The Press Box - A Presidential Passing | The Press Box (Ep. 549)

Episode Date: December 4, 2018

The death of former president George H.W. Bush and how the media portrayed him (03:00), the curious case of NFL running back Kareem Hunt (24:00), and the return of noted conspiracist Jerome Corsi for yet another Russian scandal week (36:30). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, it's Liz Kelly. Throughout the month of December, the Ringer staff will be releasing their year-end reviews covering the best and worst of 2018 in sports, TV, movies, music, and more. This week on the site, you can read Chris Ryan and Alison Herman on the best TV shows of 2018, and Chase Serrano and Rob Harvilla on the best albums of the year. You can check it all out on the ringer.com. David, Twitter enemies Eve Piser and Bari Weiss met in real life and decided that no matter their irreconcilable ideas. biological differences. Darn it, they liked each other. I want to ask you the opposite question.

Who do you like in real life that you're pretty sure you would hate online? Oh, no. These are different skill sets, right? These are different skill sets. Well, I can't, I mean, our producer, Jim is definitely on that list. Wait, which part? Every time he sends me a tweet and he's like, do you think it would be funny if I tweeted this. I'm just like, I never want to talk to you again.

I feel it's an HR violation to answer this email. You know, I think that there's probably a lot of people that fit that category. Tweeting in a vacuum is I think what got us into this mess, although I don't you know, I don't want to like, I don't want to play the old man card on the younger generation, but this whole idea that you

would necessarily, that it would be impossible to like someone that you disliked online is just sort of wacky, right? I mean, the entire history of Well, let's keep it pertinent to this podcast. The entire history of journalism is people that, is like people that hate each other on the op-ed page having drinks together at midnight, you know?

At midnight. Or two in the morning or 6 p.m. Like all day long. But yeah, I don't, I don't know. What do you think? Well, I mean, it's just different skill sets, right? I mean, if someone was just kind of pumping out a bunch of jokes in front of me that kind of fit a nice little template, you know, the feels win, dot, dot, dot, dot.

You know, somebody was just giving me a lot of that. I think I would really hate them with a passion. Oh, yeah. But I think I would like them, you know, online just fine, right? Because I just sort of wanted that little happy pellet to come with. I'm trying to think of the ringer employees who are whose online presence is most like their Twitter, their real life presence. The most authentic to who they are in real life or to who they are in their writing life? Yeah, no, no, just Twitter in real life.

Oh, I mean, like, Jason Gallagher is one of our great video producers is one of the most, like, wonderful and hilarious and authentic people at the same time. Kevin Clark, pretty close. Yeah, Kevin Clark's, yeah, totally different style, but yes, exactly. More heart-bitten. Yeah, I'm kind of similar in that I don't ever tweet, and I never respond to people in real life either. Yeah, got a couple emails waiting for you.

We are the uneasy alliance of media podcasting. This is the Press Box, part of the Ringer Podcast Network. The Pressbox is the media podcast where you don't have to worry about what Cam Newton wears to a postgame press conference. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer. We've got three burning issues to cover today. David, first let's talk about the death of former president George H.W. Bush and the persistent image of him that was created in the media. Second, we'll talk about yet another player the NFL didn't suspend until TMZ got the video, the curious case of Kansas City Chiefs running back, Kareem Hunt.

And finally last week Was Russia's scandal week In Washington Again And what better person To emerge from the woodwork of collusion The noted conspiracist Jerome Corsi

Corsi's back We explained Plus is always the overworked Twitter joke of the week But David let's start with George Bush Who died Friday at 94 Can we call him George Bush again Remember when we called him George Bush

And that was it? Yes We had to insert an HW there What I wanted to focus on with you is how the Bush we came to know or thought we knew was created in the media. And let me start with a thought

that I want to hear your response to. All of these obits I've been reading, many of them lovely, feel like a giant subtweet of Donald Trump. And by that I mean, George Bush was a man of many nice qualities,

many redeeming qualities. But what I feel is happening is many of those qualities are being exaggerated or sort of taken out of context to highlight Trump's deficiencies. You know, when I see the front of the New York Times yesterday saying a genial force in American politics, there's a good case both ways with George Bush, right? As with a lot of politicians. But I feel the word genial only gets on the front page of the Times if Donald Trump, who is not genial at all, is president.

