Jon Favreau wrote some of the greatest speeches of the Obama presidency. Today, with a runaway political podcast, he says he is grateful that Trump has inspired a grassroots Democratic revival

By many measures, Jon Favreau ought to be a vision of despair, holding his head in an Edvard Munch scream of angst at a world turned upside down.

He was the future once, a twentysomething White House wunderkind who wrote speeches for President Obama that laid out bold, confident visions of progress on race, inequality, poverty and the environment. Time magazine named Favreau one of the world’s most influential people in 2009. People magazine named him one of the world’s most beautiful. Cerebral, handsome, feted by the liberal establishment: it seemed a gilded existence – and then Donald Trump became president and set about destroying everything Obama and Favreau and their team had worked for, chipping the great liberal dream to rubble amid cheers from Republicans who now dominate executive, legislative and judicial power in the US.

Fair reason, you would think, to curl up in a ball, whimpering about a lost Arcadia. But the figure who bounds forward, hand outstretched, in the lobby of a sunlit Los Angeles office, is very far from a quivering wreck. Tall and tanned, Favreau sports jeans, T-shirt, runners – no socks, this ain’t Washington – and a gap-toothed smile of unshakeable cheer.

“I am optimistic,” he says, plonking on to a sofa alongside his dog Leo, a goldendoodle. “Trump has awakened a sleeping giant of people who had thought: ‘I don’t have to vote, or once I vote I don’t have to do anything else, and my life will be protected and everything will be fine.’ People understand now that democracy is an everyday struggle.”

Favreau, his youthful optimism apparently undimmed at 37, believes a new generation of progressive activists and candidates will lead the way back to power with a “multiracial populism” that can clang a big, loud bin lid over Trumpism.

“Donald Trump has energised the base of the Democratic party. There is so much new blood out there. They all bring … this freshness. They don’t talk like politicians or recite talking points all the time. They don’t seem another cutout that some pollsters created in a lab. They seem like real people because they are real people.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest US President Barack Obama goes over his speech with Jon Favreau. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

After Obama left the White House, Favreau found a second act in US politics with a massively successful podcast, Pod Save America. Freewheeling, conversational, veering from earnest to funny, the show is the left’s answer to conservative talk radio and the voice of the resistance. Now he is launching a new podcast, a 15-part series about the history and future of the Democratic party called The Wilderness. An apt title, since many Democrats feel as if they have been mauled by a grizzly. “I call it The Wilderness, but we’re not completely lost. It’s a party that is rebuilding and is rediscovering the grassroots energy that has always propelled it.”

Hope and change 2.0. Midterm elections in November will indicate whether this is wishful thinking.

Although no longer scripting lines for the president, Favreau has a hugely influential voice with Pod Save America, which he co-hosts with fellow Obama alums Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer and Tommy Vietor. The twice-weekly shows average 1.5m listeners, mostly young liberals who with Jon Stewart gone from the The Daily Show, rely on the podcast for insider analysis, jokes, interviews, solidarity, swearing and, above all, catharsis.

Favreau is the ringmaster who marshals topics such as Trump’s hirings and firings, North Korea, healthcare and immigration reform. Lovett, who was Obama’s chief joke-writer, injects wry, sometimes bawdy humour. Pfeiffer, who was White House communications director, and Vietor, who was the National Security Council spokesman, supply policy wonkery.

“The podcast began because we’re four really close friends – the chemistry is the four of us,” says Favreau. What you hear are not carefully constructed personae. “It’s very us. For no other reason other than it was the easiest way to go – just be ourselves. When we started, we didn’t know how to do a podcast sojust talked like we usually talked. It was like, what’s the worst that can happen? We’re not running for office. So we just speak our mind.”

There is no Fox-News-type humbug about being “fair and balanced”, says Favreau. “The whole basis of that propaganda machine was a lie from the get-go. Ours is like: ‘You know who we are, we worked for Obama, we’re partisan Democrats. We’ll base our arguments on the truth and on facts as much as possible, but you know what you’re getting, which is a liberal point of view. Because that’s who I am – I’ll always be an Obama guy.” Listeners appreciate the authenticity. “People are actually hungry for people to not bullshit them about politics.”

The podcast is partisan, but allows for nuance, unlike Twitter, says Favreau. “You look at Twitter and think, everybody is so angry all the time.” He joins in, he confesses. “Sometimes you can’t help yourself.”

The podcast includes “never-Trump” Republicans but draws the line at loyal Trumpers. “I don’t think it’s useful to have Trump supporters on who are just going to lie.” What about cabinet members? A shrug. “I don’t have a ton of interest in having them on.”

When the hosts take the podcast on the road, performing in venues across the US and Europe, fans treat them like seers and rock stars. In Stockholm, Favreau recalls, the audience asked arcane details about an impending election in Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district. “There was more of a hunger to know what the fuck’s going on in America than I realised. Because it’s probably like watching a trainwreck.”

And yet here he sits in his Hollywood office, breezy and upbeat. The reason is partly personal. Last year he married Emily Black, a PR account executive – “Pod save the wedding”, said drink koozies/coolers – and bought a Spanish-style bungalow in LA for $1.9m (£1.4m). Hollywood is a good place for liberals to socialise. After our meeting, Favreau was due to attend a preview screening of Sacha Baron Cohen’s new television series.

