The Press Box - Election Reaction Edition | The Press Box (Ep. 542)

Episode Date: November 7, 2018

The Democrats' victory in the House and the Republicans' victory in the Senate (02:00), Donald Trump's turbulent last week of the campaign (26:00), and the changing face of cable Election Night coverage (44:00). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, here are a few topics recovering on the ringer.com this week. We're covering the midterm election, Julia Roberts's new show Homecoming, and the worst person of the week on The Good Place. Also, make sure you check out the rest of the Ringer podcast network for more pop culture conversation. David, last night MSNBC broke out their breaking news, Kyron, to announce that Chuck Todd was on the set. What I want to know is, in 2018, what event would be so obscure. that it wouldn't constitute breaking news on a cable station. Oh, wow, wow. That was, I mean, this is MSNBC, God love them.

I mean, I used to joke all the time that they would break out like the countdown clock for just like any old episode of like, you know, the Rachel Maddow show when it was coming on, I guess. Breaking News, Breaking News Chuck Todd arrives is at least like it is a statement of fact. I don't know what. I mean, at MSNBC, the bar, I mean, I guess the bar is pretty low. I would go with like, I mean, I would say like breaking news, Steve Koranaki bought slacks, but I've actually seen them have that discussion on the air, so I'm not sure. I'll tell you how the bar was last night is Steve Schmidt arriving on set was also breaking news. So that's, that's, oh my gosh.

Do you think breaking news, we've got pastries at craft services would make the guy? I think I think the liberal joke to make here, by the way, is what would be two, small for MSNBC or any cable station to break out the breaking news, Kyra. The answer would be massive voter suppression. That would be the... Oh, man. Well, breaking news. We're recording the press box on a Wednesday.

Yeah, it's not breaking news that we're back in front of a mic. This is the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. The press box is the media podcast where you don't have to apologize for Beto's F-bomb. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoebaker of the Ringer. Welcome to the special election edition of the press box. Wednesday morning, David, and we are going to hit last night's results in so many different ways. First, we'll talk about the top line news from last night. Democrats win the House.

Republicans pad their advantage in the U.S. Senate and media members grope around for a unified storyline. We'll help them. Second, we'll talk about the strange final days of the campaign from the closing argument of Donald Trump and his allies, the migrant caravan, the middle-class tax cut. I am making air quotes here, et cetera, et cetera. Truly a strange moment in American political history. And finally, a grab bag of election fund up to an including Trump's Game of Thrones meme, a weird sort of Trump ringer social media strategy moment.

It all comes together eventually. Plus is always the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, but let's start with last night. Did you notice as I did as the results finally came in, Democrats, claim the House, which was first called by Fox News. That was kind of a, first of all, kind of a moment, right? Did you love the liberal paranoia on Twitter? Fox, I believe it was around 830, 930 Eastern when Fox called it, which seemed kind of early.

Democrats had fallen behind in both of the Florida races at that point. And there was this kind of wave of conspiracy theorizing like, what is this? Did Rush and Sean Hannity cook this up on the platform with Trump in Missouri? Are they trying to convince people in California and Nevada not to vote? And that's the diabolical plan? I just love that. We're in this, and really not for bad reason. We're in this like maximal conspiracy era.

And even the good news for the Democrats sort of winds up setting it off. Yeah, I mean, that's only to be expected, right? I mean, I immediately had a bunch of, maybe had conspiracy theories of my own that were much more low-key. I mean, just about like, was this actually like Fox's just, you know, were they just trying to score a point? Was this a sort of like in-house reaction to the Hannity campaigning with Trump moment? But all of that sort of beside the point, right?

I mean, they were right. And, you know, if that had been, you know, Nate Silver, then they would have gotten a big pat on the back for being out there in front and being correct. I think that, I mean, I, obviously I think that one of the big takeaways from from and what we're going to talk about a lot of this in depth one of the big takeaways was the sort of was the sort of gun shyness of all of the networks from getting out too far ahead of what they could 100% verify and and I think that

Fox you know it seemed to me that from the very beginning of the night the people on the Fox set had an idea of where the night was going and you know I think that they just were a little bit more confident with their prediction than the other networks were willing to be for fear of how it look if they got it wrong. Yeah, I mean, but that was that was kind of a funny media hiccup in the night because we came into the, we came into it thinking thanks to Nate Silver and the various election forecasters. The Democrats were going to win the House fairly easily. And there was going to be a massive uphill climb for them to win the Senate. And yet there, I feel there was this like hour where James Carville got shoved onto the MSN.

set and looked just completely depressed, just looked incredibly angry. Well, they'd kept him in a closet on the MSNBC set for the past three years. So I think that's probably why he was up. He'd been there since he had to come out and say that Hillary wasn't going to beat Trump. He looked incredibly depressed. And everybody was like, uh-oh, what calls has he been making? And then I think this was in John Koblin's column in New York Times this morning or last night, too, that like it was John Dickerson,

all these people all of a sudden went down and that's when Nate Silver's forecast all of a sudden dropped like 40% odds of Democrats going to win the House. Yes. So there was this kind of hour of funereal air on across television. And then all of a sudden Fox just called it.

And it was like, okay, we're back to where we thought we were. Right. I mean... It was just a weird sort of roller coaster that didn't seem to actually have any basis. I don't know if it was the way I was consuming. it, but the 538 jump from like 7 to 8 odds to 2 to 5 odds or whatever seemed like it happened in, you know, there was one step in between, but it just seemed like it happened so quickly.

And, you know, for all of the sometimes unnecessary crap that 538 and 8 silver get, just maybe mostly because they're the sort of big kid on that block, to change your formula mid, you know, halfway through the, or just in the drop of a hat, just to just to air on the conservative side, it's just sort of galling, right? I mean, for, I mean, I guess I shouldn't be that upset about these sort of like statistical predictions. And I'm, and I, and I got to say, I'm not, I wasn't too, wasn't too upset about it at the time. But in retrospect, I mean, doesn't just sort of like keeping a certain, sticking, sticking with your, you know, don't, don't switch formulas midstream.

Isn't that the old political canard? That, I mean, it's just, it just seems sort of insane. Dance with who brung you, we would also accept as all purpose, political saying. Dance with the algorithm that brung you, yes. It was, he tweeted at one point last night. This is what happened. He said, I'm trying to do six things at once. We think our live election day forecast is definitely being too aggressive.