What do you think of that? I mean, there are a lot of ways I would think if you were, like if an alien came down, and took a look at the history of the America, America's ruling parties in the presidency in real life. I mean, like, you know, there's, there's, the case for like the Bush family being the norm is, is certainly not, you know, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

same with the Clintons. It's, this is the complaint that people had about, you know, have had about the presidency. And I think there's some, you know, it's justifiable. And I, I, I don't know that, that that's really what I would, go to, I mean, he's necessarily the first president I would go to as like the perfect example of the anti-Trump, but that is sort of what we fall back on, you know? I mean, there's a certain, we're all, we're all, you know, our country was born out of

the, in rebellion of the British throne, and we still like that sort of thing for some reason. But I do think that there is that, that is the sense in which, I mean, the very traditional, you know, northeastern family, you went to Texas, he sort of lived the American dream, American story in that way. He had this, you know, career as a spy or, you know, on the intelligent side. And, and then, you know, bred a well-heeled family of future presidents or presidential candidates. I mean, I'm not exactly sure how he's less of, less of a fairy, I mean, fairy tale is not the right word, how he's less of a, I guess he, I guess he's,

what I'm trying to say is, it's just as ridiculous for him to be an, aspirational figure is Donald Trump. But he does have a certain dignity, I think. And that's, and that's, he's the sort of person that's, uh, that's, you know, okay with the fact that, that he doesn't know how to check out groceries at the grocery store. And in that sense, in that sense, he is more, uh, he's, he's the sort of president that

we wish we had. Well, I just think he's, he's a normal, he's in many ways a normal president. Sure. You agree with the, you know, first Gulf War or the tax increase that he passed or, you know, his management of the end of the Cold War. I just don't, I just, when I see these examples, they just tell me George Bush was not particularly unique in a lot of these ways. He just wasn't Trump. Like the one that keeps getting tweeted is that note he left for Bill Clinton when he vacated, like literally everyone has tweeted this now. I've heard that read 30 times today on the various news channels.

You know, and look, there's some, you know, was George Bush, you know, in those kinds of, he's very good at gestures. He was very good. And I believe he meant every word of that note. But, you know, like in the American experience, we've had how many successful, peaceful transfers of power in a row now? And, you know, if I think of somebody gracefully turning over the White House, I think of Barack Obama turning it over to a guy who built his political career on the racist birther thing. I mean, that to me is, so again, it's like, boy, you know, remember a gentler time when the president used to graciously turn over the White House to a political enemy? It's like, yes, I do. That was 2016. I know. I know. That was not long ago.

Or the one about him, the other bit we saw was that, you know, he really liked Dana Carvey. Dana Carvey is making fun of him on TV. And he just wrapped sense. We remember that Sarah Palin loved the Tina Fey impression and went on Saturday Live right before the election. the election in 2008, right? Yeah. We know this, right? Like that, again, and again, there's nothing, there is, that is in a way an admirable

quality of George Bush's. It's not abnormal, though. Abnormal is now, and it only, it only looks like particularly newsworthy or saintly when you take it completely in a vacuum, when you, where, excuse me, when you don't take it a vacuum, when you put it against the current occupant of the White House. Well, and there's, but, okay, yes, all of that is true, but there's also the element of, you know, just general passage of time. Yes.

It rehabilitates everybody, right? It rehabilitates everybody. I mean, it's a miracle that former President Bush lived as long as he did. It rehabilitated his son. It certainly, yeah, absolutely. Just like we were saying before we came on the air, just start painting dogs and the world forgives all your sins. But, I mean, the letter that he wrote to Bill Clinton that we mentioned before was 1993.

I mean, that was a long time ago, right? I mean, there are listeners of the story. podcast that might not have been born then. And, but yeah, I mean, so, I mean, it really is. We might as well, I mean, you could, we could just play, Jim, can you just play some old violin music and I'll make this seem like a PBS documentary? But like, the lot, but just the pros seem so archaic. They're like, you will be our president when you read this note, you know, I wish you well.

It just feels like something out of another era. And I think in some ways, and I don't mean this as like a slight, but I do, but I, but feel like that's the nostalgia for that that period of normalcy and the not too distant past is is every bit a sort of fabrication of memory as the Make America Great Again crowds, you know, version of that. No, I think it is. And I think it's nostalgia just for our younger selves, probably, as much as it is for Bush, right? Absolutely.

When we were 30 pounds lighter, when we were screwing around in high school, whenever we were doing in 1993, we'd love to get in the time machine and go back there. And it doesn't really matter who's president. I tell you what, here's my other lukewarm take. If George H.W. Bush was rehabilitated by, partially rehabilitated by Donald Trump being president. He was also partially rehabilitated by George W. Bush being president, his son. Because I think that's, you know, we didn't spend a ton of time talking about the H.W. Bush regime during Clinton. Of course, playing a news company out of Clinton, nobody had any time. But when he turned that corner and the Iraq war started going sideways and Bush's, you know,

second term started sort of drifting around, all of a sudden people say, boy, I wish he were like his father. The guy we gave 37% of the vote to his reelection campaign. And that to me was the fulcrum where really where HW began to become this sort of slightly figure. Sure. And we focus so much on juniors, you know, about the political machine and everything else that, you know, there's a lot of negative aspects that aren't purely political. Although, no, I guess the point is that everything's political.

But I think that, and I want to get back to S&L before we finish this thing. So I don't. We've got Dana Carvey sound coming up. Don't worry. Okay, good. I just, because I didn't want to sound like I was trying to force the signal conclusion. But I think in some ways, the greatest thing, and maybe this is it, maybe this is the grand organizing theory, this is the most American thing he could have done. But in some ways, like, the best thing that George H.W. Bush did was just sort of be a noble failure, right?

