The Press Box - ESPN’s Game 4 Flop, Trump’s Epstein Strategy, and Everyone’s Favorite World Cup Fan. Plus: Semafor’s Dave Weigel!

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

Today on The Press Box, Bryan and David start with their thoughts on the Knicks' historic comeback over the Spurs to take a 3-1 lead, and Bryan gives his notes on ESPN’s coverage of the game down the stretch. Then they talk about the New York Times excerpt from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's upcoming book about how the White House has been handling the Epstein files (16:23). They also talk about Twitter’s favorite World Cup fan (33:14) and a new addition to the Best Used Bookstores in the World list (43:04). Finally, Semafor’s Dave Weigel joins to talk about the Senate race in Texas, the change in campaign reporting, and much more (52:58). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline! Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David ShoemakerGuest: Dave WeigelProducer: Isaiah Blakely Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg. David? I think we have to start with game four. of the NBA finals. Anything else would feel slightly anticlimactic. Barry Weiss, I'm sorry, you're in the C block today. We've got to talk basketball. One of the craziest finals games you will ever see.

The Knicks come back from 29 down in the garden to beat the Spurs 107-106. There were times in that game where I felt like I was playing an EA sports video game from 25 years ago. Yes. Remember you'd be playing and the computer

would just not let you win? Mm-hmm. The Knicks were the computer. Yeah. Every possession, it's like, oh my God, they're going to score every time down the floor. Yeah.

Do you hang around for the whole game? I did. I mean, mostly because I was watching wrestling at the same time. This is my admission. So I was just doing, you know, you flip back and forth at every commercial break.

when I went back I think they were down by nine it was at that point of the comeback and I was just sort of you went through a few seconds where I was trying to like you know shook my head to make sure that like I was remembering what I was remembering I was like okay well this is kind of a thing and then at that point it was just downhill um it was it was definitely something to watch

and it's one of those things that you watch knowing you're you know they're telling you over and over again how rare it is but you just know it in your bone and, you know, from the announcer's desk, it's like, they must, you know that they know it too. Yeah, they're just going down in history here. It's going to be one of the all-time Nix. This is probably going to be, this might be a bigger moment than them winning the championship

in terms of like what you're, you know, the memorable, memorability of what's going on on television. 100%. I mean, any Nix fan you talk to will tell you, we will take a title under any circumstances. Mm-hmm. But when you can marry. a title, a probable title, but when you can marry a title to a game like that,

that's just about perfect. Yeah. A tip-in like that by O.G. Annanobi. I mean, that is just stuff that runs on the highlight reel in your mind forever. Mm-hmm. And also, we got these Seinfeld tweets that'll lead on. Are you doing Seinfeld tweets in Overwork Twitter joke of the week? No, we're not.

Hit me. What do we got? I mean, the best one was by somebody named Alex, Ajax 1033, who has 800-something followers. But I already saw this retweeted a million times. It's just Jerry and, yeah, it's just Seinfeld and Larry David, standing side by side on Presto. Seinfeld's giving him a funny face.

And the text just says, The Spurs know how to take the lead. They just don't know how to hold the lead. And that's really the most important part of the lead, the holding. That's pretty good. Yeah. The Knicks winning an NBA title is not something that has ever happened in our lifetimes.

Those 70 and 73 titles are just a bunch of black and white photos and grainy television footage. I mean, Willis Reed, Dollar Bill Bradley, Dave DeBusher, Phil Jackson as a player. And that is, again, that is just stuff to me that felt old when we were kids. It felt ancient. Yeah. To see them win a title now with at least Bradley still present. Very, very cool.

From the Department of Expired NBA analysis, remember the Wimby paradigm shift. It's over. No one else will ever win a title as long as Wembe's in the league. Everybody's got to trade for Yannis. We must rearm. We must figure out what

to do about this man. Oh, wait, a team might win a title with Mitchell Robinson. Yeah. That made me smile last night. I also loved Wimby the villain, pointing at his head like Bobby the Brain Heenan and every evil wrestler ever when he got Mitchell Robinson's head.

That was funny. And also, you know, the ideas people have about foreign-born NBA players, what they leap to is always what? They're soft. Yeah. They're soft. Well, Wemby, if he had shown any vulnerability at all, that's what people would have said, right?

But he's like, actually, I'm going to be the opposite. You're going to have to deal with this idea that I am an arch villain who's throwing Jalen Brunson to the floor. It don't even call it when he do that. Also, if you grew up in the 90s, like you and I did, and you hear Knicks fans moaning about physical play. every Sunday every Sunday you get home from church turn on NBC and there you have just that makes were just beating that everybody yeah everybody remembered the theme music so well when they were like you know negotiating for broadcast rights they don't remember just Pat Riley sending just the absolute an absolute mob hit out on everybody they played against it was unbelievable they're like oh those those spurs are being too rough on us

that was fun the New York Knicks start like Pat Riley and three power forwards. Like it was just to beat people up. That was in the song. Yes, everyone was Charles Smith at the same time and Charles Oakley. I got some notes on the ESPN broadcast. We talk about the Richard Jefferson recognizes Tim Legler is calling the game with him challenge. I thought that was a little better last night.

Yeah. He was actually recognizing that Legs was with him at the broadcast table. Yep. There's a weird moment at the end of the third quarter where the Knicks were trying to go two for one. And Jefferson wound up explaining to Mike Breen what a two for one was. Breen was making a very normy sports point, and I call it that because it's the kind of point I would make. Yeah. We're like, the team goes two for one.

And inevitably, the first shot turns out to be just a terrible shot. Right. They just throw away a possession so that they could get a position. later. Yes. That's what happens. If people don't know this, essentially it's like 30 seconds left,

you get up a quick shot, and even if the other team exhaust the entire shot clock, you need a ball back. Ideally, the point is you get two shots, they get one shot, and you're just manipulating the clock to get to that point,

but you're right, it's always bad. Also, for those listening who are not our age, we should identify this is the only thing color commentator, Doug Collins, seemed to know about basketball.

They're not ending their quarters correctly. Yeah. That was his obsession. And so Breen makes that point last night. And then RJ says, well, no, you know, it's, but what is the thing is, Mike, is they want to get the ball last. I'm like, yeah, I understand what two for one means. Thank you, Mike is challenging the premise of the two for one. I actually know, there was actually an even more perfect, much less, maybe less significant in a moment when AJ DeBanza, I guess in like the second quarter was on the screen because he was like covering the game as a student reporter or something like that.

He was there with Adam Silver. And Richard Jefferson said, oh, it's so great to see kids in the moment where they get drafted. Yeah, they're talking about the draft. And he's like, and I'm going to be there next week to see. I mean, we're going to be. I mean, legs and I are going to be there next week to cover it. Probably should have been a solo act. Yeah.

Probably. The final sequence of the game. David, I've got some criticisms. I know this will shock you. Some nitpicks, if you will. Play call or broadcast criticisms? Broadcast criticisms. Okay.

All right, the Knicks are down one. Uh-huh. Brunson misses a shot. Ball gets batted down the floor, and Deeran Fox picks it up. Mm-hmm. Okay. Now, again, Spurs are up one. Shot clock is off.

Mm-hmm. If game ends, you win. What does Deeran Fox do? He goes in for a layup. It gets blown. the Knicks get the ball back and they wind up winning the game on the tip it.

Nobody on the broadcast mentioned that the Aaron Fox screwed up. Yeah. Nobody mentioned it. And when I rewatched the game this morning, I saw something I didn't fully process in the moment, which is

after Fox gets a shot blocked, the Knicks called time out and we went to commercial. So they had a couple of minutes to process to reset. And when we come back, they're talking about Jose Alvarado, maybe we went back court and all the stuff. They never mentioned it.

Yeah. Say what you will about Reggie Miller. And people do. Reggie Miller, I think, would have gotten that. Sure. I think he would have gotten there that's like, we don't have to spend a ton of time on this. There are big things in front of us.

This is at the end of the game. But we have to say something. Yeah. About the fact that Deeran Fox just made a terrible decision. Yeah. And the fact that, yeah, I mean, it's, you leave it out, but I think maybe more significantly for them, you leave it to people to realize on Twitter, too. You know, it's like when people, this is a real-time example of social media doing a better job than you. Because everybody thought about that immediately.

And, yeah, they missed it. Here's my other nitpick. Okay, fast forward. Five seconds and change left. Jalen Brunson misses what would have been the winning three-pointer. O.G. and Innobe, Super. man's out of nowhere, tips it in, nicks are ahead, they win the game.

Yeah. Immediately after the Ananoby tip, we start looking for faces. Mm-hmm. Because that's what a director does. Yeah. In that instance, they look for faces. Well, we saw a couple of nicks, but

then we went into Celebrity Row and we saw John Calapari's face, Adam Sandler's, Jerry Seinfelds. We saw Taylor's Swift and the girls. We saw John McEnroe and Larry David. Mm-hmm.

We even saw David Zazlov. We never saw Jalen Brunson's face. Yeah. Jalen Brunson, who just got bailed out by his teammate. Never saw him. We never saw the faces of any of the San Antonio Spurs who just got beaten in the most pull the heart out of your chest way possible. Mm-hmm.

