The Press Box - Catching up on the Atlantic Mega-Scoop and Stephen A. vs. LeBron. Plus: Bryan’s Southwest Travelogue.

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David discuss the highlights, lowlights, and books bought during Bryan’s family vacation across the American Southwest (1:30). Then, they dig deep into three stories that Bryan missed while he was out: Jeffrey Goldberg’s Signal scoop of the Trump administration’s war plans (15:00) The latest chapter of the LeBron vs. Stephen A. Smith feud (29:00) The messy removal of Amber Ruffin by the White House Correspondents' Association (47:00) Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the brand new Zach Lowe show. That's right. I'm back to have the same in-depth NBA conversations you're used to. We're going to talk about the games, the X's and O's, the drama, the playoffs are coming up. And now you get to see every episode in full on video on Spotify and on my own YouTube channel. Episodes drop every Monday and Thursday with a collection of guests you're going to love. So make sure you follow and subscribe to the brand new Zach Lowe show on Spotify. or wherever you watch or listen to your podcast.

Let's go! Yes. I'm back. Welcome home. Dude, two weeks with the family driving across the great American Southwest. Yes. In a minivan we borrowed from my mother-in-law, a minivan whose color you might describe as magenta,

just to get... some true Clark Griswold vibes here. You guys find Forest Finn's treasure? What was the goal of all this? Just exploring? Exploring great American landscapes, David. Okay. It was my wife, Christine, my son Owen, my daughter, Stella.

We went to Utah, we went to Nevada, we went to Arizona. And I've got a few fun notes for you about our epic two-week road trip. Yes, please. our first destination was Las Vegas. Yeah. And there the kids discovered something they had never experienced. Secondhand smoke. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a thing. We walk into the MGM grant and they're like, what's that? And I'm like, kids, all of America used to smell like that. Oh, my God. My son went on, went to Italy with his like high school. school choir recently and I was just like remembering when I went on a high school choir trip to England and I remember I was on the back row of the last row of the non-smoking section in the airplane. This is how long ago that was. The difference between the smoking section, the non-smoking

section, the airplane was just the like the distance between those two seats. There was yes. And you're like, you know, it's a plane. There's not many places with the smoke to go. When we were in Vegas, we wanted to see a show that was both kid-friendly and had that Vegas grandeur and cheesiness about it. Okay. And we chose David Copperfield, the illusionist. Oh, okay. Not a dramatization of the book. Okay, got it.

No, not David. Not that David Copperfield, the David Copperfield from the 80s. And we get to the show. We're outside the theater there at the MGM, Grant. There's tons of people going in. People are buying drinks. I'm trying to get a genitonic that will nurse me through this show. I'm looking around.

We have the last minute trip to the bathroom. And I see a guy standing outside the theater with a beard. Now, we're in Vegas. All my context clues are just completely out the window here. But I'm staring at this man with a beard. And the man looks at me and he goes, hey. And I said, hey. And the man turned out to be Chuck Clefell.

Closterman, who was going to the David Copperfield show under the exact same auspices that I was. Like, with his family? Yes. What in the world? It was unbelievable. And during the show, and by the way, the illusions in the show, it was so great because I'm with my kids and I'm also reduced to the viewpoint of a child, like, looking around going, I have no idea what's going on. I don't know how any of this is happening. Yeah.

It's blowing my mind. mind, but I'm turning around and trying to crane my neck so I can see Chuck, who's back into my left to see what he's making of all this. Because it's not just illusions, which were amazing. It's David Copperfield, a character I'm not all that familiar with, but a guy who's both incredibly self-regarding and also speaks somewhat quietly in a non-vagacy way in the show. And I don't think I'm spoiling anything here, David. I know many of our listeners are right now going to the MGM Grand website and

booking their reservations. But the show ends with David Copperfield holding an alien who is visiting us there at the hotel in Vegas, an alien, and this is an animatronic alien that moves and speaks to the audience, David Copperfield is holding this extraterrestrial being and talking about his, that is David Copperfield's dead father. Wait, what? That's how the show ends. I don't think I can say anything more without spoiling it. But it was unbelievable. So I'm turning my neck around going, God, I want to just have my podcast microphone so I can go right up to closer to go, can we just talk about this for like two hours? Emergency pod. Because you're the perfect person to talk about this with. Anyway, if Chuck is not writing a chapter for a future book, please contact me. We'll put you on the air

immediately. Well, wait. So I'm going to Vegas in a week, also with my family. Do I need to go see the David Copperfield show? Is that the go to? You need to go see David Copperfield. Yes. Okay. Bring a drink. But you will have an amazing time.

I say that with complete sincerity. I was blown away. What on earth? No, I'm just so perplexed by this. It's out of this world. That's great. I've got some road trip book stories that I know you'll relate to. All right.

So a couple years ago on a different family vacation, though, with the same people. We're in England. In Bath. We go to this bookstore called Persephone Books. Okay. Which publishes neglected works of fiction and nonfiction, they say, mostly by women. Uh-huh.

And they do their own additions with these beautiful silver covers and every title has its own specific bookmark. Look them up online. You'll want to order one right away. And I see this book and I'm reading the jacket copy and it's a noir. that takes place in Arizona. It's called The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes. So I buy this book, I put it on my bookshelf, and I know you'll relate to this experience, I forget all about it.

Just completely forget I ever bought it. Fast forward a couple of years, and I'm thinking about what books could I read on this trip through the Southwest? Yeah. I'm gazing at my bookshelf, and I'm like, oh, my God, there it is. I didn't know when I was going to read this book. I didn't know if I was going to read this book. But there's a certain book buying magic that causes you to buy it and then put it on your shelf.

