The Press Box - A Super Bowl Review, the Will Lewis Era Ends With a Thud, and the Long, Strange Journey of Tucker Carlson.

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David are here and they start by discussing the end of the Will Lewis era at The Washington Post. Then, they recap everything about the Super Bowl (23:08), including if there were any memorable moments in the game, the halftime shows, the commercials, and the commentary. Then, Bryan talks to Jason Zengerle about his new biography about Tucker Carlson (47:23). They talk about Carlson as a magazine writer, how he made the switch to TV, his change of approach during Trump’s second term and much more. Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline! Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David ShoemakerGuest: Jason ZengerleProducers: Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David? Yes. What was your favorite part of the Will Lewis era? I loved it when he fired all those frauds. Sorry. I was doing my right-wing podcast before I walked in here. Do I have to have a favorite part? That's really a tough question.

What was the best thing Will Lewis did at the Washington Post? There was that quote he gave us that we cited 900 times about how nobody's reading your stuff. Yeah, yeah. That was big. That was a good one. Got anything else? Third newsroom, no. Oh, third newsroom was pretty great.

As a bit for comedy? Yes. Or as a newsroom. Well, the third newsroom was incredible. because not only was it like super offensive to the sensibilities of a place to the Washington Post, but it was also like not interesting at all. Like it was a real like Web 1.0 sort of idea of the way we're going to modernize, you know?

And just to frame it in such a way. I mean, it's an ego-driven move, right? I'm going to like frame it in such a way. It makes it seem like it's this great innovation. But that, but the framing only served to make your staff super angry, you know? That was so bad. It was sort of symptomatic of the whole thing. I don't know.

He's gone now, though, right? I mean, is it, no, I mean, is him attending the Super Bowl on the list of the favorite parts of the Will Lewis era? Oh, that might be number one. Because it was just so perfect. Yeah. Just so perfect. If you have not been following the Will Lewis saga, he was the publisher of the Washington Post. until 533 on Saturday afternoon when he sent the following email.

No subject, David. It begins like this. All, after two years of transformation at the Washington Post, now is the right time for me to step aside. Two years of transformation. Now, my first thought was, does everybody get their jobs back now? That Will Lewis is stepping aside? Sorry, I shouldn't laugh, but yeah.

Yeah, it's that kind of grim gallows humor laugh because 300 journalists went out the door on Wednesday. And on Saturday, Will Lewis is stepping aside. Well, it's a ridiculous. I mean, obviously it's a joke question, right? But it would have some grounding in reality. If you assume that the layoffs were all Will Lewis's idea and they were kind of capricious. right but but uh i think that most people sort of assumed that this is a came from an even higher level than him and uh he was sort of not the fall guy but the executioner

involved although the fall guy conspiracy theory i guess it would would have some currency now right that we're that he's just he was there to do to do all the layoffs and then get fired you know and then walk away so that then they could put somebody else in his place it doesn't have the baggage or something. I'm not saying that's true, but I'm saying that's certainly not, that's certainly not beyond the pale for someone, even of Will Lewis's stature to accept a job under those criteria, right? And if we're adding roles, the guy who failed to turn around the Washington Post to improve its financial position over a period of two years and save those jobs or some of those jobs.

Yeah, I think the conspiracy theory line would say that it was never the goal anyway, but go up, but yes, you're absolutely right. But that's what's so funny, right? Like, if you go in fully for the idea that Jeff Bezos wants to harm the Washington Post, sure, if he wants to make the Washington Post less relevant because he has a financial interest in doing it, if you go for that theory, surely he wants an engaged publisher to carry out that theory. Mm-hmm.

Like, publisher goes to the Super Bowl. It's not part of the plan. I mean, that just, that, that to me is like one step too many. Yeah. If you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, like, oh, this guy's at NFL honors. Mm-hmm. A day after the sports section went cabooy. Oh, yeah.

I mean, that, that just doesn't add up. And it, to me, it's much, it's a much easier line to go, Bezos looks and goes, this is not the person I want running the Washington. Post anymore. Yes. This is whatever my plan is for this paper, whatever, if there is a plan, and we may be assuming too much that there is much of a plan, but if whatever my plan is, this is not the person who's going to execute. Right. I mean, all those salaries, it's been pointed out many times, all the people that got laid off, all the losses at the Washington Post either theoretically or concretely has suffered over the past couple years, is just a vanishingly small,

like just deductible on on Jeff Bezos's tax return right like it's it's it's meaningless money to him um so yeah I mean it's but you know it far be it from a billionaire to look at anything they buy and say like oh I guess those losses are cutting into my caviar budget or whatever I mean like it's you could imagine if you wanted to if he wanted to buy like the Kentucky Derby winner and he came with a training staff and and grooming staff of 100 people. You'd be like, no, I really just want the horse. You know, like, I don't really need all these people.

I just want to be able to tell people I own the horse. You're not talking about journalism, are you? No, yes. Yeah. In this case, in this case, journalism is journalism. In this case, journalism is journalism. That's the sort of the parallel of making here. How this went down is fascinating.

So Will Lewis was not on the Zoom call on Wednesday, February 4th. When Posties learned that the sports section was shutting down, that the book review was gone, that there were going to be deep cuts to Metro and Ford. That was February 4th. On February 5th, Will Lewis was at the Super Bowl. More specifically, he was at NFL honors, which is the league's attempt to have its own Oscar-style ceremony where they give out the MVP and stuff. Yeah. I mean, it's a terrible look. I mean, just absolutely ridiculous.

certainly there was more of a, I'm not saying it was justified him being there, but when you asked the obvious follow-up question, which is why the hell did he do that? Is it there's more of a reason? I mean, going to the Super Bowl is obviously cool, like whatever, but to go to these Super Bowl events when they're in the San Francisco area

and it's probably going to be a melting pot for a certain sort of rich people, it has a little bit more allure for someone like him. Would that be safe to say? Well, he goes every year, though. Oh, it's a tradition for him. He was in New Orleans. Yeah.

And the year before that, he was in Las Vegas because he met with the Washington Post sports writers there too. So, yes, there is a, you know, I'm among the moguls. I'm among people that might do business with the Washington Post. But there's also the idea that might give me my next job. You have a gone? Well, now, yeah. But there's also this idea that Will Lewis likes ball.

Yeah. Which is the irony that I was trying to point out in the piece last week. It's like the guy who presided over the closure of the sports section loves sports. That's crazy. And had this Iron Man streak of Super Bowls that he was apparently intent on not breaking this year, despite the fact that the sports section had closed the day before. Yeah. It's just unbelievable.

And, you know, when I was trying to recreate that scene, you know, in New Orleans from last year, he invited the Washington Post sports writers to have drink with him. And all these sports writers are so anxious because the Kamala Harris endorsement has been pulled by Bezos himself. People are starting to walk out the door.

The paper seems like it's on the ropes. And all Will Lewis wanted to talk about was sports. Yeah. And they're going, this is like cool to have FaceTime with the boss, but it's also miserable because we're not getting any answers about the paper. Mm-hmm. So now we won up that by closing the section and then going to the Super Bowl.

There was nobody left to talk ball with except Adam Kilgore who got sent to the big game. Well, yeah. And got to file to a section as he pointed out on Twitter doesn't even exist anymore. Listen, maybe Will Lewis likes ball, but he just likes ball when it's conveyed through like a culture section piece about the broader meaning of ball to society. Well, he does now because the sports department, such as it is, has three people. Yeah. And I guess they're filing to style. Other funny part of this.

I'm not sure how many people at NFL honors would recognize Will Lewis on site. Yes. I'm not sure. Can I go back for one second? Please. How many times have you had like your editor switch midstream at your various jobs? Like it's just a really uncomfortable situation to be in because you have this shorthand. You have a level of comfort with.

them. But I mean, and I can speak to this probably better than you even can. Having gone from editors who are wrestling fans to editors who are not wrestling fans who are just the very good editors who are happy to help me out, you know, it's a very odd situation. And that's now the situation that the entire three-person staff of the Washington Post Sports team is under, we're just filing to culture editors, you know, I think whatever, like hopefully we can find somebody that has watched a football game. Oh, my God. And I guess the job now is write something that someone who is reading style or just somebody who's like interested in Trump news wants to read.