This is when it was downgrading the Democrats' chances and are going to put on a more conservative setting where it waits for projection calls instead of making inferences from partial vote counts. So it kind of switch. Also, by the way, we should note at the same time happening in Media Land was the New York Times needle was not coming online, which caused this enormous amount. I remember last time the needle caused the angst because it was sort of pointing more toward Trump than a lot of people thought it should be during 2016. And now the angst was caused by the fact that the needle did not appear. There was no needle. And when the needle finally came, it was like, what, like 90%?

It was going all Democratic House. But there was that kind of weird vanishing period. I think also another kind of interesting fact of last night, especially to how it was covered and to how lefties kind of process the news, was the fact that the three dream candidates of progressives being Andrew Gillum in Florida, Stacey Abrams and Georgia and Beto O'Rourke in Texas all lost. And, you know, in Abrams and O'Rourke's case, it was considered, I would say, pretty much of a long shot for either one of them to win. But Gillum was seen, you know, by a lot of people as expected to win. They all lost. I think that is one of those things that kind of set up, kind of wiped away a lot of storyline theater because there were a lot of people I saw, speaking of Chuck Todd, on the MSNB set, C set early, saying, boy, if Stacey Abrams, and Gillam win, are Democrats going to reevaluate how they run candidates in the South?

Are they going to think about it completely differently? There was a New York Times front pager on Election Day, contrasting Bill Nelson and Andrew Gillum and saying, here are two differing visions of how the Democrats could run, right, in Trump world, the kind of squishy, moderate Nelson versus the incredibly smart, articulate, pithy, unabashedly progressive Gillum. Well, guess what? They both lost. Yeah. That's nice.

And I just felt that, I felt that just wiped away not only, you know, the kind of all the things of the Democrats' wish list, but also just great media storylines that were just sitting there waiting to be plucked. Well, I mean, you touched on this in your piece and that it's the sort of, you know, the storylines, the meta analysis is just coming in real time faster and faster, right? I mean, it's just layer upon layer of what could this mean. And, you know, I think to some extent, by the way, we should say that there's, that there's, uh, in both, it looks like there's going to be some level, some recount in Florida, although that's probably going to affect the Senate race more than the governor's race. And, and that Stacey Abrams is not conceding in Georgia either. And it is within the realm of possibility that Brian Kemp, as we, as we record this, it's within the realm of possibility that he drops below 50% forcing a runoff. Which will historically probably favor Brian Kemp, um, in a, as we, as we're in a, as we're in a, as we're in a in a runoff race, but, you know, anything's possible now. But, you know, I mean, back to your piece and your comment, you know, I think that it, I think that it feels like, you know, watching it, you just get overwhelmed by the statistical analysis and also this meta-analysis. And it's not that, you know, on some level, yeah, this is a, this is a world

that we've created for ourselves, and I'll let you talk more about that. But I think there's also a big part of it where we're just sort of, you know, we all, we have kind of like a communal false memory of how these narratives have formed in the past, you know, it's not like that election night just was like a slower cook in previous years. I think on some level, this meta-analysis was just not existent on election night, right? I mean, that's sort of the broader storylines form over time and looking back at how elections went. And we're expecting these things to be, to play out in real time second by second in front of us on every different cable channel. I think that's right. And I just think that the type of analysis, you know, when we look at last night,

Steve Kornacki or John King over on CNN, you know, being able to sort of talk about precinct by precinct or county by county returns on those maps. Yes. That did not exist in the same way 20 years ago. Or 30 years. No, I just wanted to interrupt to say that what my favorite part, early in the night when I was just sort of like settling in and flipping back and forth between all three cable channels, that there was a, the difference between the various, uh, the various, um, touchscreens on the three major cable networks was sort of instructive that MSNBC just has this like, very, this like functional small touchscreen TV manned by Steve Kornacki and presumably like an army of nerds in a room behind him. Uh, John King has had a similar screen, but then there was an entire CGI

uh, soundstage that was also, uh, the screen and, and completely digitized throughout the entire night. And then on Fox, it seemed that they just had like a giant bingo card tape to the wall. I'm not exactly. Like I was, I was trying, I was trying to figure out in what sense that was more helpful to the viewer, but it was, it was, it was very bizarre. The whole, the, the, just the, the, the entire presentation was, uh, it was just something else. At Harris Faulkner, it was just like, trying to explain the differences in colors between tiles and this yellow line in the middle. It was very, it was, it was, it was, it was pretty entertaining. There was also this great, but I don't know how L.H. you stayed up on the East Coast, but David Wasserman, who is from the Cook Political Report, he was working for NBC and MSNBC, you know, helping them with the calls of the races, but was not on camera. But way after midnight, I think after 2 o'clock Eastern, he was allowed to come on to the set and had the kind of Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man moment with Steve Kornacki.

but he was kind of the less glib, Kornacki. You know, Kornacki kind of, as you say, those plaid slacks and, you know, that tie kind of jauntily unknotted and looking like, you know, standing in front of that board. And then the kind of awkward version came out and they were kind of talking and had this amazing conversation. I love that, by the way. That was also, by the way, my sign of I'm staying up way too late now was when I was one, Willie Geist started hosting. And I was kind of like, wait, what just happened? there was kind of a transfer of power. There's no better feel.

For people listening to this who are on the East Coast, there's no weirder feeling than being on the West Coast and having like the early morning host just appear before your eyes. And you're just like, you're just kind of rubbing your eyes trying to figure out if you're seeing this correctly, if they've changed the schedule or if no. In fact,

you were just up way too late. Yo, and Willie guys came on and said, for the next four hours, I'm going to, I'm going to, we're going to roll with this thing and, and then throw it to Morning Joe. He was like, whoa,

we're going. all the way here. Shouts to Willie Geis, by the way, my mom's favorite news personality. I knew, but I knew I was up too late when a commercial came on and it was Bill Engval from the blue collar comedy tour, like selling life insurance.

It was kind of like those old Glenbeck gold ads, right? You're like, whoa. What weird time warp have I got it to? One of the, just the total side note, one of the most depressing things about doing this podcast in general is just seeing the ads that run on all of the news. news channels all day long.

You'll just be watching like MSNBC or Fox News and just in the middle of the day, which presumably they could be able to get some ads and they're just getting like really niche, you know, medical equipment that I hope I will never have any need for. But who knows, maybe I'm the target audience. But yeah, the entire, that's definitely a sign on election night that you're up way too late. I thought it was interesting to watch the punditocracy on Twitter and even on cable sort of lurch around to try to find a unified storyline from last night. Because Dems took the House, but they didn't take the Senate.

I actually thought it was kind of simple, which was Trump made this midterm about himself, right? More than any other president has done. You know, and certainly it's always a referendum on the president. He specifically wrapped his arms around that and said, you either vote for me or vote against. We can listen to the audio later. He also had that great line where he said, remember midterms used to be boring. No one knew what those were. made the midterms really fun.

