The Press Box - Jeffrey Epstein Conspiracies, Biden's Gaffes, and Tucker Carlson's Vacation | The Press Box

Episode Date: August 13, 2019

The reactions to Jeffrey Epstein’s death (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (21:30), Joe Biden’s shaky day at the Iowa State Fair (24:30), Chris Cuomo’s amped-up day on Shelter Island (35:00), and when the movie 'The Right Stuff' was a presidential campaign (42:30). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to the Ringer podcast network. Season 2 of HBO Succession is back, and The Ringer's Chris Ryan and Jason Concepcion are here to give you the latest and boy family drama. Every Sunday night, they'll be breaking down what we just saw on our new show called Number One Boys, Succession After Show. You can tune in live on the Ringer's Twitter every Sunday night right after the episode ends. David, this weekend CNN anchor Chris Cuomo went ballistic on a heckler who called him Frato. as in the character from the godfather. We'll discuss this in detail, but what I want to know is,

what fictional character would you be enraged to be compared to? Let's stipulate for a minute that Chris Cuomo felt like that was a racial or racist attack on him to be called Frato. I'm not sure that most people heard it that way, but in so much, I mean, in so much it has been stated that that's, you know,

particularly offensive to the Italian community. We apologize, and now we'll make jokes about it. I mean, listen, there's a lot of, there's a lot of ugly characters, a lot of despicable characters. I think I would be most offended to be called just like a widely loathed character. Like if somebody was just like, hey, hey, Wesley Crusher, come, you know, get over here. Or like, hey, hey, Jar Jar, what are you doing? You know, like, that would be, oh, when I was a kid, people called me Egon, because I had sort of like a mullet. and glasses based on Egon from the cartoon, not the Ghostbusters movie.

I think I called you Egon in high school. Yeah, and that's fine. I was okay. But now as a grown-up man who is bald and has glasses, I generally get a little bit perturbed when I'm compared to another person of those outlines. But at the end of the day, yeah, I think you could call me, you know, you can call me powder all you want, and it would pale in comparison to someone, no pun intended, to someone calling me like scrappy do.

I just think that's that's so much more offensive. Can I tell you when I got on the East Coast? And this came from actually two different people I sat down with both most might be sports media people that you know. They both looked at me and said, did anybody ever tell you that you look like Woj? Now, I said, I'm not offended by that, but one of us needs a new haircut, if that's a case. Two people said, did anybody ever tell you it you to look like Woj? No, they didn't. No, they didn't.

Oh, no. We are the Stattler and Waldorf of Media Podcasts. This is the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello Media Consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. Tons to get to this week. We'll talk about Joe Biden's shaky day at the Iowa State Fair. Chris Cuomo's rather amped up day on Shelter Island. We've got Tucker Carlson on vacation or in timeout.

And we'll remember when the movie The Rights was a presidential campaign ad. But David, I think we have to start with Jeffrey Epstein. And here we go down the meta-media rabbit hole. Do I say apparent suicide? Or does that drag us straight into conspiracy land? Well, if you want to jump in feet first, then let me jump first. I was just watching as Chris here next me knows,

I was just watching an excerpt of Joe Rogan's podcast where he was discussing the Epstein, Epstein's death with comedian Tom Papa. Just who you want to hear on this. Yeah. And Rogan said, this is the one conspiracy where nobody believes the true story. And in this instance, I think Joe Rogan's got its spot on. Let's recap what we do know before we go way down the rabbit hole. Jeffrey Epstein was the financier, of course, awaiting trial on sex trafficking and other charges.

He was found hanging in his cell after 6 a.m. Saturday morning, pronounced dead at the hospital later. last month Epstein, of course, had been placed on suicide watch after bruises were found on his neck. That watch was lifted 11 days before his death. And the New York Times reports, quote, Epstein was supposed to have checked, been checked, excuse me, by two security guards every 30 minutes. But that procedure was not followed Friday night. A law enforcement official with knowledge of his detention said. The Times also notes that the inmates who had been on suicide watch typically had cellmates. Epstein did not at the time of his death.

Friday was, of course, also the day that a bunch of Epstein. documents hit the internet. That is the official story. I believe the last I checked, the medical examiner in New York was satisfied that the cause of death was suicide, but had not made that an official determination for various procedural reasons.

