The Press Box - Flushing Out the Trump Indictment, LIV-PGA, and CNN’s Cloudy Future

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

Bryan and David talk through CNN’s future and possible restructure (0:40), before jumping into the news of yet another indictment for former president Donald Trump (13:34). Later, they discuss the LIV Golf and PGA Tour merger and how it all unfolded in the media (31:02), and then touch on newspapers' role in the story of Ted Kaczynski, a.k.a. the Unabomber, back in the 1990s (39:58). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everyone, it's Ariel Hawani, and I wanted to let you know that each and every week, I'm part of a great program called The Ringer MMA Show. I hosted alongside two absolutely brilliant minds. Their names, Chuck Mendenhall and Pizzie Carroll. And every Thursday, a new episode drops where we preview the weekend in mixed martial arts and react to all the biggest news. Plus, after every UFC pay-per-view, we give you a post-fight show. So this is what you have to do.

Just follow the Ringer MMA show on your Spotify app. So you don't miss an episode. We'll talk to you then. David? Yes. Let's start with some thoughts on the future of CNN. Okay. CEO Chris Licked was ousted.

Definestrated. Is that how you say it? I think that's the way we say it in media critic land. Last week, I got two pieces I wanted to run by you that were written in the fallout. One is by Brian Stelter, the press. his very own. He had a column in the Washington Post where he advocated for what he called a muscular form

of TV journalism. I think you and I know what this is, right? It's the Republican guy, or let's just say the politician who's lying. Lying about the results of the election, lying about something fundamental, goes on cable news, and the anchor doesn't just sit there and go,

well, I don't know about that, but they actually confront them on the air and be like, no, no, no, you can't lie about that. This is, of course, what got CNN dragged into. Oh, you're a liberal network now. Yeah. Because your anchors were going back at Trump

or going back at Trump's minions. But he says the norm for cable news should be muscular journalism. What do you think about that? It's an interesting question. I think the way that you defined it is compelling. I'm not sure that when I hear muscular journalism, the first thing I think of is CNN, right?

So are we talking about like a new status quo or just a sort of reversion to, I mean, is like, is a commitment to a historical form of journalism inherently muscular? Is a commitment to like the baseline ethos of journalism inherently muscular? I mean, maybe that's what he meant, right? We're like, we just are committed to the art and act of journalism first and foremost. Okay, that's fine. But I'm not sure. I mean, in some sense, what is that calling for? You're not looking for a new president of the network.

You're going for like a guru to, like, motivate, you know, the head coach to get everybody on the field, you know, with that same, like, just drive to succeed. I'm not really sure what that means in an active way. And we're mainly talking about primetime anchors, or I guess, interviewers during the day. Yeah. Because as we saw, Jim Acosta was awfully muscular during the Trump administration. And a lot of people even on the left were like, this is getting to be a lot. Yeah. For our White House correspondent.

But you could look at most of their, you know, big name anchors over the past decade and could call them muscular or, you know, to fold that you could fold them into that whatever definition you wanted without too much difficulty talking about of course tapper and Anderson Cooper and Chris Cuomo I mean there's any number of people I mean all of um I don't know I mean I think I go back and forth we talked about it last week I'm like do we really need to be talking about and talking about this in metaphorical terms of needle moving or you know just being a good shepherd or whatever you know but but if there is going to be a if there is going to be a move if there is going to be a proactive decision made about how we kind of restructure this for the next decade plus i'm not sure that just leaning on

i don't want to say platitudes but just like some like the vague concepts of things like muscular journalism is enough now i'm not saying that stettler thought that was enough just to say those words or anything, but you know, you kind of have to define out what that means. Well, I think, I think what I would maybe tweak it to would be we're the truth telling network or something like that. Because the problem of CNN is that it's in the middle. So you've got Fox News and again, no equivalencies here, but Fox News is very muscular on the right. MSNBC, somewhere not as cuckoo, but very muscular over here. So what you're trying to do is like, how do we work sort of in the middle and make this into something that's really compelling television.

