The Press Box - Jeff Bezos Vs. The Washington Post, When NFL Insiders Attack, and the Remaking of MSNBC

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and Joel fire up the mics to close out the week here at 'The Press Box.' Joel takes you to “J-school,” where he talks to Bryan about his media diet, Stephen A. Smith's presidential bid, and his return to D.C. (1:22). Then they get into the following headlines: Jeff Bezos’s extreme opinion section makeover (19:24) When NFL insiders attack: the battle between Ian Rapoport and Jordan Schultz (47:14) A new book on Joe Biden (53:55) Joy Reid out and the remaking of MSNBC (57:16) Curt Menefee interviews New York Mayor Eric Adams (1:00:42) Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel Anderson Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi everyone, it's Amy Polar, and I'm launching a new podcast called Good Hang. In preparation for that, I asked some of my friends to send in some videos and give me some advice. Just be yourself, and the guests will come. Don't be the celebrity that this is their like sixth thing they're doing. I love true crime and cooking podcasts. Is there any way you could combine the two? Well, everyone has an opinion and a podcast. So, join me for Good Hang. It's rough out there. We're just trying to lighten it up a little. Media consumers, welcome to Pressbox.

You've got Brian Curtis, Joel Anderson, and producer Brian Waters. Coming up on a very big podcast, it's not just pulling endorsements anymore. Jeff Bezos has a new plan for the Washington Post. What's going to arrive at the newspaper on Prime Day? Plus, two sportswriters got into it at the NFL Combine, at a Starbucks, a Joe Biden book you turn. What does MSNBC's new lineup tell us about the future of that network? And Kurt Menifee, like you or maybe just I, had never seen him before. But before we get to that, it's not a preliminary bout if it feels like the main event,

ladies and gentlemen, welcome to J-School. You know what we say at J-School before a big match, don't you, Brian? Hmm? Clean fight, shake hands and come out fighting. Don't take this ass-whippant twice in the reason. Yeah, I'm saying a little Harlem Knights throwback there. But anyway. I never take it personally.

Yeah, I mean, come on. You don't lose that often, though, Brian. You don't ever have to have a lot. Well, you know. There were a couple of fights that I feel were thrown, but that's another story. I'm glad that you brought up fights because I promise you that we're going to revisit this. And as it relates to you, too, later in the show.

But anyway, I got a lot to say, and I'm going to be asking for a lot of help this this week in J-school. So I just want to start off by saying, you know, this morning, I was doing that morning scroll on social media. And, you know, anybody that has a small child knows that they're like, there are amorphish. You know, they're like attached to you all the time. So I'm just angling my body such, looking at my phone, looking at blue sky and Twitter, and while my toddler is attached to me.

And after a few minutes, I realized I sort of needed to pause to get a sense of the breadth and depths of things happening related to the current presidential administration. And I started taking notes just so I could go through it here. So there was a story on chalkbeat about how doge cuts to education research will hurt teens with disabilities. Wired wrote about the impact of doge cuts on the U.S. run Antarctic stations. And like the geopolitical consequences of that stuff, scary. There was a piece in the New York Times analyzing how Trump's tariffs and cuts to federal government have impacted the U.S. economy and the signs of trouble ahead.

There were any number of tweets about Trump bringing home the Tate Brothers. I'm sure you're familiar with at least one of the Tate's. Yeah, and Ron DeSantis commenting on that now. Yeah, right. He doesn't necessarily want those guys there, is my understanding. Well, if anybody read up on the Tate Brothers and I don't want to spend too much time on them, you may get a sense for why. Even Ron DeSantis may have some objections to the.

them showing up on the coast of Florida. Independent journalist Marissa Cabus posted the Department of Defense memo that many smart and trustworthy people interpret as an order to fire and ban all trans people from the military. And of course, you know, you got the usual leopards eating faces profile about a woman in Michigan who worked at the U.S. Forestry Service who voted for Trump because he promised free IVF. And now instead, she's jobless, right? she locked her federal job.

So anyway, it was a lot of stuff. And, of course, I was thrown back to the conversation you and Dave had on Monday about the, quote, Trump dump and how it's overwhelming media and media consumers at a particularly perilous time. And I was just sort of thinking about where I go to get informed about everything that's happening to our allegedly constitutional democracy now. And so, like, thousands of others, I've read and heard that this sort of assault on our institutions is intentional and meant to overwhelm and then demoralize everyone. So that's why I'm going

to start with you, Brian. I got a question to ask you. You're an expert in this field and I respect you for this so much, right? How do you keep up? What is your media diet? Has anybody ever adequately keep up? Yeah. Because I'm here. So it's interesting. During the election, my wife said, we usually get the New York Times on weekends only. And she said, I think we should start getting the daily paper in print every day now. Yes. And that is an unbelievable service, not just because the journalism is excellent, but because it condenses it down and it puts stories in order of importance or some kind of order

of importance. Okay. And I just think as information gets bigger, it's important for you to use your time better and also just to try to acquire that sense of what is the top story today? Absolutely. Because as you just outlined, there could be four or five at any given time, and that's at, you know, nine o'clock, eight o'clock Eastern time in the morning. And then it changes by new. So just having that sense and having something that's durable day to day as strange as that sounds. A lot of surfing like you do, a lot of doom scrolling. And then, you know, media newsletters are my friend too, not just for programming this podcast, but because the story to me seems to be now how all this stuff is being covered or, to what extent it can be covered, as David and I were talking about. So CNN's reliable sources, Oliver Darcy's doing fantastic work with status,

Dylan Byers over at Puck, the whole gang of them, because that to me is the stuff I need to get around. It's almost like I have to read about the media covering the media. Yep. Not just to prep, but just to get my arms around what's going on. No, that makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. And actually, that's an encouragement for me to go a little bit more into the newsletter piece of it.

But to your point about the New York Times, you're right. Because even though obviously only a couple of the stories that I mentioned were covered in the New York Times that I listed earlier. But I had the experience. This is how sad it is. It happened before my two-year-old came along. I got a New York Times on a plane for a trip, like just the whole, you know, the whole, you know, like it was Wednesday edition, whatever. And I read it from front to back. And I felt so smart.

Like I knew about things that were happening in Indonesia. You know what I mean? And in Wisconsin, and maybe I didn't know everything, but I felt so much more educated on the status of the world, it's for the most part. You do. I mean, even just getting to that fourth, fifth paragraph, a lot of times, because I feel that's when a New York Times story,

it's like, by the way, if you know absolutely nothing about this, if you've been pretending with your friends and perhaps even on social media that you know about this, here's what this is actually about. That's my favorite paragraph because then I'm like, who, I got it. I'm good. Yeah. I've seen. Somebody knew that I didn't really know about this. That's great. Well, look, I'm glad. And if any, you know, I don't know among our readers who think they have what they consider to be a really good media diet.

But if you are one of those people that thinks you do a really good job at it, I would be curious to know what some of those people do to keep up. Because I want to do better at this. And, you know, knowing and talking about this stuff in one way. is figuring out what I need to be reading every day. Absolutely. Absolutely. Hit us up. I was also interested in the conversation about Stephen A. Smith. And I'm not going to linger on this too much because obviously this is absurd.

And that's no offense to Stephen A. Smith, right? Like he's only doing what people are writing about him and asking him to do. Right. Like this is, I'm sure he encourages the conversation, but it's not like he's necessarily driving the conversation. Is that a fair thing to say? Yeah. These are absurd times.

