. That's so much better than just saying we must fix healthcare and here's my five point plan. And then even when we were in the White House to remember, we used the letters that we got because he didn't get out there that much. But it was like, I got this letter the other day from this woman and she has these preexisting conditions and therefore. But like if you root it as Mamdani did or Obama in like a real world example that people can understand, and then the solutions flow from that and by the way, they become long term solutions.
- [51:57]
Emma Ilic
Right?
- [51:57]
Ben Rhodes
Because you know, the solution to lowering the costs are usually fixing some structural things that will open up a long term space, you know, but you gotta.
- [52:06]
Jon Favreau
You just gotta center people in this. Because I think the whole, you know, interminable debate about like, should we be talking about democracy or not democracy? And they're like, people don't really care about democracy. It's because the way the language we use about it, people can't see themselves in it. They can't see how it affects their lives. And I believe that having a Functioning democracy is very important to people's lives. But that means it's on us to describe why. That's true.
- [52:32]
Ben Rhodes
But it's also just like. It might even be simpler than that, John, in the sense that one thing Trump done that we should copy is in our party, there's democracy issues, there's domestic policy issues, there's foreign policy issues, and they're all, like, siloed out, right? So we're either going to have a message on healthcare today, and then we're gonna have a message on, like, voting rights, and then maybe we'll allow the foreign policy nerds. Trump. It's all the same. It's all about identity. And there's no kind of real difference between these deals he's doing over here or there. Like, we have to blow up these silos because all these things are connected, right? Like we were saying earlier, like, technology is connected to democracy. And look, our ability to solve problems is connected to democracy. So I think we have to just break down these walls between these different issues and just see them as, what's your vision? What are you trying to do? You know, because, like, yeah, like, if you're trying to actually fix healthcare or energy in this country, you're going to have to get money the fuck out of politics, you know, and so repealing, you know, Citizens United is not about, like, good government. It's about, like, standing up to oil companies and special interests and all the things that were in the 2007 Obama speech, you know, like, that works politically, Right? And, you know, Chris Murphy does this and Ro Khanna does this, but, like, so there are people doing this in the Democratic Party where it's like, let's just stop separating out these issues from each other.
- [54:03]
Jon Favreau
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- [54:07]
Ben Rhodes
Huge fans.
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Jon Favreau
I have a Zebiotic story.
- [54:09]
Ben Rhodes
Oh, hit us with the jam.
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Jon Favreau
We had the. The crooked summer party. Oh, yeah, we did a couple Fridays ago and it started at 5:00pm yeah. And did that for a couple hours. Went to a bar afterwards to meet some people. Forgot my zebiotics.
- [54:26]
Ben Rhodes
Oh, no.
- [54:27]
Jon Favreau
And talk about a rough next morning. I had a rough next morning, a rough next afternoon, a rough next into the next night. And I never have rough next days.
- [54:37]
Ben Rhodes
At our age, it's like, oh, today's Friday. You want me to have a rough Sunday? You know, that's what you're talking about.
- [54:45]
Jon Favreau
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Ben Rhodes
That's why they say it.
- [54:48]
Jon Favreau
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- [55:41]
Andy Richter
Hi there, it's Andy Richter, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast, the three Questions with Andy Richter. Each week I invite friends, comedians, actors and musicians to discuss these three where do you come from, where are you going, and what have you learned? New episodes are out every Tuesday, with guests like Julie Bowe and Ted Danson, Tig Notaro, Will Arnett, Phoebe Bridgers, and more. You can also tune in for my weekly Andy Richter Call in show episodes, where me and a special guest invite callers to weigh in on topics like dating, disasters, bad teachers, and lots more. Listen to the three Questions with Andy Richter wherever you get your podcasts.
- [56:29]
Jon Favreau
Well, I'm thinking about what you said earlier, how everything sort of broke down. We stopped having a national story.
- [56:35]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah.