Trump sort of solved their problem, right? Because they were like, you sir, are telling a lie. I am going to get on this program and make sure you didn't. Then the new management decided, well, we don't like that anymore, for whatever reason. Let's dial all this down. Yeah, but it opens up a whole separate can of worms, which is how do you hire for that, right? I mean, and I think that, I mean, I'm not saying they're bound to the same talent pools that Fox and MSNBCR, but in so much as like your shows look like the shows on the other networks. and certainly to a large extent those networks are copying the look of CNN or will continue to if CNN, you know, strays off in another direction because everybody wants to look, especially if you're not down the middle, especially if you have any sort of lean or angle in your coverage,

you want to look as presentable as possible. You want to look as unbiased as possible. So I don't know. It just feels like you're like you almost need to cast a different sort of anchor if you want to be an almost like post-ironic truth teller in a world that's just so muddled, right? You need some sort of like, like, I don't even know. I feel like I always reference Pat Kiernan from New York One because he's not only like the anchor that we spent so much time watching in New York, but also plays the anchor in so many movies, but it's sort of like this almost robotically perfect anchor, but someone like him, but somehow like 10 times is charismatic or something. I mean, I don't know that you can really thread that needle of finding somebody who just like, who is, has all the charisma and doesn't come off as, as, I'm not even going to say biased, but like like the people on the other channels.

It's a weird, it's a very strange. It's a very, it's, they're in a very strange place. I totally agree. I did, I did think I saw flickers of this the other night when Caitlin Collins, who now has the prime time show. This was the last thing Chris Lake did before he left the network. had Bryson DeShambeau on on the day, on the night of the live golf story. Now, that's a great booking, first of all.

That's who CNN should be getting. And all her questioning about him, about, you know, everything from the deal to all the social, political ramifications. It was good. You know, like, that's kind of what you want, I think. And that's at least, now, can you get that guest every night? Are you going to have that crackle where you have an interviewer

who's really leaning? in and, you know, doing a tough interview. I don't know. And this is the cold, here's the cold water. Ben Smith in semaphore writes a column. It's like, just a reminder, what we're arguing about here, all this stuff about where we should position ourselves is about an industry that is probably shrinking. I don't know dying is the right word, because I don't think we're quite there yet, but shrinking is definitely true. Well, that's, that is why we're having this conversation. in some sense because CNN only has so much left to claw onto, right? I mean, it's like this is a, there's only so many more years.

There's only so many more carriage package fees negotiations that they're going to be a part of, you know, and they need to make their money well they can. You know, I mean, it's not, and simultaneously need to define what the future looks like. And obviously that's a problem that all of these news networks are having and no one's quite figured out yet. part of me wonders though I mean I was I was I wanted to come prepared with like a joke rundown of what I thought the CNN daily call sheet should look like

you know or like what the what the coverage should be I got as far as 10 to 1015 funny animal videos and then I gave up on the whole thing but I but but I started thinking like as I was doing this I was watching the last dance for the fifth time or whatever and and you know that always every time you're watching a sports documentary there about like something that happened before the 90s, there's always the network primetime anchor that comes in at some point.

And they're just like, tonight, it's Magic versus Michael in the NBA finals. Where does that exist in 2023? Where is the authoritative voice who was just talking about like, you know, farm aid or something, who now is just going to pivot and tell you and just give you a real weird, like brief overview of the big thing that's happening in sports?

or the big movie that's coming out, or whatever else. It doesn't really exist. I don't know if that's an open lane. I don't know if that's a total fool's errand because if you want that information, you'll get it elsewhere. But the point is that CNN is courting an audience

in theory that doesn't really want to get it elsewhere, right? Like, isn't that what they're trying to, whenever they say we're getting back to the basics, it's like, we're just doing the news, you know? But by the news, they mean we're covering the president and that war. You know, we're like, what? They limit themselves so much without even seemingly realizing they're doing it. And I just feel like there's got to be like maybe you just like do a total pivot and say like we're covering everything with the same.

You don't have to change who you are every week depending on the way the wind blows. You just have to lean into one thing or another every day depending on what the news story is. I could not agree more. I miss the generalist with gravity from the old days of TV. Yeah. And also that's old CNN. I think there's been this weird revisionist history. I've almost rid this piece a couple of times that old CNN was Bernard Shaw doing the news right down the middle.