Yep. So that you will find it at an uncertain future day. Yes. And we're sitting in Arizona and I'm reading the expendable man by Dorothy B. Hughes. I couldn't be happier, both with the book and with that strange magic of book buying. Yeah. Second related story Visited lots of

bookstores across the southwest You can look for me on Blue Sky if you want to see which ones But there was a particularly great one Bookman's Entertainment Exchange In Flagstaff, Arizona Uh-huh, that sounds great David, Ron don't walk

Because it is like the half-priced bookstores of our youth Except wait for it On steroids Tons of used books which clearly have been supplied in part by the professors at the nearby university there in Flagstaff. Sure. Use DVDs, use CDs, use video games, everything.

Unbelievable stock. And as I walk into this bookstore, I have that magic list in my head that I know you do too, books I want to buy and read someday. Yeah. And one of the books in my mind is a book called Bitter Fruit, which is about a CIA-backed coup in Guatemala in the 1950s. Long story short, this is not the tipping point. this is a somewhat obscure title.

Yeah. I walk into the Latin American section of bookmans in Flagstaff, Arizona, not New York, not L.A., not Guatemala City, Flagstaff, Arizona, and there is a copy of bitter fruit for $7 just waiting for me. That's amazing. I'm not a mystical person, but I feel when I'm going to a used bookstore sometimes, something has been placed there so that I will find it when I'm driving my magenta minivan across the country.

The family road trip hotel room problem. You know, David, that I am an early riser. Yeah. When you and I live together, I would wake up and wait approximately two and a half hours for you to wake up so that we could go have brunch. Well, I'm still an early riser, and I would wake up in a hotel room with three other members of my family, six o'clock, maybe six 30 in the morning. I would want two things, black coffee and two.

read a book in peace. Yeah. For point of reference, Brian used to wake up when we live together in Brooklyn and go wait outside of the coffee shop until someone noticed him and unlocked the door to hand him a cup of coffee. That's very true. That's very true. And eventually they started just opening earlier just to accommodate me.

You don't have 30 minutes of just complete silence and lack of business. But here's my question for you. How do you get out of the hotel room? because every hotel that was built after like 1990 has those card activated doors that slam with all the subtlety of like a drawbridge going up in a medieval castle. Oh, yeah. So if you walk out at 6 o'clock, that thing is going to slam and you're going to wake up all the members of your family. Yes. And then when you get down to the lobby and have that delicious coffee and read that wonderful southwest noir, it will all be for not.

Yeah. They'll already be texting you saying just like, when is, you know, do you? Do you want to, where are you? Yeah. What's wrong with you? So how do you get out of the room? What do you do during that interminable hour or two hours before the rest of the family wakes up? That's a good question.

What was your solution? Well, at the Grand Canyon, we had a balcony, first floor balcony, I should note, that had just a regular door. So I could kind of slip out there and jump over the balcony and walk to the little lodge where I could get some coffee. but otherwise I was reading my phone. Yeah. I'm like, I didn't take two weeks off to read my phone. Yeah. If I wanted Kevin Clark's text, I can just look at my phone anytime.

Why do I need to do this while I'm on vacation? All right, last thing for you. Right, there's no solution? No, throwing it open to the press box public. Oh, man. How do you escape a room at 6 a.m. When the rest of your family is sleeping peacefully? Let David and I know

David's about to go to Vegas as he said. You may be the last one up though. You may not be the first one up. No, I mean, I usually, I will be on vacation. You know, no. Souvernear shops at the Grand Canyon, David. You might imagine I was looking for some cool t-shirts or magnets for the fridge here at home.

But I kept coming across a particular book. And I recognized the book because when I was doing Reddit searches for the trip, like, you know, best books about Arizona. Best Books about Utah, right? The widest possible search terms. One book kept coming up. It's not Hunter S. Thompson or Dorothy B. Hughes or the Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward

Abbey. No, it's over the edge, death in the Grand Canyon, gripping accounts of all known fatal mishaps in the most famous of the world's seven natural wonders. Oh, my God. I mean, first of all, that sounds great. and especially if it comes with the recommendation of it being a great book or a good, the best book about an area. It was in everything.

The best book about the Southwest, according to people on Reddit. But it was also in every bookstore actually at the Grand Canyon. Here is a reported list of everyone who has died at this natural wonder. Oh, my God. And I looked through it. First of all, it's been revised and updated. Always nice to know. We've added recent deaths.

Yeah, I was going to say, revised with recent new information or just like up to the minute deaths? I'm not totally sure. I only paged through and saw that they did they sort of divided up the book by ways people died. You know, obviously there were some plunges at the Grand Canyon. So it's like a reader. That's fantastic. All right.

Yeah. Perhaps some drownings in the Colorado River, maybe a touch of frostbite. I didn't get all the way to the end. But death in the Grand Canyon, that turns out to be the book everyone wants to read when they visit our wonders in the Southwest. Wow. We have someone else to welcome here, David, someone on our own podcast road trip. He is the new producer of the press box. He's activating his microphone right now, smiling widely. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome. You know him from the big pick and elsewhere. It is Bobby Wagner. Gentlemen, what is going on? Lovely listeners of the press box,

I'm so excited to be here. I hope that I provide even half the excitement of a surprise jump scare of Chuck Closterman in Las Vegas? Oh, I don't know if you're that, if it's that surprising, but we're happy to have you here, Bobby. I hope you bring, and Bobby's got a lot of big ideas about ways that we can, like,

draft presidential candidates throughout the years, just so there's going to be a lot of drafts, I think. Yes, Bobby, welcome to the only podcast at the ringer that has never had a draft. That's what we've been doing wrong all these years.

Well, the clock's ticking, boys. The clock is a ticking. I'm really happy to be here. As you guys know already, I'm a huge fan of this podcast. I'm excited to be the first fan. Get to listen to it before anyone else. So I'm excited.

Thank you guys for having you. We're so happy to have you, sir. Thank you, thank you, thank you. All right, coming up on the podcast, all the big stories we missed while we were away. The scoop, the Trump administration just handed to the Atlantic, LeBron versus Stephen A round two. And why did the White House correspondence cancel Amber Ruffin?

plus some notes on the final four. All that and much more on the press box, a part of the ringer, podcast network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis David Shoemaker, and producer Bobby Wagner here. All right, David, three stories we missed while we were away. Story number one, the Atlantic scoop. I love talking to you about the whole arc of Donald Trump and the media.

