The Press Box - How Biden Won the Internet. Plus, Michael Smith.

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker tackle Biden’s digital divide (2:50) before breaking down the unfortunate news that ESPN is making additional layoffs (21:55). Then former ESPN commentator Michael Smith joins to discuss his career and his podcast, ‘Brother From Another.’ (39:00) Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, Steve Kornacki of MSNBC did a guest spot on football night in America on Sunday. What I want to know is could you imagine any other cable news political talker crossing over into sports? Oof, that's really good. I can imagine there's a lot of, I can imagine if they opened up the doors, there'd be a long line of people trying to make that transition. They all desperately want to be into sports. They absolutely. I mean, they would kill to have a cameo on a sports show. But would sports fans accept them?

I mean, if Wolf Blitzer were there, you know, would everybody just be like, oh, this is great? Or would they just be like, God, get this, get Wolf off my television? Well, I mean, it's a good question. With, like, the lifestyle brand aspect of sports, I mean, look, like, could, like, if Sean Hannity was doing NASCAR broadcast, Would everybody just be like, I don't care that he's not a NASCAR lifer. I just like Sean Hannity. That's a fascinating one, right?

There's obviously cultural crossover between NASCAR fan and Fox News viewer, between a lot of them, let's say. But would you as a NASCAR fan be so upset that Sean Hannity did not know as much about NASCAR as you thought an announcer should? I think you would, I feel like sports fans in general would get there pretty quickly.

So who would know that? I mean, I mean, I think that there's, certain jobs, you know, I mean, I think that like, we've made this joke a million times before, but I think in these halftime shows where there's 16 people sitting at the desk, I feel like, you know, the Brian Williams is of the world who do a fine job sitting in Kurt Menofy's seat or whatever and just sort of tossing people, you know, tossing it back and forth, but to, to spotlight somebody, I don't know. I don't know. You know what the ultimate example of this was, and it didn't quite happen, but Rush Limbaugh tried out to be on Monday night football.

Rush Limbaugh was on Sunday NFL countdown. He was on the NFL countdown, but he was almost the color guy on Monday night football. Oh, man. Back before, you know, back when he was still like, oh, he's conservative, but he's this big talk show host. I don't know. I don't know how that would have gone. I suspect quite badly. Sunday countdown was any indication.

Robbins not very well. He would have lasted a quarter. Coming up on today's show, Joe Biden won the internet. The latest carnage at ESPN plus talk show host Michael Smith, all that more on the press box. a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. David, back in April, Kevin Ruse, who's this very good reporter at the New York Times, wrote a story about how Joe Biden was losing the internet to Donald Trump.

Mm-hmm. And here on the press box, we started teasing a segment called Joe Biden's Digital Divide. And we kept running out of time to actually do it. And then we started making a joke out of it. And it basically became our version of Jimmy Kimmel telling you why Matt Damon did not come out at the end of the show every night. Wait, that's a bit? So we got a bunch of tweets over the weekend saying, you guys, it's finally time to do Joe Biden's digital divide. Because Kevin Roos wrote another piece in the New York Times saying that Joe Biden won the internet in the 2020 election.

Or at least he didn't lose it badly enough. that it cost him the election, which I don't know, David, seems like a bigger miracle than maybe Joe Biden winning Georgia. Yeah, yeah. And it's this really interesting strategy that we'll go through here that Ruse lays out

about how Biden won because it starts out of this very, very uneven platform, right? Donald Trump is very, very online. Donald Trump has an army of followers who are very, very online and do not mind just, lying online.

Mm-hmm. So how does Joe Biden break through in that? The first thing that Ruse came up with was lean on influencers and validators. And the whole idea

here is if you do not have Donald Trump's gigantic Twitter following, you go out and you find people with smaller but still substantial Twitter followings and get them to endorse you.

One of these people was Brunee Brown, research professor and popular author, Rousse writes and podcast host who speaks and writes about topics like

courage and vulnerability. Do you know who that is? No. I thought you might not because I didn't know who that was until my wife told me who that was.

Brne Brown is big. She is big. And that was a big get for them. Another big get was somebody, I know you know, The Rock. Yeah.

Dway or the Rock. Yeah. And Roos writes that the Rock, quote, created a so-called permission structure for his followers, including some who may have voted for Mr. Trump in 2016, to support Mr. Biden, members of the campaign staff told me.

So you throw out the rock and you say, hey, you've got wrestling fans, movie fans, just bros who follow you. This guy's telling us it's okay to vote for Joe Biden. And does that maybe help Joe Biden on the margin somewhat? Yeah, yeah. I mean, and I think that's, I mean, obviously, this would be the same for anybody, but I can speak from experience on The Rock.

I mean, there's any, any designation you put the Rocks fans in, I think undersells it a great bit, right? I mean, this isn't just, oh, my favorite action movie star is endorsing Joe Biden. This is just like, oh, that muscular guy who saved those kittens from drowning in the pool is voting for Joe Biden, right? That guy that eats untolds amounts of, wait, what fish does he eat? Trout? What's his fish of choice? I'm going to defer to you on this one, dude. And stacks of pancakes as high as the ceiling.

I remember those pictures. That guy has given me permission, has created a permission structure allowing me to vote for Joe Biden. I mean, it's, it's sort of a brilliant, it's a brilliant plan when it works, right? Yeah. And it's funny because it's a very, there's a very small difference between like what Joe Biden is doing with that and what Hillary Clinton did when she had Bruce Springsteen come out at a rally for her. or LeBron or Beyonce. Because remember all those people were Hillary Clinton supporters. They showed up on stage for her.

But I guess the idea here is if you go to The Rock, who I believe it never made a political endorsement or presidential endorsement of this kind before. He's even more value. He might have endorsed Hogan's campaign, Hulk Hogan's campaign back in the 90s. I'm joking. Go ahead. Yeah, a serious endorsement before

that he somehow, and because he is so online, He is very particularly online and like, you know, with a lot of like, pick me up, believe in yourself kind of videos, that that somehow breaks through the audience. I thought that was really interesting. Yeah. And, you know, normally I would be inclined to dismiss any sentence that included the phrase permission structure. But this is, this actually makes a lot of sense. And maybe this is too much of, you know, based on my personal experience. but, you know, I think we've sort of evolved for better, mostly for worse.

We've evolved past the point where you can, where people are voting on issues in a shorthand sort of way, you know? I mean, I feel like it's a party, party alignment is too, it is too personal for it to be just about like, oh, so-and-so helps the working man or that, you know, this party is, this party is going to give me lower taxes. That's significant, but it's sort of ancillary. It is more of a cult of personality, I think, on both sides, right? I mean, the sort of people that we identify ourselves as.

And this is a long way of saying, of getting back to the original point, which is, I know a lot of people that voted for Trump four years ago. And I know a lot of people who, I know a lot of people who, I guess maybe a way our listeners would identify with better is the sort of people who would vote third party, right? You've heard the people who sort of make the case just like, well, lesser, you know, instead of voting for the lesser of two evils, I decided to vote for Jill Stein or whatever, you know, whatever the case may be. that's the permission structure, right?

It's giving, it's giving average voters the sort of vocabulary to say to their family and their friends with a shrug of their shoulders, why they're voting for Joe Biden and not Donald Trump. If you're in a room where the assumption is you're voting for Donald Trump, the permission structure is not just for you. It's to be able to just, just to have that 30, that like five second explanation about why you did it. And seeing the rock do that before your eyes is actually super helpful. Yeah, you use the phrase cult of personality. It's like Joe Biden was never going to have the Donald Trump style cult of personality.