Dude, old CNN was Larry King having that guy who could like hear dead people on at night. And then having Ross Perrault on the next night. It was like CNN was everything, right? And then a movie star and then an athlete and then Hulk Hogan. Like it was there was a lot of that. going on on seeing it. It was one stop shopping and I think partly is the way the media is kind of split into a million

pieces, people are scared of that kind of approach now. Oh, who's going to want that now? Who's going to want all the subjects under one roof? So we just do politics and by politics we mean we just do Trump. Yeah, that's it. I think that you're totally right. I think I totally, I think you're dead on and that's why, but that's

I mean, that is what they're saying. That is what they're thinking. But the bizarre part about that is when you say we're going to be the down the middle news network, like you're, you're, you're just already just throwing out so many opportunities, right? I mean, you're already, you're already narrowing yourself to such a degree. You are a generalist. That's what you're trying to be. You're trying to be the House of Generalism.

I don't even hope that's a word. So why not be general about some other stuff that people want to hear? You don't want to get, you don't want to have your staff in a constant state of, like, uprising because you're talking about Trump 22 hours? a day. Well, I mean, there's other throwaway stuff you could be talking about. You'd still get viewers if you were talking about, you know,

Zion Williamson's BS or like whatever, you know, like, is that the wrong thing to say? Do we need to retake that? Wolf Blitzer on Zion Williamson. I'm booking that for tomorrow night. CNN, the new CNN. By the way, I was also trying to make a list of profiles after Tim

Alberta's Chris Lick profile resulted in Licked, leaving the network, being ousted a few days later. I asked for these on our press box Twitter feed. I don't know if I did a great job explaining it because people had some investigative pieces that

wound up ending careers or changing careers. The ones I got that really fits, Stanley McChrystal and Rolling Stone, remember that piece by Michael Hastings? Yes, yes. We're talking ride along profiles here, where the journalist is welcomed in, they published the profile

and then... Best of intentions. Things are never the same, yes. Rick Riley on Reds owner, Cincinnati Reds owner, Marge shot back in the day. I think that qualifies because he was at least suspended from baseball operations after that. There are more here. Please hit us up at the press box pod. Coming up on today's pod, no, you're not listening to a press box clip show. Donald Trump has been indicted again, plus the coverage and fallout of the live PGA deal

and the times the newspapers negotiated with the Unabomber. all that much more on the press box, a part of the ringer, podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, producer Erica Cervantes, here with you. Let us dive David into the Trump indictment and the way it's been reported. Once again, history has been made, says Dana Jacobson of CBS News. The historic indictment against former President Donald Trump. The twice impeached once Commander-in-Chief is set to be arrested for the second time in a little more than two months, on Tuesday following yet another indictment.

But it's the first time ever in U.S. history that a former president has faced federal charges. The 37 charges against Trump include mishandling classified documents and obstruction of justice. We'll see him in court in Miami on Tuesday. A few things that stuck out to me about the way this story was reported. First, when you have a very serious and grave federal indictment paired with a very funny picture.

In this case, the picture of the boxes in Trump's bathroom at Mar-a-Lago. Actually, it was two pictures, because there were also the picture of the boxes all stacked up on the stage. Oh, yeah. In the ballroom. And it wasn't like a big majestic stage.

It looked like the stage we had back at Pascal High and John Templin's theater class. Yes, absolutely. We're just a couple of feet off the floor. loved the chandelier in the bathroom. What a Trumpian touch that was. I'm sure I've ever quite seen that in my life. I just,

as someone who finds himself moving boxes around the house almost every day and, you know, taking chandeliers down and putting, not chandeliers, light fixtures down. For some reason, the thing that gave me the most anxiety of that from that picture was not like the disrespect and whatever, disregard paid to these documents of national importance.

but the idea of trying to move a stack of box beyond the chandelier to get it out under and above and next to it without damaging the chandelier that just like gave me the hebi-jeevi. Did you have a conversation with your wife like I did where it's like this is the first federal indictment that's ever made me feel better about our house? Yeah, crap stacked up everywhere. But hey, look at this. There's classified info in the bathroom. We're not that bad.

