The United States and Britain – two nations divided by a common language, until now. Nish Kumar and Coco Khan connect with Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett and Tommy Vietor to untangle what “chat shit, get banged” means, dive into what we can borrow from each other’s systems and how to turn political outrage into action, and discuss what really happened to the Queen’s corgis. Pod Save the UK launches on the 4th of May, subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts.

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

Nish Kumar Hi, I’m Nish Kumar. I’m a standup comedian and I’m obsessed with two things: politics and myself.

 

Coco Khan And I’m Coco Khan. I’m a journalist who is maybe not so obsessed with Nish, but I do care about politics and figuring out how it can work better for us.

 

Nish Kumar How do you think it can work better for us, Coco?

 

Coco Khan Well, I think we need some solutions.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah. We’re going to talk to some of the biggest experts in our new podcast, Pod Save the UK.

 

Nish Kumar So we we have borrowed this idea for this podcast for the United States, a buy borrow. I mean, wholesale stole. Yeah. And if there’s one thing British people like to do, it’s go abroad and steal ideas.

 

Coco Khan But then we tell them that they liked it was their idea. This is what we’re going to do now, really.

 

Nish Kumar So the the originators of this idea are the hosts of Pod Save America, a group of ex Obama staffers who set up the podcast network that we are now part of in possibly in reaction to finding out they were living their worst nightmare after that in the lead up to the 2016 election. They are Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor and Jon Lovett. Hello, everybody. Hello, America.

 

Jon Favreau Hey, guys.

 

Tommy Vietor Great to be here.

 

Jon Lovett Hey.

 

Jon Favreau This is exciting.

 

Jon Lovett I think if you really were going to do it in the sort of true UK practice, you would come to America, take our podcast, and then put it in one of your museums.

 

Jon Favreau Oh, wow.

 

Nish Kumar You you joke about that. Have you seen Marc Maron recently? That’s because we put him behind glass in the British Museum.

 

Coco Khan He’s just frozen there.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, exactly. We’re coming for Rogan, actually. You can keep Rogan. Yeah, We’re fine with you keeping Rogan.

 

Tommy Vietor Yeah. The supplement bill would be too high for you.

 

Jon Lovett Put him in the ashmolean with the last dodo.

 

Coco Khan Oh, wow. We’re getting some references in here. I’m feeling very threatened.

 

Jon Favreau Yeah, yeah, yeah, where’d you get that from?

 

Jon Lovett That’s right. That’s right. Hey, that’s right everybody. Buckle up. I know three things.

 

Tommy Vietor Just like on the podcast we do.

 

Coco Khan Okay. All right, Well, gentlemen, gentlemen, let’s. Let’s. Let’s cast our minds back at Stink back to 2017, which was only six years ago, which is feels like I guess time really does fly when you’re suffering very deeply. And that was the year that Trump was installed in the White House. And that is when you find gentlemen decided, no, I’m not going to give up on my progressive dreams. No to marijuana farming. No to starting a yoga retreat. I’m going to do politics. So I guess I just wanted to ask, what were you saving America from?

 

Jon Favreau Yeah, I mean, look, in in 2016, we thought that Hillary Clinton’s freight train of a candidacy would win and that podcasting would be some hobby of ours.

 

Jon Lovett But then, much like most trains in America, it derailed.

 

Nish Kumar I think it’s already really impressive that love it. It started with this idea Give.

 

Jon Favreau Us tell me a bit about our We are still dealing with the toxic fumes.

 

Tommy Vietor Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar You guys have come out spicy and I respect that.

 

Jon Favreau Yes. When Trump won, the three of us decided there wasn’t a real counterweight to the Murdoch empire and other right wing propaganda outlets. So we decided to start Crooked Media. And in Pod Save America, which is the podcast.

 

Coco Khan But you must have had an idea in your brain. I mean, I know it’s very I feel like I’m going to say, what were you saving America from? And you’re going to say Donald Trump? And like, okay, yeah, we can accept that. But there were other things there, right? There were other things that were concerning you that were growing. I would just wanted to hear kind of what those things were and how far you think you’ve come.