No. But the rocks is at least semi-comparable or he has a cult of personality. So you can substitute, like we're never going to get there with Joe Biden, but we can maybe get there with the rock. Yeah. So we kind of put the rock into the starting lineup for a couple of seconds. A lot of people were, you know, a lot of Biden voters, especially were a little bit perplexed about how Trump ended up getting more votes than he got four years ago. I mean, more so than maybe his,

him losing the election. They were surprised that he got more votes. But I do think that there was a big part of that, you know, there were a lot of people four years ago who I think were dissuaded from voting because they weren't quite sure if this Trump phenomenon was a real thing or not yet. And it's become a cultural phenomenon

for a lot of people, right? It's become the shirt you wear. It's become the flag you fly. It's become the joke you tell. It's a lifestyle brand. It's a lifestyle brand. And certainly, and that's attracted a lot.

more followers since it had and since it sort of became a I mean winning the election established it in a way that maybe it wasn't four years ago you know we saw over the past four years a lot of people who were quoted in the press repeatedly got the found the quote unquote permission structure to say things like well you know I agree with what he's doing but I wish you would tweet a lot less right that is like a permission structure was constructed that allowed people to say those things even if they were Trump supporters right and you needed to provide somebody with the script to say, you know what, this election means too much to messer. I'm just going to vote for Joe Biden. We know he's safe. Like, they needed to know exactly what to say, what it would look

like if someone said that. That's what, you know, someone like the Rock allowed them to do. I don't know if we're allowed really to use the word validator on this podcast. But Roos writes that an unlikely validator of Joe Biden was Fox News. So what would happen is Fox News, we know was very, very pro-Trump. But occasionally they would do a story about Joe Biden winning an endorsement or something like that, right? Or winning, it says here, the endorsement of, quote, more than 120 Republican former national security and military officials, remember that?

Yeah. And then they would take that Fox News story and promote it on Facebook because people scrolling through Facebook would be like, oh, Fox News, Joe Biden wins endorsement. Oh. And it almost was, you know, it kind of stopped you in your, tracks and you're almost like oh wow fox news joe biden good yeah and it was a much more effective i guess just on that level than the new york times story saying exactly the same thing do you think that was a deliberate i mean do you think fox news knew that they're well i don't know putting their finger on

the scales is the right thing to say do you think they knew that they were removing their finger from the scales and making that decision i sort of doubt it right i mean i well well maybe because you know when mainstream newspapers like the New York Times do a story that they they know when they do a story that's going to be in Republican attack ads. They are very, very aware of that. And whether that dissuades them or persuades them, I think most of the time it doesn't really matter to them, but they know that. So I bet Fox does know that on some level. Yeah. That's the that some Democratic campaigns say, look, even conservative Fox News says X. And in this case, just a factual statement that Biden was getting all these endorsements.

Number two on Roos's list, David, tune out Twitter and focus on Facebook moms. So Hillary Clinton's campaign, the Biden people realized, made a strategic mistake in 2016. They were worried about Twitter too much. And so Biden tried to get Facebook moms, who, according to Roos, the campaign, excuse me, believe could be persuaded to vote for Mr. Biden with possible. messages about his character. For negative messaging, the campaign reached out to Facebook pages like Rebel Alliance and Occupied Democrats, Rebel Alliance, that could do the Lincoln Project-y type of thing of

attacking Trump so that Biden's official channels could do the decency schick. Right. So I am all about restoring auditor and dignity to the White House and pulling ourselves up and being the America, you know, in love again. meanwhile rebel alliance over there is going to be tearing down Trump on Facebook All right, that makes sense I definitely think that leaving

I mean Listen no No one was just ignoring I'm guarantee the Biden campaign Was not ignoring what was happening on Twitter But I think having a sort of Making an institutional decision That that wasn't your

Target audience as far as like Gleaning new votes You know or like you know building the base or whatever was a pretty smart, smart move, right? Yeah, the Biden official tells Ruse that the target audience on Facebook was women, quote, who would go out and share a video of troops coming home, or who would follow the dodo, a website known for heartwarming animal videos.

Still quoting Rousse here, one successful clip aimed at this group showed Mr. Biden giving his American flag lapel pin to a young boy at a campaign stop. Another video showed Mr. Biden, who has talked about overcoming a stutter in his youth, meeting Braden, Harrington, a 13-year-old boy with one. Both were viewed millions of times. I feel I accidentally consumed inspiring Biden content on my Facebook page, which again, since it is at least half full of people we went to high school with in Fort Worth, Texas is not absolutely pro-Biden. But I'd be like, oh, there's Joe Biden at a like a memorial service. Like, why am I seeing this over and over again? Which probably shows the success a little bit of this.

And listen, I mean, that sort of move is always craven and just discussing those specific sites makes it seem all a little bit flippant or whatever. But there, I mean, if you think about it for more than five seconds, it's that in those specific things, certainly with like cute animal videos, you can't imagine President Trump being within 100 yards of a cute animal, right? I mean, the closest he got was when that eagle attacked them in the photo shoot. And that animal wasn't cute. And even troops coming home, I mean, listen, I don't want to be, like, there's no reason to be unnecessarily partisan here. But, like, Trump has not exactly wrapped himself with glory when it comes to the troops or interacting with the troops.

I mean, the last time we had a conversation about Trump and the troops, he was blaming him for giving him coronavirus. So, I mean, you can't, it's not, it does make a lot of strategic sense to sort of go after certain audiences that may have voted, you know, maybe Trump friendly, but,

but specifically targeted in such a way that they don't, like it doesn't, they don't relate to the president in any, you know, in a way that, that really, in a very sympathetic way.

The other thing, and this just makes complete sense is, as Roos puts it, fight misinformation, but pick your battles. Because you know that you're going to get when you run against Donald Trump a flood of fake charges.

Mm-hmm. And are you just going to spend so much time chasing all these things that you're doing nothing else? And you're sort of somehow boosting, you know, fake charges by responding to them. Yeah. So they did all this sort of testing on what was actually working. This is from the digital advisor for the Biden campaign. We had running surveys so we could see how in real time how people were responding. The two big metrics were, are you aware of this?

