Former President Barack Obama’s suggestive hand gesture when talking about Donald Trump’s obsession with “crowd size” at the DNC was improvised “in the moment” according to his former speechwriters, who took a break from hosting their podcast Pod Save America, to work with him on it, they revealed on Wednesday.
“I should disclose, once a staffer, always a staffer, I volunteered to help a little, look at the speech a couple of times,” Jon Favreau said during a podcast episode recorded just after his longtime boss left the stage Tuesday night before Dan Pfeiffer, former communications director for Obama, confessed that he helped out as well.
“Dan included the d— joke,” Favreau then joked, before clarifying that the hand gesture, which most viewers seemed to believe was a not-so-subtle reference to Trump’s manhood, was not in the script.
“Just so you all know, that was just in the moment,” Favreau continued. “He just put his hands on the podium.”
“Or maybe he knew all along that that was a d— joke and nobody else did but him,” Jon Lovett, Obama’s go-to joke writer during his time in the White House, added.
On a more serious note, the hosts said they found Obama’s address to be among the most “persuasive” of the speeches at the DNC so far, because it didn’t “operate from the assumption that the only thing that keeps people from voting for us is ignorance,” as Pfeiffer put it.
“Everyone is someone we have to persuade. And if they don’t agree with us—and they don’t have to agree with us on everything—but the reason they don’t agree with us is not because they’re wrong, or they’re stupid, or they don’t follow the news, or they’re ignorant, or they’ve been hoodwinked,” but because “something in their lives has not worked out the way they wanted.”
Favreau also praised both Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama for treating Trump like a “clown” and a “fool” in their speeches. “The way to go after the supposed strength of an autocrat or a strong man is to just make them seem foolish” he said, “because they hate getting made fun of.”
For more, listen to Jon Lovett on The Last Laugh podcast.
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