 

Jon Lovett Yeah, I mean, we like Trump. Trump was a symptom, right, For someone like Trump to get within 100 miles of the office of president meant that a lot of things were broken and we started Crooked Media not because we, like, felt like we knew what needed to happen or even that we had any idea how to save America. It was sort of a joke. The name is supposed to be a joke, but it was that we felt like there were a lot of people trying to figure it out and we thought the answer was going to come from progressives deciding not to give up and not to become cynical, but to turn their sense of frustration and their anger and their anxiety about what was happening to the country into actual positive engagement and activism.

 

Jon Favreau Yeah, I think I mean, clearly you guys have noticed as well, the rising tide of authoritarianism all over the world is pretty scary and has been for some time. And the antidote to that is democracy. But for democracy to work, you have to have people participating in democracy and paying attention to politics. And there’s a lot of good reason for people to be cynical about politics here in the US and all over the world. And so we hoped that instead of another media organization that, you know, kind of fed people cynicism about politics, that we could actually help people understand not just what’s broken, but what they can do to fix.

 

Coco Khan Mm hmm. I hope you’re taking notes, Nish. This is basically a job description. They’re giving us it.

 

Nish Kumar I don’t know. You’re the journalist. I’m just here for my raw sexual magnetism.

 

Coco Khan I see. Okay. So I’ll be sending that to H.R.. Thank you for that.

 

Nish Kumar How important was sort of a it making a kind of solutions based approach, like not just sitting there and diagnosing problems, but actively? I mean, you guys have been involved in lots of different campaigns to get the vote out in various elections. How important is the kind of solutions based focus for you guys?

 

Tommy Vietor Incredibly important. I mean, I think you guys have seen that the Republican Party has an easier job like the Tories do because they can run down government. They can say it’s ineffective, it doesn’t work, let’s just cut taxes, let’s give everything back to the people. And then when government fails because it’s been underfunded thanks to austerity or budget cuts or whatever it is, they say, Aha, I was right, I told you so. I think we’re fighting against Republicans, but also against fighting cynicism that comes from seeing these kind of failures. And we needed to try to find a way to help people think, okay, I have agency here. If I get involved, it will matter. I can actually make a difference, especially if we do it at scale.

 

Coco Khan In the years that you’ve been doing it, what’s been the most surprising solution?

 

Jon Favreau I mean, we have been surprised by how many people have not just listened to the podcast and a lot of our podcasts here, but have signed up for, you know, we have an organization called Vote Save America that’s part of Crooked Media where we sign up people to not just register to vote, but volunteer, knock on doors, make phone calls. And we’ve had like hundreds of thousands of people do that, many of whom have never participated in politics before in their lives, but are now because they are genuinely worried about sort of the direction of the country in the world.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, we’re about to have our first batch of local elections, which voters will have to bring ID to vote in an election, which is the first time that that’s happened. And perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of the ID’s weighted towards ID that is available for people over 60. How much do you think that there is a kind of contagion going on between our two countries and has been for like the last kind of seven or eight years where the sort of conservative parties have kind of been idea swapping?

 

Tommy Vietor Oh, I think there’s a lot of it. I think there is conservative idea swapping in a lot of places, like there’s an organization called CPAC here in the United States where the most right wing sort of faction of the Republican Party gets together and has like a horrible, racist little festival. Once a year. They’ve exported CPAC to Hungary. And I think Viktor Orban might have dropped by. They’ve been doing it in Brazil under Bolsonaro. So I do think there’s a lot of like right wing coordination happening and exporting of, you know, best practices when it comes to culture war or voter suppression or whatever it might be.

 

Coco Khan I would love to say that we’d see that here. But our own Keir Starmer won’t go and join our own progressive groups on this on the picket line when they’re protesting a climate crisis. So I don’t know. It wouldn’t be a fun party, though. Maybe that’s something we could organize.

 

Tommy Vietor Absolutely.

 

Nish Kumar As three people who are politically engaged and interested in global events, I’m interested in your perspective on what you think the UK needs saving from?

 

Tommy Vietor I look over at you guys in your politics. I see a Tory party that is and probably should be reeling after Boris Johnson and Liz Truss and now Rishi Sunak hopefully is on its last legs, but they seem to be deciding, okay, are we going to fully exploit culture war issues like the American conservatives have, or are we going to take a better path? I also see Labor trying to figure out its identity. It seems like they know they’re sitting on the lead and they’re trying to decide, are we going to be big and bold or are we going to be cautious as we go to the next election, when is like May 2024? And then there seems to be this question of like, okay, what are the Lib Dems and what are the Scottish National Party do? How do they play spoiler? And how could that sort of change everything?