Yeah. Yeah. No. I mean, it actually gave me a little bit of sympathy. I mean, I know if Trump had actually moved any of those boxes, I probably would have felt a great deal of sympathy for the man, but I know he didn't. I just love it because the indictment got announced,

and then it's like, here's a spit take of a photograph of the boxes in the bathroom. Yeah. Just like the silliest place to allegedly put classified information. How are you, I mean, I am, of course, the obvious thing is to say, how do you not have those things in a safe? How do you not have those things in some sort of designated area with padlock on the door at least, but something that looks like a filing, some sort of normal semblance of a filing room, an office closet of something?

But I just couldn't help but think, like, how does Trump have this giant, like, just incredible estate with gold everywhere and chandeliers and not have any, like, secret rooms where you're like, you know, you lean against the bookshelf and a giant storage room it appears, you know, like there's got to be somewhere, somewhere a little bit more like evil geniusy that he could be putting this stuff. Trump seems like a secret room, secret passageway kind of guy. But I think the lesson we learned in this story is that Trump loves showing off about things. So he would have shown off the secret passage to everybody who came into the office.

Yes, this used to be a secret passage, but now it's my entertaining suite to whatever. Yeah. Second interesting part of the story after the indictment was unsealed on Friday was the quotes that were in the indictment. A lot of these were broken by CNN, speaking of CNN. And if you and I had sat down and said, we're going to write a screenplay in the, in the sort of zany tradition of like the death of Stalin and come up with the most comically damning quotes we can, I'm not sure if we would. have come up with this one. This is secret information. Look, look at this. It's one of the lines in the indictment. Another one was Trump says, see, as president, I could have declassified it. Stafford replies, yeah, and laughs. Trump then says, now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret.

I think we would have sent that back for a rewrite, right? If I had handed you that script, you would have been like, okay, okay, you toss this off at two in the morning. We'll do better. This is a secret. Yeah, two on the nose. David, give me a couple more rounds on that one. Let's punch this up a little bit. Oh, my gosh. What was the one about his hand gesture where he was like, maybe we could lose those?

Yeah, pluck was the word I read. Oh, right. It was this whole argument about what pluck means in the case of an inconvenient file. The other part of this that was so strange, you and I talk about political memoirs all the time, which seemed just like the most dutiful and doomed of, book releases. Well, Mark Meadows was the White House Chief of Staff, we all remember. He had a memoir come out called the Chief's Chief. We usually keep track of these things. I do not remember

the Chief's Chief. But two people who were working on that book were interviewing Trump. And some of these alleged quotes in the indictment come out of a recording that was made in that session. So this comes out of people that were working on, and we should probably put Eric quotes over that. Mark Meadows's the chief's chief. What a fate for a political memoir that I did not even know existed before this moment. Third feature the story.

Trump broke the news of his own indictment. He's trying to beat out Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Times for scoops now. It was on true social and he posted the corrupt Biden administration, et cetera, et cetera. So it led to a bunch of weird headlines like Trump says he's been indicted in classified docs probe.

Now, one question is, if you're the journalist in that case, is why would anybody on earth lie about being indicted? Do we really need the distance? Like, no, if somebody says they've been indicted, you're probably going to be. Yeah. But it's Trump. Yeah. So don't trust and then also verify. Yeah.

I think maybe just you might want to, you know, source check the terminology there. Was he technically indicted? Is there maybe he was just maybe there's an indictment looming? Was he typing this as his lawyers were on the phone on the conference call with him? Maybe he didn't get all the details straight. Yeah, you got to check. The spin forward question for us today, Mr. Shoemaker, will Republicans actually use this against Trump? A little spoiler alert.

They haven't. Ron DeSantis has called this the weaponization of federal law enforcement. Tim Scott called it the weaponization of the Justice Department. We barely even got the cop-out answer where it's like, yes, Trump is being railroaded by these corrupt liberal justice department officials. But isn't this kind of a distraction? Isn't this a lot of, just a lot going on for him? Maybe he shouldn't be running for president. we didn't really get that.

You had to go way down the roster of GOP presidential candidates into the kind of G-League tier of Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie to find people actually saying, no, this is disqualifying. Here's Christie with PBS's Margaret Hoover. I believe that he intentionally kept those documents and obstructed the government from getting them back and returning them to the people and protecting our national security secrets.

