Bulwark Takes - Chuck Todd: The AP-Trump Feud Is A Hill to Die on

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Sam Stein is joined by Chuck Todd to discuss the Trump administration indefinitely banning the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One over use of ‘Gulf of Mexico.’

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Hey, guys. Sam Stein, managing editor at The Bulwark, back again here with Chuck Todd, who thankfully put on his University of Miami pullover. Got to represent. There it is. You know, look, it's who's getting the lion's share of my tuition dollars right now. But starting next year, I'm an all ACC family. Starting next year, the SMU Mustangs will be competing with the University of Miami for my tuition dollars.

What division are they in now? I can't keep track of. They're in the ACC as well. Basically, you know, they're the ones that said, we don't need any money. We're Texas, baby. We're Dallas. Well, you don't they're the ones that said, we don't need any money. We're Texas, baby. We're Dallas. Well, you don't worry about paying us. You just let us in your club and we'll be just fine.

Nice. Okay. Well, we're not going to be talking. Maybe down the road, we'll talk about college sports because I think that's worthwhile too. But today we're going to be talking about the Associated Press and this situation that we find ourselves in where the premier wire service in the country is being cast out by the White House and how we move about this as fellow journalists. All right, Chuck, let's start broad picture. What's your sense of what's happening here?

Well, I feel like this is the Trump White House and Donald Trump testing the electric fence, right? I've always thought the best metaphor to Donald Trump is that first Jurassic Park where they all go, oh my God, they don't ever test the fence in the same place, right? Like, you know, the dinosaurs have a brain. The velociraptors know what they're doing. Right. So this is no doubt, this is testing the fence, right? And this is what makes, I think, You know, the dinosaurs have a brain. The velociraptors know what they're doing. So this is no doubt, this is testing the fence, right? And this is what makes, I think, it's been, I think it's an interesting challenge, if you will, that the press corps is having at this moment of collective weakness. Let's not pretend it's not, right? This is a moment of collective weakness right now is sort of at least the press corps's ability to

perhaps persuade the public of its righteousness, if you will. And I had this conversation with Chris Eliza a few days ago where we were debating, is this a mountain, is this a mohel? And you can sit here and say, oh, geez, I spent a lot of time in pensacola um which is a gulf which is on the gulf coast um you know what nobody in pensacola calls the gulf uh anything after they don't say anything after the word golf it's the gulf hey it's the gulf the gulf nobody i have lived in this i have lived in and out of florida my you know my whole life um never does anybody say gulf of mexico side atlantic ocean side it is i guess we should pause for a second because for my whole life. Never does anybody say Gulf of Mexico side, Atlantic Ocean side. It is-

I guess we should pause for a second because for the uninitiated, the issue here is that the Associated Press has decided that it is going to continue to refer to the Gulf as the Gulf of Mexico, despite a Trump executive order rebranding it as the Gulf of America. Since then, Trump and the White House have said you can't come into the pool, which is essentially a group of journalists that cover, that are tasked with covering the president as he moves around day in, day out. And then they've escalated. So you can't come on Air Force One. They can't come into the Oval Office. And that's where we stand. So yes, back to Pensacola. They call it the Gulf. So the point is, I don't know anybody in America that refers to the Gulf outside of just one word, the Gulf.

So we could I understand if the average person who isn't sort of, you know, a longtime journalist or sitting there going, is this is this is this a hill worth dying on? Right. Right. And, you know, I've vacillated on this and I've come down on the side of it is because the next hill is going to be bigger. Right. It is it is this is not going to be a one off the one time test. This is the first of many. And this is about essentially, you know, trying to bring, you know, the essentially the language of journalism. You know, when when NBC standards makes decisions, they look to the AP style guide first. They don't always follow AP style guide. I have my own issues with AP style guides at times when it comes to, for instance, how you refer to abortion rights supporters and anti-abortion rights supporters. I came from the hotline and we decided we should refer to each side by their preferred