We had the passive era where CNN and other networks would just play. entire Trump rallies. Yeah. Like, here's some entertainment. Who knows what he's going to say next? Then we had the more active era where journalists are like, actually,

let's do some great reporting and uncover all kinds of things about the Trump era. Then we entered what I like to think of as the passive active era, where the team Trump just gives reporters a scoop. Yeah. This culminated in one of the all-time headlines in the, in the Atlantic. The Trump administration accidentally texted me

its war plans. Now, the White House would later go to the mat about whether these were war plans or mere attack plans. I mean, that's the argument that you're having. I don't know if I'd say you've lost because, you know,

but you're certainly not on the right footing. Yeah, you don't want to accidentally text any of your plans to the people who are covering you. FDR didn't drop his rural electrification plans in an airmail package and send them to various newspapers, accidentally anyway. Author of that amazing story was Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg. Mm-hmm. Who writes on Tuesday, March 11th, I received a connection request on signal from a

user identified as Michael Waltz. Mike Waltz is the National Security Advisor. Mm-hmm. Jeffrey Goldberg didn't think this was real Mike Waltz. In fact, he wondered if people were trying to play a trick on him, but he accepted the request. And Goldberg writes two days later, Thursday at 428 p.m., I receive a notice that I was being included in a signal chat group. It was called the Houthi PC small group.

Houthis are a terrorist organization supported by Iran. Goldberg still doesn't think this is real. This can't be a real chat group that is talking about a group that the U.S. is determined to strike. But then he begins to read this dialogue in the group that involves J.D. Vance and others talking about the merits of U.S. military action. And I'll give you some cuts here. This is Pete Hexeth. Yes, that Pete Hexeth, the Secretary of Defense. I think messaging is going to be tough no matter what. Nobody knows who the Houthis are, which is why we would need to stay focused on one, Biden failed and two, Iran funded. Yeah.

J.D. Vance. Yes, that J.D. Vance says in this discussion, if you think we should do it, let's go. I just hate bailing Europe out again. The Houthis were disrupting shipping lanes that European countries used. So here's Jeffrey Goldberg looking at his phone thinking, if this is a hoax, this really does sound like the Trump administration figures in question. Yeah. This is like draft day for U.S. military actions.

Like, do you think we should do this? I don't know. Let's debate the merits in the most public way possible. It's so bizarre. I actually would not have assumed that that's what it would sound like. I, for some reason, I'm not imagining J.D. Vance complaining about bailing out Europe in the private, in private conversation. but I guess he does.

That's what's funny, right? It feels like you're watching JFK and all the conspirators are sitting around. Yeah. Or anything where it's like, this can't be the real discussion that happens behind the scenes. Yeah. Even when you have the really good reconstructed version in a book. Yeah. It always sounds a little too pat.

Exactly. Because somebody's trying to make themselves out to be the hero or they're flattening the tone that someone else is using. But no, this is the way these people talk in private. Now, Pete Hagsit in this group post details about coming strikes in Yemen. Goldberg waits and, yes, the strikes happen, just as they are described in the signal conversation. And then at some point, Goldberg leaves the group. Now, Goldberg publishes this bombshell story in the Atlantic on March 24th.

Then there's this big discussion in the press, right? First of all, the Trump administration tries to say that stuff wasn't really classified. Right. The old, like, if you can read it, it's not classified argument. Which the Atlantic wisely took them up on and said, great, we'll just print everything we withheld in our first story. Yeah. Because they didn't want to print the details, but now you say it's not classified, so here we go. And the Atlantic did, in fact, publish that two days later.

The second thing the Trump administration tried to do was slime Jeffrey Goldberg by calling him deceitful and discredited. Fox News's Laura Engram had a good question when she interviewed Mike Walts, She said, wait a second, if he's so deceitful and discredited, why is his number available to even be added to a chat group by you? Yeah. Like, why would you have his contact info? By initials.

By initials, right, because he appeared as JG in this chat. Do we ever figure out who they, whilst thought he was adding? Was there another J.G involved in this story? It's a good question. So this comes out yesterday, Sunday, in a piece by Hugo Lowell and the Guardian, and this is even stranger. This whole caper apparently began last October. I'll read from Lowell's story here. According to three people briefed on the internal investigation, that's the investigation the White House is doing about how this happened.

Goldberg had emailed the campaign, again, this is last October, about a story that criticized Trump for his attitude toward wounded service members. To push back against the story, the campaign enlisted. the help of Waltz, their national security surrogate. Goldberg's email was forwarded to then Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes, who then copy and pasted the content of the email, including the signature block with Goldberg's phone number, into a text message that he sent to Waltz, so that he could be briefed on the forthcoming story. Waltz didn't ultimately not call Goldberg, the people said, but in an extraordinary twist, inadvertently ended up saving Goldberg's number in his iPhone

under the contact card for Hughes. That is the spokesperson for Trump, who's now the spokesperson for the National Security Council. So somehow he gets sent this block of text, if this story is correct, from a Jeffrey Goldberg email by a spokesperson, somehow that phone number becomes the number he has, for the spokesperson.

And Hugo Lowell's story continues. According to the White House, the number was erroneously saved during a contact suggestion update by Waltz's iPhone. Oh my God. I can't tell if this makes it better or worse. You knew there would be like big league bungling

going involved here. And by the way, in that interview with Laura Engram, Mike Waltz was talking about weapons, caches that they were bombing. He called them cachet, which is a common enough mistake to make when you're writing a news story, but we may not be dealing with the perfect person, be our national security advisor, and handle sensitive information. So what's your read on this whole situation? First of all, I don't think it matters, but do you think Jeffrey Goldberg really thought this was a fake,

of like a phony chat group when he received it? Or is that just like all the plausible deniability a person needs? I think it beggars belief that it would just be sent to you like that. Yeah. I mean, if you just whatever the most sensitive thing is in the world that you cover, just imagine if you got a text message that says triple H wants to add you to the WrestleMania discussion group. how WrestleMania will end discussion group.