Like he had kind of invented the genre, you know, like something he had created himself. I just thought, looking at the results last night, his brand of Trumpy conservatism was absolute poison for Republicans in suburban districts, right? It helped cost them the House or at least padded the margin for the Democrats. And yet, those overtly racist appeals, those overtly racist appeals, those overtly racist ads, that kind of appeal worked in certain places. It worked in Florida where Trump invested a lot of time. It has apparently worked in Georgia.

It worked in Ohio. It worked in Indiana. It worked in North Dakota. So this idea that we're all kind of sitting around here waiting for this maximal repudiation of Trump and Trumpism, right? It isn't going to happen because that kind of politics as stomachs. turning as it is has appeal in all these places. Right. It isn't going to happen because it's too effective. You know, I think that to, I mean, for me, obviously you said that Trump made the,

made the midterms all about him, and I think that's indisputable. I think that my biggest takeaway is that for all of the hand-wringing in some conservative quarters about the Trump presidency over the past couple years. The sort of proxy hand-wringing by, you know, well-meaning liberals about what Trump would mean for the future of the Republican Party, but also just our democracy. I think that Trump has proven his, like, just indisputable value to the Republican Party and the fact that he is not some sort of outlier that tapped into, you know,

tapped into a feeling or a vibe at one moment in time, but that that sort of just the core appeal of Trump and of his more loud messaging is an intrinsic part of the Republican Party. And it'll be really interesting to see, I mean, this is looking way out, but I mean, because obviously the next election will be a presidential one. But going forward beyond that, I mean, how does, I mean, are we going to see Trump trotted out post-presidency every midterm, every election? Because he's so linked to what, I mean, to the party's core?

Yes. Answer, yes. Yeah, I mean, but I think that that was an open question going into last night, right? I mean, I think that his, his value to the future of the party, you would have had to say it was a little bit, a little bit uncertain. Yeah, it was at least an open question coming out of 2016. Sure. There was this sense that, okay, he sort of won this narrow electoral college victory, and now he's just going to sink the party entirely.

And every, you know, there was the, there was take number one, which was finally the Republican Party will be burned to the ground and they must reinvent themselves. And then there was, you know, and then take number two turned out, oh, wait, the Republican Party has just reshaped itself around Trump. It's not, you know. But I think take number three is what you're saying, which is he can sort of throw off just enough electoral success, put aside, even the two Supreme Court justices he's already put up. But he can throw off enough Senate wins for Mitch McConnell. And enough sort of, you know, enough, he lost the House. But again, that's not totally uncommon with a sitting president.

That the party kind of shrugs at shoulders and goes, oh, well, you know, this is maybe not ideal. But, you know, this is not also bad enough just electorally that we're going to, that there's anything we're going to do about this. But I also think just the mass acquiescence of, you know, the Republican, you know, power players, right? Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan. You know, it's like when Jeff Flake, who likes to tweet every once in a while is your, you know, your one ideological holdout. Yeah. They really aren't any. And so, you know, I think also there's just this media frustration that goes beyond, you know, is the media liberal, is the media rooting for Democrats.

You just, when you look at Devin Nunes, who by the way, won re-election last night, and the way he kind of carried out legitimate, what should have been legitimate investigations is just crazy kangaroo court, you know? I'm going to investigate Trump and Russia and come to the conclusion that Hillary Clinton is the true villain here. Yeah. That actually upsets the media in a way because not only do they go after truth, but they have this kind of invested interest in the government sort of working. properly and sort of, you know, there's, there is a kind of old-fashioned belief that the House shouldn't just be a ridiculous partisan, you know, kangaroo court. It should be something that is working and checking each other. And I think that offends them in a way. And so when you see the racist appeals offend them or a lot of them, but then also this kind of idea that government

is just not working and broken and sort of in the tank. So the Democrats winning last night and you know, the promise we heard on MSNBC in other places last night that they're going to ask for Trump's tax returns. Norms will be restored. I think that's a kind of appealing media narrative as well. Yeah, I think so. I mean, there's a lot to break down there. But I think that, I think that on the one hand, you know, it's not just there's the tax returns.

I mentioned, I don't think I mentioned this on the show yet. But, you know, at the very, at the beginning of the night, you know, the Fox News has. I mean, the various people on Fox News were sort of sniping at each other. And I just kind of got the idea this goes back to them calling the election, I guess, that they had an idea that they could, or they calling the House, that they had an idea that that was coming. And not sniping over ideological things, just like weird, weird little disagreements.

They were already talking about what the Democrats would do if they retook the House in sort of conspiratorial tones. Greg Gutfeld said that they were going to reopen the Russia and to get investigation, which I believe my notes say he said, be like giving CPR to a corpse. And just a wonderful, a wonderful image. But yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, there's, there are definitely people who, who, there's the desire to have the sort of norms, the regular processes of government restored.

But even on the right, I mean, you know, there are, there are any number of conservative voices on MSNBC who any party, you know, any other conservative elsewhere would say are these people are rhinos. are not conservatives or whatever, but they probably wouldn't say that about Hugh Hewitt, who was just on MSNBC sort of gleefully embracing the rest of, I mean, the future Supreme Court picks that Trump would now be able to make. So in some sense, on that side, you know, order has, it's not that order is being restored, order never left, all that really matters is the future of the, of the judiciary. Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right. All right, let's take a pause, David, for the overworked Twitter joke of the week.

election to come here. But let's do the Overword 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. David, did you check out Oprah? Oprah Winfrey. Going to Georgia last week for gubernatorial candidate, Sacey Abrams,

who, as we said, seems to have come up short in her bid last night to become the first black female governor in American history. Oprah went to Georgia, gave an amazing speech. A couple of amazing speeches there. It was an overwork Twitter joke. to say that Oprah was going to say, you get a vote, you get a vote, everybody gets a vote.

The alternative was, has everybody at this Oprah Stacey Abrams event looked under their seats already? Thanks to Eric Sand for that one. I love the power of Oprah's favorite things. That just continues through history unabated. Last Wednesday, David, October 31st, Derek Rose, former league MVP who has suffered through about 1 million injuries, scored 50 points for the Minnesota Timberwell. right now the date was October 31st. You got that? It was an overword Twitter joke to say Derek Rose

dressed as Derek Rose for Halloween. Oh, wow. Thanks to NRL today. And Bill Simmons, by the way, for that one. Bill coming through with the overboard Twitter joke. Also sort of lost in the election in a way that it shouldn't have been was the saga of Jacob Wall.

