Transcript:
Colin Seeberger: Hey everyone, welcome back to “The Tent,” your place for politics, policy, and progress. I’m Colin Seeberger.
Daniella Gibbs Léger: And I’m Daniela Gibbs Léger. Before we dive into today’s episode, we first want to acknowledge the tragic floods that swept through Texas at the end of last week. Our hearts go out to the victims and their families, and we wish those communities all the best in their recovery.
Seeberger: Absolutely, Daniella. As a parent, the tragic loss of life of those young campers at Camp Mystic is just heartbreaking and really, I mean, a parent’s worst nightmare, right? These extreme weather events, they seem to just keep getting worse and worse. And I think that really should compel all of us to recommit to doing our part to limit their impact.
But on a more hopeful note, I heard you also had an interesting conversation this week.
Gibbs Léger: I did, Colin. I got to speak with Jack Cocchiarella, a political commentator who’s one of the leading young voices online. We talked about the current media environment, what young voters are looking for, and how the left can break into these conservative-dominated media spaces. Here were some of his thoughts.
Jack Cocchiarella: We’re always chasing how to go viral, but what does that mean? A lot of people think that virality is, “OK, my posts got 50,000 likes.” 50,000 likes is huge. You get a video, it’s got a million views, that’s incredible. The next step in that is demonstrating that the video you created, the content you’re producing, the messaging you bring has value outside of itself.
Seeberger: I look forward to listening more. But first, we have to get to some news.
Seeberger: So you may have heard, listeners, Daniella has been enjoying a much overdue and well-deserved and hard-earned vacation.
Seeberger: But while she was gone, you may have caught wind, Daniella, that Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—
Seeberger: —his radical budget and tax plan—into law last Friday, on July 4, after congressional Republicans pushed it through at breakneck speed. He did so officially enacting what are the largest cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in history, all to pay for tax giveaways to those at the very, very top.
Seeberger: While this bill’s egregious cuts—many of them are set to take place after the 2026 midterms.
Gibbs Léger: Oh, wow. Why’s that?
Seeberger: How convenient, right?
Seeberger: Yes. That said, Americans are going to start feeling the impacts of this legislation over the next few months. Immediate SNAP work requirements are going into effect that could make food inaccessible to hundreds of thousands of people, including parents just trying to raise their kids. And that’s only going to make it harder for families to put food on the table at a time that groceries are already squeezing so many.
By the fall, those shopping for health care plans on the ACA [Affordable Care Act] marketplaces are going to be staring down massive premium increases because congressional Republicans refuse to extend the enhanced premium tax credits.
And if you’re like me and have been putting off replacing your HVAC for some time, well, you better get on that because you have only until the end of the year because congressional Republicans wiped away the tax credits available to people to make home upgrades. And so, all of that combined with the cuts to the clean energy tax credits that were helping grow American-made energy supply is only going to result in people paying more for utility bills.
And you take all this together with the fact that they did all this to cut taxes for rich people and still happen to explode the debt by roughly $3.5 trillion, which economists predict is going to cause interest rates to spike, which is only going to cost people more to borrow money for a home or a small-business loan.
It’s really ironic when you think about it because Donald Trump ran on lowering prices for everyday Americans this past election cycle, and yet he and his Republican Party have come to Washington and are doing the exact opposite. They’re driving up the cost of living at the same time they’re making life easier on heirs of multimillion-dollar fortunes. It’s grotesque.
Gibbs Léger: It absolutely is, Colin. And like you mentioned, Republicans are trying to hide their actions by delaying the implementation of benefit cuts. But we’re already seeing the consequences of this bill come to life, and I don’t think voters are going to fall for it.
So health care providers have already announced that they are scrapping plans to reopen a shuttered rural hospital in Martin County, North Carolina. A rural clinic in southwest Nebraska also announced it is closing because of the bill’s historic cuts to Medicaid. So we’re not exaggerating when we’re saying that this bill is an existential threat to rural hospitals because we’re already seeing this threat play itself out in real life.