Like, guys, Wembe is. is one of the most popular athletes on the planet right now. He was trying to guard Jalen Brunson. We didn't have a picture of his face after the ball went in. Crazy. That's crazy. Absolutely crazy. We're showing all the celebrities.

And I understand that's part of the MSG thing. Certainly been part of the story of the finals. But who gives his shit what John Caliperi thinks? Yeah. That's just, again, elementary directing and producing is when you have a big moment, you show winners and you show losers. Winners and losers. In this case, we went John Calipari, Jerry Seinfeld.

No, it's totally true. And it misleads you watching it home, I think subconsciously almost, you don't think, you mean, the game wasn't over. And those are the photos that you, or the images that you show after you show the winners and losers, right? That's like the victory lap scenes. and yeah it was it was very very weird to watch because yeah there's there's nothing absolutely nothing of the players you know i wondered a couple of times separate from this throughout the

throughout the series if like if the nicks managed to win then the story for history will just be the incredible performance of jalen brunson right i mean i guess if cat redefines his career in this series that's something to or i mean i could can't imagine there's any heights and nobody he could get to that would change his perception but anyway uh shouldn't they just have extra cameras on brunson in general like every say no everything he does even more so than like steve nash in his prime everything that he does needs like an extra layer of dissection yes you know the way that he like the way that he just controls the paint as a six foot one dude you know and like every move that he makes i i mean i'm sure there are probably

are extra cameras and they're all they're all shooting and like you know, 8K for whatever, you know, NBA special will come out about, documentary will come out about this in six months. But like, it's just so weird that we, like, I kept expecting there to be like more shots of Brunson amongst bodies in the paint, you know, like Brunson doing interesting things. This was an interesting one too because he took that, wow, that crazy three on Wimby with such confidence that, like, that would, is that the time to go to the pregame footage of him

practicing that shot or something? Like there's got, I mean, it was such a wild decision to make, but it was so confident that I expected more on that front too. It was way deep. He was double covered, but he was absolutely taking that shot. Yeah. I agree about Brunson. Is it because a fallback is just not as interesting as, you know, a dunk?

Is that what it is? Is it like that dissection just not make-res? Well, I think in some ways a fallaway is like a reaction to what the defense is doing and Brunson seems to negotiate his way through without much regard for what the defense is you know and it's almost like he's playing a you know like an 80s arcade game where you just got to dodge the big trees and you like make it to the and you know you get your prize at the end or something but but yeah I don't know it's just it's it does feel like watching him and we watch him as a maverick sad to say um still hard to believe that happened

It's a really good worst. We're talking about the Knicks, not the Mavericks. Last note for you, did you notice there was a Curtis maneuver at the end of the game? No, what was it Curtis maneuver? Lisa Salters. Oh, yeah. Talking to the Anobie. Here we go, right?

We have it. We have one play. All we care about is what the hell happened on that play. It's all we care about. Yeah. She talks to him. She asks him about it. ESPN was a little late rolling the replay on the side by side.

and it was not clear to be that Ananoi could actually see it. Yeah. But we're making baby steps here. Yeah. The way to fix the interview after the game has asked the player to tell you what happened during the most exciting play of the game and roll the replay and let them watch it and describe it. We're done. And by the way, I stole the Curtis maneuver from Lisa Salters because I saw her doing it during a Monday Night Football game. So it's really the Salters maneuver.

But branding. All right. Coming up on the press box, David, how freaked out was the Trump White House about the damage caused by the Epstein files? Is Barry Weiss getting layered or is Barry Weiss getting promoted? Your suggestions about who we should add and take off from our list of unknockables?

I went to the best used bookstore in Scandinavia and an interview with one of the great's Semaphore's Dave Weigle about Graham Platner, James Tolariko, The Washington Post, and more. All that and much more on the press box. A part of the Ringer, podcast network. Hello, media consumers. It's Brian, it's David.

It's Isaiah Blakely. Producing this here podcast, David, did you get a chance to read The Exert? I refer, of course, to Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's Big Story in the New York Times. Mm-hmm. which comes out of their, only in journalism, hotly anticipated book, regime change, which comes out June 23rd a week from this coming Tuesday.

I'm very excited to read this book. Not just in a podcast. I'm excited for a thing that's about to come out way. I genuinely. You want to do the reading? I want to do the reading. But like when the Bob Woodward books come out, the latter day ones I kind of don't want to do the reading. Oh, yeah.

Because I'm just kind of like, eh. But the first two excerpts of this, even though they have been Woodward coded, in the sense of there is a very important meeting, and a person at the meeting said to another person at the meeting,

this, and inside he couldn't help but think, there's a lot of that, a lot of meetings. But this book generally seems very interesting. This second excerpt is called Inside the White House freak out over the Epstein files. you knew this was a big piece for the Times because not only did they have the vertical video

of Haberman and Swan, but the vertical video began with Haberman and Swan sitting down in the seat. Oh, yeah. This is a serious documentaries format. Yeah. Yes. And also it was incredibly long. I actually don't know how long it was, but usually if a video starts playing on the Times homepage while I'm there, I'll just kind of let it go before I scroll. It might, you know, do it. by an inevitable scroll and I just waited and waited. It was very good. Very good. I mean, very like deliberately edited, you know?

I mean, the sitting down is a good point, but they had them going back and forth and obviously like well-produced way overlapping each other and stuff. It was, yeah, they gave all the signs. The New York Times did its job. When did sitting down become the ultimate documentary cliche? God, I'm trying to think of the first one. Did people sit down in the last dance? Or did they just look at it?

No, no, no, no, no, definitely not. Definitely not. I'm trying to think of like... In a documentary, it's like, we got the, we got the person. And Michael Moore, we got the person. Did people see even sit in those Michael Moore movies? I don't think so. Dude, I don't know.

There is an old documentary thing where you show little things before and after the interview ends as a kind of way to introduce some Verite in there. With the sports docs, it usually means like, oh my God, here's Isaiah, Tom. I'm sitting down for an interview. I'm literally sitting in the seat. The Haberman and Swan excerpts. A couple of notes for you. First was

both excerpts so far, including the first one, which is about the drive toward the Iran War, have had J.D. Vance portrayed as the administration's go-to truth teller. This one begins with a scene from last July in the White House Situation Room. A lot of visits. It's a situation room in this piece

where Vance was telling everybody, hey, this Epstein file story, you may think this is going to go away. But I know the base. I am online. This is not going to go away easily.

And the only thing for us to do is just release everything right now. I'll also quote from the story here. Vance had also floated to colleagues an extraordinary PR gambit that the White House enlist Tucker Carlson to interview Epstein's long-time

girlfriend and co-conspirator Galane Maxwell in prison. So Vance's idea of trying to get ahead, get around, get away from the Epstein stories, dispatch Tucker Carlson to interview Galane Maxwell, who presumably would say,

hey, Trump had nothing to do with this, Trump did nothing wrong. That would somehow, what a strange... Well, and also, and what you can see, I mean, more and more every day is that just, I mean, having buy-in from Tucker Carlson would be probably the biggest coup of all, you know? Yeah, because he's the one that could get the base under control. Oh, Tucker, if Tucker is convinced that there's nothing here, this is much ado about nothing. Or at least, I'd say much ado about nothing, but does not have a direct tie to the president of the United States other than he was Jeffrey Epstein's associate for a while.

Exactly. maybe it'll go away. A couple of other media notes in here. Vance wanted to go on Joe Rogan's podcast and discuss everything. Mm-hmm. Hear the air. I didn't he, he nominated himself after someone else was nominated?

Yeah, Todd Blanche. Oh, Todd Blanche. I would love to hear, I would love to hear the three-hour Todd Blanche chat fest there. Like, what would that mean? God. And look, as podcasters, we're taking J.D. Vance over Todd Blanche. That's just it. By the way, Terry Bradshaw was on Rogan the other day. I was kind of jealous of that one.

Another note that came up in this story when Trump was trying to head off that famous Wall Street Journal story about the birthday note with the photo, or excuse me, with the drawing, he called the Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker. And as Haberman and Swan note,

practically shouting, the president told Tucker, who is British, that she must, quote, hate America. if she is publishing that story about him. Great stuff. A lot of stuff in here about Cash Patel and Dan Bongino. Bongino is quoted saying, this is going to be President Trump's Iran Contra.

Bongino also stormed out of a meeting with Susie Wiles, who told him that she had been told that he had leaked a story about all this ABC News. Quotes in these stories are always fascinating. Maybe people are running tape for some of these meetings. Yeah. But probably what you're doing is a lot of reconstruction, what was said and then cross-checking it.

This from Stephen Chung, who works on Coms or Trump, kind of made my eyebrows go up. Pardoning Maxwell, a trafficker of young girls, would create a huge PR problem. Can somebody actually say that? in that way. The other takeaway here, I think, and this made a lot of people's eyebrows go up,

came in one of those situation room meetings. One Epstein victim had sent an email saying that she knew another Epstein victim. Okay, follow me here? And victim number one claimed that victim number two told her, and here I quote from Swan and Haberman, that Trump had a predilection for nipples.