And by the way, that would have been a totally fine way to reinvent the Washington Post Sports section before you killed it. You could have gone to the post sports writers and said, look, this paper is more and more about people subscribing because they want their Trump fix. So the sports stories you need to write aren't wizards gamers. are sports stories that somebody like that would be interested in. In fact, the sports section was already producing stories like that. Yeah.

Lots of stories like that. They could have produced more. They could have produced just that. Let's just close the section. Let's not do that. Yeah. Anyway, back to NFL honors. The athletics, Nikki Javala was at this event.

Nikki Javala had covered the commanders for the post in the Will Lewis era. Mm-hmm. So she snaps a photo, she tweets it. And my question for you is, without that photo, does Will Lewis still have a job? Is he still editor of the Washington? I'll leave the conspiracy theorizing aside. I think it's an interesting question. If I had to bet on it, I would say he probably still has a job.

For him to lose, if he was employed in earnest by Jeff Bezos, I love that phrase. And if it were close enough that that picture could have lost him, could have cost him his job, then I think it's fair to assume that Jeff Bezos was shocked at the response to the layoffs to some extent or, you know, to the reaction that it got. But knowing that he signed off on it, he probably wasn't super eager to do anything about it or maybe didn't even have time to fully process it.

But that, but yeah, if that's the case, then yes, that photo costs. you your job. Like that's all that that is that's it's it's it's such an easy move for someone like Bezos to make as soon as there's a reason to do it. Well there were two critiques of Will Lewis going around the post newsroom. One was Will Lewis has bad ideas. Uh-huh. The other critique was we're not sure what Will Lewis is doing. So then when you take that critique and you put it in the form of a picture taken at the Super Bowl. Jeez yeah. It's powerful. That's would newspaper photographers do? You take a big complicated thing

and you take a picture that communicates an idea. That's what the post used to do before they laid off their staff photographers, I should say. God. But there we are. I saw a couple people make the comparison

between Will Lewis and Nico Harrison. So laying off, it's actually more than 300, right? is how it came down. Like it was 300 union members, but there was many more people that were laid off than that. That's right.

Paul Farhey has pointed out on Twitter that it may be closer to half of Washington Post reporters because some of them were not in the guild because they were reporting from abroad, etc. So yeah, in that correlate, I mean, the corollary is that firing

300 plus people is the Luca Donchage trade. That it was like his just absolutely inane brainchild to turn things around or to reshape the institution in his image. And then he actually had to, and even though the owner was behind him at the time, the owner was like, okay, now someone's, I got it. There's no way this goes forward unless I fire you. I think the expendability part is crucial here. I also think, and I said this when, when Bill and I were talking about Luca, which

happened about one year ago now, I just, I swear to God, I said this on Bill's pod. I was like, the Nico thing reminds me of media executives. Yeah. Who screw up people's lives and then they leave. And then they're just like, eh, well, that didn't work out. And meanwhile, everybody's job and career and family and insurance is just messed up. Yeah. That to me is what this reminds me of, why he reminds me of Nico Harrison.

Yeah, it's true. It's true. And there's the giant things he did and there's the more like, you said like you implied with the health insurance and everything else. There's the smaller things that happen along the way that don't get the attention that just mess with regular people's lives. Yeah, I mean,

like wrestling, I mean wrestling. Like, Mavs fans complained that, that he switched the trainer team, the training team because he was worried that the old trainer was like more popular than him in the office or whatever. Or was more connected to Dirk and the,

you know, had more of an institutional history than him. But fans complain about that as like, like a as like a like you like you traded a player like you it's like a game it's like a like a like a gamesmanship sort of argument not like think of all the people that lost their jobs the head trainer is fine think of all the other people that are now unemployed they have to figure out their futures that have to move their families across the country because you just you know we're insecure around this dude and you just walk away right it's just it's never going to matter

to you as much as it matters to them no I mean I think people again going back to basketball I was really hoped, I mean, in an evil way, like, hope that Nico never lives this down, and that everywhere he goes, people are just like shouting fire Nico at him. But dude was well compensated for those shouts, you know, and I'm sure the same is true of Will Lewis. And Will Lewis will be employed again. Nico Harris may never be employed in that same capacity again, but I'm sure Will Lewis will. Two interesting questions going forward. One, I think I asked you this last week, I'll ask you again.

And what does Jeff Bezos still want with the Washington Post? Well, somebody's got to write reviews the Melania documentary and whatever else he does. I mean, it's... He's going to write that personally, you're saying? Yeah. We're missing some people. I, you know, I can write a lead in a kicker. I mean, listen, the power, billion to billionaires, like the world's richest men,

whoever else you put in his genre, I guess that whole lineup of folks at the inauguration last year, is sort of the top line, right? Sam and Zuckerberg and who else was there? Was Elon standing with them? I don't remember if Elon had been subsumed. He was there in spirit or in body or both. But obviously they have an incredible outsized amount of power in the political sphere or just in general and maybe more than ever in terms of their wealth, right?

I mean, in proportion to their wealth, they're richer than anybody's ever been. but their drive just sort of reshape policy for like marginal gains on their wealth is I don't think we've ever seen anything see anything exactly like it in in U.S. history. And you know, if you're going to spend whatever percentage of your fortune to lobby for a tax break or to lobby for like whatever like that you think will help you in your business world, there's no reason why you wouldn't think that like the ongoing power to to thumbs up or thumbs down the editorial pages candidate endorsement for presidency is like I think that's something you would want to hold on to right I mean that's more meaningful than like a lot of cash in a lot of ways it it it would

steer like if he if he just continue I mean if if if whatever like the democrat establishment assumes that he is going to have the power, if you're going to continue to wield the power to approve endorsements at the Washington Post moving forward, will that effect who the party nominates? Will that affect who they run for higher office? I mean, that's an incredible amount of power to throw around. It is. I think it's probably, it was more powerful before because allegedly we're not going to have endorsements at all. And we have this sort of tame opinion section that's, you know, just pooping out right-wing editorials. And I'm not sure that that's, I don't know how, I don't

how influential that is, to be honest. I mean, it's something. It's the Washington Post opinion section. But it's like, is it just, I mean, if you're him, if the Washington Post does anything to piss off Trump, which it will do because it still has a ton of reporters who are good at breaking news. As soon as it pisses off Trump, Donald Trump's not going to be like, hey, thank you so much for, you know, doing what you do with the endorsement, the opinion section. I'm not mad at you for this. he's just going to be mad again. He's already mad at CBS News. Yeah.

I mean, so I don't, I just think if you're Bezos, he got mad at CBS News like 15 minutes after they brought in Barry Ways. He did. He's still mad. I mean, you're just like, I think you'd just be like, you know what? Sell the paper. I can do all the other things. I can buy 19 Melania docs, all of which are directed by Brett Ratner.

I can continue to, you know, manage my relationship with Donald Trump. and not need the headache and then, you know, again, this is just wishful thinking because then the paper would have some direction. Question number two, by the way, is this. There are still people running the paper, namely executive editor Matt Murray.

Boy, what a job he's got now. One, you got to do whatever you possibly can to win back the newsroom. I'm not sure that's even on the board at this point. You got to keep people at the Washington Post who have just been told 19, different ways. This ain't the place to be anymore if you get options. Yeah. And if you accept Will Lewis's and Matt Murray's statement about the place the Washington Post was in financially,

editorially and otherwise, you have to be a wartime consigliary. Yeah. You have to have ideas. And I listen to his whole conversation with Dylan Byers over on the Grill Room podcast, which I encourage people to go listen to this. Man, I know that was a kind of of about what happened and revisiting it, that guy better have a bunch of ideas about fixing the newspaper and steering it fully into the 21st century. Sure. And I'd love to hear what those are because there sure weren't a lot when it came to the sports department, at least it filtered down to the people I talked to.

Yeah. So what do you got? Oh, it's going to be video now. It's going to be audio now. It's going to be multimedia. We're doing this. We're doing politics. Brian, hear me out.

A fourth newsroom. Oh, man. We did get a little bonus media piss test over on the grill room. Here's Matt Murray talking about Jeff Bezos. I lived through multiple eras at the Wall Street Journal of the end of the Wall Street Journal, right? It was 20 years ago, and I remember it, but fewer and fewer people do. It was 20 years ago that the Wall Street Journal was done. as a publication because it was soldier Rupert Burdock who was for the image of 20 years ago,

whatever people think of Jeff Bezos, Rupert was like Jeff on steroids. There you go. Jeff Bezos on steroids. Is Jeff Bezos not on steroids? I don't know. Okay. I don't know. Jeff Bezos, I'm joking.