- [56:36]
Jon Favreau
And so I gotta end with the recent J.D. vance speech at the Claremont Institute that both of us have become obsessed with, in part because, you know, he basically makes the argument that being an American shouldn't be about believing in a set of ideals like the ones laid out in the Declaration of Independence, that we're all created equal, but being American should be about who your ancestors are and how long they've been here. And you know, I asked Pete Buttigieg about this on Pod Save America because I genuinely Think that Democrats finding an answer to that argument, which is not just a J.D. vance argument, but an argument of the new right, of the new nationalist right in this country, is going to lead us towards that sort of coherent vision for the future that you've talked about. Have you thought about, like, what that larger American story might be updated for, like, where we are in 2025?
- [57:31]
Ben Rhodes
I mean, I don't claim to have the answer to this, you know, but I'd offer again a couple of thoughts, suggestions. The first is, like, we have to remind ourselves that as dominant as Trump is, this guy is not permanent. He's 79 years old, by the way. Even if the absolute worst case scenarios happen, it's still not permanent. Right? Like, there will be another side to this thing, whether it's in three years or even if literally the horrible things happen, there's still another side to it. So you gotta be thinking about these things, right? To the J.D. vance point, I think that, look, there's a meta answer and then there's more of a political answer. The meta answer is there's always been two stories fundamentally in America that go back to the founding. And you and I have talked about this a bit, but like, J.D. vance's story is actually not a new one, Right? This is a country for certain people, and they're white people. It's a white Christian nation, and other people can participate, but they kind of have to accept that that's kind of the basis of how this works.
- [58:32]
Jon Favreau
You know, the treatment of Native Americans, of Catholics, of early immigrants. It's all there.
- [58:38]
Ben Rhodes
It's all there. We've acted out that story for most of our history, right? Then there's Barack Obama's story is the progressive story that runs all the way back to the Founding Fathers. Benjamin Franklin's view that the answer to what was wrong in the Constitution was the Constitution. The more perfect union answer that the Trump version of American exceptionalism is we aren't exceptional, we just are inherently exceptional. What we do is right. To J.D. vance's point, I'm sure he could construct a narrative where we are the inheritors of Western supremacy. Not even saying white supremacy. You could say that if you want, but more like Rome to Britain to us. You know, like, we are the strong heroes of these traditions and of Christianity, and if we do it, it's right and we are exceptional. And I truly think they believe that the Obama story, which is a story of the Kennedy family and the kings and FDR and the progressive movement and Frederick Douglass and Reconstruction and Lincoln and back to, I think Benjamin Franklin is the exceptionalism is the pursuit of the more perfect union and the pursuit of a multiracial composite nation.
- [59:43]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [59:43]
Ben Rhodes
Where essentially we are enriched and stronger because basically we are the place that welcomes all strivers. And now that's not a political message. I would argue whatever the answer is, this future point has to come into it because their message is inherently about the past. It's about going back to something, make America great again. There was this time in the past that was better. You had a better status or you had a more secure job, or some of it's race, but some of it is economics.
- [60:14]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [60:15]
Ben Rhodes
Or some of it's societal. But people kind of sense that these guys want to roll the tape back. They don't have answers about the future.
- [60:21]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [60:21]
Ben Rhodes
Democrats are better when we're the ones saying this is a nation about the future. This is a nation that's going to win the future. To use one of our many campaign slogans.
- [60:30]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [60:30]
Ben Rhodes
But to make it more tangible. I think what everybody feels on left to right is that there are these forces kind of crushing our lives and they're big, out of our control forces. Tech companies and oil companies. And if you're Trump, the deep state, there's just this top down pressure and suddenly the future looks scarier than the past. And that's why Trump's winning the argument. The past looks safer than the future looks and I think you need an infusion. I won't even say Obama because we're so partisan, but this is what John F. Kennedy came along and said. There's a new frontier. Like we are going to go there. And I think though this one needs a little populism. Say we are going to smash that power structure. We're not going around it, we're going through it. We're going to smash the grip that these people have in our lives. Bernie's term would be oligarchs, but it's more just like the Brexit slogan was great take back control, but that was a reactionary one. I actually think there's a take back control of the future. We are going to smash the forces that are suffocating us and, and we are going to find the answers to why technology is going to work for us and we're not going to work for it, for why we can have a clean energy transition that lowers cost for people instead of being trapped in these higher energy costs in a fossil fuel economy that is going to have a safety net that's not just about protecting these old programs, but we need a new safety net that works for the way in which people live and work in the 21st century. I think the message has to be about both, like, breaking through these forces that are, like, crushing us, but reclaiming the idea that there's a new frontier.