So as Haberman and Swan portrayed, here's the president's whole team in the situation room, figuring out how to deal with that piece, and again, just an allegation, just a second or third-hand allegation, but trying to figure out how to deal with that piece of this entire story. Yeah.

And I must read you one more paragraph here. The vice president said he thought the president would be okay with releasing the nipple-related documents. Arguing that Trump had been accused of worse. I think we should put it out, he said. It would cause people to say we're going further than we need to. Wiles quickly responded that the president would not, in fact, be okay with it. Anyway, check out the entire excerpt over at the New York Times.

We'll have much more about regime change over the next few weeks. Barry Weiss, David. I took the Tuesday show off, hoping you would have just churned through all of your Barry Weiss, but no. Well, we had too much Scott Pelley to talk about it. That's true. That's true. Question that has surrounded Barry Weiss and CBS News, but you and I have asked a couple of times, is how much does bad press matter? Mm-hmm.

The fact that you'd have Scott Pelley, a well-regarded correspondent, talking about 60 minutes being murdered. Talk about CBS being on fire. How much does that matter? And when I say matter, I mean to David Ellison, who is Barry Weiss's boss. She apparently reports directly to him. Is there a point where he says,

whatever I'm getting out of this person, is it worth all of this terrible press for my news division? It's not just, is Weiss going to do a good job, but is she going to do such a good job that she will overcome all of this? Well, a couple of stories I want to submit to you here. One came from Dylan Byers in Puck. He wrote about this in May.

Buyers wrote that members of the senior leadership team have had informal discussions about changing Barry's mandate at CBS News and eventually CNN in ways that would give her less control over the linear product. Paramount would look to bring in an executive who could manage that business. And Byers continued sources with knowledge of the conversation said that Barry would likely see day-to-day control over the evening news, CBS mornings, and 60 minutes to this more experienced as-yet-unnamed executive, shifting her focus to the news division's digital growth.

Now, that makes it sound like Weiss is being layered, that important responsibilities are being taken away from her. I mean, if this is true, it's maybe more interesting than anything, is that, like, she doesn't seem privy to the discussions. which goes to the layering point, right? I mean, there is a way to do this exact same thing with Barry involved, right? And just be like, listen,

there's only one way to head some of this stuff off. We just got to assign, you just got to pick a right hand who's going to do all the day to day, you know, and make it look like your choice and whatever else. But according to this, she seems sort of separate from it. Then there's another piece that came out, from Sarah Fisher and Mike Allen and Axios.

And their piece is sort of the opposite of buyer's piece in which they say that Paramount is hunting around for a business side counterpart to Barrywise. And they say the search implies that if Paramount Skydances deal with Warner Brothers Discovery goes through, Weiss would oversee all news editorial across both CBS and CNN. So now we're not talking about somebody being brought in to kind of layer her, say, hey, we brought you in to do digital stuff. somebody's going to take care of the day-to-day 60 minutes, which he has definitely been, as we know, involved in various ways.

This is more of, okay, somebody's going to take care of the business so that you can focus on editorial. Yeah. In a sense. And then Byers had another piece last night sticking by his original report. So I guess those are two outcomes. Byers does mention that the bigger story here, maybe at the end of the day,

or at least, let's call it the other big story, is not just what is Barry Weiss going to do to CBS, but what's going to happen when CBS and CNN are combined? Yeah. How many jobs are going to be lost? It's true. And when you're reading from articles that are speculating about new hires, I'm sure they'll still hire, you know, the multimillion dollar business executives.

Those people probably won't be redundant when those two things come, you know, overlap. They seem to be the last to go. Yeah, every single time. Yeah, it's going to be very interesting to watch. It's going to be, it's just, it's hard to believe how, even watching it in real time, how much this is sort of like, is going as predicted. You know what I mean? Oh.

Everything from the ideology to the incompetence was predictable. Yeah. I am grimly fascinated by what the next season of 60 Minutes is going to look like. I don't know what you... I actually didn't listen to the show earlier this week. I apologize. So I don't know how much of it that you guys got into. But in some sense, like, listen, line editing for, like, ideological reasons,

just that's an absolute no. The sort of broader point about the sanctity of 60 minutes while I'm sympathetic to it, I was just like, I kind of feel like anybody who in her shoes would, should do exactly that. Like, you know, no sacred cows, right? Like, this is our biggest show. Let's make it an even bigger show. You know, like, whatever.

That's got to be some of the thought process. But even that, it's like, she would, like, the, the, whatever, the holdover forces were proven right again and again and again. You know, it's just like everything just comes with an inherently negative story about it. The question isn't, should. should 60 minutes change to adapt to the new world we're in. The question is, is very wise the person to change it? Sure.

Is she capable of doing that. Of all of the things that have warranted, you know, insider stories about her tenure so far, this is really just theoretically the one I have the least trouble with. You should have an eye on 60 minutes. But she's not the one to change it. She's just not the one to change. And every article I read about this, there's this framing. And I don't know if this creeps in from Weiss and Company.

because journalists presumably seek comment and are trying to be fair to her and figure out. But there's this framing in there that the people at CBS News are these old TV dinosaurs and that she is trying to drag them into the streaming age. And my response is, name me one thing she's done at CBS News that has anything to do with streaming or the future. she's doing TV stuff out of 1986, which is booking BB Net and Yahoo for a newsy interview and changing the anchor of the evening news.

That stuff people have done forever. If anything, she's old media, not new media, and it's very, very flattering for her to be portrayed as well, you know, these people, they still think Walter Cronkites, you know, Brian, old media, what do you think, what's the over under on the last year, in which a major news network hired a newspaper reporter as their new boss.

Like 1910 or something? I know, but the free press makes it. No experience in video, and she's like, let's take over a TV outfit. But the free press then, again, and everybody's eyes like, oh, you're into the digital world. You know how to do that. Okay, well, we'll see about that.

Related report from Natalie Korachian's status. Daniel Dale. America's fact-checker, David, Daniel Dale. America's fact-checker by way of Canada has not done an on-air fact-check for CNN in three months since he fact-checked Trump's State of the Union. He's done online stuff. He's done short-form video,

and CNN, of course, denies the status that anything is amiss. But you might ask, what happened three months ago? Well, as Korach writes, Two days after his State of the Union fact check, Paramount announced its blockbuster merger with Warner Brothers discovered. Certainly interesting timing. The World Cup starts today, which will be what you're watching when you change over from wrestlers, flip over from wrestling. Have you been following the saga of Freddie the German soccer fan? No.

Okay, this is kind of like a guy who made Seinfeld joke. Yeah, as soon as you ask it, I'm like, I think I've seen a lot of tweets about this and didn't know the subject. About how endearing it is? Freddie L.A. 7 on Twitter has traveled to America, apparently, and has published a series of wide-eyed posts about the sights and sounds of our country. Freddie went to Taco Bell, which he called the Holy Land. Posted a picture. went to Walmart, went to Buckees. Wow.

Near and dear to our Texas hearts. Freddie went to the Waffle House and tweeted, Just had our first Waffle House experience at 1 a.m. Great food, great prices, and friendly staff. 10 out of 10, we will be coming back. We certainly got the American comment section posting style. That's great. Freddie also tweeted, I love Americans.

We were about to walk an. hour to the stadium in the rain to save on an Uber. And the receptionist at the hotel we were parked in front of decided to drive us there. Now, I've seen a lot of tweets saying, this is so awesome. Follow this man. This is, this is so touching. I've also seen some tweets led by our friend Jay Kang at the New Yorker saying, is this real? Oh, yeah.

Or, you know, did this start? Start out real and now we're just being, is this an ad? For Waffle House or whoever we're tweeting about? FIFA or something. Like, what's happening here? Or is this like a, like a QAnon-style sci-op? What are we, exactly, are we accusing Freddie of here? We're not accusing him of anything because this is a media podcast, but we are just, we

are responsibly wondering aloud if something that is so touching. So, so, so why. died about the wonders of American life could possibly be just that. I would never dream of calling him or anyone, Alexi de Hoaxville. You laughed at that one.

I did. That was a good pun. Yeah. You think there's a career these days in being just like an itinerant short form ghost writer? Like my job is to just just travel the country, identify the various Freddies of the world,

and give them their moment by taking over their social media accounts and being them, really doing it, and, like, creating the character and then just dipping out after two months or whatever. It feels unnecessary because most people just volume post and

doesn't matter whether, how good or bad and stuff, it's like, I just ate a pastrami sandwich. Look at it. Yeah. But, yes, there probably is a certain art form there, and there should be somebody if there's not already to... Who just does it, right?

It's just like... Whatever. It's like, find the oldest living Knicks fan who's been waiting for this for so long and just, like, be their Twitter voice for a week. Yeah. There was some good stories, by the way. You see the person who went to Rikers to watch the Knicks game? That was good.

I was jealous of that. We got some updates to our unknockables list. Oh, I was waiting for this. This was the May issue of the press box getting in just under the next. the wire, May 31st, you and I took a 1966 Esquire story that seek to gather the very small group of people that no one objected to.