 

Coco Khan It’s really challenging time. I mean, I my concern is about whether the Labor Party will lose its kind of core voter. By playing it safe. You know, like in Silicon Valley, it’s like elevate or die. Like playing it safe is is fine. And maybe that will work and maybe that will be enough. But there are outsiders coming up with ideas that are more exciting and interesting. And I don’t think labor can take for granted It particularly takes for granted. It’s kind of like urban young people particularly take it for granted. It’s pack votes. So the play it safe thing, I think you sort of hit the nail on the head. They’re trying to figure out what they’re going to do. I really hope they don’t do that.

 

Nish Kumar There’s been a narrowing in the opinion polls said Labor have have had this huge lead because of the kind of double whammy of Johnson and Truss. And there’s been a narrowing because of a sense that sooner it represents a more competent leadership of the Conservative Party. But he’s still pressing the culture war button over and over again. So we’re currently there’s a big focus on what they call small boat crossings. So boats with refugees in them being people traffickers, bringing those small boats and them landing on British shores. And the use of the phrase small boats has become our version of Trump’s the caravan of migrants that is being driven up to the border. It’s being repeated over and over again. And, you know, there’s also been this emphasis on grooming gangs. And actually Rishi Sunak has kind of is leaning on Suella Braverman, who is the home secretary, who is basically represents the hard right of the Conservative Party. And she has been saying some things that are considered racist by members of the British Conservative Party. And I cannot tell you how far you have to go. Yeah. To be considered racist by a member of the British Conservative Party. But she has sort of she’s saying things that her own office is contradicting in terms of their evidence basis.

 

Coco Khan So, you know, I said to you earlier that I’d like to introduce you to some English phrases, but one I think you should know. It’s a very historic phrase that we use here in Britain, and it is chat shit, get bang.

 

Tommy Vietor I love that.

 

Coco Khan Surprise. It’s true. And well, and I promise, I mean this genuinely. There is a lot of chatting shit in politics, a lot of flagrant lying and not enough getting banged. And I think really the general public and I like is I’m serious. I feel like people need to see some consequences to the constant lies the public can see through it. The small boat thing is a really good example. It plays well with their hard right base, but it’s polling terribly with the public. Same for the grooming gang stuff. Is it’s polling really bad? Not that I care about their polling. I mean, guys, keep lying to yourself. It’s fine. But I do wonder about this, the corrosive element and what it will do to how we do politics. If this is the tactic that we take, we just going to lie, lie, lie, lie all the time. No consequences. Tell you what. Okay, let’s agree. Pod Save, campaign number one, politicians get banged. What do you think?

 

Jon Lovett I think that means something different over there.

 

Tommy Vietor Yeah.

 

Jon Favreau We do wonder about that.

 

Jon Favreau I don’t think there are alot. I mean, well.

 

Jon Lovett Talking, people getting banged is like a good Friday night over here.

 

Tommy Vietor Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar The. The thing that you’ve heard.

 

Jon Favreau How  do you guys mean getting banged?

 

Tommy Vietor Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar It meant something very different when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister. Definitely made something different when he was prime minister. But I think what Coco was saying is there needs to be more public consequences for.

 

Coco Khan Yeah, okay, so get, get, get banged.

 

Nish Kumar Get banged literally means get beaten up.

 

Coco Khan Get beaten out.

 

Tommy Vietor Oh yeah. Yeah.

 

Jon Lovett I see. Well that can be part of it over here too, depending on what you’re interested in.

 

Jon Favreau But I think I think we found an episode title. Yeah.

 

Tommy Vietor When you say poke em in the eye, then fuck em. And I means something very different.

 

Jon Lovett That’s true. I mean. It’s interesting that what you’re saying, that because I think we we went through we have it we have a similar dynamic. We’ve had, you know, they go on about the caravans and there’s meth in the Skittles and there’s all these news cycles over here of conservatives trying to jump drum up fear and get their base all riled up. And actually the press falls for it. There’s a lot of like in, you know, Democrats worrying about how effective it’s going to be. But we’ve had a couple elections where the kind of caravan right wing fear on immigration hasn’t really worked for them when it actually came to the vote. And I wonder if you’re feeling like there’s going to be there’s a similar dynamic hopefully playing out over there.