That's a further disqualification for someone to have the authority to possess those secrets and to make those decisions on behalf of our country. Just in time, CBS has a new poll, which was conducted before and after the indictment, though they said they called some of the participants back

and the indictment didn't really move the needle very much. Donald Trump, David, 61%. Ron DeSantis, 23%. Everybody else in single digits. Well, in some sense, I think this is going to, I think that's why they're staying away, right? I mean, I don't think that there's anything that's going to happen here that's going to significantly move the polls, short of him being somehow disqualified for running. And so I don't really know that you gain much if you're DeSantis or anybody else by saying, you know, lock him up.

You know, it's, all you're going to do is, is alienate the potential Trump voters that would come to your way. Were he not on the ballot somehow? But that's not going to happen, right? So, like, I'm not, I think you got to hope for like a, you know, just steady attrition over time. I don't think yelling from the mountaintop is going to help you at all as a Republican candidate. It's amazing the vice he's put them in. Yeah. I mean, he's asking people to, you know, sign pledges of allegiance to him, like, as these indictments are coming down the pike.

I mean, it's pretty, I mean, it's, that, that's a smart move, you know, I mean, there's nothing, nothing that anybody can really do about it. I don't know. I mean, it's funny, the closest that I came to seeing anybody on the right, really, like, you know, except, you know, really not, really accept that Trump may be. guilty of something, short of like Bill Barr, who was, which one is he on? Is he on Face the Nation today? Yeah, I was on the Fox show definitely, because I'm talking to Shannon Brown. Oh, okay. But anyway, Bill Barr is one of those guys who might fit into the still good Sunday host.

I mean, still a good Sunday guest category. Yeah, this week anyway. But, I mean, he's just a terrible human being, but at least he goes up there and says things that, you know, you need a voice of gravity to say sometimes. But the closest I heard was some of the sort of, like, like, the the the the gen x millennial sort of far right but pretending to be unbiased twitter truth tellers you know that are that are sort of you know you know i i don't love you know i don't always love trump or i do love trump the guy i don't love him the candidate or whatever the people that

talk around it to sort of maintain the sort of like sheen of of of of of neutrality or whatever i saw a couple of people say something like trump is getting railroaded trump is getting taken you know this is the you know the cia assassinations and Kennedy all over again, but it must be said, Trump, they set a trap and Trump walked right into it, right? Which sort of, I guess the implication is he could have returned the documents, right? And he, and that, and they, and he should have seen at that point, they're trying to get you and he could have gotten out of it. But that's, and that's a sort of interesting place to be, because I do think that there's a lot of, you know, rational people, even pro Trump that would,

that could talk themselves into that position, but that's the entire case, right? I mean, it's like once you acknowledge that you should have just given them back, well, not giving him back is what's going to get you 70 years in prison or something. You know, I mean, that's, that's exactly what, what's at stake here. And it's, I guess that the best case scenario is that there's just sort of like, you know, just kind of general ambient admissions, not admissions, people, they will admit this piece of it. Oh, well, yeah, of course he did that. But, of course he did that. But, I mean, it's the same argument that's going to get a grand jury to conceivably convict him, right? It's like we're not arguing.

A jury, a jury. Sorry, grand jury did the indictment. But once you just say, yes, these things happened, well, then that means guilty. Right. You can't. This is the secret file. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, yeah, he hid that. Yeah, he hid that. I don't think he was just doing anything wrong, but he hit, okay. Well, did he hide it? Okay. I mean, I don't know if there's enough of a trickle down. If you kind of admit enough little things about it that will actively affect his polling numbers, though. I mean, it's, it's, it's a very strange situation.

It also just puts, you know, an issue on the table here, which is that Donald Trump is running. And I saw a piece of this effect in the New York Times to not go to jail now, right? This case may not be over. They said in the times the appeals certainly won't be over by the 2024 election. So he's running to be president and also to not face this legal jeopardy if the case doesn't go his way. To pardon himself, as we heard is a possibility. last time around. I saw some people in very, you know,

just, I don't think they were being particularly serious, but people were saying, well, if he had the right to have these when he was president, and he's going to have the right to have these again in two years. We're really just talking about a brief window. It's like when you get pulled over and the guy's like, well, your registration's expired, but if you get it renewed in 90 days, they'll just get rid of this thing.