And make it better. That no one could knock. We wanted to make it better, but we wanted to mainly do a 2026 update of the unknockables. Here are some of the, a lot of people wrote us and said, hey, you put Martin Scorsese on the list. And then he immediately embraced AI. Is this an unknockable's curse?

that we're looking, that we're staring down here? Cover curse. Yeah, maybe we should have put Uncle Stephen on the list instead of Martin Scorsese anyway. Thanks for that. Ralph Rousseau and Josh Weissman ask, how could we leave Paul McCartney off the list? He was on one of the early lists, wasn't he? He was on, but I think we picked Stevie Wonder over him. Sir Paul should probably be on the list.

I will say, though, they might be, you know, there might be some like magnetic what is it called when the magnets push against each other there might be some tension I don't know if you can be knighted and be unknockable at the same time I think you might have to pick but didn't we have some dames and sirs

I know yes yeah I was trying to I'm just trying to make an excuse um yeah now it's true if that is indeed the original Paul McCartney then he should probably be on the list yeah I you know him playing off Colbert right

I mean, that's, you know, he's just, he did season finale of Saturday Night Live. Yes. Do you think we could get a redo of Ebony and Ivory on our Nuckables list if we have both? Yeah. No, no, no. He definitely deserves to be there. And that whole James Corden thing that he did is just like, it's fairly recent, but already just like a YouTube Hall of Fame clip of him going back to Liverpool and everything.

Anyway, yeah, he probably deserves it. Listeners, Kevin Lazzan and Bob Capetchi had a good idea. Chef Jose Andres. Oh, there you go. W.P. Callahan writes this. I can make a persuasive case for most of the cast of Star Trek the next generation. Patrick Stewart being the most obvious choice and Lovar Burton probably being the better one. LeVar Burton's a good one.

From Reading Rainbow to his current podcast, Levar Burton reads, I have found Lebar Burton to be a great advocate for literacy and a fine example of aging gracefully. Levar Burton is absolutely unknockable. We got to vote for Snoop Dogg. We talked about Snoop Dogg. We talked about him.

And Patrick Stewart, for that matter, but I don't think we even got Lavar Burden. That's a real oversight. That was an oversight. And I had a whole space traveler category, too. Philip Stratton writes, I knew that Snoop Dog made the list with my 68-year-old father, who is a son of a Methodist preacher

texted me during the Olympics asking if I was watching Snoop Dog coverage and my mom sent videos to the family group text of my dad laughing at him. Yeah, he's there. But he also, didn't he also? You bought a soccer team too, a British soccer team. I feel like that's in most situations

kind of a heel move. So I don't know. It's tough. Matt Sinkowitz points out another big omission. Malala, Usavsa, the activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner. Who besides the Taliban has a knock on Malala?

Matt writes. He also suggests Lewis Hamilton, though you and I probably have to know more about F1 to put him on the list. Guy Daggata had two really good ones. Neil Patrick Harris. Okay. Anybody against Neil Patrick Harris?

No, there's a lot of comedy actors or comedic actors that could have gone on the list. but you know i mean even though it's the list is sort of like it implies some sort of timelessness there is a sort of still an an editorial consideration of like who's like of the moment and i didn't think and there was no real obvious of the moment choices that didn't make the list also hyo miazaki oh yeah that's a fantastic one he should have been on the otterer list yeah absolutely for sure for sure nobody doesn't like miazaki uh guy also proposes

is a universally disliked list. Mm-hmm. This is kind of the opposite of the unknockables. He nominates Ted Cruz, King Charles, Kim Jong-un and Nickelback. Put that list together. That's a pretty solid for some. Darren Cohen writes of Pat Riley, who you and I considered but did not put on the final list. The man is and will always be enemy number one in America's largest city.

that is New York, think that makes you ineligible for even being mentioned for such an honor the day he sent the facts quitting the Nix. I remember leaving high school and putting on Mike and the Mad Dog

a woo boy, it was mid-June and Pat the Rat was the topic for 5.5 hours of radio perfection. Jack Poore writes to us, you brought up showrunners at the end of the episode. Who would knock Vince?

I'm the one who knocks Gilligan. Not bad. Brian Smith suggests Michael Pallin. Oh, yeah. I thought of John Cleese, and I think John Cleese probably has enough tweets and political takes that he is not unknockable, but Michael Pallon is. Ryan Harrington suggests Paul Simon. Okay. Tracy F. says Alan Alda.

Oh, yeah. Is he so with us? He's still with us. Dang. Okay. Hawkeye Pierce is still with us. A. Brodina, I suggest David Remnick. Yeah. I kind of wanted to do a whole journalism version of this.

Because like David Grand's on the list. Patrick Gratton Keeff's on the list. Christian Almanpur is on the list. Maybe another time. And Jaron Perizek says Denzel Washington. Yeah. All great suggestions. Finally.

I was in Sweden last week. Oh, what a joy it was to be in Sweden, David. there were certainly some corporate activities going on but also because I had 10-hour flights to and from Amsterdam I got to do a lot of reading. I read four books four books

four books during this trip I read Henning Mankel oh that's a good one I read another Swedish novel called Dr. Glas which was published in 1905 and was a wonderful and very, very modern book. Terrific.

I read Hemingway's immovable Feast, which I had never read. And I read a wonderful memoir by a BBC booker named Sam McAllister. But in the midst of that reading, I also found the best used bookstore in Scandinavia. Oh, okay, here we go. Now, by the way, the best used bookstore in Scandinavia sounds like the title of one of these novels that you will take on your next trip. There will be a murder at the best used bookstore in Scandinavia.

There's a New York Times bestseller right there. Yeah, maybe a Helen Mirren show that appeals to. Yes. The, both of our moms, they tell us how great it is the next time we talk to them. Yeah. They're just like, I can just, I can just smell the fresh bread. I don't know why. Fresh cardamum buns.

Yeah. So I wrote ahead, emailed ahead to the best bookstore in Scandinavia. Oh, I want to see one of these pitch emails comes with these days. I might have to use one. I mean, it was mostly like, hey, I'm on this podcast and we talk a lot about used books. Mm-hmm. But one of the people that worked there was kind enough to meet with me. So I took my microphone, and I had him introduce himself, pronouncing.

pronounce his name and also the name of the story. Okay, it's not so common in your country, but it's Pontus, P-O-M-T-U-S-L-E-N-T-U-S-O-L-D-E-N. What's the how do you pronounce name in the bookstore? Renel's Antiquariat What's a bit difficult for you Antique variat means antiquarian in Swedish

Ronald's is a fantastic bookstore and Pontus was a fantastic guy, the perfect person to me to use bookstore great which is to say he was smart he was informed

he was not braggy if you're a chest beating kind of person, you probably don't work at a used bookstore. Tracks a different type. Pontus has worked at Ronald's for 45 years. Wow. 45 years.

That's great. He told me he started out as a clerk, alphabetizing the books. And then he got promoted to where he was buying collections, people who were selling their books. And then, and this is much more common in Sweden than it would be in the United States, he became one of the owners of the bookstore.

Here he explained. Every young bookstore employee's dream. This guy is living in. It is. Here he, Pondis, explains how. It used to be an old family business, but the last family owned died in 1998, and then we took over. we were eight and I'm the only one left now but we have shared the stocks or the the

owner so so we are five now or six now or those and what does group ownership do you think what benefits does that we don't have to have a boss that's very good are a few meetings it's very nice. So I think that's the good part that we can decide together. It works very well. That's my professional goal as well, not to have any meetings. A boss, I guess.

I can abide that, but no meetings. By the time you're his age, your version that's going to be like, oh, it's a great place to work. Very few meetings, no podcasts. That probably will be the, will be what I say. Ronald's has 100,000 items. Okay.

100,000. About 25% of the books are in English. They have an English fiction section, but all the other books are mixed. Oh, okay. If you go to archaeology or Egyptology, both of which were sections there, you will find Swedish books.

Yeah. And English books. And you just go on this wonderful treasure hunt to find interesting things. That's awesome. What Shakespeare and company is to Paris, Ronald's is to Stockholm. Now, in the 80s, this bookstore was one of those places where well-to-do

Swedish men came in looking for fancy, expensive books with gold bindings. Now, as Pondas told me, most of the books in the store are under $30. Okay. Or $300, crooner, if you will. He showed me some really cool old editions of Nietzsche and Winnie the Pooh. Awesome. But most of the story is in the Brian and David's own. Most of it is?

Yeah. Oh, great. The vast majority. 30 bucks and under. I found Swedish editions of Henderson the Rain King. Oh, nice. Of Goldfinger. Nice.

The James Bond Adventure. Of Robert Hughes's history of Australia. Yeah. which proves something I've long believed that every used bookstore in the world inevitably includes Robert Hughes' history of Australia. Found Stephen King's The Tommy Knockers. The Swedish translation of the title was just The Knockers. Sounds like what Donald Trump's staff was worried about.

The Epstein Report. I bought a copy of Raymond Chandler's Trouble is My Business. Oh, yeah. translated title in Swedish was One's Death I texted you right away and I was like this is the toughest book I have ever owned in my life

Yeah So it had two crooks holding guns on the cover And I took it up to the front desk And I purchased it and I bought a t-shirt too And the cashier took my book and wrapped it in thick green paper And you know taped it on the sides like it was a Kift? Was that even asking you? Well, it was an old school parcel.

