The Press Box - A Deluge of Shedeur Sanders NFL Draft Takes. Plus: Kara Voght on the Embattled White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

Hello media consumers! Bryan and David are back to opine on the overwhelming amount of content that has come from Shedeur Sanders sliding in the NFL draft (1:00), including a bizarre story line about the son of the Atlanta Falcons’ defensive coordinator prank-calling Sanders (22:00). Then, they run through a handful of smaller stories from the weekend, including the awkward Bill Belichick CBS Sunday Morning interview that went viral (32:00) and “WWW PR” trending (37:00). In the notebook dump, the Washington Post’s Kara Voght joins to relay her experience of attending the White House Correspondents' Dinner (44:00).Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline.Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David ShoemakerGuest: Kara VoghtSenior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everyone? It's Rachel Lindsay, and if you love all things Bravo, then you need to be listening to Morley Corrupt. Every Tuesday and Friday, your favorite ringer podcasters and I dive into Bravo's biggest moments and dish out hot and always unfiltered takes. And guess what? Now you can watch us too. That's right, Morley Corrupt is now available in video on Spotify. So whether you're listening in your family van or watching next to your white refrigerator, don't be all uncool. and miss out. Catch new episodes every Tuesday and Friday, only on the Ring of Reality TV feed. David? Yes. We got to start this Here Media podcast with the fall of Shador Sanders.

I know what you mean. That sounds a little bit dramatic. I don't know that his career has fallen, but yes, he fell in the draft. Not in the Roman Empire sense of the word. Yes. In the draft nerd sense of the term. Mm-hmm.

Shador is the son of Dion. He was a badass quarterback from Colorado. We thought maybe he would go 21 to the Steelers on Thursday night. He didn't. No. We thought, okay, maybe he's more of a second, third round type of quarterback who's going to go on Friday night. He didn't. Shador Sanders finally gets drafted on the third day, on Saturday, with the 144th pick.

Deonti Lee made a great point on the Ringer NFL show where he said, man, this solved ESPN's problem of covering day three of the draft. Yep. Because can I give you some other fifth-round picks that were drafted in the vicinity of Shador Sanders? Please. What can you tell me about Tyrian Ingram Dawkins,

defensive end of Georgia? Not a lot, no. Mack McWilliams, quarterback Central Florida? Nope. Colin Oliver linebacker, Oki State? No. So that's the kind of player we normally talk about on day three. Here was one of the most famous players in college football,

second generation NFL player, and a guy who became a cause celebrate, if I may use the only in journalism term, of Stephen A, of Skip, and wait for it, Donald Trump. Yeah. What a moment, David, for draft experts. You know, we're all kind of draft experts now. We all feel we know a lot more about the NFL draft than we ever did. Yes.

Donald Trump has joined our ranks. And he came in. I want to read you some of this true social post. He says, Dion Sanders was a great college football player and was even greater in the NFL. He's also a very good coach, streetwise and smart. Streetwise. That term feels racially freighted, but it also just feels very, very old. Yes.

Streetwise. Therefore, Shador Sanders, his quarterback son has phenomenal genes, all caps, and is all set for greatness. He should be picked, picked in quotes, immediately. It's kind of a throwback to the old Twitter Trump, wasn't it? Yeah. Do you think Trump really has a vested interest in this? I mean, has he been watching Colorado games? And no chance.

So what is the, what is the, I mean, I don't want to belabor this too much. What is the angle here? It reminds me of 2010's Trump who was like reading the AP wire and was like, oh, Robert Pattinson, I got broke up with, okay, let's go. Yeah. We need a tweet for that. Let's hitch our wagon to this new cycle. Yeah.

I mean, generally, he knows who Dion Sanders is. Yes. Did he watch Shadour play a down of college football? I'm going to call that highly questionable. Yeah, that's why I think too. That's why I think it's a weird... I mean, I think that sort of in some ways encapsulates the entire Shadour Sanders draft whatever,

hullabaloo, is that... It felt like we should... We were all... Like, we all should have something to say. We all should have a very strong opinion on this. And yet, with the exception of Mel Kuyper and a couple of assorted others, had like a really firm opinion.

It was just sort of, huh, I guess those draft guides I read were missing in element or something, you know, it was just sort of like, you know, it's, like you said, we all consider ourselves draft experts, not because we know necessarily or even implicitly more than anybody who said, who is officially a draft expert, because we know more about the draft for this brief window of time than we do about, you know, the state of our mortgage or whatever. So it's like to us, this is expertise. You're a regular person. This is regular world expertise.

And I just sort of, I just, I think we're all just sort of bemused by the whole thing. Yes. I think the most powerful sports arguments are the ones we can participate in without knowing anything at all. Yeah. And this one, you're like, hey, maybe I didn't watch college football this season, which seems, by the way, to include a lot of our draft experts because they're kind of catching up on all these big games as they get ready for April. but you can just be like, hey, son of Dion, didn't go, what's going on?

Yeah. You just wait, it's like LeBron versus MJ, who's a goat? You know, who's the face of the NBA? You have no sports knowledge is required to participate in that.

When you have like a dad or mom hangout, you know, it's like, what's going on with this? It's like you're Trump tweeting, you know, what's going on? He should be picked immediately. Yeah.

Kevin Van Valkaberg had a great tweet, so I was very jealous of. He said, we have been searching for a new Tim Tebow and finally found one. Yeah. It gets to play out similarly as part of not only the football media industrial complex, but also the culture wars. It's like watching someone reboot a beloved TV show from your childhood.

Yeah. Dude, that feels so right. I mean, this feels like it's going directly into the A block of every debate show and speaking of not knowing that much about the NFL draft. Yeah. Because that's the thing, right? Like forget the Travis Hunter trade, Shador Sanders.

He didn't go. And I also think, I don't know if you heard this, but there was a little bit of a media critique baked into all this on, at least on Thursday, Friday, maybe even on Saturday where people were saying, you know, the media misled us into thinking he was a first round pick. Yeah. There's a lot I told you.

So, hey, I tried to tell you about those bad interviews at the Combine. Yeah. Tried to tell you they were looking at tape and they were not seeing you know, Drake May. Yep. But what happened is then he falls out of the second and the third and the fourth. And it's like, well, I didn't read the prediction that he was going to be around in the fifth round. Yeah. If you were saying, hey, this guy might be taken after Dylan Gabriel, take a victory lap today because I missed your writing on that subject.