And then you're reading this chat, and it's Triple H and Nick Kahn and everybody else in the WWF going back and forth about their secret plans. Yeah, no, no, no, I know, I get that. I guess I just, if it were, if I'm in a group text that I don't have any interest in, I think I just generally unsubscribe, but I guess that, I mean,

that everybody has their own ways, you know, and if you're a busy man, like Jeffrey Goldberg certainly is you probably have a bunch of just a bunch of these chats that are open even if they're not something you're paying are in attention to. But yeah, anyway. Yeah, I mean, I guess it would seem it would seem bonkers. Also, just, I mean, I know this has been, we've been over this a million times in the time that we haven't been off the air. But like, Signal, I mean, remember all the stories we got about like Barack Obama, like not like hating to put down his iPhone when he was president? he had to give that up.

I know everybody's made all the cracks about the Hillary's servers and everything else. But like, I mean, let me just say up top that. Like so much of this story is incredibly identifiable. I mean, and you're like embarrassed by proxy because we've all been in related, you know, related situations. Yeah, maybe not with U.S. military strikes. No, of course. Of course not. Of course not.

But like, you know, how frequently do I like drop what I think is a, as a DM in a public Slack channel or whatever, you know, I mean, it's just, and then you got to delete it or you got to apologize, whatever. I mean, it's like, not even if you're not saying anything wrong, you just look like a dodo, you know, for not understanding technology perfectly in that moment.

Is there not, did Doge fire all the people that will, that are supposed to come in and tell you, like, what apps or, you know, what, like, government communications programs were supposed to be using? Like, how, how is this happening? Is it just, I guess on the relatable side, or maybe these signal chat groups all pre-existed Trump's victory.

And so now there's now there's communications that's sort of going on. And it's like, you know, like when you want to email somebody from your formal work email, but you've been corresponding with them from your private Gmail account and it's just too much of a hassle to cut and paste. So you just keep going with the private one. Like, is it one of those situations? I think so, right? just being as casual as humanly possible and somehow the subject has turned to

the use of the U.S. military, but we're still using the same signal chat group. It's crazy. It is absolutely crazy. I mean, this is, you know,

Goldberg's had a number of big scoops, including since he's been at the Atlantic, but he can never have got one under stranger terms than that. They never will. Here is the scoop. please, please log on and enjoy and report it to your readers. It's also interesting,

I mean, that Goldberg has become a character in the story. You know, I mean, that's sort of part of the calculus too is that you have to sort of put yourself out there, right? He's done a lot of interviews and sort of just sort of recounting the minutia

of how this came to be. But, I mean, the Atlantic in general has had to wrestle with the concept of becoming an actor, you know, I mean, you can't just say, you can't report on it without like involving yourself to this incredible degree. How much do you think that that was, I mean, do you think this, they, they just gamed out the entire thing before we heard any of the story? They must have known exactly how this

was going to go. 100%. One, because the Trump administration has been antagonistic toward that magazine in Goldberg in particular. But two, you know that as soon as you figure out that this is real or probably real, that you've been given access to this thing, that you should not have been given access to. You know that people are going to immediately say, you snuck on there. Yeah. You were posing as someone else to get into our private business. Yeah. And by the way, if that had been the case, you know that they would have screamed that this stuff was classified. Yeah. And that these were indeed important national security secrets that a journalist like Jeffrey Goldberg had no business infiltrating. Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of people even at the time just trying to catch

Goldberg in a sort of logical trap, right? Of like, you know, like how are you publishing this stuff and then say, you know, just the reverse of what the administration was saying, right? It's like either what Trump did, either with it, you know, Hegg Seth and all those guys did, it was fine, or Jeffrey Goldberg should be in jail. Again, when they mail you the scoop, you're out of legal jeopardy. At that point, you have, you know, you've not done anything. anything wrong. You're just publishing what has been sent to you. Yeah. I think we're good. I think we're good. But it's got to be pretty freaky, right? I mean, it's just like, if you, if you got the nuclear codes in a text message, you'd just be like, well, shit, now,

your mind doesn't go to journalistic ethics so much it goes to like the marathon man or something, right? You're just like you're, you're holding this stuff and you're like, oh, crap, someone's going to come after me. Like, what do I do with this? That thinking was done at the Atlantic. Yeah. You know, what do we do? Look, we do have information. that's very, very sensitive, and that could put U.S. service members' lives in jeopardy. Yeah. So we can't, you know, then there's a calculation about what you publish and when you publish it. But man, you're right.

It's just like you're looking at it like your phone's almost glowing like, oh, my God. Yeah. I have learned a terrible secret. Imagine that. You're sitting right in the middle of a David Copperfield show and you realize what. Was Goldberg there too? I didn't realize that. In the back row, looking at his phone.

All right. The second thing we missed. David, another chapter in the Stephen A. Smith, LeBron James feud. Oh, God. I'm sort of glad we missed this one, but go on. Let's talk it through. LeBron James went on Pat McAfee's show on March 26th. It's a big long interview, and McAfee teed up LeBron to talk about Stephen A. Stephen A, who had been confronted by LeBron court side at a Lakers game.

And then Stephen A had gone on first take and done his thing. Well, the first thing LeBron does is make fun of Stephen A saying that he was reluctant to address the issue and only because of the video. I think we all agree there. And then he says this. He says something like he was talking about how he didn't mind reporters or media types talking about what happens on the basketball court. But James said, when you take it and you get personal with it, it's my job to not only protect my damn household, but protect the players. Yeah. So before we get into Stephen A's response to this,

I can't help but think the whole, you know, look, you can talk about how I play. But when you get personal, you cross the line. I can't help but think about that. That's the oldest refrain we've ever heard from athletes. Yeah. It's not untrue. It just has been used, you know,

in less than straightforward ways as an excuse in many times in the past. And it feels different now, I think, because athletes have Instagram accounts, they have podcasts, their whole MO is to be very personal with the public on their own terms. Maybe not with journalists, but on their own terms.