Oh, yeah. And I put it in my bag and I felt so good. Oh, the old school parcel. I love it. Oh, my God. I also asked Pontus, as a bookseller, do you ever see books and think, I don't want to sell that?

I want to own it. Here's what he said. Not so often. I'm not to collect myself. I'm a reader. so I often not often but rather often I can bring a book home and then I bring it back

I don't have to keep it I like it no not so much no no I collected Kafka when I was young so I bought some really good I still have them but that's my

well more like I don't know I don't want to sell them yet but I will someday It's hard to part with books. Anyway, Ronald's was a fantastic store.

I could have spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars in there. When in Stockholm, please stop by. Thanks to Pontus Solden, and congrats to Ronald's Antigvariet. You are one of the best used bookstores in the world. Coming up in 30 seconds, folks, it's Dave Weigel. But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week,

David, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the Pressbox pod where they are always gratefully received. When you go see the Odyssey at movie theaters this summer, you can buy something special at the concession stand. A souvenir popcorn bucket. Have you noticed how... Every movie has souvenir popcorn buckets now?

Yes. I didn't see He-Man. I didn't come within 100 yards of He-Man, but there's a little. there was both the Castle Grey Skull and Battlecat popcorn bucket. Yeah. Which would have thrilled young Brian and David to absolutely no end. Absolutely. For the Odyssey, they are selling a Trojan horse filled with popcorn.

Not the helmet turned upside down. That's what I would have guessed. No, it's Trojan horse. Trojan horse. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write. Popcorn, eh? Yeah. I'm not falling for that.

If you feel safer with Battlecat holding your popcorn, congrats, you made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. By the way, very funny to see all the, I think, correct takes about how the movies are back last week. And then you looked at the box office results and scary movie five was the number one movie in America. Yeah. Both these things can be true,

but it's kind of funny that they're both true. Yeah. All right, we're joined by Dave Weigel, politics reporter at Semaphore where he writes the Americana newsletter. He likes to say subscribe to the newsletter. And you should right now. Dave, welcome back to the press box. Oh, it's good to be here again.

Thanks, guys. Graham Platner won the Senate primary in Maine. You spent some time there. What kinds of things does Platner need to do now to win the general election? Right. I spent some time there. I talked to Plattener throughout the campaign because let's dial it back, I'm answering your question, but he gets into the race

with a bunch of instant media attention, organized by fight agency, his strategists, who have a record of nominating these populists, at least in affectation candidates. Platner being somebody who had some privilege growing up, but this has entered a blue collar life as an oyster man. And their belief in this campaign is that the story of Graham Platner combined with the fact

Collins has to run as Donald Trump's Republican Senator, that that is going to be enough that can withstand every scandal, every story, because they disagree in the campaign that some of these things are scandals. So what does he needs to do? The simple answer is if he got most of the people who voted for Kamala Harris in name to vote for him and no one who voted for Donald Trump, then he would win. The decisive voter has been a Democrat who's willing, or I'd say, let's call him a moderate who does not want to vote for the Trump for Hulligan Party, but does like Susan Collins, that was decisive in 2020. Is that storyline going to appeal to them?

Because I do think they're, I wouldn't say their intention, but they are different things that the campaign is trying to do. One is to make Platter himself and every man who's made a lot of mistakes. And if you hear about one, factor it into the fact that he's made mistakes and trying to get better. But the other part is a very populist campaign that is saying throw out this incumbent. been senator and shake up the system and soak billionaires slash the Epstein class, this term he uses in a new ad. What does he need to do? That's the strategy. We know he needs to win. We know what the strategy is, is basically running a Bernie Sanders populist campaign with this, I don't think this week you call it an asset, with this accompaniment of a messy

biography. How did the Democratic voters you talk to talk about the allegations in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal stories? Well, I, in the last trip there, which was last week, from what we're talking, was focused on Plattener supporters, people who were showing up. I did not do a lot of personal interviews outside polling places. I did a little bit just to get some. I did not, and I was, again, if that was my focus, I probably could have found, well, we're looking at 28% of the Democratic primary vote that didn't want to vote for Platner. But I generally found people repeating the campaign's line. And if you watched Platner a couple days later on election night,

one of his signs, the sign on his podium or his lectern said they don't get, they don't know Maine. So they agreed with that premise that the Graham Platner story is so inherently Maine, inherently relatable that it's the media that is responsible for people talking about something else. They want to talk about the story, but they also want to talk about this populist message. Universal, that's what I heard, versions of that at the campaign. And some digging in, some people who was supported Platner saying the fact that he was under attack in the media, and that's generally how they put together, right? Not I saw this on Fox News, not I saw this on

Seaman, but the media is after him. The fact that they were attacking him, that's the point of the populace message is you can fold that in and say the reason that I'm getting negative coverage which is because of these corporate owners of the media who don't want populists to win. I think if somebody's been covering Democrats 20 years, yeah, 20 years, probably not Democrats, but with a focus on Democrats for a while, I think that's evolved.

That is not brand new, but that is becoming a more popular position among Democratic primary voters, who, again, are generally whiter, more well off than people who vote in a general election at this point in a place like Maine, that's becoming pretty popular. And I think the attention on the Ellison's moves through the media,

the Trump administration's threats to the media through the FCC, I think that has kind of gotten below the top soil for Democratic voters, and that changes how they see something that's a negative story about somebody they like. I noticed Platner called the Times and the Journal Establishment outlets, quote unquote. Yes. Well, much more succinct. You can do the succinct part if I can do the long-winded part. Right, I'm running against the political establishment, and I'm also kind of running against the media establishment, which happens to be headquartered in New York or Washington rather than in Maine. Yes, yes, classic tactic. If you covered the Tea Party in 2010, it was a version of that tactic. And I'm not a, I'm not one people who needs every scale to balance in a story.

Both sides do it. I'm just saying, this is, this is a democratic message is interesting. And I, and I, that's what I'm saying. In Maine, Kamala Harris won Maine. Bernie Sanders was not the nominee in Maine. Bernie Sanders was popular Democrats. It is a bet that because Collins has beaten other Democrats, it's a bet that they need to make it a full-on populist burning campaign, not one of the more moderate Democratic campaigns that have won statewide, but not beating Collins. It's a trendy thing to write right now that Donald Trump has reset the parameters for what counts as a scandal these days. What's the evidence that that's true both in Platner's case and with Democrats more broadly? I'm only pausing because the goal I was saying this, somebody else today. The goal of

campaigns is to fix in people's minds, most voters' minds, the one they need to win a couple of facts about the candidate. You're not going to know every policy position, but you're going to know that they took XYZ positions, and you'll know some facts about them. And so the

job of a campaign is to win the argument about the person's character so that maybe you think you hear scandals and think, well, of course, he has some scandals. I think that's what happened with Republican voters and Trump and also the new voters who voted for Trump. I don't think individual, and you saw this in polling when you'll see an open-ended poll that asked people to associate Trump with.

The idea was that he had a bunch of scandals that were known, versions of versions of which be based on behavior that was known before he ran for president. and people put the scandals in one box and voted on other issues. That is the goal for everybody. They want every, a lot to happen. Either the scandal to disappear or the scandal to be put in a column where voters consider other issues. So Trump has been incredibly helpful in that. Trump's particular accusation against him, I should say, want to be careful about how you describe them, are not agreed on by everybody.

But I'd say among Democrats, very popular to believe the act. absolute worst thing you've heard about Trump. You will see, you see this in Democrats in Congress like Ted Liu talking about the Epstein files and saying stuff, making accusations about Trump that would be hard to back up in those files if you were not a member of Congress and therefore could use the speech of debate clause to say things that'd be dangerous to say on a podcast. And because Democrats think Trump has gotten away with that much, they don't know why this would bounce back against Epstein. One of the, there's a, you saw a reaction. You saw a reaction. from the pro-Platinor media, which is another relevant thing here, just the progressive media infrastructure

for Democrats for these candidates outside of mainstream media, it's just much more robust than it was even two years ago. But in that media, you saw when Platner went on Morning Joe and was asked if the accusations against him, which are being rough with a girl he dated and sending romantic messages to several women while he was still married a couple years ago. Those are the main character accusations about his personal life. The question for Mika Brzezinski was, well, this is make it more complicated for you to talk about the Epstein files? And he answered it. He kind of denied the premise of the question. I think he did so in line with Democrats,

because they have been trying to change the way people view Trump into not, there's some scandals and they're not relevant, but that he is personally corrupt. He is tied in with the corrupt elite who run the world. a sort of theory of the world that jumps between parties and it is important to understand how his corruption is making your life worse. They're trying to draw out the scandal part of Trump,

which on its own just hasn't been enough to beat him into his character issues are reflected in his choices about what to spend on money that he personally gets to the presidency, pardons he gives to people when they donate to him to his super PAC or his presidential library. That's where they're trying to do with Trump. the actual character accusations about him.