Times. Yeah, right. He is an absurd potential candidate for absurd times. That's the way I would put it. Man, you know, I see, I want to, I don't want to get too distracted here, but I felt like a lot of this happened. I have this really vivid memory of working at the AP in Oklahoma in 2003 or four. I think it was 2000. It actually was the end of 2003, I think. And Arnold Schwarzenegger gets elected governor of California. He'd never held any public office. before. And I remember the debate in the newsroom was, was the story too long. Like the AP's, you know, normally, if you get past 800 words, the AP, people are like, all right, man, you need to wrap it up. This story had gotten to like 2,400 words and people were apoplectic about it. And I was like, this actually seems appropriate because it is crazy that this happened,

right? What do you think you are, Hemingway? Yeah, 2400 words. I was like, I could read about this forever and how this happened forever. I don't know why you guys aren't as fascinated. Because like the Jesse Ventura thing had happened already by this point, but Jesse Ventura had been like a mayor, at least. He had worked his way up the ladder somewhat. This was just a guy from the outside. It was kind of a long shot. He got to be chief executive of, you know, one of the largest economies in the world. Anyway, so I've just been thinking about that over the last few years. But what has really been shocking to me and has come into focus in the last year, sort of the degradation of expertise. And I'm thinking of, you remember when Jeff Saturday got to be

an interim coach? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And it's in that light that I see Deshaun Jackson getting to be the head coach at Delaware State University, right? Doug Gottlieb gets to moonlight as a radio host and head coach of a D1 basketball program, not doing very well at it because that is a job that usually, I think, takes an insane amount of focus in time. Wouldn't seem like you'd be able to fit in radio hosting in between, but whatever. Yeah, I'm going to Radio Row at the Super Bowl and hanging out, you know, in the middle of basketball season. You know, maybe I shouldn't have said anything.

So, because I felt like we need to get him on the show. Don't worry, we'll edit all this out. Yeah, let's edit it out. Nobody's ever going to hear this piece. But anyway, just, look, I'm realistic about the world, but it's just kind of weird to be that Stephen A. Smith is some people's idea of how to rise to the moment. That it's not about policy or substance of competence, but it's about hiring who is loud and who can get their message across no matter what they're saying.

Okay, so I have a related point, and this may be crossing one bridge too far, but when I saw the whole thing about Paul George putting his podcast on hiatus so he can concentrate on having a crappy season for a crappy basketball team. I was like, it's a little late for that, isn't it? Yeah. I actually thought the same thing because I think this is also an era, not just where celebrity replaces expertise, but an era where you never have to say no to anything. Yeah, right?

I think about our friends in the media. You know, Kirk Herbstree, you have a full-time job being Mr. football for ESPN and you are also doing Amazon being Mr. NFL on Thursday. Absolutely. You look at that, remember that Netflix lineup on Christmas? Like here's a bunch of people that have jobs. Ion Eagle, Greg Olson, Mina Kimes, Laura Rell, they're all on the show. And again, I don't begrudge anybody doing that.

I don't, I would not, I'm not lining up with bosses here. But it does feel like there is a point, even where the most industrious people are just going to hit a wall and be like, okay, I'm doing so much. I'm not having to say no to anything. I can coach a basketball team and host a daily radio show. You care about national sports that I presumably have to spend at least some time studying for. Right. I mean, yeah,

you can't just watch Wisconsin Green Bay, right? You got to watch, yeah, whatever. Duke in Alabama. You probably get a lot of calls about Wisconsin Green Bay. No offense to anybody. There's something about our ear now where you just had to, people just stop saying no. Yep.

And people just started doing. everything at one time. Right. And that strikes me as a Stephen A thing, too. Like he's entertaining notions of running for president while hosting first take while doing his podcast while doing everything else. And again, I don't begrudge him for that. Good for him.

Yeah. But it feels like our era where you could do so many things and never actually have to say no to anything. Yeah. And it's, I mean, this is not any of their concern, but the hoarding of opportunity. You know, like maybe there's somebody that could be Stephen A. Smith that could get that opportunity, you know, whatever else. Like whether that's, uh, wouldn't

maybe not the place to go with it there. I think Doug Ghaly. Let's go back to our potential press, last guest. Yeah, the assistant, the, an assistant somewhere or somebody else that is dedicated to the field of, uh, radio hosting. Like, either way, like you could, it just feels like, you know, that sort of hoarding of opportunity is also kind of happening across this country, uh, as well.

And, in, in much more insidious ways that Stephen A. Smith pondering running for the presidency, but still, there's something that I've noticed about. I completely agree. Lastly, again, I'm going to ask for help here from people. And I'm a little ashamed to do this, but

this is a personal note about returning to the DMV. And I've been hitting about this move for the past couple of weeks. And last week, my wife, mother, and two kids, both of them, you know, under the age of three, made that cross-country trip from Palo Alto to the D.C. area. Now we're here getting settled,

Brian. And I went to that August Big Ten institution of learning, even this morning, the University of Maryland, and hung out with my son at McKeldon Mall for a bit. So if anybody from Maryland, you know, you might see me on campus every night again because I'm just looking for places to hang out with my kids. I just can't believe you made this move. I mean, that is just mind-blown to me. Someone who has two kids who are once that young. Oh, my God. I still can't believe it. And it is a top five hard thing in my lifetime, I would say,

just in terms of managing logistics. And I mean, we're also five people with very different needs in a small house, moving from small house to small house to finally the house that we're going to live in. We're still not there yet. So it's a lot. But yeah, but I'm glad we. did it. And actually, right, you know, lots of people had actually asked me why we left the Bay, and more than that, why we chose the D.C. suburbs of Maryland. And this gives me a chance to explain

the impact of some of the great journalism from our past. So it's been sort of uncomfortable to explain to everyone why we left. And I sort of talked about it in a very vague way, intentionally. I don't want to make anybody uncomfortable. And I've got two lovely kids, and I love them in the way that every parent thinks they love their kids and maybe even more. There's the things you think that you need when you have kids, space, resources, close family, friends, whatever.

But I was also thinking about opportunity. And so this is where I'm going to mention my friend, Gene Demby, who's host of the NPR Code Switch podcast. He referred me to this story that ran in the New York Times upshot from six years ago. And it analyzed a study that produce reams of data showing how poorly black boys fare all over the country, even when the parents make roughly the same income.

The story was written by the great Emily Badger. I'm a huge Emily Badger fan. I think I've told her this before, but I don't know if she knows. So anybody knows Emily Badger, please let her know that I've been a huge fan of her work for a very long time. And it's informed a lot of how I think of the work that I would like to do. But she was one of the people, Claire Kane, Miller, Adam Pearson, Kevin Keely March. So here's the lead of the story. Black boys raised in America, even in the wealthiest families and living in some of the most well-to-do neighborhoods, still earn less in adulthood than white boys with similar backgrounds, according to a sweeping news study that traced the lives of millions of children.

And there's a data point later in the story that says, in 99% of the country, black boys are doing worse than white boys, even when, you know, income is the same. Do you know where the 1% is? Silver Spring, Maryland. What a coincidence. And it's not just a coincidence because this is one of the things that I've been thinking about in my head for a very long time. But it had been lodged in there, but I couldn't remember why it had gotten stuck in there that I know Silver Spring is good and would be good for my family for this reason. And it was this story. And when Gene sent it to me, it really tipped all that off.

So first of all, I just want to thank. The New York Times and Emily and crew, great journalism can really have an impact on people's lives, man. It doesn't mean that Desmond, my son, is going to do great. You know what I mean? It doesn't mean that I've assured, you know, some glorious future for him. But it did make me think about the kind of life I wanted to have for him in a way. And, like, journalism could do that for people, man. And so I just wanted to give them the props.