- [62:07]
Jon Favreau
Well, it's also, how are we going to do those things? How are we going to get to that future? We're not going to get there. If we are isolated from the world, if we are isolated from each other, if we are at war with each other all the time, if we are divided all the time, if we're just going to bitch and moan and yell at each other and dunk on each other and have all these fights, and that's not going to be progress. We're not going to get there. And by the way, like, for, you know, again, because you have to, like, appeal to people's self interest. Like, you might think that you are, you know, rich enough or well off enough or well educated enough to escape the consequences of the short term thinking of the politics that Trump's. But, like, it's going to come for us all.
- [62:52]
Ben Rhodes
It's going to come for us all.
- [62:53]
Jon Favreau
And if it's not, and it's going to come for our children.
- [62:55]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah.
- [62:55]
Jon Favreau
And so if we don't find a way to live together in a country that was founded on the proposition that we are all created equal and not on the proposition that you get a leg up in the, in this society, if your ancestors were here and fought in the fucking civil war on the wrong side, then, like, we have to get our shit together and we have to, like, be a pluralistic society. Because when we have worked together in this country, that is when America has been at its best.
- [63:27]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, Yeah, I completely agree with that. And you need to be able to live with some discomfort to get there.
- [63:31]
Emma Ilic
Right.
- [63:32]
Jon Favreau
Like.
- [63:32]
Ben Rhodes
Like, because it doesn't just mean accommodating views you disagree with, but it means, like, standing for something in ways that can motivate people beyond those who already agree with you. And, like, look, it's not a coincidence. If you look at the last 50 years, let's not count LBJ, because I'm not sure he would have gotten elected without tragedy. And then you got Biden, which is kind of. That 2020 election is a weird one. I'm not sure he wins without Covid. You know, Kennedy, Carter, Clinton, Obama. These are young outsiders. You know, you need that young outsider coming in and making that case for the future and making that case for we are going to care about things and stand for certain values, but not in an exclusionary way.
- [64:17]
Jon Favreau
Right. And they were all anti system.
- [64:20]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah.
- [64:20]
Jon Favreau
In a way they had elements of that reform, like let's, you know, not as much as like smash the oligarchy, but, but, but they're elements.
- [64:27]
Ben Rhodes
They weren't scoldy to their opponents. They didn't say before you can come on my team, I need you to admit that you're racist or you're this. They'd say like this country's so great. It's changed before and it can change again. You know, and, and that, that simple idea. But frankly, we haven't tried it since 2008 in this party, you know.
- [64:48]
Jon Favreau
Well, if we can, if we can get off our phones and our feeds, maybe we can do some long term thinking about that. This was fun, man.
- [64:54]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, it's great.
- [64:54]
Jon Favreau
Thanks for doing this. Great as always. If you have comments, questions or guest ideas, email us@offline crooked.com and if you're as opinionated as we are, please rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform. For ad free episodes of offline and Pod Save America, exclusive content and more, go to crooked.com friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. If you like watching your podcast, subscribe to the Offline with Jon Favreau YouTube channel. Don't forget to follow Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok and the other ones for original content, community events and more. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau. It's produced by Emma Ilic, Frank Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. Jarek Centeno is our sound editor and engineer. Audio support from Kyle Seglin, Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Delon Villanueva and our digital team who film and share our episodes as videos. Every week our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.
- [66:25]
Andy Richter
Hi there, it's Andy Richter and I'm here to tell you about my podcast, the Three Questions with Andy Richter. Each week I invite friends, comedians, actors and musicians to discuss these three where do you come from, where are you going, and what have you learned? New episodes are out every Tuesday with guests like Julie Bowe and Ted Danson, Tig Notaro, Will Arnett, Phoebe Bridgers and more. You can also tune in for my weekly Andy Richter Call in Show episodes, where me and a special guest invite callers to watch weigh in on topics like dating, disasters, bad teachers, and lots more. Listen to the three questions with Andy Richter wherever you get your podcasts.
- [67:07]
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