This is the renew your registration. election. Trump, if you are elected president in the next 90 days, we'll throw this ticket away. Just pay the, pay the, you know, $15 cost. Last thing on Trump, New York Times did a background around Jack Smith. This is the special counsel who indicted Trump. And I'm going to read a few passages, and I want you to count off, David, verbally count off the only in journalism words.

Oh. You hear here. Only in journalism are words and phrases you see in news. stories, but never hear anyone say in real life. Are you ready? Yeah. Jack Smith is a hard driving. Yes. Okay. Flinty. Yes. Veteran Justice Department Prosecutor. Dot, dot, dot, dot.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland tasked him with overseeing two investigations. Finally, Mr. Smith, 54, has cut an elusive figure. Wow. Wow. That's like a 10 point word there. Let's go. People are always cutting figures of some sort or another in news stories. Also, listener Matthew Schott says it was a big week for the word tranch. As in a tranche of documents. Yeah. I'm not sure I knew that tranch meant a portion of something before I looked it up 10 minutes ago. But trench. Tranch. It's a good. Only in journalism. Big trench week. By the way, there's a, I, man, it spent too much time in like the dark recesses of the internet this week, as you probably can already tell.

But I did see put a pin in this here. But I did see the beginnings of a Jack Smith is not actually an American argument coming out of the weird recesses of the dark of the far right. Because he spent some time working in the Hague that he's not an American citizen. And somehow he. He changed his citizenship to work at the Hague. This is how the theory goes. No, I think the implication is he came straight for that's where he was born and raised in the Hague. and then came here.

And that he came here. He's not even. He was somehow just like hired by the, you know, brought on by Merrick Garland from, you know, parts unknown to come lead this investigation. Okay. We'll reconvene after midnight to consider those theories. Coming up in 30 seconds, speaking of big stories, how about the live PGA deal? We talk about how it was reported.

But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. Today's winner is about the detail we mentioned that the feds

produced a picture of boxes in the bathroom at Mara Lago. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, this is a historic document dump. I got to say, David. How did no one come up with

my choice. Potty over country. It's amazing. It's amazing. I was waiting for it. And I saw the tabloids and they didn't do it. No. They could have called us.

Potty over country with a picture of the bathroom. That is your headline. And we should have like an 800 number, like a, you know, a bat phone that people can call on. We need a pun headline for this subject. And we'll just get on it. We'll get back to you and like three, leave a message. We'll get back to you. And within five minutes.

So if you need any ideas for running CNN, we can answer those questions for you, too. I love this. This is like an old school newspaper officer calling a machine. Leaving a message. We'll go back to you in five. Thank you to Chris Sullen Trop. If you wonder why Trump didn't give America a courtesy flush, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week.

All right. In the notebook dump, that other huge story, the PGA live deal that was announced on Tuesday, PGA, of course, had squared off with live golf, which was funded by the Saudi public investment Fund. On Tuesday, David, they announced, never mind. We're forming a new company together. Just a few quick notes on this as a media story. Aren't you fascinated by the tiny number of stories that come across the Twitter wire that nobody saw coming? Oh, yeah. And in this case, not nobody like the best golf journalists in the world, nobody like Rory McElroy or other people who were involved as direct participants in the deal.

I'm always amazed when something in this world truly catches us flat foot. Yeah. You know, this is and this beyond like Wojbaum territory of, you know, hey, sign it with us purrs. It's like, no, no. These two entities that have been doing nothing but battle for months just called it. Yeah. And nobody knew about it.

But it seemed like at least some of the reporting that I saw is that they, this was a very, almost a premature announcement. And it was sort of like as soon as like, you know, the room size grew to five people, they were like, well, this is going to get out. So let's just announce it. You know, as soon as it got like even in remotely serious conversation. But you're right. I mean, it is wild that nobody knew that just even that the first two people were talking. You know, I mean, that's, it's incredible. this was one of my first times where I've been on Twitter sitting here at my desk and it was reported on by CNBC broke the story and it was CNBC now was the Twitter account.