I'm not. I don't need a lawsuit, although that'd be a pretty funny one. Yeah. Wow. Thanks to Jim Baumback and Vince Tuss for pointing that one out. All right, David, coming up on the press box, what were our highlights from a Super Bowl blowout, the halftime show, or should I say shows the announcers,

the Green Day concert? We'll talk a little Olympics. We'll talk about what has happened to Savannah Guthrie's mother. Plus, Jason Zengarly of the New Yorker, is here to talk about his new book, about the long and strange journey of, Tucker Carlson, all that and much more on the press box. A part of the Ringer podcast network.

Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, producers, Isaiah Blakely, and Bruce Baldwin here. David, our friend Danny Hifitz, was at Ringer headquarters yesterday. And I went up to young Hifetz, and I said this. I said, I'm not sure there is going to be a single play or image that I would will remember from this year's Super Bowl. Mm-hmm. I don't know if there's one.

Do you have anything? Well, yeah, will you remember anything from that game? Dude. I don't even know. Like, what would it have you, what would even be in the running? So I feel like that the,

The highlight we were all waiting for was Kenneth Walker running free to the end zone in the fourth quarter. And then it got called back for a holding. Absolutely true. By a crew that hadn't thrown many flags all night. That would have been the highlight. He was the MVP. It was just a perfect capstone, but we didn't get it. I mean, the Seahawks, you know.

And also, he's like, I mean, no offense to Kenneth Walker, but he's just not, like, the most famous. guy, right? I mean, part of that, part of for something to live in memories, you kind of have to attach it often to, you know, a sort of well-known player. Who is the most famous person playing in the Super Bowl? I mean, judging by the coverage, Drake May or Sam Darnold, I guess. I mean, whatever, but like, it's, I mean, Drake made because of, you know, just the power of Patriots fandom and Sam Donald because the narrative that had been being written about him for so long. I was going to say even Donald, like, there's a version of the story where like Donald's,

you know, trophy celebration or his post, one of his postgame interviews, like his postgame interview on ESPN or whatever was, was, or on Peacock was like so memorable that that's the thing you remember. But even he was just so placid through the whole thing that it was just like, there is nothing. There's nothing there. He was very placid. And if Sam Darnold walked up to your doorstep tomorrow, would you absolutely know that was Sam Darnold?

Oh, I would know Sam Darnold. I mean, he's... So if somebody rang the doorbell and it was Sam Darnold, you would say, I know who you are. You are the quarterback of the Seahawks. I mean, I might say you look like Sam Darnold. Do you know you look? But speaking of the player, like,

dude, they had a whole big thing on the pregame show, like a long interview with Malcolm Butler. because he was, you know, obviously a huge player. The last time the Pats and the Seahawks played, and, dude, Malcolm Butler was, like, more talked about than any defensive player for about four months. You know, even going into the next season, he was, like, getting benched, and that was a story,

and, like, all this kind of stuff. And I was watching him interviewed. He's a little bit older, obviously, but I was like, I definitely could not pick Malcolm Butler out of a lineup ever, as, like, as big of a name as he was at that moment in time. The whole strangeness, strange quality of the Super Bowl

was illustrated by Drake May throwing the game ending interception and NBC's Chris Collinsworth giving us this. That was such a bad pass. I have no analysis. Yeah.

Was it even a memorable Larry Brown style Super Bowl interception? No, it was like a I don't want to say why did he do that out loud, but it doesn't make any sense. It was great. And you could tell Collinsworth had looked at the replay several times.

He's kind of laying out, let the moment settle in. And he's just like, yeah, I got nothing. It was interesting to watch Collinsworth do that game because he was really good in the first quarter. He realized very quickly this is going to be a defensive game. Yeah. Neither of these offenses can do anything, especially the Patriots, which just leapt all over that. Yeah. and then there was kind of nothing really to add to that for two and a half hours.

You know, if you're trying to tell the story of a game, if that's the goal of any broadcast, he correctly told the story of the game. The problem is the story didn't change. Yeah, it's a short story. Yeah, I mean, you could talk about Darnold's escapeability. You could talk about Will Campbell, the poor left tackle for the Patriots and how he just could not block. But other than that, you just, you were doing the same things over and again. You could highlight, you know, who's playing defensive end for the Seahawks.

You could tell the DeMarcus Lawrence story, talking about the Seahawks, D-Bs. But it was just the kind of same story. Very, very tough for announcers to deliver an A-plus performance during game like that, at least to us Normies who think of a game like that as being less interesting than a 45-42 shootout. Yeah. but I thought Collinsworth and Torrico too almost it's almost you know we almost don't even need to compliment

Toriko anymore I thought they were really good I thought they were they made the best out of the game they had it just wasn't terribly interesting what was interesting was what went on around the game NBC started with a feature that I kind of liked where they just had people talking

about what the Super Bowl means to them yeah some kind of corny about that but this is this just occasion of civic life that we all watch and people just talking, oh yeah, I remember that happened. I remember when that happened.

I kind of liked it. Yeah. Then we got some famous players of your like Tom Brady and the Mannings, Steve Young, coming out of what looked like a food truck. Yep. Then a Green Day concert started.

Would you make of that? Love Green Day? I don't know. it was just it was on the field before the game yeah yeah i mean listen they got to they got to do something to fill the air right um but it was like we were in we were in sports mode by that point this was not the you know five and a half hour pregame green day concert it was like all right it's time for football but first green day yeah if i can point a phrase no I thought it was good I thought it was good I mean it is really is true I mean it's sort of a dumb thing to say that like the Super Bowl has become somehow more monocultural as everything else has been stripped away from our monoculture right I mean like it wasn't it was all the debate and I'm sure you'll talk about it but the halftime show got um and how I mean like that's obviously just a very a separate I mean a symptom of our times in a separate way

like 10 years ago, it wouldn't have been weird to like skip the halftime show. Probably weirder to skip the commercials, but like, you know, like, but it wouldn't have been that weird

if you just had like something else to do now, it's like, dude, if you can't tweet or talk at work tomorrow about the halftime show, then what was the point of watching the Super Bowl? You know, and it's,

it's just the elements of it, talking about what the Super Bowl means to people. It's like, not only is it more true now than ever, but it's true. Look back. you think back to your Super Bowl memories. It's those things really weirdly stay with you. You don't remember everything, but, you know, the commercials that hit the, the, the, those big moments,

they're more meaningful in so many of the other sports things that you grew up watching. I agree. And I think Bad Bonnie is probably the thing I will remember from the Super Bowl. Oh, for sure. Part of this, too, and I mentioned this Tim Miller yesterday on the podcast we did, is like, we just all feel obligated to have an opinion about everything. everything now. Mm-hmm. Like, and, you know, the bad money thing was some, just got sucked into the vortex of politics.

Yeah. But there was a time when it was okay, just not to have an opinion about the Super Bowl halftime show. Even to be just like, that was awesome. Don't tell anybody else. Yeah. That's great. And I just didn't tweet yet.

I didn't tweet on Sunday because I'm just like, you know, it's okay. Like, nobody's waiting for this. Like, what do Brian think? Brian, what's your favorite bad bunny song? Nobody was waiting to hear. hear the answer to that question. Yep. I also told Miller this. By the way, what is your favorite bad bunny? Now that you have the opportunity. Well, some of the one of those ones he's saying on the halftime show that I really did that first one was great. Did you did you see the the bad money

allies? So this is not the kid rock consortium, but the people that were all in they were watching the halftime show and they tweeted things like I wish I spoke Spanish so I could understand this. Was that a probout bad bunny comment? It was. Okay. There was Megan Kelly doing her thing, but there were also pro bad bunny forces just being like, I genuinely wish I spoke Spanish right now. There's software to help you if that is something you desire. It's so, I know.