They have done as much as they can to blur, you know, me as a brand, me as a person, me as a basketball player. Sure. So it's a little weird than to say, well, look,

the only thing you're allowed to talk about is me as a basketball player. Yeah? Even though I have brought all these, other things into the world. Yeah. And of course, the point that LeBron is making here is about something Stephen A said back in January, which is a very, very funny monologue if you want to go look it up.

But basically Stephen A's point was it was a bad idea to force the Lakers to draft your son, Bronny James. It was a bad idea to tweet that Brony was already better than players in the NBA before he'd gotten to the NBA. Yeah. It's a bad idea that your press. presence on the team, you being LeBron James basically forces the Lakers to keep Brony on an NBA bench instead of letting him play in the G league full time. Yeah. I think that stuff is pretty inarguable. But the way Stephen A put it was, I am pleading with LeBron James as a father.

Right. Which is, I guess, what activated LeBron's annoyance. I don't know if anger is quite the right word, but at least annoyance, maybe verging on anger. But, you know, when I look at the merits of this, I'm just like, isn't Stephen A right about all of this stuff? Is there anybody in the basketball world who thinks that the Lakers drafting Brony James is helpful to the Lakers in 2025? No. Does there anybody that doesn't think this created an awkward situation? awkward at best, bad at worst. Where the Lakers are forced to do things for non-basketball reasons

instead of doing things that might help them win a championship this year. So what we're arguing about with Stephen A, if we accept that then, is the way he has carried out this argument. Yeah. Which is not nothing. No, it's not nothing. But as soon as LeBron goes on McAfee, comes back with a 16-minute segment on first. take. Yeah.

In which he's addressing all the issue saying LeBron mischaracterized their argument, that Rich Paul went on, McAfee show and set all this up, et cetera, et cetera. He also says that the reason LeBron is mad at him is because he puts MJ number one on his all-time NBA power ranking. He's in LeBron number two. Oh, that's rich. So is it enough to just be mad at the presentation? You say it's not nothing.

I mean, is that, but is that what we're upset about if we're if we're taking the matter of Stephen A versus LeBron seriously, or at least half seriously. Are we really upset at Stephen A? Are we just like, hey, man, 16 minutes? Yeah.

Making this personal between you and an athlete. There's a point where you go, if you go over like, you know, the usual two minutes, then you just cute. You got to go 16.

It's almost like you're just, you know, you're setting a new personal best and that becomes the story in of itself, you know, we wouldn't be, just to be able to say it was 16 minutes,

I feel like there's a little bit of a, there's a little bit of an implicit like wink there. But yeah, I mean, listen, you can go, I think this was a great content cycle for everybody. And I think at the end of the day, that's probably what it is. I mean, listen, LeBron was there talking about how guys like Brian Winhorst put themselves over

as LeBron's best friends when he's on the Pat McAfee. show, which is a great show for so many ways, but it's built around the notion that, like, these guys are just like us, right? There's a reason why LeBron went on that show in person to stage this whole thing, right? At the same time, like, I don't need a lot of justification to see LeBron's, or, you know, to kind of, like, buy LeBron's point of view, whether or not it's Stephen A. Smith is worse at this than anybody else, whether or not the specific way that he approached it was deplorable. I mean, you are going to hear this as a father if you're LeBron James, right?

I mean, you could, for the same reason that, like, you might talk trash about, like, the person at the front desk at your kid's school or whatever, just like the way they seem to sneer at your child, you know, it's all in your head, but it's like, you know, we all have our grievances, petty grievances. But, yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, it's, I don't know. It's just hard for me to get too, like, terribly worked up about this on, either side. Yeah. I mean, I understand why the whole pleading with you as a father is triggering. Well, it's not even just that. It's like if you feel like people are like you, regardless of what

you've put out, what LeBron put out there about Brony, you can, there's still a piece of him that's going to get, it's going to feel a certain way when people talk shit about Brony. Sure. No matter what they're saying. And it's not irrational for, I mean, it might not be logical, but it's not irrational for him to like personify that in Stephen A. Smith, you know, like for him to just like focus on what Stephen is Stephen A. Smith as, as the problem, even if that's not fair to Stephen A. Smith. But I totally, I totally agree with that. I just think, I just think with us on the media side of the equation, when Brony James comes to the NBA, even if we

understand that LeBron James is going to be defensive about his son, on whatever terms the criticism is his son has got to be criticized. Or for sure. The machinations that got his son to the Lakers has got to be fair game for criticism. Absolutely. This idea that we're like hurting his feelings or I'm sorry, you're not allowed to talk about my family when my family's in the NBA. Yes.

I mean, that just makes no sense. It's true. But I mean, but at the same time, it's like when LeBron tweeted that thing about Bronny, you know there were like people covering basketball who were like, like rubbing their hands together like evil villains. like, ha ha, now he's fair game. You know, I mean, even though we're, like, at the same time, there's fair-minded people who were like, you know, we got to, you know, like, we're only going to cover Brony if it matters.

I mean, but you're right. I mean, nothing Stephen A. said was wrong. But, you know, for the same, I mean, it's, yes, the Lakers, like, wouldn't have drafted Brony probably had LeBron not been there. But, yeah, you know, I mean, it's. it's got to be weird to realize you're part of this content cycle in a whole different way than you were before, right? I mean, Stephen A. Smith wouldn't be talking about Brony except that it just like drives ratings in this weird way. And LeBron's, you know, brawny is more part of a content cycle than he is a player, you know, and you'd hate to see that happen to your kid.

