The Press Box - Bob Woodward Is Back. Plus: Don Winslow on Fiction and Politics.

Episode Date: September 10, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker dive deep into Trump’s recent comments to veteran journalist Bob Woodward (2:08). They question Woodward’s motives and examine whether or not he should’ve waited to release his revealing interview earlier (13:33). Novelist Don Winslow joins to discuss his latest collection of short stories, ‘Broken’ (32:10). Plus: The Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, Bob Woodward's new Donald Trump book is called Rage. His previous Donald Trump book was Fear. So if Woodward makes it a Trump trifecta, what do-mey one-word title will he choose next? Wait, is this taking place in a hypothetical future where Trump is reelected, or is this a post-Trump book about Trump? Let your imagination wander. I mean, we've seen that Trump has managed to break some of our, you know, some journalists that you would previously consider to be unbreakable over the past four years.

I can totally imagine a world in which Bob Woodward's next book was, if Trump was reelected, was just the title was just, wow. Damn. Oh, yeah. Oh, hell. I guess that's two words. What do you think? Do you think Bob Woodward would drop the F-bomb for the title of his book? Or is he dignified for that?

It feels like more of a Matt Taibi kind of move than a Bob Woodward kind of move. If we're in the political writer, I just like him doing moods, right? Or moods are feelings. So there's fear. There's rage. Right? Acceptance. Resignation.

Resignation. Ooh, that works two ways. That's good. I like resignation. Coming from Simon and Schuster in 2022, Resignation. It's time for the breastbox. A part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers.

Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here with a big show for you today. We'll answer your listener mail, including the question, what's the press boxes Mount Rushmore of great headlines? The amazing novelist Don Winslow stops by to talk about his crime fiction and the Twitter videos he's producing to sidestwipe Donald Trump. Plus, David guesses a strain pun headline and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But first, David, Bob Woodward's back. So what was President Xi saying yesterday?

Well, we were talking mostly about the, I think he's going to have it in good shape, but, you know, it's a very tricky situation. It's, it goes, it goes right, but the air, you just breathe the air. That's how it you want. That's a very delicate one. Even your string. I know. It's much for the same thing for. This is more, you know, this is 5% versus 1% and less than one.

Does it ever feel like your entire adult? life, David, has been one long Bob Woodward news cycle. Our pal Chris Sullenchop did the power rankings a couple years ago when he did the last book. And I was looking at it. I was like, not only have I read a ton of these books, I have made content about a ton of these books. And I'm not even a political reporter.

Yeah. It's easy to, when we're not in the, you know, leaving through the press packets of a new book, it's easy to forget. But yes, I mean, our political calendar, at least going back to what, the Clinton years? I mean, I know, yes, obviously, Watergate's where it began. Yes, the Clinton years, in our case. The Clinton years, like, our political calendar is structured around Bob Woodward book releases. I mean, it's kind of crazy.

There's a two every, every term, and they really direct, talk about, you know, steering a news cycle. I mean, everything is just sort of read in the context. of those books. It's Bob Woodward book releases and then everyone in the White House and the Oval Office pointing at each other for why did you talk to Bob Woodward and why did we let the president talk to Bob Woodward. Those are the two things we can count on in every administration. But isn't Bob Woodward of all of them, I'm sorry to interrupt. But I mean, in some ways, Bob Woodward is the one instance of this that makes sense, right? I mean, this book is going to get written. It's going to have numerous people on or off the record regardless of whether or not you talk.

It's almost as if you got to hope that like by being on the record and by cooperating, you blunt the force of it, not by just getting your message out there, which is what a lot of, you know, I think a lot of the people on Trump's team were telling him and interviewing this, but almost you change the perception from the consumer of the book if you're perceived to be on board, right? It's almost like a, it's like Michael Jordan producing his own documentary. You know, it's like, well, we just think it, we think of it in a different way if you're, if you're involved. I don't know. And the Woodward books, like I said, they're going to happen.

They're going to sell a million copies. And it's different than like giving a sit, you know, giving an accidental five-hour sit down to Olivia Nuzzi or whatever. And that's not a reflection of hers, you know, her abilities or anything. But the Woodward books are going to be epic regardless. And sitting down with them is kind of a right of passage. But it's a little bit and it's also kind of understandable. It's, let's dig through a few of the revelations from Bob Woodward's The Last Dance, Trump edition here. That clip you just heard was from February 7th, a full month before the NBA shut down, by the way.

and during that month, Trump was saying the virus was going away. It was going to be close to zero cases that it would miraculously disappear, contrary to everything he's saying there to Bob Woodward. CNN also had the tape of a March 19th interview in which Trump told Woodward how he was talking about the virus to the American public. Now it's certain some startling facts came out. It's not just older. Yeah, exactly. To plenty of young people.

So give me a, I'm a. moment of talking to somebody going through this with Fauci or somebody who kind of, it caused a pivot in your mind, because it's clear just from what's on the public record that you went through a pivot on this to, oh, my God, the gravity is almost inexplicable and unexplainable. Well, I think, Bob, really, to be honest with you. Sure. I want you to be. I wanted to always play it down.

I still like playing it down. Yes. Because I don't want to create a panic. Am I the only one fascinated by hearing the journalist ask the questions and how they walk the Trump-like figure up to answers like that? By the way, I can just, I can listen to the – I'm – you and I are probably the only two people on earth, but I listen to this all day. I mean, it's just absolutely fascinating. Oh, yeah. I mean, was there anything better than the – oh, no, no, no.