 

Nish Kumar Well, the concern is yet is it’s polling very badly. And despite the gap narrowing, there’s still a big lead for Labor in the opinion polls. But the concern here is more closer to was something Tommy was alluding to, which is labor needing to be bold, I think. The problem at the moment is it’s very difficult to articulate fully what the Labor Party stands for. And there is a danger in 2010. David Cameron basically sort of ran a campaign against at that time, a very unpopular Labor government mired in the absolute depths of the financial crisis. But he ran a campaign basically on I’m not Gordon Brown, and I’m a cool Tory who likes the Smiths, which later turned out he did like the Smiths, but just sort of Morrissey’s more recent stuff. But at the time there wasn’t any sort of cohesive vision for what he was going to do with the country, and he managed to not win that election like he did win it technically because he entered into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats that ended up being quite sort of politically fraught and damaging. And he basically only got out of it by promising the Brexit referendum. And so the fear here is that it’s possible to win an election and not win an election. And if Labor can’t do enough to animate their base and offer to offer something to the public.

 

Coco Khan Yes.I completely understand why a lot of people feel disillusioned with the Labor Party. I mean, I personally have been very supportive of the strikers. I don’t see why they couldn’t have people in the shadow cabinet sort of stating their support for it. I think this is kind.

 

Nish Kumar Of been gripped by basically a national strike effectively over the last three months, just a string of different industries and all across the public sector at the moment there’s been a junior doctor strike. There’s also been a train strike. So it’s been a really interesting thing to see the Labor Party, which is a party that formed out of the trade union movement, seem to be keen to distance itself from striking trade unions yet again.

 

Coco Khan Going back to the polls, the public tend to support the strikers, particularly when we look around the NHS. I don’t think it’s too much of an exaggeration to say that the NHS is kind of sacred to us. It’s probably the only thing that we have in the UK that we like all agree on. We all like we all want to support, you know, not the monarchy, certainly not Manchester United. That is the one thing we really believe in. And so it has been sad to see Labor play it so safe that they might actually alienate themselves from the people that would ordinarily be on their side.

 

Nish Kumar Is there something we can like? Is there something the Labor Party can learn from the Biden campaign?

 

Jon Favreau Well, listening to you guys talk about this, I was like, man, the similarities between our politics and your politics are striking because the conversation, you know, is the Democratic Party bold enough? Does it stand for anything? Is a conversation we’ve been having in this country for the last 20 years, as long as I’ve been in politics. 200. Yeah. Yeah, right. And there is something about, I think, left, left of center parties all over the world right now where they sort of exist now in opposition to this sort of right wing authoritarian impulse that sort of taking over conservative parties all over the world. And because there’s now such a big umbrella that that that left center, left parties have to like, you know, appeal to so many different people, so many different constituencies, it’s become harder to have an identity with these parties because the right wing parties have like a shrinking demographic of people that they represent. So they’re more homogeneous in their values and their beliefs. And for center left parties, it’s just much more difficult because you’re representing a much broader swath of people.

 

Coco Khan Hmm. I feel like we’re going to end up having the same conversation about electoral reform soon. Do you know what I mean? Do you remember that time when the Conservatives and the Lib-Dems went into bed together and David said, Alright, let’s have Brexit? And Nick said, Only if I get a bit of Avi. And we had that vote in Lost. I feel like actually our system first past the post is maybe at the heart of this problem.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, we have, we’ve got, we’ve got, we’ve got an antiquated electoral system which I don’t know if that’s something you guys can relate to.

 

Tommy Vietor Well yeah.

 

Nish Kumar Anyway, you could meet us half way on having an electoral system that’s not fit for purpose.

 

Jon Favreau That’d be nice.

 

Jon Lovett Well, at least. I mean, you have a you have the ability to have multiple parties, and you can have an election when people really hate someone as opposed to over here. But we have to hate someone for years before we get a chance to vote them out. I actually wanted to go back to your original question about sort of what we kind of observed from over here and what I because you brought up the National Health Service and what I would have said a couple of years ago is one thing that you would hear in the US about about UK conservatives is look how big, how big a difference there is between American conservatives who attack any form of public health care as socialism and conservatives in the UK who, because of its popularity, have to talk about their support for the National Health Service. But it seems like that may be. Changing in certain ways that the sort of the door has been opened up to more kind of ways for for to undermine the National Health Service. And I’m wondering how that’s playing out and whether or not the Labor Party’s taking up that mantle.

