The Press Box - Impeachment Is Here, Richard Jewell, and Warren Goes on Offense | The Press Box

Episode Date: December 10, 2019

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss the latest in impeachment news (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (24:30), Richard Jewell and the media (28:15), an update on the 2020 Democratic race (44:30), and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For over 115 years, Orris has been making purely mechanical watches in Holstein, Switzerland. Staying true to a rich heritage, oris is one of the few Swiss watch companies to remain independently owned and operated. And watch is coming to four themes, diving, aviation, motorsport, and culture. So Orris has a watch for everyone in every occasion. Shop the collection at oris.c.c.com slash press box to go your own way. David, on Tuesday, Democrats submitted draft articles of impeachment against President Trump. What I want to know is, since the ringer is obsessed with the NBA draft, do you want to take this opportunity to make any draft jokes?

Yeah, I mean, I can see the president's done some bad things, but what's the upside of this? Can we get, like, I can't, let's turn on CNN, and wouldn't that be great if, like, Chad Ford, does Chad Ford even do the draft anymore? No, we have, we get, we should, is, is Woge going to be leaking the articles of impeachment? Oh my God. I once read Adam Schaefter say that he was interested in trying to be a political reporter. No. Just for like, no, no, just for like one campaign.

And I think the idea was like, could you do it, right? Mm-hmm. Could you be, could Adam Schaefter become Jonathan Swan? Could one insider just transfer worlds like that? And we may have reached the time in history where it's appropriate. that we can recruit Woge at all to just cover impeachment, right? Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I think that...

I mean, I think that basketball and politics are so intertwined at this point. That Woge's power may extend into the political... No, Woge's power may just extend into the political sphere just by nature, I mean, just by the sheer power, I mean, the volume of his sports world power. But yeah, I'd say let him have at it. Like why not? What else is he going to be doing? Like, Woe would be pretty successful covering the Yang campaign. I feel like that would really work.

It's his new assignment. We're the lottery protection of media podcasts. This is at the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers. You've got Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. Lots and lots to get to today. We'll revisit the case of Richard Jewel, Olympic bombing hero, media villain, and subject of a new Clint Eastwood movie.

We'll update you on the 2020 Democratic race, including Elizabeth Warren's decision to change basically everything about her campaign tactics, plus, of course, the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But, David, we've got to begin with impeachment because the procedural stuff is largely finished. Two draft articles of impeachment were unveiled Tuesday morning

by Democrats who were arranged around microphones speaking inappropriately grave voices, a nine-page document charges Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Here I'm quoting from the New York Times. The draft articles accused Trump, quote, of carrying out a scheme corruptly soliciting election assistance from the government of Ukraine in the form of investigations that would smear his Democratic political rivals. To do so, Democrats charged, Mr. Trump used leverage of two official acts, the delivery of $391 million in security assistance, and a White House meeting for Ukraine's. president. Democrats also charged that by giving blanket orders to ignore House subpoenas, Trump was creating unprecedented, categorical, and indiscriminate defiance of House rights. So what

happens next? Well, the House Judiciary Committee will meet to discuss those charges on Wednesday and is probably going to vote to recommend them to the entire House later in the week. Trump could be formally impeached next week, and his full Senate trial would probably take place in January. I guess I just kind of want to start emotionally, if that's the right word for it. What does it feel like, David, to see this actually here draft impeachment articles against the president of the United States? I don't want to betray my own ignorance. I do that well enough on an episode by episode basis. But I told you before we started recording that just the volume of push alerts that I got on my phone

was my only real metric for how significant today's procedure, today's events were. I mean, yeah, it's really significant. Pelosi and the Dems came out and started announcing some, I think, believe some infrastructure stuff to sort of prove that they could walk and chew gum. Trade, but yes. Oh, trade, sorry. to prove there could do multiple things at the same time. And I appreciate the gesture, but that only did, to me,

only further kind of muddied the water of like the 12th day that major impeachment moments have happened without really amounting to much. I mean, taking it for what it is, yes, this is a very significant day. And it is interesting to see the charges that they settled on and the charges that they excluded. it's also interesting to see sort of the i mean republicans out there is trying to trying to parse this without actually having read anything or digested at all it's a it's i think um you know

this is a big moment and um whether or not uh you know trump finishes out his term whether or not he actually even gets impeached um you know this is i i don't think we can I mean, I think despite my sort of shoulder shrugging, I think, you know, we should, this is a day that we should take seriously. And they're, you know, this is, this is a moment to sort of reflect on just how bizarre situation this country's found itself. A couple of points off what you just said. One, how chaotic and crazy is the Trump administration when the presentation of draft articles of impeachment seems, as you point out, like kind of just another day, if not a serious but not. really that big a day in the life of the Trump administration. I mean, that's incredible, right? This moment was a presidency defining moment in Bill Clinton's presidency. And here it just feels like Tuesday and really not that newsy a Tuesday. That's number one. And number two, you point out that