But we went immediately into conspiracy world, starting with the president of the United States, Donald Trump, who retweeted an actor and comedian who'd written, hashtag Jeffrey Epstein, had information on Bill Clinton and now he's dead. I see hashtag Trump body count trending, but we know who did this. Lynn Patton,

a Trump staffer in the housing and urban development department. Reference the Epstein story on Instagram and wrote quote, Hill read and hashtag Vince Foster part two, referring to a much debunked theory about Vince Foster's death

back during the Clinton administration. I almost think there's so many conspiracies kind of floating around this, David, that we have to distinguish different things. There is this stuff where Trump, a Trump official and various people in internet conspiracy world

are going straight to something else, straight into the world. And then there's a second kind where I think journalists are being, are sort of naturally raising their eyebrows as they would when anyone of this magnitude, I saw somebody call him maybe the most,

maybe the most famous criminal defendant in the world would suddenly die in jail under those circumstances when he was supposedly being watched. And I guess the first one doesn't surprise me as much, but I think what's interesting about this whole story, and McKay Coppins wrote a piece about this in the Atlantic a while back where he said, the thing about Jeffrey Epstein is,

the stuff that's on the record, the stuff that we know, is the kind of stuff that dignifies conspiracy theories. The stuff we know is the stuff that is, you know, this guy was a convicted pedophile. This guy had Bill Clinton and Donald Trump in his social circle and Prince Andrew. So McCopens's point was,

when you ask, why do these things flourish? This is a story that actually has elements that then people then take and go into strange directions. And it's true, right? I mean, not conspiracy theories aren't true, but the stuff about Epstein is really, really, you know, it's the kind of fuel for those kind of theories. Yeah, exactly.

I mean, and I think that the conspiracy theories, I mean, I think that the danger of this is that, I mean, as you were alluding to, it calls into question the whole category of conspiracy theories that would otherwise be easily dismissed, right? I mean, the various established voices making Vince Foster jokes over the past couple of days, while in poor taste, you know,

one can assume that that lies within the realm of humor, but there's a huge audience for those tweets that is not taking them as, not taking that as a joke, right? I mean, in some ways, this, the Jeffrey Epstein situation retroactively validates not just the, so sort of broader genre of conspiracy theorizing,

but specific ones too, you know, and that has the potential to be really dangerous. And I think specifically to this one, and I think the McKay-Cobbins point is the right one, this is, it exists as a conspiracy theory. I mean, it is what we think of as conspiracy theory. The difference is we know it to be true. Now, there's a lot of questions,

there's a lot of potential ways you could look at it to sort of make peace in your mind about how it was allowed to go on for so long. this is not you know this doesn't fit neatly into the mold of like you know some of these

some of these me too situations that are ghastly in their own right but certainly it's a it's reminiscent of the Bill Cosby situation and that it is an

it was a a heinous you know it was not not a crime I mean it hadn't been convicted of a of of one for a long time, but it was a terrible site. A terrible, a terrible situation, a terrible crime existing in plain sight, right?

I guess that's the best way to put it. Yeah. And by the way, now that we have the whole scope of the thing, doesn't the reporting that Julie K. Brown did in the Miami Herald, it doesn't seem more miraculous that nobody else was really following up on this? Yeah. You know, now that we know, we read that, you know, he potentially had damaging information about other famous people. That, of course, Trump's Labor Secretary was the one who made the deal with him.

He gave him the sweetheart deal there in Florida, which allowed him to be a free man all these years. It's just amazing that nobody else was on this trail. Yeah. At all or on it to the extent that she was on it anyway. I don't know. When I was reading all the tweets on Saturday. after he had been discovered in his cell. This was one of those moments that I really longed for newspaper ease.

We talked about how journalists last week could be newspaper journalists could almost do this parody of newspapering when they see something in front of them. This is one of those times where I'm like, everybody else on Twitter is going into conspiracy mode. What I want is this little slice of media Twitter to just tell me what happened and just tell me what we know. and put together the pieces methodically and and not go down this path because it's just like, I mean, I was reading, you know, Claire McCaskill tweets, something, we should do a whole Claire McCaskill segment at some point. Something stinks to high heaven. How does someone on suicide watch hang himself with no intervention?

Impossible unless, dot, dot, dot, you know, unless what? want to keep want to keep going with that um and i was i was struck by a tweet from the miami harold's bin connark i think that's how you say his name he says not going to speculate but the idea that someone could kill themselves even while on suicide watch is not surprising to anyone who has covered prisons and jails as he has so i don't know about you but i was like i i'm i want to i want old media starchiness to reach reassert itself here. I want us to go slowly.

As frustrating as that could be when Trump says the obviously racist thing, this is when I want old media to go, okay, we're taking this a half step at a time here. Yeah, only because you want to, because as a, you know, hopefully informed consumer of news, you want to be apprised of, yeah, the granular detail in, you know, presented in, like you said, in slow motion, I mean, I can speak for myself when I say, I've, in the past several days, I've clicked on more of the, you know, the kind of clickbait archetype headline of like everything we know about, you know, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein's death, Jeffrey Epstein's associates, Jeffrey Epstein's money. I've clicked on more of those headlines deliberately than probably the rest of my life put together because I'm just like I'm literally like groping for, you know, molecular concrete information. And, and like you said, you just want, you want to be presented. with what we do know in the face of just wild, I mean, almost inescapable speculation. I was looking at a tweet from the Washington Post, Carol Leoneg, who was one of the bylines on one of their early Epstein stories after his death.