Did you see this? Oh my gosh. This kind of... I followed this very close. Yeah, good. Well, this sort of pro, as MSNBC called him, a pro-Trump conspiracy peddler, who was this part of this alleged scheme to advance this idea that Robert Mueller had an active sex life, which, again, I don't want to, I don't want no judgments about Robert Mueller, but the idea was that he was going to, that he was putting out this quote unquote dossier that was done by surefire intelligence, Wall denied having any connection. with this company, Surefire Intelligence. And then it was found, as MSNBC says,

that the company was linked to Wall in numerous ways and a company phone number redirected to a number registered to Wall's mother. Oh, you never want to give it away. You never want to give it away that way. It never stops being funny, too, and it's just said out loud. I mean, I, it does, yeah, go on.

Anyway, there were lots of overword Twitter jokes. There was the whole hipster coffee shopping, L.A. subgenre. I think my favorite, though, comes from the Atlantic's Adam Surwer. He says, seems unfair that Jacob's mom built the wall and also has to pay for it. Thanks to All Night, Alan, Paul Bosson for that one. All right, David, let's talk about topic number two, which is Trump's closing argument over the last week.

You know, the midterm elections used to be like boring, didn't they? Do you even remember what they were? People say midterms, they say, what is that? What is it? Right. Now it's like the hottest thing. These guys are making a fortune because of it. of me and you.

It's true. It's true. I mean, whoever even heard of midterm, they don't even know what it is. I've had a lot of people say, I don't know what midterm is, but now I'm watching every single minute and I'm going out to vote. But the keys, you have to go out to vote. Because in a sense, I am on the ticket. You got to go out to vote.

Did you feel at any point like you were living in a Rick Pearlstein nonfiction book about conservatism that will be written 20 years from now in real time when all this stuff was happening? Yeah. From here are the things I wrote down that were part of Trump's closing argument. People have noted, by the way, when we talked about Trumpism in the first segment, he could have just run on the economy, right? Economy kind of roaring, you know, he could have made the pledge that the economy's doing well,

vote for me, vote for my proxies in Congress. Instead, he ran on migrant-carrying. Caravan. He ran on media, and media is the enemy of the American people. He ran on birthright citizenship. His economic advisor talked about abolishing the federal minimum wage. We also got this racist ad that got compared to the infamous Willie Horton had from the 1988 presidential campaign. Jimbo, let's take a listen to that. The 7,000 migrant caravan crossing Mexico, marching toward our border. Dangerous illegal criminals like cop killer Luis Bragamates don't care about our laws. America cannot allow this invasion. The migrant caravan must be stopped. President Trump and his allies will protect our border and keep our families safe. America's future depends on you. Stop the

caravan. Vote Republican. I'm Donald Trump and I approve this message. So that was it. What did you make of the final week of the campaign and just the weird sort of moment we were dunked into as a society. My favorite, I mentioned the on-air Fox panelist sniping earlier. My favorite moment was that it was early on when they had some consultant on there insisting that Trump hadn't pivoted away from the economy in his closing argument and got some, and was getting pushback from everybody else on stage. That's funny. And I guess there's not, I mean, I guess you can argue degrees or something like that. But, yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, without spending too much time with the meta-narratives,

I think in some sense, you know, obviously Trump was proven correct in making that judgment call, right? I mean, not just in the results of the election, and specifically in the states that he spent significant time in. But also, you know, there's a lot of exit polls that put the economy really low on people's, you know, list of concerns. It's hard to know, right? Because we'd have to sort of run it back. That if he, you know, expecting like what would happen if Trump were actually presidential and actually normal? It's like I feel like something we just do all the time. But I don't know how different it would have been.

It's kind of a weird, it's kind of an interesting question. But I agree with you. I think you probably, you know, those close races in Florida, you know, Texas, places like that where immigration and quote unquote security. really plays, yeah, maybe they would have been different. Yeah, maybe so. And maybe that would be, you know, I mean, it probably, it's especially in a place like Texas and Florida, you know, it cuts both ways, you know. I mean, it mobilizes both sides, one would think, and I think that the numbers are going

to kind of bear that out. But yeah, I mean, I think that it is an interesting question whether Trump has to go to the kind of disturbing extremes that you. he that he has gone in the past couple of weeks. If that's necessary for a necessary part of his appeal or just if his presence and a, you know, catchy enough chant is a necessary, I mean, is all that's really needed, right? I mean, because it's easy. I find myself, you know, watching his rallies and I'm not, to me, the content is the sort of last thing on the, on the checklist, right? I mean, it's not specifically what he's saying. It's just the sort of

his presence and the way he's saying it. Yeah, it's a sort of be in with Trump. You know, we're going to commune with, we're going to commune with our guy, essentially. Exactly. And whatever he happens to say, we'll just sort of roll with it. I like this tweet from Mark Tracy, our old pal who covers college sports over at the New York Times, where he basically tweeted out a press box segment. He said, like, I feel like the conventional wisdom in liberal circles has been that the Trump era has politicized day-to-day life to an unacceptable and hopefully temporary degree.

But what if it has politicized day-to-day life for liberals in a way it has. has already been politicized for conservatives. And I think what he's saying there that's interesting is, if you're a Fox News watcher, this is the kind of just day-to-day bonkers crazy, everything is political world you already lived in. Yeah. And that liberals who, you know,

were listening to NPR and watching the Daily Show and, you know, getting their advance tickets to go see Roma in a few weeks, were living in this kind of, you know, relatively placid universe. And now we're all in the same, we're all in the same, you know, panic room together. And I think he might be right to an extent. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think that that's definitely true. I mean, I was having a conversation with our pal and co-worker dressed in charity before we came in.

And I'm not assigning these takes to him. this is mostly me making this questionable argument. But I do think that there's a, there's an extent to which for all the, you know, for all the, you know, commentary that meta commentary we have about Nate Silver and,

and the New York Times, the New York Times, various charts and graphs and everything else, there is a certain, or there was in the pre-Trump era, a certain piece that came with that, you know, with the sort of predictability of everything

and the knowability of the world. Mm-hmm. And I think that Trump's election upended all that. Now, you know, there is the, there is, and this is purely from an emotional standpoint. I mean, I don't think the kind of the point of this is that there's not statistics to back it up. But I think that there was a, I think that, that it opened people's minds to the possibility of a enormous blue wave because, you know, what the Trump election can prove was that nobody's model is a good model, right? and I think that that sort of upset liberals in a way or that kind of royal liberals just because of the possibility, but mostly the uncertainty, right? And even though, and you wrote about this really well on the ringer.com last night, that we ended up in the same place that we started, right?