Yep. So it kind of turned out that everybody was right. Yeah. The guy told you so he's not at top of the draft. People were right. Then other people were like, actually, this is really weird and strong. they were also right. Yes.

And the mystery of why he fell, I think, is also a huge part of the story because we actually don't know the answer. Yeah. There were those bad combine interviews, allegedly. Mm-hmm. There was a whole, like, you know, Dion Media Company following him around. Again, I just like, when we do the look at me athlete thing here in 2025, I was like, we all have podcasts with our names on them.

Yeah. We all. and I mean journalists here post pictures of ourselves on social media. So what is our look at me standard? People were pulling out old Shadour interviews, and they were also pulling out interviews of Tyler Booker, a guard who got drafted in the first round, who was saying at the Combine,

I want to play football to such a degree that my opponent will lose their will to play football. I'm like, okay, so that counts as an awesome quote, but everything Shadur said about being legendary, no, you are, you're done. Yeah. And doesn't you feel a little bit like Rosillo talking about Luca? Like, well, if he was smoking as he was coming out on the court, you know, I'd still make the trade.

I'm not going to claim to have watched enough Shadoura Sanders tape to have a strong opinion on the subject. You were like, okay, so you're like the host of a debate show. Please continue. But I do think that there's a sort of, I mean, I think this, I don't think this is, this is shocking to say. I do feel like there's a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy in it, right? It's like the degree to which people were perplexed is fine, but the degree to which the outrage machine, and I don't want to pile on Kuiper,

Kuiper legitimately seems to think this is a top prospect or whatever. But the way that the NFL draft, like you said, day three problem was solved, the degree to which, like you said, this is going to go directly into the A block of all these debate shows is exactly why you don't take Dionne Sanders son if you see him as a career backup. Right?

It's like, do you want every single day? And this will be local coverage, too, dude. If he got drafted by the Cowboys starting in training camp, as a beloved as Dak Prescott is. It would be every single day, is this the week for Shador Sanders to take the reins? You know? And if you're in the front office and you're like, listen, I can tell you right now that every time that question is asked, the answer will be no.

Like, is that really what you want to spend your time answering questions about in press conferences? So that's the theory of why he didn't go second, third. Yes. The theory of the first round is basically a talent thing. No, I think it's more of a question about why he didn't go in like the fourth of the fifth round. It's like if you, if this is really where you think this guy is going to be forever, then why would you want to waste your time and energy on that?

But there's got to be like a pushback to that, which is the NFL so desperate for quarterbacks. It's true. And you're just like, like, what would have to happen? Like if Dion Sanders from Boulder is radioing plays into Shadour's helmet. during an NFL game. Are you in or are you out if there's a chance he could be your quarterback? Well, you're also talking about NFL front offices making these decisions, right? And that's where there was a lot of, I mean, people looked at the Brown's draft and they were like,

there's no reason you take two quarterbacks that close together unless the ownership is involved. There's a lot of like kind of, you know, owner get involved sort of situations. If you're in an NFL front office, which you're not the coach, but your job is maybe even more expendable in a lot of cases. and you're a lot of times tied to the coaching staff. Do you want your coach to be in a position where they're getting, where every loss someone saying should Dion Sanders be the new coach of this team?

Yeah, that would be terrible. By the way, that would have been the Cowboys scenario. A hundred percent. I'm surprised he's not the coach already. We kind of did that in the off season, even though Dion wasn't interested in neither were the Cowboys. Yeah. Oh, my God.

All right. Coming up on the press box, more on ESPN's NFL draft coverage, including a very worked up Mel Kuiper and an equally worked up Reese Davis. Plus, Bill Belichick is out there selling books with his girlfriend.

The worst question ever asked at the White House, the camera that decided two NBA games, and WWEPR is trending. We'll explain. Followed by a very special treat, the Washington Post Caravote reports from this weekend's White House Correspondence Dinner.

All that and much more on the press box. A part of the ringer! Podcast Network. Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Bobby Wagner here. Continuing on the draft, David, we got a media complaint right at pick number one.

I saw Kyle Brandt leaping aboard this bus today. first pick was Cam Ward from Miami, went to the Titans. ESPN almost immediately goes into a debate because Mel Kuyper, who's sitting there on the set, has Shador Sanders ranked ahead of Cam Ward in his rankings. It's Big Board, it's close. It's number five overall versus number six.

Booger McFarland, also on the set, has Shador Sanders ranked ahead of Cam Ward. So there was a lot of, hey, what are you guys doing? This should be Cam Ward's moment. Yeah. Why are we doing debate TV here instead of just celebrating this guy for being the number one overall pick? Yep. Do you have a feeling about this either way?

Well, I mean, I feel like the rest of the, I mean, you're absolutely right about the content thing you said earlier. I feel like days two and three of the draft probably got all. lot more wrapped attention they normally do. But one of the things that stood out with to me is the day three, the day three, like, the, like the, the, you know, the soft tinkly piano music in the background, like hard time, hard times, you know, hard life player profiles that a lot of these, that some of these players get, that seem to get more prevalent on the, in the latter parts of the drafts. Like, how are we going to fill this airtime?

The answer is, you know, touching human stories. watching some of those and thinking about how little attention Cam Ward got, I thought was kind of put it in relief for me. I mean, I agree. There's more time in the first round,

but there's not a lot of time given to Cam Ward. And it should have been, I mean, one would think it would be his big moment. I think it's not just about Chedore Sanders. I think it's just makes, it's a little bit unsettling to see the, you know, the debate machine roll into high gear immediately during the NFL draft instead of, you know, showing that camward tape that presumably some Titans fans would be excited

about. Maybe if it weren't the Titans, you know, maybe if it were, maybe if it were the New York Giants, then like they would have spent more time lauding the incoming hero or whatever, but yeah, Titans are kind of a black hole content ways. Well, it's not, yeah, and presumably, you know, Not as much of a viewership win if you get every Titans fan to pay attention. But it did, I generally feel odd about like making that sort of moralistic complaint about a sports broadcast, but it did feel a little bit particularly glaring this time. It gets to me, for me, at a Rubik's Cube, you and I have been trying to solve on this podcast, which is how are you supposed to cover something like the draft on TV versus how are you supposed to cover

everywhere else. Because if Deonti and Stephen Ruiz and Shield Capati had gotten on the Ringer NFL show that night and been like, guys, let's not grade the drafts. Let's celebrate Cam Ward and give him his moment. Bill would have called with some notes and be like, hey, that's actually not how we do podcast.