I don't know if it's six years too late or whatever, but it happened. And also, Brian, I want him. help. I'm not, I'm not shameless to crowdsource. People tell me what to do, tell me where to go, where to eat. A couple of good friends of the show have reached out and done that with me. And so if you have, I feel like we're probably, our listenership probably disproportionately DC. There's a lot of DC. There's a lot of DC. Yeah, I'm not going to be able to hang out or do anything for a long time. But in the, I want to build a to do list. And if people can't see you, but he wants to know where to eat.

I can't see, but I want to look, I was driving around today after the University of Maryland. I'm like, where the hell am I supposed to go with this boy? So anyway, tell me who's the best in any time, any of that stuff. So just please hit us up. But anyway, I look forward to getting to know this area and knowing the people here. And now, Brian, I'm our official DC insider. So I want to get working on that for our show. I cannot wait for that because I'm going to, you know, we're going to turn to you for the latest on the inner workings of the Trump White House.

what's really going on with the White House Correspondence Association. Do you think I'm going to get in for them? I think so. Can we send a note to Eugene Daniels? Is he still doing that now that he's on MSNBC? Hey, well, we should, somebody, somebody can hook us up, right? All right, let's do some headlines. Number one, here's something that's gotten a lot of news over the last 24 hours.

Jeff Bezos's extreme opinion. section makeover. Now, you must believe me when I say that I was trying to avoid Washington Post segments for a while. I believe you. I know you were. Not because they weren't worthy. You don't want to overdo it.

At some point, there are other publications that need to be scrutinized and made fun of. That's definitely to go around. Absolutely. Where's the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, right? Yeah, here we go. We've got to make somebody into the. makes right well on Wednesday Washington Post staffers got a memo which was a bad signal to us

because the memo was from the paper's billionaire owner jeff bezos the same bezos who canceled the post Kamala harris endorsement last fall now he wants to remake the opinions section of the post bezos writes this in the memo we are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars, personal liberties and free markets. We'll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others. There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section

that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job. well speaking of jobs David Shipley who was the post opinions editor decided he didn't want to do it anymore yeah he bailed rather than execute those changes so where do we start with

Bezos and the remaking of the post's opinion section don't done the national review and a whole bunch of places already do that already right like I mean I guess if that's your idea great but you say you're going to leave those

other people making arguments for the other side of free markets of personal liberties to the other people to do it. But people are already making those free markets and personal liberties, arguments and media outlets already, right? So this is your grand idea for how to reshape that section. It just, okay. In a way, saying I am personally, I am personally and socially liberal,

but fiscally conservative is the most generic set of issue positions. That's Stephen A's issue positions, by the way. Absolutely. That's what he has come out of. typically said would be his platform for a presidential campaign. Yeah, yeah. I mean, don't, I mean, I think what it comes down to is, let me see y'all talk about Amazon in this, in this section again.

Right? Like, y'all, I want to hear shit about that. Don't talk about, don't talk about labor issues that. Shut it up. Or drawing a political cartoon, like the one that got nixed and caused the cartoonist and telling us to leave the paper. I completely agree. Now, I think one unknown thing here, maybe.

is known is whether he's talking about the staff editorials at the Washington Post or the entire opinion section yeah it sure sounds like he's talking about the entire opinion section but that is a very big distinction right like the post thundering in those unread and nobody wants to write them editorials about free markets and liberties and whatever else okay but you're not going to publish any other column that is deemed to be in any way against those ideas?

Do you think that we're waiting for clarity on that? What is the because it feels like there should have been more clarity behind that in the first place, right? We should know, okay, he just made editorials

because you're right. That is a huge distinction. You're telling me that you're not going to run a syndicated column from, I mean, I don't know if Clarence Page is still doing syndicated columns, but you get what I'm saying, you know. Yeah. Are you going to take out the fifth paragraph in Perry Bacon's column because you decided it didn't match up? Absolutely.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And the fact that we don't know kind of makes me think it's the whole enchilada. Right. Right. That we're talking about it. And you said National Review, really the comp here is the Washington, excuse me, the Wall Street Journal's opinion section. Right.

Which has been a massive albatross on that paper. You know, everybody's always like, wow, some excellent reporting in here by reporters who are doing, go ahead and doing their jobs. And then there's this opinion section, which nobody reads. Right, right. And it totally obscures because that's, it is very hard to disabuse yourself of the notion that the Wall Street Journal does that sort of great journalism because of that perception, right? Like, it's always like, ah, you got to kind of have to be really diligent to be like, oh, no, no, no, wait a minute. They have like very good writers and journalists there. it. The opinion section is not a reflection on them.

This is a different thing. And again, I would just like to emphasize to anybody because occasionally we get tweets about this. This is not about this specific ideology necessarily. Yep. If this is carried out in the way Bezos's memo indicates it's going to be carried out, this is going to be incredibly boring no matter what two ideologies you had picked. Right. it's just going to be, it's just, it's going to be a blunt instrument.

It's not going to be a place where interesting journalism happens. Yeah, well, I mean, you might as well just do a policy journal out of the Hoover Institute, you know, as opposed to that. And even then, I feel that there'd be some curveballs in there. Yeah. Yeah. Right, right. I mean, because the thing about opinions, too, is that it's not, I mean, it's not all political. And it's not all, it's sometimes it's just about slice to life.

But I guess the thing is, he's not saying that that's not. going to run, right? It's about the opposing. So somebody's saying that we should have a universal health care, right? Like I don't, I wonder you think that falls on free markets and personal liberties. It's a great question. And also, who's going to be the one to decide it? Right. Because Bezos himself is not going to be reading those Perry Bacon columns. No offense to Perry here, by the way. Yeah, right. Perry's great. Perry is great. But somebody's going to have to be the ex-execis executor of this thing. Right.

And who wants to do that? Who wants to be the tool of the owner to execute this vision and not be able to publish what you want? Brian, there's always somebody, though, right? No matter how unappealing the job looks in journalism, I guarantee you because there's not enough jobs and there's not enough well-paying jobs

for people to not fall. Jim Rich was willing to lead zombie deadspin. Terry Tang took that LA Times job after Kevin Meredith. Like, you know, there's always someone willing to work that job, whether out of desperation, naivete, they're just like, and have you ever had the experience of taking a job before and being like, I know that they said they want me to do, but I'm going to figure it out and I'm going to do it out. You know, I'm going to do my thing. Yeah, right. I want to do my thing. Don't worry about that.

Or just complicity. Like, they will believe in the mission and they will do. it. So, I mean, you're right. It's not a lot of people are going to take that job. And they're not going to necessarily get the quality of candidate that they want. But somebody's going to take that job, man. I mean, you can you take this job without being a complete tool? Oh, man, no, but I, things have changed so much in me. It used to be that you could not go back and forth between PR and journalism, like a generation ago.

And that happens now because people understand, like what the climate is for journalism. and what they're working in. And so people are a lot more forgiving than they used to be. I guess it depends on like how much bootlicking you're prepared to do, right? Yeah. And my other question would be, forget just the person who's running opinions.

How about all the people working underneath them? Yeah. Or all the people writing for the section. Yeah. Who now feel like, oh, wait, is there this sensor in there? Which again, if I just, this is not about me being,

I oppose free markets in principle. It's just about what if I have some little curlicue in a column and whoever is the person executing basis of his visions like actually we have to take that out yeah because that doesn't comport with what the boss wants this section to be i mean that's and this is the thing about all of his various little moments here over the last several months it's like you're just putting a sign up on the washington post that says hey talented journalists who are already here or may want to work here someday be careful This may not be the place for you.