That's the funniest thing. I mean, listen, I don't want to spend any undue amount of time on the complaint that the halftime show should be in English. Like a million people have pointed out that, the people that are making, that it is a, first of all, it's a generational, it's a, it's a right of passage that every generation pretends they can't understand the words that they're,

of the songs their kids are listening to, right? The fact that it's in Spanish is a little bit beside the point. Then don't dummy that you understood all the words that, that anybody, that Kendrick Lamar or Aerosmith or fucking, you know, Bruno Mars performed during the halftime show. My guess is that your, you know, your perception

rate was somewhere on like 2% during any of those things. But yeah, I saw somebody that was a couple people doing it for the kid, for the children angle. And it's like, no, no, your kids know, first of all, probably know what he's singing already. And if they don't, like, they know how to find out. They don't need any adults help to figure this out. No, they don't need Rosetta Stone. They can just look it up on the computer.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Genius.com does the job. were you? Did you check out the Turning Point USA alternate halftime at all? I sure did. So the funniest thing was that it started with the national anthem. I know that their whole thing is like, we're, you know, they were doing this for real Americans. Not those people who love bad bunny.

And I'm like, hey man, I'm from Texas. I'm a football fan. There is not one real American that hears the anthem at the beginning of the the game. And then goes, can we hear the anthem again? Yeah. No matter how jingoistic you are, you don't want to hear that twice. Yeah, no. You don't want to hear that at half time. No, I mean, they're calling at the All-American halftime show. I mean, it's a, it's inseparable from the Super Bowl, which already performed multiple national anthems. Then there was a kid rock lip sync controversy. I thought my thing was just buffering badly or something. I was like, oh, wait,

everybody's seeing this? Well, yeah, can I do my, can I do in defense of Kid Rock? Please. It came out later that this was all pre-recorded, right? This was recorded on a soundstage like hours, like earlier in the day or maybe the day before. I don't know, but it was pre-recorded. And so my first reaction I heard that was then why couldn't they fix the lip-sinking

issue? And then I thought, well, isn't it much more likely that this is not a lip-sinking issue, but an editing issue? That he actually probably was performing it appropriately and they just put the wrong piece of video in over the audio? Maybe. I don't know. He was, there were several times

when it was just like a long, continuous shot and Kid Rock was rapping, but the mic was at his waist. Right, I'm just saying they played the wrong piece of video. They had more, you know, they were just like, their time signature was off or whatever. The, the, not time signature, that is the musical term. Regardless, I'm not sure that it really matters

because he definitely lip synced. I mean, that's, it's whether or not he lip synced well as many professional artists do in such a situation or whether he was just like so, and just performing with such disregard for reality that he just dropped the mic halfway through various sentences or whatever. Yeah, just a weird vibe overall.

Also, the shorts. Like, I'm a big dress for comfort guy, more so than dress for the job you want. But like, I don't know, you would just think Kid Rock would be out there in something special for the All-American. American Super Bowl halftime show. The set also looks like one of those Rob Loe game shows that Fox has that I've never

actually watched, but I just see the promos for over and over during football. Yeah, it just looked ridiculous. It just looked so silly. I mean, it was like there were all these people also online. I think more like the detractors of that, I mean, of that All-American Half-Time show that were like, dude, it looked like, it turns out there were only like 200 people there. I was like, yeah, it looked like there were about 50 people there. Like, it didn't look impressive at all.

No, I mean, the whole thing was just so, so silly. And even, you know, I mean, it just affected Donald Trump to couldn't bother to change the channel at his event or whatever. It's just kind of tells you all you need to know. Everybody, all the people, I mean, it's unnecessary that so many people tweeted they weren't going to watch it or support this Super Bowl. And then got called out for commenting on it. It's just like none of it matters. It's all farce. It's all performance.

And that's just sort of where we are. And Donald Trump was watching Bad Bunny, or at least he, you know, he was sitting next to it. So, yeah. When I was watching the commercials. Wait, can I ask a semi-related question? Please. When he's tweeting about Bad Bunny or tweeting about the things that he doesn't like,

does anybody ever get him on camera tweeting? Well, that would have been an interesting question last week when he tweeted, you know. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's fair to believe, I mean, whatever. I don't think it makes a ton of difference if he's. tweeted or not. I mean, that's a structural flaw that you can lose your job over, like, whatever.

But yeah, I mean, I think that's believable. I just think it's that occurred to me during the sewer bowl where it's like they had all these cameras trained on him as he was just sort of like low energy talking to the people at his table. And then these like all caps tweets were appearing. I was like, that would at least

be interesting for someone to get a shot of, right? If him like, like typing it in as he uses his thumbs as he used his pointer fingers, like, like, I think they dictated. I think they dictated and somebody's doing it. By the way, the night that he tweeted, you know what, he also tweeted this, or he posted on true social,

this video of a dog coming when it hears the sound of whipped cream coming out of a canister. Did you see that? No. Dan Diamond tweeted that out. And it was like, turned out not to be the most alarming thing the president tweeted that night, but it was just like, here's a funny dog video for all of you to enjoy.

Here to see if the president. Oh, my God. I thought of you during the Super Bowl, particularly during the commercial that had Grogu driving a team of taun tons. Yes. Like the old Budweiser Clydesdale's commercial. Yeah. Because you said several Brian and David's Super Bowl reviews ago,

we're kind of have our own Will Lewis Iron Man Street going of talking about the Super Bowl. You said that every Super Bowl commercial is now about Super Bowl commercials? Yes. they're about it is about itself that was a great illustration of that absolutely we're like young and old or admiring it what else do I have the famous fan announcing

the team as it runs out of the tunnel we had Chris Pratt do the Seahawks and for the Patriots we had John Bon Jovi our old friend Steve Hayden is a Patriots fan how did I never know I don't must have known

that. Steve Hayden tweeted, John Bon Jovi, a Jersey guy being a Patriots fan, is extremely fraudulent even by John Bon Jovi standards. Yes. Also, NBC, very into hometowns over the course of the night, not even just the players announcing, you know, their alma maters like they do on Sunday night football,

but like every time you saw a graphic of Sam Darnold that said San Clemente, California. Oh, yeah. Which is where Nixon lives. I was like, listener, Doug Galaise said that we even got the referees hometown at one point. We're really, really leaning into personalizing the people on the... Are you allowed to submit your own?

Do they ask you for your hometown? I think it's a matter of record, probably. Maybe not for the refs. Well, I just mean like, you know, when they do the player introductions during games, sometimes the players, they usually say their university, but sometimes a player will say their high school or something funny or like whatever. Like for Monday, not football or whatever. I wonder if they ask you for your, like, are you allowed to do like, to, you know,

maybe you were born in one place, but you grew up another place mostly? Or like, can you do the pro wrestling thing for you're like, I'm from Bad Street USA, you know. Parts unknown. Yeah. Yeah, we could for Fort Worth, we could have done the fort, Funky Town, all the cute nicknames. Cowtown. Cowtown. Have you been watching any Olympics?

No. Okay. I mean, I feel terrible about it. at it, but like I saw the first, when I started seeing headlines, I was just like, we're talking about the qualifiers still, right? Like, I'm so behind. Here's what you need to do. You need to watch the mix, mix doubles curling final today. All right. Because the U.S. is in it. It has been unbelievable television. I watched this. My son was like, this is not a real sport. I was like, no, it is. And it's awesome. I watched the semis, I believe,

and I believe the round before that. The U.S. team is Corey Dropkin and Corey Tisi. I think I'm saying her name correctly. The new Corries. The new Corries. That's great. The new Corries. They're spelled differently. The second Corey is from what the AP calls the curling haven of Duluth, Minnesota.

More hometowns. That's great. Doesn't curling just like pop off every four years, though? Like, are we crazy for not doing a curling podcast starting like three months ago? We really should have. We need the Duluth correspondent to do it. But that would be fun. I'd be into that.

This is what I love about the Winter Olympics. I have no knowledge about the sport. I will not think about this for another four years, but I am just 100% in. Let's go. Wildly entertaining. Breezy Johnson winning the women's downhill. What a great name Breezy Johnson is.

Yeah. 1,000% that was exciting. Here we go. winter Olympics. What else I have for you? Man, I just want to mention the Savannah Guthrie story. I don't know what the hell to say about it, but it is certainly a story. I'll just read you the top of this New York Times story from today.

Today show anchor Savannah Guthrie on Monday implored the public to help find her mother who has been missing for more than a week saying in a video that she believes she, quote, is still out there. We are at an hour of desperation, Samantha Guthrie said in her plea, which she posted on Instagram. Her 84-year-old mother, Nancy Guthrie, was abducted from her hometown outside Tucson, Arizona, early on February 1st. The authorities have said, her family last saw her a few hours before Ms. Guthrie had dinner with her older daughter, Annie, and her son-in-law who dropped her off at the house around 9.50 p.m. Dot, dot, dot. Investigators later found a splatter of her blood

on the front stoop and said her doorbell camera had been disconnected and removed shortly before she was apparently taken from her house. And there's been so much reporting around this, around Guthrie's colleagues on the Today Show. Brian Stelter's written a lot about that, about this sheriff in Pima County. There was a good New York Times story about that, about him the other day because he has now found himself in the middle of this media vortex. All these reporters and, you know, him having to handle a press conference with people asking questions and reporters from all over the world.