I saw tweet it. And of course, we don't have a lot of verified Twitter accounts anymore or if they're verified, they're not verified. And I'm sitting there like, this must I don't know if this is a joke because this feels kind of. of like a prank and I sent it to Kevin Clark immediately texted it to him and then I was felt terrible because I was like I think I misled him. I think in like two minutes we're going to figure out this is not real. Yeah. But it was one of those we were just like walking through Twitter with a blindfold was like I don't know. I saw it. The first place I saw it was in in ringer slack and it just popped up like on the, you know, in golf slack with no comment. And I was and I think I just read it

as a joke. You know, like I was like I was just like, oh, that's a weird. bit, but okay, but like, I didn't really digest it until like 20 minutes later. It's, it is an absolutely unbelievable story. What do you think? I mean, do you think, obviously, there's more than enough reason to be outraged by this, but do you think that the, that the hypocrisy is a bigger deal than the, uh, evil? Do you think, do you think people care more about the hypocrisy of the, you know, bringing the 9-11 families out to, to, to, uh, to, uh, start about how bad live golf was. You think that's

that's sort of what people are more outraged about than just the the, you know, the involvement of the Saudi investment fund in general. And let's all participate in sports washing together instead of denouncing sports washing. Yeah. It's a great point. You know, I'm always

the one saying like, who cares if it's a bad look? Let's just decide whether it's bad. I do and, you know, when this deal went down, people had those very convenient video clips of Jay Monaghan of the PGA invoking 9-11. He did not have to do that.

Yeah. But he had done that because that was one of the things you could point to when you were trying to delegitimize the other golf tour. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, you're right. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, I think, I don't think there's anything wrong with doing both because Jay Monaghan looks like a very, very, you know,

odd figure at this moment in history. where I was denouncing them on like moral grounds invoking like one of the greatest tragedies and you know the great terror attack and American history and then and then I was just like never mind I made a deal with them yeah but yeah you can do both but I agree with you the bigger deal is the deal itself not what somebody said a couple of months ago other thing I was struck by and Kevin in particular was texting me about this was there's moment when you have the news story like this that nobody expects is you really need the Tom broke off figure to make their way to television and just be like we didn't see this coming

we're all flat-footed here we may not even know what to think yet but i am going to communicate those thoughts in to your point about CNN earlier this kind of with this sort of gravity to tell you that you can watch me, right? I got this. I'm handling this. The Golf Network got Mike Torrico to call in from the French Open. Oh, wow. And he kind of did like 10 great minutes that were just like pure news anchor minutes.

I don't remember what he said, but it was like, okay, here we go. We're giving some thoughts on what's happening. We're laying out the issues that are important. it was a brokaw style moment. I turned over to ESPN and it was, they were just running the regular noon sports center. And I got there in like the B block of the C block and it was like

Biondre Hopkins signing scenarios. And I was like, are we doing PGA live here? And we're just going to like training camp reports. And it was like, is it, is this not big enough? They were just going to red alert right now.

Yeah. A huge sports story. And I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't know what the argument is for not crowding out like NFL offseason stories for an hour.

But I'm like, and in fact, if you went to ESPN.com, there was one opinion about LivePGA. You want to guess who's it was? Who's? It was Stephen A. Smith. Oh, my gosh. On the dot com? On the dot com. And it said, why Stephen A. Smith loves PGA's agreement with Liv.

And I watched the video. That was the correct title. and that was it other than the newser. If you need any evidence that ESPN is now built around five or six very powerful people and it's built to broadcast their opinions about whatever is happening. There you go. That's what it is. ESPN has tons of people who can talk golf starting with Scott Van Pelt.

And I know he was tweeting that morning. But I'm like, I think there are lots of ways we can go here. But that's not the way it's built now. It's built around Stephen A. Smith's opinions. And if you needed yet one more piece of Evans, David, oops, I got one right here. Friday afternoon. Stephen A tweets about Chris Christie. Did you catch this?

No. So the first Republican debate's going to be in August. And one of the qualifying things you need to get into the debate is to have 40,000 donors. That's the mark there's, you know, setting between top-tier candidates and not top-tier candidates. Stephen A tweets about Chris Christie. Yes, I know the Gov. Yes, he's a friend. But this has nothing to do with endorsing him nor anyone else.