This may not be where you want to be if you have options. Right. Right. I mean, do you think that, what do you think happened here? Do you think that this is all an attempt to win sway with Trump or that as a guy who was the richest person in the world has heard a lot of anti-capitalist rhetoric in increasing in more areas than you've probably ever heard it before? And he probably just got tired of hearing it.

It's like, you know what, fuck it. This is my chance to take to do what I always wanted to do anyway. I'm laughing because I'm just thinking of, you know, anti-capitalist rhetoric at the Washington Post opinion session. Right. You know, this is not chopo trap house. Right. But yeah, I think that's part of it. I think there is certainly like a long-term project of getting right with the Trump administration.

Also think we're in an era of super rich guys feeling their oats. Yep. and being like, I got this. I mean, that's what Elon's doing with Twitter. That's what this is. Like, hey, I got this thing. So why don't I just do what I think is the most maximal version of whatever it is I want to do? Right.

And that's what you're doing here, right? This is not like, hey, I want David Shipley out. And I want somebody in there who's more ideologically in tune with me, Jeff Bezos, and the kind of ways I see the world. You could do that pretty easily. or hey, I think we should hire this columnist who may not have been your number one draft pick, that all those things could happen. And you could put that voice on the page or even that voice guiding the page.

This is, this is a, again, a very rare thing, which is I am writing a memo telling you to do exactly what I want. Yeah, man. And this whole opinion section is going to then be shaped in this image. It's just, I mean, I know everybody is doing this. So I told you that that's why billionaires, you know, all the people that wanted billionaires to step in and save media. Nobody wanted that in the first place. There was no other choice. You know, the thing is, people who have gotten used to not paying for journalism.

People don't want to pay very much for journalism. Journalists, you know, are not a very popular group of people in this country. It's not a very popular industry. And so there's just not a lot of ways to support it right now. And it's, I mean, and so like Bezos stepped. in, there was a void there, and Bezos stepped into it. But it's not like people were like, thank God for Jeff Bezos coming in and, you know, with his meal. I mean, I guess like there was a time when it like looked and it was going in another direction. That felt good. But I don't, I think

everybody has always been sort of suspicious about, all right, now when is this person going to want a favor? You know, when are they going to want to put their little imprint on it, right? Yes. And I, and I think we would have, we might have suspected instead of the ideological imprint, it would have just been Jeff Bezos saying, hey, I'm losing tons of money on this thing. I'm eating ever since Trump left office the first time. We've been eating losses every year. So now I have to come in and figure out a way for us to make money or at least to lose less money, which would change the character of the paper. I would say that fear was right up there with Jeff Bezos bends us to his ideological will.

The funny part about that is Bezos seemed to be taking steps to do that. He hires Will Lewis. We're going to bring the British publisher in. And the British publisher is going to be the one that looks those American writers and editors in the face. Like, it's time for some medicine. You guys have this very old-fashioned idea of newspaper journalism. We need to do things differently around here. And he was going to bring in these sweeping reforms.

And what happened was he hired Matt Murray as his editor. after reportedly getting turned down by other candidates. Yeah. He did that. Like, there hasn't been that sweeping change. If you want to say, like,

British person comes in and changes the place, that's the Wall Street Journal under Emma Tucker, who's made that to an interesting paper, a more interesting newspaper, right? So, in fact, what's happened with the Bezos changes is just, they've been changes of ideology. Right.

They've been changes of, oh, we're not running the Kamala Harris endorsement. Oh, we're going to change the opinion section that don't have any obvious upside for fixing the finances of the Washington Post. Man, yeah. I mean, the money is, and so I'm sure the people that can probably correct me on the scale of this, I always think about this so when somebody buys a new media property and they start spending a lot of money and they start, you know, hiring expensive

journalists, opening new bureaus, spending a lot of resources, which is great for journalism. We need But I worked at a place And I remember, you know, right around two, three years in and we're just spending money, spending money. And I'm like, eventually they're going to want to make, you know, the nicest billionaire in the world is going to want to turn a profit

or like stop losing a lot of money at some point. And I always just kind of wondered like when that would happen. It doesn't seem to have impacted this. This moves so much, but it seems like a piece of a broader thing to like, well, if I'm going to be losing a lot of money, on this either we're going to try to make money or we're going to do it exactly the way I want to do it. Yeah, so it's going to become my ideological instrument.

Right, right. If I'm going to lose tens of millions of dollars a year, that I'm going to get something out of it. Can I ask you this, Brian? Does this all seem familiar to like what's sort of happening to the country and sort of like the hollowing out of the institution? Right. Because like at a certain point- This is doging, the doging of the Washington Post. Because, I mean, all this turmoil comes as the Post has seen this exodus of top talent. You know, and there's this void in leadership from previous regime.

So, like, there's the natural turnover that comes at any prestige publication. But, like, without Marty Barron, without Fred Hyatt, without a lot of all the people that have been there for years and years and years, and you're not going to be able to replace them. You're not going to be able to replace those guys. And the people that anybody else that has an option is going to leave, it's just like at what point does do you start to see a change in the quality of the newspaper that has not happened of course like it's still a very good newspaper don't take it that way but like you wonder at what point

you start to affect the foundation of the actual news organization well sarah fisher from axios had a good tweet the other day where it's like this is really the time where we need to separate reporters from management yeah because in this era you're talking about reporters have been undermined by the people that run or own the newspapers over and over again. Yep. Settling frivolous lawsuits with Donald Trump, thinking about settling frivolous lawsuits, what's happening at the L.A. Times with the bias meter to getting right, what's happened at the Post, right? Constantly undermined by the people that run the institution or own the institution.

Yep. You know, you're right. If you looked at the Washington Post news pages, like this looks like the Washington Post. these people are doing what they're if you took those bylines all and just made them disappear i'm not sure that you and i who host a media podcast right would really know that josh dossy and people like that had left right i don't i don't think we would much less somebody who's like a more normal human being that does not have a media podcast in their life man there's some dan diamond uh your fans out there bro you know you never know that some people like hey i haven't seen the line about dan diamond in a while you know what i'm saying shout out i will i will i would like to say this though because I think you brought us to an interesting place. We saw a lot of brave

tweets over the last 24 hours. You know, look, I'm a news reporter and damn it, I have a job and I'm going to keep doing it. What has happened that makes any of us think that Jeff Bezos is not going to touch the news section of the Washington Post next? I mean, nothing. I keep hearing, well, you know, publishers owners, they traditionally have sway over opinion, but they leave news aside. As we say, we're in a different era now. We're an era where billionaire does what billionaire does. There's no rule that says that has to happen.

There's not like an actual wall within the post newsroom that Jeff Bezos doesn't have the key to the door. Right. Right. I mean, what he did in releasing that memo is audacious. Like, that is a claim. Like, I'm telling you that I'm leaving my fingerprints all over this. You know what I'm saying? and the idea that he would restrain himself now,

you know, why does he care about the news mission of any news organization? He doesn't. He doesn't. That's what I think. I mean, I'm like, why? What is it in there for him? Yeah.

Right. And to me, you know, like, I understand. Like, I'm not trying to be a complete doomsayer here. I don't think he's going to send Dan Diamond and Elon style email and say, tell me five things you did last week. I bet he could fill out a good list, though. that Dan could do. Dan probably had five bylines last week.