We're all good with the celebration. Tell me what you freaking think. Yeah. And I just think the podcast apparatus us that has built up and tweets and everything else has put pressure on TV to try to keep up with that. Yeah. And if I worked at ESPN, I think I would think the same thing.

I'm like, wait a second. All these other people are just having a million opinions about the draft. Shouldn't we have some of that on our shows? They have to watch us. It's true. But I mean, this is, I mean, going back to Bill's imaginary notes, this is similar to some of Bill's basketball broadcast takes, right? It's like there's not enough time.

You don't have the same amount of time as you do in a podcast, right? Because Even as a draft, we have 10 minutes? Well, you have, you clearly have a lot of time. But, I mean, the guys on the NFL show

started off their post-draft podcast talking about Shadoor Sanders and what happened to them. And then after 10 minutes of that, they said, okay, let's go to draft grades. And they started breaking everything down to granular level, right?

I mean, like you have time to do the one thing that's going to, you know, kind of headline and still do everything else. And just to the top of it, Yeah, I don't think it needs to be like, let's just show Cam Ward hugging his family members for 15 minutes. Let's just show, you know, we don't need to like, you know, put one shining moment on repeat while we show his like touchdown highlights or whatever.

But like, yeah, reviewing the tape, seeing what he could mean for the Tennessee Titans, seeing what comparing him to other first round draft picks and first round quarterbacks and what that can mean. I mean, I think there's plenty of stuff you could do that doesn't just feel like excessive, not in the over the top way, but excessive like it doesn't feel like flab, you know. know, I mean, there's a lot of content that you can make of that. But, you know, I know what you mean. I can imagine wanting to do that and not knowing and, you know, but I don't think people just think about it as podcast either. I think, I mean, most people, that sort of reaction is, that feels like a very ESPN reaction. And I think the feeling was that, you know, maybe the draft is sacred.

You know, maybe the draft is a place where this doesn't have to happen. But, you know, it's okay. I mean, listen, it was very... We're saying things that would have made people faint in 1985. The draft is sacred. Well, sure. Yes. The draft is certainly not sacred.

Although there was an element, and you might be waiting to get into this. But the part where, like, Kuiper went on his... Well, let's use wrestling terms here. When Kuyper cut the promo about how the NFL is famously bad at scouting quarterbacks? Yes. Didn't that feel a little bit like he was breaking K-fabe? Like, you're not allowed... Like, this entire...

this entire complex is built upon scouting, right? And whether or not we get it right or wrong, the scouts, the online scouts, the people like Kuiper, I'm sure I've been just as bad as the NFL at identifying quarterbacks. It seems to be one of the most timeless problems, unsolved, most unsolvable problems in the world. But when he just, like, said it out loud, it just seemed to be like that,

it felt like a thing he wasn't supposed to say, NFL teams don't know how to do this. That's why they got it wrong. I thought the same thing. And I was also like, can we go back chapter and verse through Mel Kuyper's quarterback rankings through the years? Yeah. Like, aren't we all pretty fallible on this whole thing? Yes.

The draft expert once time tell me, it's like, you're not trying to bat 1,000 with your draft rankings. You're trying to bat 300. Yeah. People who are good bat 300, people who are bad bat 200, just like baseball. So we think Mel's batting more than 300 for those quarterback rankings? I don't. also Reese Davis just trying to corral Mel Kuiper on day three yeah Reese was more worked up than he ever was during let a naysay or no

I don't think I've ever seen him like that yeah I mean he was Mel it was kind of and he was trying I think trying to just move on right trying to get Mel to change the subject and be like okay he is the 144th pick this is what Shador has to deal with now yeah where these battles have been fought on the air for two and a half days, we got to kind of turn the battleship around here. But he was getting worked up. Yeah.

They always replay that Mel Kuyper, Indianapolis Colts clip from 1994 where he was mad at them for drafting Trev Alberts instead of Trent Dilfer. Oh, yeah. Which is a great, let's talk about some guys moment. But I remember watching that in 1994.

And the thing that was very, very striking about it at the time live was that a sports cast was mad on television. Oh, yeah. That was very, very unusual. And now you watch it and you're like, oh, he's mad. He's actually madder than like Stephen A is on Monday morning.

That's what it, it took like three days of mad to cut through now. Yes. To be like a real like people on Twitter like, wow, is this his last draft? Yeah. Well, Kuiper has a different sort of mad. I mean, there are sometimes where you, I don't know, I can't speak. for anybody else. Sometimes where I read it as if he has had,

he's at private conversations with various front office personnel where he feels like either A, he's been misled or B, his advice was not taken seriously. You know, and maybe he feels, because it does feel like he's personally hurt, right? Like he's like there is a,

so, so I don't really know, but it is a very specific sort of upset that is, yeah, it's different. It's a good TV, you know? I mean, it's good. That's terrific. I mean, I was riveted.

I mean, if you had been told ahead of time, you know, Mel's in a contract year, he's going to try to get all that Stephen A. Smith money. This is kind of the kind of performance that you would have, that you would have maybe imagined, right? Yes. And it goes to the whole thing about the number one pick. I'm like, if you don't, if you want somebody who shares the consensus for you that Cam Ward's better than Shadour, well, put that guy on television then. Yeah. This is the guy you put on TV. So either we're going to hear from her.

or you're going to go find somebody else? Or you're going to go hire Dame Bruegler. Like, sorry, that's fine. I want to get to the prank call that was somehow a part of the festivities this weekend. Oh, my God. Didn't you think the era of the prank call had ended? No, and thank God. It made me feel young and vital again.

It did. I mean, it made me remember us, I think it was you, right, calling that girl in high school. Oh, yeah. And in a very bad British accent asking for, Alloicious. We just thought that was high comedy. Oh, that was high comedy. I don't know.

