The Pod Save America host Jon Favreau has taken issue with those criticizing his podcast for welcoming on Kamala Harris’ campaign aides for a post-mortem interview that evoked more excuses than responsibility taken.
The New York Times’ political reporter and podcaster Astead Herndon got into a tiff with Favreau on X after the former responded to a widely-criticized clip from the podcast and wrote, “A good ad for the importance of independent media.”
Favreau, a 43-year-old former speech writer for Barack Obama who co-founded Pod Save America, didn’t care much for that comment. “You ok?” he responded to Herndon. “Have you not gotten enough credit for breaking the news that Joe Biden is old?”
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Herndon, 32, shot back: “You’d think you’d have more shame, but I understand this is just like a game of sims for you.”
That last message was echoed across social media on Tuesday after Pod Save America released its hour-and-a-half interview with Harris advisers David Plouffe, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Quentin Fulks, and Stephanie Cutter.
The interview revealed some interesting nuggets about the campaign. That included the revelation that Harris’ internal polling never showed her up on Donald Trump in key states and that Harris had an interview offer to Hot Ones rejected by the show.
Much of the podcast, however, was lined with back-patting by the aides and excuse-making, critics noted. That included Plouffe detailing the “headwinds” the campaign faced by taking over from an unpopular Joe Biden so late in the cycle. Critics also pointed out that there was no mention of how the Biden administration handled conflicts abroad and how that may have swayed swing voters.
Perhaps the moment that drew the harshest criticism in the interview came after Plouffe, an architect behind Barack Obama’s election wins in 2008 and 2012, asserted that Democrats must “dominate the moderate vote” in future elections.
“I think as we look ahead to ‘26 and ‘28, particularly where you have seen drift amongst non-college voters generally, particularly those of color specifically, we obviously have to get some of that back,” Plouffe said. “We can’t afford any more erosion there. The math just doesn’t f---ing work.”
Plouffe was criticized on social media for lecturing Democrats on how to move forward so soon after he was a top figure involved in Harris’ sweeping electoral defeat.
It was that comment from Plouffe that Herndon responded to initially, sparking his beef with Favreau. In other posts Tuesday, Herndon suggested that Democrats were beating around the bush when addressing what went wrong on Election Day.
“It’s fine to argue Dems don’t need to big message changes but I think squaring that w/ results also requires believing 1) Harris was a uniquely bad candidate OR 2) Biden put Dems in a uniquely bad spot. It can be message or messenger or process but can’t be none of the above,” he wrote.
Herndon also called out Pod Save America for being too slow to point out that Joe Biden’s age was an issue back in late June, after his disaster of a debate with Trump.
“You guys couldn’t seem to acknowledge it until waaaaay too late,” a commenter wrote to Favreau on X. Herndon then responded to the critique, “That’s what I’m saying! If it was so obvious then what was taking them so long.”
Some criticized both men for being petty. That included the YouTuber Hank Green, who tagged Favreau in a post to his 1.5 million followers to assert that the X beef was below him.
“I have heard a lot of people say we need to stay out of this kind of non-constructive conflict and I feel like one of those people is you,” Green wrote.
Favreau then conceded he maybe shouldn’t have engaged with Herndon’s criticism.
“Fair!” he responded to Green. “I’ll admit I was caught off guard by a NYT journalist I barely know attacking our media company but I should’ve known so engage with him.”