I want you to be honest. When Trump's about to be honest, it's really just like – Yeah, I mean, he's not steering him. He's just sort of like, you know, patting him on the back and getting letting the conversation go on. So, Daily Beast, Sam Stein pointed out on Twitter, we've known for a while that Trump was down playing the virus. We knew he was warned early on about the severity of the virus. But as Stein says, what's new here is Trump is admitting the latter as he did the former, right? We're being able to put dates onto this timeline and saying very specifically on February 7th, this is what Donald Trump thought.

know this because Donald Trump is on tape saying it. And that's very valuable when sort of going off and uncovering all this. Stein also tweeted there is so much in the Washington Post piece on the Woodward book that it's buried in like the 30th paragraph that Trump accidentally revealed a new U.S. nuclear weapon system. Just an incidental revelation in Woodward's reporting. To the question of how did Woodward pull this off, which you raised, David, I absolutely agree with you. It's the implied threat that Bob Woodward is going to write this anyway. And we should note that that is the implied threat that is underlying so much journalism, particularly political journalism, right?

At some level, it's a power struggle. Do we think that this journalist is going to get this story? And do we think they have the ability? Do we think they've already gotten the story? And if so, then we want to come in and help this journalist or at least talk to this journalist. that's just a very basic journalistic transaction. With Woodward, it's magnified because it's like coronavirus, Trump, a huge bestselling book.

Yeah. But that to me is a very, very normal everyday power struggle between journalist and subject. Yeah, and I know I made that case before. But there is it, but in a lot of ways, there are a lot of instances, the Trump administration should be the administration most insulated from that sort of transactional. And I mean then the best possible way, you know, journalism, which is to say that like, in every big, I mean, almost every big Trump administration scoop that I can think of, it's not a matter of whether the reporter got the would have gotten the scoop anyway.

It's almost always the access is the scoop, right? It's like being present, like becomes the scoop in and of itself. Hearing somebody say something. I got an interview with Trump. Yeah. I got an interview with Trump is the scoop. Or just the quote is the, you know, the quote becomes the whole thing. And so, you know, practically, in the age that we live in, I think this book would probably, I mean, would certainly be a lot less damaging to Trump himself if he weren't on tape.

Certainly if he weren't on tape saying these things, it'd be a lot easier for his adherents to kind of hand wave it away as they've already tried to do, you know, even with this stuff on tape. But, you know, he sat down with him and he made a calculated decision. And now we see what we got. part of the appeal surely for Trump to is Bob Woodward's celebrity it's Bob Woodward you know it's not that schlub from the Washington Post or the New York Times who's always trying to get interview this is Bob Woodward you know there's some respect for this man Trump love celebrities we know and Woodward two years ago published his first Trump book didn't get a Trump interview and Trump acted at the time like he was disappointed that his staff had not brought the invitation

to him right CNN's Caitlin Collins said Trump thought he could have convinced It's Woodward to make him look better, as you pointed out. And Trump even told Woodward, you know, I'm very open to you. I think you've always been fair. So that's a funny thing. And by the way, there is a Trump tweet for that, TM. This is from 2012. He's talking about watching Hannity.

Sean's interview with Bob Woodward on a Hannity show was very interesting. Woodward was great. Okay. So there you go with that. How could you possibly spend this one? Well, here's Louisiana Senator John Kennedy with CNN's Pamela Brown. All I can do is share with you my point of view, Pamela. These gotcha books don't really interest me that much.

He's on the record. He's on the record. These gotcha books don't really interest me that much. There'll be a new one out tomorrow. But this is different. He did 18 interviews with Bob Woodward. Right. So he's recorded.

You hear his voice. And you're seeing that. You're contrasting that with what he says to the public. Wouldn't that be something of interest to you as a United States Senator? Well, let me answer you again. These gotcha books don't really interest me. Do we think John Kennedy was actually holding the Jeffrey Goldberg talking points? They're like, well, these anonymous sources here have really got, no, no, no, no, Senator.

This is the president's voice on tape. This is not the anonymous source. Well, it says here the Atlantic article is filled with anonymous sources. It was so generic. Oh, my God. That's so great. I mean, yeah, this is what happens when you're just like totally caught flat-footed, you know, when you only have, when there's no defense, you know, you end up with the one with the thinnest, like one-line defense possible. I don't know why you're going on TV to try to put that out there, but somebody's got to do it, I guess.

And Kaylee McInakeney had a version of this. She said, well, this is something that the president allegedly told Bob Woodward and the person in the crowds. No, no, we actually heard the president's voice. I don't know what allegedly. I can hear the voice on the tape saying the thing. That is what we're referring to. By the way, I feel like I said it's all the time on this podcast, but the, the journalist tweet, particularly from political journalists where people are like, why in the world would President Trump talk to Bob Woodward? These are people who spend their whole day trying to get politicians to talk to them against interest.

And then when a politician does exactly. that. They do this weird Twitter thing. Like, why in the world would he do? Stop that. You're trying to, you're doing the same thing. Yeah. All the time. Yeah. Congratulations. Like, why would we want to, why would we want to put into the air that politicians shouldn't be this dumb? They know, they should do this all the time. I just never, I never get that bit. And it holds, it comes out every time there's a revealing interview. The big media question that sort of consume Twitter, at least, part of Twitter yesterday was should Woodward have spilled the beans about some of these revelations rather than waiting seven months. Spill the beans at the time. Yes. Yeah. Call up his editor at the Washington Post and say, I got something.