And many people had heard of it. And the second category was, are you concerned by it? And the clear answer was no. So, for instance, you saw all those videos during the campaign of Biden stumbling over words that Trump and his allies were happy to throw into the world. Yeah. Voters didn't care about it. So the Biden team wasn't going to waste time saying, oh, no, no, Joe Biden's age and health are a big deal. But according to Roos, people did worry that he was, quote,

an easily manipulated tool of the radical left. So Joe Biden there could plant his foot and say, uh, uh, I'm not that while not chasing the concerns about age. Huh. Another one was the Hunter Biden story, which we talked about on this podcast endlessly. Quoting one last time from Roos, the campaign's testing found that most voters in its key groups

couldn't follow the complexities of the allegations, and it wasn't changing their opinion of Mr. Biden. So for all the time spent on that, they're saying we're not going to follow these allegations down the rabbit hole. We're going to focus on the things that matter. And that just feels like really sort of narrowly targeting the damaging stuff online. I mean, that's the most interesting decision, right? Because not only was it surprising that they didn't kind of combat that loudly and in real time,

but the entire news cycle, at least especially in right-wing media, but I think across the board, there was a new cycle that was sort of, loudly or wondering aloud why he wasn't contesting it, right? And where was Joe Biden when all these delegations are being thrown around? I think there was an understanding in many quarters about why one would choose not to or, you know, waiting for some sort of, you know, waiting for the thing that you could grab onto to say that's not true. But it's interesting. I mean, it's interesting. It's a separate, I mean, maybe above anything else in this piece, that's the decision that took a lot of guts. It took a lot of guts to stand back and do relatively nothing while this story was being

covered, you know, widely. If it wasn't, I don't care if people are showing you all the data in the world that it's not clicking. It's not catching on. It's not, it's not, you know, this is not what the election is going to turn on. In that moment, it's got to feel really significant. That's the decision that makes your palm sweat, because it's easy to say, oh, just ignore it. Don't, don't give Trump the benefit of responding to this. But guess what? What if it were? And a month later, you've been like, wow, we could have come out and said bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, and we didn't do it. And now that sunk in and became part of the way people view Joe Biden, and you can't undo it at that point. Would it surprise you, David, to learn that the part of the Biden campaign that was charged was making these calls was called the Malarkey Factory.

And does not surprise me. congrats to the malarkey factory for apparently figuring out which negative stories to address and which negative stories to ignore. All right, David, time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominations to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received.

Did you watch any of that weird football game last Wednesday between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens? Only the highlights. I'm ashamed to say. I had it flipped on here in the office, and it was like, first of all, it was like,

how in the hell is this happening? And then second of all, it was just like, the players didn't seem to want to be on the field. They seem to be as confused as anyone else. It was an overwork Twitter joke

to imitate Carrie Underwood and say, waiting all day for Wednesday afternoon. Thanks to Garrett McCloskey. David, from the world of Disney Plus shows, you will almost certainly watch with your kids.

There's this head. line. Star Wars Canobi reportedly set to film in Boston next month. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. Turns out they did find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Thanks to Don Steele and Patrick A. Bernard.

Wait, did you see that the second wave of that was that it was actually filming in Boston, England? No, is it really? Yeah. Everybody was like, why is this filming in Boston? It doesn't make any sense. It was filming in the English city of Boston.

So all these Twitter jokes like, this is our planet Doth? All that was just based on a misconception. But misconception that they allowed to linger for several days, I guess. I mean, I can't say it's all their fault. Finally, David, a heart-wrenching story out of the nation's capital. President Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has tested positive for the coronavirus. It was an upward Twitter joke to right.

Don't worry, everyone. Rudy will get world-class care at the Walter Reed Total Landscaping. thanks to a whole bunch of people who I don't have time to thank. If you made a on the line joke about Rudy Giuliani South, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. Time for the notebook dump. And David, we got more bad news last week from the world of ESPN. Dan Labatard, who hosts a radio show and TV show over there,

is leaving the network. And ESPN is continuing to lose writers. The latest names include writers like Ian O'Connor, Bonnie Ford, Wayne Drey's, Ivan Maisel, who's a great college football writer, announced he was leaving a few weeks ago. I think we have stuff to say on both of these stories, but let's start with Lebitard, who I wrote about last week.

He was a Miami Herald column before coming to ESPN. He goes over there, and he becomes part of this really unique and in retrospect, I think, kind of strange moment in time where ESPN turned to a bunch of sports writers and made them the stars of the network. And in some cases,

like Levitart, it wasn't just like, we want you to be generic opinion guy. It was, we're going to build a whole show specifically around your personality. You, this personality you created as a writer, it is now going to become a television show. Yeah. That we're going to put on the air every day. Now that we're sort of at the end of this era, if that's what it's called, doesn't it seem kind of amazing that that ever happened? Well, I mean, isn't it sort of like, I mean, it wasn't traditional media sort of ESPN's training wheels from the beginning, right?

I mean, they, like, they would, they employed your, I mean, not just like sports casters, but, you know, they had, you know, your edwarders working the side, you know, being your beat reporters, you know, coming straight out of the kind of print journalism world. Peter Gammon's. Peter Gammon, yeah, there were so many of them and, and so many of them are now gone. I mean, there's, there's obviously a handful that are left. but then they were replaced, and again, I'm working in broad strokes with, you know, youngsters that came up and learned how to do it by watching those people on TV, right? I mean, that's what the, that's, that's the sort of, they, they created the mold. And then you kind of do the same thing, you do the same thing with, with, you know,

the people in the, the, the, the Lvatar group, your Tony Kornheisers and Michael Wilbons and so many others. And then you have a sort of, a subsequent general. of ESPN sort of take masters, right? I mean, and that's, and some of them certainly did come up through the journal. I mean, obviously, you know, Stephen A and Skip Bayliss obviously came up through print journalism and everything else, but it became more of sort of a, the performance is more important than the take, I guess is where we got, right? And, and, and, and again, I don't think that would exist without Dan Levitard and his elk.

And Dan Levitard is obviously one of the most. significant names on any list you would put together. But it is a different sort of, the game has evolved a little bit beyond whatever it started out as. Yeah, I guess I would just say there's a couple different things. One is that like the information person was kind of already a mainstay of TV, you know, Will McDonough on the set of the NFL shows in the 80s. So and, you know, and having SportsCenter, and that's certainly, I don't want to underrate

those guys at all because they gave SportsCenter like really genuine journalistic chops. Like here's Ed Werger standing in Dallas. mentioned. Mort's got some NFL scoop for you. And that continues on to Adam Schaeftor and Woj and those guys. But there is like a significant difference, I think, in going to the lebitards, the Stephen A, the skip, the around the horn saying like, we're kind of turning over the network to sports columnists. Like you are going to be our stars. You're going to bring the attitude to ESPN that in a previous era, Dan and Keith brought. Or Chris Berman brought is still bringing. you know, in some ways.

Like, that's interesting to me. And that you would also just kind of give over a huge chunk of your daytime lineup to those people. Yeah. And just say, like, again, this show's going to be about you. It's not going to be generic sports arguments starring you. It's going to be about your personality. It's still amazing me. Dan Lebuttar built a daily ESPN show around the relationship he has with his father.

Yeah. Remember the first time you saw that? And you're just like, what is this? Yeah. And then over time, it made sense. And they committed to it. And, you know, Lebitard was like a huge star, both on the radio and on TV in that world. Yeah, I mean, in his radio show, which is broadcast on what ESPN2,

I sort of had a national, like, it was like half national and half local in the way that this show was constructed. Our local, I believe, and then the rest of it was national. But even beyond the part, I mean, I guess an hour was carved out to be. you know, South Florida specific, but, but the show itself didn't give itself over. I mean, it didn't, it didn't compromise when it went national, right? It was still very much, it wasn't about him and his dad. It was about him and like the five guys in the studio. But, you know, it felt a lot different than Mike and Mike or, you know, whatever else was ESPN, you know, whatever other radio shows they were broadcasting live across the country. It was, you know, him leaving

is the end of an air in a lot of ways. It felt very sports columnistic in the sense that it felt of a particular place. Like it was about Miami, even the national parts of it. Yeah. It felt like it came from that hotel. It felt like all that stuff, you're right, was part of the show. Yeah. Every time you talk about LeBron, you relate it back to his time with the heat and him leaving the heat.