I mean, we ended up, we ended up with the most likely result, right? the result that everyone probably would have agreed upon two days ago or two months ago. But the journey from in that span of time has just been remarkably unsettling. Yeah, it really has. And again, I just think it's this, I don't, I never want to be old technophobe, anti-nate-silver, anti-whatever guy. because I think this, I remember the, I remember the old world. And you were talking about how much election TV has changed.

In the old world, like Jeff Greenfield and those guys and David Gergen, those were the smart guys on cable. Sure. And now those are kind of the dumb guys. Those are the guys who are sitting, you know, it's like watching MSNBC last night, especially a midterm, right, which is just so much about districts and states and places that are unfamiliar to even people that are politically. plugged in. It's really about Steve Kornacki, right? Like, we need the information guy. And when Chris, when you go to

Chris Matthews sitting there stroking his chin about, you know, some Pennsylvania thing, or Tip O'Neill or whatever, it's just like, come on, this is so, this is such a waste of time. Brian Williams was sit there. Like, Cornacki was clearly the star, but Williams kept going, who was, it was anchoring the coverage, kept going, Steve Schmidt has been

really, who's been very patient. We're going to get to you in just a second, but first we have to go to Cornacki, and then it was, Chris Matthews sitting over there has been very patient. And I just got the sense that everybody was giving Williams the evil eye in the studio. Like, what the hell haven't you called on me? But it's like, we don't want to hear from you anymore. We don't want to hear from the guy who knows stuff.

Yeah, no, I think that's totally true. I think that, I mean, just to back up your point, I was flipping channels right before we started recording. And of course, MSNBC had John Meacham on this morning, right? I mean, they're waiting for the day. Yes, it was something something very portentous and historically was saying. Exactly, but it's like he's out,

he's testing out material during the daytime hours of MSNBC the morning after, whereas normally, you know, it's not that long ago that he would have had that GERGIN spot, center stage. You would have been the GERGIN.

It's the sage. It's like a sage, right? It's a wise man. Yeah. And I'm sure we'll see Doris Kurns Goodwin, you know, before the day's out or whatever, and that's great.

But you're right that, that what we're interested in is, you know, the data. And it's funny because I was watching CNN last night. And I don't know, I guess it was a deliberate, it was a deliberate camera shot. But when, when Jake and Wolf were like doing like their main emceeing role, John King was like bizarrely standing off in the background. It looked like he was running lines, but he was just sort of like looking at a monitor.

It was very, very strange. But all of that is to say that, you know, there, I remember when John, King was being touted as the next big thing in news, right? He was certainly going to be the next Wolf Blitzer. And of course, Wolf is immortal. So that was probably a bad call. But I was watching him last night. My first reaction, I mean, the first feeling I had was, man, he's sort of like sunk

since that, since those predictions of his, of his, you know, impending greatness. But also, but then I had the second take, which comes back to what you were saying, is that he actually has a more central role to the future of news than Wolf Blitzer does or then, you know, then the traditional anchor. it's all about the data and not just having the data at your finger on a piece of paper in front of you, but the felicity with the data, right, that he and certainly Steve Kornacki have, that you can run this touchscreen monitor, but implicit in, and it's not just a technological thing, implicit in that is understanding every precinct, what every number means, and on a very deep level.

And, you know, this is how we engage in sports. This is how we engage in everything now. It's this kind of like granular study of everything that eventually, you know, piles up into some sort of deeper, broader understanding. Do we need to split it off like we do for the baseball playoffs? Do we need the stats cast? Separate feed? Yeah.

So it's like you turn on stats cast and you see Kornacki and you see who else could we, what other sort of number crunch? Anybody named Nate could be on that thing who crunches numbers. there's like, we've got multiple Nates. I get a Harrietin. So many Nates. Throw them on there, right? You'd need somebody just to kind of lighten the mood a little bit, you know, like a

Catherine Miller or something, like a Ben Smith, Ben Smith, you know, somebody can kind of speak that language, but it's not in that world. Yeah. Kind of pull them out of the, uh, pull them out of the numbers for a little bit. And then on other channel is essentially the equivalent of like major league baseball play by play. Exactly. So there's Wolf and there's Jake and there's all those kind of guys.

I think that, I think that, I think. I'm not to take your joke too seriously, but I think that that, you know, in some sense that I think that that already exists, right? I mean, the problem with the stats cast on sports is that if you really wanted stats, you wouldn't be watching it on TV or you wouldn't be, you know, the audio part, a portion of television or whatever. And so much of the way that we took in the election last night and also, but just, you know, in general now is this kind of running conversation that's going on on Twitter and not just on Twitter. I mean, every blog post, every update and the number is. every, you know, take by an on-screen statistician is an implicit response to another, to another statisticians or, you know, numbers persons point of view. You know, it wouldn't have been shocking that Fox called the, the, called Congress except for, you know, except in relationship to what the other networks were doing and what the models were showing and everything else. And, and, and on Twitter, you know, it's every, every tweet, I mean, 538 wouldn't have changed their model, or, probably wouldn't have changed their model except in a relationship to others. And everybody

online is tweeting, you know, and sub-tweeting everybody else's statistics. So it's a, I mean, that conversation is taking place and it's, and it's, you know, both sort of, it's hard to even say it's enlightening, you know, I mean, it's, there's just so much noise. Yeah, I would, I would say that Kornacki makes television viewing feel essential because he does feel like he knows stuff and you're getting it in a very user-friendly way that it'd still be hard to kind of get online without shopping around a lot. I feel the one weakness of it is that people like Dave Weigel, I saw saying this last night at various times, can say, Ned Lamont's going to be the next governor of Connecticut. The only reason he doesn't look like it right now is just a

particular account, right? Whereas the guys on television have to be a little more cautious and kind of can't make because almost they're almost so dedicated to their nerdery that they can't be that sort of swaggering and be like, this thing is over. It happened with Ned Lamont. I've seen people saying that about John Tester this morning, who's Montana Senate race is still out. I am fascinated by the wise man because it's such a character of cable television. And it feels on the one hand like the wise man should be basically in huge trouble that David Gergan, you know, should be saying, gosh, am I going to have to sell that extra condo in Florida? You know, the CNN sign assure that I have essentially had seemingly since like 1982 is finally,

if I'm not working in the White House coming to an end. But the other thing is, these cable networks hire so many people. Yes. That there's enough room. I mean, I honestly can't watch CNN on election night because just the quality to noise ratio is so crazy. I can totally roll with Jake Tapper, who by the way, interestingly, has kind of fused data guy

plus news anchor plus wise man all together into one package. He's kind of all those. He's kind of the ultimate five tool outfielder of cable news. But I actually can't watch because there's just too many people on the set.