moniker. So we would go with pro-choice and pro-life. I was so programmed to do it that I often said that on the air. I'd get lectured by standards at NBC and I'd continue to say it on the air because I understood, you know, you know, there were some on the, on the pro-life side, anti-abortion rights side who would, who would argue, you know, you know, there were some on the on the pro-life side, anti-abortion right side who would who would argue, you know, the description is automatically negative. You're portraying us in a negative light. Right. It's when you're when the word anti is. But the issue here is it's not they're taking the choice away from the outlet and giving. No, no, there's no doubt. And that's what my point is, is that AP has it is more than just, you know, the leading wire service, arguably in the world. You know, Reuters might have a, you know, Reuters is the other sort of

competitor. They would make a claim to the international one, but yeah, go ahead. No doubt. But those are the two. And so this is about Trump wanting to control language police too a little bit, or certainly the, you know, the Trump communications shop on that front. So this is a test of wills. I've been disappointed in the inability of the rest of the White House press corps to sort of stand up to this moment. I understand that everybody has a boss. It's my understanding that there are lots of journalists in that room that would like to be taking more of a stand than their bosses want them to, which I think is, you know, this is a reminder, you know, we've already seen all the capitulations of the various corporate entities that own news organizations that we've

been watching. And it's extending to this sort of lack of a showdown. And here's the irony, you know, covering the president is very expensive. Being in the pool, you know, the government doesn't pay for the press corps to be in the pool. The Associated Press pays for that. And if you take that away, good luck finding other news organizations that are going to be willing to spend that kind of money, even their preferred news, unless I guess maybe some wealthy person will just sort of underwrite the Daily Caller or whatever, to do whatever manufactured replacement or the Daily Wire or whatever it is. Sure. But it's extraordinarily expensive and i'll tell you what donald trump would miss if there was no longer a press pool that was traveling with him um coverage he gets every day he likes

all the coverage and i and i don't know why the rest of the press corps is i mean before we get it before we get into reaction and remedies let's just talk a little bit about um let's play with this um hypothetical yeah to sort of distinguish between whether it's a mountain or a mile. Let's say the Associated Press tomorrow said, you know what? We will call it the Gulf of America. We want – it's not worth it. Let's just do it. I'm just playing devil's advocate with you because I actually agree with you.

They shouldn't do it. I actually think this is actually a very big deal. But let's say they do do it. What's the next – You say it's a slippery slope. What's the next? Well, by the way, there was another way they could have done this. And I'm curious to see if the White House would have reacted the same way, which is saying, look, our formal recognition, you know, the formal, the global recognition of this body of water is Gulf of Mexico. Sure. And, you know, we will in American coverage, we will note it is also referred

to as, you know, and some people have done that, right? Like, I think Google has done that, where if you Google it in America, it's Gulf of America. But if you're outside, it's Gulf of Mexico still. And I wonder if they had done that first. Right. Right. What the reaction what what the White House would have done? Do they do anything, right? I don't know. It's obviously that's, so you threw a hypothetical out there. I wanted to throw that back, which is, what if they had just come up with some sort of middle ground, if there was one. And by the way, there are plenty of things that are called one thing by one country and called something else by another country. I mean, by the way, there are country names that change. Myanmar, Burma, some countries want to still refer to it as Burma. It'll always be Burma to me if you watch

a lot of Seinfeld. But to play your hypothetical there, I think it's a slippery slope because it sort of dictates what the press can and can't say. It is sort of the entire premise of the First Amendment. And while the president doesn't have to take questions from AP ever again. I don't know if in a democracy, it has the authority of just barring them from doing something that isn't their decision of who's in the protective pool. That's a White House Press Association decision. Now, I should note that the Associated Press has actually... So Trump issued another executive order where he took the name of Mount Denali in Alaska and changed it to Mount McKinley. The Associated Press did accommodate that. They refer to it as Mount McKinley now because it is – and their rationale was this is within the American boundaries.

It's not an international body and therefore we believe that it's within the – By the way, it's no different than an airport name. Right. I remember a long time – Reagan. Look look i lived here before it was known as reagan and there were a whole bunch of air traffic controllers in particular who hated reagan because he was infamously fired a bunch of them uh early on and is it in his tenure who refused to call it reagan right for like the longest time and then there would be these fights about whether to call it Reagan. At the end of the day, hey, that's the name, the official name of the airport, right? Like this is now, he has the ability to officially rename that mountain. So the body of water, though, is not something that we've ever really dealt with like this before.