You know, whatever. I mean, it's like there, it was very much of a place. And I think the interesting part to me as a as a print person like you and also as a somebody who's just interested in that world is the way print became like the credentials for all these people. You know, it was Dan Lebitard writing for the Miami Herald was the way that ESPN saw Dan Lebitard having credibility on television. Same with Jamel Hill coming from the Orlando Sentinel, Michael Smith, who will hear from here in a second coming from the Boston Globe. Like that was there, that was at least at the beginning before people forgot. out they were ever even newspaper writers. That's what gave them credibility.

Yeah. That was the real before they had a real. Exactly. That was the Chiron, right? Here we go. Let's bring on so-and-so from the Dallas Morning News. Like that was the whole one on and on around the horn. It still is.

Like they are coming to us from a newsroom. This person is qualified to have opinions in sports on a very sort of, I don't know, old world idea of who's qualified to have an opinion. Yeah. The funny thing also about that is, and I don't know if you and I shared this dream in quite the same way, but I think that became sort of the animating dream of sports writers. Not only would you maybe get a column at a paper,

not only would you get a book deal, maybe a local radio show, wait a second, what if it all works right for me? And ESPN will put me on TV. And again, not in some dumb role, but they'll actually carve out a smart,

interesting television presence where I can recognize myself on TV. Yeah. And recognition works the other way too, right? I mean, there are a lot of people out there over the years, and this isn't, you know, this isn't just us. I mean, just our generation. A lot of people out there who probably thought they would, I mean, you know, the old face for radio thing. They were never going to be, they were never going to be, they were never going to be,

had the looks to be a sportscaster, but then, you know, ESPN puts Tony Cornheiser on the air. It puts, you know, Dan Levitartar is a good looking guy. but he's not exactly what you'd think of is just like, you know, a matinee idol. So, I mean, it's... Speak for yourself, by the way, but go ahead.

I was just saying, you recognize yourself in these people who you see on television. Yeah, Jamel Hill gave me a good quote about that. She said, an ESPN producer told her one time, I can't teach you how to have an opinion, but I can teach you how to be on TV. So in other words,

I can teach you the sort of grammar of turning to this person and having a conversation, but I cannot, you have to know how to get, an opinion. And the sort of blow-dried TV guy over there, I can't turn him into a really good opinion person, but I can you, which I thought was interesting. The irony of all this, David, is that was becoming this sort of animating dream of sports writers. Maybe I'll get on to ESPN someday. Sports writing was beginning to fall apart. Like, it was starting to become really hard

to be Dan Lebitard. Go to the Miami Herald. Get a beat. Get a beat. Get a best. better beat, get a better beat, become a columnist, right? Get up to this ultimate sort of nirvana of being at a local paper. You couldn't do that anymore in the same way. It was really hard to do that. But at the same time, you're looking at Dan Lebitard on television, Dan Lebitard, formerly at the Maya Harold, and you're going, well, that guy's killing it. He was making around $3 million a year, according to the New York Post.

I mean, he's that, he's living the dream. So it was this weird dissonance of sports writing falling apart. and a select number of sports writers making it absolutely huge in TV at the same time. Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting when you think about it that way. But if we zoom out and pull back from Levitart a little bit, we'll pull out from, zoom in maybe on Levitart a little bit.

How much of this do you think? Obviously, he's had his sort of political issues with the mothership over the past several years. Obligatory use of mothership once during this conversation. Thank you. Thank you. you know, we know what it feels like when somebody's sort of straining to to spread their wings a little bit. It seemed like that was the case fairly recently for him.

There were obviously several particular, like inciting incidents not long ago. They laid off one of his staff members and he decided to keep him on with his own salary. I mean, there were a lot of different things. Obviously the political stuff over the, you know, he was suspension, everything else. How much of it is Dan Lebitard, any of his own? ESPN actually mutually deciding to part ways, one or the other, whatever. How much of this is actually like a balancing the books situation? I mean, was it financial?

What do you think is going on here? Because, and we're going to spend time on this because it's Dan Lebitard, but like there were other, like you said, there were a bunch of other people who've been laid off lately by ESPN too, you know, and it's not exclusive to ESPN. I mean, ABC, who's, you know, obviously the same, all under the Disney umbrella where it's laying off, it's appeared to be laying off a bunch of people from five to today. There's,

there, I mean, I don't even know what the question is. What's going on? I mean, do you think it's just, is this,

is, is Lovetard as much of financial consideration as the rest of these seem to be? I think all of this is in the,

in the mixture somewhere. The pandemic, the fall of the cable model, but also the particular, in Labetard's case, the particularities

of his situation. I mean, I'm listening to him over the last couple of months, talk about his bosses, talk about the fact that Mike Greenberg was getting an hour of his show on the radio. They were giving one hour

to Mike Greenberg while all these very Dan Lebitard ready stories were happening in the world of sports from the pandemic to the protest, everything else. I was like, it sounded like David Letterman back at NBC when he was like bashing, you know, GE and Grant Tinker and all these people. It was like, this is not going to end well. This is obviously going to end. And it's interesting you bring up the political stuff, because to me, and I wrote this the other day, like, we always think of that as like, oh, can you talk about politics on ESPN? It's like Jimmy Pataro, who's a president drawing this line. I think that's part of it. And it's certainly Lebitard in particular is interested in that. But I also think this is about control. And when

we talk about people who are newspaper columnists coming from that world, they were not used to being controlled a lot at their newspaper beyond the sort of bounds of, you know, what you could putting a newspaper, whatnot. And under John Skipper, they were given a lot of freedom at ESPN. And all of a sudden, there's a lot less freedom. And I think that factors into it too. But yes, I mean, to your point, I'd say it's all the above. And let me add one more for you.

People often have brought up the question, does ESPN now care as much about journalism as they once did? I think that's an interesting question, a debatable question. I think it's beyond debate. They don't care as much about words as they did before. ESP in the magazine shuttered. ESP and the website is harder than ever to find substantial written work.

We saw the other day when all these longformers that are still over there are now going behind the Disney Plus pay wall. I just think, I just don't think they care about that. It's interesting when you think about it that way

that the long, like we're the late adopter or whatever. I mean, like we're the dinosaurs. Like we're a slice of the market. Those of us that are interested in reading are a like, definable slice of the market that they can pull out and separate and and hide behind a paywall because, you know, even if only not all of us go, I mean, we're a definable chunk, you know,

we want to read these people so we will pay that $10 a month of them. Absolutely. And not we want to read these people, I should say, we want to read. I guess that's a difference from the way that we were thinking. Yeah. No, I agree. And I think like when we look at the last. and I sort of like don't think I realize this at the time,

but I think when we look at the last decade of sports writing, it's going to be amazing about how much ESPN was propping up the industry of sports writing. Even as these local papers were going under, even as it was becoming clear, as you say that people that want to read was, you know, becoming a more defined slice rather than everybody. They were hiring everybody.

They were employing all these people. They weren't just giving you lebitard, hey, here's the ultimate dream of, being a sports writer, they have NBA beatwriters for almost every team, right? Beat writers for the NFL teams. Grant Land, which employed we should add right here that both of us were beneficiaries of this era. Yeah. Part of that came from John Skipper and John Walsh and those guys being print guys.