I mean, and I don't mean that as an insult, but he was a, no, I like this. He was a one-term president, which is a great achievement for 99.999% of, you know, humanity of Americans anyway. But, you know, he was the vice president in the Reagan era. He got reelected for a number of reasons, but, you know, the... He elected. Or sorry, he got elected. Right. But, you know, often seen as the third term of the Reagan presidency.

He was a good steward of that, you know, for the four years that he got. And then he was defeated by a, you know, he was, it was not an embarrassing campaign. I very clearly, one of my earliest political memories is sitting with my parents on that election night and listening to my dad say, he looks pretty relieved, you know, when having that part of his, that segment of his life over. That's interesting. You can say what you want to say about his presidency. There's a lot of, there's a lot of rare, reasonable critiques to be made. But that he, you know, that he, I think that he lost the reelection makes it, you know, hard to define his era, hard to define his presidency in the way that we're used to. doing it. And I think the just the sort of situational aspect of where he stood between Clinton and

and Reagan, you know, I mean, he was just sort of a literal transitional figure despite all of the, you know, all that he did accomplish for better or worse during his presidency. And I just think that there's not a lot there. I think for the popular, in the popular imagination, we, he just sort of situated there in between those two presidents. and he went on to be, you know, a public figure as all former presidents are. And that's sort of what makes him so lovable is that he was not, you know, he was not his son. He was not Clinton. He certainly wasn't Reagan. And that sort of makes it easier for us to come together in, you know, eulogy.

Mm-hmm. Oh, I think that's exactly right. He had this line when John Meacham wrote that big, very big and very sort of kind biography of him a couple years ago where he said he feels like an asterisk, you know, between the glory of Reagan and Clinton. And that was his, that was his word, an asterisk. And I thought it was just a kind of a fascinating sort of moment. And, and, you know, he said that late in his life. I don't think he would have said that earlier in his life. But he clearly, what you're saying, I think rightly is the noble failure gave him this kind of kindliness and kind of, you know, probably helped him historically. He certainly didn't view it that way.

He was still smarting over 1992. Couple of other vintage media image-making moments, David. Let me direct you to the cover of the October 29th, 1987 cover of Newsweek, which I have dumped into our Google Docs here. Headline was fighting the Wimp Factor. It showed him driving a boat. This is back when Newsweek could rule the world.

By the way, the second headline on Newsweek is the latest on cholesterol, had a head off heart disease, one of the great hearty perennial stories of a weekly news magazine. George W. Bush was kind of his dad's consigliary in the 88 campaign, and he had actually brokered this piece, this profile, which is right when Poppy Bush announced he was running for president. And he saw, the cover came out. They, of course, had no idea the wimp factor was going to be on the cover.

And W. wrote in his memoir later. I couldn't believe that the magazine was insinuating that my father a World War II bomber pilot was a wimp. He calls Newsweek. I railed about editors and hung up. From then on, I was suspicious of political journalists and their unseen

editors. So if we want to know, we've been talking a lot about the press and presidents lately. That, I believe, was George W. Bush's moment where he was done with the press. Another one that I think kind of locked an image of Bush, Ann Richards, into the public mind, and Richards,

88 Democratic Convention. Jim, can we hear that famous sound? Poor George. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth. It's an amazing line because it gets two things in there, right? It gets Patricia George Bush in there. And it also gets his propensity for malaprops. Same line.

And it also... I mean, and also, it couldn't be... I mean, there's no better person in the world to deliver it because there's the very loud subtext of like, this is what a real textant sounds like. And she's got a big smile on her face. Yeah. Oh, my God.

She loved that. Let's talk about Dana Carvey. I read Ben Smith, Major Domo from BuzzFeed, tweeting about how Richard Ben Kramer had locked a lot of Bush in our popular imagination. I would love that to be true as a fan of what it takes. I have a feeling that Dana Carvey locked in like 95% of what the public thought of Bush on Saturday Night Live. Here is some of his impression

from 1989 on the eve of the first Iraq war. The celebration of a military victory one centuries ago and a part of the world where today 400,000 brave Americans await my order to annihilate Iraq.

And none of us want war in that whole area out over there. But as commander-in-chief, I am ever cognizant of my authority. to launch a full-scale orgy of death there on the desert sand. Probably won't, but then again, I might. What you cannot see there is the amazing Dana Carvey hand gestures.

He looks like a third base coach as he's sitting there doing Bush. That was fantastic. And I don't think that was one of those. People talked about the Gerald Ford Chevy Chase bit, how Ford, you know, who was an actual college athlete, never got over the kind of idea that he was stumbling and falling down and all this stuff. George Bush never crawled out of that, did he? Out of the Dana Carvey thing.