And that’s why I think Republicans have created a really big political mess for themselves. And let’s remember that when Donald Trump and congressional Republicans tried and failed to repeal the ACA way back in 2017, voters did not like that.
Seeberger: No, they didn’t.
Gibbs Léger: And they went to the polls the next year and elected a Democratic House majority and elected a Democratic Senate just two years later. So fast forward to today, Republicans have now succeeded in enacting the largest cuts to Americans’ health care in history. As you said, it will cause about 16 million people to lose their health care coverage. This bill is going to close hospitals, it’s going to jack up costs, all while giving tax rates to America’s wealthiest. Good luck running on that in 2026, guys.
Seeberger: Hell of a sales pitch.
Gibbs Léger: Yeah. And we know that Americans are still learning about all the awful bits and pieces of this “big, beautiful bill” and what it means for them. So folks on the left, they have to hold Trump and Republicans in Congress who voted for this thing accountable every single day.
Gibbs Léger: So every time there’s a line going down the street at a food bank because of the bill’s cuts to SNAP, that’s because of Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s Big Beautiful Bill. Every time a health insurer or a utility company announces that they’re increasing rates, that’s the Big Beautiful Bill in action. Every time a hospital closes, say it with me, it’s because the Big Beautiful Bil..
Seeberger: The Big Beautiful Bill.
Gibbs Léger: Exactly. Poll after poll shows that when Americans learn more about what’s in this bill, they absolutely hate it.
Gibbs Léger: So communicators have to get out there and just constantly harp on this. And especially remind our friends in the media that when these things start happening, tie it directly back to the passing of this bill.
Seeberger: That’s exactly right. And we have to make sure that the people who voted for Donald Trump understand just how much he’s betraying them, right?
Seeberger: Like, the people who are going to be most harmed by this are working-class people. People who may be hourly workers, may be just scraping by, because they’re the ones who are going to lose their health insurance. They’re the ones who are going to lose their food assistance.
And so this notion that Donald Trump is some populist figure, working-class champion for the Republican Party, that’s baloney. Donald Trump is a faux populist. He campaigned on a litany of populist promises like, “make America affordable again” or “don’t get the U.S. embroiled in conflicts overseas,” right?
Seeberger: Yeah. Instead, he walked us to the brink of a major foreign conflict by conducting a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities that experts think set their nuclear capabilities back only a few months.
And then thanks to his tariffs and his economic agenda that just passed in Congress, Trump’s making prices more expensive, not less, for everyday Americans. He even restored weapon shipments to Ukraine the other day. I don’t know whether you caught this.
Seeberger: After suggesting he’d leave Zelenskyy out to dry. America first.
Let’s not forget, he repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he’d end the war in Ukraine on day one back in January because of his good relationship with Dictator Vladimir Putin. Suffice to say, that’s not panned out.
Seeberger: Nope. And his Justice Deportment just earlier this week announced that they’re closing investigation into the Jeffrey Epstein files, which, there’s an absurd conspiracy theory around his death in jail that Trump and many of his own senior administration officials peddled for years, including the attorney general, Pam Bondi.
Seeberger: And so look, Daniella, the MAGA base is livid. And frankly? They have every right to be.
Gibbs Léger: They should be. Look at their false king. These are big promises that he made to his coalition, promises that got people to vote for him.
Gibbs Léger: And he’s done a complete 180, and he’s completely abandoning his positions.
Now, we know that Donald Trump isn’t exactly a details guy, but you’ve got to wonder: Are there schisms that are opening up within the MAGA coalition? Are they good? Are they permanent? Are they here to stay?
I don’t know, but it certainly seems like they are growing. You know it’s bad when you have everyone from Steve Bannon to Laura Loomer to Joe Rogan criticizing your policies and your decisions.
So again, the job for the folks on the left is to use these divides to drive home again how Donald Trump is not delivering on the issues that people care about. He’s not delivering on the things that he promised to deliver on during his campaign.
Seeberger: Like protecting Medicaid, right?
Gibbs Léger: Yeah, for example.