This is her tweet, people close to Epstein fear he was murdered. As Epstein told authorities, someone tried to kill him in a prison incident weeks earlier, he was described as being in good spirits in recent days. okay you go whoa here's a long time Washington Post reporter this seems big and then you click on the link and that information is buried like three quarters of the way down through the piece and is not presented in exactly those terms

it's more in the terms of associates of Epstein were surprised he committed suicide which by the way happens with lots and lots of suicides in the world how many people say I knew this was going to happen and I watched it and it was like it was almost like as if a very by the number story was packaged on Twitter in this just extreme way people close to him, fear he was murdered. And then, you know, well, what do those people know?

You know, what do those people know of anything? And are those people that are worth quoting in the newspaper? And anyway, I just thought that was interesting. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And further to the Ben Connard tweet that you mentioned, Michael Shermer of Skeptic magazine, who's a writer I much admire a lot of the time is tweeting about this and kind of he's you know he's anti-conspiracy theory almost across the board but and and has made you know continues to make the point on Twitter that if a pedophile whose name you didn't know you know who is

not a national figure kill himself even under on suicide watch in prison no one would be surprised no one would be putting conspiracy theories together but it's the celebrity involved in the situation that makes our minds uh you know go to these extreme places. That said, you know, a pedophile whose name you didn't know who's on suicide watching prison certainly would not have been attached to so many high-level figures. Listen, I mean, the speculation is fun. I was sitting, I mean, I mean, I get it. I get why people are so, if not fun, why it's so captivating. I was sitting in the office yesterday talking to ringer employee Justin Charity about how how powerful a human has to be to have someone killed.

You know, I mean, that's just like it's a thought experiment that's like attractive in a kind of, you know, whatever, playful way, even though it's not a playful situation. But, you know, it's, this is, I just can't imagine a story that is, that would be more seductive to conspiracy thinking than this. And frankly, I can't imagine a time in our history where it would be, it's more dangerous for this to be kind of the going conversation. You know, Ross Douthit has a, has a, I think a pretty good column. in the times today discussing the whole situation and conspiracy theorizing in general and when it's okay to believe conspiracies

and he makes it, you know, he draws an interesting comparison to Area 51 where he's just like, yeah, well, it's easy to dismiss the little green men thing if you're so inclined, but like there's actual conspiracies going on. I mean, there's actually,

there's actually stuff going on at Area 51 and our kind of military industrial complex that, like, that, you know, neatly fits the description of, like, conspiracy, right? I mean, there's lots of stuff. that if you wanted to point a finger at, that we know about this stuff, right?

And this is sort of one of the, and that feeds the kind of loonier end of the conspiracy theories, and this is, I think, another situation like that. Doesn't it tip the balance when the president of the United States is on the pro-conspiracy side? Doesn't it just change everything?

I mean, this is like if Lyndon Johnson had been like, hey, I think the mob or Castro got Kennedy. And you'd be like, whoa, what? Or, you know, or we're throwing stuff out around there. and I think when you have the president doing it, I just feel like throughout a lot of American history, or at least recent American history that we've seen, the official voices are the ones telling you,

look, that's bullshit. That's not true. And in this case, the official voice, including the number one poor voices, at least retweeting stuff. And of course, he had his whole bit about Ted Cruz and JFK,

is the one telling you, hey, why not believe these? Even if, and who knows if Trump, actually believes they're not, but Trump's the one saying the point you just made, this is fun. Why don't we go down this road? Why don't we imagine that the Clinton said these people killed?

Why don't we imagine all that stuff? And man, that to me just changes everything. Yeah, I appreciate you associating me with the president. That's great. Just kidding. For the first and the last time. It won't be the last. But listen, I completely agree with that in theory.

And I think that especially, you know, coming off of the tragedies of, last week, it is our obligation to point out the fact that regardless of how you answer the question that you just asked, part of the answer is, yes, this is a dangerous thing for him to be doing, that the people who are most susceptible to believe these things, the people for the people who I'm implicitly describing when I say the word dangerous, yeah, I think would take the president's endorsement as a significant positive, or at least a significant thing. that said i can't help i mean when you start asking the question part of me just says you know exempting though exempting that that area of real you know definable danger part of me thinks that it

doesn't matter that much and not that it doesn't matter but that that the president has president trump has so long ago abdicated any kind of role of moral responsibility of institutional guidance um that i'm not sure that there's anybody that saw his retweets or saw his has seen his kind of Twitter reaction to this and thought something different than when they went in, except potentially those, you know, few real problematic sorts who are, you know, who are trying to translate Q&on statements or whatever.