this whole thing feels like it's been kind of in this slow grinding procedural way. And I totally agree where you're you're constantly turning on CNN and you're seeing Democrats talking in front of the microphone and something big is about to happen. That to me is a reflection of just how fast news moves now. Yeah. This hasn't been going on very long. But, and of course, you hear Republicans charging, oh, the Democrats are rushing to impeach. But I just think we process things so quickly, thanks to social media, et cetera, et cetera, name all the normal factors there. Plus, were used to processing Trump news so quickly, that this does seem like it's actually been just grinding away

at this incredibly slow pace. The Democrats have done, I mean, have sort of been forced to thread this needle between taking their, I mean, taking, you know, taking things relatively slowly so as not to seem like they're jumping the gun, because that would certainly be, it has been the charge at times. And also, you know, having to deal with what,

you're just discussing the the kind of specter of monotony of repetition that that sort of blunts the force of whatever you know impeachment articles or or whatever accusations surface um but yeah i mean we we have to say that that it's that this is huge news that you're right because of the way we process news now because of the way the news cycle works it's um you know that this news is certainly blunted by all that. But also there is real brand new exciting news that has come out to yesterday and today in the investigation into the FBI's investigation of the investigation of the investigation with the FBI looking into the Trump campaign. And and basically, I mean, and Bill Barr, our attorney general, Bill Barr's complete denial of the investigation

that he, you know, functionally was in charge of. And just as we're like pressing record now, he's out there in NBC interview saying basically everything that that investigation turned over is nonsense, which is all to say, I mean, if that is what's overshadowing the, you know, the roll out of the articles of impeachment, then that's justifiable. But it's just wild that we're in a situation where those two narratives are competing. I mean, that's, or not narratives, those two narratives, those two stories are competing. These are both just should send shutters up your spine. Absolutely. And they

weirdly, they somehow, even though any reading of the stories is incredibly damning to Trump or any honest reading, they seem to just cancel themselves out in a lot of ways because they're just too much news. And people just, again, you just sort of get confused or, you're not quite sure what's happening, even people like us who were allegedly paid to do this stuff. Trump was watching TV this morning. I know that's going to shock you. He tweets to impeach a president who has proven through results, including producing perhaps the strongest economy in our country's history. By the way, credit to Trump for inserting that perhaps. Trump doesn't strike me as a perhaps person. To have one of the most successful presidencies ever, he continues. And most importantly,

who has done nothing, all caps wrong, is sheer political madness. He capitalizes political and madness. Also noticed today, David, that the Democrats' messaging has really improved. Here's Adam Schiff on the question of whether the Democrats are going too fast. He says, the argument, why don't you just wait amounts to this. Why don't you just let him cheat in one more election? Why not let him cheat just one more time? Why not let him have foreign help just one more time? and that to me strikes me as a very effective answer to the whole question of this is moving too fast is you know and everybody's saying oh isn't there an election there's an election coming up right why don't you just wait and the American public will have their say on whether they want four more years of Donald Trump

no because he's going to cheat in the election that that's what that's what impeachment is about and cheat is a really good word here not solicit help and and, you know, ask for favors from Ukraine, all this stuff. No, no, no. He's going to cheat to win. So we can't wait for the election that we think he might cheat to win in. It's just as simple as that. But that is weirdly one of the more clearer versions of that argument that I've heard.

You do mention the Democrats striking a deal with Trump on trade, which is really interesting. Because we haven't, I think, heard much criticism of political. Pelosi and her caucus for the political implications of impeachment recently, but we have heard a bunch of criticism about what they're doing during impeachment. Pelosi today, as the Democrats were outlining these charges against the president, was talking to the press about her support for the U.S.MCA trade deal that replaces NAFTA. Pelosi thinks she got a good deal. We ate their lunch. She apparently told her caucus about the deal. and of course she would say that.

But there is this bizarre idea that you just referenced that the Democrats think they have to prove that while they're impeaching Trump, they should be carrying out the business of government at the same time, walking and chewing gum at the same time. What do you make of that, both procedurally and morally, cooperating on a deal with the president

that you're trying to impeach? Um, that's a good question. I mean, I think for one thing, the, the, the, I mean, this is this, both the walk and chew gum, uh, concept and the speed of the process, I mean, the speed of, you know, the impeachment proceeding, um, are issues, or optics issues, right? And it's not, I mean, both of them are legitimate separate from optics, but there, but the reason why, me talk about how Adam Schiff's talking. talking points have gotten better. They certainly have. But he's not the only person that went on TV and got asked if the Democrats are moving too fast, you know, in this impeachment investigation. Every time somebody's had, every time a different dim pops up, Democratic Congressman pops up on CNN or Fox or MSNBC, that they get that question. And it's just this sort of pro forma interest

in optics that is sort of, that is utterly separate from the content of what we're, what we're dealing with. So, I mean, a casual viewer might be forgiven if they're sort of, if they miss the force for the trees and all this, right? Totally. It feels like, it feels like the slightly skeptical question that a news, a cable news anchor can ask of a Democrat at this point. Right. Right. Just kind of show that they're unbiased or whatever. But it's just, you know, it, I mean, it's, it honestly sounds more like someone who hasn't engaged with the facts deeply, right?