This is about helping the Gov get on that debate stage so we can all see who's the best man or woman for the job. This is a way to make that happen. And it's a link to a Chris Christie fundraising solicitation. Now, we've all had lots of rounds with sports people and other people getting into political speech, social issues. I don't think I've ever seen a reporter, journalist, television personality of any stripe tweet out a fundraising solicitation for a presidential candidate or any Canada. No. That is something else.

And by the way, when I checked right before this pot, it's still up. Yeah, I feel like that would have been just a fireable offense in the not too distant past at ESPN. Yeah? And now the tweet's still up. Days later. again, it was before we recorded this pod. It's like, I guess that's not a violation of anything. It's okay.

If you're Stephen A. Smith, don't try that at home. I wonder, I wonder if anybody else that works there is going to try their hand at the same thing in the election season. Maybe just take the exact, use the exact same wording of the tweet and change the candidate, you know? Stephen A could do it. Why can't I do it? Mm-hmm. You're putting some ideas out there. We'll see what this policy is.

Got one more note for you. Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, found dead in his jail cell early Saturday morning. He was 81 years old. Ted Kaczynski killed three people and injured many more by planting or sending bombs through the mail in the years between 1978 and 1995. There was a very, very strange media part of his story. And I got all this from the very excellent New York Times obit. This happens starting in April 95, which is the year before Ted Gazzinski's captured. I'm just going to read to the obit here.

Kaczynski promised to stop hurting people, though not to stop attacking property, in exchange for getting a long article about his ideas published in a major periodical. So in June, the New York Times and Washington Post received a 35,000-word manuscript. Citing a recommendation from the FBI and the Department of Justice, the papers took the Unabomber's offer. They split the cost of printing. the essay titled Industrial Society and Its Future, the post distributed it online,

and as an eight-page supplement with the September 19th print paper. They printed it as a separate supplement that was distributed with the newspaper back in 1995. 35,000 words. At the time, William Finnegan and the New Yorker called it the most extraordinary manuscript submission in the history of publishing. But this really has to be. happen. The two biggest newspapers in America were in certain terms literally negotiating with a

terrorist. Yeah. Peace by Howie Kurtz at the time said the supplement cost 30 or 40,000 dollars to put out. And this was Times publisher Arthur O. Solsberger at the time. It's hard, it's awfully hard to put too much faith in the words of someone with the record of violence that the Unabomber has. But he said, you print it and he doesn't kill anyone else. That's a pretty good deal. You print it. You print it. and he continues to kill people, what have you lost? The cost of newsprint. This is not a First Amendment issue.

This centers on the role of a newspaper as part of the community. I thought that was fascinating. Yeah. Something really interesting that someone needs to revisit here in the next few days. There was also a note on Wikipedia

that Penhouse offered to print the manifesto. Really? And Ted Gazzinski was not interested in that one of the quality publication. And to Sol's book, Berger's point, and this is covered in the Times obit, what happens is, what have you lost is that manifesto then entered the public record. And as he was sitting in jail for decades and years, there became a lot of fascination with his ideas as it often does with people like that.

Yeah. I guess if you say there's a flip side to it, that was it. All right, it's time for David Shoemaker. Guess this is a strain pun headline. Yeah. All right. Last Monday's headline about the Republicans threatening to tank the economy was the bluff schemes are made of. It's the bluff schemes are made of, baby. Today's headline comes from basically everybody. I'm going to award it to Joel Wyrick, Sean Shearer, and Evan. It's from the New York Post, David. It's about that awful air quality you East Coasters have been experiencing.

After the Canadian wildfires. I want you to think Canada and start with. the phrase Apocalypse Now. What was the New York Post, strain pun headline? Starting with Apocalypse now? Yes. Apocalypse cloud.

Apocalypse. Wait. We're talking Canada here. I know. The big headline was blame Canada. Think of particular unique, unique words of Canadian speech.

A. Uh-huh. Oh, Apocalypse now. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Apocalypse now. That's pretty great.

He is David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. Pressbox final edition this week. I'm going to be at the U.S. Open at L.A. Country Club. There's going to be any news there? Who knows?

Golfers. Have anything to say? you'll hear from me the next Monday Shoemaker and I return for our final press box before summer vacation which will include

more lukewarm takes about the media you see you then David See you later Brian you