"You're listening to The Parting Shot with H. Alan Scott." This has been an insane week in reality television. There have been three huge premieres, the Golden Bachelorette, Dancing With The Stars and Survivor, and each one featured crazy moments. So over on the Golden Bachelorette, we met Joan, and she met her Golden Bachelors, and she had a bit of a freak out when she was handing out roses and eliminating some of the Golden Bachelors in the first episode, but, you know, she ultimately did. But it was the season preview that really got me excited for the Golden Bachelorette. So the Golden Bachelors, they do a full Monty dance in one episode, apparently, which I'm here for. But then also, last season's Golden Bachelorette, Jerry, might be returning. You might remember that Jerry, who married his Golden Bachelorette, they were only married for like a couple of months or something. So I'm intrigued by what's going to happen this season on the Golden Bachelorette. Over on Dancing With The Stars, they all were fine. Everyone was fine. It always makes me kind of sad when like some of the people who should not be dancing, Eric Roberts, he, you know, they, I don't know, I just, it makes me sad to see them have to compete against, you know, actual Olympians. And probably the best dancer out of all of them was the Clark Kent Olympian himself, Stephen Niterostik. And he, I mean, he was the best. He kind of had that frozen deer in the headlights sort of face the whole time while he was dancing, but he clearly can dance, which is exciting to watch. But the one that everyone was talking about was of course the felon, Anna Delphi, who danced with her ankle monitor bracelet on that security bracelet that is monitoring her whereabouts wherever she is. And everyone was first questioning why she even was on the show, but then she danced. And it turns out she's probably better at being a felon because she can't dance. She cannot dance. And then on Survivor, we had season 47, the premiere of season 47 of Survivor. And it was a great premiere episode. It featured someone that a lot of people know, John Lovett, who of course, you know, he's one of the pod save America hosts and he's the former speechwriter for Hillary Clinton and then of course, Barack Obama. So he's famous in his own right. So having someone with that kind of notoriety out there in Fiji is a big deal amongst the other cast members. And I was shocked by what happened. I mean, no one saw him getting eliminated first coming at all, like nobody. Well, I'm going to ask him about it because I had to chat with him about why he thinks he got eliminated so early on, if his notoriety worked against him and what he thinks about Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and how they would fare out there in Survivor, which kind of funny if you think about it. So here's my chat with John Lovett. There's more to imagine when you listen. Select your imagination soar with Audible. Audible has audio titles from every genre that will inspire you to imagine new worlds, possibilities, and ways of thinking. As an Audible member, you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. Enjoy an exciting reawakening of a beloved classic with the Audible Original David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, produced by Academy Award-winning director Sam Mendez, starring Shudi Gattwa, Helena Bonham Carter, and Theo James. This adaptation breathes new life into a familiar tale. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit Audible.com/imagine or text "imagine" to 500-500. That's Audible.com/imagine or text "imagine" to 500-500. Hi John. Hi. How are you? Live in the dream. I have to say, I was shocked. I mean, I'm sure you were more shocked than I was, but I was shocked at last night's results. And I mean, so was Jeff. He said it in an interview. So like, what do you think happened? So here's what happened. Obviously, I was in the grand scheme of things shocked. I wasn't shocked in the moment. You could see it on my face. Here's what happened. Basically once Andy has his event, the possibilities really narrowed. And the challenge I had was once we got back from the challenge, the immunity challenge, very quickly it crystallizes that I am hearing that the vote is going to be on Andy. But it was so neat and clean and so obvious to me that that's exactly what you'd say. Because if I were in their shoes, I would tell me it was Andy and then I'd vote me out because at that point he had just projected to the not just our tribe, but to every tribe that he was no longer a threat. I remained a threat and that made it obvious. And so the challenge for me in those hours of wrangling of which you only see a small piece is how do you persuade a group of people to do what they're already telling you they're doing and you know they're not, right? A group of people have just told you they're voting for Andy. I know it is not the case. And I need to persuade them to do that anyway. It became very clear to me that the more emphatic people were that it was Andy, the less I could trust it because there's the shot in the dark. And so my options became either believe them when I know I couldn't play the shot in the dark or try to finagle a different vote in a way that made sense. And you only see a small piece of it, Andy, and I believe Sam had already floated Onika's name. I really liked Onika and I wanted to work with Onika and we would have I think had things gone differently. We also had a really good conversation on the first day. We just hadn't by happenstance talked much in the 48 hours that followed. And because I knew and could