They were one. I feel they were sort of one and the same. They are. They are. I mean, it's hard for, I'm sure, for people even a little bit younger than you and I to register how little the president was a part of our lives in those days. I mean, certainly, I think I can say with confidence that I saw more of Dana Carvey's President Bush, or as much as Dana Garvey's President Bush as I saw of President Bush himself,

at least with the, you know, with the audio included. Yeah, I mean, it was, it was intrinsic to our understanding of him. I mean, that, that parody. And, you know, I mean, it's not just, I think that, you know, you could watch that even as a kid. watched that and you know the hand gestures are kind of a gag the voices over the top we know that but you know there was a certain element to which the wimp thing was tied into that too because you didn't it was hard to extricate carvey's like diminutive stature right i mean because you don't we didn't see george bush you know situated amongst other adults in video that frequently you know we

we saw you know we we just see him behind a podium or whatever we knew he was tall though right no we knew logically we knew it was tall but i think that that that part of the Carvey impression sort of stuck in a lot of ways and everything else I think and I think that the voice you know I mean it was it was a fucking it was a great impression you know like what do it's it's a great

caricature of a guy and but I do think that it was outsized in a way that that it was you know it was more it was more just pure comedy than satire and and I think that that you know it's

it sticks but at the same time I think that it was I don't know how as sticky as it was, I don't know how incisive it was, but I'm not sure that that really is the point. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, I think it was, I think that's an interesting question.

That's probably like a full segment on satire on the purpose of the book and Saturday Night Live. One last night I wanted to hit you with from Maureen Dowd's very long, an interesting column about her relationship with Bush.

And by the way, I'll say that this is probably something that is genuinely unique about him, which is the ability to carry on a long relationship with someone who wrote about him negatively and snarkly and especially wrote about his son in that way. She says one of the only things at 41, that is the 41st president of the United States,

ever boasted about, was when he began hilariously claiming after he got out of office, he had coined the phrase you to man in the 60s. So George Bush claims to have invented you to man. He made me. He maintains he was inspired to shout it to the Houston Astro's Rusty Stob as he rounded third base following a home run. And it slowly caught on from there.

Doro Bush wrote in her book on her dad. What? I knew that there was a longstanding, like, you know, there was a history of like who invented the high five. And then it turned it was an old, it was a baseball player back in the day. But I didn't realize that you demand had such a storied history of the sport. That's great. Truly, truly bizarre. really bizarre. I'm also glad to know that George Bush

Sr. and Maureen Dowd or the Eve Piser and Barry Weiss of the greatest generation. They really were. Once they met in real life, it was just fine from there. All right, David, now time for 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. Did you follow

the national and international obsession with the Western Australian steer named Knickers last week, David? Yes. Yes, I did. Later, there was some fact-checking. Yeah. Which revealed that Knickers was big, but not exactly super big. Not as big as something made Knickers out to be. It was an overworked Twitter joke to say of Knickers, it looks like Andy Reid at his punt pass and kick competition.

Oh, yes. That's good. I like that. That was a good one. I saw that a couple of times. In yesterday's Bears' Giants game, Odell Beckham threw a 49-yard touchdown pass to Russell Shepard. Kind of a goofy trick play, right? It was an overwork Twitter joke to say that Odell Beckham Jr. now the best quarterback in New York City. Thanks to Tyler Bolton for that one.

And David, I wanted to have a special Yakov-Smernov section of this Edward Twitter joke of the week. Because the deeper we get into the Mueller investigation, the more that Yakov-Smernav joke templates have crept into Twitter. Now, if you're not 40 years old, you might be asking, what's a Yacov-Smirnoff joke

template? I'm glad you asked. Or a Branson Missouri resident. That's great. There we go, Jim. Hit it. In America, there is plenty of light beer, and you can always find a party. In Russia, party always finds you. Party always finds you, David. It's an amazing bit.

I watched him with him about Carson. It was just amazing that that was the whole act. Oh, yeah. And then he'd take these great shots where he'd say, you know, he'd say anybody here from Cleveland, you know, and you know how people make fun of Cleveland, you know, he'd say, in Russia, we made fun of one city. It was Cleveland, you know.

We'd just get a good laugh. I love that guy. All right. Oh, he's great. The overworked Twitter joke here, back to business, came out of the Michael Cohen confession slash plea deal that was invested in. Anyway, I just saw several variations over the last couple weeks of in Soviet Russia, dictators invest in you.

So if you respond to the Mueller investigation by quoting a comedian who peaked during the Cold War, congrats, you made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. Fantastic. Topping number two, David. Reem Hunt, let's start by listening to a snippet from ESPN's Sunday NFL countdown. The questions here being asked by reporter Lisa Salters. The chief say that you were not truthful with them when you told them back in February about what happened, were you?