And what happened was when he did that original take back in January, Brony had played in the first quarter of a Lakers game against the Sixers. Yeah. And played badly. and it was an issue that was big enough to be talked about by JJ Redick after the game. Yeah. Like he was asked about it by beat writers there. So this is not Stephen A being like, hey, let's get another brawny segment in the A block. Yeah.

It was out there. And again, whether you approve of the way he handled it or not. By the way, on the topic of Stephen A making it all about himself. Oh, yeah? Does anybody who has a podcast, do we really have grounds to say making it all about himself? Isn't that kind of what the game is here? Yeah. Also mentioned Pat McAfee.

Thank goodness we have Pat McAfee as a journalistic beacon in this whole story. Oh, wait. There was another story while we were gone, David, in The Athletic by Katie Strang, who's making a subspecialty of writing about ESPN, in addition to her usual investigations. There is a freshman at Old Miss named Mary Kay Cornett. She was the subject of a false internet rumor about her and her boyfriend, father. Without

mentioning Cornett's name, McAfee decided to get into this rumor on his show with Adam Schaefter present, just to give it another surreal touch, got off a couple of laugh lines, did McAfee and his associates there

before switching to NFL draft analysis. But it really had this whole feel of, I read something on the internet about a person. It's not a public figure. who doesn't have a platform to defend themselves. And it went straight onto the show.

Yeah. Strang reports that Cornett has now had to move into emergency housing at Ole Miss. She's taking online courses because showing up at campus results in harassment. Cornett's father tells this to Strang, the only way I could describe it is it's like you're walking with your daughter on the street holding her hand

and a car mirror snags her shirt and starts dragging her down the road. Yeah. And all you can do is, is watch. You can't catch the car. You can't stop it from happening. You just have to sit there and watch your kid be destroyed. Salt took me back to last January when you and I were picking through the Pat McAfee, Aaron Rogers, Jimmy Kimmel episode. Uh-huh. And I wrote at the time that these incidents come out of the managerial style of ESPN chairman Jimmy Patero, that he styles himself as a players coach.

Yeah. We're going to let the guys do their thing. And if there's a problem, we're going to try to handle it behind the scenes. Mm-hmm. Without the big public statements and suspensions that were handed out by his predecessor, John Skipper. Yeah. When I wrote that story, the pushback was all, hey, look at ESPN successes.

Yeah. Look at the contracts that were signed or about to sign with the SEC and the college football playoff in the NBA. And my point was, well, that's good. That's one way to think about ESPN, but there's really no pushback on this idea that this is happening and it's going to keep happening at the network. Because ESPN is being run in a way that allows things like this to happen. There's no Norby Williamson figure there to be a bad cop. They're all good cops now.

And Jimmy Petaro, to his credit, I will give him credit for this. every major media organization said after this last election, you know what, we should get some of those podcasters in here. Yeah. And if they have rough edges, if they get us in trouble sometimes, well,

that's okay because they connect with the youngs. Yeah. That's what everybody was saying. I think Pataro saw that a couple of years before just about everybody else in mainstream media did. Sure. But the thing is,

this keeps happening. Yeah. You know, sometimes it's Jimmy Kimball, who's plenty capable of defending himself, no matter how heinous the implication is. Sometimes it's Mary Kay Cornett. Yeah. And I don't know what's going to happen. You know, I don't know any way that that's going to stop, save certain people deciding they want to leave the network. Yeah.

I mean, there's a lot going on with this, right? I mean, you don't, what McAfee did was not okay. I feel like the story has been, without sounding like I'm defending him, a lot of the reporting around the reporting. I mean, it felt a lot like some of the Joe Rogan coverage during the presidential election. It was a lot of opinions by people

who've never actually listened to the show, right? And while stipulating that you're right, there needs to be a firmer hand on guiding like what can happen. I mean, this is the Pat McAfee show is not around the horn, right? It's not a 30-minute show where every subject is like pre-vetted and there's graphics on the screen. It's like it's dry, it's sports radio, right? It's a podcast, basically.

It's like people are going to wander into things that are trending on Twitter. And this whole, I mean, in this, and this particular case, like, this was all trending on every social media platform and before Pat McAfee made a joke about it. the problem is that there's like is that that that's that's content now right the way that we've built this network is that is that everything is content and I don't think it's unrelated to the brawny James stuff I think that there I think that you know I'm sure part of the value of Pat McAfee is that he can fill up all this airtime right just in he and talking kind of minimally about sports not that he doesn't cover sports on there's some sort of like you know facade.

But being happily sports adjacent. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, listen, you've been making the case, I'm going to try to drag you back, like reverse drag you into this. You've made the case for the longest time

that like sports talk radio was, you know, like, it's, it's the, just kind of like men's radio. Like it's not, it's not about sports.

It's about dudes listening to other dudes talk. It is podcasting. Yeah. There was podcasting before podcasting was podcasting. Yeah, exactly. I was listening to Philly radio this morning on the way on the way home and

they spent a few minutes on like the host critique of the Grateful Dead as a as an overrated band, right? And this has nothing to do with how the Phillies are doing right now. And everybody's doing White Lotus Day. Like I totally understand that. This is an extreme example. Yes. And you and I both know that there is a way to do that to bring in the world, to bring in stuff I saw on Twitter without going here. Oh, absolutely true. Yeah, yeah. And without,

and for somebody there to be like, hey, man, do we even know if this is real? Do we even know who this person is? Well, I think honestly, one of the most damning parts of it was that there seemed to be an awareness of that, right? I mean, McAfee himself was not, they didn't mention her name. And McAfee himself was saying allegedly, you know, with a wink and a nod throughout the entire thing. Yeah. And I'll add one other thing from Katie Strang's piece, since we're talking about bringing in the world. Here's a paragraph. An ESPN spokesperson declined to comment.

McAfee, KFC Barstool and Jack Mack, these are people involved in the story, did not respond to messages seeking comment. Yeah. So we're bringing in the whole world. We're talking about everything. No comment. Yeah, that's it. When you get called on it, when people ask, why did you?