Anyway, we'll talk more about it later, but I just want to make sure we mention that at least once. A couple more things, Dave, before we get out of here, media piss test. Okay. Media test two. We already did one today. Yeah, okay.

We got another vibe, Paul Feinberg. This was a headline in Rolling Stone. We are witnessing the Imperial Presidency on steroids. Thank you, Paul. and in the department of the comics were the funnies as we used to call them funny papers yeah go on

after the death of Dilbert creator Scott Adams we asked how many comics trips took place in an office and alert listener Janice Fianndaka wrote though the comic is blondie Dagwood Bumstead is often shown at the office what is he an architect it's like he was always carrying around big tubes

am I imagining that how did we forget Dagwood Bumstead Yeah, he'll go to the office. Yeah, there were bosses, but it's not an office-centric comic strip. Yeah, or a medium, really. That's what I think that's what made Dilbert stand out a little bit. Was Beatle Bailey at the office when that, you know, corporal or whatever was yelling at him to give a... He's on duty.

I don't know if that counts as the office, but he's clearly like at work. Was Hagar the horrible at the office when he was in the castle? It's more of a sociological question. I don't know quite how to brand that. Um, yeah. All right. Coming up at 30 seconds was Tucker Carlson really a great magazine writer? But first, 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 add the press box pod where they are always, always gratefully received. This week's runner up, David, comes to us from alert listener Hampton. it was an overworked Twitter joke to write a Drake has gotten destroyed in back-to-back Super Bowls that's pretty good that's a good one but this week's winner

comes to us from a number of people including Eric Martin and T.K. Gore halftime began you will remember with Bad Bunny holding a football it's an overwork Twitter joke to write Bad Bunny has carried for more yards than the Patriots. True, okay, great.

If you would have also accepted the guy who ran onto the field in the second half has carried for more yards than the Patriots. Congrats. You made the Overwar Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, after reading some Truman Capote books with you, I turn to a new book about Tucker Carlson.

So it's still kind of true crime. Go ahead. One that traces his journey, if you will, from magazines to television to X, podcasts, wherever it is that Tucker Carlson is coming to us from.

Jason Zengali is the author of that book. We talked about Tucker and a little bit about our history together. Here's Jason. All right, let me bring in

Jason Zengrily. You can read Jason's terrific political stories in the New Yorker. And before that, you could read them in the New York Times magazine.

He has got an awesome new book out about Tucker Carlson called Hated by all the right people. As Jason tells it Carlson's story is a Russian nesting doll, a media story, inside a political story, inside a media story again. Jason, welcome to the press box. Thanks for having me, Ron.

All right, let's start here. When someone like us talks about what happened to Tucker Carlson, the first thing they always say is, you know, once upon a time, Tucker Carlson was a great magazine writer. Was he really a great magazine writer? Yeah. You know, he's a great magazine writer? Yeah, you know, he really was pretty good. I mean, at the time, we all thought he was great. And I think you're a few years younger than I am. But, you know, back in sort of the late 90s, Washington, D.C., he was writing for a magazine called The Weekly Standard, which was a conservative political magazine.

It was kind of the preeminent magazine of American conservatism. And he had an amazing staff. It was founded by Bill Crystal. You know, David Brooks was there. Charles Crouthammer was there. It was all these sort of heavyweights. Tucker was like a junior writer there, and he was not like an idiologue. He was just kind of like a really good craftsman, very good reporter, and a really like gutsy one.

He would, you know, take on sort of sacred cows on the right. And he wrote this like fantastic takedown of Grover Norquist, who was this very prominent conservative movement leader at the time. He was eventually hired by Tina Brown at Talk Magazine. You know, she has pretty good taste. And when he was writing for her, he did this really like kind of. subtly devastating profile of George W. Bush when he was still governor of Texas. He was the frontrunner to be the Republican nominee. And Tucker, you know, kind of portrayed him as this sort of callow, stubborn, you know, ignorant guy. And it's funny. I mean, we were all,

when we're all like, wow, he's great. And the course of doing this book, like, I went back, obviously, and reread all those pieces. And, you know, and others, too. I mean, he did a piece for Esquire where he went to Africa with Al Sharpton and Cornell West and like members of the nation of Islam to try to like broker a peace treaty in Liberia. Those pieces hold up. They're really, really good. I mean, he, he was a really, you know, excellent magazine writer. It's funny. I went back and read that talk magazine profile of George W. a few years ago. And not only is it really good, it was really brave of somebody like Tucker Carlson, you know, who was, as you say, not an ideologue, but certainly a conservative. To write that in 1990.

Yeah, right when Bush was, you know, very likely going to become the next president of United States. Oh, I mean, that's sort of what stands out about him is he was, you know, he really was in a, and especially, I think in conservative media in particular, like there was a real tendency to toe the line and kind of do the establishments bidding. And Tucker just, you know, didn't do that, which like made him stand out in a way that was, was impressive. At that point in his career, he wanted to be Hunter S. Thompson?

I think so. I mean, I like kind of joke that if he had been born 20 years earlier, he probably never would have left print journalism and he would have, you know, because it would have been able to give him the kind of career he wanted. He recognized before, you know, certainly before I did, before a lot of people that print was not going to be all that great a greater career to have. And he, you know, he left it to go into television. But yeah, he would have been like a Hunter S. Thompson or a George Plympton or a Tom Wolfe. I mean, those those were his idols. And I think, you know, given the level that he was performing at when he was very young, I think it's very easy to, you know, have imagined him growing into that sort of role.

And is it him seeing the media changing? Is it money? What pushes him to cable? Yeah. I think it's him seeing the media changing. And I think part of it is definitely money. I mean, he, he has this sort of reputation of coming from money because his, um, his mother, who, you know, left his family at an early age as was an heiress of the Miller fortune, Miller was like the largest landowner over in the United States in the 19th century. He kind of owned all of California. That's Tucker's great, great, great, great, great, great, grandfather, I think. And then his father's second wife was an heiress to the Swanson frozen food fortune.

But as I understand it, he actually, both of those fortunes were like fairly depleted by the time he would have come into inheriting it. So I think money was a bit of a driving factor. He had a lot of, he started having kids early and he was always like, worried about private school tuition and college tuition. But as much as money, I think it was it was fame and power. You know, he saw that that the status that you know, guys like Thompson and Clinton and Wolf had, you know, achieved through print like just wasn't going to be possible anymore.

And television was how you got that kind of status. And so yeah, he moved over into cable news. You write in the book too that he realizes that he can go on television and toss off a thought and it will have more. impact or at least generate a bigger reaction than a piece he would labor over for days and days, which sounds in a way like a preview of the podcast here. Yeah, I think that definitely was part of it too. I think he saw the labor reward kind of ratio being a lot, you know, smaller in TV.

And, you know, he would sweat these pieces, obviously. And I think, you know, I think like all writers, it was, it was tough for him. And that's not to say that television is easy. I mean, people I think like, and he himself would always kind of like talk shit about television and, you know, talk about how stupid everybody was and how easy it was. I mean, I don't think it is. Like, I couldn't do it. But he, but his particular talents, he's very glib.

He's very fast on his feet. He has an opinion about anything. I mean, they were so well suited to television. Two things I really loved about the beginning of Carlson's television career. One is this bit of advice. You have him getting from. Larry King, the late Larry King, which is this. The trick is to care, but not too much.

Give a shit, but not really. He viewed Larry King as like a Yoda. I mean, his reference for Larry King was like kind of amazing, actually. You also have Carlson studying tape like he's a draft guru to learn how to do TV. And he's watching Chris Matthews and John McLaughlin, which makes sense in a late 90s. early 2000's context. Would you like to share the other person he was studying in his attempt to learn how to ask questions on television? Ricky Lake, CNN executive sort of put him up to that. And I think he took it seriously. I mean, I think to his print colleagues and his friends at the time, he badmouthed

television and talked about how easy it was and how stupid it was. But I do think, like, out of view, He worked really hard to master that medium. And I don't think he wanted people to know that he was doing that. But he spent as much time and effort kind of learning television as he did, learning print journalism. He makes a tour of all three cable news networks. I think what most people remember about CNN is John Stewart parachuting into Crossfire on October 15th, 2004.