The chiefs are right, and I didn't tell them everything. And, you know, I don't, you know, blame them for anything. And my actions caused this. And I really wish I could, you know, just apologize. to them and let them know it's no hard feelings between me and the Chiefs and you know I love the program, love the people there and I just

want to, you know, take this time and better myself and you know, not let anything like this ever happen again. So the facts of these back in February, police were called to a hotel in downtown Cleveland where Kareem Hunt's second year running back for the Chiefs lives. Nobody was arrested. No charges filed. No

suspension from the Chiefs or the NFL. And then TMZ as they so often do got a hold of the video, and it shows Hunt pushing the woman, pushing someone into her and knocking her to the ground, and then kicking her while she's on the ground. On Friday, hours after the video's release, Hunt was released by the Chiefs, thus completing the same cycle as Kevin Clark pointed out in our pages that happened with Ray Rice. Here's my question for you. Have we just gotten to a point where the NFL is just so unwilling, incompetent, whatever, to investigate these matters that TMZ is just a necessary part of the life cycle here, that we just,

that something happens, there's some kind of nebulous event where there's an inconclusive police report, an inconclusive or in this case non-existent NFL investigation, and we just need the TMZ video to set the events in motion? Is that pretty much, is that pretty much where we are at this point? Yeah. I mean, just yes. I don't know any way around. I mean, it's hard. I got to tell you. you, when this story broke on Friday, I wasn't thinking, I mean, I was just pretty outraged. I wasn't, you know, very lucid about the subject. I certainly wasn't being snarky about the subject, but my kind of, you know,

when I was preparing for the podcast, the thing I just couldn't stop thinking was about the NFL's just incompetence. And I, and, because I can't, I'm trying to parse this, trying to find my way through this line of argument that the NFL doesn't care enough about these situations to punish people without the intervention of TMZ or some other external force. And I think that there's some truth to that,

but I certainly think the NFL has just an incredible, I mean, they're just an unforgivable blind spot in this area, and their inability to adapt more than anything is galling. But it's their incompetence that I keep coming back to because even if you don't care, if Roger, I don't think Roger Goodell does, but if,

but if he or anyone else wakes up every day and just says, it literally doesn't matter to me. With the rising of the sun, it doesn't matter to me if there's domestic rounds in my league. Even if that's your point of view, be competent enough

to have your investigators go destroy the video. You know? I mean, it's wild that the NFL is, is so, so powerful and so ever-perful. present in our culture and can do some things with such with such just clean efficiency stage a Super Bowl or a draft just yeah and yet they can't employ the investigators that we all know exist or at least allow them to do their jobs who can find this stuff either legally or surreptitiously

and deal with it we know they're not concerned with the with the legality of investigative of processes. We know that they don't care about due process when they're punishing their players. So just find the video and punish them under the table or punish them for another reason.

It's just so wild. The twist here, right, it's not only were they unable to get the video, but they didn't talk to Kareem Hunt. They never interviewed him. Let's listen to a little sound where Lisa Salters asked Hunt

about his interactions with the NFL after this incident was reported. Has the NFL ever questioned? You have questioned you about that incident? No, they have not. Did they ever ask you to talk about that incident? No, they have not.

Okay. So, you'd think, right, if you can't get the video, at least you pull Hunt into the league offices in New York, get as much on the record from him as you can, get as much information. And maybe, and I was trying to find, because I find when these things happen, there's not a lot of prescriptive pieces out there, at least that I read, that tell us what the NFL should actually do in these kinds of situations.

And I sort of think isn't the move here to question him as much as you can, get as much information, and then just publicly or however you say, like, we are very concerned about this incident. And if we find anything out about this that changes his version of events you're suspended, right? They didn't get to that point. That just seems like a very reasonable point to get to. they didn't get to that point. Yeah. I mean, it seems like if the police are called and, you know, they're players involved,

then that should just be the, that should just be the formal, I mean, just the sort of minimal public facing statement, right? Like, we're aware that we're aware that something happened and we will, you know, if anything changes,

the punishment will change or we'll be looking into it. Yeah. But I even think just from like a, I mean, I know I keep harping on this, but like, how is it that TMZ

has a hookup to somebody in the hotel's security division and the NFL doesn't. It's not like, CMZ certainly doesn't have a bigger budget than the NFL. I mean, it's just sort of wild.

I mean, I guess the argument is they can just throw around money however they want to. We don't know exactly how they go. They can. And listen, I mean, we both know that there's a lot of, that there is a level of personal esteem for some people that comes with

leaking something and seeing it put out there by a TMZ or something like that, kind of being that conduit. And also, you know, maybe it's a moral decision too, that something more significant is going to happen because of that. But yeah, it's a, it's, it seems weird, it seems weird that this conversation is based around this video, because, you know, that. Again, just like with Ray Rice, we would like to think that knowledge of the event with or without a video accompaniment would be enough to bring us to the same kind of moral conclusion, but it's not. Or it continues to not be.