It was a different era. We're sorry to the parents who answered the phone late that night. What would you do if that happened with one of your kids now? Would you just crack up? Yes. I think it was really funny. I hear him once in a while talking about ringing a doorbell and running away. Yeah.

Or T. P.ing a house. And I'm like, I'm glad the old religion is still around. We saw this prank call from Shador's side. like he was surrounded by people and we saw that video. And then we saw it from the apparent cranky anchors enthusiasts who executed it, including a guy in an Ole Miss sweatshirt. They're calling him up and saying they are the, these are the prank callers I'm talking about,

that they were the GM of the Saints and they were about to pick him. Yeah. And then they said, no, we're not about to pick you. Sorry, you should do her. Well, we got a statement from the Atlanta Falcons. This is the next weird shoe to drop in this story. says earlier in the week, the 21-year-old son

of the Falcon's defensive coordinator unintentionally came across the draft contact phone number for Shador Sanders off an open iPad while visiting his parents' home and wrote the number down to later conduct a prank call.

Unintentionally came across as doing an interesting amount of work in that sentence. Yes, and let me just say if I were in his position at 21 years old, I would have 100% done the same thing. Whether or not I made the call, I guess that's the open question,

but if I saw that number, I would want 100% have written it down. That was, with the potential, like, with the purpose of potentially prank calling him. And we're saying unintentional that he did not look through dad's stuff

to find Shador Sanders' phone number. That was, that's what we're trying to get across with that word unintentionally. Yeah, like it was just like the Rolodex was open or whatever. Or like maybe he was, his dad was just,

yeah, The contacts thing on the iPad was open, right? And so that he would have just said. Or maybe his dad was like, hey, well, you grab my iPad and look up the number for Shake Shack. I want to order some, what order us some burgers. They just types in SHA and there it is. And he's like, okay, this is, I got to do this. We've all been there.

The people who are getting really, there's a lot of high dudgeon and high horse and on Twitter. I can't believe they release his kid's name. Like, I can't believe they even identified him. I mean, it's a, I don't know. It just, it's a, it's a prank. Come on. They were like they should take a draft pick away from the Falcons for what the,

for what somebody's son did. Oh, my God. I'm sorry. Are we going to do coach's sons? That feels like a whole different category. I'm sorry. Are we, are we feeling bad for sure?

It's so strange, man. And if he had gone number one, we would be, those same people would be out here talking about how he's, you know, his interviews should have disqualified him from, from playing in the NFL. I mean, it's just, it's all,

it's all a show. One last note about the draft, David. Roger Goodell went on Pat McAfee's show last week. Roger not waiting for the apology to marry Kate Cornett. By the way, Roger just ready to go on the Pat McAfee show. No problem there. He was talking about the way the draft unfolded this year,

10 minutes, as we said, between picks. And Goodell pointed out that very few teams use the full 10 minutes. So he said, why don't we go to seven minutes between picks in the first round in the future. But then every team has a extra two minutes card that they can play once per draft. So if you need some more time, if you're on the phone soliciting offers for the pick,

you can put down a card that says, okay, we get an extra two minutes here. Why on earth would you agree to that if you were a team? Wait, do agree with what the commissioner wants to turn the draft into a game show? Well, wait, yeah, well, okay, the game show aspect would be fun. But I guess I'm a little bit confused by the whole premise here.

Roger Goodell says very few of the teams use the full 10 minutes, right? Which he knows because presumably the picks were submitted and finalized before the 10 minutes were up. The pick is in. Right. So why don't we just change the rules so that ESPN then reports on it the moment the pick is in? Just send Goodell out to the podium the second the pick is in. Wouldn't that make everything go a lot faster? or are we more worried about the broadcast functionality than the teams,

like I'm out of time the teams have. That's the most agonizing like two minutes in sports, isn't it? Yeah, when the pig is in, but you don't know what the pick is. It's like waiting for the Kerg machine to make your first cup of coffee of the morning. You're like, come on now. Just the last drop. Let's go. Yeah, it does take longer, doesn't it?

It just seems like a real unnecessary. It's like this is not a problem. You know, this is just like a, it's like gamifying it is somehow going to, it's not gameifying, game showifying it is going to somehow make it more move faster. No, it just move faster if you say it's going to move faster, you know, it doesn't, it just seems so unnecessary. But I guess making it exciting, I don't know, the first round really needs it, but, um, whatever.

In other news, David, the worst question ever asked at the White House. Oh, God, do we have a new one? Well, we crowned a new champ while you were away. Uh-huh. It's kind of like the title changing on a house show. Still counts sometimes. And Hershey, Pennsylvania over the weekend. Uh, podcaster Tim Poole was in the new media seat at the White House.

Ah, yeah. And asked a question that could be summarized as the media is really terrible. Do you have a comment? Mm-hmm. Well, we got a new one this morning. A new contender, I should say. It's from Fox's Peter Duce's. and yes, it's NFL draft related.

After the president's truth social post, the Browns finally took Shadur Sanders. Does the president think he deserves credit for Sanders getting picked? And does he think going to the Browns is better than being undrafted? Hey, I'm going to, all I will say is the president put out a statement and a few rounds later he was drafted. So I think the facts speak for themselves on that one, Peter. We'll go to the back row in the middle. Wait. The president put it out after day one, right?

He did. And then Choudoir went in round five? Yes, he went in round five. So we're, you know, and even if he'd put it out after day two, there was still the fourth round at the beginning of day, you know. So yeah, we're presumably like 150 picks post-tweet that he gets selected. I guess the facts do think for, do speak for themselves. I mean, again, I don't want to overdo the whole.

like meta theorizing about this. But if I was worried about first take, if I'm in front office, it says I don't need the heat for first take or just the annoyance of first take or I don't want the annoyance of Dion Sanders rumors. I certainly wouldn't want the annoyance of the president of the United States tweeting every week, why is it Shador Sanders starting for your team? That might lead a team to stay away from a player as well. The thing Peter Ducey had at the end about him going to

Cleveland was kind of funny. That's the only reason I'm not totally sure it's a new champ, but I'm willing to go with your take here. It's the worst question ever asked at the White House. I mean, it's definitely one of the worst answers. I mean, and if it was a setup for that, I think you can, it can share in the credit. I was reassuring listeners last week. We've actually done this research. Bobby wasn't even watching the Mets this weekend. He was watching old Nixon press conferences. These are in fact the worst questions ever asked at the White House. There were some really, really good contenders in the Herbert Herbert Hoover era, you know? A lot of questions in the Herbert Hoover era.