Oh, yeah. So I came up with some scenarios for you. Okay. That I think are feasible, or at least we're talking about. Scenario number one. Washington Post reporters have a big story about Donald Trump. A big damning story, either about Trump administration or Trump's private enterprises. And Will Lewis feels like he needs to make that call to Jeff Bezos, as you often do with a big

story, especially a very sensitive one and say, hey, we're about to publish this. Donald Trump may sue us as soon as we do. It may erase that goodwill you've been building over these last few months with the Trump administration. Does Bezos flinch? Does he say publish? Screw it. We're a newspaper in that situation. Brian, what a hell of us. I know you've got more, but this has to, This is, if the Washington Post and the journalists there are who they say they are, this has to happen, though. That showdown has to happen, which you just outlined. Of course. Yeah.

Of course, right? And by the way, that's been the thing to Bezos's credit, right? They've published stuff about Amazon. They published everything. We've documented this. But at that point, is it absolutely published? Let me give you scenario number two, just to make this a little more interesting. Okay, okay.

Let's say the story is published. Donald Trump sues the Washington Post. So now Bezos's choice is, do I settle in for a year, years long legal battle, endure years of true social posts from Trump? Or do I do what other media proprietors are doing and settle? Work toward a settlement. So I didn't cut the legs out from under my journalist, but I cut the legs out from under my journalist. man. Are we sure we know the answer to what he would do in that

scenario? That's a great. I mean, the thing is I mean, if you know that you're going to settle from the start, then you, just backtracking, if you know you're going to settle, you don't run the story. Like if you know that you're not going to fight it, because, I mean, Trump has shown

that he's litigious. And even if he's not litigious, he's just going to try to make your life horrible. Like, he's going to make life miserable for you. And if you already have shown not an appetite, for that, why would you keep fighting if you already know, I'm going to lose anyway. It's true. I just think, I mean, we could, by the way, I'm outlining a scenario there where it was like something that made it to his desk. It could just be a regular story that Donald Trump

sues about. He's not been shy about these things. Oh, yeah. I mean, so then the question is, does Bezos want to fight that out in court with his newspaper or is, you know, again, we've seen a lot of people We'll try to get right. Let me give you one more scenario. We go through four years of Donald Trump. We have Bezos's chosen opinion section. People leave the Washington Post or continue to look for other options because the paper now has this just weird stench about it from its owner. The opinion section becomes less interesting, becomes something like a Wall Street Journal thing, which just doesn't offer.

really anything worth reading. And at the end of Trump's term, Bezos sells a week in paper because he's no longer interested in running it. If you have a situation, again, I don't want to be too much of a doomsayer, but we've seen what's happened with the LA Times, post-Tribune company,

where it goes down just enough, it takes just enough of a hit that it's really hard to get back to that top level. Right. where the paper is right up there with the best newspapers in the country. Because you can only have so much, right? There's only so much of it where people are just like, I don't want to read this anymore.

This isn't for me. Right. Well, so I'm going to give you, there's only two reasons I think why billionaire would buy a newspaper because presumably they know that it's not a great business investment. So no, no, no, no. I hope that that news would have reached them. Yeah, I'm going to squeeze all the dollars out of this thing.

No. Either you want to be seen as a philanthropist and a do-gooder, like a guy that is saved, an institution, and you want to be seen as sort of above the fray and providing information of valuable public service to people. Like that's the model, the platonic ideal of the billionaire or the very wealthy newspaper owner, right? Or you don't give a shit about that and you want it to be your, like, like, if you don't care about that first thing, then what's stopping you from being the guy that's like, um, I don't ever want to see anything critical about my homeboys, my rich homeboys, or my company, and blah, blah, blah. Like, if you give up on that first thing, isn't it just too easy to slide to the second thing? What's the third reason for being a billionaire owner of a newspaper then? I mean, I suppose there's some space between those things. Okay. Where you could initially want the first thing, maybe even imagine that you could make it into a better business than it was. I'm sure Jeff Bezos thought that when he bought the Washington Post.

Yeah, I think he started off one. But then sort of grow tired of it in installments. Yeah. Not only losing money, but seeing your guys, you know, called out in the paper, you know, you're getting phone calls from people that you know, like, why is your newspaper attacking me? And it really does nothing for your reputation. Like the Washington Post, the credit accrued goes to the post, not Jeff Bezos.

Like, he sort of mentioned in passing. like, oh, since Jeff Bezos bought the newspaper, such and such, this one of this many Pulitzer's, whatever. But it ain't like people thought that Jeff Bezos was a nice guy because he bought the Washington Post. You know what I mean? No, it's only by, it's only a kind of, you know, bank shot of a warm glow.

Yeah. Publicity-wise. I can understand trying it. Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. And like, by the way, if you had, what was the Washington Post sell for, $250 million?

kind of unbelievable in retrospect and you have that money to throw around sure don Graham comes to you and says hey you could do this you could protect this storied institution to use that word one more time you and I've talked about this before but like the Washington Post is not a tool of the resistance its reporters are not foot soldiers in the resistance but because it publishes good journalism about this administration and writes good columns about this administration, it is a thing that people who oppose Trump would want to pay for. People are counting on it.

They need it. They want it to be the best Washington. They might feel they need it and need it as good when you have to actually put your credit card down. Yes. So just again, branding the Washington Post as, hey, resistance people who actually will pay for media, that part of the tiny group of people in the world that will pay for media, this place isn't for you is crazy. It's absolutely crazy.

Brian, what do you have against free markets and personal liberties? Oh, my God. I just can't wait for us to define personal liberties. Yeah, man. I mean, what does that mean in regards trans people, Francis? You know, what is personal? Is that how you got to? Donald Trump thinks he is a protector of personal liberties.

I mean he does. Said that outright. Elon Musk does too. That was his whole thing with Twitter, right? So we'll see. Before we get out of here, I always love when competing media organizations pounce on a story like this. It just entertains me to no end. So this is a tweet from Yoni Applebaum, deputy executive editor of the Atlantic.

Absolutely coincidentally yesterday tweets, in politics, the Atlantic Monthly will be the organ of no party or click, but will honestly endeavor to be the exponent of what its conductors believe to be the American idea, our commitment for 168 years. All right. This coincidentally thought he needed to put that out into the world yesterday. And this one was even better. This comes from John Favreau of Crooked Media and Pod Save America. John Favro tweets, just an FYI here at Crooked Media, we love to hear and engage with opposing

viewpoints. value excellent journalism and are always looking for new voices. Man, no way to say it. Even crooked media is saying that it is more open to opposing viewpoints. Do you not think they don't care about personal liberties over at crooked media? Of course, it is interesting that they see themselves as a competitor for attention and eyeballs with the Washington Post though, right? I just think it's, I mean, you just put blood in the water and everybody goes, I can

take a shot to Washington Post. This is, Joel, this is Pod Save America where we can literally choose between multiple former Obama advisors to speech riders. How could I possibly choose? Look at this diversity of opinion here. I would say, though, I mean, there's Ram Emanuel

in some flights, and then there's, you know, I'm sure it goes back over to, you know, Van Jones, whatever. I know. Jane Koston's at Crooked Media now. They've got other people. It was arranged, but yes, I hear what you're saying. Absolutely.

Headline number two, when NFL insiders attack. So the NFL combine began today, Thursday, in Indianapolis. It's a big occasion for sports writers. Because if you're an NFL writer in indie this week, you could be the millionth person to tweet about the shrimp cocktail at St. Elmo Steakows. Man, I've heard about that thing and never have had it, man. Have you had it? What a great sports writer tweet.

No, I've just consumed it via tweet because it's every, but he tweets about cocktail. We ought to go to that next year. I don't know if our live show is. We should. We'd have no problem getting guests. Yes.