sense how smart she was, I really couldn't believe her when she told me the vote was on anti. I obviously you don't have 360 degree of view. You don't see that there's a conversation where she's actually the one trying to persuade Rachel and Sarah and Sam to go with actually voting, Andy, that Rachel's open to it. Sam and Sarah are less so like I don't see that conversation. All I feel is a collective decision on that group to vote for me basically. Sam and Sierra felt like they had and by period is the subtlest of parents, right? These are not fully formed or forged groups was too quick. But like the smallest of indentations are forming in the sand and you end up with a light connection between Sam and Sierra, a light connection between Rachel and Onika, a light connection between me and Andy, I am not seeing in full that Rachel and Andy have had this moment in which Rachel is really suspicious. In my mind and what I think very well might have if not probably would have happened had Andy not melted down is I think I could have pulled Onika and Onika could have pulled Rachel into a vote with me and Andy, how that would have shaken out. I don't know exactly but like there was a lot of ways it would have gone. I don't believe it would have fallen on me. But once that happens, I'm kind of stuck, right? Because if I project to Andy that I'm so angry about what happened that I'm turning on him, that's a problem. He's now said to the group that we're aligned and that he's not reliable. That's a problem. So I'm giving you the details because I feel like people appreciate the details here. That is why I went into the tribal vote. I felt like with a lot of awareness, I really was thinking, "Oh, wouldn't it be funny if in front of everybody?" I turned over my bag and took out my shot of the dark and voted, used it. So yeah, that's sort of where my head was at. In the moment during Andy's breakdown, I mean, I don't think Andy's breakdown was strategic, although I see people on X commenting about that. But do you think your other teammates saw Andy's breakdown as an opportunity to make a move in a way that did something? Of course, everyone's seeing every baby. Your whole point of what you're trying to do is to turn every single moment into an opportunity. Andy said my name out loud in front of everyone. He basically said to the rest of my tribe, "Oh, look, we have somebody that we can focus on." Whether or not Andy was copus mentus, whether he was paranoid in some way thinking strategically, it doesn't really matter because whether he was just sort of losing it, whether he was in some combination losing it and trying to figure out a way to save himself, it was fundamentally a strategic because no one could rely on you from that point forward. You're no longer, again, literally just describing my experience of being on the mat. It is hard to imagine him being a threat to the end of the game that anybody could see him as somebody worthy of making it to the end or getting votes based on how in three days he's collapsing in this way. Whatever he'll... Look, I don't have any ill will towards Andy. I said this before the game, "Leave it now." What happens out there is inside of the game, people get so wrapped up in, "Oh, someone lying to me," it's a zero-sum game, so I have no ill will towards him whatsoever. There's no way in which that was strategic. I thought about a lot of things before going out there, I didn't really fully wrap my mind around what it would look like for somebody to both blow up and backstab me at the same time. He's stuck through you under the bus. But yes, and so I came there and you see it in it. I thought really hard, I thought a lot about what to do. I was very strategic in how I tried to work with people, didn't obviously go my way. I gave a lot, I thought very hard. I hadn't anticipated somebody who could. It was an unprecedented situation of somebody to do something like that. If you look at me while Andy is doing that, what you're seeing is somebody just rapidly running through what the best way to respond is and what I'm thinking in that moment is I need to signal to Andy that I am not going to turn on him, that I'm still amenable to him even if I'm frustrated. Well, at the same time, I identified myself with a larger group. It just was a tricky situation. You already go in with a liability, both in terms of your fame and your notoriety, not so much within the survivor world, but just in the world in general. If anyone's clued into podcast, they know who you are. But then also on top of that, and I've talked about this a lot with me too, that we have these personalities that sometimes in those situations can be a liability because funny, you know how to do a response, you know how to communicate, you know how to socialize, you know how to do these things that sometimes can be a liability in the game of survivor. So do you worry about your personality or your notoriety impacting your game potentially in a negative way? And do you think that played into what happened on your cast off? Notariety, I didn't really worry about too much. I decided to kind of just play it straight. I think people worry too much about that kind of thing. In the end, the dynamics of the game, I think swamp these outside factors and people get I think in their heads making up stories about themselves. My feeling was be transparent with people and the value of being myself and not having this layer of artifice would be more important than the value of some kind of story. In terms of the social dynamics, we win that challenge or Andy doesn't melt down what could have been described