I mean, I'm not, I think that, I don't think that the moral institution of the presidency is any different today than it was a week ago. No, but I think that, I think the moral calculus about conspiracy theories is different. And I think having Trump as somebody who, you know, again, it's just a totally strange, unconventional authority figure in American life who is pushing these theories actively,

or at least, you know, in the case of the JFK thing, or, you know, sort of retweeting them and winking about them. I think that's different. And I just think whether it not it convinces one more person that there's something to this Epstein thing that the official record is not telling you, I don't know, but that it makes the fever swamp expand a little bit more. Sure. Yeah, you're, you're right. And I think what I'm saying, I think I am, I am, uh, conspiracy thinking a little more into, let's say like conservatism, a Republican party thinking. Sure, right. I mean, that's yes. Yeah, you're right. You're right. It's

uncontrovertible that that's right. I'm probably, I mean, I'm just beaten down into some, in some extent largely immune to to what the president does. And yeah, I mean, it is to, you know, to wink at the notion of conspiracy is one thing to sort of like implicitly or explicitly name the Clintons as he and others have done, I think is, is despite the fact that that's an easy punchline and that there's like, you know, good spirit of humor to be found right next to Trump on Twitter about such things for the president to do it is, is outrageous. I mean, yeah, I can say that with, I can say that. And I think that you're right. To mainstream conspiracy theory is is incredibly dangerous and not just from a, you know, political violence point of view or from anything like that. Yeah, but it's,

I think it's, you know, on some level, it's on the continuum of, I mean, I don't want to get too soapboxy here, but it's on the continuum of the trajectory the Republican Party's been on for a while with, with, you know, I mean, just denial of climate science and denial of, of, you know, the largely agreed upon economic principles and and and and and you know delivering um in i mean kind of falsifying evidence to deliver outcomes that they're not promising all across kind of across the board i mean i'm not i think that this is i mean maybe as with some other thing so many other things in the trump era we're kind of reaching the logical end to a lot of the problems the republican parties has, you know, been offering us for a long time.

Everything becomes a hoax. Everything you don't like becomes a hoax or everything that you hope, you know, everything that says that what you want to be true isn't true is a hoax or a cover-up. And I certainly think that's a big deal. All right, David, time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious. What a transition. But all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time.

Send your nominations to at the press box. where they will be gratefully received. This didn't really fit in a conspiracy theory, just weird. But I'm sure David, you saw the bizarre sports story with Antonio Brown. No, not the one about him hurting his feet in cryogenic freezing. The other one. Yeah. It involved his helmet for the NFL network's Mike Silver.

Brown was so upset that the NFL no longer lets him wear the style of helmet he prefers that he began acting strangely and then went AWOL from Raiders training camp. That's a weird story. but it gets weirder because guess who weighed in, O.J. Simpson, let's listen. Oh, no. Now, I live in Las Vegas. I would love to see Antonio Brown play. I think he's one of the greatest receivers that has ever played football.

But if you're telling me, he's willing to give up that kind of money because of the style of a helmet. Look, you don't want to go to training camp? Don't go. But giving up that money because of the helmet, I called BS. I'm just saying you'll take care. Now I've laid a lot on you there.

Antonio Brown's helmet. O.J. Simpson's comment on Antonio Brown's helmet. But stay with me, David, because it was an overworked Twitter joke to write if your helmet doesn't fit, you must quit. If your helmet doesn't fit, you must quit.

Thanks to OB1 Jacoby for that one. I thought that was pretty good. there is a sequel, David, to the lucrative horror movie, It coming out. Last week, IndieWire tweeted, quote, Alamo Draft House, a movie chain near and dear to my Texas heart. They didn't tweet that, but that's me. Alamo Draft House sets clowns only screening of It Chapter 2. It's a clowns only screening of the new It movie. There were a lot of jokes about Trump or Congress.

I'm not going there. That's kid stuff. was a superior overword Twitter joke to write condolences to the one Uber driver bringing all 150 of clowns to the screening. Oh, it's nice to have a clown car job. Oh, man. That is amazing. That is fantastic stuff. And finally, David, Donald Trump took a break from slamming Democratic presidential nominees or fostering conspiracy theories on Twitter to slam evil, feckless Hollywood.

He tweeted liberal Hollywood is racist at the highest level. and with great anger and hate they like to call themselves elite but they are not elite in fact it is often the people that they so strongly oppose that are actually the elite and blah blah blah blah blah

they are the true racists and are very bad for our country okay who deep breath it was an overwork Twitter joke to write wow Trump really hated the trailer for cats thanks to our pal Nick Field for that one if you think cats jokes really are now and forever

congrats you made the overwork Twitter joke of the week all right David time for the notebook dump Let us begin with Joe Biden's day at the state fair. If we as a press corps are monitoring Joe Biden for any downturn and stamina and capacity, well, Thursday he delivered. What a list. Biden appeared to confuse British prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and Teresa May,

a mistake he has made before. Biden said he was the vice president when the Parkland shooting in Florida happened, also a mistake he has made before. Biden said this when he attempted to land one of his big riffs during his stump speech. We got to let him know who we are. We choose unity over division.

We choose science over fiction. We choose truth over facts. And so folks, if you're interested, join me. I could use the help. We choose truth over facts. Wow. That's like a George W. Bushism right there,

I feel like. probably the most devastating part was this bit of mangled speech, which Biden delivered at an event devoted to race. We have this notion that somehow if you're poor, you cannot do it. Poor kids are just as bright and just as talent as white kids. Wealthy kids, black kids, Asian kids. No, I really mean it, but think how we think about it. We think now we're going to dumb it down.