Seeberger: And that was the thing that distinguished him as a Republican candidate, right?
Gibbs Léger: Right. He’s like, “We’re not going to touch Medicaid.” Again, my poor Donald Trump impersonation. Instead, he’s doing the opposite. He’s making it harder and not easier to get by. If Democrats offer a strong alternative that will actually address people’s problems, I think that that will be a compelling message that can resonate with people in the 2026 midterms.
Seeberger: I think you’re totally right. I mean, for Trump, it’s Trump first, families last, it seems, which is just such a shame. But with that, that’s all the time we have for today. If there’s anything you’d like us to cover on the pod, hit us up on Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky, and Threads @TheTentPod. That’s @TheTentPod.
Gibbs Léger: And stick around for my interview with Jack Cocchiarella in just a beat.
Gibbs Léger: OK, so before we begin, how do you pronounce your last name? And I will say that I grew up in Verona, New Jersey. Extremely Italian town.
Gibbs Léger: My next-door neighbors were the Cocchiarellas.
Cocchiarella: They really were?
Cocchiarella: So we say “Cocchiarella.” I don’t know why. I don’t know what led us to that pronunciation, but that is the way that I’ve always been told to relay it. But I always say, anyone who can make the attempt, anyone who can try—I’m probably saying it wrong, they’re probably saying it wrong back home in Florence. There is no right way. It is—my last name is the friends we made along the way. That’s what it’s all about. So in any way—
Gibbs Léger: I love that.
Cocchiarella: —anyone wants to try, but I say Cocchiarella, and I’m glad I can get that on record because I get so many comments below my videos of people asking, and I don’t just want to be like, “So Donald Trump is crashing our economy, but before we get into that, here is my last name. Because this is the really important breaking news that we need to get into.”
Gibbs Léger: Exactly. Let’s get this correct right now.
Cocchiarella: Let’s get it out of the way before we get into 25 percent tariffs on the penguins.
Gibbs Léger: Well I’m glad we could clear that up. My maiden name is Gibbs. It’s spelled with two Bs in the States, but in the islands, where my parents are from, it’s one B, or it’s two Bs and the ES. And I’m like, how? What?
Cocchiarella: It does make name-searching myself very easy when I want to go to Twitter and see how people are feeling about the videos. I don’t run into any problems there. So that’s the only upside of it, I guess, besides the fun pronunciation battle.
Gibbs Léger: Well, there you go. All right.
Jack Cocchiarella is a political commentator and strategist. He’s the host of the “Jack Cocchiarella Show,” and his YouTube channel has amassed more than 1 million subscribers. He graduated from Columbia University this spring and just moved to D.C.
So Jack, welcome to D.C.!
Cocchiarella: Thank you so much.
Gibbs Léger: And welcome to “The Tent.” How are you enjoying our humidity?
Cocchiarella: I am, as a Floridian, very disappointed in myself that I am unable to escape it. You would just think that being able to do my show from anywhere, I would pick a better location as of now. But I’m braving the heat, and it really helps with all the studio lights in my very small room where I shoot my show.
It’s what it was like when I was doing my 200-square-foot dorm room, slash studio, slash workspace, slash space to study in New York. And it was during the summertime. Then it was really bad with all those lights. But with the hair that I have, I’m getting through it best I can.
Gibbs Léger: Well, listen, we have two to three weeks of great weather in the fall, so we can look forward to that. So tell us your story. You just graduated from college. You already have a million subscribers on YouTube. Take us back to what first got you into political commentating, and how did you turn that into what is now a full-time job?
Cocchiarella: Well it is a long but also shortened story. When I think about the fact that when I woke up this morning, I saw I had a missed call from my mom. I was like, “Oh no, what’s going on?” And I called her back, and she said, “Happy anniversary.” I was like, “Of what?” And this is, as we are recording right now, the one-year anniversary of my YouTube channel, which I didn’t even realize. I started it one year ago today.