I mean, and that's not, I'm sure that's not the case for most of them, but it's become this, you know, the question of optics has become, you're right, the question, the skeptical point of view, which is, you know, really sad. Specifically to the point of, you know, making a deal with, with, with the president on trade. Um, I mean, I think that, that, that just because we're, you know, the optics are so significant and the politics, more broadly or so. important, especially as we come closer to election to election time, I don't think, I don't think that the moral stand is one, you know, a moral stand is a luxury that the Democrats have. And frankly, I'm not sure that it's, that it's justifiable, you know, that it's justifiable, even in terms of morality, because they do have a job that's more sick. I mean, that's bigger than just, um, the decision is to whether or not to try to, for the,

you know, the president should remain in office. Um, you know, there have many more things their plate and as distasteful as it may be to be cutting a deal with Trump on the same day that you're making this announcement or as this investigation is unfolding. These are, I think, necessary decisions to make more often than not. Yeah, well, there's two parts of this, right? There's the procedural argument that if you're impeaching the president, we hear the, you know, high lords of Washington say, you're going to ignore the business of the country, right? No president who is being impeached has ever not made that argument. I'm sure Bill Clinton made that argument a billion times in the 90s. Congress is obsessed with impeaching me.

They won't get what needs to be done, done. Okay. So Democrats on the one hand are showing, look, we can literally do these things at the same time. But yeah, the moral question is fascinated to me. Because to use a really dumb analogy, if I thought you, David, were endangering the integrity of the ringer. And I, you know, reported you to the inspector general of the ringer, whoever that may be. And then I called you up and said, hey, what do you want to, what topics do you want to discuss on our media podcast tomorrow? That would be weird. That would be really weird. Like, I think you're a danger to this website, but I want to do a media podcast with you tomorrow. They didn't make any sense. And that is sort of what the Democrats are doing. Plus,

morally, there's this idea, and this has been a democratic dilemma for years now since, you know, Obama's election and probably before that, this is Robert McGuire of Citizens for Ethics on Twitter. As Democrats stand poised to give Trump his biggest political, biggest policy victory in two years, it's important to remember that during the Obama years, Republicans would vote against anything, even bills they had co-sponsored if Obama came out in support of the bills. They essentially made Obama a bystander to his own presidency in his second term. And yet, Democrats want to. to do deals with Trump.

They wanted to do an infrastructure deal with Trump in year one that Trump, for reasons beyond any of us, just didn't want. And now they want to do a trade deal with Trump, which he will absolutely crow about being a big victory. And by the way, he will crow. He's already done this on Twitter this morning, crow about being a big bipartisan victory. Look, I got Democrats on board for my trade deal. I did what I said I was going to do. I got a better deal than NAFTA. I mean, that's what he's going to do.

crow about and sell through the Midwest in 2020. Yeah, I mean, go ahead. Is this the big unifying problem with with everything the Democrats are doing? I mean, that they're, they're basically like performing their roles as politicians rather than trying to, I don't know, get like, there's one criticism of impeachment, which is from the right, which is that, you know, they're rushing through this because they don't want the president to be absolved. And then there's criticism of impeachment from the left, which is that all of this is just like a performance of disapproval and it's kind of based in an old-timey understanding that if you say, oh, sir, I don't think you understand what you've done like loud enough, it'll do it.

And I don't, I think it's just a mentality that we're living in a world that we're not living in anymore, where really the way that you win, the culture war is to be fighting your battles in the culture war and instead they're trying to fight them in article in very narrow articles of impeachment which aren't going to do anything in the end. Or you're saying they're essentially trying to win the editorial boards of the Washington Post in New York Times. Right. Or meet the press circa 1992.

Like, oh yeah, you got him. Right. Rather than winning in the way people win now in 2019. Anyway, go ahead, David. I think it would be easy to accuse the Republicans have been. solely concerned with this ideological fight or this sort of performative fight and to defend what the Democrats are doing by saying that they're actually interested in doing their jobs or they're actually interested in the good of the Republic or whatever you want to say.

And that would be that's in some ways their weakness. But Chris is right. I mean, there is it's not, I mean, in some ways, their ideological target, yeah, or editorial boards, you know, I mean, it's being. It's doing the right thing, but more importantly, being lauded for doing the right thing, being, being, you know, having that etched into the history books. But this is not distinct from, I mean, you mentioned the Republicans' unwillingness to vote for anything that Obama, you know, was for. You know, it's not, we don't need to confuse consistency or even cohesiveness with morality. I mean, you don't have to have, this taking it back to your earlier question, but like, it's not indicative.

of some pure moral code to be, you know, to, I mean, to basically be a legislative terrorist, you know, and just to say no to everything. This is what we encountered over and over again with the debt ceiling when like Republicans really seem like they are willing just to let the whole thing blow up because in some ways that would, that, I mean, that fed their sort of base dinosaur ideology. But, I mean, Democrats in those cases, we're forced to make deals when no one should be making deals in that situation, you know, because this is a, we've been in the situation a million times before and there's never been a showdown. And that's sort of where we are. The Republicans are changing the, you know, changing the playing field or changing the rules on the field and the Democrats are forced to adjust. They're not pure in this, you know, I mean, they're not, this is not some, this is not an argument in faith. This is not a moral argument one way or the other, but it isn't very, we'll go ahead. I think it's an argument about using your power, right? Republicans when they got control of Congress, when Obama was president, were not afraid to use what power they had to make life difficult for him. That we look at that and, wow, this is seemingly counter to the interests of the United States in many cases, of the U.S. economy, as you mentioned, with the debt ceiling.