They can do anything anybody else can do, giving a shot. you can see his brain trying to scrambling to correct that one. The recovery was impressive so far as brain energy goes. Yeah, he just named other kinds of kids. Anyway, I wrote a piece about the fact that the press is sort of looking at Biden like he's an aging quarterback. Yes. When we have an old quarterback before us, all of us sports media people watch the guy and are like, Oh my gosh.

Oh, did you see that passing through today? Oh, God, it's getting worse and worse, isn't it? Isn't that the way we're covering Biden at this point? I think so. And you sort of have an institutional press corps that, you know, there are a lot of reasons why I can imagine one could watch the news and feel like a lot of the press is sort of in the bag for Joe Biden, for Joe Biden and other politicians like him,

but Joe Biden in particular. But there is a sort of aging quarterback vibe to that, too. right? It's a sort of like you can imagine Joe Buck and Troy Aikman not coming out and saying like, geez, Louise, this guy's lost it and just sort of try to talk around it or go straight to the old story bag or whatever and avoid talking about the, it is, you know, degeneration or whatever altogether. But yeah, I think overall that's exactly right. I mean, I think that it couldn't have, I mean, it's a spot on analogy by you, congratulations. And I, but I think after that the day, I mean, that Joe Biden's day at the fair is a, uh, I mean, who knows if it'll actually change the trajectory of a campaign, but man, it was a, it was a, it was just a supremely bad day. You know, one hopes it was an off day at this point. It's getting sort of hard to, uh, to write these off as mere gaffs. And honestly, you know, as we, as we kind of go into the meadow horse racey stuff about this, it's hard to imagine that, I mean, it's hard to continue to talk yourself into him being the best opponent for Donald Trump, no matter what these like super early poll, you know, head to head. polls show. He's just a he's a walking target at this point. His appeal to Democratic voters

at this point is, I'm the safest choice if you want to beat Trump. These other people could screw it up, but you look at me and think that guy could win Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania to win the election. And the way that's going to disappear, the way his advantage of the polls is

going to disappear is if that notion of I'm the safest choice disappears. And I do feel, again, we're so early, we still got months and months before the first caucus or primary. But I feel that all these things begin to chip away at it a little bit. Yeah. I feel like people like our moms who are not reading Matt Iglesias as Twitter feed on a daily basis or really, or really ever, no offense to Matt. the Biden gaff thing is starting to work their way down there. And at some point, that's going to show up in the polls.

We don't know how much, don't know when, but it's going to show up at some point. Yeah, I think that, I mean, if you just speak specifically of moms, I mean, I think that there's a lot of power in, you know, Joe Scarborough putting his head in his hands in exasperation and reacting to something like this, right? I mean, that's what we'll stick with a lot of potential. potential voters. And I, you know, this, I mean, listen, again, they're not reading Twitter, but to take, to make a Twitter point, when you can have a day like this that elicits a million, you know, who among us has not, you know, ironic tweets, you know, I mean, it's, it's just a bad, it's a terrible day for a campaign. And to have kind of one thing after another, to have them, to have, I mean, we were exchanging tweets where people were just compiling the tweets,

you know, I mean, and it was, there, it's just, I mean, it's hard to, imagine that day going any worse. I mean, for any candidate. And by the way, this is a day when Bill de Blasio wandered around for like 10 hours without being noticed by anyone. So, you know, I mean, the bar, the bar was already set. Did you notice how Biden's people were trying to spin his mistakes as authenticity? Essentially saying the reason he has flubs once in a while is that he's speaking what's on his mind. This is their move here. Uncle Joe. is not scripted. Uncle Joe is authentic.

And when you have somebody who's authentic, they're going to make mistakes because they're just speaking from the gut. That is their attempt to finesse this. Because I don't know how else you do it at this point. But every time he, this is, this is not a dude who's had a lot of public appearances or really very many tough interviews at all with the press. And every time he has one or almost every time we get something like this.

So I guess that's their move. The New York Times noted that David Axelrod was doing sit downs with all the candidates in Iowa, and Biden was one of the few candidates who did not sit down with him. This is David Axelrod. Guy ran Obama's campaign. Biden was Obama's vice president. So, you know, they are keeping him very, very far away from this stuff. And it's still happening.

Yeah, I mean, it's got to be alarming. that's not too far away from the excuse i mentioned george w bush earlier it's not that's not too far away from the from the kind of excuse given to him when he was you know when he would unleash any of his you know many famous malapropisms um and i think to some extent that was true i mean i think if it's not i don't i don't know that's that you know mispronouncing nuclear makes a potential voter like you better or like you more but it does potentially I mean, but if they have an easy excuse at hand, if they have an easy, you know, if they have an easy way to dismiss it, I think that's helpful. But I also think that, you know, George W. Bush wasn't running in an era where his opponent was just going to like stand up at a debate and just list the dumb things he said, you know, just as the audience cackles.