You're on newspapers.com yesterday looking those up. I don't believe we had television, Bobby, in the Hoover administration. Yeah, well. Court reporters, though, typographers, you know, that's a long time. You've got an etching of the White House press room. Cave house drawings of McKinley questions. I mentioned Tim Poole in the new media seat. Well, there was an amazing person or at least a media outlet, David, occupying that seat today.

Oh, no. Who is it? It's the Philadelphia Inquirer. There's new media? It's new media. Punch polls Jake Sherman points out the Inquirer was founded in 1829. Yeah. About when Bobby was looking up White House questions.

So congratulations to the Inquirer. for being new media. I can't tell if that's a compliment or it's disparaging to the inquirer. Like you're just wanting like, yeah, some startup. Rather than a, you know, a newspaper that vacuumed up Pulitzer's like crazy. That's so bizarre. Why is it in the new media seat? Because it wasn't previously, it hadn't previously been at had a seat at the press conference?

I think we're just trying to throw people into that, into that chair and trying to prove that it's not just conservative influencers or conservative types in that chair. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what the strategy is. I remember Mike Allen was the first person ever in that chair who's the oldest of new media,

I guess next to the inquirer. 1829, is that what he said? 1829. Oh, my God. One of the founders, John Norville, Norville, Norville, Norville. Also, a U.S. senator from Michigan, I guess, later in life,

when you click on his Wikipedia page, he's wearing like the high-collared black coat with the giant black scarf slash bow tie situation and the white collar that pokes upward. That's just to give you a frame of reference for where the founding of the Philadelphia Inquirer lands in American history. That's amazing.

I think Will Lewis dresses like that of the Washington Post these days. You'd have to see him, I guess, first of all. The Bill Belichick interview that's lighting up Twitter. Oh, my God. Bill Belichick has a new book coming out May 6th. It's called The Art of Winning. But he's already out there selling books, David. He was on CBS Sunday morning with Tony DeCopal.

And his 24-year-old girlfriend, Jordan Hudson, was present for the interview. A constant presence, DeCopal said in his piece. And DeCopal asks, Belichick, how did you two meet? And Hudson, who is sitting right off camera, says, we're not talking about this. Okay, that's an odd answer because one would expect that to be, well, I feel like one could expect

that question and to put it off in such a way, I think draws more attention than it deflects. Yes. And as DeKopo pointed out in the piece, there are Instagram photos of Hudson dressed as a mermaid lying on the beach and Belichick dressed as a fisherman who has just pulled her out of the sea.

These new photos? Or this is like, That's when they met. You're saying it's like kind of more of a mythical story of Bill Belichick being tempted by one of the sirens of the sea. Yes. I just don't think you can get, you can't post that photo on Instagram and be like,

sorry, that's all we're giving you. We're not going to say how we met. Yeah. I guess that's a good point. And she's also, Matt Baker reported this in the athletic. She's also some kind of,

you know, informal media advisor for the University of North Carolina. like Belichick asked her to be copied on certain emails. So this is, you're actually news now, you know, beyond the ha ha, hey, look at Bill Belichick and who he's dating. Like, she's doing things at a public university. Okay, yes. At the risk of taking this too seriously. Okay.

Would we, would you be reading her age in the lead to this if she were 45 years old? and still much younger than Bill Belichick? I would not. Fair point. Would you be reading her age if this were like a Robert Kraft book or just some old billionaire who had a history of dating younger women? Is it just, is it partly that Belichick seems in our mind to not be the guy who would be out there with a much younger beautiful wife or girlfriend? Yes, I think that's part of it.

I mean, he just seems like the guy who's not interested in anything except football. ball. Yeah. So just any part of his personal life. And so it's sort of a novelty that he is, I mean, that he's, I don't know. If he'd become a beekeeper and he was, you know, posting photos of himself doing that on Instagram, I think we'd be pretty equally fascinated. Okay, not equally. But we'd also be fascinated. Yeah. Somebody. But that interview was incredibly bizarre, the staging of the whole thing, her sort of hiding off camera and, and, and both of them seeming sort of blissfully unaware that, that anybody would notice. I thought it was a great piece.

I thought it was better than just about every non-political, non-world events piece on 60 minutes of the last couple of years. And DeCopal was just like, I'm just going to ask you like very deadpan questions. Like he would show the mermaid fisherman photo. Be like, what do you think of this? Or what was the reaction to this like? You just get Bill Belichick to answer that?

Yeah. Incredible strategy. Somebody texted me and said, do you think CBS Sunday morning is now occupying the Oprah-like space? in our culture where it's the best place to possibly sell a book? Well, I mean, judging from, you know, Barnes & Noble, there are other book clubs, Reese Witherspoons, I guess, that occupy a similar space. What if I said on television?

Yeah, probably. I mean, I don't know if there was, like if Jenna Bush spent most of her, like, third hour covering books on the Today Show or something. I imagine it would have a similar effect. But yeah, yeah, I mean, it's hard to argue with that. I don't know, like the amount of books you can probably move on one Sunday morning show is probably, it's, I mean, it's probably pretty crazy. See what else we got here.

Pete Buttigieg on the flagrant pod. Maybe we'll talk about that next week. Oh, here's one. W.W.EPR was trending last week. Yes. Do you have a comment on WWU. PR. No, I mean, I was just I was at WrestleMania covering

WrestleMania doing some interviews with some wrestlers when, and sitting in a room, not coincidentally, with several members of their PR team when I checked Twitter and saw that WWPR was trending. Big shouts to Chris LaGental over there at WWE and Chuck

and Greg, the rest of the team. Yeah, it was, I think I guess it was trending because Roman Reins had gone into what was the in Vanity Fair and talked about that he voted for Trump. And that became a thing. And then John Sina did an interview and seemingly totally, again, Vanity Fair interviews are the sort of thing where like, you feel like you might have handlers there who could,

you know, ask for certain things to be on or off the record. A Jordan Hudson-like figure, you're saying, sitting up to say. And then John Sina completely unprovoked, it seemed, that an interview talked about how much he loved Vince McMahon and he didn't care who heard it. a lot of these things started hitting back to back. Now, you know, the mainstream media pays more attention to wrestling at WrestleMania season. It's a good hook to, you know, sell magazines or whatever you're trying to sell.