Did you do this? I mean, listen, when there's, when there's, when there's a, someone's being sued for a bunch of money, obviously, there's got to be people saying, don't say a damn word. And I understand that reality. But I do feel like just in, I mean, we say this over and over again. Life would be better if more people were just like a little bit self-aware, you know, they just said, yeah, that was terrible, lesson learned, you know, and just sort of move on. But that's, that's never going to happen either. All right, the third thing we missed, the White House Correspondence Dinner, David,

something I know you're looking forward to. You got your tucks already. It's going to be April 26, three weeks from yesterday. We know that all the normal problems of the White House Correspondence Dinner, the criticism, reporters being too chummy, if only for one night with the people they cover.

Well, this year, there's a new problem. The Correspondents Association asked comedian Amber Ruffin to provide the night's entertainment. And then they decided to can Amber Ruffin. What did Ruffin do? Well, Ruffin went on a Daily Beast podcast and referred to the Trump administration as, quote,

kind of a bunch of murderers. She also said of the Correspondents Association itself, quote, they were like, you need to be equal and make sure that you give it to both sides. And I was like, there's no way I'm going to be freaking doing that, dude, under no circumstances. The Trump White House got mad at Ruffin's comments. So after that, the Correspondents Association said, you know what?

Actually, please don't perform at our dinner. Yeah. I just cannot tell you how ludicrous this is. that first of all, okay, we're soldiering on with the dinner. We're here in this

strange, awful relationship with the Trump White House, which doesn't like the media, which wants to replace us with sage steel in the White House briefing room, which wants to ban the AP

because they're calling the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of Mexico, which wants to do all that. We're going to have the dinner anyway. Donald Trump's never even come to the dinner, so he won't be there.

We hire a comedian. but then we are going to cancel the comedian because the Trump administration doesn't like something the comedian said. Yeah. We're going to stand up for the AP's right to write whatever they want. But as soon as Trump White House objects to the comedian's jokes, okay, we're out. Yeah. What are we doing? Wouldn't you be so embarrassed if you were part of that association and you saw that decision?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what's the point? If you're not going to, I mean, it's like, you had to have seen this coming, right? I mean, I guess the only case is just like the roughen should have just, shouldn't have been doing like pre-media for it, right? It's just like- Save the jokes for the deus. Yeah, but that's not like, that's not really what's at stake here, right?

It's just your inability to, I don't know. I mean, just stand up. I mean, this is like, obviously the calculus is like, this is like choose your battles, right? This is not the time to stand up to the Trump administration. But if you're not going to do this, like, tiny thing, when are you ever going to do it? I totally agree. I mean, we can, of course, note the Trump administration here, which loves to say, comedy is back.

Yeah. You no longer have to be afraid to say stuff anymore unless you're Amber Ruffin who's saying stuff we don't like. Yeah. And then we object to the things that you were saying. Mm-hmm. But the journalists here. seriously.

You can't do the comedy act. You can allow the Trump administration to say the things that you can laugh at and not laugh at or even a comedian that you can just put on the dais to do the night's entertainment. Really? You're going to do that?

No matter what happens, there's going to be a million people saying, why are we doing this? And to decide that, like, you're going to, like, you have to pick which side of the, why does this exist argument you're going to come down on?

Right? Who at this point is defending the White House correspondent's dinner? Nobody. Nobody. Except the only people defending it, the people say, look, this raises money for scholarships. That's what they always go back to. Yeah. But again, either have the dinner or don't have the dinner. Have the dinner on your own terms or don't have the dinner. Yeah. Come on. That's so ridiculous. And in Washington Post, Jeremy Barr noted that one day after these stories came out about Amber Ruffin, the Trump administration, to take over the chart, the seating chart in the White House briefing room, which had previously been handled by the Correspondents Association. No, no, no, we're going to decide where everybody sits. The good thing you cancel the comedian, because now relations with the Trump administration will be fine.

Yeah, I'm sure. All right, David, coming up in 30 seconds, some notes on the final four and a headline, the Houston Cougars hope they never see. 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, excuse me, at the press box spot where they are always gratefully received. I got two for you this week.

One, the great John Greenberg over at the Athletic predicted that if Duke lost to Houston in the final four or even got behind, everyone would post the photo of Jason Isaacs from White Lotus wearing a Duke shirt with a gun to his head. And that is exactly what happened when Duke lost. congratulations John but our runaway winner David is about that Atlantic scoop

and how Jeffrey Goldberg got added to the chat about an attack in Yemen it was an overwork Twitter joke to write new phone who these oh that's fantastic you see what they did

yeah thanks to our friend Nickfield and many others if sometimes you've just got to tip your cap to Twitter congrats you've made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, some notes on the final four before we sign off here. Saturday night, we had the men semis,

Florida, Auburned and the aforementioned Duke versus Houston game, and David Houston alum Jim Nance showed up in Cougars gear and was wiping away tears after the Cougars pulled off the unlikely upset. Nathan Hubbard tweets, honestly, I'm just happy for Jim I would have paid so much to sit close enough to hear him call that comeback under his breath like you know he just did. Yeah. Do you think you can turn it off as a play-by-play announcer? I mean, I think what we see over and over again is that like the longer you spend covering a sport, calling a sport,

that you just sort of get alienated from fandom for a lot of people. But for other people, it's, you know, it keeps you even closer. and it's not like Jim Nance has called a lot of Houston Cougars games over the years. I think he's been able to, he can probably separate out his fandom. It's funny, though, the tears were, the tears were unexpected. You know, you'd think that it would be, you'd think that that lever would have been disengaged at some point during his professional career. But it was kind of amazing to see.