 

Coco Khan I mean, how it’s playing out is not very well. It’s playing out really, really badly. Everyone’s very sick that the pandemic was terrible.

 

Nish Kumar It’s not good. And over the winter, because of a shortage of hospital beds, they were treating patients in ambulances in the parking lot, which then led to an ambulance shortage that then led to people, you know, having to wait two and 3 hours for an ambulance. And this is all of this comes back to 13 years of underfunding the service. And they’ve done something very clever where technically they are every year since the NHS has been around in existence, they haven’t received increased funding, which makes sense, right? You have the NHS to keep more people alive. You have to put more money into it. But the Conservative Party did something very clever where they reduced the percentage increase but still technically made it an increase. So they’ve been able to technically say we are putting more money into the health service, but in real terms it amounts to a real terms cut in the funding for the service. So there are all sorts of talk now about the only way to save the NHS is with the involvement of more private companies. Rishi Sunak said that in an interview the potential future to help the NHS will be more involvement from the private sector.

 

Coco Khan I guess the question is whether the Labor Party is the only party that can be trusted with the NHS. When you ask people on the street what you worried about, NHS is number one. Number two is cost of living crisis. I’m sure you’ve heard everything’s in England, it’s very expensive and we have the highest energy costs in the world. I think it might be if you look at the kind of our poorest who are actually better off being poor in Slovenia than in the UK because of the standard of living is so bad and you’ve got the squeeze middle class as well. So those are the things that people really, really care about. Brexit, everyone’s forgotten about, or maybe we’re all just traumatized. We don’t wanna talk about it anymore. And I was curious to what extent. You know, just quality of life, cost of living money, people making money was on the minds of the average working American as well.

 

Jon Favreau Oh, yes. It’s the top issue for most voters. Inflation here is been a problem for the last several years. But the only other couple of issues now that have been competing with cost of living concerns, which are still top of almost every poll, are abortion access. Because we have a right. Supreme Court decided to take that away. And and democracy concerns people concerned about the Republican Party extremism, Donald Trump and and sort of the threats to Democracy Now! QUESTION On your NHS comment, I noticed you shipped your health secretary to a random island in Australia and made him eat bugs as part of a reality show. Was that an effective way? This is Matt Hancock, I believe. Did that help your problem?

 

Jon Lovett You’re still sending prisoners to Australia? I didn’t know that was still going on.

 

Tommy Vietor Matt Hancock is a future prisoner. I certainly an MP.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, I eat. Yeah. What? My family were over from abroad over Christmas, I felt like. And they saw the country in the condition. It was a it felt like somebody who runs into you when you’re drunk and you’re like, Jesus Christ, you did not catch us at our best here. But yeah, and Cook’s, who was the health secretary during the pandemic, whose handling of said pandemic is, I mean, at best questionable. He actually ended up having he ended up having to leave his post because he was caught on CCTV violating social distancing rules by having his hand deep in the ass crack of a lady who turned out to be his mistress.

 

Coco Khan So yeah.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah. So he then.

 

Jon Lovett So were they wearing masks?

 

Tommy Vietor Not where you think.

 

Nish Kumar I think at one point maybe a defense was bandied around. You can’t catch COVID from the I don’t know if you know out I got legally prove that.

 

Coco Khan Amazing. I mean, if you ever get a moment, there’s some really good kind of compilation videos on YouTube. He he he pretty much went onto that show to.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah this is so he went onto a reality TV show called I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, which films in Australia and where they do survivor like tasks where they have to eat bugs and stuff. So all of what you’ve said, dispiriting Leigh, as a British person is 100% accurate.

 

Jon Lovett One thing that was very one thing that I was it was I was slightly jealous of, as you had the scandal around Boris Johnson and social distancing and some sort of a birthday party. And it was just adorable the way people seem to really care. And there were consequences for people’s actions. They they they got banged, as it were. Yes. And because because over here. Because here in the United States of America, our president, Donald Trump, just for soir for swore social distancing while he had COVID tried to kill Biden, nearly took out some of his closest advisers basically on purpose.

 

Jon Favreau And he’s and he’s a coin flip away from winning the presidency again.

 

Jon Lovett And sure, he may end up in prison, but not for that.

 

Tommy Vietor Yes.