But generally, WWE, you know, would be, you would think, averse to that sort of news coming out right on the cusp of the biggest night or two nights of the year. So it was, you know, anytime that, I mean, I don't know that there's really, even with all like the Blake lively stuff, like I'm trying to think of like what the Hollywood parallel to this would be that some company's PR department would be trending on Twitter. It seems like a pretty amazing moment, but it's also, you know, the sort of tweets that are being made and sort of without really realizing how the entire machine works. I don't know. What would you,

what would you feel like if you were in a PR team and just your team's PR was trending because of bad press? It's a pretty pretty incredible moment. I'm not sure I'd be happy if I were on the PR team. But I was, you know, I saw it. It was an awful announcing piece about this, about how the Fed was kind of off message before WrestleMania. And two things struck me about that. One is like, I don't want anybody to ever be on message as a reporter. Yeah. It's almost like we're detracting from Cam, you know, we're detracting from the number one pick of the draft, right? And it's like, no, no, no, well, we need to be off message. That's a good place to be. Yes. But the second part of it just it gets at what this,

this change that has come over the wrestling business, which it used to be the circus, right? Like you never saw behind the big top or behind the curtain at the back of the big top. Help me with the analogy here. And now you're putting these people out there to the New York Times, to Vanity Fair as real people. And they are being like, hey, I voted for Trump. My in-ring character might not have, but I, the person, actually did.

And I like Vince McMahon, despite. everything that he's been accused of. That's a much better question. The follow-up should have been, who would Roman Reins the character have voted for? Okay, that's funny. Maybe he watched Pete Buttigieg on the Flagrant podcast and was swayed. This guy's making some sense.

Yeah, I know it is. It's also particularly weird in the world of pro wrestling, and I don't mean to belabor this, but there's, you know, as I have said many times, it's like everybody, all the wrestling fans know that wrestling is staged, right? It's not some trick that everybody, the non-wrestling fans growing up used to think it was to say wrestling's fake. I guess we're very aware of this.

What? But, oh, God, here comes Bobby. What? What? But the, we should have had a Santa Claus like rule when Bobby's producing the podcast.

But, uh, I know, it's my first time here, guys, what the hell? Uh, but the trick with wrestling is that you have,

is that fans and, of course, the performers interact as if wrestling is real, right? Like part of the deal is going to a wrestling show is that you like boo the bad things and cheer the good things and you know it's like you act like this is all happening right before your eyes. And so it's a little bit weird when things get off message even though yes we're presenting these is real people these athletes as real people now. Right. It still feels like there's a certain manufactured aspect to it or a degree to which you can be offended by these fake personalities as well as even more so than a professional athlete. Disappointed. winning you. But yeah. The best one of these was Nick Con, tweaking Tony Con on Bill's Pod.

I was like, well, I don't know if that even got mentioned in the rundown, but that certainly Bears mentioned. I mean, it's, it's, it was a very,

it was, I mean, there was, I mean, Nick Conn, I mean, did a lot of great things. Donald continues to do a lot of great things for WWE.

And I count these, those podcast appearances amongst them. It's like there's not really a place in the wrestling world anymore for like the heel owner, but like in so much as that's sort of who he becomes on these podcasts. I wholeheartedly endorse it. It's really fun. I mean, I don't even mean that particularly as a joke. I mean, I would love it if like my opinion of Roger Godell would change dramatically.

If when he did these sit-down interviews, he was just like trashing the NBA and MLB, you know, just like these idiots over here don't know how to run a professional sports league. I would, I would be a big Goddell fan out of nowhere. I wanted to keep going. I wanted to get him on the Jacksonville Jaguars draft class. as long as we're talking about the other con family. All right, coming up in 30 seconds, a report from the front lines

of the White House correspondence dinner. But first, David, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. This week's runner-up jokes about Shador Sanders. For instance, Shador Sanders can still go in the first round

if Mike Pence has the courage to do the right thing. But our winner, Trump David, gave an interview to Time Magazine. Is anybody doing as much for Time magazine as Donald Trump is right now? And Donald Trump said in this interview that Chinese leader Xi Jinping had called him to discuss the U.S. tariffs. Xi Jinping denied that a phone call had been made. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write just another case of he said, she said. Thanks to Connor Stevenson and Charlie

Ban, if you thought that was way too easy, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, in the notebook dump, Saturday night was the White House correspondence dinner. The vibes on this thing had been a little weird.

So who better? To give us a full report than the Washington Post-Siles section reporter who covers vibes. She's a favorite of ours. She's a great friend of this show. Kara Vote, welcome back to the press box. I'm so happy to be here on all of days, especially today. A lot of questions about this year's dinner, but first, let's talk in general terms. For the men and women who report on the White House and on politics generally,

the White House correspondence dinner plays what role in their lives every year? It is their prom. It is the opportunity for a bunch of people who ordinarily are kind of of rumpled looking who get up really early in the morning for live shots at the White House lawn to clean up, to dress up, to see and be seen, to be taken seriously by not only their peers in the political media, but on most occasions by entertainment media. It's the one time of year where their jobs really pierce through the bubble of political journalism. And it is the biggest party weekend of the year in Washington, I would say. So it's more than just one party. to be clear.

Before we hit record, you were saying you were at anything and everything. Can you give us a little breakdown of what the week or weekend looks like? Yes. So a misnomer about the weekend known as White House Correspondence Dinner weekend is that it doesn't actually start or is limited to the weekend. It really begins on Thursday night when various, usually media organizations, but sometimes with some kind of corporate sponsor, will start throwing. weighing big parties.

Sometimes they're happy hour, sometimes they're gala's, varying degrees of formal wear. I think as the weekend goes on as we get towards Saturday, what starts as business casual ends up black tie by Saturday night. So Friday night's just a little bit more in that like cocktail hour kind of dressing. So we had big parties on Thursday from Semaphore, the online outlet founded by Justin Smith and Ben Smith, formerly a BuzzFeed News, a substack had a private dinner for its substackers, more on that in a little bit.