Part of it came for maybe that's where ESPN thought it could go out and conquer local papers and do their own part to putting away those local papers. Sort of like the athletic thought and thinks. But I just think like in retrospect, they were propping up a lot of the, industry. And if all these people, the names I just mentioned are getting laid off, man, as bad as it is for sports writing, if ESPN is not going to be a mass supporter of sports writers, we're even more screwed than I thought. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot. I mean, there's a lot to be said here. And most of it's just depressing. But, you know, there's no,

I feel like we've had this conversation before. good writing, kind of being a luxury item, I mean, dates back to like the, like the days before the printing press, you know, before Gutenberg, right? I mean, it's not unusual for, it's not some, like, novelty that, that it would take some, the largesse of some, you know,

multimedia company, I guess, in the past, a very wealthy person or family that would prop up good writing in various different ways. It's kind of shocking that a company, like, you know, the size and the scope of Disney doesn't see the value in that, that's, I mean, the, the value of anything beyond the literal, the literal monetary value of what it's bringing in and what it's, you know, what's going out. And doesn't see the value in, I mean, conversely, the, the, the, the negative value of whatever bad PR comes from whatever

minor savings are going to be accumulating, you know, by, by laying people out. I mean, honestly, in the middle of a pandemic. laying off, and I know every layoff is just sad and terrible in its own way, but laying off like baseball writers as soon as the season's over, laying off political writers right after the election's over. I mean, it's like, every

time this happens, people, these like trolls get online that just try to tell people like me that I don't understand how business works. And it's just like, you know, give me a fucking break, you know? Like, my mom was a teacher. They didn't fire her every May and rehire her and rehire her in the fall.

when they if they decided they needed her. You know, I mean, this is, it's, there is a social, well, whatever. I mean, it's all just sort of surprising, but it shouldn't be after all this. Big figure in this ESPN world we're talking about in this era of letters at ESPN, Michael Smith, now doing a show over on Peacock,

the streaming service. He joined us. Here's Michael Smith. Michael Smith broke into journalism with the Boston Globe, spent 15 years at ESPN, and now with Michael Holly, he is co-host of Brother from Another on the Peacock Streaming Service,

which I believe is the only show whose Friday rundown included both James Hardin and Jane Mayer. Michael just finished his edition. He's fresh off the field. Thanks for coming on the press box, Michael. Good to be here, man. How are you?

I'm very good. I'm very good. You said something in a recent GQ interview that kind of surprised me. After ESPN, you said, I had zero intention of returning to TV. Why not? Good question.

Good place to see. start. There's a couple of reasons. There was a big part of me that kind of felt like, all right, I've been there, done that. Like, what's the next thing? What's the next stage of my evolution? You know, I've always tried to and enjoyed the process of reinventing myself over the course of my career. And it just kind of felt like there was nothing else realistically for me to do in TV. But also, man, to take the truth, I was kind of burned out by it, you know? And It just was one of those things where it felt like, all right, it was a good run. I enjoyed it.

Had my own show a couple of times. But, you know, let me do something else and just kind of try to climb another mountain, really. It really puts you in a tiny subset of people because I got to say, I talk to these people who leave television. And 99.9% of them spend the next however many months or years they have left in their lives trying to get back on. television. If they don't think, okay, well, I'm going to get a podcast. I'm going to get a, I'm going to do something. I have to get, it's the energy, it's the feel, it's the adoration, whatever it is. You didn't feel that emotion. That's a man, you know, that's a, that's a good other great one. No, actually, I kind of felt the opposite because, you know, just being honest, you know,

it's only the only way I really know how to be is, you know, after, after Sports Center, you you know, for my own mental health, I needed to just disconnect from it all. And then the longer I was away from television, away from that rush you're talking about, the less I missed it. And I started to say to myself, well, do I really love it as much as I thought I did? Or did I just love being successful? And it's not quite what, you know, that cliche about athletes. You know, there are guys that love the game and there are guys that love what the game.

provides. I wasn't one of those people that just, it wasn't just a job. I loved what I did, but I think I loved it because I was good at it, if I may say so, and I was, at least successful at it. And it was really all I'd done for most of my career. All I knew to that point was, you know, as you mentioned, the 15 years at ESPN and the, you know, the rat race inside of Bristol. And so, like I said, the more removed I was from that day-to-day grind, and I was like, wait, maybe I'd never really loved it as much as I thought. Maybe it's time for me to find something new, something new that will challenge me in a way that honestly, and I don't mean this to diminish what I did or what anybody's still doing or even what I'm doing again now, honestly, just the idea of giving my opinion

or being a talking head again or doing a TV show, like I said, been there, done that, there was no more challenge in that for me. I wasn't, that didn't feel like something that I need to be, you know, I need to feel like I'm getting better. I need to feel the improvement. I need to feel the process in terms of somebody that presents commentary on television or anchors a television show. I didn't think there was anything else for me to prove to myself on that front. You got to ESPN when you were 25 years old.

And did you ever feel, or at least in retrospect, that you were on such a fast track there that you were so, as you said, into that rat race in such a way that you didn't have time to sit down at any point and think, what is it that I really want to do with my life? 100%. Bingo, brother. Bingo. Like, damn, you were ready for this interview. Yes.

Like, that's exactly what it was. It's like, so just going back a little bit further, you know, I'm in college and I'm trying to figure out what I want to do. And, you know, I had done a high school internship at the New Orleans Times picking you. And so I'm in college and I'm, I'm either going to like go to summer school, summer after my sophomore year or I don't know what. I was even thinking about doing. And the Times Speaking Union calls me up as like, hey, we never had a sports intern. You want to be our sports intern? I'm like, all right. So you mean like I get to write about sports and get paid for that shit? Like, yeah, like, okay, well, sign me up. So I'm making like, boo-cool money, as we say in New Orleans. Like, I'm making money to cover high school sports and other things in the summer. So I dig it. I'm like, okay, I think I can do this writing thing. Like I'm, tell me I'm pretty decent at it. So then again, going back to my mindset, yeah, next year, I'm like, all right, I'm going to apply to the 30.

biggest newspapers in the country for our internship. So I put together my clips from the school paper, from the Times-Picayune. I sent out to 30 papers across the country. And I got one offer. That was the Boston Globe. Don't ask me why. Don't ask me how all the papers to give me an offer was the Boston Globe. So I go to Boston Globe after my sophomore, after my junior year of college.

I'm sorry, I got it backward. I go to the Boston Globe after my sophomore year of college. And then again to the Boston Globe after my junior year college. They had never had a two-time intern before me. So I'm the first sports intern at the time speaking you. I'm the first two-time intern at the Boston Globe. And then at the college, the Boston Globe is like, yo, come on back and work for us.

So this shit's kind of easy for me. I'm like, damn arena in 84. Like, oh, I'll be in a Super Bowl every year. It's like, okay. It's like, I just, you know, it was like, oh, this is what it's like. And so that success came easily or quickly, I should say, not easily. I mean, I worked for it and everything, but quickly to where that fast, track, it was never any time for me to decide if I wanted to be on it because I was on it,

you know, I'm making money. I'm like, I'm, I'm covering. And by the way, then right after college, Brian, you know, I graduated from Loyola, New Orleans in May of 2001. In February in 2002, I'm back in New Orleans covering the Super Bowl. So I'm covering the Super Bowl in my hometown, like a conquering hero. It's like, yeah, there's Marshall Falcon and there's Michael Smith is back in New Orleans, but it's Super Bowl. It's like, okay, like, what could be better than this. And so you go from that and covering a dynasty in New England at the globe. And then ESPN comes calling like da-da-da-da-da-da comes calling like at 25. It's like, who the fuck wouldn't go to ESPN at 25? And just like, so this is where I'm gonna be. And so I'm there.