You know, it was a different era. And I think that, I think that running against Trump, that's going to be a problem for one thing. But I think more importantly, it's that all of us are talking about it. It's that the news networks, even the ones that, like I mentioned before, that might have previously seemed to be in the bag for him are covering it. The cable shows, you know, are covering, have the time often to cover it ad nauseum. And eventually the narrative begins to write itself. And that's what you're running against, almost as much as an opponent. Can we talk about the genre of state fair reporting in the national media?

The best specimen of the genre was never Trump or Max Boot. who wrote a Washington Post column called My Day at the Iowa State Fair reaffirmed a little of my battered faith in America. He begins the piece. This is the first sentence. Last month I was at the Wimbledon Championships. Now, if you're going to write a Man of the People column, I'm not sure you want to start with Wimbledon.

I like Max Boot. I've met Max Boot. I don't think anyone would accuse him of being a man of the people. Let me give you a few more sentences here. My day began and ended in the livestock enclosures where on a small stage lined with artificial turf, the swines strut their stuff. He continues.

The food stands are almost as entertaining as the star attractions. They advertise deep fried mac and cheese, hand-dipped double bacon corn dogs, giant half-pound tenderloin, deep-fried pickle dogs, and other delicacies that will never be found in the lean cuisine aisle. Lean cuisine. Oh man That's even where

Let's go to the previous bush Using that line might be worse than not knowing how it Yeah not knowing how a checkout Checkout scanner works That's insane Are you going to take the nesty plunge next? Are you You going to bite into a Charleston chew

These references from Here's his final paragraph I left reassured that the normal rhythms of Iowa life Continue as they have for generations Despite the various pathologies on display in modern America from the White House to the El Paso Walmart. Iowa Nice has survived in an age of snark,

sarcasm, and mass shootings. There are still plenty of kids who devote their energies to raising pigs rather than raising hell or simply zoning out with video games. My day at the fair reaffirmed a little of my battered faith in America. Newsflash to Max Boot. The kids who brought their pigs

to the Iowa State Fair want video games. That is, they are not immune. They are... They like things that other children like. I don't know where you think you're visiting. This is. Yeah.

Department David of Angry News anchors. I was going to do Anthony Scaramucci in this lot, but our producer Jim Kenningham quickly says we should revisit the Chris Cuomo thing. Weirdly, Scaramucci does get involved in this later. Yeah. Chris Cuomo primetime CNN anchor was at a bar in Shelter Island, New York when a man came up to him and called him Fredo,

like from the godfather. you're part of his response don't fucking insult me like that I didn't insult you I ask you you call me fredo it's like I call you pump bitch you like that you want that to be your nickname I didn't call you that I called me fredo you know my name is that fucking fredo

you did not think my name was fucking fredo don't be a liar I want to be a man stand up like a man I'm standing up man I'm standing up man they're fucking own it can own what you said hey then own what you said you're going to have a fucking problem

you're going to have a fucking problem what are you going to do about it I'll fucking ruin your shit I'll fucking throw you down these stairs like a fucking punk. You don't want to sue. You don't want to do you. You don't want to call me free to take a fucking swing. Take a fucking swing.

You know what my response to the heckler was as an employee of the ringer and Bill Simmons? What? Get your own cultural references. We own we own Godfather references here. Get out of here. Come up with something else. Weirdly, Scare Mucci and Sean Han. Hannity came to Cuomo's defense.

Hannity said he had nothing to apologize for. Cuomo on Twitter for his part says, truth is I should be better than the guys baiting me. Dot, dot, dot, dot. I should be better than what I oppose. So Chris Cuomo. Going at it. This item, David, I call.

I know what Tucker Carlson did this summer. And it was say something dumb and offensive on his Fox show. Last Tuesday after the El Paso shooting, when a white supremacist killed 22 and wrote about an impending Hispanic invasion, quote unquote. Tucker Carlson called the idea that the U.S. has a white supremacy problem, a hoax. Listen up. The whole thing is a lie.

If you were to assemble a list, a hierarchy of concerns of problems this country faces, where would white supremacy be on the list? Right up there with Russia, probably. It's actually not a real problem in America. The combined membership of every white supremacist organization in this country were they able to fit inside a college football stadium? White supremacy, that's the problem. This is a hoax.

just like the Russia hoax. It's a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power. That's exactly what's going on. As we were saying about hoaxes and conspiracy theories, huh? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, listen, if you took out white supremacy and replaced it with any other subject, that is the most like just cut and paste Tucker Carlson rant you could imagine, right?