I got something and it cannot hold for the bookstore. I have thought about this over the last day or so. I sort of think Woodward's culpability here can be overstated. somewhat. I saw yesterday. People saying, well, people died because of Donald Trump and Bob Woodward. I'm not sure they belong on the same platform there. I think that's not the, I don't think that's the way to put it. It is hard for me to understand why he held this news outside of the fact that he wanted to put it into a book.

Like, I've read a couple different interviews with him. He's done this whole thing. well, I needed to check it out, like check out the president's direct words. I don't quite, I just didn't understand that. To me, the most convincing case is he wanted to hold this for his book. This is how big nonfiction books work, right? They don't want it to be parceled out to the newspaper. And so he held it for the book.

Did you hear anything more convincing than that? No, I mean, Eric Wimple has some quotes in defense of it that I thought were sort of abstractly compelling. I mean, I think that Occam's Razor will lead us to your conclusion being the right one, right? I mean, there might be a bit of a lot of external or a lot of other justifications for this, but I think that, I mean, just practically, when you're writing a book, I mean, your nonfiction book, you are targeting the release of your book as the time when all the information within it is released, right? I mean, that's just practically where you begin and often where you end. And it's often a tension.

with newspaper reporters, like, why aren't you putting that in the paper? Why are you holding this for months down the line? And the argument here is we're in the middle of this absolutely bonkers pandemic. And the president is on tape. You have him on tape saying something about the virus that is vastly different from what he is telling the public about the virus. And vastly different from the way the seriousness he is conveying to the public. So given that, and as tens of thousands of people die, how do you not at that point go, okay, I know I've got a deal, but I have to, the public deserves to understand this information

when they're evaluating the president or when they're going about their daily lives. Well, I think there's, I think there's a couple of things here. I mean, I think that Eric Wemple, as I said, I mean, other people have made this sort of case for journalistic integrity. I think you can, I think you can, journalistic ethics can, I think it can justify holding it. I mean, but you're talking about a question of morality. And I think once you get into that territory, it's murkier, you know, I mean, I think that the answer is, yes, you should have alerted the world from a moral perspective. But, you know, I mean, you can certainly question whether or not that would have made any difference at all. Because we're not talking about

a policy distinction. We're not talking about him coming out there. If he was out there, that would free Anthony Fauci or the CDC or whoever else is under Trump's thumb to act differently. It certainly wouldn't have necessarily made any sort of governing change out of the White House and probably not out of Congress. So you're basically saying if Woodward had done the right thing, then legions of Trump supporters that were flouting masks and driving up infection rates because the president told them that like, you know, insouciance is the way to go would have changed their mind because Woodward would have said it, would have released this tape. I don't know that

that's true. No, but I don't even get to that second step of what would have happened if he had done this. I mean, you can certainly say that if you're blaming Woodward for thousands of deaths, whatever, but I just get to the sense of should you should you put it out or not, right? Journalists cannot control the flow of history to that to that degree, but they can do their best to put out information, factual information, in this case from the lips of the president as quickly as possible. And I saw people saying, well, he might have made a deal with people in the Trump White House. They would hold this, which turns out he did not make a deal or at least he said he didn't make a deal. Well, remember the Brett Kavanaugh thing?

We did a couple of weeks ago where he had that he was going to out Brett Kavanaugh as one of his sources because Brett Kavanaugh was up for the Supreme Court and Woodward deemed it important enough. Well, so we understand that Woodward's deals with his sources can be changed based on. circumstances, extraordinary circumstances. And surely these count as extraordinary circumstances. If you don't think Trump, by the way, has tried to get in on the whole Woodward held the scoop thing. Here's a tweet from today. Bob Woodward had my quotes for many months.

If he thought they were so bad or dangerous, why didn't he immediately report them in an effort to save lives? Didn't he have an obligation to do so? No, because he knew they were good and proper answers. Calm, no panic, exclamation point. And I think what's getting a report is David, too, here, is. just the machinery of the book rollout. CNN gets the tapes yesterday.

Woodward is going to be on 60 minutes on Sunday. He cannot answer questions about the book other than how he reported it until the proper rollout on 60 minutes and then the book comes out two days later. And that just feels a little weird and a little unnerving given the scoop and given the subject of the virus.

I mean, I don't think that, I think that, this is a very interesting conversation. And I think that, I mean, yeah, I don't, I, I obviously lean towards where you are, that he should have, he should have, I think you're right. Journalists can't talk about, I mean, you can't, can't assume to steer history. But I think that's a lot of the response. I mean, a lot of the, a lot of the reactions that you're seeing right now are, like you said,

at the top of the segment, that Woodward and Trump have, you know, are responsible for all these deaths. you know, I think that's taken it too far. Yeah, I think there's a more subtle, there's a more subtle point than that. One last note, David, amidst all the coverage, we hit a journalistic milestone yesterday. Here's Carl Bernstein, Woodward's old partner on CNN. Last time this happened during Nixon's, the end of Nixon's presidency, the Republican leadership, including Barry Goldwater, was a 1964 nominee of his party for president, went to the White House and told Nixon, he had to resists. He had to resign. And the facts here are even graver than in Watergate.