Everybody and their mother is there. Another combine tradition I learned about last week because I happened to be talking to an NFL writer is the Starbucks post-up. Okay. So with the JW Marriott downtown, you go to the Starbucks, which is right near the overground tunnels. You know,

India is one of those cities that has the tunnel. supposedly for cold weather that goes to the convention center. And you plant yourself there because guess who walks in? Somebody from a front office. An agent, an assistant coach. Hey, how funny to see you here. Let's compare notes about NFL draft prospects. Well, there was a little throwdown on Wednesday at a Starbucks in Indianapolis.

Crazy. So it was not, it was not Shadour versus Cam Ward or anything like that. It was not the battle for the first for QB1 of this draft. No. Weirdly, the story is broken by PFT Commenter. I'll just throw that out there. Mike Florio later reported that the newsbreakers who got into it were Jordan Schultz of Fox and Ian Rappaport of NFL media. Huh.

Okay. Let me give you some blow by blow here. This is Florio writing. We're told that Rappaport was talking to an agent. Schultz approached Rappaport and said, we need to talk, or specific. words to that effect. Rappaport replied, we're told, we don't need to talk. Wow.

Well, specific words to that effect. Yeah, there you go. All right. Schultz then made accusations about Rappaport, we're told. Rappaport were told regards the accusations is unfounded. The two men were essentially face to face. If you have

anything to say it to me, say it to my fucking face, Schultz said, or specific words to that effect. If this continues, we're going to have a fucking problem. Wow. Rapicorth and ask Schultz to step back. If this happens again, we're going to have a fucking problem,

Schultz said, or specific words to that effect. Now I'll step back. The incident was reported to NFL security. Oh, my God. NFL security has taken statements from multiple witnesses. That's humiliating.

That last part? Oh, my God. Yeah. Oh, man. It can't get to that. I mean, seriously, NFL security? I mean, that's embarrassing. Because two writers, even Florio's tweet,

Jordan Schultz of Fox verbally accosted Ian Rappaport. Are we talking about sports writers being mad at each other? I mean, man. Do we need the language of a criminal complaint here to verbally accosted? Is it not shocking that this does not happen more often, actually? I mean, journalists, so many journalists hate other journalists. There's so much petty beef in this business, right? Doesn't it probably happen all the time just on DMs and phone calls and stuff like that and we just don't hear about it?

Well, this is why I'm circling back to something I was going to ask you about at J-School. Who's the journalist that you've had a beef with like this? Is there one? You don't have to say their name. I would love it if you did, but you don't have to. I'm trying to think of one that was actually good. I mean, there's often, I feel like what I get mostly is the passive aggressive DM. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And I sort of look at it. it and sometimes I'm like yeah they they have a point you know I just awarded something the wrong way rarely is it a full climb down but and then I feel like the the way you respond to that when you're the the complainer is like oh I'm just I'm just screwing with you I'm just kidding right which for journalists you're never actually just kidding come on you wouldn't bring it up like I was like why did you pick it up there yeah why did you like me yeah why are you here yeah man no that's um I But never a yelling match, no.

Never a yelling match. No. Never a yelling. Or anything like that. Okay. All right. Well, you're a classic guy. But there's still time. I mean, I mean, if anybody calls you, if anybody calls you woes to your face again, I'm going to fight them. Did you hear that? Do you see the thing I put out there? I put this on social media the other day that I would say security guard at Ringer headquarters. I swear this, I'm now the, like, subject of some crazy reality show.

Just walks up to me. I'm sitting in the newsroom last week, but ready to go on Tay Fraser's show. And he goes, does anybody ever told you you look like Woj? I mean, what is the conclusion? I'm like, whoa. I just don't get it. And I said, yes, people have mentioned that once or twice. By the way, other funny moment about this story was people discovering for the first time that Jordan Schultz, the NFL insider, is the son of former Starbucks CEO and presidential hopeful in the Stephen A mold, Howard Schultz. Can I tell you a story about this real quickly?

Please. when I was at ESPN, I was covering a NCAA men's tournament regional in L.A. It was me and my boy, Ed Ash, the great late Ed Ashoff. We had two seats on the floor. And there was another seat way up in high, but we had two seats on the floor. So who gives a shit about that seat up there? Get to the game? Guess who's sitting in one of our seats?

Jordan Schultz, former ESPN colleague ours. So Ed graciously agreed to. sort of walk around and take his seat up at the top because I was not moving. I was like, look, man, this is my seat. But you know what happened? I was like, did you know that that's Howard Schultz's son? Oh, shit. I did not, I'm just thinking this is some guy that's confused or an asshole.

So, anyway, that's my Jordan Schultz story. You have the same reaction. Like, what? What? Huh? Oh, excuse me. Do you want my seat, sir? You know, no.

And the fact that this confrontation was at a Starbucks. Oh, man, you bring it that so funny. That's so funny. That's too much. No wonder he felt thirsty. He was on his home turf. Yeah, that's right. You feel in your oats.

It's a home game. I get you thrown out of here, you know? Oh, my God. Headline number three, the Joe Biden book U-turn. Yeah. Joel is a big announcement Wednesday morning. A new book is coming out from CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios is Alexeos. It's Alexeos.

It's called Original Sin. President Biden's decline, it's cover up, and his disastrous choice to run again. It's coming out on May 20th. Here is the irony I thought was amazing. Alex Thompson, one of the co-authors, had a Biden book contract with Simon & Schuster. It was supposed to come out last year. The book, that is. The book got canceled.

Politico reported that before Biden's debate meltdown, no one was buying Joe Biden books. And so Simon, the publisher, said, well, no one's going to want this. There is no market for this at all. We probably need to get a couple of other Trump books in the hopper. So now we've come all the way back around where we have this huge book where Jake Tapper is one of the co-authors by the same person. And I mean, it's just kind of crazy to me because I wonder what they think that there's no

market for Biden. There's really not enough people in the world that are just interested in nerding out on administration theater. You know what I mean? Like, you don't matter who it is, no matter what it is. Because it would seem to me

that that story on its own, rebuilding the administrative state post-Trump, accomplishment, regret for not running in 2016, Hunter Biden stuff. Yeah. Like, I would have thought that that would have been enough, but obviously I don't work for Simon and Schuster.

It's so interesting too because Alex was one of the people who was writing about, are we sure Joe Biden's okay before anybody else was? Published those stories, he got clobbered for a lot of those stories. It sure is interesting how that's the mind change. Oh, yeah. That probably would have been in the book, you know, originally. You would have had that in a hardcover form. Right.

But as it turned out, that turned out would be huge story, right? an election defining story. Right. And now after it comes out, now, oh, now we're interested. Now, in fact, we won a whole book just about this. Right. Man, I mean, is that, if you're Alex, I mean, obviously, like, you're grateful for the opportunity to get to do it. But I wonder how much of this.

And maybe we can ask him. I mean, I saw that he retweeted your tweet about this. Or he didn't retweeted it. He responded to your tweet. He did both. Yeah. And I wonder with this tension between, all right, like, there's a lot of other interesting Biden stuff in here.

And also we, but the publisher is like, but really we're going to need 75 to 80% this to be about how he was daughtering old guy who should not have run in the first place, right? Like I wonder how much that tension is going on there. Because this is right. You're right. Like this is what sold that book now again and why there's presumably a market now when there wasn't a year ago. We'll get him on in May when this comes out because there you're right.