And, you know, I have to say, it's the, the, I mean, I mean, I don't, I don't know what to say about Karin. hunt, the person, I mean, I don't, it's, it's, it's mind-boggling that players are still finding them, putting themselves in these situations, aside from the fact of they're still committing these, like, indefensible actions. Yeah, I mean, I hear that a little bit, but I'm always, you know, somebody with me as Peter King today saying nothing good happens after midnight. It's like, but just wherever, whatever, whatever situation you're in or whatever time you're out, just don't attack people and don't attack women.

Like, that's okay. You and I've been out past midnight. You know, you don't, I don't understand this thing where it's like, well, you're in this situation. Well, no, just don't do it. Totally true. Another interesting thing I thought was a piece of Nate Taylor, the Athletic, who's their chiefs writer, wrote a good story. A fascinating sort of moral twist in this is that the chiefs have pretty much said in a couple of different ways that if Hunt had not lied to them in February when they asked him what happened in the incident, they were. would have made every effort to keep him on their roster, even after the video came out.

Right? So in this series of events, he says, yeah, I got pretty violent or, you know, maybe I pushed somebody or kick somebody in February. They, you know, make, you know, fur their brow. But then when the video is released to the world, as it was last week, they keep him on the team. And I'm just, and they said, and so what they said, and then they said this in their, in their initial statement was that he was not truthful. And that's the reason they released him. And I heard

that repeated a couple of times on ESPN and some other places. Oh, you know, just like Ray Rice, Kareem Hunt lied to his team. I just think that is such a weird effort to flatten this into like an HR dispute. You know about an employee who lied rather than about an employee who attacked a woman. And who cares if he lied to his team? What does that matter? I mean, I understand it matters when I get evidence gathering perspective. But like, that seems to me to be the single least interesting part of this whole argument. Yeah. And the idea that, well, we would have cut him if he had actually done this act but just told us about it.

I mean, that's just incredible to me. And I don't think that's getting enough attention in all this. Yeah, I think so too. I mean, I think to some extent, it squares the circle a little bit for, you know, I think if you were, I'm not saying there are people who are willing to dismiss what he did. But I think that it just sort of doubles, it doubles the offense, and it makes it much less likely that,

I mean, it makes it somewhat less likely that anyone's going to complain about cutting him. Because it sort of, it takes, you know, a contrary argument, I guess.

But it's, but it is really, it's just unnecessary and, and silly. I think that the lying thing, more than anything else, though, is just to cover your ass sort of thing.

That's what I mean. Yeah, I mean, all it is is them, is them saying they knew enough to cut him in February. Right. Well, and you just avoid the moral question of should we have players on our football team who could act like this.

It also feels like football culture to me gone terribly wrong where you can literally do anything but don't lie to the coach. Whatever you do, don't lie to the coach, son. You know, and that's the most important thing. That's not the most important thing. Another uniquely shitty part of this, David, and this is from the

Casey Starr's Sam Mellinger. he notes that the chiefs immediately upon seeing the video knew that Hunt would never play for them again, but they waited until the NFL put Hunt on the commissioner's exempt list, which is kind of this limbo where you can't play, to ensure he wouldn't play against them this season. So the chief strategically cut Kareem Hunt at a time to avoid him getting on another roster this season and potentially playing them on their way to the Super Bowl. Just make sure we know that part of this too, right?

Because I don't think that's getting enough attention either. Speaking of cynical. Yeah, no, I mean, I don't think you have to be born cynical to see the ridiculousness of that. And also of the lying thing that we were just discussing. And I think also, you know, frankly, just the speed with which they reacted in the first place. I don't think they had to see the video. I think it's pretty clear from the snail's pace at which these investigations have gone in the past. It's pretty clear to me anyway that this incident.

entire course of action was in place for months. And they were just in case the video came out, they knew exactly what they were going to do. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Maybe I'm being too cynical. TMZ, America's most trusted news source reports today, bright boys, we go on the air, that Kreme Hunt was accused of a nightclub attack in January. This is a separate attack. Yeah. Attacking a man this time. And there was another Cleveland, or excuse me, another Kansas City Chiefs player allegedly present. We'll let that sort itself out. But just to just to note, another reporting scoop for TMZ. All right, David, topic number three.

On November 23rd, New York Times reporters Sharon LaFrenierre, I hope I'm pronouncing that right, and Maggie Haberman reported the reappearance of one Jerome Corsey, right-wing conspiracies, swift-boater, birther in the Robert Mueller-Russia investigation. The very short version is this, because we could go way into the weeds here. But Mueller is investigating whether Roger Stone

and Corsi, and in fact, Roger Stone through Corsi, had any sort of, how should we say it, had any sort of like operational relationship with Julian Assange and Russian hackers. Corsi believes that he's about to be indicted for lying to investigators. He has refused to plea deal saying he's prepared to go to jail. Excuse me. I really enjoyed Eric Lackspiece in The New Yorker.com, where he said, The irony that someone who spent years making baseless arguments about the illegitimacy of one president, that is Obama, is now the target of a federal investigation that may well undermine the legitimacy of another one is almost too on the nose. And I completely agree with that.