Graver than Watergate. Worse than Watergate. And that sounds like a big deal coming from Carl Bernstein. But Bernstein actually says this all the time about Donald Trump. Here he was two years ago during the Mueller investigation. More than that, I think it's time to recognize that what we are watching in the Trump presidency is worse than Watergate. Politico, in fact, has a historical list of 46 scandals that people overwork. over the years have called quote,

worse than Watergate. So I think we should just start using this now. The Milwaukee Bucks picking Eric Bloods over Malcolm Brogden, worse than Watergate. I'm willing to go out on a limb. Can we just have a segment where every week we find something that's worse than Watergate and give it a championship belt? Absolutely.

Absolutely. Your weekly worse than Watergate, now on the ring. Something I saw on first take this week, worse than Watergate. I'm ready to make the proclamation. All right, David, 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.

Send your nominees to at the press box pod, where they are always gratefully received. From the Department of Amazing Timing, right before these Woodward revelations, Ross doubt that of the New York Times wrote a column about whether Trump's response to the coronavirus was terrible or actually just mediocre. Douthit tweets,

once you step back from deaths and case rates to other measurements of response capacity, the U.S. looks anywhere from slightly below to slightly above average. Once you step back from deaths, it was an overworked Twitter joke to write. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln,

how was the play? Thanks to Betsy Keeley. That is quite a step back. Yahoo NBA reporter, Chris Haynes, has a new report, out, Houston Rockets Reserve Daniel House Jr. is under investigation by the league for allegedly allowing a female COVID-19 testing

official into his hotel room. It was an overword Twitter joke to call this a house call. Thanks to Alex Panhands. I'm not implying anything. Just that's out there. And finally, David, a fascinating obit from the New York Times. Gerald Scher, the architect of the witness protection program, has died. it was an overword Twitter joke to write

or did he? Thanks to Jack and Todd H. If you made me think of Goodfellas, congrats, you made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. Time for the notebook dump and let's do some listener mail. We do this every Thursday at the press box pod or DM us. First ones from Corbyn.

I'm waiting for the press box strained pun headline board game. I would play the shit out of that. David, do you think we can get Parker Brothers, if there is indeed a Parker Brothers still extant in this world, interested in the Strain Pun headline board game. I think we can, I think that there's a potential to produce a board game. I don't know if Parker Brothers is our target.

I mean, it would be, would see us as their target audience or their target demographic, but we'll, we can figure this out. We're more in the animal farm age now. What is this going to be called, though? Ooh, well, I think it kind of needs a pun, right? I know. It's got to have the greatest pun of all time in the title. All right. Hit us up at the Pressbox pod for that.

From our friend Chad Orzel, last week's pigment of her imagination pun headline was a New York Post classic, which made me wonder what are your all-time Mount Rushmore Hall of Fame strained pun headlines? I've got a couple, David. No, please. I'm glad you had these. Let's go. All right. My favorite two that were attached to my pieces. At Granlin, I wrote a story about Mori Povich. I went back backstage at his show and got to see one of his You Are Not the Father shows. The headline suggested by my friend Michael Solomon was

from here to paternity, which is fabulous. I don't even think I told Raph that Michael Solomon wrote that. I think I wrote it myself. Anyway, sorry, Rafe in advance. For Outside Magazine, I wrote a short feature on Anthony Bourdain, and this is when he was traveling the world for one of those shows eating all the crazy exotic. foods. The headline was written by my friend Michael Roberts, Anthony Bourdain does not taste

like chicken. Anthony Bordan does that, there's certain subtlety, right? And pretty great. But my all-time favorite that I can remember at this moment, nothing to do with me. New York Post, Martha Stewart is convicted. Remember that whole business? Martha Stewart is going to prison. the New York Post headline was simply curtains. Curtains. Anything that's that simple. If you can get it down to one word. Yeah.

And it's a little da-da, you've won me over. Yeah. All timer for me. This is from T.J. Wanderslug. Is there a journalistic version of the Mandela effect where we hear a new shocking Trump story and swear that it's a story that was previously reported years earlier? I think the answer to that question is definitely yes. Is there a phrase for it or does that effect exist?

Does that effect exist? I think he's asking. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that happens to me. I mean, this is something about the speed of the news cycle, but there's definitely a time where you're just like, you know, you turn on MSNBC at like, you know, midnight and they're doing a rerun of one of the daytime shows and you're not sure which controversy is being discussed

with such, you know, You know, depths and significance. And I think we've all had the thing where, you know, Google news or Apple News or whatever, sort of like the algorithm breaks down when they find, when they, sometimes they just like decide you like a thing or I don't even know how the algorithm works and they give you a story from like three weeks ago. So it does happen sometimes. And yeah, there's definitely times where I've seen like a Trump headline where I'm just like,

no, not this again. Come on Apple News. Get your shit together. And then it turns out they were right. The secret nuclear weapons program for me was kind of one of those. Because I was like, didn't he tell the Russians about that when they were in the Oval Office? Oh, yeah. A couple years ago.

But that was something else. Is there anything that's like more like literally significant to our lives and to the world and weirdly like less impactful in like headline or in breaking news form than just like Trump discusses secret nuclear weapon? Have we just seen too many movies that have rendered that like fantasy? Yeah. If it was like a Pierce Brosnan era, James Bond movie. Not even, not even one. Yeah, we know so little. Presumably the Russians or the Chinese or whatever know everything with such great detail.