I mean, it really is. And it's so typical of Trump, right, to take something ridiculous like this before. It's uncharted territory. It really is. And it's so typical of Trump to take something ridiculous like this and try to turn it into this cultural, turn it into a culture war. And that's what it is, which is why it's sort of like, do you fight on his terms? Well, on this case, if it's a basic principle, yes. You do. Okay. So unpack a little bit, because you talked about it, but unpack how the pool works. I don't think people really recognize it and how it operates and what kind of structure it has, who controls it, and all the access points in the White House. Well, look, there's been this protective pool. It was created sometime in the 80s because there was a time, for instance, and it was basically like anything. This was about cutting costs and it was about the lack of space. You had sort of two competing issues as you had more news organizations wanting to be in every major event at the White House. You know, Andrea Mitchell can tell you stories of when there were competing.

Literally, you'd have three cameras in every, can you imagine three camera crews in every pool spray? Well, that's what's called a pool spray now, but because it's only pool. But before there was a pool, three cameras would be in there, three radio networks. You might have had six newspaper reporters. It started to get a bit absurd. Then it became a safety issue. And there was also, there was certainly financial, right? That was a big driver for the media side of things when the first, the three major networks, then it expanded to CNN, then it expanded to Fox, where, so now every five days, there's a, the, the five TV networks

in the, in this case, it's ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox rotate who's in the TV seat. There used to be a radio seat. I assume there is no radio seat anymore. I'm, I'm, I haven't been a white house correspondent in 10 years, but I don't know if there's, you know, I haven't been there in a while. I'll double check that one. When when i when i when i left i think it was a constant rotation really between npr and bloomberg radio i wanted to say news here abc news radio had abc news radio had it for a while i don't know if that exists anymore yeah right in its current form so but there would be a rotation in a radio seat there was was a print rotation. You were a member of that when you were at HuffPo back in the day. And that was more of a, you had, and there were two different print pool rotations, traveling print for the news organizations that were willing to pay the

high cost of being a part of the pool. And it's high cost. Yeah. It's very expensive. Very expensive. Versus the in-town pool, which you didn't really have to pay for, if I'm not mistaken. You did not. You went around. The president might go to some event locally and you were in that pool, but mostly you were hanging around the White House covering pooled events at the White House. And to be in the pool, if you're not on White House grounds, means you're in the motorcade for what it's worth.

There is a, you've got Secret Service protection. You're in the motorcade. You're just ahead of the ambulance, I believe, right? If you're keeping track of it. And, you know, so on Air Force One, there is a wire there. I believe there were two wire seats. I think that's right. Back in the day, maybe there's down to one, but there used to be two wire seats and they were always just AP always had one. And I think Bloomberg would pay to have the other one. The rotation of the TV side, rotation of radio, rotation of print. And then you might have one other guest. Right. You know, somebody that might be traveling with the pool at the president's press office discretion or something like that.

But it is a rotation. It is run by the White House Press Association in consultation with the press office. When they put out pool reports, it's the White House press office that puts out the print pool report. And it is, which I've always thought is weird because we in the TV pool directly fed our information to our colleagues in the TV pool while you in print sent yours to the White House press office for potential edits. Well, this actually happened once

where they held a pool report of mine because they didn't like some inclusion I had and I flipped. I was like, you can't edit my – It's not your decision. It's not your decision. That's my copy. So access, long short of it, is that access is important.

You get – you're there to document every single – ideally, not every single, but most movements of the president. And the AP has been constant presence there. And Trump has decided that's no longer going to be the case. And let's play the footage of Trump most recently explaining or talking about the AP and why he is doing this. The Associated Press just refuses to go with what the law is and what is taking place. It's called the Gulf of America now. It's not called the Gulf of Mexico any longer. I have the right to do it, just like we have the right to do Mount McKinley, and nobody's even challenging that. But only the associate, essentially,

it's primarily the Associated Press. And I don't know what they're doing, but I just say that we're going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it's the Gulf of America. We're very proud of this country, and we want it to be the Gulf of America. Now we get to the point where, okay, they've clearly made this stand. He's cutting them out from the pool and he's cutting off from Louisville. And now we get to what you were talking about, which is what is recourse here? And I'm reminded of something actually quite similar that happened when you and I were both at the White House in 2009. The backstory is the Obama White House was furious with Fox News.