I’ve been doing political activism, being in all of the spaces online for a while now, since high school. But to think back on it only having been a year, probably the longest year of any of our lives, considering all that went down, but it was a similar reason why I started my channel a year ago as it was that I got online and started posting nonsense on Twitter, which is when I really started to grow my audience.
It was originally actually because I was getting recruited to play basketball out of high school, and so I wanted a place to put my film. I’m posting fewer basketball highlights now. I don’t know if those would get better views on YouTube. Maybe I should sprinkle some of those in.
Gibbs Léger: Maybe think about that.
Cocchiarella: But it was just a time in which I felt like our generation, Gen Z, really had the opportunity to take hold of what was driving elections. And in my mind, that was spaces online.
I think back to the rally Trump had in Oklahoma, when it was in the middle of COVID-19, and he was touting it as a million people have signed up. A million people. We’re going to have overflow outside. And it turned out, it was just a bunch of Gen-Zers on TikTok who had registered for all the tickets, and then there was no one there. And it was a complete humiliation.
And you look back on that, it’s like, our activism has taken much better forms. But starting out from that point, it’s like, “Oh, these platforms are so powerful to engage in whatever form we want to take.” And sometimes a comic mode is the best way to operate to start, and we certainly need it.
So from there, I just got involved more in figuring out Twitter and Instagram and TikTok and spending way too much time on the internet. And I guess I’m glad I have because I’m thankful for the platform that’s been able to build me.
Gibbs Léger: Yeah, I’d say it definitely has worked out in your favor. Much has been made since the election about how the right controls the information ecosystem. Now, obviously there are certain politicians and voices like yours that break through on the left, but what do you think the broad center left needs to do to better thrive in this current ecosystem?
Cocchiarella: Well the most important thing that we’ve had to do, we have done in the past couple of months, which is recognize that we have been at a disadvantage. And you’ve seen the explosion of growth. Obviously we see CAP put out datapoints with those bubbles that everyone has come so well to know, of the red bubble of Elon Musk, and seeing Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens dominate these spaces.
But that has changed recently as the center left media has really exploded. Midas Touch, Brian Tyler Cohen, David Pakman—these people have really set their audience in the space and grown it so much. But it can’t just be on information where we seek to find our audiences. If you go look at what Ben Shapiro or Candace Owens are talking about on any given day—which I recommend you don’t, just listen to me describe it, save yourself the trouble—but they’re not really talking about politics as they’re talking about culture that they use to inform people’s politics.
Candace Owens spends more time talking about Disney princesses than she does Donald Trump. It’s an obsession that they have with framing our culture in a way that is politically advantageous to them. And I can see it in my analytics when I look through this stuff. When I make videos about Bill Burr responding to Elon, I can see my demographics skew much younger and different places than they previously would if it was just a video about tariffs.
And so we have to understand that reaching our audience through these incredibly smart algorithms can’t just come by trying to build it strictly talking about politics. We have to know that if we want to reach people, the thing I always say and so many have come to know, is like, “We’ve got to meet people where they are,” which is often communicating our politics through our culture.
So I’d say to the people in this space, which is exploding right now: Make sure that we take time to figure out how we connect what is happening in the news to what is happening in people’s lives. Try to spin what’s happening on “Love Island” into a conversation about the economic insecurity being felt by my generation. This is what we need to be able to do.
And so that’s kind of my call to what is going to be the best mode to increase not just our viewership—of course is so important—but our reach into people who are bumping into their politics, rather than seeking it out. Because the right has done that really, really well for a long time.
Gibbs Léger: So let’s talk about this a little more. You’re a member of Gen-Z, obviously, and you talk to a lot of young voters. So I know it’s hard to answer this for everybody, no group is a monolith, but like what are they looking for in this moment? What are young voters looking to hear from the left that maybe they haven’t heard before? Is it just politics, but like in the environment of culture conversation? What is it that you think is missing from that?
Cocchiarella: Authenticity is a word that obviously comes up enough and a lot, but I’d say that it’s not just that. It’s not enough to be authentic. The authentic version of you has to break through. You have to be talking about something that matters. I think we’re going to speak more to what has just been the most masterful campaign I can remember in Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory.