Apparently the foreign governments know everything with such detail that like the knowledge that there is a new thing might be more significant than it is to us. But like if somebody's got a stockpile of nukes and they're like, oh, hey, we got a new nuke. I don't know. It doesn't affect the biggest deal in the world, even though it is. This is from Ruben Alonzo. Is there a term for an overwork Twitter joke that won't die? Every time a different appellate court in a different state kicks Kanye off a ballot, we all get the same jokes from local media reporters. I think the term you're looking for is Twitter.

That is where the overworked Twitter joke will never die because it's the same all the time. From Zach Waters, for the mailbag, I was hoping you could spend a little time on the war. No one is talking about suburban front yard political signs. I'll see your 14 small Trump signs with my one giant Biden sign. anything more passive, aggressive? Is this happening in your corner of the world, David? In my corner of the world, there's a lot more Black Lives Matter signs, and there are Biden signs or political signs in general. I know down in North Carolina, there's a, yeah, I mean, my experience is from Charlotte, so it's, you know, a big city. I saw a bunch of handmade Biden

signs in one yard, not very many Trump signs. Pennsylvania is full of Trump signs. I think that I can't speak much of personal experience. I got to be honest with you. So I, but I do ascribe a certain sort of whatever specific decision making on the people that are putting these in their yard. And it does seem like everybody, you know, it's the sort of people that do bumper stickers, the sort of people that want to make sure their neighbors, you know, know, like get a sort of F you without actually having to say anything to their face. So, yeah, there's nothing more passive aggressive than it. That's for sure. Yeah.

And another level of passive aggressive of Zach is where somebody is clearly anti-Trump, but they don't want to put a Biden. sign up so they put like any living human or what is it any functional human 2020 yeah which is kind of your halfway step to declaring that you're voting for Biden that's always a favorite of mine uh this is from tie yager i got to know your favorite and least favorite teams in all of sports well uh Dallas cowboys for me how number one Dallas cowboys doesn't that make me unique in this universe least favorite anybody else in the NFC East. I mean, Dallas Mavericks are number one for me.

I had to sort of divorce myself somewhat from the Cowboys at some point. But David will come back. Someday. It's funny because I would consider... David isn't an open sports relationship. Let's put it that way with a lot of teams. I consider myself a Carolina Panthers fan instead of a Cowboys fan.

However, to answer the second half, the antipathy for the other NFCE teams has stayed. So I don't love the Cowboys, maybe like I used to, but I still hate the other three teams. Yeah, see, I like that. I can totally live with that. Finally, from Matthew Haber,

while creating an anniversary video for my parents, I happened upon the press box theme music, which is called Evening Stroll. I did not know this, by the way. Where would you and David go for an evening stroll together? I can't believe you're giving this away for all the people that want to do like, you know, just fake episodes of the press box

to put all over the internet. get us into trouble. Yeah. All the press box strolls are going to be a real issue. With this knowledge. Man, I would go an evening stroll anywhere. Where do you want to go, Brian? Well, I think, no, I think he's asking where have we gone for an evening?

Oh, no, he's where would you? But I was thinking where had we gone? Didn't we do some down in the Bowery when we were in the Lower East Side? Oh, yeah. There was a lot of east side, broadly defined, Lower East Side Manhattan strolling. You and I had the twilight kind of walking through talking about the movie we just saw? There was a lot, oh yeah, walking all the way down from Kipps Bay to like the lower east side.

That's right. David and I would occasionally do the long walk. That was David and I's sort of method of exercise. And there was the, but there was a, but I mean, prior to that, back in our, basically our functional childhoods, we did a lot of walking in D.C. Because we couldn't afford taxis and the subway is all closed at 10 or you stopped using them at 10 o'clock or whatever. So if you went out to a bar, you would, we would walk home like three neighborhoods. There were three neighborhoods to get back to, you know, the couch or whatever. There was a lot of strolling there.

I don't know. Is there anywhere else? Didn't do less strolling in Texas. Note to listeners. Our functional childhood, we were 22 years old. It's important to know that. David, big guess this week, a guy that is in the Shoemaker Pantheon and the Curtis Pantheon, where our pantheons sort of come together. Don Winslow, crime novelist extraordinaire, and guy who tweets about Trump in entertaining ways,

extraordinary. Here's Don Winslow. Can your favorite crime novelist also be your favorite anti-Trump Twitter follow? Well, in Don Winslow's case, the answer is yes. Winslow's latest book is a short story collection called Broken. And on Twitter at Don Winslow, he's not just lamenting the latest depravity of the Trump era, but producing original videos about Trump. His handling of the coronavirus pandemic in Kamala Harris-Dahn,

thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having. So when the Bob Woodward news dropped yesterday, I noticed on Twitter that you had flipped over to Fox News, to watch how they were handling it. Was that morbid curiosity on your part or a little sadistic glee? A little bit of both, more morbid than sadistic, I think. But yeah, real curiosity.

I mean, how do you handle something when you caught red-handed? Are you a Fox Newsologist in your spare time? I am not a Fox Newsologist. You know, look, I mean, I look at them because it's always good to know what the opposition's doing and what they're saying, but it's not my favorite time of the day or the week, no. So a lot of novelists are tweeting through this campaign. I see Stephen King tweeting over there, but you have been producing Twitter videos under the banner Don Winslow films. Earlier this month, a video called Trump is Not Like You.