And yeah, next thing you know, I look up with it is 15 years later. So I mean, they're spot on and that's what you just said. Like things fell into place and I was so blessed and fortunate to start off at the paper for sports at the time, Boston Globe, cover the greatest dynasty in NFL history right out of college and then go to ESPN three years later. I never did nor ever thought of stopping to examine whether or not this is what I wanted to do. You also said in that GQ interview, I love film and television more than I love sports. Was that something you knew when you were spending all that time doing mostly sports? Or is that something that realization you came to later? Oh, I knew it. I knew it. It was just one of those things where there's plenty of room to love both, right? And so, you know, I was able to still, you know, do my job, I think effectively and be committed to it and enjoy it. But whenever possible and it became easier and easier as my role at ESPN evolved. And I became more of a personality than a reporter than a straight reporter to integrate and implement as much pop culture, specifically TV and movies as possible. So that was always, you know, and I'm not alone in that, but that was always kind of, kind of.

like my identity. It's always how I, you know, how I express myself. Yeah, that Dan Marino referenced a second to go aside. I think if I counted up all the pop culture references you made when you and I have talked versus sports references. Yeah, right? I mean about 20 to one, I would say, you know. There's a Dan Marino in there, but it's, you know, few and a fort. Exactly. Easily. What did you and Michael Envision, brother from another being about? Us. And honestly, that was the inspiration behind the name was I was trying to think of the thing that best spoke to our relationship and you know he and I he was my mentor at the Boston Globe he started as my mentor and then became one of my best friends and a brother and we remained close over the last 20 years and so

we wanted this show to just be a true reflection of us in that you know one minute we're but we're totally passionate and so the content of the show of the show is only the subjects that we are passionate about. It's not just freedom in terms of what we say, but it's freedom in terms of these editorial control. Like there is no scorekeeper, there's no producer, there's no mandate. Nobody's saying, hey, it's Monday.

You got to talk about the NFL, the whole show. You got to play the hits, as they used to say, right? It's like, no, we talk about whatever we want to talk about, whether that's, you know, Trump's rally in Georgia, whether that's COVID, whether that's France, Frankie Beverly and Mays, you know, whether it's Larry Bird, James Hardin, or, yeah, sure, week 13 in the NFL. And so we wanted it to be a reflection of our, the versatility of our interests and the diversity of our interests. Like, we love music. We love politics. We love art. We love literature. You know, I don't mean to, like, overstate my intellectual capacity or anything like that. But we're just much more than former sports journalists.

And Michael's still a sports journalist. But we're much more than sports. writers and we wanted to reflect that but also just our dynamic and our relationship which is you know two guys who have a lot in common disagree a lot love each other like brothers and fight like brothers so it's really a family affair if i may yeah when you take a real relationship and translate it into a show i watched you and jemel do that i watched paulo and bomani do that dan and his dad do that on ESPN it's the only way to do it but how do you start doing that because you could also have a conversation with Michael and it could be it could just sound like two guys talking right it's not necessarily going to translate from a relationship that relationship isn't necessarily going to get

to the DNA of the show so how do you do that um I would say there's off camera and there's on camera I think off camera it's no different than any relationship in terms of a significant other it's like it's nothing without communication so you piss me off I got to tell you I piss you off you got to tell me. Can't let it linger. Can't go to, can't go to bed on an argument. You know, we've got to keep it 100 with each other all the time. And we got to be able to critique each other, you know, because we're literally, all right, I hope I'm not going too far with this. We're literally in bed together, you know? Like, this is, as I go, you go and vice versa, right? And so that's off camera. But I've always found that if you take that off

camera dynamic and translate it on camera, don't try to have a different relationship off camera than on. The successful ones I find are a reflection of the conversations that you and the interactions that you have off camera and you literally carry it over on camera to where it feels to the viewer like, oh, I'm just, I'm just listening to two friends. Like, I'm going to fly on a wall as two friends talk. Like, Michael and I, I don't even think about, and I never did. You know, when I was doing his and hers or to a lesser extent, sports center. But definitely, now, a brother from another, I don't think about who's watching or how many people are watching or what they think. All the thing I'm focused on is, it's like I'm in a crowded restaurant,

and I'm sitting across from one of my best friends, and I'm talking to my best friend, and I'm, everything else I'm tuned out on. I'm not even thinking about the fact that I'm on television. And I think that's the difference. It's like, you know, Jamel and I, when we were doing the show, I mean, we would, even leading up to the show, while we wanted to work together was we would talk, you know, all the time about just whatever. And then when we were doing the show together, one of the reasons a lot of people, you know, thought that we had our actual relationship

is because we spent so much time together off camera. We ate lunch together. We hung out together. We, you know, drove in to work together. We parked next to each other. Like, it was a real friendship. And it's like, okay, bam, do it. Let's do that same thing.

on television. And then the same with me and Michael Holly. Like Michael was in my wedding. Michael is a godfather to my oldest child, you know, and vice versa. You know, Michael introduced me to my wife. And so that relationship, we just, and it's also trust, man. It's like you got to trust that the other person has your best interest in mind as much, if not more than they have their own, you know, because too many partnerships. And that's why I started when you started the question, and sorry if I'm rambling, But, you know, when you started the question, I said, that's the only way to do it. Too many people try to like chemistry in television or chemistry and media cannot be a laboratory experiment. You know, if you're a producer, you can't, or an executive, you can't say, well, this person's popular and this person's popular.

And he's a man and she's a woman or he's a black man and she's a white woman. Let's put them together and that'll be great. Like, that shit don't work like that. They got to like each other. They really, they got to fucking love each other. They got to love each other. Love each other enough to disagree, but not let it be anything that festeres. It just rarely, rarely, if ever, does it work as well as it could.

Now, I'm not saying, because I know a lot of relationships on air that they hate each other off camera, but they were talented enough to mask it effectively enough on air to where you didn't know. But to me, what bothers me about those scenarios is how much better it could be if y'all actually loved each other or actually cared about each other on a personal level. Yeah, though I guess the reverse applies too, is if you hate each other off the air, you're completely focused on making it work on the air. Whereas if you come in with a preexisting relationship, you've got some other, some other things going on.

I don't want to chew out my partner, even if he sucked today, because that would hurt his feelings, right? Or there's some, you know, personal reason I'm not, you know, making the show as good as it can. I'm going to forgive him something that I wouldn't forgive a kind of semi-stranger of. You know what I mean? No, actually it's the opposite. No, in my experience, at least it's the opposite,

because that's why I go back to that trust. If it's somebody who I know has my best interest in mind, like, okay, whether it's Michael or Jamel or Beaumani or any of the people that I'm closest to in this industry, if they tell me something, I'm going to take it to heart because I know it's coming from a good place. I'm not going to take offense to it. So they can correct me or they can, you know,

know, encourage me or frankly chastise me or whatever. And I'm going to be like, all right, I'm listening to them because that's my, they got my back. And I know that they're doing that, you know, for my own good. It's not, it's not a competition. You know what I mean? So if you, if you don't have, if you're not invested in the other, not only can it cause, you know, friction that inevitably is going to probably bubble to the surface in some way, shape, or form, but also, too, it's easier to carry on a conversation if you're genuinely interested in what the other person has to say and genuinely interested in that person flourishing and that person shining because, you know, one of the things I was taught early on and I always held on to this

lesson is that there's a phrase that I hate muttering on television. I hate, I hate hearing it. It's like nails on a chalkboard and I've never said it. I might have said it once. I'm not going to say never, but I try never to say it is let me finish. Like let me finish. It's such an, like it's such an, It's such an abrupt command. And when I hear that, I know, okay, yeah, they're not complimenting. They're competing. And here's what I mean by that. The polite thing to do, this was taught to me.