And Lack also notes the irony, if you listen to both Stone and Corsi in their public statements here, saying, we didn't actually know anything about this. We were just guessing. We were sort of guessing what kinds of emails that Wikipedia was about to dumb. So Laxas, after years of portraying himself as a possessor of information, they don't want you to know. He said that he didn't actually have any insight information in the summer of 2016. Another great. What did you make of Jerome Corses' reappearance? Oh, man.

I love the idea. And the just like 70-year-old guy who just like pops up on YouTube from time to time is somehow just reading the Internet tea leaves in a way that no one else around him is. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I have been, you know, following Corsi for some time. I mean, since the very beginning of his, you know, appearance in the Obama administration with great regularity. I have to admit that I don't know what it was. That until this, until very recently, I was confused. I had confused myself about his backstory. I thought that prior to unfit for command,

where he made the allegation, the swift boat allegations against presidential candidate John Kerry. Yep. I thought that he was a respectable, or somewhat respectable journalist, or at least an established think tanker up to that point. Yeah, not so much. No.

No. And because I guess this just shows my naivete. I guess it was just that because the press took him somewhat seriously or I don't, or that he looked like a man of some repute. I don't know, there's the white hair and the whatever. Remember he also put Ph.D. on his cover covers. That was a big thing at the time. Yeah, by the way, can I answer your question of why he was taking so seriously? I think he sort of cracked the code of how to publish something between hard covers that was full of, errors and just pure garbage, but sort of inject that directly into the right-wing media system.

So just remember, the Fox News is becoming ascendant as of 2004, right? And all of a sudden, it's like, if I just publish this, I'll get on all the Fox News shows, Fox hosts will be talking about this, right-wing radio will be talking about this. It doesn't have to be true. Yeah. No, it's totally true. I mean, he was the, in some ways, just the canary in the coal mine for, you know, the media world that we live in right now and the sort of the Trump era in general. You know, I think that it's all that said, it's sort of amazing that he and Roger Stone are central players right now because they seem like they should be wildly insignificant to, I mean, when we're talking about a presidential campaign, but they are just sort of, you know,

They're just, it's, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't want to make a light of what's going on at the Mueller investigation. We have a lot more, a lot more to go. But they are these just sort of like Rosencrantz and Gildenstern characters that are just like bumbling through this, this, this, this, this, whatever weird moment we're in right now. Oh, totally. And that it's so Trumpian that they would be elevated to this thing or to this stage at this point. Yeah. Yeah, it is, it is truly weird. And by the way, Jerome Corsi, despite telling you, he's about to be indicted.

for lying to investigators. He's having a ball. He's talking to everybody, interviews with the New York Times, Tucker Carlson. Here's a little bit, of course, he telling Ari Milber what he's willing to do rather than sign Mueller's plea deal. You were offered a plea deal

by Bob Mueller's team. That's correct. Why did you reject it? Well, I felt the deal was fraudulent. It required me to lie, and it required me to violate various regulations, and even I thought commit fraud. And I won't do that. I will not lie to keep myself out of jail. And I realize that I could go to jail for the rest of my

life. I'm 72 years old. I might die in jail. But I'm still making this decision. One unsavory aspect we should mention here. Speaking of cynicism watch, I may need to be a new semi-regular department here on the press box. Will Summer over at the Daily Beast notes that though coursing new Podesta's emails, John Podesta Clinton campaign chairman's emails had been stolen by hackers in 2016. He was telling people as late as last year that Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich had stolen the emails and was murdered in revenge for the heist. So while he was allegedly participating in one conspiracy, he was alleging a completely

different conspiracy that was bonkers and fake in the media, which is pretty much, I mean, that's kind of the, that's kind of peak coursey right there, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, I thought I was, that was, that piece is what kind of started our conversation that we're having right now. And I thought it was a really interesting piece, probably more so for Roger Stone, only because I'm a little bit more confused about what his, what his, like, career, you know, what his job is. But I think on the course he side, I'm a little bit more forgiving because, you know, it's not like he, one assumes that he doesn't believe most of the conspiracy theories that he's touting, right? I mean, he's, it's not,

it's one thing to call somebody, I mean, there's, you know, there's the conspiracy theorist who's just like the guy standing in the town square yelling crazy things because he's, you know, imbalanced. But there's also just a professional conspiracy theorist who makes money off of website ads. And YouTube hits and whatever. And this is, that's his job. And a new book, by the way, as you pointed out, he's already got a book about this. Talking about, by the way, talking about cracking the code of putting something, of, you know, putting a bunch of like poorly written lies between hard covers. As someone, speaking of, my, speaking of, myself who used to design book covers. He certainly cracked that code. Like they're not, his book covers

aren't great, but he's got that perfect blend of like, of, of, of like, you know, Gothic sands and just like some little like seraphi thing for his, seraphie font for his name to make you feel like you're looking at a proper book, even though in this case, it could not possibly be a book. Do we think it's the same guy who's designing Dinesh DeSuzza's movie posters? Oh, I'm sure. There's like one right wing guy who can make it look just enough like a good into that market. You should do that piece. I was going to say you should do that piece, but you actually just want the business.