I mean, I write about sports television for a living and it's too much. You know, it's like, I watched Michael Irvin and Stephen A. Smith debate the Cowboys on Monday, and I couldn't get through 10 minutes of CNN's election coverage. We're talking about the number of champions. Okay. We're still up there right now.

I asked you a question. I asked you a question. So, well, when you go to history, let's go into history. Don't just go to your history. Let's go to the history. What does that say about CNN? Yeah, I mean, Jake Tapper also has this sort of just sour puss of like he doesn't, he's. He does.

He doesn't smile. That's key. No, and I think that, yeah, I think that. that the, I think that the fact that you can read, whether or not it comes out in his voice, the fact that you can read an implicit disdain for the statistical analysis on, you can read that onto his face is helpful because it, because watching myself, I go back and forth between like the just immutability of Koranaki now, you know, or whatever, and, and just like, can we please just have one person talking in a calm voice that would, I mean, that would,

that would mean everything to me right now. I think you're, but I think you're right about the, about the wise man and everything else. I mean, and about how many people the networks hire. I mean, if these, if we didn't have three competing networks that were going head to head and trying to fill up, you know, 24 hours basically of programming each every day, there probably would have, I mean, there may, not probably, there may never have been room for the statistical analysis. You know, there would have, certainly, you can look at specific, someone specific like Steve Cornycki, who was sort of brought on, you know, as like a, you know, a fill in for Chris Hayes and then found this kind of second light.

that became more valuable than what he was brought there to do. So they wouldn't have been there if not for all of this, all these, the need for just filling airtime. But now, and they've displaced the wise people, but the wise people still have jobs because, like I said, there's Wednesday mornings to fill. I know. Listening, listening, I was listening to it in the car. You know, they have like a feed of MSNBC and CNN live on Sirius Radio as I was coming in making my drive in this morning. morning, I'm like, oh my gosh, they're just still going. It's like, Hallie Jackson's got an hour, right? And it was like, and Meacham was on, as you say, and just kind of like, ah, Kornacki's still

alive, so let's go to him. And we just got to fill so much time. David, let's do our third topic and just cram in a bunch of funny election and election media notes that we didn't have room for. Speaking of MSNBC, am I the only one that finds a little weird that post-fabulism, Brian Williams is just sort of carrying on in news anchor voice that kind of

combination speaking of hybrids that kind of combination of Tom Brokaw and hip dad guy voice I heard him say

last night he goes you know it's going to be a minute until we get the results in from Georgia

oh you know the phrases Mr. Williams you know how to reach the kids there's something kind of

audacious that just he still on television? Well, I, you know, I recommend anybody who's, you know, interested in his redemption or the potential thereof, listen to the episode of Malcolm Gladwell's podcast where he talks about, you know, how human memory works and how Brian Williams as the epitome of this phenomenon should be forgiven for his fabulousism. But, yeah, I mean, I think that there's, the moment that he popped up.

Bullshit, by the way, go ahead. The moment that he popped up on MSNBC, he sort of, it's like, it's like the shackles were off, but, you know, he didn't have to be as buttoned up as he used to be, but he only had, but he only had one button to one button, I guess. You know what I mean?

But I sort of, I, he only had a half zip to unzip. Yeah, exactly. He did, I love, I love this Brian Williams. I just think that, I think that the like, like MSNBC has, MSNBC's like big night coverage has this is this incredible crew of of voices that at various moments seem to be like the most fun crew to hang out with as a group but also

seem to sort of just be like secretly seething at each other the entire time you know I mean it's the the interpersonal politics there are really great and Brian Williams as just sort of the the oblivious party host you know like the guy the guy who's like hand out cocktails without realizing that like the house is burning down is just it's it's it's really and i mean i honestly mean this is a compliment he's he's uh he's got this just incredible incredible incredible like just lounge singer vibe that is just that that makes the makes everything just so wonderful and and you know awkward to watch at times yeah chris matthew seems to be the seething smokestack if we're going with a party metaphor yes that he's not more of the star

which is really the story of Chris Matthews' life and career and television, but he's just, you know, every time they go to him, he's like, why the hell have you been talking so long? This might be the first election. I don't remember the Trump one, but this is, we're not too far removed from every election, every midterm, there being a story about him seething at the prevalence of Mata or Keith Olderman before.

He was over, you know. Who I missed, by the way, on election night? Oh, for sure. I like the Oberman era. There was kind of an uncomfortable Oberman and Matthews era where it was like, you know,

why is Chris Matthews getting to talk? But Oberman felt like at that, in that era, the kind of perfect, you know, slightly partisan cable news anchor, but also just the facts guy. He was really,

really good at that. Speaking of cable news, how about Sean Hannity getting on stage with Trump in Cape Girardo Missouri, here's what I found amazing about that. The idea that

Sean Hannity is not only a Trump fan, but a Trump advocate and a Trump shill is not surprising, right? There's literally zero surprise in that. No, no, no, of course. What amazed me was that he was so eager to deny it and distance himself from it.

He had that thing beforehand and said, look, the Trump campaign announced it that he was going to be a special guest. He said, no, no, no, I'm just going there to cover the rally, the final rally. the campaign like I always do. Then they got him up on stage and he made remarks. He said some unflattering things about the media, which apparently included his Fox News colleagues. And then afterwards, he said, look, no, no, no, I was telling the truth. This was just a total surprise. I had no idea. Why is he distancing himself from this? Like, nobody in his audience

actually cares about this, right? No, I mean, the whole thing feels a little bit like my Twitter was hacked. You know, it's like I have to give, I have to do the performative aspect of denying this so that I can continue my employment or whatever, but like no one actually cares. Yeah. I mean, it's a, you know, it certainly, it made for some good, you know, tweets from the liberal side and, and some very, and some outrage, you know, but, but I, but I think that that it is sort of amazing that he feels, you know, that he feels the need to do that. And actually before he, the morning after his appearance, before he tweeted his explanation that it was all a surprise to him that he got called up, while the rest of Twitter was just, you know, photos or videos of him speaking put side by side with, you know, the tweet of him saying he wasn't going to speak. We're just zooming around Twitter. He was just, I looked at his timeline and I think he was, he had just put up a video of him being like him being embraced by various members of the

crowd. How he just sort of walked in and was just hugging just, you know, your average Joe's from around the world, or from, not around the world, but from from that district, I guess. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it is, the denial was, was just a wonderful little thing. Yeah, just a strange moment. And it turns out like lots of Fox hosts have appeared at various Republicans. Fox had a statement saying this was an unfortunate distraction and that Fox hosts were prohibited. from appearing, and it turns out just several of them appeared of various campaign events over the course of the year with no punishment, of course. I also loved it. I'm stealing this from somebody on Twitter. I can't remember who it is. Apologies person of smart person on Twitter. But just the mini genre of articles that come out where anonymous Fox people talk about how

embarrassed they are to be working with Sean Hannity. And do we just call the same people every time that there's one of these meltdowns, just like every year and a half? You know, like, ah, just so embarrassing. It just makes me want to quit. And then the next, and then that person is available to take calls in two years when there's another thing that happens like this.