That's what they think, is that it started lowering, let's say, with Bill Clinton in 1998, and it has continued to lower. You can poll voters, there are different personal mistakes that they assign different importance to. For example, and I think this is, this is to you, I believe, but that just behavior, cheating on your spouse is viewed very negatively

in a way that posting something unfortunate online is not. or even having a bad tattoo is not. This has been looked at, and the voters, again, that they want to win, have a different view of this. It's just interesting to watch Democrats agree that their standards can't be high if Republican standards are not high. And this is something I've heard talking to Democratic strategists this week about all this, is that they don't think Republicans are criticizing platinum in good faith.

obviously when a Democrat like John Federman criticized Platernor has more weight in the media let's agree on that sure everything when Republicans do it doesn't have that much weight because nobody believes that they really think these character issues

are refiring repents let's say somebody at Doge had that tattoo and got it changed would they would would the administration defend that person from the woke left? Probably would that's how they think about it forgive me if you already wrote this but there's a good Wigo column about Platterner

progressive media because he went on pod save with Tommy Veter when those Reddit posts first came out he went on with Chris Hayes after the stories came out of both stories of the journal and the Times and then as you mentioned one more trip to Morning Joe after he won the primary

that's been fascinating to watch I want to ask you about Texas because as soon as Ken Paxton won the Republican Senate runoff there Republicans started attacking James Tala Rico the Democratic nominee as a Wimp I could use other words but let's go with Wimp

here on this family podcast. Here is Ted Cruz making the case the other night with Fox's Sean Hannity. I got to say, if you were making a list of a thousand adjectives to describe this guy, masculine would not be one of them. I mean, this guy, if a stiff breeze came by, it would blow him over like a feather. Where does that line of attack come from, Dave? I think it's pretty direct. And I'll abide by your parameters on what we can talk about.

but it's some of the least subtle association campaigning I've seen in a while. Their work was done as soon as Tala Rico wins the March Democratic primary. Republicans are hopeful, I'd say not Texas Republicans, D.C. Republicans are hopeful that John Corny wins the Senate runoff. But Republicans have been messaging this for three months now. As soon as Tala Rico was clearly in the lead, going to be the nominee, rather,

there were attacks on what he said about basically transgender rights and the basis for restricting them as Texas has done. He was, he during a debate on it said there are actually six sexes in referring to biological differences, abnormalities in addition to male and female. Which he said, I've talked about this, is to win the debate point and be provocative. He wanted to debate Republicans who were banning gender medicine and that he didn't think they understood. He said another debate that God is non-binary. That was the basis of it. but he made an appearance on a podcast in 2023,

where he talked about, actually I put this, the final question of the podcast for him was about what he loves in addition to his family. And he said, I'm just going to say, because I'm thinking about it, because it's on my mind,

the trans children who came to the Capitol fight for the right. So Tala Rico was referring to those debates, Texas banned gender medicine for minors, classify his child abuse. Ken Paxton, who's running for the Senate seat now, his AG's office has been litigating in other states to ban it. So that was a political position in Tala Rico took,

and what Republicans have done, Republican and Republican media, is cut that up, usually truncated to say, I love the trans, I love because I love the trans children, not that they were on the Capitol, not the cons text. and the discourse in Republican politics and conservative media has been that he must be creepy, he must be a grumer to use a word that was put a lot more

into his circulation in 2021. And so on Ken Paxton wins the primary, the runoff, I should say, and he and the people introducing him, including Congressman Brandon Gill, who's a very anti-woke Republican congressman, he uses his hearings to grill the leaders of liberal groups and ask them to defend the language they use.

They all mentioned this trans children comment. And so the implications did not been not been subtle. Stephen Miller, the White House chief of staff, calls him the first transgender candidate. Everything going on has been conservative media in Texas is basically beg the question of why Talarico's not seen with a girlfriend. Tyler Rico said he had one. There were questions about that. Some reporting was done to establish that he is dating a former staffer who, when they started dating, got private and Republicans in conservative media in Texas have been attacking him as somebody who unethically

was dating staff. That has not gotten as much traction as the other attack. The very, the very gender-specific, LGBTQ-specific attack on Tala Rico really has undergirded everything and in the effort to make him look like culturally alien and dangerous because the premise of these Texas laws is that people who want gender medicine for minors are literally child mutilators. This isn't in the heck they're very comfortable than making. If you talk to the libs, I think they will tell you, or they will ask, how in the world can anyone vote for Ken Paxton, given all of his scandals?

And I think we can actually use the word scandal there. You've studied this race. You've talked to Republicans. What is the appeal of Ken Paxton in Texas? I just talked a little bit about it at the end of the answer, because I think in, it is often reported in political media that liberals read. that Ken Paxton is this Trump ally who sued to overturn the 2020 election. That's true.

In Texas, he has done a lot of work that I was mentioning this on social conservative priorities. So he's used the Texas A.G.'s office, well, one, to go after media matters is one thing he did. He helped when Elon Musk was court shopping for people who would do that. But on gender medicine and on abortion, he has made the office very aggressive in prosecuting people disobeying Texas's laws. And you saw in 2022, 2023, the period of Telry who made that comment. And you saw people profiles, people leaving the state for that reason. So that's what he, he is

a, he is not just seen as a strong, solid warrior for Republican values. He's seen as the kind of Republican by conservative primary voters who actually fights when a lot of them will say, oh, I'm against that, and then not litigate it, not do anything about it or not ban it. This is the popularity of Ron DeSantis. his own state. So, Paxton's messy divorce, his impeachment, those have been problems for him. He doesn't have quite the same appeal as Trump and look at this rascal who is only being

attacked because of the liberals who run the establishment. There's some of that. It's just not as powerful as for Trump. A lot of it really is that, and he got this office because Ted Cruz endorsed him in 2014 against a more moderate Republican. He has been known among Republicans for a very long time as one of the guys who will absolutely start shooting when other Republicans are cautious about the possible backlash. He will take on, like DeSantis, he'll take a company stuff. He's just not as media-friendly as DeSantis,

and that's part of this race, is that Paxton does not court the media very much. He's done a little bit since he won the election, but Tala Rico wants to be personally in people's for you page getting their attention all the time. And Paxton talks to conservative media and is not the focus of his campaign, anti-Talorico attacks or more the focus is campaign.

I think I learned this from you. Ken Paxton does not debate either, right? He hasn't debated, yeah. And so, yes, Republicans have strong advantages in Texas in every election. They haven't lost a statewide election in the century. But, yes, Paxton has had competitive races before. He lost re-election 2018.

He did much better. in 2022, but remember, he was primary that year by George P. Bush and another Republican, George P. Bush being the Jeb Bush's son living in Texas. And Paxton won that without debating them. They challenged him, didn't work, and didn't debate in the general election. So it's not that he would melt down in a debate. He's definitely a less, I think, effective speaker than Tala Rico, put it that way. But he's one of these Republicans, and this has been a trend too you've seen across the country and in a state where you don't really need um to worry about losing to a democrat uh yeah not going not debating your opponent on some on some liberal media platform

you have you pay no price for that Republican voters do not mind uh Dave I live in L.A you used to live in L.A does the slow count in California that ended with Spencer Pratt in third place have any consequences outside of conspiracy theories oh definitely because who is listening to those conspiracy theories it's people at the White House. It's the U.S. Attorney's Office. So, man, the explanation of California voting is so exhausting that you get the, you get this, you understand what people are tired of it. But basically post-COVID, California has very generous absentee ballot laws. People get mailed a ballot, and ballots are counted until if they are postmarked within a week of election day,

they get added to the count, they get pulled and counted. This has been known, just as the temporary COVID practices in 2020 and other states have been known, and we're known before that election. I'd say, fair to say, the Republican Party has taken a lead from Donald Trump and just characterizing all elections where ballots counted later go against them as phony. They just do that now. It's much rare for Republican to say this is probably legitimate. And so you saw the Speaker of the House Mike Johnson say that.

You saw Attorney General Bill Esle, SLE, going on Glenn Beck's show. to agree with him in launching investigation, be more careful because the problem you just handed at is this is how the law works. Nobody has found actual problem, but it is going a lot like the 2020 stopped the steal aftermath, where because of social media being really uncontrolled at the moment, I'm not saying this endorsement control. It's just Elon Musk has lifted some guardrails that used to exist before and Republicans have successfully gotten guardrails off Facebook, etc. There's a lot of rumor mongering about Ballastounded the trash and that must mean a bunch of that they're fake. there's no chain of custody, which there is.

People are getting signature matches returned, which they think is Democrats still in the election and not proof that signature matches or they're used to verify ballots. It is the same stuff you're in 2020. So the question is, there's a litigation for the Supreme Court right now that would, if it would succeed,

prevent states like California from counting ballots after election night. that would lead to different, a lot of issues about how states have a lot of leeway in controlling their election practices. They can't, you know, discriminated people based on a race and figure of things. They generally can set their own rules.