But they weren't afraid to exercise the power they had. Democrats seem afraid at some level to exercise. Nancy Pelosi didn't want to go down impeachment until literally there was a transcript that said, please impeach me. She didn't want to impeach Trump. They don't want to do that. Wants to make deal. Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, want to make deals with Trump. They wanted to since Trump got elected. Again, I just can't underline that enough.

Trump would have done an infrastructure deal in 2017. That would have passed with bipartisan support. So, again, they're just working on a completely different script than the Republicans. Last episode, David, we flailed away at the question of, why is Rudy Giuliani doing this, a.k.a. being Trump's agent for hire in Ukraine. The New York Times had a big front page story Monday written by five co-authors that pretty much answered the question. And the answer is, Giuliani didn't get to be Secretary of State. So he wanted to be pretend Secretary of State. days after the 2016 election

where Giuliani supported Trump earlier than almost any establishment GOP figure, he was sitting at a cigar bar, the New York Times reports, in New York City, musing how about Secretary of State when he's thinking about possible jobs?

As Chris notes, this is literally the plot of a House of Cards episode. If we hadn't canceled House of Cards, I would be literally a plot of the episode. Giuliani, of course, did not get the job. The Times doesn't quite, seemed to know why he didn't, though the paper holds out the idea that Rudy may have only

been up for Secretary of State in his own mind. He was the only one he thought he had to get a chance to get it. Miraculously for this piece, the paper interviewed Giuliani's estranged wife, Judith. She says that not getting Secretary of State was a bitter disappointment, quote unquote, for Giuliani. Quote, he doesn't just like the spotlight. He craves it for validation. Well, I mean, that all rings true.

I mean, sometimes the, you know, times comes through with the right with the sort of with the perfect answer. I think that, you know, you can read a lot of, you can make a lot of assumptions about what was going on in the early days of the pre-presidency of Trump and how he was making the appointments. There have been a lot of things reported on that front. And, you know, it's easy enough to imagine enough to fill, you know, to fill in the blank spaces. but yeah i mean it's it's a i you know i'll repeat what i said last week which is that like the the the wildest thing about juliani is that he failed to realize that he could have just sat out four years and emerged more popular than he was before um but maybe he thinks he doesn't have the time you know maybe he thinks that this you know i mean i guess it's we can't you know i i can't

fault him for not taking that tact except for that i can fault him certainly that i can't for, you know, breaking the law and, and, you know, pursuing a shadow foreign policy. Exactly. Pursuing a shadow foreign policy. You could definitely fault him for that. To the detriment of our country. But, yeah, I mean, it's,

it's a very, very plausible story that I'm sure we will hear more of. Let us break 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. Please send your nominees to at the press box. pod where they are always gratefully received. David, did you see the banana thing at Art Basel? No. Oh, you didn't.

An artist named Marizio Catalan duct taped a banana to the wall of an art gallery in Miami. The banana art was called comedian for reasons I didn't quite understand. It was just a banana duct tape to the wall. It sold for

$120,000. Then, according to at the Miami Herald, and I hope you're following me at this point. Banana duct tape to wall sells for $120,000. Then the Miami Herald says, New York-based performance artist David Detuna ate the banana at around 145 in front of a convention center full of art lovers.

Great Twitter video if you haven't seen it. This guy just walks up, takes a banana off the wall and eats it, the $120,000 banana. It was an overword Twitter joke to reference this line from Arrested Development. Don't you judge me. You're the selfish one. You're the one who charged his own brother for a bluth frozen banana.

I mean, it's one banana, Michael. What could it cost? $10? You've never actually set foot in a supermarket, have you? I don't have time for this. Thanks to Hannah, Don Steele, Zibi by Day, Michael Lev and Michael Salerno for that one. On Friday at a roundtable with business leaders, Donald Trump got to talking about the EPA and toilets. Yes, toilets.

Listen up. The situation where we're looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms where you turn the faucet on in areas where there's tremendous amounts of water, where the water rushes out to sea because you could never handle it, and you don't get any water. You turn on the faucet, you don't get any water. They take a shower and water comes dripping out. It's gripping out, very quietly dripping out. people are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once. It was an overword Twitter joke to call Trump the commoder-in-chief.

Thanks to Eric Cannon. I just love when Trump's just riffing. You know, like I don't know anything about this, but I'd like to talk about low-flow showers and toilets for a few minutes. Big news from the world of sports, David. Russia has been banned from all global sports, including the Olympics and the World Cup over doping allegations. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write.