Yeah. The couple other notes, what did you make of the Trump Game of Thrones meme? Sanctions are coming. As the art director of the ringer.com. Yes. I want to say that I'm very... He's rated on the artistic merits.

Oh my gosh. There was, I thought that it was impressively done. I don't know if anyone else even has the, the brain space to remember back to the earliest days of the Trump presidency when all these stories resuming around about their inability to staff the White House. I don't know. One of the most shocking things to me was that they were just like tweeting out graphics that just looked like they'd been done in MS paint and probably were.

You know, I mean, like it was like really, really, really bad, really bad social media design. And I thought that this one as a, as sort of just implicitly offensive as it was, was actually, you know, it looked like someone to put some time and care and had some actual Photoshop experience to do it. Of all of the things, though, that, you know, we constantly have this debate about whether or not Trump is sort of like trolling the media or deliberately trying to distract the media

or if it's just this is Trump is what Trump is and, you know, the media just, you know, reacts. This certainly felt like trolling. You know, it felt like we were, like he was trying to get, just trying to, you know, needle everyone to get, to get, to get the sort of reaction that that tweet got. Or when we say he, we mean somebody on it, we don't think Trump knows what that is, right?

No, no, no, no. Trump does not understand the phrase winter is coming. You're right. Maybe that's the distinction. Maybe that maybe Skivina or whatever. The social media team knows, has a deeper or more philosophical understanding of the way that Trump gets reaction.

It was very Trumpy, but it was also very Obama-esque, right? Obama would have understood the value of that kind of pop culture. Obama would never put the meme up on Twitter. But he would have understood the reference, you know, the value of making that reference. So it was a weird sort of joining with Trump and his predecessor. Other notes, there was the Beto F-Bem on MSNBC. Yeah. In every single part of Texas, all of you show in the country how you do this.

I'm so fucking proud of you guys. Yeah, I was watching that one live. That was exciting. That was kind of amazing. I kind of turned to my wife. I was like, did he just, did he just,

uh, did he just say that? Um, that was, that was an amazing thing. And also, by the way, the end of bedomania,

temporarily. I mean, do we think a Rolling Stone feature is being written right now? Yeah. I mean, on, on, on Beto.

What's next for Beto? It's impossible to predict, obviously. Um, I, as I was watching his concession speech, I was, I saw different people,

that I know react in completely opposite ways which on the one hand was well that's the end of Beto as a national figure and that was not just reaction to his loss but in reaction to his speech

and then other people a different person but many other people online saying you know this is his sort of his big RFK moment whatever his this speech is the leap into the national

political scene you saw Steve Kerr tweeted Beto 2020 last night right oh no I'd miss that but You're fired from the ringer, by the way, for not knowing that. But, yeah, I think that there will be enough, there'll be enough narratives taking up airspace over the next several months

that this won't, you know, this isn't a preemptive, you know, coronation, certainly. There's no need to spend any more time on Beto right now. And probably, you know, if he does have a future on the national political scene, that this is probably a good thing for him to sort of keep his head down for the next year or so and then be able to sort of reemerge as a

as a new dark horse but yeah I mean it's I'm sure that someone is someone has already greenlit the you know bedo and winter piece for Rolling Stone or wherever else it is can I go ahead and headline it while we're at it

please it gets Beto the second act of a celebrity Democrat all right by George Parenthood No, I'm just kidding. Sean Fennessey just greenlit that for you. I did love as a small media thing, the sort of dueling, performative Texanness of Beto and Ted Cruz.

Beto had the, and this speaks to you and I, David. Talk about a candidate that speaks to you and I. Forget the policy just for a second, but Beto tweeting the pics, or it was a staffer tweeting the video of him in the Waterburger line after a debate, the late-night Waterburger run, something that you and I did did and did together multiple times.

And then there was the slightly more staged and awkward Ted Cruz goes into Buckees to buy beer, which is kind of the Walmart of gas stations in Texas now. And it's a big thing. But just them showing the nation how Texan they could be in the kind of most Texas way.

I really enjoyed that because like I said, that really spoke to me. The other note I wanted to cover to you, this comes from our ace producer Jim Cunningham. Nevada was a great state for the Democrats. Jackie Rosen won the Senate. But we also found out, this is according to the New York Post, the morning deceased brothel owner Dennis Hoff has managed to win an election

for the Nevada State Assembly seat in Tuesday. Hoff is dead. Died last month at the... It was that the budding politician was found deceased after a rally with porn star Ron Jeremy and former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. It was one of the great moments in American political history. Yeah. So, uh, congrats to Denisov.

Do you think there was a Denisov victory party last night? 100% right? Somebody was celebrating. That's for sure. No, there was a great, I mean, just in, in terms of the annals of politics, this will definitely be brought up. I mean, this is definitely one of those stories that someone's going to rediscover in 20 years and write an incredible piece.

I mean, I don't even writing a piece is going to have any currency in 20 years. But we'll, but, you know, this will, there'll definitely be something that people rediscover and, uh, and, and just, laugh, laugh about. I mean, one of the great stories, and I think that this was reported a couple weeks back in, was it New York Magazine? It might have been Politico, but I think it was New York Mag about how Republicans had been running as quickly as they could away from Dennis Hoff when he was campaign, you know, after he won the nomination, but, I mean, won the primary, but then as soon as he died, they were campaigning for him, basically, just because they would get, they, they

get to replace him. Just in terms of just like the weird, like, screw turning of, of the political system, that was a good one too. One more note about Beto, which I just forgot to say a minute ago. If you're a political journalist, here's the real sadness today when you see Beto losing, Gillum losing, and Stacey Abrams probably losing in Georgia, those are career makers, right? That's, Beto winning is a book, you know. That's, don't underestimate how valuable it is for journalists to be covered. covering the guy who or gal who wins, right?