But he wasn’t just on social media, as a lot of people like to attribute his victory to. It’s not enough to just be posting on Instagram. Plenty of people share their clips. You have to have a very driven and specific message. And something that I think he accomplished so well, which we’ve talked a lot about in the Democratic Party as we’re reshaping and thinking about our brand, is that a lot of people sometimes view Democrats as talking down to them, where Zohran captured an excitement around curiosity, right?
Curiosity breeds hope. People are at their most persuadable when they are curious. His videos didn’t just talk to you. They talked about what you wanted to know more about—and also allowed you to be a political actor. He demonstrated so often that in these areas that we think change isn’t possible, our politicians have often been bystanders to problems. But he demonstrated the ways—outlining the Rent Guidelines Board in New York City, how he’d be able to go about freezing the rent, wasn’t just satisfying people’s desire to hear about housing policy that would actually address a crisis of affordability, it said there is action that can be taken. Let me explain it to you, so you can participate.
And I think that’s oftentimes what we miss in our messaging, that obviously we have to be an opposition party right now. I’d like to see a little bit more opposition, sometimes, in our opposition party. But there’s an aspirational vision lacking there that needs to meet the curiosity of people who have given up on politics. They’ve given up on politics because they don’t know what’s next. I cannot remember a time in which Donald Trump did not exist in my life, which is a terrible sentence to have to say—
Gibbs Léger: That’s really bad.
Cocchiarella: —and to have to feel. And most of my generation can’t. So let’s show an alternative in which something can actually happen that isn’t just things being broken.
Gibbs Léger: Yeah. So let’s talk about Mamdani. He went from being sort of a no-name candidate to now being the Democratic nominee. And you’ve interviewed him. You interviewed him several months ago. And the title of the video then was “Winning the Vibe War.”
So talk more about this victory. Do you think he won this war? And what can other Democrats learn from his victory? Because I think people are too quick to dismiss it and say, “It’s New York City, very different from the rest of the country.” But is there something else that other Democrats can learn from this?
Cocchiarella: Yeah, I think the vibe war has so much to do with being aggressive in your opposition as it does being aggressive in your—again, I come back to that word of an aspirational vision. Something that’s hopeful. And it was always such a joyful campaign. This guy’s a cutie-patootie.
Cocchiarella: It’s fun to look at Zohran and watch his videos, and it’s a blast, and you’re having a good time. Because he is always smiling—like, he is always smiling, and he’s excited, and he makes you feel good about the work.
And that is part of the vibe war, right? When we’re talking about what breaks through and what can engage. And at the same time, he was so willing to bring in anyone and everyone who wanted to engage with him. He was doing every single show he possibly could. It reminded me of Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign. Right? Where he was just willing to go everywhere.
And when you do that, you accomplish something that I think needs to be very instructive for Democrats going forward, which is figuring out what virality means to them. We’re always chasing how to go viral, but what does that mean? A lot of people think that virality is, “OK, my posts got 50,000 likes.” 50,000 likes is huge. You get a video. It’s got a million views. That’s incredible. The next step in that is demonstrating that the video you created, the content you’re producing, the messaging you bring has value outside of itself.
And that’s what I saw so much with Zohran’s campaign, is that there were these little bubbles that sprouted out, that just popped out from it. You saw “Hot Girls for Zohran.” And you saw all these different machinations of the campaign that were existing outside of it because people were so excited to engage with him.
So you have to foster an environment in which people want to take what you are doing, have that message, and break it off into their own thing as well. That’s when it really starts to flourish. And that’s part of the vibe war, is to create an environment that people want to be a part of.
Gibbs Léger: So let’s talk a little bit about creating an environment. And I’d love to get your thoughts on this debate around, “Do we need a Joe Rogan on the left?” Is that possible? Should we be aiming for that? Or do folks on the left need to figure out, like you say, different ways to prop up existing voices that are already out there? Are we trying to chase something that we shouldn’t be chasing?