There's a new one that links Kamala Harris with Rosa Parks, a civil rights pioneer, and another very stark one called America's greatest mistake. How do these videos come together? You know, my buddy Shane Salerno and I, my agent, my friend, co-conspirator, you know, A-list screenwriter in his own right. I work on them with him. You know, listen, I mean, I never thought of myself as a video maker or even a political person for that matter until kind of recent times. But, you know, these are extraordinary times. And it demands it, you know, for those of us who have even a small voice to say something to come out with it. We got a lot of videos floating around the world right now from like the Lincoln Project, right, and other people.

Is there something you specifically want to clarify? in yours about Trump? Well, I want to tell the truth. I want people to look at the facts, and there's nothing but facts in those videos. You know, it's an extraordinary opportunity where you can put something together and 48 hours somewhere between

5 to 6 million people can look at it. So hopefully some people are looking at it and seeing maybe for the first time the unalloyed truth coming out. And why a video instead of writing something, for instance about the election? Well, I've written a lot. You know, I've done a lot of op-eds.

I've taken out ads in the Washington Post in the New York Times. And I've written a few books that have some fairly political content to them. But let's be honest, we live in a visual age. And particularly, you know, in the COVID era, when people are staying home and that's what they're doing, is they're looking at this screen like I'm looking at it now, it seemed to be the more powerful meeting. And are these directed at people who would read your novels? that the audience here? I hope the audience is to everybody. I certainly, I mean, I think the initial audience are people who read my books, but I think it's reaching, it's reaching rather a much

wider audience. You know, we're getting, you know, five, six million views. I think something like there's been 50 million views or something on these videos, which is mind-bending. And did I see Twitter said your initial Trump is not like you video violated their standards for some reason? Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. What's, what's, what's, been happening on several of these videos is that these bots have been getting on in their tens or hundreds of thousands and automatically complaining falsely that there's nudity and violence in these videos, which there is not. So what happens is that Twitter picks that up. They freak out. They shut them down. They put on this video contains sensitive material you need to change your

settings. Then they come back in and they realize there's no violence. there's no nudity. There's no sensitive material in here at all. And then they put it back up. But that's eight or nine hours later when the damage has been done. Ah, I see. Yeah, the only nudity and violence would be clips from a Trump press conference, which is, which is, which would be offensive, but not in that purpose in that way. Endlessly offensive, but not nearly naked enough. Looking at your Twitter feed yesterday, you had dozens of tweets and retweets from subjects ranging from Woodward to Kaylee McAnney to Chanel Rione, the O-A-N, reporter, quote, unquote. How do you manage being online like that and also turning out fiction at the rate you want to?

You know, I finished my latest book in last fall, I think around, in fact, this time of the year. I've been working on other things, but in all candor, I've slowed them down in order to address the exactly the issue that you're referring to. Oh, really? So you're not writing, are you still writing fiction like part of the day or just doing? completely. Very, very little. Very little. Because it's funny with some writers who aren't political reporters, right? They read all this Trump news and it puts them into the state of agitation and it's very

hard to switch from that to a state that's conducive to writing. Do you have that issue at all? You know, I don't really. I think maybe the first two or three days after Trump was elected I did. You know, I woke up thinking this is not the country that I thought it was. And it took me a couple of three days to get back to work. But look, that's what we do, isn't it? That's what you do. That's what I do. We have to shove the anxiety and the angst, the side, and go back to working on whatever we're working on, whether it be a novel or this more political content. A few tweets of yours jumped out at me. I can't wait for Donald Trump to announce that Mexico will be paying for the vaccine. That was funny. And then also 2020, the year we get rid of the two scummiest families on the planet, the Trump's and the Kardashians, is, it's 20. Twitter a release for you? Do you see it that way at all?

No, not really. There's no catharsis there. You know, listen, every once in a while, it's good to be funny. It's good to be sharp. I think it does do some good. I don't see it as a release. I really view it as a very straightforward effort to communicate certain realities and certain truths. Sometimes that comes to the form of some offhanded humor more often. It's more straightforward. Do you ever hear from readers and say, Don, I love the force. I love the cartel, but your politics are pissing me off? Sure. And what's your answer?

I hear from them. I hear from people who are, you know, don't love my books and don't love me, who are pretty upset. Listen, I think that we are complete human beings. Do you know what I mean? So a big part of what I do and the biggest part of my life is writing these novels and writing these books. And I hope people like them. I think that they do. I do my absolute best, and I'm very grateful to have that gig.

On the other hand, you can't just separate and say, well, because I'm a fiction writer, I have no political beliefs. More importantly, I have no ethical or moral beliefs because I think this all goes beyond politics. This is not a left or a right issue anymore. This is a right and a wrong issue. So when you're throwing kids into cages, when you're lying about something as lethal as COVID-19, when you're calling veterans losers and suckers, including my dad, who was on Guadalcanal when he was 18,

including friends of mine whose names I've seen on the Vietnam Wall in Washington and calling them losers and suckers, now we're into a moral and ethical realm, even more than a political realm. political realm. These things are just wrong. And so I don't think that we can just say, at least I can't say, well, I'm a crime fiction writer. That's what I do. I'm going to set the rest of my beliefs aside. I can't do that. My favorite story in your new book, Broken, was a story called The Last Ride, which dives right into the crisis at the board of the Trump creatives. Story opens with the line, the first time he saw the child, she was in a cage. So when you dive into something that is that fresh, that visceral, is that exhilarating as a fiction writer?