So right before Election Day, the pits George Bush against John Kerry. and humiliating him. I'm here to confront you because we need help from the media and they're hurting us. I made a special effort to come on the show today because I have mentioned this show as being bad. It's not so much that it's bad as it's hurting America. So I wanted to come here today and say,

Wait, wait. Here's just what I wanted to tell you guys. Yeah. Stop. What did Carlson take away from that encounter? That was, I think, a pretty big inflection point in his life and in his career. I mean, it blew up his career. You know, he would argue that he wasn't fired from CNN, but they let his contract lapse after that. They canceled Crossfire.

Like a new president of CNN came in and basically said, I agree with John Stewart. We're canceling this show. This show actually is hurting America. And, you know, I think Tucker took a couple things from it. I think personally it was a source of, you know, I think real pain and frustration. He really came to resent, I think, a lot of the people who were his friends and colleagues kind of in sort of elite media and political circles who he felt did not support him the way he would have liked them to when that happened, who didn't sort of get his back.

I don't, I mean, in reporting the book, like, I do think a lot of people tried to support him and they didn't abandon him the way he kind of thinks they did or he says they did now. But it planted a little bit of a seed of resentment towards these people that I think is now, you know, blossomed into something else entirely. But I think that that started there. And I think it also, you know, it changed the way he thought about doing television and just handling his career. And, I mean, you can't separate the John Stewart's smackdown from the war in Iraq because that that was kind of the public sentiment that Stewart was kind of channeling and voicing the backlash to the war. And Tucker, like, you know, a lot of conservative pundits, most conservative pundits, had been a big cheerleader for the war publicly. Privately, he had really, you know, harbored some pretty serious doubts about the wisdom of going into Iraq. but he didn't voice those publicly because for two reasons.

One, and this I think gets overlooked a little bit, like his best friend and now, the person who's now his business partner, this guy named Neil Patel, who was his college roommate, Neil Patel worked for Scooter Libby, who worked for Dick Cheney. And, you know, the case for the war, all the misinformation and all that, that came out of like Dick Cheney's office. And I think Neil was someone who was telling Tucker, you know, there are WMD, so he's going to trust his best friend. Number two, in his role on Crossfire, his job, you know, he was on the right, you know, Crossfire

for, you know, people who are not old like us, it was this debate show and you had a host on the right, a host on the left. And it was the host's job to represent their ideological side and, you know, their partisan side. So Tucker was basically just like a Republican, you know, mouthpiece on that show. And he could not have been an opponent of the war and done his job on that show. You know, because on the left, you'd have Paul Begala or James Carville. Those are the two left hosts, you know, saying we should be going to Iraq, Bush is an idiot. And then Tucker can't just, you know, Tucker can't agree with that. He hasn't disagree with it.

So I think he felt, you know, very like hemmed in. And he felt like he had to support this thing. I mean, to his credit, you know, he got off, he got off the Iraq bandwagon or like earlier almost than any other conservative pundit. He, I think, you know, nine months in, he went to Iraq to report a story for Esquire, you know, saw things. for himself and came back and was like, this was a, this is a mistake, this is a disaster, I'm embarrassed, I supported this, I'll never do that again. And I think that was really rare among pundits, conservative and liberal. I mean, you know, so you and I, like, have known each other for a long time because we worked

at the New Republic. And the New Republic was a liberal magazine, but it was definitely a huge cheerleader for the war in Iraq. And the editor at the time was a guy named Peter Beinart, who was, you know, definitely banging the war drums. And he, of course, came to reconsider his view. But I think, like, the only two pundits I know of who really kind of wrestled with how wrong they were and used that as an occasion to kind of reexamine all of their, all of their kind of views are Peter and Tucker. I think most people who supported the war just kind of like went on, you know, like, I don't think Tom Friedman really rethought things significantly.

I don't know if David Brooks did either. I mean, some people like, some conservatives, you know, Bill Crystal and guys like that, like they never really recanted. I think Tucker, he used that as an occasion to reexamine everything. When he was at the Weekly Standard, one of the Weekly Standards big projects was to basically read Pat Buchanan out of the conservative movement. And that was something that they were fairly successful at. And after Iraq, and Buchanan, of course, had been a big opponent of the war in Iraq. He's an isolationist America first kind of foreign policy.

after things went south in Iraq, after Tucker realized his mistake, I think he started reevaluating everything and kind of looking at the people who he had told, who he'd been told and who he himself said were wrong, started to sort of wonder, okay, like what else were they maybe right about? And you start to see him kind of shift there on other issues, whether it's free trade or immigration, and he starts kind of hewing or towing more to like a paleo-conservative line, like a Buchanan line. And I think, so I think Iraq was just kind of a really important moment for him. And I think it's tied up in the John Stewart thing. But that, you know, Iraq is Stewart together, I think, are kind of this pretty major inflection point for him.

It's fascinating how many ideas that 15 minutes of television contains from Iraq specifically to authenticity on television generally. And as you know in the book, the YouTube media empire, which is, you know, a decently sized media empire was built in part because, one of the founders wanted a site that could actually host that video. Yeah. Because we were all watching it on our desktops. Yeah. People say it's like, you know, the first viral video. I think like maybe that and lazy Sunday.

You know, those are sort of the first of things that went viral. What a time to look at your computer at work. It was. You mentioned Tucker bombs out at CNN. And then he goes to MSNBC. People might forget about this little adventure. he bombs out there, and you had this fascinating observation in your book that if things had gone slightly differently, Tucker Carlson could have been the conservative host of Morning Joe.

Yeah, yeah. He was, I mean, he went to MSNBC pre-Olderman when MSNBC was not sure what it was. It definitely was not the liberal analog to Fox. It was just kind of, it was nothing, basically. And he hosted this primetime show that, you know, no one remembers. Basically, I mean, his one great contribution at MSNBC was he hired Rachel Maddow. He needed a liberal debate partner, and he found her audition tape. She had just been an Air America talk radio host and brought her onto the network sort of over the objections of the execs.

But MSNBC was kind of limping along. They didn't really have an identity. Eventually, Olderman gave it an identity as a liberal network. But one of the other hosts at that time was this guy, Joe Scarborough. And he also had a kind of pointless evening show that was called Sonderman. Scarborough country, and he was kind of like an O'Reilly knockoff. But Scarborough, you know, had this sort of brilliant idea to move to mornings and, you know, kind of become this sort of Excel a corridor kind of operator who knew all the political players. Scarborough had been a former Republican

congressman who, you know, kind of hobnob with like the political and media elite and was sort of the ringmaster and the matrily in some ways. And Tucker, I think, actually would have been. better suited to that role because he, I mean, like, you know, his time in Washington, like he was friends of all these people. He was, you know, an incredible sort of, you know, charming, like, you know, dinner party guest. I mean, it would have been a perfect role for him, but Scarborough beat him to the punch. Or Scarborough, I think, just had like a vision that Tucker didn't have at the time. He had an imagination of what was possible that Tucker lacked. And, you know, Scarborough managed to save himself at MSNBC because when Olberman became the, you know, the

symbol of the network as this liberal, you know, anti-Bush network, it became really hard for conservatives there. And so Tucker got bounced out. Scarborough managed to kind of reinvent himself as like a nonpartisan, you know, mayor of the Excel recorder and survived. Obviously, he's gone on to, you know, bigger things. But Tucker, I feel like if he just had a little did more kind of vision himself. He could have easily done that. So Carlson flops at CNN. He flops at MSNBC.

And then in 2009, Roger Ailes hires him at Fox News with the TV equivalent of an NBA free agent minimum contract. He's a 10-day contract. That's right. It was a 10-day contract. What did Roger A. See in Tucker Carlson? That's a really good question.

And I think people wonder about that. I mean, some people say that Roger A. was he liked to take chess pieces off the board. And basically Carlson, you know, was, it was like, really like, it was, he was an absolute like sort of personal and professional nadir. But, and so Ailes could have him for very cheap. And people say, oh, well, he just wanted to like get him, you know, in the Fox sort of, you know, house.