I think Jim Nance is more likely to succumb to tears than just about any top play-by-playman. I think he would say that himself. Yeah. he's emotionally he's he has a kind of emotional rawness yeah that nobody else in the business has true scene from time to time so watching the women's title game youcon versus south carolina yesterday afternoon been a big debate on twitter and elsewhere about whether that should be an afternoon game or they should actually put it in prime time like to do with the men's games almost certainly it should be in prime time i was just watching that game yesterday which was a

complete blowout yukon was amazing and thinking how good that telecast is we've talked about the much lauded halftime post game show. We talk about Ryan Rucco doing play by play. He's really good. And Holly Roe, who must know more about any sports she covers than any sideline reporter. Yeah. Even sideline reporters who are team specific on regional cable channels. Yeah.

I mean, her command when she's asking questions, just amazing to me. I'm just watching that being like, I'm just happy with all of this. This is like TCU Georgia national title game, and I'm sitting here just lapping all this up. Yep. Really good. Over on the men's side, they were signing off the postgame show after Houston Duke

and Ernie Johnson referred to the site of the final four as San Antonio. Do we need to make a press box rule outlawing any uses of San Antonio? You disapprove? Well, I tweeted about it. and a few people came back to me. I'm like, yeah, well, what about George Strait? Like, well, David and I are not going to text explain to George Strait, but for everybody else,

if you are not a legendary country musician, I'm not sure you should ever use the words San Antonio. Yeah, I don't know that I've ever heard anybody use the word San Antonio. That's a different category. It's not only in journalism, it's only in country music. I don't think that the people really, no one ever actually, no one really says that in real life. Can this feel like a paste pecanny sauce commercial from the 90s?

Yeah. So there's a certain. San Antonio. Yes. There are regional colloquialisms and then there are there are like nicknames that only exist for rhyming purposes in like folk songs, you know, like it's not, that's not a real thing. All right.

Last note for you here. Kenny Smith after the Cougars won, Kenny Smith, of course, is a former Houston Rocket. And he said something after the. game, he said, look, you know, when the Rockets won titles, we were known, Houston was known as Clutch City. And since the Cougars had this amazing comeback against Duke, I would like to hand the title, the mantle, if you will, of Clutch City to the Houston Cougars. That sent me down a rabbit hole because I knew both Houston both as Clutch City and as its predecessor

nickname Choke City. There's a great- Choke City came first? Choke City came first. So Clutch City was a response to Choke City. Clutch City was wiping away the title of Choke City. Okay. And there's a great story about this that was written a couple years ago by Greg Roshin in the Houston Chronicle.

I'm going to take you back, David, to R. Prime, 1994. God. Been all downhill from there. Keem Elijah won, who was courtside with the Cougars the other night and Kenny the Jet. are playing with the Rockets, and they're playing Charles Barkley's Phoenix Suns in the Western Conference semis. Cool playoff series, right?

The Rockets blow the first two games of that series. Yeah. And blow a 20-point lead in game two. Mm-hmm. According to Rajan's piece, the Houston Chronicle sports staff, including columnist Fran Blindberry, is sitting there at the game,

and they're like, okay, we're on deadline. What are we going to do here? And they start thinking about Houston sports in the 90s. Houston Astros, never won a World Series at that point. Houston Oilers, some really, really bad chokes, including blowing a 35 to 3 lead in the playoffs against the bills. Akeem's own Faislamma-jamma, lost a championship game two years in a row in the NCAAs. So they think, aha.

And then headline the next day, May 12th, 1994 in the Houston Chronicle is Choke City. Well, Houston had two newspapers at the time. and by very strange coincidence, and I mean that genuinely, the headline in the Houston Post the next day, May 12, 1994 was also choke city. So the staffs of two papers, yes, and Rajan interviews the staffs.

They had no idea what the other paper was doing. They both came up with the headline, Choke City. That's so weird. Yes. And of course, what happens in 1994? Will the Rockets come back and beat the Suns in seven?

They beat the Knicks in the finals in seven. They win two straight NBA titles. And as Kenny Smith says, Choke City becomes clutch city. Wow. And now that's been, the mantle has been passed. Officially passed.

All right. Our last thing here. You and I have not been scouring the world for only in journalism words. These are words you read all the time in news stories, but never actually hear in human speech. But David,

New York Times reporter, Reid J. Epstein, was on the day podcast with Michael Bavarro while we were gone. And for a news hound like Epstein, the work never ends. As we know, after every presidential election, the political cognizanty. Is that how you say that word? I think that's how you say it.

I think that's an only in journalism word. Okay. The political class, the political world. That's such a great clip. And do you like how Bavarro does what we all do when we're confronted with an only in journalism word, we immediately retreat. Yeah.

To the more note, the political world, the political class. Not a retreat. Forge a different path forward. There you. That made me laugh so much. Oh my God.

I loved it. All right. It's time for a feature that is never in retreat. It's time for David Shoemaker guesses. The strained pun headline. Yeah. Our last headline about how Steph Curry made the three-pointer cool again was Trey Sheik.

So good. Today's headline comes to us from Paul Bayerly, among others. So in the New York Post, David, it's about those Trump tariffs. That's right. Trump is declaring economic war on the whole planet. What was the New York Post strained upon headline? A whole planet. Tariff, some terra firma something?

That's really good, but that's a little. That might be a little highbrow for the post. Yeah, there you go. World War. It's not three, though. It's a tariff, so it's World War. Fee? World War fee, yes, sir.

I think I would save that for something else, but it's not a bad headline. World War fee. Tariff firma is really, really good, though. Or tariff incognita, maybe? Yeah. We'll workshop that while we're gone. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis.

Prodxative Magic by Bobby Wagner. Felt fun to say that. Lots of pods went up while we were away. Hope you'll check those out. I have an interview with Graydon Carter. I want you to listen to. Joel and I did the second in our 25 or 25 series reviewing pub revisiting,

excuse me, publications that died this century from Gawker to Sports on Earth. Joel did a pod with Van Lathen, which was wildly entertaining, and another one with Josh Levine and Stefan Fatsis, his former podcast host, which I also recommend. He's here Thursday,

David, you and I are back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.