And Mike and Tony are masters at this. Maybe that's why it's called pardoning the eruption. The polite thing to do when you're engaging in a debate or discussion or whatever, when the other person starts talking, you're supposed to stop and let them go. And vice versa. So the idea of an interruption is not a negative or an interjection even. It's not a negative. And that's how you have that ping pong effect.

But you can really do that if you're actually interested in what they have to say. So whether it's Jamel or Michael Holly or Bermani or the list goes on for me, a lot of people I respect. But if they say some, if I'm talking and they jump in, I'm not taking it as, oh, you took the mic from me or you're interrupting me. It's like, I'll stop, let them go, and now you avoid that talking over each other that makes TV hard to watch sometime. Yeah, let me finish sounds like one of the debates we just watched a month and a half ago, you know. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's what you're saying.

You're with it to stop. Yeah. Excuse me. Yeah. Mr. Vice President, Mr. Vice President, let me finish here. Yeah, I'm speaking.

I'm speaking. That's right. Yeah. No, I listen. I'm sorry to ramble. This process fascinates me. So thank you for asking. I hope it's interesting to you as well.

But, you know, you started out Friday's show by talking about the COVID death total, which is now more than 2,000 people a day and the sort of idea of mask mandates versus mask suggestions, you know, in this country. So you do a segment like that or a short, you know, bit like that. And then do you want to come back on your show and do something light after that or tacked to sports after that? How do you guys think about that? I think about it just kind of what flows, you know, and what's it. interesting about the streaming format is we don't have many breaks. So a lot of it I'm thinking

about in the moment. I'm thinking about a lot of it while the conversation is going on. I'm looking at, you know, the list of things that I want to get to my feed, for lack of a better word, as we call it. So like, here's the topics I want to hit. Here are the topics that, you know, I have an idea of what Michael wants to go to, not necessarily what he's going to say, but way he wants to go. So I'm thinking about, you know, the top. And I try to give him. it's some thought in advance, but it's also such an unscripted and organic show to where, no matter what I think we're going to be doing and how long we're going to be doing or where it's going to go pre-show, it could go a million different directions once the conversation starts.

So conversation starts and I'm like, you know, whether it's while Michael's talking or even in advance when I have an opportunity, I may say, okay, what flows naturally off of this? I don't like to make the hard turn necessarily from sports to politics or vice versa. You know, we only have, we have six breaks, two minutes each over two hours. So we don't have a whole lot of time to game plan or reassess or, and we don't have a rundown. We have the feed items, but we don't have a rundown. So really, it's just feel for me. It's just what feels like the right place to go next.

And that's it. But I rarely will force a pivot. It's just really, I like transitions, natural transitions. Oh, okay, for example, and this isn't a politics, sports example, but I'm just looking at the feed from today. So we're talking about James Harden and his absence from Rockets practice and going to a little baby's birthday party. And then I just used the easy layup.

It was like, okay, you know, speaking of birthday, oh, we compared him. Michael Holley was talking about him versus LeBron James as a team builder and culture shaper. And I was like, all right, speaking of birthday, You know, a pretty significant birthday we wanted to acknowledge today. Speaking of birthdays and LeBron,

and Michael took the, he took the alley. It was like, Larry Joe Bird, so we started talking about Larry Bird, his birthday celebrating his brilliance in the 80s, and me talking about how a couple of years ago, only a couple of years ago, did I sit Larry down from my all-time starting five at Small Forward and insert LeBron?

So just the way my brain kind of works in transitions and segues. That's pretty much it for me. Yeah, it has a feel to me of a radio, show a little bit as much as a television show. Oh my God. It is more radio and podcast than television at this point. Oh, yes, 100%. Because, you know, there's no real time limit on our topics. As you can tell, I can kind of ramble from time to time. So it's like, yeah, I mean, we go and it's really wherever the wind takes us, wherever the show takes us. There is no preset schedule or segment length or any of that.

It's absolutely more radio and podcast and television. 100%. It's a sprawling drive time radio show where it's like we're going to do 40 things. We're going to have some guests on. We're going to do like 20 topics. They're going to be here, here, here, here, and we're going to get to them in an order. And that's the idea. Yeah. And then you end up getting the five of them because you land on something that was really good.

And it's like, oh, okay, let's stay here. You know, like, you couldn't have told me that starting today's show, and we actually started with sports today. We started with the worst team in the NFL. You couldn't have told me that we would have spent 20 minutes on the Jets. But we did, you know, look up and we spent 20 minutes on Greg Williams and the call and tanking and take a quick break and come back. And I think I forgot we switched to in the B block. But yeah, it's really, we just kind of played the whole thing by ear.

You mentioned Trump's rally in Georgia. How have the election results settled in your mind? I feel better in, what is it, 40-something days, you know, when Joe Biden's taking the oath and whatever. side slash shit show Trump is going, going to pull off, you know, as alternative programming has taken place. So once January 20th gets here, I'll feel much better. But I would say relief, first and foremost. I'm still feeling that relief and that peace that we all felt the day of the election was called. I'm not going to say we all felt. Reasonable people felt. You know, the normal people felt when it was called. But, uh, um, but, uh,

You know, still January 5th is on my mind more than anything, Georgia in particular, because as great as it is to have Donald Trump out of the White House, unfortunately he and those who think like him are not out of public consciousness. They're not out of the picture. He just may be out of the White House, but he'll still cause quite a bit of a distraction and division from Marilago, if not Trump Tower or wherever he decides to set up shop. So July 5th is critical, and I'm just hoping that they continue to cut off their nose despite their face in the Republican Party and deliver a Senate majority to the Democrats. And then we could actually see about holding Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to their campaign promises and trying to take this country not back to normal, but to a higher level in a more just,

equitable and fair society, you know, hopefully four years at a time. There were some people who right after the election felt, oh my gosh, Joe Biden won, but Donald Trump did so well, right? I was one of those people, yeah. Ten, and we're talking, you know, we're not talking about a lot of votes that could have swung this election, right, if a portion correctly in the swing states, even though Joe Biden won by more than four million votes, right? So have you, you've passed that stage of, or you've at least leveled off of that

stage of sort of pessimism about Trump doing this well? No, no, not even. It's still top of mind for me. I've just tried my best to not focus on it because I'm certainly not one of those people that's like, you know, okay, we got to, we got to reach across the aisle and we got to, we got to try to connect with Trump voters and there's 70 plus million people, you know, who we need to consider like, no, no thanks. Like, I'm good because the reason, like, what always bothered me was how an

a clearly unfit, a clearly unfit for office candidate. And I'm talking about 2016, unfit from a qualification standpoint, unfit from an intellectual standpoint, unfit from a moral standpoint, how he was able to, and even if, you know, sure, Russia had a hand in this, but, you know, win the election in 2016. And yet there was still so many people, who even if they didn't, they weren't crazy about Donald Trump, were crazy enough to suggest that he would somehow grow into the job, that he would somehow be a different person than the person that he had been his whole life, which a quote unquote brought him success and gotten him elected,

that he would somehow realize the responsibility with being president and he would change. Okay. So then he fucks up the last four. years something royally. And then, in spite all of the evidence that was suggested, this should have been a land, more of a landslide election than it was, there's aforementioned 70 plus million people decide, please sir, I'll have another. Another round.