So that would be a lot in Supreme Court changes that, if it doesn't, the Trump administration is still making it harder, threatening, I should say, to make it much harder for ballots to be delivered in blue states. This is the executive order they are contemplating right now. When I say threatening, we know about the executive order

because the president's talked about doing this sort of thing. So that's why it matters. The absence of fraud in these elections does not prevent that. Just the fact that somebody was winning and then somebody else was winning and more ballots came in later, you've seen a flowering of references to things that didn't happen. For example, the idea that one batch of votes went entirely against Spencer Pratt

and he got zero votes in that, in his mayoral campaign in Los Angeles in one of these updates, that didn't happen. But I just referred to it because it has been posted enough that is believed by a lot of people. And I mean, everything gets back to the media bubble question,

but there's just not a source. There's not the federal government. And then there's not a media source that would explain this in the way that California wants people to explain it. So most of what supportive of the president are hearing officially and through their favorite channels

is that, yes, of course, the fact that this election is taking so long means Democrats are stealing it. It's been an amazing week for anecdotes. I don't know a single person in Los Angeles who voted for the top two Democrats. Right. You've seen people pointing out that there are Spencer Pratt fans in Santa Monica who were to support when they couldn't vote for him and Santa Monica is not far Los Angeles. You've seen anecdotally a lot of that stuff. How much of it is real on Twitter?

well, you can assume a lot of, you can trace people and see that a lot of it is, but I'd also say Pratt was an incredibly popular political betting contact on Kalshi, which is very invested in politics, which gets a lot of, of this millions, tens of millions in this race alone, bets on the outcomes of elections, something that's completely unregulated right now. And they're really, if you, I've not seen a successful case brought, seen one tried against insider trading information in Congress float against George Santos. I've not seen somebody find a campaign that bet against itself and went to court over it.

This is a wild west that people are playing around in. But let's say most people betting on Spencer Pratt legitimately believe because they saw his AI videos, et cetera, that he was going to win. Did some of them lose the money? Did millions of dollars get lost based on betting on Pratt? That looks that way from the way these contracts. are paying out. And unlike, I mean, in 2020, because Trump was denying the election, denying that he lost or had to concede, there was a question about what betting markets were

going to do in that race, paying people out when they got the call right and Biden won. So Pratt himself has indulged in some of this. He's not said that everything was stolen from him, but he said on social media, on X in particular, that he at one point was done. down because of 43,000 ballots to add to the count. And then he linked to a story about how they were close to 40,000 homeless people in the city of Los Angeles. Not hard to draw the implication what he was saying. I think we can call that a conspiracy theory.

That makes no sense. But on social media, you will find video interviews to homeless people who were told they vote for somebody else. How verified is that? It's as verified as somebody going up with their camera and putting it online. People deciding to believe it. The rest of the state, less of that is happening. Steve Hilton, because he was leading on election night

and coverage of the race the first three days showed Republican candidate ahead in California, most of California's counties read. I hope I'm not being too demeaning. This is how the president thinks. Number on election night, chart in election night, amount of red on a map equals that Republicans are doing well. But the president did take credit

for the fact that it was officially called that Hilton would be in the second round of voting over Tom Steyer. He didn't say that that that was only done. because he commented. But that hasn't generated the same questions. And why didn't matter for California? There are Democrats, some of them in these elections who are acknowledging that this looks so bad for the state.

If they can't process ballots faster, one, they're at legal risk of not being able to do that and having maybe hundreds of thousands of voters to show up in November who get their ballots thrown out, more maybe in California. And two, that they, it's just any story that makes liberals look bad, that makes it look like they can't run things,

is bad for them. So Zoraaamandhi's been quite popular, in part because of a very effective media strategy getting in front of services the city's offering and how the city is cleaning up from snow, et cetera. When California is in the news, it is for being unable to do things, is unable for spending a lot of money on a high-speed rail

that wasn't built, spending lots of money on homelessness problems that were not fixed, and spending lots of money on elections that are taking forever to cancel. So that net a story that Democrats who want to win elections are concerned about, even if Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris is not the nominee, I found that with a lot of Republicans. California is sort of a metonym for everything wrong with when Democrats run the country. And Democrats want a story that you see kind of centrist Democratic groups will put forward people like Brooke, you know, Brooke Rollins, the DA in San Francisco, more conservative Democrats who've achieved things and watch crime numbers to go down, et cetera. they want some other story to be told because they all are very concerned about the California story being a drag on that.

A couple media questions before you go. You've been reporting on politics and campaigns for more than 20 years. How has campaign reporting changed over that period? Well, it got easier than it got harder, I would say. So in 2000, I was read my first freelance pieces about politics, I think 2001, 2002. And campaigns had just launched websites. It's easier to find without going to a phone book or finding their office, easier to find a campaign. The media environment was much smaller.

There was a lot of political media, but just a bit of the flowering we've had since, like, 2002. I just say, less competition to talk to a candidate. And then as Facebook and other social media became popular, campaigns would often share what they're doing very, very widely and won attention on it. I'm talking, not just about showing up and seeing the candidate, but getting to know who the strategists are, talking to the strategist, building some level of trust, which you needed to tell the inside story of the campaign, actually break news on it.

That became easier. It became harder the last few years, I think, one, just a lack of trust in sharing information online. We've seen this, generally. People don't put their direct email and phone numbers online because they know they'll get stolen. So on the very basic starting out the story level, slightly hard to reach a campaign. Some have deprioritized in-person campaigning.

You saw this with the Tom Maskey race in Kentucky. Massey made a point out of being very accessible, doing lots of stuff in person and alerting the media about it, having a very busy media handler who was dealing with press coming through the state going on CBS, et cetera, news that was not friendly to him necessarily. And his opponent, Al Gore-Rine, did not do that. He did a lot of conservative media. But any reporter who went down there would tell you, it was hard to find him in advance where he'd be.

He liked to do, this is pretty common in the age of campaigns being pictures and vertical videos online. Very common for a campaign to do some stuff in the day and then post later, hey, we really enjoyed being at this bakery. We really enjoy meeting the workers at this factory. Sometimes there'll be media that they bring along for one thing, but they've tried to push out the direct access to the candidate. The actual coverage of the campaign mechanics, that's up to the campaigns.

Coverage of the financing, again, much easier and then harder because some of the nonprofits that made it a little bit simpler to sift through finance information, lost resources. Who does and doesn't get investments in nonprofit sector ends up having an effect on politics. But the through line has been, if we're talking about 2002, I was writing for various magazines, freelancer. I had a blog spot blog, but wasn't doing a lot. with it, but other people were getting it involved in politics as diarist, bloggers, et cetera,

and building a following. That was a new story when I was starting out. It was always a sidecar to the media. It supplemented the mainstream media. Blogging needed that to exist. Bloggers doing interviews, et cetera, making their own content, going to things themselves. That evolved, but it was never as available at the media, and the resources weren't there. You know, How do you take a video of a campaign event and then upload it in 2002? It's very much harder in terms of the equipment you need to bring to you than it is in 2008. That's just been, you've seen campaigns don't need the media like they used to, so they don't cater to it.

And that can mean, generally campaigns, well, if you talk to the right strategies, you can communicate and get their side of the story. They want you to have a communication with you if something bad happens, they need to spin it, right? The candidates themselves, yeah, they don't need to talk to the press. So you encounter more campaigns where there is a public schedule. The candidate will talk. Maybe he'll talk to cameras outside the event. But he doesn't need to go on a TV channel to speak out.

He does that in part just to show voters that he's being active and he's talking about what he's doing. He can post he or she can post vertical video. They can communicate without any media filter. This is all obvious, and I'm saying this is all going to have been written about, lots of books. You have a wiring subscription or you're alive, you've caught up to this. But it really has changed the way that campaigns interact with the press, that you want to report. Like, there are industries that are harder to report in politics.

Not every industry ever had a press secretary who says, yes, you can meet the person and hear what you have to say at this event. There's a lot of opacity in covering other levels of government. This has gotten a bit more, like covering those other levels of government in terms of access. instant public access, and just you need to be relevant. I feel in choosing what you cover, I enjoy just telling a good story about the campaign, but you're aware that if you have a really good poll quote or a new fact that has been under Earth, it might just be taken away from you and spirited away on Twitter, X, rather,

and people will never see where it came from. That's also, there's less literacy-first interaction with the media than there was. was. Everyone knows, everyone again, knows this. I do think it's just changing how people campaign because final thing about it is that there's so much, clipping is what is driving campaigns now, just not just the access, not to the ability to put entire video online, put something live, the ability, live events are less important than taking a video that can go viral. And so every campaign, every campaign with money has the resources you now see the person with a small rig, filming them, or at least you see somebody with a high-quality camera getting

done B-roll but interactions. Okay, this is a good town hall interaction. The kind of thing a reporter would have wanted to use as a lead, possibly, if it's not too prefab and obviously can talk to it. If it's a real moment, they kind of want to do that and get it out to themselves. And if there's a scandal, for example, Graham Platner in the last week, that's a candle subject, How did he respond to that? How would somebody respond to a portal?

He might have in 2002 first been visited by reporters to his house because he hadn't said anything yet. He would have gone given a press conference, given an advanced notice to media, CNN would have been there, et cetera. People would have had a feed of it. The feed would have been disappeared. It wouldn't have been online forever.