Those were a couple of the Thursday gatherings. Axios had an open AI happy hour, which felt like a letter from the future, not altogether comfortable for me, personally speaking. And then Oliver Darcy is status news. He has a new newsletter that covers the media. You guys talk about it a lot on this show. He had a big shin dig.

in Washington was his first big party, I believe he was celebrating the First Amendment, which is, of course, the reason for the season, everywhere you go on this weekend at a celebration of the First Amendment. Then you get to Friday night, and that's when the New Yorkers start to get to town. And it starts to feel like,

oh, we're really kind of doing something big here. That's when the agencies have their big parties. So CAA hosts a party with Condé Nast. United Talent Agency hosted a very big party at Osteria Mata, which is the fancy new restaurant in Georgetown, where we've seen the likes of President Obama and President Biden in recent weeks. Crooked media, the liberal media, through their own party. And then getting into Saturday, which is the dinner, there's big after parties,

usually hosted by NBC News. They host something at the French embassy that tends to be the more exclusive party. And Time Magazine hosts a party at the Swiss Embassy, and that is for everybody else. has a bit of more Coachella vibe to it in terms of just the baccannalia that goes on and their very big space. So that's a general run of show.

This year, also unusually, Substack, had a party during the dinner called the New Media Party. That was full of all the talent on that platform. And I'm happy to share more about that too, if you'd like to hear. Yeah, there's a big blinking sign that says Ryan Liza in my mind right now. So let's go right to the Substag party, please. Absolutely. So I'm going to lay the scene because this to me blew my mind. And I think consumers of this show will also have their minds blown. So I get to the line hotel on Saturday night. The dinner is still going on. I left the dinner early to make it there. And I walk into the bar and I see in my line of sight, we have round of Tulles of Tulles, I believe is how you pronounce his new publication, formerly a political playbook. We see Tara Palmary, now of the red letter.

also formerly a Politico playbook. Tina Brown, who is of course synonymous with legacy media, with the golden era of glossy magazines. Sean Spicer, former White House Press Secretary, Michael Cohen, former Trump Fixer, Medi Hassan, formerly of MSNBC. They are all gathered around this bar. And, you know, they're there because they're all on Stubstack.

That's just how it goes now. They're all peers. in a different era, these people would have been activists and, you know, adversaries, and now they're all just colleagues now on the same platform. Wild times. You couldn't believe it. So do you think that that, I mean, does that feel like a broader commentary on the state of Washington journalism that were less divided by a job title and more united by platform?

I think that's correct. I would say that there are three types of parties I went to this week. end. One of them was the substack party where definitely the platform was the uniting force. The fact that independent journalists are getting so much access in various ways with the administration, the fact that they were all gathered together really just felt like they were announcing themselves as a very important force. Then there were the parties that I would say look more like the legacy media parties where you've got members of the Washington Post, where I work, the New York Times, various magazines, they're gathered together. And a lot of their

guests, now at these events, I should say that oftentimes members of the administration historically would come and hang out or other people in politics, for the most part, at the parties I just described, it was a lot of members of the Biden administration in exile. You know, I was at the Crooked Media Party, which Potsday of America, their former Obama staffers. There were people who worked for Biden who were. there, like press secretary Andrew Bates and communications director Kate Bettingfield. They're there, you know, hugging members of the New York Times White House team. And it was a very cozy environment that I think that, you know, this weekend generally

looks a lot more like that. But then the third kind of party now, which is the conservative, dare I say, MAGA media, who actually is hanging out members of the administration. So the Daily Mail had a party at the British Embassy on Friday night, visited by a few folks who work for President Trump. I think probably more minor figures than most listeners of the show would know. But then also members of what the White House is calling

the new media. So there was Natalie Winters, the co-host of Steve Bannon's show War Room. There were folks from The Spectator, which is a right-leaning magazine historically from Britain. I would say that there were some occasions where these people got to mix this weekend, but for the most part, they were all kind of in their own little pods.

Very bifurcated set of circumstances at these celebrations. Let's talk about the dinner itself, which not only traditionally includes members of the administration, unless it's the Trump administration. It also usually includes a comedian. In this case, the White House Correspondents Association decided to cancel Amber Ruffin because of some Trump jokes, or at least one Trump joke. What was the vibe of the reporters who were at the dinner? about the dinner.

What came to mind was like, it was like a nice trade association gala. It was like people who all know each other, who were hanging out, who were patting each other on the back, saying job well done, really without the gage of the world upon them. I think that in general,

people were, there were some quiet conversations about, like, can you believe we're doing this? Or more to the point of like, is this the last one? On my way in, I ran into Rohit Chopra, who is the former head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of the many agencies that Trump administration is interested in shutting down. He lost his job a few months ago when Trump took office. And I said, what are you doing here?

And he's like, it's the last one. There was a lot of energy in that department. But among the reporters, it was just like, wow, we threw ourselves a really nice party and we got dressed up to hang out with each other. I would say that on the whole it felt probably cozier and more insulated from the outside world than it ever did. It's funny,

I mean, you weren't the first person to call this the nerd prom or the journalism prom as you did at the top of this. But do you think is that, do you think there's an element to which just the infrastructure separate from the administration

will keep this thing going far into the future because of just what it means, even just how much fun it is for journalists to do it? I mean, is it, I think there was a lot of feeling on the outside the first time, you know, when Trump first said he wouldn't be attending, that this would spell the end of the White House Correspondent Center and then the rest, I guess, by proxy of everything else that's going on, is it, is it just too much fun? Is it, is it just impervious to any sort of presidential interference at this point because of what it

means to the, to the journalists themselves? I think that's correct. I think that there's a couple of things. One, some of these parties did have a dancing on the deck of the Titanic feel to them. We're eating caviar, we're drinking champagne, we're all together dressed up, and behaving maybe a little too normally, given the fact that we are at the nadir of, if I may use an only in journalism word, we're at the need of, of relationships between the administration and the legacy press. On the other hand, yeah, there is a way in which these events, which I said at the top, like they have corporate partners, like agencies. There's a whole economy around this that I think will continue. I think that there's too much momentum, there's too much inertia. It's a great

opportunity for people who have business in and around the political media industrial complex to show off, to show off their clients, to find new clients, to make a big show of other people they represent. There wasn't so much celebrity this year at the dinner. We can talk about that in a second. I think I only saw one actor the whole time, which normally we see some pretty big names coming in and out, but just Jason Isaacs from White Lotus this year,

if my count is accurate. But I think that there is a whole cottage industry that supports this dinner that has nothing to do with the actual relationship between the administration and the press. I would be shocked if we don't have a dinner like this next year. I would be shocked if we don't have these parties. The fact that so many of the same parties persisted this year, very few things were canceled. I don't actually think of the major parties.