Cocchiarella: Yeah, I think a good Joe Rogan would be the guy who overwhelmingly won young men—in New York City, Zohran obviously had huge turnout with young guys in the primary. But chasing a singular figure is, I think, more of a media understanding rather than it is the political goal of progressives. I think that it’s just such an easy framing for the media to say, “Democrats are after their Joe Rogan.”
Gibbs Léger: Are you saying the media is lazy?
Cocchiarella: Yeah, I am saying that the media is lazy.
Cocchiarella: That’s not actually our goal. I think that understanding that the reach of someone who people trust to shoot from the hip and bring on anyone at any time. I don’t particularly love all of Rogan’s politics, but when he has an interesting guest on, I might tune in.
Cocchiarella: He brings in scientists, sometimes better than others, and it’s a very interesting conversation. The first time I ever listened to Joe Rogan was him talking for three hours with Neil deGrasse Tyson. That was a great conversation, and I learned a lot. We need to create more spaces where our Democrats can go and talk for long periods of time, feel comfortable again talking about issues that aren’t just necessarily politics.
In Charlie Kirk’s conversation with Gavin Newsom, he made a lot of statements that I felt were a little ridiculous. He called podcasting a very masculine art, and I was like, “What? What are you saying?” But what he was a little tapping into there—I don’t want to give him that much credit—was that ability to go and speak for hours on end is something that is an art form.
And you can only do that if you know how to connect your message back to what you are bringing up in any given conversation because it is so central to you. Zohran’s message of affordability wasn’t something he always returned to in talking points. It was just central to what he was after and what he was thinking about and what he was walking the walk of every single day, telling his own story and connecting that to it.
No one ever doubts anything that Bernie Sanders (D-NH) is saying is coming from a place of, this is what Bernie Sanders has always thought and believed. He is the message, and that makes it a lot easier. So when we have people who can go anywhere and talk for long periods of time about anything, and they view those topics as ultimately connected back to some message about affordability—obviously a big topic of conversation right now—it makes it a lot easier. And so chasing after the monolith isn’t something I’m as interested in as maybe more identifying people who are willing to have big open conversations.
Oftentimes those are comedians who exist in a Joe Rogan-esque space. But you see a lot of these guys getting pretty annoyed with Trump right now. Shane Gillis had a pretty funny bit when he was talking about how laughable it is that Marco Rubio and Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard are going to UFC fights when they should be working. He’s like, “I’m going to lib out right now. What is going on? Don’t these people have jobs?” And that’s largely—like, we need to be going and showing those people that we want to engage with them. I think that’s certainly part of it.
Gibbs Léger: So I want to ask you a question about conflict. Should the left, should Democrats be focused on pointing out everything that’s wrong? We know how the algorithm works and what kind of content can pop. Or do they need to be putting forth an affirmative agenda and giving people something to grasp onto that’s forward-looking and not just about the day-to-day battles that we’re having?
Cocchiarella: I think you can do both. I think that the problem that we have with our conflict right now is it is so instructed by individual figures and numbers. Of course, talking about the 17 million people who are going to be kicked off—really, have their health care stolen from them—is paramount right now. But when you repeat that number enough, it just starts to go away in people’s mind. It doesn’t really stick. It’s a figure they hear, and they can’t conceptualize it.
I feel like our opposition needs to be based more in personal stories. I think those break through. I think those stick with people. I would like to see our opposition not be something done just from Congress. Go to the hospitals that are closing. Go to the nursing homes that are being shut down. Go speak to people who are being affected right now, whether they’re Trump voters, whether they’re Kamala voters, whether they sat out the election.
The first really viral piece of content—not to bring it back all the time to my favorite guy—but that Zohran had was when he just went and spoke to voters and said, “OK, well, you voted for AOC, you voted for Trump—why? Why didn’t you vote for Kamala Harris? And then what can we do to bring you back into the tent?”
And I think that that is the thing that we need to be doing right now, is getting out and demonstrating our opposition. I saw a headline that said, I think it was like, “Middle-aged white female voters say ‘get shot’ opposing Donald Trump.” It’s like, we want to see people get shot. Not necessarily like that, but like, we want to see your opposition take place in real life and engage with it, actually demonstrate how much you care.