Russia has been cleared to compete in the 2020 elections. Thanks to mysterious Dr. Z. and Joshua Papa for that. And finally, David Archright Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter from out here in California has pled guilty to the charge of conspiracy to steal campaign funds. Hunter announced he will resign, quote, after the holidays. it was an overwork Twitter joke to write while we used to say Christmas in this country thanks to Anthony Reimer

we never really talked about the hunter stuff on this pod but the stuff he put down as campaign expenses according to the San Diego Union Tribune oral surgery a garage door video games tickets to River Dance

raise your hand if you knew River Dance was still going around and $600 in fees to fly a pet rabbit across the country. That is not a joke. Well, the rabbit's not going to fly itself. If you join the fake war on Christmas with the real war on political corruption,

congrats. You made the Overwood Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, time for the notebook dump. If you've watched any football over the last month, you've probably seen the trailer for the upcoming Clint Eastwood movie Richard Jewel. I thought this was a good time for some history-splaining because Jewel was a significant and somewhat tragic figure in the history of the and also in journalism because of the way his case was covered.

And if you were on Twitter yesterday, you saw a giant backlash to the way a reporter in the Jule case was portrayed. So let's untangle everything. Stop me when anything here sounds interesting to you, please. The Richard Jule story began in 1996 with the bombing of Atlanta's Centennial Park during the Summer Olympics. The bomb killed one person, another died of a heart attack at the scene. We later learned the bomb was planted by a... an anti-abortion terrorist named Eric Rudolph. But at the time, the authorities in the media focused on Richard Jewel.

I'm cribbing from a 1997 Vanity Fairpiece by Marie Brenner called American Nightmare, which is the basis of the new movie. At the time of the bombing, David, Jewel was 34 years old. He was living with his mom. He'd been a campus cop at a liberal arts school where he somewhat zealously wrote up students for drinking infractions. From the beginning, Brenner writes, Jule was perceived in the public imagination as a hapless dummy, a plotting misfit, a Forrest Gump.

On July 26, 1996, Jule got to work at Centennial Park in Atlanta in the late afternoon. He found a green backpack under a bench, and when nobody claimed it, Jewel quickly helped clear the area, saving a number of people from potential harm or even death when the backpack exploded. Initially, he was considered a hero. He went on CNN, the Today Show, and then things turned. four days after the bombing, Jule was visited at his mom's apartment by two FBI agents. Quote, they told me they wanted me to come with them to headquarters to help them make a training film.

Jewel told Marie Brenner. After Jules spent some time with the agents, they somewhat mysteriously asked him to fill out a waiver of rights. At that point, Jule thought, oh my God, they think I set the bomb in Atlanta. Meanwhile, the press picked up on the suspicions. There was an Atlanta Journal Constitution headline that read FBI suspects, Hero Guard may have planted bomb.

A journal constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs got tips from law enforcement. And because of what Brenner details is a strange voice of God's style that was the lingua franca of the journal constitution, the paper wound up printing the sentence, Richard Jewel dot, dot, dot fits the profile of the lone bomber. Brenner notes that besides the New York Times, nearly every newspaper in the country, remember America was still a country of newspaper,

at that point, picked up the journal Constitution story. And this whole hero bomber theory that says, see, someone might set a bomb so that they can be seen as saving everyone from the bomb and get famous. That was the theory. The media wound up surrounding Jules' apartment where he lived with his mom, as I said. On NBC, Tom Brokaw said of Jule, quote, they probably have enough to arrest him right now, probably enough to prosecute him, but you always want to have enough to convict him as well. There are still holes in the case. the New York Post with its typical delicacy called Jewel, quote, a village rambo and quote, a fat failed former sheriff's deputy. One of Jewel's attorneys who was fighting the PR war against the feds accused Kathy Scruggs, the aforementioned reporter, of misquoting him and erroneously saying that Jewel had a sample of a blown up bomb in his apartment, a claim that would later be repeated on CNN.

What you see in this case, David, was not just incorrect facts. it was largely that the press was repeating what the FBI's theory was at the time, right? That was the problem. They were unskeptically swallowing the whole hero bomber theory rather than trying to poke holes in. Jules spent 88 days under a cloud of accusation, according to Brenner. Then he was cleared. He sued numerous media organizations for libel, wound up settling with NBC, CNN, and the New York Post. the general constitution won a protracted court case and richard jule died in 2007 so that's the long

version but it's it's just amazing to me and i you know we of course we've seen i don't know dozens hundred examples of this where it's not that there's some evil nefarious press out there that's doing things making things up and all that kind of stuff or whatever trump would accused them of. It's a press that is literally following what the authorities are telling them. And these guys suspect this guy might have been a quote hero bomber. So we're going to repeat that at infinitum until he's basically convicted in the public mind. Yeah. I mean, we've we've had a couple of stories like this where there's a in the past year where lack of skepticism turned out to be a real.

downfall of, you know, various journalistic establishments. And in some ways, Trump's demonization has, you know, let journalists off the hook because if you believe rightly that they're not some like insidious cabal that's out to, you know, push a political agenda or worse, then, you know, it's easy or it's perhaps easy to overlook when they actually do get something wrong. But this, but the lack of skepticism is like the great sin of journalists. And sure, I mean, like, FBI sources are the best kind of source, you know, amongst the best kind of sources, I'm sure that many of these journalists could hope for. But, you know, we should be particularly skeptical of pet theories of the, you know, profession of like secret knowledge that all these, that this sort of theorizing evolves out of. and I mean, it's not,

well, it's a pivot a little bit. I was reliving a lot of this last night. And it was like re-watch, it was like when you watch a documentary and you start Googling like what happened to these people afterwards, you know? My household, we re-watched Hoop Dreams recently and the movie got about like five times more depressing

with the help of Wikipedia. I, I, I, I, I, you know, I obviously can't be sure about this, but I'm fairly certain that when Richard Jewell died in 2007, I still more, like, more or less believe that he was guilty of something. And they were unable to pin the charges on him.