David, our final section here where I hit you with a couple of quick, we've got five minutes left. Can I hit you with a couple of quick headlines? By the way, one of our listeners suggested we call this the kicker. Would that be, is that journal, is that two journalism-e? Yeah, there's kickers in sports too. It's perfect. It splits the uprights, if you will.

That's great. David, the plea deal of Michael Cohen, Trump's former attorney reignited the race that you and I have been tracking now for several months, which is the race to declare the end of the Trump presidency.

You know, the facts aren't all in, but I think we very well could look back on this day November 29th, 2018 as the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency. Then there's our old pal David,

Jeffrey Tubin. You may remember his previous entry in this race was August 21st, when he said it may be that the Trump presidency will be divided into the pre-and-post

August 21st periods. Here's Tubin with Anderson Cooper on Friday. You know, today's the first day. I actually thought Donald Trump might not finish his term in office. Really? I mean, I think this thing is enormous. Sooner or later, they're going to be right. If we all just keep declaring that Donald Trump's presidency has finally gotten to the end or the beginning of the end, eventually somebody's going to be right. I mean, just calling it. I mean, I'm going to, I'm going to say at the day before the election in 2020. I could be right. Can we have Jim just tweet hour by hour from the press box Twitter account? This is the hour where the Trump presidency ends?

So we can just resurface that tweet and delete all the rest of them. Yeah, we'll delete the rest of them. It'll be fine. Another item here, Laurel Wamsley, NPR reporter and my former colleague at Slate, she was reading the Washington Post the other day and she noticed a true crime heading. This is above a story. You know, they do those little story headings. On topic headings, it said true crime.

And she knows this, wait a second. This is a newspaper. So if it's in a newspaper, it's just crime, right? There's no, there is no David Baldacci novel happening in a newspaper. This is not like Charles Dickens where we're serializing something. This is going to be a true story, true crime. Not necessary. I like that.

The Crazy New York Times story last week about Les Moonvess, written by James Stewart, Rachel Abrams and Ellen Gabbler. Everyone should go read that. I know the term novelistic quality is overused, but this had the quality. of like Elmore Leonard in the sense that you have this fading Hollywood talent manager who finds himself in a position to know that MoonVess has allegedly committed harassment if not abuse. And then he starts to prod MoonVest to do all these favors for him, including showing up at his birthday party and giving him a tie so he can impress all his friends and sort of get back into the business.

Absolutely incredible. I mean, forget the new accusation against Les MoonVest, which is disturbing and may in fact wind up costing him his giant golden parachute at CBS. But the story, just the human drama of that. I mean, that feels like such a wonderfully wrought piece of pulp fiction. I just absolutely loved it. And finally, David, one more for you. This is from CNN's media newsletter.

New York Magazine unveiled a brand new homepage on Tuesday. The magazine said the redesign page offered, quote, a cleaner, more modern look. Now, I've said to you before, haven't I, that every single magazine redesign in journalism, history has offered a cleaner, more modern look. It's never been described. No one has said, I want a more antiquated, cluttered look. No one has said this needs to look like that. So I went back and found some fun examples. Vanity Affairs Chris Dixon in 2015, talking about his redesign. It was making the design cleaner, stronger, and more compelling while remaining true to our character. Wired UK in 2017, the look is cleaner. The stories are running longer and our

imagery is slightly more sparing and generous. This may, from National Geographic, the style harks back to our past, but is updated for a more modern feel based on archival type that's been digitally recut for a clean new look. But this was my favorite. This is in 2013. You know the dating site, E-Harmony? I'm familiar with it, yeah. Don't say anymore.

This was an actual headline. E-Harmony rolls out a cleaner magazine-style redesign. Holy crap. E-Harmony was boasting about their clean redesign so look if you redesign your website

of your magazine I am good for you but there's no need to say that it's a clean redesign well just assume that unless you specify otherwise all right that's the press box for this week

he is David Shoemaker the producer is Jim Cunningham our research handled by Chris Almata more lukewarm takes about the media next week. See you later David see you Brian let me start the thought that I want to hear your response to.

No. TMZ America's most trusted news source. No, and I, because I guess this just shows my naivete. I guess it was just that, that I took, that because... Party always finds you, David. No one

has said, I want a more antiquated, cluttered look. No, no one has said this. It's like 70-year-old guy who just like pops up on YouTube in time. Join the phrase you demand in the 60s. George Bush.

What? There was like a lot. Fighting the whip factor. Right-wing conspiracist, swift-boater, Berther makes money off of website ads. Have we just gotten to a...

Memories of sitting with my parents on that election night. I'm listening to my dad say, he looks pretty relieved. So... I'm also glad to know that you're mumbling through this,

this, whatever weird moment we're...