Terminally Online: Live from Crooked Con (Subscription Preview)
Episode
26 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Productivity, Marketing, Psychology & Behavior
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Online politician criteria: Being truly online requires both posting and replying to others, not just broadcasting. Trump ranks only third despite constant posting because he operates solely in his Truth Social sandbox without engaging in replies, while JD Vance earns top ranking by actively replying to critics and calling people names like dipshit on social media platforms.
- ✓Nancy Mace airport incident: The South Carolina congresswoman demonstrates peak online behavior by posting hundreds of times about a Charleston Airport police escort dispute, triggering bipartisan criticism from Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham. Her response exemplifies main character energy and the Streisand effect, where attempting to control narrative only amplifies negative attention through obsessive posting.
- ✓Campaign digital strategy evolution: Zoran Mamdani represents a new generation of digitally native campaigns that understand online discourse without being defensive or reactive. However, being well-adjusted and non-defensive actually disqualifies someone from being truly online, as genuine online behavior requires a specific personality disorder characterized by constant engagement and defensiveness about criticism.
- ✓Platform-specific analysis: Evaluating online presence requires looking beyond Twitter to include TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit. Politicians like Gavin Newsom operate primarily through staff-managed accounts rather than personal posting, while figures like Graham Plattner demonstrate that Reddit posting represents a particularly deep form of online behavior due to the platform's anonymous, discussion-focused nature.
- ✓Crooked Con straw poll methodology: Live audience polling at political events faces significant participation challenges, with only thirteen initial votes collected from hundreds of attendees. Pete Buttigieg won the 2028 candidate preference poll at 31 percent, followed by Andy Beshear at 22 percent, though improved QR code placement and voter outreach could dramatically increase sample sizes for future events.
What It Covers
Pod Save America hosts present a live recording of their subscription show Terminally Online from Crooked Con, ranking the most online politicians of 2025. JD Vance tops the list, followed by Nancy Mace, Donald Trump, Zoran Mamdani, and Gavin Newsom, with analysis of their social media behavior and online presence.
Key Questions Answered
- •Online politician criteria: Being truly online requires both posting and replying to others, not just broadcasting. Trump ranks only third despite constant posting because he operates solely in his Truth Social sandbox without engaging in replies, while JD Vance earns top ranking by actively replying to critics and calling people names like dipshit on social media platforms.
- •Nancy Mace airport incident: The South Carolina congresswoman demonstrates peak online behavior by posting hundreds of times about a Charleston Airport police escort dispute, triggering bipartisan criticism from Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham. Her response exemplifies main character energy and the Streisand effect, where attempting to control narrative only amplifies negative attention through obsessive posting.
- •Campaign digital strategy evolution: Zoran Mamdani represents a new generation of digitally native campaigns that understand online discourse without being defensive or reactive. However, being well-adjusted and non-defensive actually disqualifies someone from being truly online, as genuine online behavior requires a specific personality disorder characterized by constant engagement and defensiveness about criticism.
- •Platform-specific analysis: Evaluating online presence requires looking beyond Twitter to include TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit. Politicians like Gavin Newsom operate primarily through staff-managed accounts rather than personal posting, while figures like Graham Plattner demonstrate that Reddit posting represents a particularly deep form of online behavior due to the platform's anonymous, discussion-focused nature.
- •Crooked Con straw poll methodology: Live audience polling at political events faces significant participation challenges, with only thirteen initial votes collected from hundreds of attendees. Pete Buttigieg won the 2028 candidate preference poll at 31 percent, followed by Andy Beshear at 22 percent, though improved QR code placement and voter outreach could dramatically increase sample sizes for future events.
Notable Moment
The hosts reveal that Mike Lee would rank above both Trump and several other politicians on the online scale due to his pattern of posting confidently incorrect information, then doubling down when corrected. His behavior mirrors someone who might accidentally respond to a text message with their Social Security number, demonstrating a particular type of addled online energy.
Episode Transcript
Hey, everybody. We are off for Thanksgiving, but we would never wanna leave you without, some sweet, sweet content. So please enjoy a part of our subscription show, Terminally Online, which we recorded live at Crooked Con. You can hear the full episode when you sign up for Friends of the Pod at crooked.com/friends. When you sign up, you get ad free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Love It or Leave It, and offline. Plus, you get exclusive content like Dan Pfeiffer's Polar Coaster and more. For a limited Black Friday offer, Annual subscriptions are 25% off. So go sign up. Get that offer. It is the best way to directly support us as we try to build a truly independent progressive media organization. Again, that's crooked.com/friends. Now here's Terminally online. Welcome to Terminally online, the crooked subscription show live from Crooked Cone. I'm Elijah Cohn. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. I'm Tommy Vietor. I'm John Levitt. No Barack Obama coming out. No Barack Obama. Alright. You guys wanna play a game? Yeah. Sure. Alright. Let's do it. We're gonna do a blind rankings. Mhmm. If you're unfamiliar with how blind rankings work, I'm gonna give you five things. You'll have to rank them as they come, but you don't know what's coming next, so be careful to leave that one or five spot open. What we are going to be ranking is the most online politicians of 2025. Oh. I have some questions. And for those who watch the show or are familiar with Elijah's work, you know that he hasn't often hasn't thought of all the rules here. So Let's let's hash it. Are we Hash out some rules? Ranking them, or are we ranking them collectively? Consensus. Consensus. Okay. I was gonna ask that in a nicer way. Time. Yeah. Look. Some of these people are turning the line on fans, and one of I Elijah told me himself. He said, bully me. He said, one of the appeals of the show is when we pick on them. So That is The people came all the way from all across the country, and we're not gonna pick him up. Elijah Elijah get bullied in person. Yeah. Let it begin. We got thirty eight minutes. I think it's a killer segment. I think that you guys are gonna love it. Okay. We'll let the audience judge. Alright. First politician, kind of the pace car here, president Donald j Trump. The old man may have lost a couple miles per hour, but he still got his fastball, Throwing out all caps truths. Posting AI videos. Dumping shit on Harry Sissen, which is just, like, a deeply online thing to know who that is. Instant classic. Are are we docking points for only posting on his dumb little tiny corner of the Internet? You can you can slice that either way. I mean, he's so online. He, like, got banned and did He made his …
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