Like, I just, without having engaged in the facts, and to that point in time, it was easy to think that, like, he was acquitted on the technicality and the lawsuits were sort of performative.

I feel like we're saying performative a lot today. But that does, and that's utterly wrong. and that says probably a lot about me is a news consumer, but it also says a lot about how significant those sorts of errors are. No, that's right. And I probably felt the same way that at least you were kind of like, wait, is it the guy?

Did he actually do it or not? Right? Yeah. Just because it had been pounded into your head. And Eric Rudolph, who actually set the bomb in Centennial Park, wasn't arrested until 2003. So it's actually pretty close to the date of Jules' death. No, I completely agree.

And, you know, you understand, even if you can't totally forgive, you understand what happens in these cases, right? That bombing story in 1996 was absolutely huge, right? You had an Olympics in the United States for the first time and a long time. You have a terrorist act at the Olympics. And all of a sudden, every newsroom in the country is scrambling to get that story. The Atlanta Journal Constitution, where the story is literally in their backyard, is scrambling to own that story. what is it? You know, how can we, how can we figure this out? And again, as I said, they are accurately channeling what authorities think. I'm making things up. The authorities thought they

had their guy. They didn't, it turned out. Now, the postscript, I wanted to start there because a little bit of that is getting lost with the story that was big yesterday. I mentioned the Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter Kathy Scrugg. She died in 2001, by the way. She's played in this movie by Olivia Wilde, and I recommend to everybody a good profile of Scruggs in the actual non-movie version of the journal constitution by Jennifer Brad. One of the movie's intimations is that Scruggs slept with a source to get scoops, okay? Something Brett in the paper says there is no evidence for. And beyond that is a stereotype about women reporters that keeps turning up in movies somehow, not to mention shows like House of Cards. Because of that, the journal constitution has

lawyered up and sent a letter to Clint Eastwood asking him to release a statement saying the events were dramatized and even add a disclaimer to the movie. I'll start with you here. How do we keep getting to this point where every time a female journalist is portrayed in a movie, there is this, we immediately go to sleeping with sources for scoops. How does Hollywood keep getting to that place? I mean, how do we get to, you know, reluctant hero saves the world or damsel in distress or anything else? I mean, they're really just tired tropes that often were allotted for writers and directors are allotted for kind of define those molds or playing against expectations. But, I mean, really, the only answer is just like laziness, right? I mean, it's like you don't, if you're only, someone long ago who was,

I forgot who it was. I don't know if I read this or someone told me, but, um, you know, like a bad, like someone was trying to say what a bad version of screenwriting was. And you never,

like when you're writing like an episode of ER, you never put yada, yada, where the medical stuff goes in. Or you never, you always, like, you have to,

you need to understand the information, you know, there's, you know, instead of coming back later, once you've like, when you figure out what kind of medicine, medical talk you,

jargon you need and putting it in. You need to understand what they would be saying before you put pin to paper, right? I mean, you fully understand. And this just feels like the, like that problem, uh, and it just, I mean, perfectly executed, I mean, perfectly exemplified that this writer, and who knows if it was the writer, if it was, you know, if Eastwood or someone else had a hand in it, but, um, but like, whoever came up with this literally has no, has never encountered a human being that's a

journalist before with the exception of like press junkets. and probably has had very limited experience with human beings on any sort of real level to think that that is the way that these things work. And if your only exposure to a female journalist is watching other movies with female journalist character, then I mean, that's the only explanation for this.

And that just like, I think that that's kind of says all you need to know about this creative process or if that's not giving it too much credit. No, I absolutely think that's right. I would also top you with one thing with one more idea on that, which is that here's a problem with portraying journalists in movies. Journalists are really interesting. Their work is really interesting. The act of journalism is really boring.

So you have to invent journalists doing crazy things to try to make that somehow cinematic. Like somebody making phone calls and typing away at their computer or looking at doctor. or looking at documents isn't interesting. So I think these people who make movies like this are tempted to then take these crazy extra steps and do all this stuff. Look at the last season of the Wire, right? David Simon was a journalist,

and he went there into this cuckoo territory. Billy Ray, by the way, screenwriter of Richard Jewel is the guy who made the Stephen Glass movie. In that case, but even then, right, Stephen Glass, who wrote all these crazy fictions and all this stuff, typing those into his computer. That was the actual act of making

up all those stories. You know, it wasn't, it's not that interesting. And so I think part of it is like people get to this point where like, how do I, how do I make this character interesting? I'm not, I'm not a, I don't think the movie's spotlight. I think it's sort of overrated, just as a movie.