Is that scary? How does that play in your mind? It was painful and sad, to be honest with you. Look, in writing that story, I was really writing a neo-Western for a number of reasons. At the end of the day, it's about a guy on a horse. It's about an old cowboy. What I was trying to get at was a return to some of our older values. values that might even fact be conservative values.

I remember when we used to rescue children, not locked them up, you know. And I live in a very conservative part of the world. I live on an old ranch and I'm surrounded by cowboys, basically conservative in their beliefs. But if you talk to them on a moral and ethical level and on the level of that sort of older cowboy code, of the way we used to behave, then you start getting somewhere. So the cowboy here is Cal, who is a Border Patrol agent, who watches Fox News, buys American trucks, an F-150, to be exact.

And the idea of the neo-Western is, there's a corrupt law out there, there's a corrupt force, but there is a moral code that he is trying to pursue outside of that law. Am I getting that right? I think you've got it exactly right. Look, you know, Raymond Chandler, the great Raymond Chandler,

the grandfather of all of us who do this gig, once wrote famously about the detective hero, Down these mean streets must walk a man who is not himself mean. Had he been writing 30 years earlier, he might have written, Down these mean canyons rides a man who is not himself mean. It's the same code. And I think, you know, don't get me started. I could do a whole lecture. I won't.

Don't worry about, you know, how the American crime novel comes out of the American Western novel. But yeah, you know, it would have been easier to approach that story from the point of view of the child or the mother or, or let's say a social worker or defense attorney for that kid would have been the easier choice and the easier way to go. But I thought it was more interesting to start with a character who believes the Trump lies about the border. And it fact, it's his job to stop these immigrants from coming through. And then more interesting to talk about a guy who changes his mind. And I think in terms of fiction, conflict is always more interesting.

You know, when you can look at a character and there's a conflict between, God, what did I believe and what do I believe? You know, what's the easy thing to do? What's the hard thing to do? Those are interesting to a fiction writer. Did you talk to Border Patrol agents when you were creating that character? I talked to them long before that. I've known them for a long time. I live along the border.

I realize how melodramatic that sounded when it came out of my mouth, but I do. I live, you know, in a border area. So I know Border Patrol agents, both professionally and socially. You know, I think driven, ridden, or walked every mile of that border. So, yeah, I was pretty familiar with what they think and how they think. think and what goes on. What is what is surprising about them because they are figures in this Trump created drama right in some some cases similar to the police characters you've written about but what do you what is surprising about them to those of us who who don't know people in the

Border Patrol do you think? You know it's it's always dangerous to generalize because you're talking about thousands of people and so on the one hand you might have those just absolute believers and on the other hand you have people for whom this is just the job. What's struck me when I was out with them years ago was how depressed they were. How sad. But in those days, they viewed their primary mission as a rescue mission. They used to put up tall, not towers, but what am I trying to say, poles, with red flags on the top, to mark where they stored water, cashed water, for immigrants who were lost out there in the desert. Now that mission has profoundly changed, and I think that the Border Patrol

has changed with it. But, you know, the surprising thing, I think, as it is with cops, you know, again, you're talking about a very, you know, varied group of people. This job has its effect on no question about it. Your writing schedule begins at 5 or 5.30 in the morning most days. Yeah. What is it about those morning hours that's conducive to writing? The numbers. I just need a lot of hours. I wish it were otherwise. You know, I, I wish I could go to a coffee shop and, you know, the muse lands on my shoulder and whispers sweet nothings into my ear that I can then time and get another coffee. But that's not the way my working life happens. You know, I just need that number of hours per day.

And so I need to start early. I wish it were otherwise to tell you the truth, but it's not. I also read that you often are working on two things at the same time or you have two things you could be working on. What is the value for you of doing it that way? It's to have a fresh pony in the corral. You know, speaking of westerns, you know. Look, I do. I start at 5.30.

I know to be, if I'm being honest with myself, that by around two in the afternoon, anything I write on that book is likely to be garbage. It's headed for the delete key, you know. And so I've sort of learned, why bother, you know? And so what I tend to do is then switch over to. another project. And that feels fresh and, you know, I can bring a different perspective to it and it to me. And so that's pretty much the way I work. Wait, so you mount the fresh pony at like two in the afternoon. And then that could be A or B material as opposed to unusable material on that

project? Yeah, I think so. Usually it is, you know. Yeah, I ride that one around to torture the metaphor until, you know, five or five-thirty and then I quit. Then all the horses are in the barn. But Yeah. No, it's really quite useful. I was just going to say, I've tried it, I think, with articles once or twice. But it always happens that it just becomes an excuse for me not to finish article number one, which I should have been working on because I look at number two over here. Wouldn't that be nice to work on? Yeah, exactly.

You know, I maybe have a bit more leisure, you know, because book deadlines tend to be farther away. And I don't think about them anyway. So it's easy then to stop at around 132 o'clock and say, okay, you know, I'm going to pick up Project B or Project C and play with it. Other times, though, I might just choose to go back to earlier chapters in the main book, and I'll do weird stuff. You know, like sometimes I'll just take 10 pages and I'll only look at the verbs. And what does that exercise do? I get better verbs. You can juice them up 25%.

Yeah, I look at them and I think, is that accurate? Is that really what's happening? Is that guy doing that? Is that woman really doing that? Can I be more specific? Can I be more vivid? And if then all those requirements are met, can I be more poetic? You know, do the consonants have the sounds that they should?