So just in case he develops into something, we'll have him. Other people say, and I think this, I was sort of convinced more by this argument that Ails, you know, he had a, he was a blue collar guy. He had a huge ship on his shoulder no matter how much success he had. And he just hated, he hated elites. He hated wasps. He hated people like Tucker, you know, who at the time was kind of this like preppy frat boy. He wore a bowtie for much of his early career.

After the John Stewart thing, he lost the bowtie. But he was, you know, he was just like this like fraternity rush chair kind of stick. And Ailes hated that. And so Ailes hired him in part so he could humiliate him. Like it sort of counterintuitively, like it was an opportunity for Ailes to just like stick it to Tucker. So like when he first called Tucker to offer him the job, I mean, he started the call by saying, you know, you're a complete loser. You totally fucked up your life. But then he went on you, but I like hiring losers like you because you'll work your ass off for me.

And Tucker, when he got hired at Fox, like his goal, his hope was to be on this show. special report, which was kind of like, it was like prestige television for Fox, I guess. It wasn't sort of as stupid as everything else on the network. And, you know, it had, it was, it had like, you know, relatively intelligent conversation on this, this all-star panel and, you know, kind of like relatively intellectually, interesting people like Charles Crowdhammer.

Tucker wanted to be on that show. He thought he was, you know, that was for the right role for him. Ailes would just not, was not going to go for that. And instead, Ailes had him do. he had to host the weekend version of Fox and Friends, which is like even dumber than weekday Fox and Friends. And I mean, it was bad for a couple of reasons. One, it was early.

Tucker didn't like to wake up early. Two, it was done out of New York. Tucker lived in Washington. So he had to like leave his family on the weekends and go up to the city. And three, I mean, the stuff he had to do was like kind of humiliating. Like he would, you know, drive a go card around the studio and do like cooking demonstrations with Billy Ray Cyrus. And it was, you know, it was like a way for.

A. L. just kind of put Tucker in his place. And to Tucker's credit, like he, he did it all with a smile. Like, he didn't complain. He threw himself into it. I think privately, he didn't like it, but publicly, you know, he went along with it. And it was, you know, and that was like his role at Fox, basically. He was, I mean, it's kind of funny. Like years later, you know, Pete Hegsith had the same job. And, you know, he rose from that to, like, be Secretary of Defense. So that was, like, a pretty big leap. But until Pete Hegzith, like, Tucker was like Fox and Friends Weekend's greatest success story, basically. Such as it is.

So he does a sad grunt work. Eventually, post-Dales, he finds his way back to prime time. How would you describe his on-air style versus other Fox stars? It was the most interesting on-air style, I thought, especially in the Trump era. He, his move to prime time coincides with Trump winning the election and where the rest of the primetime lineup just, you know, fell in line with Trump and sort of join the cult of personality, like no one more so than Sean Hannity. Tucker, Tucker really kind of resisted praising Trump as like a person. I mean, he definitely supported Trump's policies, sometimes more than Trump himself and would,

you know, criticize Trump from the right when he thought Trump had kind of strayed from the ideological line. But it was, it was an interesting show. It was a interesting show. It was, It was interesting because you never quite knew what was going to happen. You didn't know if Tucker was going to maybe criticize Trump or take a shot at Republicans or who he was going to go after. It was also, like for Fox, like a pretty smart show. I mean, it was the only show on Fox that, like, you know, could launch 10 Ross Douth out columns, you know? Like people, conservative intellectuals would watch that show because Tucker was sort of trafficking

and ideas that came out of their world. He was doing a lot of other stuff, too, but it was, for Fox, it was like an unusually kind of perceptive and interesting show. How did that show influence Trump during his first term? So Tucker was very wary of getting personally close to Trump. And unlike someone like Kennedy, who, you know, at the time, like he was referred to as the shadow White House chief of staff because he spent so much time in the White House or he spent so much time on the phone with Trump and other staffers, Tucker kind of didn't do all. that. He didn't really resort to like special pleading off air. Instead, he just talked to Trump through the television. And at first, he didn't, I don't think he quite realized, like, that he could do that. But eventually, he saw that things he said on air, Trump would then repeat and they would become

government policy. And he really started, you know, programming his show with this kind of an eye towards this audience of one. I mean, he would, he would write his monologues to, you know, influenced Trump, he would book guests who he knew would maybe say something about someone who was going to get a government appointment that he didn't want to get that appointment and that and Trump would see that and he, you know, nicks them from his list. I mean, it really, it became sort of like the, I think in the book I say something like, you know, the Tucker Carlson A Block like replaced the interagency process basically in the first Trump administration. And Tucker would just talk to him through the television. And in one case was actually able to convince Trump to call off air strikes against Iran

in 2019. Yeah, no, he has all these sort of like policy wins that, you know, are just kind of crazy when you think about it. It really is really, really fascinating. So he gets fired by Fox in 2023. And then he goes to TwitterX and he also hosts a podcast. And this is a period in which he's interviewing Vladimir Putin in Russia and he is interviewing Nick Fuentes, which causes this big earthquake at the Heritage Foundation.

How would you describe Carlson's influence now? I think in a weird way, it's actually more significant than it was before. When he got fired from Fox, I think most people thought he would basically following the footsteps of all the other people who washed out of Fox, who were huge stars and then became irrelevant, like Bill O'Reilly. But Tucker has like, I mean, he's really managed to stay in the picture. I mean, he's done that a couple ways. One, I think he's figured out the attention economy as well as anyone,

and he understands that outrage will generate listeners for his podcast or eyeballs for his video podcast. So, you know, he'll look, he'll look Andrew Tate on as a guest or have Alex Jones or, you know, Putin or what I mean. And look, I mean, I think any serious news person would want to interview Vladimir Putin, right? I mean, the thing that Tucker did that piss people off was he did a softball interview with him. But he's been very good at, you know, using, using guests and the like to maintain people's attention attention. He's also up to his own kind of outrage quotient. He just says crazier and crazier stuff, which is a way to get people to pay attention. The other thing that he's done that is different is he has embraced Trump himself in a way that he never did during Trump's first presidency.

He and Trump, I mean, in his first presidency, like he was sort of famous inside Fox and in Washington to like sometimes letting Trump's calls go to voicemail. You know, like it was just kind of a flex. he didn't like to be seen with Trump. Like when he visited Mara Lago for the first time, like he wanted to be a secret. He arranged to go in sort of through a back door so people wouldn't see him. But the secret got out. He got discovered.

But he was just very sensitive to that. Now, you know, he go to Mara Lago and try to be seen. He basically became a member of Trump's like 2024 presidential campaign. He would give speeches for him. He'd appear his rallies. He spoke at the Republican convention. And I think he recognized that proximity to Trump was a way for him to stay relevant.

And with that proximity, I mean, he's become, he's become like a really important advisor to Trump. Like Trump wants to hear from him and listens to his opinion, and Tucker, like, doesn't hesitate to offer it. During the campaign, he was a pretty critical voice supporting JD Vance to be the running mate. He and Vance, I think his relationship with Trump is tight.

I think his relationship with Vance is even tighter. And he is someone that, you know, those people listen to. He has a lot of allies in the administration, people who he helped place there, like Bobby Kennedy. I don't know if he's a JHS secretary and Les Tucker's lobbying for him, Tulsi Gabbard. I don't know if she's a DNI without Tucker lobbying for him. Sub-cabinet posts as well. I mean, he really involved himself in the transition process.

So he has lots of people he's friendly with who listen to him who are all over the administration. And he is not shy about exercising that influence. And he's also not shy about like wanting to be perceived as influential. Like I think the first time around, his show was enough and the built-in audience, his show ad was enough. Now I think he realizes that in order for people to keep on paying attention to him, they have to think and they have to know that he's someone that Trump and others are paying attention to. So he's kind of shifted his approach. One thing that's happened to conservatism during the Trump years and the Tucker years is that ideas like replacement theory have been dragged into the conservative mainstream. How much blame does Carlson deserve for that, do you think?

Oh, I think, well, blame or credit. Depends on your point of view, right? I think Tucker, I think Tucker's one of the big functions he served at Fox, and I think he's continuing to do it now on his video podcast. It's a little bit different, is he was excellent at finding these fringe theories or stories or ideas, you know, oftentimes like in the deep recesses of like the conservative internet and bringing and smuggling them into the mainstream and presenting them in such a way that, you know, median 70-year-old Fox viewer

be like, oh, that's a good idea. You know, like great replacement theory. I think if I would, I would like to think I'd like to hope that an average Fox viewer who encounter kind of great replacement theory in its like original rawest form, which is just like purely racist, purely anti-Semitic, you know, founded on some like, you know, Daily Stormer article or whatever, they would be repulsed by that.