I mean, this sort of like, I'm going to take out white supremacy. No, that's the point that I'm about to make. is that you I mean you could he makes these sort of like like arch like untrue but like you know to the word maybe not irrefutable I mean maybe irrefutable arguments taking you know just like you know obscure data points and and yelling yelling as if they're the most important ones and and you know just to try to make some antagonistic or defensive you know argument uh that makes his side or or look good or makes the other side look dumb but it's just like is I mean it's yeah. how do you how is how is how is white supremacy the hill that you choose to die on and how is white supremacy where you're going to take this line of just like like debate club idiocy i it's just it's just so sad carlson after that bit did what a lot of foxos do when they get into trouble he went on and here is the control plus v media text what fox news said was a long planned vacation you'll remember this happened back in 2017 after the big bill o'reilly started landed in the New York Times. Also in 2017, Jesse Waters went on vacation after making a lewd gesture in reference to Ivanka

Trump. I'd actually forgotten about that Fox News scandal. Didn't Laura Ingram go on vacation too? She had a vacation. Everybody had to be a vacation. Yeah. We invite you to go into exile for a week and hope that everybody forgets about this story. Can I suggest

a conspiracy theory? Sure. Since this is the conspiracy theory episode of the press box? Why not? What if this a long-standing Fox News tradition that when you actually have a vacation plan, you do something offensive enough to get yourself fired on your last episode just to make everybody

freak out. So wait, wait, what's the conspiracy? Well, the conspiracy is it is it Fox News? The Fox News knows exactly what they're doing. That every one of these has been planned, right? When you just say something really offensive on your last day before vacation, so that when you go on vacation,

people spend the entire week when they normally would be forgetting that you exist. They spend that entire week debating whether or not you got fired. Now I'm getting it. And when they roll in like the B or C replacement host, people are still talking about Tucker Carlson. There is like it's this like we care about Tucker more now. He has a better tan now. And he's like he's gained two points in the ratings in his absence. You're making a lot of sense, David.

You're making a lot of sense. In a not unrelated story, David, did you see the news about Breitbart? to the departure of their spiritual leader, Steve Bannon, the rap rights. Monthly traffic on Breitbart has plummeted nearly 72% from 17.3 million in January 2017, when Trump took office to 4.9 million in June 2019, according to Comscore. It used to be the second biggest conservative news site behind Fox. It is now number six behind the Washington Examiner, Washington Times, the Blaze, and the Daily Collar, and Fox. And boy, if you have to be grouped with those sites, it really sucks to be.

be number six on that list, does it not? We are the sixth biggest conservative site. The rap says that some suggest the Breitbart has struggled as the far-right views that used to make it stand out have become mainstream. Everything keeps coming back to our number one topic today. I got a correction of the week for you, David. Actually, I got two. The runner-up was this correction that ran in the New York Times on August 6th.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the law that protects hate speech on the internet. It is the First Amendment, not Section 2. 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Just go for the more obvious one next time. The far more corrected was the July 27th feature that ran in the Washington Post. It was an interesting topic about African Americans who tried to retain farmland their ancestors had during reconstruction and Jim Crow, how the descendants deal with this tangle of court documents and different names on deeds, stuff like that.

Problem was lots of facts in the article were wrong, including name, dates, number of, of children various characters had, also various aspects of the law. Andrew Bujan in the Washingtonian notes that the correction was 579 words long, I'm quoting now, a little more than a fifth of the length of the revised article. In print, it's so long it has to jump from the first page of the food section to the fourth. And Martin tells Bougain in a statement that he is embarrassed about this. That one just made me feel terrible because it made me feel bad for the paper, made me feel bad for the writer.

It's just one of those where it's like this was just, this just didn't work on every level. All right, David, I got a little bit of history for you. When I was in New York, I picked up the new book by Jay Hoberman, former movie critic of the village voice called Make My Day,

movie culture in the Reagan in the age of Reagan. I showed this to you. I was very excited about this book. This is like one of my favorite books about movies. It was totally mind opening to me because I thought I knew everything about like war, James and Red Dawn and Ghostbusters. And then Hoberman draws all these connections between them and what was happening in politics at the time.

Here's one thing I thought would work for us, which was Hoberman's discussion of the 1984 presidential campaign when just as they are now, Democrats were trying to unseat an incumbent Republican president. And one Democrat that stepped into the batters box was John Glenn, who was an Ohio senator and the first American astronaut to orbit the earth. And Glenn's lane, if you will, was the centrist, plain talking common sense solutions guy. He was like John Hickenlooper if he were an astronaut. Listen to one of Glenn's commercials where he tries to define himself versus another Democrat, Walter Mondale. I'm not so sure I fully understand Mondale's policy because he's been making so many promises in some areas. I think Mr. Mondale is trying to please too many people. He's trying to be everything for everybody.

Let's put it that way. And you can't do it. I see in making all sorts of general vague statements, whereas John Glenn comes out with specific plans. Normdale, I think, good man, you know. But I think Glenn's a better man. But I think Glenn's a better man. That's just a parade of regular people there for you.