as a liability might very well have been a strength. You go back and you find a justification. But I view the vote as having been strategic and hard to escape from because there's only one person whose name was thrown out and I was more of a threat, right? Like everything else, I think you can take out like there's no story about what happened that you can tell that makes sense without that fact. You can add other factors if you'd like, but you don't really need them. Yeah. No, it makes sense. And do you, I mean, does it change? I mean, in terms of sort of you're living it out there, but while watching it last night, was it a different experience than, I mean, because when you're in the moment, obviously you're experiencing it in one way, but when you're watching it, you must have, was there any anger towards anything? Was there any sort of like new things that you were like, Oh, I wish I would have known, I wish I would have known more about that person. I think there's like one tiny moment. I tried very hard, like we stayed as a group the whole time. We really did virtually the whole time, clearly there was one moment where Andy pulled me and somebody just turned and said, Oh, it's the four of us, right? And that I think in hindsight looks important, but there were conversations that I had with others on the tribe that basically said like, Hey, like whatever conversations we're having right now, and I believe this is true over time, the alliances that last and hold are not ones made in a second based on happenstance. They're ones based on connection. And so I was making an argument. I had this conversation with Onika, I'd started having it with Rachel that's basically like, let's start thinking about how we build something that lasts, knowing full well that there had probably been conversations of various groups of people that I had missed. I didn't realize how much Rachel had felt that Andy wasn't somebody that she felt super reliable. Yeah. Was super reliable. I like I'd gotten a, I think like looking back on it, like, no, because obviously they show that Andy kind of told me, but like, I'd also had very similar conversations with Onika and was really excited about working with Onika. Like in the end, I, her name comes up, but that was really just out of kind of a last ditch effort to figure out a conversation that I could have that would make sense to Sam and to Andy. So yeah, you know, I look back on it and it's like, I don't, it's actually kind of great. And that's how I felt really watching it kind of relief, which is that like, Oh, my sense of what was happening is what was happening. There was a moment I went on a Rosa where I started kind of thinking to myself, Oh, did I turn the vote on myself? Mm hmm. Right? Like, was I wrong? Right? Like, was it actually Andy and I panicked and turned it on to myself? No, I don't think so. Yeah. Wow. Well, my last question for you, it's less so a question and more of just a comment from, I guess one comedy person to another. Since you're in politics, you were, you talk about politics all the time while watching you on the screen last night, I just kept thinking about how funny it would be to see Kamala Harris and Donald Trump out on the island in Fiji. And I wanted to know, A, how funny would it be to see Trump out there? Because that would just be to me very funny. But B, who do you think would win? What a great thought experiment to remind everybody that I can't think of a bigger nightmare than to be on a tribe with Donald Trump. And I can't think of somebody I'd be more likely to want to work with on a tribe than Kamala Harris. Oh, yeah. Should be ruthless. Maybe so, but she's reliable, she's smart, she's capable. She isn't a narcissistic ego maniac will turn on you in a second. You couldn't form any kind of alliance with Donald Trump. He'll turn on you in a heartbeat. You couldn't trust it for a moment and he'll never ever shut up being trapped on a desert island with Donald Trump. That is one of the world's worst nightmares that could ever befall a person. If you are listening to this, we have 45 days until the election. Go to votesaveamerica.com and do one more thing that you otherwise would have done that's not just scrolling on your phone. Yeah. I just want to see him in the cut off suit, like, you know, like early season survivor that one guy who came in with the suit and he had to cut it off into shorts. That's what I'm imagining Donald Trump would look like. Right. That's that season where they experimented and told everyone it was press day, but actually the game had begun. And so they were in like, yes, yes, she was in her. She was in her troop leader uniform and people look at just the wrong clothes and they were completely unprepared. That would be great. That would be great. Well, John, thank you so, so much for chatting with me. It's so nice to see you and and I see you too. I hope to. I mean, keep watching the season. I hope I hope you'll keep watching. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then listen, I'll, we have a Kathy Griffin on love to relieve it tonight. Love. We're going to just show her clips of me on Survivor and she's just going to roast the ever loving shit out of me. I've interviewed, I've talked to her many times. I've been with her at CS Place. She loves the gays, as we know. So like, you know, she's, she's, I think she's going to be, she's, I think she can be conveyed to love survivor. I don't think she loves survivor, but I think she can be convinced. I think you can convince her. Okay. Yeah. I'll work on it. Yeah. I'll work on it. Take care, John. Have a good one.