But in terms of getting what the life of a journalist is like, it's probably pretty correct. You know, it's a lot of reading stuff, looking through, looking through books and you have an occasional, like, dramatic interview, but that's it, you know. Yeah, I mean, and, and, right, I mean, and there are, there are equally kind of ridiculous depictions of journalists in films that, you know, most journalists would probably happily

accept, you know, I mean, the sort of like John Grishamie, Southern Fried journalist with, like, the, you know, cigarette in his mouth and the six shooter in the back of his pants or whatever. I mean, like, those don't exist either, but like there are, you know, but some, but there are certainly versions of that that, that, you know, writers and journalists are happy to sort of accept amongst their number. But yeah, I mean, it's just, it's not, it's not a very interesting, uh, uh, I mean, the journalists are not by and large, very interesting people. So, um, I guess that does make a certain amount of sense. I'm all for the people at the journal constitution standing on their desks to help say what the, truth about Kathy Scruggs is and was, especially because she's passed away and she's not here to say it herself. I'm happy for them to write articles about it, to give interviews about it. I'm less sanguine about them hiring Marty Singer, who was the guy Bill Cosby, who on Bill Cosby's

behalf was writing letters to newspapers, demanding retractions for articles and stuff like that. As the press, do you really want to be in that business? You know, to put, to a disclaimer on the movie. I mean, it just, it all strikes me as, again, well-intentioned, but unjournalistic behavior to have somebody doing that kind of stuff on your behalf. I just don't, that part, that's a part where I step off the train. Again, publicize it, correct the record, et cetera, et cetera. But to the point where we're writing, you know, stern letters and hiring people, I don't know.

That to me is, I disembark before we get to that point. I think just strictly about, I mean, when you talk about what the value of that is, I mean, I think that that's, I think that's a smart point, right? I mean, I don't, it's hard to imagine what's to be gained, although Richard Jewell, I mean, not to draw a direct comparison, but one might have said that about him, and he won a bunch of his cases. And, I mean, rightfully, and was rewarded. But, I mean, I don't think anybody's going to be. be swayed by

by this lawsuit in a way in to the extent they weren't already swayed by the argument that's backing it up. Yeah it's not a lawsuit but just that would essentially they're just having a lawyer write letters. Right. So you know but again I don't I don't know if you if you're in the press are you in the business of having a lawyer write letters because there's a fictional portrayal

you don't like I just don't like that doesn't that again that doesn't just as poisonous as it is and I'm not letting use to what are those people. off the hook. I just think there are other remedies to that you're probably to do as a journalist. Let's talk 2020, David. I want to begin with Elizabeth Warren and the way she's changed her campaign. She is to use the campaign reporter lingo taking the gloves off. No more Mrs. Nice Consumer Champion. And let's discuss some of the things she's doing relying on pieces by New York Times, Aces, Shane Goldmacher, and Jonathan Martin. First thing Warren has done is she's given up her longish stump speech. She's given herself an edit. now her stump speech is shorter and includes more audience questions.

Why? Because that creates, as Goldmarker notes, more organic moments. Remember, the key to running for president in 2019 is the ability to go viral. Here is a legitimately touching one that happened earlier this month in Marion, Iowa. Listen to Warren take a question from a 17-year-old LGBTQ student. I was wondering if there was ever a time in your life where somebody you really looked up to. Maybe you didn't accept you as much. And how you've done with that? Yeah.

My mother and I had very different views of how to build a future. She wanted me to marry well. And I really tried. And it just didn't work out. And sometimes you just got to do what's right inside. And hope that maybe the rest of the world will come around to it. The Warren campaign isn't trying to engineer moments like that, but they're certainly trying to put her in position

where she can show more of her personality and things like that. What do you make of that strategy, David? I mean, I think that's a smart strategy, as it was described there. I think that, you know, again, this is a fine balance. this you know taking the gloves off whatever the the low key reboot um or actual reboot however you want to put it of the campaign is a uh you know the the decision the decision making was sound right i mean these changes are or good or at a bare minimum understandable um and you want the i mean i'm getting way too meta here but you want the attention

that comes with being responsive, being perceived as responsive, and you want the attention, just the attention full stop that you get from announcing a campaign reboot, right? But there is a real pitfall, which is having the sorts of articles written about you that have to explain why your campaign was struggling to the point where this was necessary. It's a real, it's maybe a bigger mistake.

to run as a front runner when your campaign is faltering. But, you know, the New York Times piece, which you mentioned, was very good. But, I mean, I found it hard to come out of it and not feel like there was more, it was, you know, on the whole, you know, more negative towards the Warren campaign than positive. And I, you know, I think that's the risk that, that, you know, you run. And obviously the benefit is not just going to be the attention today, but the attention on those sorts of moments when they come up and kind of feeding journalists the aha moment when moments like that materialized in the future.

But, you know, to have run the campaign that they've run to this point and then to be kind of by virtue of a couple of polls in Iowa forced to be forced to be acting like the bottom, falling out, I think is, you know, is probably is a little bit unfair to the, to what they've accomplished so far. Yeah, I mean, to me in a way, it's the viral version of the Warren's selfie line.