Yeah. I mean, we saw it with all these people who ran, you know, Maggie Haberman to Katie Tur on MSNBC who were covering Trump. And that turned out to be really, really good for their careers. Yeah. And when Beto, you know, basically has a close loss to Ted Cruz doesn't do much for your career. Beto, that's a thing, right? Stacey Abrams, that's a thing.

Andrew Gillum, that's a thing. But never neglect the careerism element of this. No, and you could see that on the way that the various correspondents were farmed out by all the networks. I mean, MSNBC in particular. Chris Hayes, I believe, was there, right? Chris Hayes was with Beto, but you could see the sort of pecking order of like, who got which races Katie Turr, I believe was in Georgia. And they sort of, you know, it kind of, you know, trickled down from there.

But yeah, I mean, it's certainly, there was definitely, I got to say, I miss. Chris Hayes at the desk. There was not enough Beto action to keep him that allowed for Chris Hayes' continued presence throughout the night. But yeah, I mean, you could definitely see that he was,

that, you know, they were, MSNBC as an institution, was very interested in that race because Chris Hayes was there. We could do a whole segment sometime on how the weirdness of what cable network is playing at the rally for the,

because there was an insane moment where I believe it was MSNBC went to Georgia, and MSNBC came up on the screen at the Stacey Abrams rally, and everybody, or no, it was a, I can't remember, I think it was the Andrew Gillum rally, actually, excuse me, and everybody started cheering. And there had been some kind of, you know, Broward County votes out. And everybody was, oh, wait, did it just flip? And it turned out that people were just seeing MSNBC and they were cheering for their favorite cable network that had come up. And also maybe the fact that voting rights had been.

restored to felons in Florida. Anyway, that was just a weird, weird sort of something. Should we close with sad Steve Bannon, David? We, yes, absolutely, let's do it. He went to Topeka, he went to Topeka, Kansas. Story was in the Topeka Capital Journal. He went to a holiday inn last week to stump. Big week for Holiday Inn, by the way.

That's where that bad Mueller press conference was. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. forget about that. We get for the room you can rent at Holiday Inn. You always walk past those when you're at the kind of like small holiday in. You're like, who really is using this? We actually answered the question. This is according to the pitch KC.

He attended this rally for Steve Watkins, a Republican who went up hanging on to his seat in Kansas, the second congressional district last night. According to Smith, who was the reporter there, this is Sherman Smith of the Topeka Capital Journal, approximately 17 people showed up to see Steve Bannon. He was wearing the Steve Bannon multiple shirts, sneakers, and safari jacket look. He also, I don't know if you're looking at this photo, but it's incredible. It's you can see in the background the flat screen TV with the cords just kind of hang, you know, cords going all the way across the wall.

Like it's your campus dorm room. And also the carpet of the Holiday Inn, which. which I just love, having seen it so many times. It's kind of the one where there's kind of semi-concentric circles. It's kind of a brown and teal and tan kind of pattern. This is really the ultimate. And it was kind of like there were more articles written about Steve Bannon being at this thing than there were actual people in attendance.

What a moment. Yeah. I mean, he did, I will say Bannon had a positive moment in the week, which was the David From essay about debating. Bannon and losing to Bannon and surprisingly losing to Bannon I didn't see David from last night

I don't know if he's ossified to the point where he's not there he doesn't he's not getting on TV I think there was a live Atlantic event happening I just made that up but I just it's a safe I totally believe it but yeah I mean there's there's I think that

that that we you know we've we've spent a lot of time and dedicate talking about Bannon and and dedicated a lot of headspace to him over the past couple years. And, you know, I think that when we talked about the New Yorker Festival hubbub, you know, one of the things that we discussed

was that he was also speaking at like two other festivals at the exact same time, and to other like ideas festivals at the same time. And, you know, there's different ways, there's different economic philosophies behind, you know, behind, you know, the way you put yourself out there for your, for your, for your, sort of, you know, victory lap or whatever. But, you know, supply and demand does dictate that, like,

the more you get out there, eventually people are going to stop showing up, right? I mean, if he had gone to the same venue for his first post-White House, you know, appearance, there probably would have been a lot more people there. But it is, it is, he's quoted in every story now, by the way. Yeah. Have you noticed that? You just open a record, yeah. Yeah, you open a random, like there was a, the New York Times did a big George Soros piece the other day, kind of how Soros became the conservative a boogeyman. And Bannon had this kind of amazing line where he was like, I want to be the George Soros to, I want to be George Soros to the left. Like, I want to be so effective and so powerful that they, they consider me like that. You know, right now they consider me. It's kind of like kind of

semi-washed up, you know, nativist guy. But I want to be that. But he's just available, apparently, for quotation in anything. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to call him from my next piece about play-by-playman, you know, just said Steve Bannon, who masterminded Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. Absolutely do. You should just call him and see if there's anything he wants to talk about that, you know, outside of the political sphere. Just like, what are you interested in? What can I get you on the record about? That was, maybe 14 people would read that article. All right, David, like Hallie Jackson with the morning after MSNBC show, we will stand by for subpoenas, for more Trump reacts. I believe he's actually talking, was talking while we were recording this podcast, and may still be talking.

Yeah. And more media stories. Our research is provided by Chris Almeida. Jim Cunningham is our ace producer and tips us off to all the great Nevada brothel owner stories. Until next week, David, happy election day. Happy election day after. More hot media tags coming. See you, buddy.

See you later, man. One great news story that broke while we were recording. Okay. Two, one, Des Brian assigned with the same thing. Let's blow it out. All right, Jim, we're re-recording. Two, the AFL-CIO released a formal statement on Scott Walker's defeat. Uh-huh.

This is the complete statement. State quote, statement by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in response to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's re-election defeat, colon. Scott Walker was a national disgrace in statement. Pretty good. That's another story that's going to get totally swallowed by this. But the way that whole, just the Foxcon debacle and that was at a Washington Post piece breaking right on the eve of it or whatever. And also the weird thing about how he, Scott Walker apparently, he signed into law that if you were more than a one percentage point behind in a governor's race, you can't challenge or you can't question the results.

Uh-oh. Or challenge the results. And he's like 1.2 or 1.5 or something like that points behind. This is also, by the way, news from the Trump presser, Trump reading off names of losing candidates at the White House and suggesting they deserve to lose for not embracing him. Mia Love gave me no love, Trump said, too bad. Sorry, Mia.

Awesome. Oh, my gosh. I never want to be old technophobe, anti-nate-silver, anti-whatever, anti-whatever guy. Because I think this, I remember the, I remember the, I remember the old world. Oh, yeah.