If I remember correctly, it was mostly with Glenn Beck. At the time, it was a Glenn Beck issue. Just conspiratorial chalkboard musings. And they refused to let Fox News in the pool again. And a specific event was, I think it had to do with. It was a treasury event. A treasury event about. I want to say, yeah. Round Robin.

It was probably a Round Robin interview. It was about the auto bailout because it involved Feinberg. And they just said, Fox is not going to cover it. And what happened next was you guys the tv people the tv network said no right we said no look look the it is an equal you know the there's a chair of the pool every um i believe it changes quarterly not monthly but you may you may somebody may fact check me on that maybe it's monthly now but it would be quarterly you know, it would basically be a rotation of the D.C. bureau chiefs.

And they dealt it would so that there would be a single point of contact between the White House communication shop, the White House press secretary and a executive that sort of oversaw the pool for that quarter, whatever it was. I cannot remember whether who was chairing at that moment, but it doesn't matter. All five, it's very expensive to do the TV pool because you're paying for three people all the time, right? The journalist, the audio and the shooter, the photographer, camera guy. And so it's very expensive in its shared cost. Okay. Everybody pays the same amount of money. So we viewed it, frankly, as just a violation of our,

of our contract, essentially with each other, right. Of our cooperative, however you wanted to describe it. You know, it is, you know, we, we've agreed to do this and you can't, you know, if you're going to leave them out, then we're all out. You know, you, you, you can give an exclusive and then they, you know, look, white houses have played games. Hey, this is a broadcast only versus cable. You know, you would have that, you know, with, with quote round Robbins and what would be pooled and what wouldn't be pooled. You know, you would have that, you know, with with, quote, round robins and what would be pooled and what wouldn't be pooled. You know, we have things like that. But so the rest of the network stood up because, you know, it was one of those moments where, hey, you know, this time it it's something that's harming Fox next time it could. And that was exactly the rationale. It was just sort of like, this is a slippery slope. And I've always argued, this has been a bipartisan effort by White Houses to pressure, essentially, coverage on the pool. Pressure all the time, right? There's always been more, every White House tries to create more restrictions of press access than the previous White House. And it hasn't mattered whether it was a Democratic White House replacing a Republican White House or vice versa.

This has been a universal where every communication shop comes in thinking, we're gonna tame this press corps and we're gonna push back. You're not gonna have this much access. We're gonna cut off access here or cut off access there. And we always fought it. And I always fought access pressure

from the Obama White House because I viewed it as slippery slope yeah the minute you let one white house do something the next one would use it as precedent to prevent it from happening in the next one did you guys now refresh memory did you guys say we will not cover the next we didn't say we went i i can't remember what our threat was but we're just like you just the the pool goes away like we're we're not going to participate in this event if you if as a you know if you now they it's funny i was looking back they capitulated yeah they capitulate but not not at first and it was kind of interesting because i i i went back i looked at and it's the reasoning was almost remarkably

similar uh and to what trump uh is doing is, oh, it's not a real news organization. We can't abide by commentary. We have to have standards here for what actually is news, and we don't need to be dictated to essentially what those standards are. Now, they did capitulate, and I'm not trying to make a false equivalency because I do think Fox News is fundamental. Well, I would also argue that the irony is that and I and this is just deep irony, is that Fox News, when it was run by Roger Ailes, allowed journalists to be journalists at Fox. The current version of Fox News. I think Jennifer Griffin tries to practice journalism. I think, you know, I think Chad Pergram.