And the campaign would have been looking to get the best coverage possible, win as many inches and minutes, in print and TV coverage and to the extent radio coverage. And that's just not how they think anymore. So Plattner is in trouble. Reporters are in touch with the campaign. Reporters also have been talking people who used to work

for the campaign to see what's going to come out next? Or what is the truth behind this accusation, et cetera. But the campaign responds with a video from the candidate and a video from his wife. And that's just there. You know, a reporter doesn't need to go and dig that out. Nobody gets the exclusive. So nobody's sitting down for the first Platon Review,

except he keeps giving interviews, they keep making news, one with Chris Hayes, one with Morning Joe, MS Now, notably. I think this is important for that campaign, not to get back into it because we're trying to wrap up. One of the premises of these populist candidates is often they can go to conservative media and get a hearing because the things they're talking about have a conservative audience, maybe not newsmax, but you could go on to,

a conservative podcast, people to say that is right. Healthcare companies ripping us off, et cetera. Plattner, because of what's happened, been limited in his ability to do that. He's not going on Fox, which through the general Murdoch Media, Fox New York Post, Wall Street Journal, et cetera, have dug a lot in his personal life. New York Post had people at his restaurant eating there to see if he could get a quote from his mother who owns the restaurant. It's Planner delivers oyster to the restaurant.

This is among the stories in the race that may be hard to call us. scandal, but kind of has been one. He communicates through his campaigns on videos, and not for media that's going to just paper it over for him, but media that is generally pretty friendly. And his goal in every answer is just to not give a bad

clip. It's not just to nail 30 minutes of an interview. It's not to have a moment that somebody can clip and turn out of context. Also has to be in your head when you're covering campaigns. You think about what is, well, one, what new information can I extract that is interesting is the first

question, however method I can extract it, what is new that I can get and put on paper, but also what do I need to be aware of because of the way it might be played? It happens a lot now that you're at an event or you're watching something and you see people referring to it incorrectly because they saw a six-second clip. I'm not saying incorrectly like they're being politically incorrect or something, just missing the rest of the statement. This is been done with James Tolariko where any reporter who's covered him has seen him say, the border should be like our front porch with a welcome mat out front and a lock on the door. And Republicans have clipped that to saying, our reporters should be like our front porch with a welcome mat on the front. And that's

it. So this is something that's challenging as a reporter is there's just more through clipping as a medium of witnessing the reality, more shaping and dishonesty about what was said. What do you do as a reporter? How much a story you're spending correcting what has said? I don't think it's that hard, but it's something you have to be constantly aware of. Because otherwise, what are you doing as a reporter that's not just reacting to clips? That's not just saying, this is trending and here's my take on it. You really need to be creating some sort of news and value and introducing new facts into the world or else everything else has been replaced. You don't need to be there. All right, last one for you. On this podcast, we spent a good chunk

at the last year talking about your old employer, The Washington Post. What do you make of what's happened to that paper? Well, it's everyone who's worked there, sad about it. Every conversation you end up having with somebody in public with a current post employee. It is a little funereal. It still, it has been. Even though the Post has come back, the Doge reporting one public service policy, which you should have in the last year, everyone is aware that just it is a place people are trying to get out of.

Not that the quality of the reporting has down, the people who are there. are still good. It's just, it, the cuts took away its capacity to do some of what it was doing before with foreign reporting with different desks, with style books, et cetera. Just, generally, I feel, I feel terrible about it. It's the first day of sports. I didn't even mention sports. I feel terrible about it. For colleagues, and a lot of colleagues have gotten new jobs, but everyone there wanted to retire at the, I would say everyone they wanted to retire the most. Lots of people, when they get there, expect to stay there forever. I certainly did, and they end up going to a startup. But, uh,

It is a place where people who work for 40, 50 years. The one of few viewkeepers that was like that, now it isn't. Now it's just a much more risky sort of job. So that coverage, not at all. I mentioned how it hits politics. I try to sublimate whatever I'm thinking through what I'm covering. And in democratic politics,

I wrote about this a couple weeks ago, it has changed the post reputation so that it's not going to be blocked from covering something, covering a democratic event. When it has negative information about Democrats, it's now seen very skeptically. And the editorial page changes, you talked about them, everyone knows they are, and Bezos goes in and replaces David Shipley with an editor who's going to take the paper in a free market's direction. And it's now a conservative editorial page, as Mark Thieson, the columnist has said.

That has really stacked its relevance with Democrats, James Walkinshaw, the congressman from Fairfax, Virginia. He's telling me, just did, you know, he used to read it at every. every day and the local coverage isn't even what it used to be, so they don't feel like they need to respond. I just think that's terrible. I would, being in the media, but I do think the interaction, the veil between a newspaper and things that are happening in the area covers,

it's good for there to be news organization that is tied in to the community. I just think I really missed that, even after I left. It was very good to catch up on that because I live in the place. I live in the suburbs now, but you live in the region, you want to know what is happening because a disaster happens or there's an election, or you just want to know who won a game. You want some local source to do that.

So the flattening of all political media where the Times is now able to absorb so many people and cover media so definitive, cover politics at least, so definitively, cover the world, so definitively. Yeah, and I'm not just as a post-homer. I think that's that lack of compensation between big newspapers, that's bad too. Yeah, I feel book world, I'd say,

was the one thing that made me saddest, though, because it's like just, yeah. It's such a great job with that. They always had great, I had just different collections in my house and different book critics who worked at the post, but just, that's something I worry about all the time. The lack of literacy by choice

that people are evolving to right now, just having some sort of interesting, surprising book section where you could flip through and, okay, I wouldn't have heard of that, but for this book review, but for this writer who actually read the thing, but from this expert who wrote about it, or this former sonner, right? That's awful. I mean, really, I read, everything, everything was, piss me off. That one just was nonsensical to me.

Just because of that capacity is gone. I think that what I've seen the numbers on it when to make them up, and it's definitely that we're talking, I can we can count the number of professional book critics for newspapers on both hands, I think, and still have fingers left over. That's awful. Truly is. When the opinion section changes stripes, I thought we were going to get a bunch of even the liberal New Republic style stories about that. Ahah, even the liberal Washington Post criticizes the Democrats. But in fact, no, it switched very quickly.

People just kind of ignored it, you know. It doesn't like, as you said, it's almost just like, eh, and it doesn't matter anymore. So there you go. Yeah, I haven't done the reporting on I generally don't. I don't, I'm very loyal to the institution. I really, I really don't want to, even when people have called me and say, can you be anonymous source? I don't want to do that. No, I love the paper. But yeah, I've seen the way, that is now punching bag for liberals in a way that it never, ever was. And the post in the 1980s, you read Eric Alterman's book about the liberal, I guess the rise of pundits. There is an era where Henry Kissinger being in the Post and George Will, it was conservative, part of the national conversation to the irritation of not just Democrats, but leftists,

leftists who were against intervention, Central America, et cetera. It was very relevant in the conversation in a way that I now think some Twitter users and substackers and YouTubers are. And just not just the change of media. I do think the change of media from something reasoned for a thousand words in print versus rambled at length on YouTube or tweeted at short length. I do think something is lost when that. first format is gone.

100%. Dave Weigel, Semaphore, the Americana newsletter, Dave, thanks again for coming on the press box. Thank you very much. All right, it's time for David Shoemaker, guess is the strain pun headline.

Yeah. Our last headline about Jacob Allorty was Jacob Allorty Cans Can Plans, not in jury due to injury. That was a good one. Today's headline, David comes from alert listener,

Eric Martin. It's from the athletic. Okay. A site that many consider a latter-day spy magazine. Zach Mazzel has a fun story over there. It's about why catchers in baseball are being struck more and more by foul balls that hit them in the groin. I don't know that you need much help.

So I will ask you, what was the athletic strain pun headline? You know, we've, I know, has this come up on the show before? When I was growing up, anytime some a guy you know got got it hit in the groin we would just say that he got racked i got i got racked on that on that uh on that fence when i tried to climb over it like whatever and then i and then i didn't think about it again all through high school college when i knew you if i said it it it must people just must have let it go and it wasn't until i was an adult that i said it somebody was like i don't know what you're talking about and i was like racked and i started

asking all my friends from Texas, nobody knew. It turns out it's this very specific, like, skate culture thing that I guess I was, like, peripherally a part of in Louisville, Kentucky. That's the only place where they're talking about RAC. So anyway, that's where my mind immediately goes. That's funny. You should say that because Racked was the go-to term in Fort Worth and middle school. So maybe it is.

It's just Fort Worth and Louisville. Or maybe I brought it to Fort Worth and nobody noticed it. By the way, we have not talked about that on the podcast before to answer your earlier request. The first time I was just like, yeah, racked. And somebody was like, that's not a word. It's just like. It is definitely a word. You want to guess the strain pun headline?

Is it something like foul balls or balls strikes or, uh, yeah, you're there. Ball strike system. Yeah. Ball strike system is, uh, the athletics headline. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Products Magic by Isaiah Blakely. Please follow us on Instagram at Pressbox Ringer,

where you can see this week my collection of Stephen Spielberg magazine covers. Very cool. And a full write-up of Ronald's Antigvariat and some of the other best-used bookstores in the world. Write us Pressbox Ringer at Gmail, plugging a Tuesday show. Me and Joel talked about a number of things. We had a big show.

Plus, we interviewed former RNC chairman, and Michael Steele on that program. That was great fun. David, we're back to normal business hours next week. I'll see you Tuesday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you later, Brian.