 

Coco Khan Actually, it’s funny you guys mention that, because I came across a study recently. It’s only just been released in the UK. They are some Australian social scientists and they compared the impact of lying between America, Australia and Britain. And what they found was that Australians would change their vote if they found that their person lied. British people seem to show the same signs, but not in the States, and I was curious if you felt that to be true.

 

Tommy Vietor That’s really interesting. The three countries you mentioned there, because normally I would blame conservative media, but those are two the three countries that are like owned by Rupert Murdoch. You know, if you look at the sort of Australian newspaper ownership he owns, like, yeah, yeah, two thirds to three fourths of them or something. So yeah, no, I don’t think there’s much of a cause for lying anymore. It’s incredibly frustrating. I think that believing our politicians are dishonest is sort of built in to our political culture. Yeah, it’s a cynicism. And so yeah, it is. It goes back to the cynicism and I think people from both parties and increasingly people who don’t feel comfortable in either party in the United States, which is a growing number of people, just look at leaders everywhere and it’s like, Oh yeah, they lied. That’s not something I’m I’m surprised the facts are getting. Yeah.

 

Jon Lovett And there’s also I’m I also just they’re getting the facts keep getting banged and also the the I really appreciate.

 

Coco Khan You are using that so wrong and I’m really enjoying it. Thank you.

 

Jon Lovett All right. Well, what do you want to do about it? We can you can fight another war, you’ll lose that one too.

 

Coco Khan Oh, gosh. I thought this was meant to be friendly. What happened to this friendly relationship?

 

Jon Lovett These are. These are. These aren’t the Falklands, all right? You can’t just assume you’re going to win.

 

Nish Kumar Aw a Falklands burn. It’s gone deep.

 

Jon Lovett That’s my second one. What I was going to say is your there’s a culture. It seems like there’s a culture war where people are expected to and I. Really take part in really hard questioning. You have question time, you have people bickering and asking each other questions on the floor of the parliament, and we just don’t have that. A lot of our a lot of our especially conservative politicians. They go weeks, months, even years without facing a hard question like nobody. I mean, if you ask Ron DeSantis a tough question, he physically shuts down.

 

Jon Favreau Yeah, yeah, we would kill for PMQs.

 

Nish Kumar Well, well, that leads me on to what I was about to ask you is that one thing from the British political system, If there was one thing that you could import to the states, what would it be? Would it be PMQ’s?

 

Jon Favreau I think it’s very cool that when your party wins, then it gets to implement their agenda.

 

Tommy Vietor We don’t. We don’t have that. We don’t have that here. Like it’s like you don’t, you don’t have like a Joe Manchin or a Kirsten cinema, just like holding up the whole agenda when the entire rest of the party and hanging your agenda. But yeah and you’re gonna still probably not I don’t think that’s right so.

 

Coco Khan This is great.

 

Tommy Vietor Like you have a majority of the country they just they went out they voted they install the government has majority support and then like two senators just hold up the whole thing. I think it’s very cool that you get to implement your agenda if you get with you win.

 

Coco Khan So can I ask you about the special relationship? Not not us, which is obviously on thin ice at the minute with all these Falkland references. You know, it’s.

 

Nish Kumar One more day, by the way, for me restarting the revolution.

 

Coco Khan Do you think it actually exists or is it bigger in our mind than perhaps yours?

 

Tommy Vietor I think it exists. I think there’s no country with which, you know, lawmakers are closer than the US UK relationship. And that goes sort of like down the chain. There’s like intelligence sharing, there’s conversations, state visits, etc.. I think it’s a real thing. I will just say that. And Tommy says that as the person who’s responsible for moving the Churchill bust out of the Oval when Obama was president, that was Tommy. Oh, yeah. I will say that your media, for some reason just surfaces every insecurity possible about this, I guess, in service of like damaging Barack Obama at the time. But like, yeah, worrying about a bust or whatever. It was very stupid.

 

Nish Kumar A local politician said that it was because of the and this is his specific words, the part Canadian president’s ancestral dislike of the British Empire. You know, we did to that man. We made him prime minister.

 

Jon Favreau I recall. I mean, you know, we did make it up to you guys because Barack Obama did give the Queen an iPod. All’s well that ends well. Oh, what.

 

Jon Lovett What do you get the woman who stole everything?

 

Coco Khan I always felt that the whole thing.

 

Jon Favreau God rest her soul.

 

Coco Khan Was like that, that the Americans say that to like every girl. You know what I mean? That’s how we always found.