I think there's still journalists that were, I always say Fox is not a journalistic organization. There are journalists that there are people that practice journalism that happen to work at Fox, right? But that is not a journalistic enterprise at all. Ironically, Roger Ailes knew he couldn't have credibility at night if he didn't have real journalism. I mean, you know,

Brit Hume, uh, at the end of the day is a journalist first and he always had, and he fought really hard and, and you, by the way, you see glimmers of it, right? Which is why they limit Brit. I feel like Brit Hume's airtime keeps shrinking all the time over there because he's, he's, he will stubbornly speak truth to power at inconvenient times for the Fox audience. But the point was, Roger knew he had to have credible journalists in the daytime in order for the folks at night to get credibility. This is not how Fox is run now. It is just run as an amplification message machine. Like I said, there are still a few legacy people over there that practice journalism as best they can under the circumstances with which they have to work, but it is a totally different animal today than it was. Put it this way, I thought the way

that Obama White House spoke about Fox journalists, that is not my experience with Wendell Goeller. That was not my experience with Major Garrett. That was not my experience with Mike Emanuel. Was Major the White House correspondent at the time or was it Ed? I can't, I just, I want to say it was Major. I think it was Major. But, you know, Wendell Goeller, Mike Emanuel, these are pros. These are all pros.

Mike Emanuel, still a pro. And I, and I, and I, like, I hesitate to sit here and trash the organization because a guy like Mike Emanuel's, you know, working his tail off, you know, and he, but, but that's just, look, that's what it is now. Right. And I think, and I think the fact that they had that, those people on staff made it a lot harder for the Obama people to say, we're pushing you out now okay so okay so you guys eventually on a matter of days they capitulate fox gets back in the pool 2000 flash forward to now um we're not seeing anything like that we we've seen no one in the press pool as far as i know say hey if they're not allowed in we're we're not going to cover you guys. That's absurd.

Why are we not getting the same collective action? I think there's a few reasons. One is you have individual journalists that would like to do things, but their bosses have cautioned them not to. There are major news organizations that don't want to be in this. Everybody's trying to avoid a fight with Trump, right? It's sort of, it's, you know, this is not the hill to die on mindset, right? And you see it all over the place. And I think this is what's happening more than anything else.

And then the other concern, and I've had this conversation with a few, what I would call leaders in that space, is, you know, if you lead, will anybody follow? Right. Like a fear that is the issue, right? It is sort of like, and I think we know they have more power collectively than they do individually, but they're afraid to find out, you know, what if, you know, what if everybody is so scared that you just don't you don't have the collective action. Right. And that's that's what Trump's trying to prove. Right. He's trying to divide and conquer on this front. Certainly, you know, this is this Trump communication shop. Trump 1.0 still wanted to have, you know, Kellyanne Conway sort of more managing communications.

She needed reasonable relationships with mainstream media. This version, I mean, this guy Chung, you know, who's just, I mean, he's Baghdad Bob, right? And sometimes and how he responds to everything. You're like, you literally, you'll be like, you know, the Associated Press declared today that the sun set in the West. And it's like, how dare they say that the sun set in the Trump, you know, is what Stephen Chung would probably say. Right. Like it's it is such a it's comical. Like I find his quotes comical. They're they're sort of they're they're they're fun to read at times. Right. But they're not remotely close to the truth and accuracy. And so they don't care about this relationship with the press, right? In fact, the goal is-

They need the press as a boogeyman. They need the press as a punching bag. This is the most fascinating rationale I've heard from a few journalists that say, this isn't the fight to have, is this. They want to fight. Don't give them a fight. Right. Right. Rope a dope. Right. Let them punch themselves out. They want to fight. Don't give them a fight. Right. Right. Rope a dope. Right. Let them punch themselves out.

Rope a dope. Don't say a word. Do you not buy that? On some things I do. Right. I agree that they want the fight, but I worry about precedent. Right.

Right. The next White House. What does the next White House do? And again, all I have is the professional history of my time being at the White House, observing it before I got there and watching it after. Precedents matter a great deal. They're used all the time to justify the next action. Let me pepper you. core they are harming the the press core for president vance and president westmore and

president you know um baron trump etc assuming assuming we have future presidents yes uh or emperors or whatever we call them right what happened when the roman republic became the roman empire right we changed the title yeah you changed the title um all right a few let me pepper you with a few uh here one is a lot there whole idea of, well, one thing they could do, the press corps could do, is just stop covering Trump. Don't send anyone there. And I don't know. I honestly don't know. I can see both sides.

You got to cover. Look, you owe it to your readers. You owe it to your readers. You have to cover what's happening. You have a to your readers. You owe it to your readers. You have to cover what's happening. You have a job to do. Look, I think one of the biggest mistakes that were made, and I was on the minority in this fight post-January 6th, the decision to de-platform Trump is the single greatest mistake mainstream media did because it allowed Trump to create an alternative ecosystem that is now dangerous to the world. This alternative ecosystem is now essentially going to kill people in Ukraine.

