Jonathan Ira Lovett (born August 17, 1982) is an American podcaster, comedian, and former speechwriter. Lovett is a co-founder of Crooked Media, along with fellow former White House staffers during the Obama administration, Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor.[1] Lovett is a regular host of the Crooked Media podcasts Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It. As a speechwriter, he worked for President Barack Obama as well as for Hillary Clinton when she was a United States senator and a 2008 presidential candidate. Lovett also co-created the NBC sitcom 1600 Penn, and was a writer and producer on the third season of HBO's The Newsroom.
Jon Lovett | |
|---|---|
 Lovett in 2017 | |
| Born | Jonathan Ira Lovett August 17, 1982 Woodbury, New York, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Williams College (BA) |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 2004–present |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Partner | Ronan Farrow (2011–2022) |
Early life and education
Lovett was born in Woodbury, Long Island[2] to a Reform Jewish family of Ukrainian ancestry[3] that operated a box factory started by his grandfather.[4] He attended Syosset High School.
Lovett graduated from Williams College in 2004 with a degree in mathematics.[5] His senior thesis, Rotating Linkages in a Normed Plane,[6] led to a related publication on the same topic in American Mathematical Monthly.[7] Lovett was the Williams College class speaker at his commencement ceremony in 2004.[8]
After graduation, Lovett spent a year working as a paralegal and doing stand-up comedy on the side.[5][9]
Political speechwriter
In 2004, Lovett volunteered for John Kerry's presidential campaign. He was asked to write a statement for the candidate, and his work led to an offer of a writing internship.[10] He briefly worked in Jon Corzine's Senate office.[6] He was hired in 2005 to assist Sarah Hurwitz as a speechwriter for then-Senator Hillary Clinton,[6] and he continued to write speeches for her through her 2008 presidential campaign.[10]
When Clinton lost the 2008 Democratic primary contest, Lovett won an anonymous contest to write speeches for President Barack Obama in the White House.[10] Lovett wrote speeches in the Obama administration for three years, working closely with Jon Favreau and David Axelrod.[4] Prominent speeches that he wrote include policy speeches on financial reform and don't ask, don't tell,[6] as well as remarks at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.[11]
Lovett secretly officiated the first same-sex marriage in the White House, before the Obama administration supported same-sex marriage.[11][12][13]
Media career
Television
In 2011, before Barack Obama ran for reelection, Lovett left the White House and moved to California to become a screenwriter,[14][15] citing a desire to write independently and focus on creative comedy full-time.[6] Lovett collaborated with Josh Gad and Jason Winer on the television series 1600 Penn, of which Lovett was a co-creator, executive producer, and writer from 2012 until its cancellation in 2013.[16] Lovett then worked as a writer, producer, and advisor on season three of HBO's The Newsroom.[11] From 2012 to 2015, Lovett also contributed opinion pieces to venues like The Atlantic.[17] As of 22 May 2024, Lovett has been confirmed to be a contestant on the 47th season of the CBS reality television show Survivor.[18]
Crooked Media
Starting in March 2016, Lovett co-hosted The Ringer's political podcast Keepin' it 1600 with former fellow Obama staffers Jon Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer, and Tommy Vietor.[19] The podcast was intended to cover the 2016 presidential race, and not expected to continue after that.[20] But after the November 2016 election, Lovett, Favreau and Vietor wished to become engaged in politics again without having to leave Los Angeles or return to political campaigning.[20] So they founded a liberal media company, Crooked Media, with the flagship podcast Pod Save America.[21] Crooked Media, and Pod Save America in particular, has been compared to previous left-wing efforts like Air America to match America's Conservative talk radio, and Lovett has been characterized as providing comic relief to the programming.[20] The company has since launched a range of podcasts, several of which regularly feature Lovett.
In March 2017, Lovett began hosting Lovett or Leave It, a panel show podcast produced by Crooked Media.[22] The podcast, typically recorded in front of a live audience in Los Angeles, with Lovett and Crooked Media, embarked on national and international tours featuring live versions of both Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It.[23] Lovett was also involved in launching Crooked Media's voter recruitment and education project, Vote Save America.[24]
Personal life
Lovett is gay.[15] He and investigative journalist and author Ronan Farrow became romantically involved in 2011.[25][26] In October 2019, Farrow published Catch and Kill, where he publicly announced their engagement after proposing to Lovett in an earlier draft of his book.[27][28] However, in a March 2023 episode of his podcast, Lovett or Leave It, Lovett stated that he was single after the end of a "10 and a half year" relationship.[29]