What happened was in October 1983, more or less where we are now in the Democratic campaign, a movie came out called The Right Stuff. You know this movie. And the movie was partially about John Glenn. He was played by Ed Harris and Glenn, though he hated the script and actually tried to get NASA and not to cooperate with the filmmakers,

thought the right stuff would launch his presidential campaign. No pun intended. The New York Times at the time wrote, it was clear that no presidential candidacy has ever had a send-off quite like that afforded to Mr. Glenn. The Times also noted that the priggish self-righteousness attributed to Senator Glenn in the Wolf's tone down in the movie. Tom Wolfe's depiction was not so kind, but it looked a lot better in the movie. So this movie, just imagine this, a biopic, a group biopic, but a biopic of you

is coming out while you're running for president. Right. Which is pretty incredible. And it gets even better. Philip Kaufman, who directed the right stuff, got so paranoid because suddenly he realizes, wait a second, I've made this movie that may have this huge impact on American history. He gets so paranoid that he thought his film reels would be stolen in a Watergate-style caper. He tells New York Times that he told his editors, you never know. Now our film might have some political significance thinking back to Watergate. What might happen? According to the director, memories of break-ins and tape erasures made him determined to see that the original negatives were locked away and that all the editor's workprints were duplicated. Mr. Kaufman said later that a 9,000-foot workprint that included all of the Glenn flight was lost or taken from his workplace in San Francisco.

9,000 foot workprint of the right stuff was stolen. John Glenn thought this was such a big moment for his campaign that he started saying, the right stuff, you better believe it, in his TV ads. Well, what happened in October 1983? The movie came out and it bombed, finishing seventh at the box office. Glenn finished fifth in the Iowa caucuses and a while later ended his biopic-fueled presidential campaign. And David, that is how the right stuff became the original Better Work Vanity Fair profile. Oh, that's fantastic.

That's fantastic. Is that amazing? Can you imagine which candidate would you like to say? see have a biopic coming out. I guess Beto kind of did with that HBO documentary. Which candidate would you like to see having like a major motion picture about their life at this point?

There's definitely like a totally fictionalized version of, I mean a semi fictionalized version of Bernie Sanders. The road, like one man's road to lonely road to socialism, I think would be a really interesting one. I mean, he's definitely met a lot of luminaries over the years. Yeah, you need a director who just was a real

kind of straight shooter, one foot in front of the other kind of director. Yeah. I'm not sure who would have done the Bernie Sanders story. Because Bernie, Bernie's sort of revolutionary in his ideas, but starchy and his persona. Sure. It's hard to imagine any of these Democratic candidates really rising to that level, although, you know, who am I to say? Maybe the John Hickenlooper story would have some legs if the right director got a hold of it.

It's time for David Schuemaker guesses a strain pun headline. Oh, man. Here's where I pause. I'm pausing for David. There we go. Thank you. Friday's pun headline was herb your enthusiasm. By the way, a lot of people on Twitter were a gas that we didn't know that herbs were a big part of Pesto.

So sorry. Not a Pesto podcast. Today's strain pun was sent to us by CNAE. And it's from that. Is there any other adjective? Venerable digestive ideas, the economist. And it's a piece about tourists, David, who smuggle fish out of Norway. Tourists who smuggle fish out of Norway.

Does that sound like an economist story or what? The venerable economist tells us visitors to Norway are allowed to take home 10 kilograms of their catch and double that if they fish with a licensed tourist company. The current bout of tourist fisc activity, as the phenomenon is known, suggests many tourists are going far past the limit. In recent weeks, officials have caught dozens of cars and motorhomes laden, sometimes with 100 kilograms or more of fish. mainly cod. All right.

Tourists taking fish in Norway, and I'm going to give you a key word here. Haddock. Haddock. What is the economist strain pun headline? Can I tell you right now that I'm just like, as you were describing the story, the first thing to pop into my head that's permanently wedged there now is that there has to be at some point a strain pun headline that's the sun Oslo rises. That is excellent and better than this one, but thank you. Please continue.

It doesn't fit, sadly, for this. Haddock. All right, so people are smuggling Haddock out of Norway. Is it Paddock? Is that the thing I'm going for? No, it actually involves the word Haddock. Oh, God. Haddock.

Haddon. Hadd. Ha, ha. Hmm? I'll haddock, no cattle. Just deep cutting that. Is it something with Haddn't? That's the only thing I can't get that in my head.

You're in the right zone. To haddock or have not? Hmm. To hat. Not bad. A little flowery, but yeah. Okay. Are you ready?

Yeah, tell me. Norway has haddock enough of fish mugglers. And CNA notes that in the actual newsletter, the headline was Norway has had its fillet of fish smugglers. So the fill. Filet. Yeah, you missed, that was, you mislabeled this. This was, this was time for David Shoemaker to guess the strained dad joke headline of the week. I'm not sure that this.

They've had it enough, David. I've had enough of this episode. Let's get out of here. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Alme, made a production magic by Jim Cunningham. The official band of the press box is gin blossoms. We're back Friday morning, bright and early with more lukewarm takes about the media.

See you then, David. See you later, man. David. Oh, man. Something stinks to high heaven. Mmm. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, I think overall that's exactly right.

Deep fried mac and cheese, hand-dipped double-bacon corn dogs, giant half-pound tenderloin, deep-fried pickle dogs. I mean, it's a spot-on analogy by you, congratulations. Not bad. a little flowery but you know oh that's fantastic that's fantastic isn't that amazing idiocy it's just it's just so sad just didn't work on every level