Well, also, Chuck, it let people forget what Trump was on January 6th. 100%, right? The decision to deplatform him, he started his own thing. I mean, just literally, there is no good that came from this. And I never understood the rationale. No, we will not put anybody that didn't certify the election on mainstream media ever again. And I'm sitting here going, hey, guys, the voters platform these people. This isn't about whether you can have a debate about whether Jeff Zucker should have given Donald Trump a TV show in The Apprentice. You want to have that debate? Go ahead and have that debate. But you know who

decided that Donald Trump should be president of the United States? The voters. And the Republican voters decided they should be the nominee. And you can have an argument about, okay, he didn't win the popular vote in 16, but he won the electoral college. He was the president of the United States. The voters platformed him, pure and simple. So deplatforming him was a huge mistake. And I think it's led to all of this current situation. I really, when I look at, if I could correct one thing, it would have been that. So you're not, yeah, I'm with you. I don't buy the idea that, okay, the proper reaction to what he's doing to the APA is just don't give him any coverage whatsoever. You can't do that. You just can't. No, but let me, I'll say this. This is also a question about access journalism, right? And I always say this, there's all types of journalism and we need all types of it. You can't just, if you're only an access journalist,

you're a stenographer, but guess what? You need a stenographer, okay, with the President of the United States, right? You need to find out what is happening. When it comes to the questions- What did he say? I want the transcript, yeah. Correct. When it comes to the questions we as journalists are having to answer, right, the who, what, where, when, you need to know the what, right? What happened? And that's just a basic thing. But here's something that I do think is unique with Trump, which is getting information from the Trump administration is not necessarily helpful to your viewers or readers, right? Because it's normally, it's usually not the truth. There are glimmers of truth. There are

crumbs of truth, but it isn't the full truth. You're never getting the full cover Trump through the White House press briefing. Right. Like that's like, you know. Well, that's what I tell people. I mean, everyone who talks to me about covering the White House. What I say to them is that it's both the most prestigious and important job in the world and the most miserable job. Because you are literally on one side of a wall and they're on the other side of the wall. And they present to you a reality that they want to present. And your job is to find out what actually is happening on the other side of the wall. And they present to you a reality that they want to present. And your job is to find out what actually is happening on the other side of the wall. I don't know about you, but every story I broke at the White House, my sources were on the Hill. Yeah. Well, that's 90% of the time. Like if you want to cover the White House, you do it from

Capitol Hill. And that's why when I was running White House coverage at Politico, I was insistent that we have a Hill-based White House correspondent because that was just the best way to get... All right. Last question then is, the other thing, and I think I know where... It's sort of what we've talked about, but the Trump people are like, well, look, we're not... The AP can come to the briefings. They can come to the White House proper. We're not restricting access. What we're telling them is they can't have the privilege of going into the Oval, of riding on Air Force One. Great. Pull the photographers.

You know, I'll tell you this. If the White House photogs said they would not cover any pool events until APs was restored, that might have impact. Because guess who really wants pictures? Donald himself. Donald Trump. And many news organizations, you know, we used to have a rule. And unfortunately, this was one that we let the Obama White House change the rules on this. And I always regretted it.

And I fought it internally, which was to accept White House photographs, White House taken photographs. The White House photographer takes the photograph and then presents then presents of a news event and then presents it and we didn't have a independent journalistic you know photographer there you know it again slippery slopes you know i think what's the most famous example the re the the re-oath right where they didn't let oh with uh yeah justice roberts yeah justice roberts because he blew the oath um quite problems but yes i remember that one yeah um all right so in the end this is a collective action issue and ultimately journalists and i've lived it like you are constantly figuring out do i work uh to advance my publications interests or do I work to advance the interests of the institution of journalism? And a lot of it just depends on what kind of support you have from your bosses.