Or is there a different verb that works that would have the better consonants? or vowel sounds or whatever for whatever the piece is. I live in Huntington Beach, California, not too far from the pier where you set a scene in Broken. And Raymond Chandler, as whom you mentioned, showed us why L.A. is a good setting for crime fiction. So why is the Pacific Coast Highway and the beach cities between here and San Diego?

Why is that a good setting for crime fiction? May I first add, because it annoys my L.A. friends, that Raymond Chandler wrote his great L.A. novels, while living in San Diego. That's right. La Jolla, right? Yeah, just off Highway 101. I've been in love with Highway 101 for 30 years.

From the moment I first drove that sucker, I came out to the West Coast when I was still a P.I. And I was on a case, and I had an unexpected day off. And I thought, well, I'm going to drive this Pacific Coast Highway. I've heard so much about. And that was just north of Lagoon Beach, California. I drove it south to Dago, San Diego, and I fell in love. And I have to tell you, I never get tired of driving that road.

Never. It's always exciting to me. It's always evocative to me. It has what I've called the small gods of place, you know, the little taco shops, the surf shops that you get used to driving by or stopping in, certain beaches, certain breaks. I never tire of it. Yeah, and your PCH is yoga studios, it's breakfast burrito dives, right? It's ocean side apartments. Yeah.

And I was never convinced that, you know, criminality could lurk in such a place until the coronavirus when I walk out on the PCH now and it's the anti-masker capital of the world. And I feel that now I understand the evil heart of the PCH, at least around Huntington Beach. You know, one thing I love about writing crime fiction and also in that setting is, is it's, It's like surf, isn't it? If you stand on the beach or on one of those bluffs above the beach and you look at the ocean, you see the pretty waves. And they are.

They're absolutely gorgeous and they're real. The beauty is real. It's good to know, though, and what's fun to explore as a crime writer is what's beneath the surface. That what's causing that wave is always something deep and dark and it's something that might have happened days ago or weeks ago and it can be affected by a lot of things that we don't see and that's where the danger lurks and that's where the intrigue lurks

and that's why I like working in that setting on. Last thing I wanted to ask you about, Don, is your use of the one-sentence paragraph. You write the most exquisite one-sentence paragraphs anywhere. I'm going to read a short passage from Broken here. This is from the point of view of the character, oh, not everyone is going to like it, she thinks, new paragraph. They don't have to, she thinks, new paragraph. Only I do, new paragraph.

Fuck everyone. End of section. How did that particular bit of style evolve in your writing? It started when I wrote a book called Savages, I think back in 2010, which is where that character, O, originated. I wrote a rather famous opening chapter, two words, the second of which is you and the first of which is not. And what I realized was that reading, and we sometimes forget it, is not only a mental intellectual

event, it's also a visual activity. And so there are times when I want thoughts to run on, like in an action sequence, I want to grab you by the shirt and not let you go until I'm done with you. And so I'll just keep da-da-da-da-da-da-da-word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word. Other times, though, I really want to focus the reader on a thought or a image, and I realize that just like in a painting or a photograph, that image needs negative space. It needs a lot of emptiness around it so that it forces the reader to take a break, both before and after it, if only slight. And then that brings that word or two or that sentence out. Don Winslow's latest book is broken. He is at Don Winslow on Twitter, where a new video from Don.

Don Winslow Films. I understand many new videos are in the offing. We are going to be doing videos, sir, until the election and maybe after, and we got one coming up, watch for it that I'm very excited about. Look out Lincoln Project. You've got some competition. Thank you so much for being here, Don. Thanks so much for having me. All right. It's time for David Shoemaker. Guess is the strained pun headline. All right. Monday's pun headline about a college professor who lied about her race was pigment of her imagination.

Today's pun headline comes from Will Holland. It's also from the New York Post, but from the sports page. David, are you aware that the Toronto Blue Jays are playing this year in Buffalo? Yes, I am dimly aware that the Blue Jays are playing. I always have to check. No, I still have to pay attention to work slack and stuff. It's, you know, I got to keep vague. I got to sort of, you know, open my mind to these things.

So the Yankees go there and lose in embarrassing fashion, giving up 10 runs in one inning. Your word is Buffalo. Buffalo. What was the New York Post strained pun headline? Buffalo wings, buffalo sauce, Buffalo a little different there.

Buffalo chicken. Buffalo Maybe another team that plays in Buffalo. Buffalo builds, Buffalo there we go. Buffalo Nills. Close. That'd be good if they scored zero runs.

What was the score? 10, 10 runs? Well, they just got blasted. They gave up 10 and run one inning. That's not important. They just got blasted. The Buffalo, uh, Buffalo, uh, Buffalo, uh, Buffalo Nils, but Buffalo kills.

Kills, Zilch, uh, Bill, uh, why don't, why can I think of this? You got to tell me. Buffalo ills. Oh, God. All right. I tried every other content at the beginning of ill and didn't think of ill. That was great.

Sometimes the New York Post gets too pigment of her imagination. Sometimes you settle for Buffalo ill. Happens to everyone. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida. Production Magic by Lonnie Renaldo. Thank you, Lonnie. We're back Monday with a cool guest. Lukewarm takes about the media and a podcast that will be, wait for it, worse than Watergate. See you then, David.

See you later, Brian.