So, no, like, you know, I guess I'm not even, I'm trying to have to waste bandwidth trying to figure those people out. Because I could give you a pass if you were so, you know, you just could not bring yourself to vote for Hillary Clinton, or you were so disenchanted or desponded or just disgusted with your lot in life in the direction of this country and this so-called outsider for whatever reason appealed to you. I have my theories on why he appealed to people in general. But okay, you fell for the okie-doke in 2016.

but in the midst of a raging pandemic where the only thing America is first at in this context is being the worst, after all of his racism, after all of his white supremacy, after all of his incompetence, after all of his xenophobia, after all of the humanitarian crimes he's committed, let alone the blood of mass murder, frankly, that's on his hands based on how he's handled or mishandled this pandemic, for people to still look past all of that and throw that support behind him, it doesn't surprise me, but unfortunately it does disappoint me because even I was guilty of falling for the trap of expecting better from a country that's never shown me that it's any better than this.

Like I actually kind of thought, okay, there's no way people are going to sign up for more of this after, given what we're going through. And sure enough, I mean, because if you really want to do it to look into some fraud, maybe that's the fraud. Maybe we're not that bad. Maybe 70 million people really didn't vote for Donald Trump. Maybe that's the real crime here. Because it's like, yo, are we really that fucking stupid or worse? You know what I mean?

Like, you know, because, okay, fine, I'll forgive you racism. Bear with me here. I'll forgive you racism. Okay. I'll forgive you white supremacy. I'll forgive you xenophobia. Okay, cool. But are you really so stupid?

stupid as to think that this dude is the best option for the country, given that our economy is being decimated and people are dying by the thousands a day, a 9-11 event a day, and you really wanted more of this? So I'm like, yo, y'all, I wish, here's what I wish, okay? So, hey, Michael, you're the king of the world for a day. You know what I would do? I take an island and I would take all the people who don't take COVID-19 seriously. pick the motherfuckers up, drop them on that island, and say, here, Donald Trump, you're in charge of that island.

Y'all go have a nice life together. Y'all deserve each other. That's what I would do. So the rest of us who unfortunately have to share this country with the people who aren't taking this pandemic seriously enough to wear a fucking mask could get on with our lives. There's like this MAGA fire festival kind of happening on this remote island. This is the idea. And Trump is running this thing. You know what?

I actually, no, I take that back. Not an island. a fucking planet in a galaxy far, far away. Okay. COVID planet. Oh, my God. Sorry, man. No, no.

The other thing I wanted to ask you about with Trump is that SC6's first episode was 17 days after Trump's inauguration in 2017. Yeah. 17 days. You gave me this quote at the time. I've never forgotten this. He said, this election was about taking the country back from people like us, right? And now it's like, damn it, I got to come home and watch these two.

Did you feel Trump having this tractor beam pull? I don't want to give him too much credit here on your career. I mean, given the time and the place and everything else? Wow, that's interesting. Yeah, I think that's something to be said for that to some extent. And I know what you mean. Obviously, he doesn't know what the fuck I am. And he's that he's not like consciously doing it.

But no, I know what you mean. Like, yes, the trajectory of my career has been in some. way, shape, or form, influenced by his ascendancy to the White House and the ensuing four years and just the way, yeah, absolutely. You know, but for the better, though, because I think, you know, I think the conversations that we're having and the dialogues that we're having and more important to people that are having them around issues like social justice has come a long way as a result of the last four years. You know, Trump was not, and I'm not the first person to say.

this, but Trump was not so much of a, so much of a, just an aberration or an anomaly as much as he was a revelation or exposing something that was already there. You know, he was a manifestation of who we've long been, but done a better job of being more subtle about it as a country. But after Barack Obama, America was like, nah, fuck this. Let's just, like, no more, like, no more nuanced, you know, like, no, none of this. We ain't playing nice. Like, let's get Donald Trump in this.

Like, you know, so, yeah, I think, I think there is something to be said for that. But I feel like I am in a better place. And I think, I feel like, you know, since you asked about my career, I'll just kind of extrapolate to the business. I think the business is in a better place because of the state of the country. And I think the people who try to put a muzzle on people like me or who want to tune out conversations that needed to be had that were being led by people like me or people that looked like me and think like me, they had no choice but to get out of the way, especially this past summer. And so I'm actually, I'm grateful because I guess he showed us in this regard,

because he showed us how much work we need to do. My career is in a great place. And I think the business and the conversations and the more mainstream. And listen, maybe it's not always a good thing, and I don't want to get too off track, but the more universal and mainstream acceptance and appreciation and interest and curiosity about these conversations and perspectives could not have happened, if not for the last four years. You can catch Michael Smith and Michael Holly's rundowns, often dueling rundowns, often sub-tweeting rundowns of the other ones run down. Every afternoon on Brother from Another on the Peacock streaming service.

Michael, thanks so much for being here. Appreciate you, Brian. Thank you so much. All right, Sam for David. Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline. All right. We're going to get it today. Monday's headline about the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree policies was bowel humbug.

Today's headline comes from pretty much every listener of the press box. It's from Texas Monthly. did you see this story out of Austin David? Mayor Steve Adler recorded a video urging residents to stay home, giving the soaring number of COVID cases. Nothing surprising except for one thing. He recorded the video from Cabo San Lucas where he was vacationing at the time. So Cabo San Lucas, those are your raw materials here. First of all, I just want to say, I didn't see a lot of coverage on it. I remember reading the story. I didn't read this story, not reading anything in Texas Monthly. I saw the story I'd love. mind right when it happened. Was it not, was it just me or was the most damning part of the whole situation, not that he was there, not that he was whatever, but that he had like turned his video camera in such a way that it was like only filming the ceiling. So it was clear that he was trying to

hide where, where he was. If he had just done it in the kitchen of whatever like cabana house he was in, I feel like it would have been kind of fine. Yeah, it was it was it was it was it was it qualifies maybe for the second worst, uh, webcam disaster of 2020. All right, sorry. Let's go back to the thing. Not going to get the number one. All right. So I'm not using his name. I'm just using Cabo San Lucas.

Cabo San, looky, look, look, look, um, do, um,

what? No, I wasn't saying, oh, okay, I would just follow your finger here. Cobbo San, Duke.

Hmm? This, this mayor, he's a real. Oh, Cabo San Dufus? Cabo San Dufus. Oh, man.

That is, I mean, just the gall to the title of story of that, that win. I mean, that's, that's very, very impressive. It's almost like Texas Monthly was casting an NVSI at the New York Post. Yeah. The very neat. Texas Monthly heard rumor of your plan to take them over. And now they realize the only way.

That's not a plan. Everybody there just disregard. They're going to keep pumping out bad upon headlines, you know, as long as it takes, man. He is David Shoebaker, I'm Bride Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida, production magic by Erica Servantes. David, on Thursday, we got a treat. Listener mail, yes, but also, Mori Povich.

That guy, Mori Povich. Wait, he's not here with any specific news for one of the hosts of his show. He did have an envelope, and it said, David, test, I don't know. We'll await those results. Plus, of course, more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.