There's a journalism story embedded in a nonfiction book and a presidential administration story. All right, headline number four and we have a lot to say about this. So I want to get here to read out, aka the remaking of MSNBC. Last weekend we learned about some big changes over at the liberal leaning cable network. Joel, we got these are the list of people that her out joy reid who anchored at 7 p.m. also out. Alex Wagner who anchored the non-Maddow nights at 9 p.m. she's staying on in a different role in at MSNBC. Jan Saki who takes over Wagner's job as the Thursday to Friday host of the Maddow slot. Joy Reid's slot will be filled by Simone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steele, and Alicia Mendez. Here's Joy Reed reflecting on the end

of the readout. But in the end where I really land and where I've landed on today is just gratitude. Just pure gratitude. And gratitude not just because people would take the time to get on a call like this or to take care of me, but also that my show had value. And that what I was doing had value. Man, that's tough, man. And I fell for joy. I don't know joy.

I will say that it'll be above ground. It's like she was going to appear on the slow burn live show I was going to do at DC a year ago and she had to cancel it like sort of the 11th hour. But I've never matter of so but you know presumably we sort of know each other through professionally other people so

i'm not going to pretend as if i don't know her or have some knowledge of her but um i think the thing that i think about is that this was inevitable though like i always thought that joy reed was going to get fired or lose her job didn't i mean like is that's is that a weird thing to say like i never thought that she was going to hold that slot for 10 or 20 years for and there were any number of reasons for why. Ratings will always be one of those things that people can sort of hit you with. Any change in leadership? Well, Rashida Jones, formerly there at NMSNBC. Now, she's gone, and that's a person that presumably had interest in keeping a certain kind of diversity in that spot, right? No longer there. And then I just look at, you know, I mean, it's not just

black women, but I would just say that Melissa Harris Perry, Tiffany Cross, they all had whatever reasons they were for leaving, but like it just never, it seems like for whatever reason, and, you know, we can go in any direction on that, that it was not going to last forever, that we were always going to end up here at this day with Joy Reed losing her job and people being upset about it, right? I'll throw one other thing in there for you, too. MSNBC, and maybe we can tie this into a bigger media story, going with former government apparatchiks instead of journalists.

Yeah. Hoarding of opportunities, by the way. There we go, right? Yeah. I mean, who's benefiting here? Jen Saki, former Biden press secretary, Simone Sanders Townsend, former Kamala Harris chief spokesperson.

Nicole Wallace, Michael Steele, like all these, They should be working at political consulting firms. They wanted to hire Ronna McDaniel. Yeah. I mean, they're hiring most official people you can imagine. Yeah. Instead of, and I think like when I look at her Joy Reid losing your job, join with that, I'm just like, are you just trying to be more chummy with the Democratic Party here?

Isn't that kind of the problem with MSNBC? in that the problem with everybody when they got pants because they were not seeing what was happening with Joe Biden, biggest political story of last year? Right.

So you think this is actually a problem because I wonder, I was, because some people alleged and I was listening to it. This is going to sound funny for people that listen to this, but I listen to this podcast regularly.

Mark Lamont Hill on the Joe Biden podcast was talking about how many people, is that one of the first time Joe Button podcast is when you used this as a sports game? I think it's number one. Is it okay? We're going to reset the count. counter to zero days since the Joe Biden podcast and didn't mention on the press point.

I listen to Joe Budd podcast, man, ever since the Drake, uh, Kendrick thing. But anyway, uh, Markleman Hill said that there's been the suggestion that is because she was an open critic of Trump and that Trump wanted, because Trump has publicly and consistently criticized her that she was a target for getting fired. So which do you think, I guess it's plausible that it could have come in either direction for joy, right? Yeah, I mean, I don't know about the Trump thing. I mean, it's just like, what is their job then for the last month? If not to, I mean, the whole turnaround of the network is because Donald Trump is president, right? The fact that

their ratings have rebounded. Right. You know, I think, I think all the things we out, the things you outline there, plus wanting to get like, they see their future host as somebody coming from an administration with a certain kind of star power because they were on cable news answering questions. Yeah. rather than a journalist who has a different kind of power base or would have to build up a different kind of power base. Right, right. I can buy that.

I think that you're right, that that's probably the trend here, right? That they want somebody with some name recognition, a nice source book, you know, a nice little, you know, a rolodex. I guess people don't have rolodexes anymore, but you know what I mean. And yeah, like, I mean, Jen Saki was on TV every day for a number of years. in front of the American people, and presumably they'd be like, people will want to watch her. Because as mad as my mom is, my mom is, like, the MSNBC viewer. Like, that is what we had to do to make this whole Airbnb thing work here. We bought YouTube TV, and she can stream MSNBC on her phone and iPad to get through this.

And as upset as she is about Joy Reid, like, she still is watching, and she's a big Jim Saki fan. Yeah, I mean, that's what's so interesting. interesting about it. I mean, I just find Schumacher and I make fun of this on Monday, the whole, you know, Senator so-and-so, my friend, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for fighting the good fight. I'm like, you should never talk to a politician like that if you're a journalist. You should never talk to any politician like that. That's true. If you were an actual journalist. That's just, that's just crazy to me. There's a couple other interesting little parts of this. Dylan Byers noted this in Puck that of all shows on television that we could possibly pick,

the five on Fox News, the show that gave us or made Greg Gutfeld in the public imagination, has become something that cable people have pointed to and said, maybe people want something like this with a bunch of different people on it, rather than a show with a singular person looking into the camera. So hence the Simone Sanders-Townsend, Michael Steele show, with it's more of like a i mean i mean look at that abbey phillow food fight that's on cnn every night like i i i do not like watch that show but every time i get on twitter there's a liberal aggregator it's like look at scott jennings getting his ass yeah right yeah right like watch

you know watch uh let somebody blast scott jennings oh my god that's a that show seems just completely crazy to me just just judging by the club it seems like it's miserable and i've known people that have been panelists on that show, and it's just very awkward. It's like the political version of being going to Gil's Arena. I don't know if you see clips when it's like Kenyon Martin and Rashad McCants just all seething at each other for an hour.

But I was actually thinking about this that that you credited the five. Is it not the best damn sports show in the world where they just, they had a whole bunch of people that rotated it? Like it was at, I feel like

that was one of the first shows where there was a whole bunch of people and sometimes you didn't know who I think there was a more steady panel at one point but then they just started rotating people in and I felt like was that did that feel like the first big like daily sort of like bonanza of personalities so forget Doug golly we need to get Tom Arnold yeah yeah Michael Irvin yeah remember remember the days the best dance sports show period come on yeah yeah with some I think you might be right that might have actually given us because that was like both a panel show and was weird and unpredictable. Kind of a free for all.

Like people just kind of, you know, you didn't really know what to expect on the day to day, but it was very personality driven, right? And which it's all these shows are, right? But yeah, I mean, I guess, I feel like MSNBC tried that already. Then they had that with, and I think they had it with Alicia Menendez and Toray and other people.

Like, they've done this with Alicia Menendez before already, I know. Yeah. Another thing that buyers mentioned is Pug piece, and this is one of those things that is just one of these parts of cable news that I have just never understood, and I was glad to see him make a big deal out of. But Rachel Manow makes $25 million a year to host her show one night a week. Yeah, man.

Now, she came back for the first 100 days of the Trump administration and hosted it five nights a week. That was cool. But now it's going back to one night a week with Jen Saki. And I'm just like, you know, even Johnny Carson at the end showed up like two or three days a week. I mean, man, I'm just, I mean, and it's like, how is that possible? How is that a good idea for anybody?

I mean, again, I just like, I respect Rachel Maddow. She's obviously really good at her job. But she's, I think my mom would die the most if she got to meet Rachel Maddow, right? But, yeah, I mean, just also, again, hoarding of opportunity. Think about all the people that that could hire, the news organization, the TV, the people you could have if you didn't have all that money tied up in one person, man. But I guess like they haven't come up with a plan, right? And that's what all this shuffling is on cable. It's like you get one thing that you can kind of count on.