I feel like there were additions, not subtractions. I was watching a little bit of the dinner this morning, which is one of the most embarrassing things I've ever said on this podcast. And I'd like to share a few of my personal highlights. One was whenever a journalist was named from the podium, there would either be scattered applause or no applause at all. I mean, somebody could get up the Oscars and name check Mel Gibson and there'd be applause. Like, here we'd just name a prominent journalist.

It would be just dead silence, which is very, very funny to me. Also, Alex Thompson of Axios won an award, and it was announced that he would also be receiving a cash prize of $2,500. The personal highlight. And then the third thing was the dinner began with a band marching up to the front of the auditorium, like it was a White House function. Kara, give us some more highlights or preferably low lights of the dinner itself. I was talking to my colleagues about the military band. They're always there.

We didn't remember them playing so many songs. This time around, it kind of took a long time for us to get to our food. We were standing for a while, hands over hearts. There was that. Speaking of Alex Thompson, one thing in his speech that I thought was remarkable was the fact that he mentioned that his colleagues had dropped the ball in covering President Biden.

and his mental decline. I think he was correct in saying that we had failed to adequately address his state. We don't usually get to hear our peers talk about their work at these dinners. We usually hear from the comedian. We usually hear from the president. And again, going back to the Trade Association analogy, I kind of liked hearing a New York Times photographer Doug Mills talk about how he shot a picture. Like, I didn't know anything about photography and that he has multiple cameras lined up in various places just in case

of how President Biden who was shot in this photograph that was award-winning, how he might move through the room. So I learned a lot. I really enjoyed that part of it. After a while, I sort of wish the speeches would wrap up.

But Eugene Daniels, the president, did mention, and this is correct, dinner did not last nearly as long as it usually does thanks to the lack of comedian and presidential speech. So we all got to go to our after parties early. I can't believe journalists went on too long. What an upset. Right.

Who can imagine? You know, because of the lack of comedian, lack of president, just the general change in the vibe, I haven't seen anything yet. So correct me if I'm wrong, but this may mark the end of one of my favorite short-lived journalism phenomenon, which is non-political journalists attending the correspondent's center and writing about attending the correspondent's dinner from sort of an outsider's perspective. Did we get any of that this year or has that ship sailed? That's a good question. I looked through some of the coverage. My colleagues at the Washington

Post, we always write a party story. But, you know, I have like one foot in the political journalism world, one world in the like weirdness of Washington world. I didn't see a lot of other reporters. I think Vanity Fair sent somebody. There were the media reporters who were there covering the media vibes. But no, I didn't see like, I didn't see e-news there. Maybe they were and I missed it. I did skip the red carpet. Blue carpet, red carpet. That felt too depressing for me to bear witness to when there's like one actor present and basically no one else famous who I could recognize. So yeah, hopefully that's the end of that. I would love there to be, you know, let's let these, again, we're nerdy. Don't don't give us so much attention. This is not good for

us to be treated this way. I'm glad you mentioned Alec Thompson's speech because I thought that was really good. And I think, you know, I say this is a host of a media podcast, but just this idea that we can recognize our own flaws and be honest about them and not treat ourselves like the people we cover treat themselves. That is the path to enlightenment here, you know. And I know Alex is selling a book. I know he is personally involved in this Biden, you know, mental cover up story. But that, those words are palli, did they land in the room? I think so. I think So, you know, it's complicated. And this is a whole other topic for another day.

The erosion and trust of media is so nodded and has so many vectors of, you know, why that's happening and how that's happening. I think that we are living right now with so many of the consequences. I don't know if you guys saw this, but Caroline Levitt hosted the first ever influencer briefing today. So only influencers were allowed to come to the White House. it's astonishing and it does reflect where things are going. But to actually answer your question, Brian, yeah, I think people, I think people acknowledged it. And I think that there's, there has been a lot of reflection, I think, among my peers.

Speaking of just kind of the platform and what happened, the Associated Press had won a couple of awards from the White House Corresponds Association. Pretty powerful moment when they took the lectern and it was a standing ovation. extended applause, what they've gone through in terms of their fight for access to the president's been been pretty interesting. I believe that they have gotten their access back. Of course, now the White House has changed access entirely, so it's all a little bit murky on exactly how much access the AP is getting these days. But it was really nice to hear from them, nice to give a moment to thank them for doing the work of fighting back for their independent and critical lie. Caravote. You're going to read her in the Washington Post. She was staring off into the middle distance like Jason Isaacs and White Lotus for us this weekend. We really appreciate your service. Thank you for coming on the press box. Thanks so much, guys. All right, it's time for an event, an institution that will never be canceled. It's time for David Shoemaker guesses, the strained pun headline. Yeah. Our last headline about a visitor in the White House and what she wrought was Fruit of the Lumer

today's headline comes to us from Newtown Every Hour is from the New York Post, David. Cade Cunningham, the Pistons Guard who has been making life tough for the Knicks, not tough enough last night, but pretty tough, has a chance to become a Reggie Miller-type character in Nick's lore. I'm going to spot you the following phrase here, because this is a little strained, ready, willing, and able. Think of that.

as you ponder, what was the New York Post's strained pun headline? Cable? Wait, it's about Cade? It's about Cade. And the type of character he could become in Nick's lore. Reggie. Reggie willing and able is better than what this is. I'm going to give you that.

Ready willing and. How about ready? He's a pesky. Ready. And then he's going to become a... Miller. A bad person. A bad, a bad sports person.

Ready, ready, villain. And Abel. Yeah, Reggie willing and able was superior, however. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Blackson Magic. By Bobby Wagner, Joel Anderson, Thursday. Shoemakers back Monday.

David, I cannot wait to talk to you. And to have more lukewarm takes about the media. See you that. See you later, Brian.