And she got so much attention because she was willing to wait after all these events and take a selfie with everybody. Which was her method of retail politics, right? Like, I want to have a moment, a human moment with you person at campaign rally. And this is a way, I think, by doing more questions like this, that, you know, she's hoping that some of those human moments get transmitted to everybody else.

A couple of other things she's done. She's made gender a bigger part of her campaign, especially since Kamala Harris left. You can find Harris and even Kirsten Gillibrand's picture now in Warren's Facebook ads. She said she's going to wear a pink scarf to her inauguration. That was also in Goldmarker's piece. She's also tactically, David, running a totally different campaign. Her campaign was notable for not doing normal campaign things like attacking rivals or even trumpeting good polls. now she's laying into her rivals.

In a sub-tweet of Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer and really all rich people everywhere, Warren is selling a mug labeled Billionaire's Tears. Goldmacher notes it was made in two different colors and is now on back order. As Buttigieg demanded that Warren released more tax return, she's released everything back to 2008 already, she demanded that Buddha judge open up his private fundraisers. A great quote in Goldmocker's article that is, this is one of those quotes. So if you're a journalist, you just hang up the phone and, you know, do the chef's kiss motion or, you know, just put your hands together, whatever it is.

Listen to this. Adam Gentilson, who's a Warren backing strategist, the great mismatch that's happening right now is Biden looks like he could beat Trump on paper but not in person. And Warren looks like she could beat Trump in person, but not on paper. How is that for an encapsulation of the Democratic dilemma right now? That's really good. Yeah. That is really good. I mean, it was sort of as good, and as good as that was, the entire article up to that point in so much as if it wasn't about Warren was about Pete Buttigieg, right?

And so, and this brilliant kicker fails to mention him at all. I don't, I'm, I guess the structure of the, the structure of the argument in general, or the structure of the, of the sort of status quo in, in the primaries right now, are, or is a little bit, at a moment like this, a little bit hard to wrap one's mind around. But I think that's, it's an incredible line. I think it's exactly right. It's exactly right. I just think that it, I think that there's a, there are maybe to answer my own question.

There's Buddha judge and maybe some other candidates as well are the ones that are really reaping the benefits from Biden's lack of in person. And for some reason, Elizabeth Warren is not. That's interesting. John Martin, I mentioned a minute ago, has this whole game theory. about who campaigns want to win Iowa if they don't win it. And Biden really wants, if Biden doesn't win Iowa, Biden really wants Buda Judge to win Iowa. Because Biden wants to blunt Warren, right? Biden's nightmare scenarios that Warren wins Iowa, New Hampshire, and the nomination is effectively locked.

Right? So Biden's like, if I don't win Iowa, I want Buttigieg to do it because I don't think Buddha judge has much life past those two early, mostly white states. And then I think I can execute my plan of winning in South Carolina and going from there. Again, all this seems some crazily theoretical. And as I've said on this pod before, I don't believe in the strategy that says, I'm going to lose a bunch of primaries and then I'm going to win a bunch of primaries. We've heard that before.

Koff, Marco Rubio, Koff, Rudy Giuliani, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. You should just win primaries. That's the best way to get the nomination. All right, time for David Shoemaker. Guess is a strain pun headline. Tuesday's headline about the decline of the luxury sedan was OK Beamer. Fantastic.

But, yes, was fantastic. But, but, but our listeners had some that were almost equally fantastic. Jonathan Treger says it should have been to Beamer or not to Beamer. The Mexican delegation suggests Mercedes-E-Ns. Mercedes ends, a certain simplicity there. Steve Bonifero had a great one. Is the Ben's still mightier than the Ford? And Jump Six, you know me, when I like just a,

I like a great pun and I like just a perfect, you kind of compactness to it. So listen to this. Jump Six suggests just some outy that I used to know. Oh, that's good. I'm outy that I used to know. This week's headline comes from Kyle Palletta. It's from Vanity Fair, David.

It is atop a big Gabriel Sherman piece about Adam Newman, the founder of WeWork. Okay. Great. I'll give you a shortened version of the subhead. Newman grew WeWork to a $47 billion valuation by convincing Wall Street he had a near mystical understanding of the working style of millennials. Okay. I want to emphasize the name of the company and the idea.

that Newman was telling people something that wasn't exactly true that was selling them something maybe or or signaling to them something that was not quite right what was Vanity Affairs strained pun headline

we we it's not we worked we working forget we forget we just just go with working time working um getting worked getting uh being so what is it imagine a shepherd

sitting on a bluff with sheep what would he potentially say dishonestly to to somebody about a threat to his sheep like a threat to a sheep Well, you were all that days were, uh, what is that, what is the animal that comes after the sheep? Ah, so the shepherd would be the, the boy, boy who cried, the boy who cried work. The boy who cried work. What the hell? The boy who cried work. Wow.

I'll, I'll watch the Google. right now where you guys check my check me but this is it vanity fair the boy who cried work that is unbelievable Kyle writes his head from Vanity Fair is so bad I hesitate to even submit it but but there you go Kyle you send in anyway we love you he is David shoemaker on Brian Curtis Research by Chris Almeida production magic by Jim Cunningham we're back Friday with more lukewarm takes about the media see you then David see you Brian