And then you just keep trying shit. You know, oh, let me get this person on. Let's cycle that person. Let's try this person in that in that slot for a couple of years, right? Yeah. Speaking of which, Eugene Daniels, moving from Politico to MSNBC. It's going to be on a weekend show. I mean, that's what the money is, man.

First ever MSNBC host with the Rivals Recruiting Profile. Man, we got to see, is that, is that right? Is that, man, it's got to be. Got to be. Anybody sneak in, anybody both play college football and play it in the rivals era? Oh, man. That's what you'd have to be here. Oh, man.

Yeah, you couldn't be on like one of the old Bill King calling shows where they featured. We got Lavernees Coles down here. Yeah, you can't be in the Austin American States with Fav 55. You have to, you have to be in the rivals database. Man, that's a good way. If you are that person, please let us know because I would like to see your rival's profile. I want to see what your star rating was. Eugene was on the podcast last year.

He's got a lot of great star qualities, both as a reporter and it's just a personality. And I'm like, if you were Politico and you had a little bit of a more, I don't know, a sweeping idea of what you should be, what a Politico journalist could do at your place, wouldn't you have just given him a podcast like that? man and i mean the playbook podcast or whatever that was i mean like the eugene daniels show shouldn't that have existed at politico absolutely but that yeah absolutely but by the time that was obvious idea in the world like i know we're at the ringer so it's everything oh why don't you give them a podcast but i'm like shouldn't you just give them a podcast that's true but man

people don't ever think of those things and still it's too late and they'll keep you in that job until somebody else offers you a job and then they've got to compete and then it's it's As our buddy, Nick Reich said, there's something about being on TV that you just can't capture from having a podcast to having a YouTube stream. I was looking on YouTube the other day. I don't know if people remember the comedian, Godfrey. And I was like, Godfrey has 57,000 subscribers on YouTube. And I was like, Godfrey, for real? And I was just like, yeah.

So I don't know how to, like, does that mean you're famous? Does that mean you're doing well? I have no idea. But if you get on MSNBC, if you get on TV, even if only 300,000. people are watching you in that slot. Like it still does kind of mean something it feels like, right? It really does. It's like when you're on ESPN and you're on in the clubhouse on the clubhouse TV

and you're an important person. Yep. Because you're not just a print journalist. You're a television personality. There's something to do that. My family never cared about me more than when I was at ESPN. They don't care about my, they don't know anything I do now. So yeah, man.

We got to get your mom to listen to the press box in addition to watching MSNBC. That's good luck. She doesn't listen to Slow Burn. So it's okay. We'll get in the queue. All right. Headline number five, we'll end here. Kurt Menofi, welcome to the resistance.

We know Kurt Menofy is the host of Fox NFL Sunday, a job he's had since 2007. Those of us lucky enough to have spent time in North Texas know him as a DFW sports anchor, or former DFW sports anchor and radio host. Last year, Joel, he decided to take a new gig, host of the five-day-a-week morning show Good Day, New York, which is on the Fox affiliate New York City.

I remember being surprised when that happened because I'm like, you can surely just do Fox NFL Sunday for the rest of your career, have a great life. But doesn't everybody have the ambition of being, you know, whatever, right? Like everybody wants to do with the Stephen A thing or whatever, right? Like you want to be in front of, you want to be in front of more people. He wants his own podcast, P. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. So yesterday, Kurt Menafee found himself interviewing extremely embattled New York Mayor Eric Adams. So you've heard Frost Nixon listen to a little bit of Menofy Adams.

Back to an event you had at the Gracie Mansion last night where you spoke about Black History Month. And in it you said, quote, all these Negroes who are asking me to step down, God forgive them. Are you implying that if you're black, you have to support you? No, not at all. I'm asking for all New York is to support me. So who are you specifically talking to when you say Negroes? Well, who has stepped down? Who has asked me to step down?

If you look at that whole speech, the speech talked about the continuation of lighting your flame and continue to light and shine. And that's what we've done in this administration without team. So those who have called for me to allow my flame to prematurely be extinguished, that's what I'm talking about. So you're saying all New Yorkers and Negroes? I thought I was very clear in my definition of what I said. All New York is, we got 8.3 million New York is 8.3 million people didn't call for me to step down. I get just the opposite when I'm in the streets. So anybody who's black who calls for you to step down, they need help from God.

I'm focusing on this because your use of the word Negro has come up repeatedly over the last couple of weeks. And I think some people actually have an issue with that term. So explain who you're talking to when you use that term specifically. I didn't say you need help for God. I said, pray for them. Wasn't that what I said? You said, quote, God, forgive them. Exactly.

Let's pray for them. And so let's be... I'm in. So who are you talking to when you refer to Negroes? It's going to play on a reel in my head for a very long time. It's stuck in there right now. That was unbelievable. Yeah, man.

I'm shocked that Eric, there's no way Eric Adams thought that was going to happen, right? He's like, oh, this is Kurt Menofi. I'm going to talk about, we're going to make jokes about the Cowboys and the Giants, right? Yeah. I guess. Did you think he was having a Shaquille O'Neill? I wasn't really familiar with your game moment during that interview. Absolutely, absolutely.

He was like, damn, remember Kurt Menofy is wearing my ass out. Eric Adams has faced more combative interviews than any other current politician than I can remember currently. I don't know if you remember a year ago. I'm going to make another, well, you probably have referenced this show. He went on to Breakfast Club a year ago. And O'Leo Luren, as, you know, media critic, writer, you know,

influencer, all this stuff, really flamed his ass up for an hour talking about his record and everything else. And he just, he was stuttering there in front of Charlemagne to God for like an hour. And I was like, damn, it's just really unusual. And I don't know. Is that a New York? thing because you're always so hated and you kind of got to fight your way through it or what i think partly that and it's a partly i see andrew quomo leading in all the polls thing and i got to do something

yeah to save my political career at this point because he knows where this is headed right i mean so i got to i just think i got to do something new york but you're right new york mayors probably get grilled like that i mean you remember those juliani press conferences where he's yelling at the guy about ferrets and yeah that always had a always a little more combustible than you know the Houston and Dallas mayors doing the press conference absolutely as I mean de Blasio didn't seem like that offensive of a guy but he was getting his ass lit up the whole time I was in new york and I was like man y'all hate this guy I know it wasn't perfect but anyway so I just know that it's a very difficult job and eric has certainly earned the difficult interview I will say that

He has absolutely earned it. Anyway, great job by Kurt Medifie. That was, again, for those of us who are mostly used to seeing him throw it to Terry Howie and Jimmy, that had some heat on it. All right, that is the press box. He's Joel Anderson. I'm Brian Curtis. But he's magic by Brian Waters. We covered a lot today, Joel.

I got to say, there was a moment yesterday morning. I was like, what are we going to talk about tomorrow? And then news happened. You promised three hours. I think we made it to. Maybe not an hour. and a half but we well you're moving so I made sure that you know keep us on the track here you got stuff going on your life I appreciate you I do have a baby to go hold as soon as this is over

speaking of which we got another 25 for 25 percolating is that fair to say yeah we got a couple of great ones I think right can we say it's a zag can we say it's a political zone new zone show rather than a sports zone show yes yes yes yes absolutely absolutely I've gotten I've gotten the information, we just got to get it on the calendar. There we go. All right, next couple of weeks, look for another 25-25. Shoemaker's back with me on Monday. Joel, cannot wait to talk to you next Thursday. Likewise, buddy.