Gibbs Léger: So we like to try and end these interviews on a positive note when we can. Not always possible.
Cocchiarella: Not on people getting shot in opposition?
Gibbs Léger: Yes, yes. But what gives you hope about the future of this country—not just from your generation, but in general?
Cocchiarella: What gives me hope is I do feel like people are listening. People are learning—our elected officials, whether it’s because their staffs are forcing them to or because they’re genuinely curious. I’ve had a lot of conversations where I’ve been fortunate enough to go and dump all the internet speak and analytical understanding of whatever platform it may be with members of Congress, and they seem actually interested in getting better at the art of social media. And that makes me very hopeful that there is a care about the messaging, there is a care about the attention. And then that we’re kind of breaking out of some of the business as usual.
I also am very inspired by younger candidates, I guess, as you would expect—but younger candidates not just being young, but being representative of our generation. And I feel like we are able to hold people’s feet to the fire a little bit better.
I love the little Instagram and TikTok videos that are “Rating my”— or “Rating your member of Congress” on what type of donations they take—like, what is the composition of their campaign funding? And it seems as you skew younger members of Congress, we’re seeing no corporate PAC money. We’re seeing people engage with small-dollar donors. We’re seeing people who are really bringing the fight and sharing the stories of their constituents in a way that demonstrates greater attention to what matters most.
So that makes me hopeful that people are learning, and that we feel comfortable, at least in my generation, making sure that we are asking the most of our elected leaders, especially if they are going to represent us and how we think. Again, not a monolith, but I think Gen-Z is definitely a change generation.
Gibbs Léger: Well that is, to my Gen-X ears, something that’s great to hear. I think there’s a lot of concern, after the election and after January, that a lot of people were going to kind of pull back, right? People are tired. They’re scared. They’re angry.
And it literally is, I think, your generation that is giving older folks like me some hope about the future of this country. So I want to thank you for all that you do and for your platform and for taking time to come visit us here.
Cocchiarella: Thank you so much for inviting me and for nailing my last name on the first try. The first person to ever do it, so I’ve got to give you your props for that.
Gibbs Léger: Do I get a prize?
Cocchiarella: Gosh, I forgot it at home. I’m going to have to bring in next time I’m here. All right.
Gibbs Léger: Sounds like a plan. Thank you.
Gibbs Léger: Well folks, that’s it for us this week. Be sure to go back and check out previous episodes. Before we go, did you miss me?
Seeberger: Daniella, my world was just not the same without you.
Gibbs Léger: Oh, sorry about that. But I needed that vacation.
Seeberger: I know that’s right, and I very much do as well. So—
Seeberger: —that is going to be in the cards, hopefully, for later this summer.
Gibbs Léger: Yes, we do love that for you. But it was wonderful to disconnect. I still had to deal with my husband putting on MSNBC and CNN and then, like, seeing our boss on TV. I was like, “I’m trying to disconnect from work!”
Gibbs Léger: Come on! But the weather was great. The beach was lovely. And I feel relaxed and rejuvenated.
Seeberger: I hope you had a rum punch for me.
Gibbs Léger: Yes, I had several for you. And then I got to come back to “Cowboy Carter.”
Seeberger: Oh, you are going from one paradise to the next.
Gibbs Léger: Seriously. Although I wouldn’t call Northwest Stadium paradise.
Seeberger: Northwest Stadium when it’s 93 degrees, 100 percent humidity. Yeah, not sold.
Seeberger: But I hear the show was amazing.
Gibbs Léger: The show was fantastic. And I loved “Renaissance.” I didn’t think she could top that.
Gibbs Léger: And honestly, this was even better for me. She still did some old stuff. She did a lot of stuff from “Renaissance,” so it was a really interesting juxtaposition. The transitions and the vignettes—I was like, “Folks, these are the visuals that you keep asking for. They’re all right here.” They were really deep and meaningful, and just—oh my gosh, it was so amazing.