 

Jon Lovett There is there is a video compilation of President Obama in various meetings in the Oval with different prime ministers and leaders from around the world saying, wow, Denmark, you really punch above your weight. It’s great to be here with it’s great to be here with the leader, leader of Poland. Poland really punches above its weight. Everybody punches above their weight when they’re visiting.

 

Tommy Vietor Let’s see how special it is. Would you guys trade Trump for Boris straight up?

 

Coco Khan Well, I mean, actually, the thing about Trump is that if he was our prime minister, he would be so repugnant to everyone, he wouldn’t last long. So it might be quite kind of strategic to swap.

 

Jon Lovett Wishful thinking.

 

Jon Favreau Like us in 2016.

 

Jon Lovett It must be like it must be nice thinking that.

 

Coco Khan We already have it. We already have The Apprentice and it’s Alan Sugar. I mean, what else can I give?

 

Nish Kumar I’m less. I’m less sure about that. I think that like having seen the Conservative Party line up behind any leader possible, I’ve got absolutely no confidence that if we swapped Boris for Trump, everything wouldn’t have happened exactly the same. But I think, you know, this is as good a place as any to wind up on, especially on the subject of countries, the punch above their weight and speaking as a country that is punching well below its weight. We thank you very much for your time. God bless America, I guess.

 

Jon Lovett Sure. And right back at you.

 

Coco Khan I’m so, so touched that you didn’t mention the monarchy once. I was dreading it.

 

Jon Favreau I know. I was waiting.

 

Nish Kumar I kind of laugh about how they gave the Queen a fucking iPod.

 

Jon Lovett I do not. I do not understand how you tolerate those people having all those rooms in Buckingham Palace. Get them out and turn it into apartments. It’s enough.

 

Nish Kumar But the problem is, if if we got them out and remove them from apartments because of the location in central London, we’d be trading our royal family for the Saudi royal family.

 

Tommy Vietor We got we got one last message for you guys.

 

Coco Khan Okay.

 

Joe Biden Hey, Nish and Coco. It’s Joe Biden. Here’s the deal. I was actually part of the original Boston Tea Party and threw your shitty piss water into the harbor myself. But let’s let bygones be bygones. I just wanted to wish you the best of luck and apologize for Lovett making fun of your racist museums.

 

Coco Khan How did you get to do that?

 

Tommy Vietor Took a lot of work to get that from Joe. Because he was in Dublin.

 

Jon Lovett Yeah. But he did a voice memo.

 

Coco Khan I really hope they auditioned people for that. That’s what I want.

 

Tommy Vietor That’s AI Joe Biden.

 

Coco Khan Okay. Yeah.

 

Jon Favreau Tommy’s the best practitioner of Joe Biden messages in the country right now.

 

Tommy Vietor The only pitch I got, I’m an aging knuckleballer.

 

Jon Favreau We are so excited for Pod Save The World. This is just. It’s going to be very, very exciting.

 

Jon Lovett And this was great. This was fun.

 

Jon Favreau This was fun. We should do this more.

 

Jon Lovett We should do this more often.

 

Tommy Vietor Truely. Misery loves company. You know what I mean? Like, we’ve all been living like a parallel nightmare.

 

Jon Lovett Next time you vote to sever ties with Europe or something, we should get together.

 

Nish Kumar I think the next vote is us voting to leave the earth’s crust.

 

Coco Khan I’m really winded by this attack. These attacks. I’m not. I’m not even. I wouldn’t even consider myself a nationalist. I’m getting ready to send this to MI5. What are we going to do about these people?

 

Jon Lovett Hey, question for you guys. Did they find a new home for the Corgis or bury them in the pyramids? Like she’s the pharaoh?

 

Nish Kumar No, the corgis go in with her. Did you not know that?

 

Coco Khan She is recently deceased, Jon.

 

Jon Lovett Okay.

 

Coco Khan Did you know that? Right? We don’t speak ill of the dead.

 

Jon Lovett Yeah. May her memory be a blessing. Whatever.

 

Tommy Vietor Prince Andrew got the Corgis.

 

Jon Lovett Oh, really? Yikes.

 

Coco Khan To hear more from Jon, Jon and Tommy. Subscribe to Pod Save America.

 

Nish Kumar Pod Save the UK is a reduced listening production for Crooked Media. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. First episode drops on May the fourth.