Right. And, you know, do you have a journal? Is your boss a journalist or is your boss a news executive? And there's a difference these days. And the news executives that were former journalists usually are a little tougher minded on this and are ready to take the heat. But as we see, I mean, look at the Washington Post decision to first take an advertisement and then say no to an advertisement. This is having to do somebody. And this again, it's actually for, it's sort of a symbolic thing because who the hell gets the hard copy delivered newspaper anymore? But the Washington Post was apparently selling a wraparound advertisement that was going to be pretty anti Elon Musk. I take it. Yeah, it's critical to Eugene Musk. Yeah, it was going to be critical of which is very much federal workers. Right. If anybody's going to read a hard copy of the Washington Post, it's going to be federal workers here in the in the dmv and donald trump right who still reads a

hard copy of the newspaper donald j trump the new york post not the washington post but true but at least it's on his desk right to to get his sharp assuming they haven't canceled all the subscriptions yeah through hbs right so you know i'm sure somebody looking out for the jeff bezos politics at the post said oh this isn't worth the headache that it's going to give and again i understand the rationale of bob eiger to settle the rationale of sherry redstone to settle the rationale of these uh of of jeff bezos because he's got other entrants or jeff bezos to to sort of i don't know what you call the the talent fee for melania trump um but that is 40 million dollars that's pretty impressive yeah probably the greatest modeling

contract she ever got um i mean, wow, right? But again, you know, I get the rationale that they're all thinking, right? They're just thinking about their business interests. And this is, here's the slippery slope, Sam, I think. This is, you know, when people say, what kind of, what's happening to the American democracy? And I'm like, step one, when you start to see a democracy erode, the first thing that happens is it becomes a kleptocracy, becomes a pay for play. And I think all of these press decisions that we're watching are a form of pay for play. Right. So you think, you think that you, you believe that the posts, maybe CBS, people who

have people higher up who have financial incentives to play nice right are not going to be incentivized conversely to say hey we're going to take a moral stand with the associated press because they know it'll piss off the trump folks and it's not they don't and it's it it's not worth the price for them right i i joke when you think about the history of nbc but then at what point does it become worth the price for them, right? I joke, when you think about the history of NBC. But then at what point does it become worth the price, or is the price just too much to pay? I don't know. It's too bad.

There's a great shareholder letter that a friend of mine got a hold of that William Paley one time sent to shareholders at CBS, basically saying, hey, I hate Edward R. Murrow too. I don't like him too. They hated him. Okay, this isn Edward R. Murrow too. I don't like him too. They hated him. Okay. This isn't new, by the way, shareholders and wealthy people not liking some journalists on the airwaves. Okay. Edward R. Murrow, big business, hated him, all this stuff. And Paley basically said, look, he only helps your bottom line in the long run because the more credibility our news has, the more credit. To to paley's credit he was making the case for having essentially uh an opponent you know somebody against their business interests right or potentially against their business interests channeling some part of the american public's uh anger or however you want to describe it. And there aren't any William

Paley's right now running any major media corporations. They're just not. Yeah. And then the other thing though is, and it's obvious why this is happening, but Fox was the beneficiary of collective action back in 2009, as we discussed. Right. And obviously it's a different entity now. I'm not going to say I'm disappointed that they're not standing up for the AP because I never expect them to stand up for the AP, but I'm wondering if you're disappointed having stood up for Fox yourself. I've given up on, there's, look, I don't want to, I don't want to name call, but I've given up. I've,

I've given, handed my credibility to a handful of journalists over there who've never reciprocated when times were tough, when times were tough for them, I went out of my way to defend a couple of them. When times were tough, you know, an unfair criticism or character assassination that was taking place. And, you know, these people don't stand, you know, they're just, you know, there's, there's an, certainly we've seen the evolution of one of their larger news personalities go from trying really hard to follow in Brit Hume's footsteps and suddenly looks more like Sean Hannity every day. Right. And it's a shame, you know, because I thought because he really cared about that reputation. And I think really actually cared about being a journalist first and wanting to sort of walk that line, understood what his audience was.

And instead now just wants to have tea time with the president. I hope he enjoys it. Chuck, thank you so much. Thank you so much, So thank you so much, man. Appreciate it. We're going to get you back to talk college football when the season comes. Maybe I'd love that,

man. Chuck Todd. Thank you so much, man. Appreciate it. We'll have you back. Take care. Thank you,

brother.