Seeberger: And she’s such a talent.
Gibbs Léger: She’s so talented and her voice is incredible and she looks amazing. We in this stadium of however many thousands of us, tens of thousands, we’re sweating gallons of buckets.
Seeberger: Yes, you were.
Gibbs Léger: I know that she has a team of people behind stage, and she has high-powered fans, but I need to know how she did not look like she broke a sweat.
Gibbs Léger: Because I’ve never been anywhere that humid, and I literally just came from the tropics. And I was like, “This is awful.” But kudos to Beyoncé. Oh my God, and Blue and Rumi. Oh so cute.
Seeberger: They were there?
Gibbs Léger: Yeah, yeah. Oh, Blue is like, she’s in the show.
Gibbs Léger: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. She performs for probably most of their songs.
Gibbs Léger: And there’s one point where she comes out and has her own little dance break.
Gibbs Léger: Yeah, I know. It’s very cute.
Seeberger: I love the clips that I’ve seen of Beyoncé riding around on the horseshoe.
Seeberger: That’s some of my favorites. But speaking of the fans, I mean, the videos are incredible. The amount that they are blowing in her face, I’m like, “Ma’am, how are you still standing?”
Gibbs Léger: I don’t know.
Seeberger: Because they’re blowing hard, man.
Gibbs Léger: They really are. But, yes, the fans are paid actors on that stage for her.
Seeberger: Sure are. Well speaking of no longer going to be paid, Daniella—
Seeberger: I know, sorry—this transition I thought through so many times. But I’m not sure if you caught while you were away the latest news from “The Golden Bachelor.”
Gibbs Léger: What’s going on?
Seeberger: Well I guess “The Golden Bachelor” has gotten the ax.
Seeberger: In an interview with Reality Steve last month, Mel Owens, who was going to be the next Golden Bachelor, apparently said that he was going to cut all the women who were 60 or older solely on the basis of their age. And that didn’t go over too well with an audience for “The Golden Bachelor.”
Gibbs Léger: I’m like—did he forget what show he was on?
Seeberger: Correct. Correct. So suffice to say, ABC is searching for a new Golden Bachelor.
Seeberger: If you know anyone—
Seeberger: —make your nominations now.
Gibbs Léger: Now is your chance, Golden Bachelor dudes out there who are open to dating people of the golden era.
Gibbs Léger: That is ridiculous. Also, don’t talk to Reality Steve before you shoot the show. Like, just don’t. Like, why?
Seeberger: Yeah. What are you doing? Nothing good is going to come from that.
Gibbs Léger: Exactly. Yeah, I was like, “OK, boomer.” Anyway. On that note, we’re done for the week.
Seeberger: That’s all we got.
Gibbs Léger: That’s all we got. Guys, if you are in the D.C. metro—I think it’s actually all on the East Coast right now—it’s bad.
Gibbs Léger: Because it is so hot. It is so humid. And yes, I will complain about it like I said I would. I warned y’all that once we got past our cold spring, I was going to complain about summer. And so here we are.
Seeberger: My poor husband is having to hear me lament about our struggling HVAC all the time these days.
Gibbs Léger: Thoughts and prayers.
Seeberger: We will see if it holds out for another few months. We’re trying to wait until winter to do the replacement because the cost will go down like 30 percent if you don’t do it in the middle of peak season. But yeah, it’s brutal.
Gibbs Léger: Thoughts and prayers to your HVAC.
Gibbs Léger: You’re welcome. Y’all take care of yourselves. We’ll talk to you next week.
Gibbs Léger: “The Tent” is a podcast from the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It’s hosted by me, Daniella Gibbs Léger, and co-hosted by Colin Seeberger. Kelly McCoy is our supervising producer, Mishka Espey is our booking producer, and Muggs Leone is our digital producer. Jacob Jordan is our writer. Hai Phan, Olivia Mowry, and Toni Pandolfo are our video team.
Views expressed by guests of “The Tent” are their own, and interviews are not endorsements of a guest’s perspectives. You can find us on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.