But Tucker can take that from the Daily Stormer and translate it and make it a little bit more palatable and put it on his Fox show and people are like, oh, that's actually not such a crazy idea. And he's done that countless times. I think great replacement theory is the most sort of prominent and probably problematic example. But he's done that a lot. And he continues to do it on his podcast now. Two quick ones before you go.

I've always been fascinated by Tucker Carlson face, by which I mean he's interviewing somebody in his Fox. And he looks like he's just smelled the worst smell and the worst smell in the world. And you write in the book that they did this on purpose at Fox. The idea was to really split screen it so we would see his disgust. It's like you and me right now. Yeah. Well, I'm smiling at you, Jason.

I'm not making that face. The idea was just to register his disgust of the guest. So that would be a visual element of the show. Yeah. Yeah. They, I mean, they would, they would have, even if the guests appeared remotely like I am now, even if they were in the same place, even if they were in Washington and Tucker was doing a show from Washington, they would oftentimes put the guest, like, in a separate studio,

so he wouldn't be sitting across from a table with Tucker. And that way they could frame both their faces and they would just keep it up as a two shot. And that was half the thing, just Tucker's face. I mean, when Biden gave some joint address to Congress, I remember Fox, it would air during what was Tucker's normal showtime. And so Fox aired it. But then, like, halfway through, they put up a little, like, you know, box of Tucker, just him watching, you know, and just making facial responses. And they had like a Chiron that said, you know, Tucker's response coming up in five minutes. But you know, they were they were showing like a live kind of Tucker reaction shot. Like it became, I mean, I don't know.

I think back to, you know, that period like 2017 to 2023 and Tucker's face, that kind of dumb look on his face. Like that just that symbolizes that period to me. Last one for you, the you mentioned in the book that during your magazine days and his magazine days in Washington, that you guys were, you knew him, right? He was a guy that you would sometimes reach out to if you were writing a story because he was gossip. I'm not a friend, but definitely someone I knew. And everyone knew.

I mean, he was, yeah. And he was gossipy. He would get on the phone and talk to you for a story that was about conservatism or some story. Super accessible. Yeah, super accessible, super gossipy and super helpful. I mean, and in a way that, like, you know, everybody has like sources and people they talk to, but the thing that I really liked about Tucker was,

even though he had left magazine writing behind, he still had the muscle memory of a great magazine writer. And I think, like, I think in some ways missed it. And so the conversations with him would be just, it would be almost like talking to like you or like talking to an editor or something who, you know, he kind of had ideas. And he sort of like understood the story that I was trying to do

and maybe actually understood it better than I did sometimes and would sort of, you know, give me ideas that I could then use in the story. It was more like talking to a colleague in some ways that it was not the kind of conversation you often would have with a source. So what did he make of the Jason Zangarly Tucker Carlson biography? I've not heard that. He did not cooperate with the book.

I mean, I tried. And honestly, like, I thought he might because he's, he has always been happy to talk over the years and always quite responsive. But when I told him, I was writing a book about him. He was, you know, he said, oh, why would you ever learn a book about me? But then, you know, I sort of made the pitch. And he was like, well, you know, sounds reasonable. He's like, but I don't know if Fox will let me do it.

I, you know, kind of doubt they will. But let's see. I'd like to do it. We'll see. And then, you know, that was sort of like this kicked off like a six month, eight month process where he would say he was trying to get them to cooperate or let him cooperate, but they wouldn't. And then finally, it just kind of petered out.

And then when he got fired, I went back to him and was like, hey, you know, Fox can't stop you from cooperating now, but did not have any luck there. I have not heard anything from him about the book since then or yet. You and I have known each other for 25 years, Jason. I know. That's crazy. At the New Republic. And I have to thank you because way back when my first job,

and I say job in the sense that it paid $300 a week, job in air quotes. I think I got $200 a week when I was an intern. You should be grateful. There was a raise. I got offered this internship at the New Republic. I was at the University of Texas. And when I got offered it, my first response was,

let me think about it instead of, you know, I will gratefully accept this, this internship that you're giving to a state school kid. And I have this memory of you and Ryan Liza, who's been in the news recently, calling me in my office at the Daily Texan newspaper and saying very gently and very sweetly, you know, you should probably say yes to this. We were desperate for you to come, I think, in part because I think, I think Ryan and I were like the only two people at the New Republic who didn't go to Yale. or Harvard. So just like, I mean, I, during the internship application process, like when we were looking at applications, one of the people who was in charge of that, he referred to you as text. Like that was your nickname, text. Because like, you were like, yeah, like the only guy who wasn't a Harvard or Yale person. Like, that's how you were, that's how you were distinctive. So that's why Ryan and I really wanted you. Very nice. And George Bush was running for president. This is, this is the background.

That's true. I don't think we, I don't think we were that. We weren't thinking that far ahead, probably. Tex had a little bit of a cultural salience, maybe, that it wouldn't have had before. Anyway, the book is terrific. It's hated by all the right people, Tucker Carlson and the unraveling of the conservative mind. You are commanded to go by it right now. Jason, thanks for coming on the press box. Thanks so much for having me around.

This was fun. All right, it's time for David Shoemaker guesses. The strained pun headline. Yeah. Can I ask you a question about Tucker Carl? Actually, this is not about Tucker Carlson. Did you hear the Wright Thompson? You're just thinking of great magazine.

writers. Did you hear the Wright Thompson monologue before the Super Bowl? I don't think I did. Was this on the ESPN show? I don't remember. I don't remember what I was watching. It might have been on ESPN. Was Wright going live on Instagram? My question is, do you think is Wright, does Wright Thompson at this point

pitch monologues to open things or do the ESPN programmers go to Wright Thompson to get one? I think it's the latter. Because he's been doing this for a while. No, I know. I know, but is he, does he, I wonder if he's just always sitting there thinking, what can I say about San Francisco, you know, like whatever.

And then it just... Wait, does he think in the same voice he talks with? Yes. Well, it's my take on the whole Seattle thing. I love right, Thompson. All right. Our last headline, but it's been a little bit of while. We've been on emergency footing here on the press box a lot.

Our last headline was about the end of LeBron James' run as an all-star game starter, and it was... It's a good one. King James Aversion. Today's headline, David, comes to us from, alert listener Brandon Folsom. It's from the old New York Post. Man has the New York Post done an undertaker sit up since Zeran Mondani became mayor of New York City.

They know what they got to do. The subhead here is trash piles up on streets as traffic snarls. I want you to think of New York Anthems, as you ponder. What was the New York Post? Strain pun headline. New York Anthem. It's not New York. York, New York or on Broadway or on New York, New York, New York is good.

Oh, like the words of the song. I'm like, that doesn't really work. Start spreading the trash. That's not it. I want to. It's the city that. Oh, the city that never sweeps. That's fantastic.

The city that never sweeps. Well done, sir. There you go. He is David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Produce of Magic by Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin. Thank you, gentlemen. I want you to follow the press box on Twitter and Blue Sky.

It's at the Pressbox pod. We are at Pressbox Ringer on Instagram. Please, I ask you, because this is the year of shameless commerce at the press box, retweet us or re-skete us, however you prefer. We'd love you to do that. As mentioned, I get a new pot up with Tim Miller of the bulwark, who David was kind enough to come by the Ringer offices in Los Angeles. I was not. It sounded like you said I was at the Ringer office. Tim Miller was at the ringer office.

Tim Miller was at the ringer office. Yeah. Came in his, you know, Tim Miller is a Denver Nuggets and Denver sports fan? I did not know that now. He's from Colorado. And remember when we were trying to find celebrity Nuggets fans when they were in the finals? And like, Ken Jong was randomly doing a gaggle with the press. And we were like, it's Ken Jong a Nuggets fan?

Or is he just here? Mm-hmm. Tim Miller is the actual celebrity Denver sports fan. Okay, cool. He is the Denver sports fan. New email address, pressbox ringer at gmail.com. Hit us up there. Joel's here Thursday.

David, I'll see you next Tuesday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you later, Brian.