And business, after a bump, is good. Inspired by Lovett selling a sitcom about family dramas in the White House, 1600 Penn, to NBC, Favreau set out in 2013 to try screenwriting, among other ventures. “Leaving West Wing to pursue Hollywood dream”, as the Boston Globe put it. But NBC canned Lovett’s show after one season and Favreau’s projects drifted.

Trump’s victory in 2016 changed everything. Instead of keeping a dutiful distance from a Hillary Clinton administration, Favreau, Lovett, Pfeiffer and Vietor stumbled back into politics with their podcast. Each episode of Pod Save America, which debuted in January 2017, is estimated to generate at least $50,000 in advertising revenue, totalling about $5m per year. Their company, Crooked Media, now runs other podcasts, including Pod Save the People, focusing on social justice, Pod Save the World, about foreign policy, and The Wilderness, their new series about the Democratic party. Earlier this year, Crooked Media signed a deal with HBO for a series of hour-long TV specials.

The company operates from the fifth floor of an airy, open-plan office a few blocks from Sunset Boulevard. A lobby adorned with a collage of newspapers and a glowing neon image of George Washington sets the tone. Posters, notes, talking points and slogans – “the blue wave is not a weather event” – dot walls.

Favreau, a top-ranking graduate of a liberal arts college in Massachusetts, started out with John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, then started writing speeches for an intriguing young senator from Chicago. “I would not have succeeded, and Barack Obama would not have succeeded, if we didn’t have a close personal relationship,” he says. His method was immersion. “I sat with him, typed everything he said, read every single transcript of every interview he gave, read his books multiple times. I just got to know him. I learned not just how he spoke, but how he thought. Once you get into someone’s mind you can write for them better.” The results, such as Obama’s 2008 speech on race, were, on occasion, historic.

It feels like another era, says Favreau, swigging a water bottle and patting Leo. “Some of the controversies that Obama dealt with seem so small in comparison with what we’re dealing with right now.”

His former boss remains “zen”, he says. “I’ve never seen him freak out. Even in the Trump era, his personality is never going to change. He’s focused on the long game.” Obama, he says, wants Democrats not to mope but to organise, campaign, vote. When I ask Favreau if he could conceive writing for the 45th president, he laughs, then sighs. “No, no I can’t. Trump – what he does well is identify problem, enemy, solution. He does it in very simple terms. Most of it is based on lies. But what he tells people is, here’s the problem, here’s the person causing the problem, I’m the person who can fix it.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pod squad … Tommy Vietor, Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett (L-R). Photograph: Jim Ruymen/UPI

Trump is also effective speaking off the cuff. “The rare times that Trump reads off a teleprompter it’s actually bad. When he’s at a rally doing his crazy, he at least seems like himself. A big problem people have with politicians today is they seem phoney. If you don’t seem as bullshitty as other politicians, it’sgoing to be an asset.”

Favreau detects the hand of Stephen Miller, a White House adviser and immigration hardliner, in some speeches. “It’s a little less stream-of-consciousness ramblings and more ethno-nationalist, semi-fascistic.”

Pod Save America talks about Trump all the time because he makes news all the time, says Favreau, and that is a problem. “We don’t spend enough time talking about what should the Democrats do to beat him.” The Wilderness, which starts next week, is an attempt to correct that. Progressives’ big mistake, says Favreau, was to relax after Obama’s victory in 2008. “People said: ‘OK, I hand you my vote, you go fix the country and I’m going to chill out for eight years.’” Republicans vacuumed up governorships and majorities in state legislatures and Congress, letting them gerrymander districts and control judicial appointments.

“Our party has been focused solely on the presidency for too long. The good news is that Trump has awakened in [us] this belief that politics matters at every level.”

In this media age, it can feel that history begins anew each morning, says Favreau. “We sort of forget all the things that got us to this place. It’s not just because Trump is president that everything has gone to shit. We’ve been having these same fights over immigration for over a century.”

Progressives tend to prevail, leading to backlash, a pattern likely to repeat this time, he says. This long view makes Favreau relaxed about Democratic in-fighting. “It’s always been this jumble of constituencies and identities,” he says. America’s tumult reflects the negative effects of globalisation, reasons Favreau. “Even in good economic times, there are people working two, three jobs and can’t make rent. Until a party can address this, we’re going to have this instability.”

Favreau advises candidates to avoid Trump-bashing monomania, but does not fret about publicly shaming Trump officials or seeking Trump’s impeachment, tactics that some party leaders fear will alienate swing voters: “I don’t think it’s going to make a difference either way.” Ordinary voters care more about healthcare, jobs and living wages, he says, citing focus groups. “Democratic candidates should be unafraid to propose very bold, progressive economic solutions and not worry that they will be tagged as too liberal or too far to the left.”

Politics aside, the former wunderkind does have one, enduring fear: flying. “Yeah, I’m a control freak. It’s like, small plane, suddenly goes into a storm, bad turbulence, no one says anything. Not knowing the information freaks me out, like something bad’s going to happen.”

Even here, it turns out, there is hope. “My wife told me if you lift your feet up you don’t feel the turbulence as much.”

Does it work? He shrugs. “It helps.”

The Wilderness launches 16 July. crooked.com/podcast-series/thewilderness/