The Press Box - Jon Ossoff Gave Us Permission to Record a Natalie Harp Podcast. Plus: CNN’s Elex Michaelson!

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

Today on The Press Box, Bryan and Joel talk more about Jon Ossoff and Natalie Harp. They talk about this week's coverage of her and what it's all for. Then Bryan is joined by CNN's Elex Michaelson to talk about his start in news, how he pitched his late-night show to CNN, making cookies with his mom, and much more (36:04). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel Anderson Guest: Elex Michaelson Producers: Isaiah Blakely and Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. Insurance operations today are fragmented, and policyholders expect more. That's why leading insurers run on Adion.

From premium collection to claims payout, Adion supports the entire insurance value chain, giving insurers full control over how money moves, a single platform to reduce fragmentation, complexity, and risk. Drive revenue, control claims cost, and power your next move with Adian. Learn more at adion.com. Hello, media consumers, and welcome back to No Vacation August on the press box. It's Brian Curtis and Joel Anderson.

How are you, Mr. Anderson? Did you know, Brian, I think one of our listeners took a little bit of offense to that. I think it's, and I don't want to, it wasn't like a series of beef or anything. He was like, I hope you guys know as college football writers that we're, we've been working since, you know, late July or whatever. And I was like, you know what? That's right. He was absolutely right. I think it's Matthew Syracusa or something like that.

But this person never got to a beach at all in July, anything like that? Well, not since, you know, not since maybe mid-July or something like that. Because, you know, I mean, I guess you got to be there for camp, you know, all this good stuff. So I will take that criticism. He's right. We're so far removed from covering the college football beat that we forgot. Our producers who are also not on vacation are Isaiah Blakely and John NotBones, Jones.

There you go. Coming up on this here podcast, Joel, the host of CNN's late-night show, Alex Michelson is going to join me in the studio here in L.A. to talk cable news, local news. He is high school basketball career. Alex's 6'5 and was a very good basketball player. Oh, wow. Do you put up some numbers?

He put up some numbers. And much more. And we're also going to have another, call it a mini edition of J-School. Yeah, that's fair. Many, very many. many edition of J-School. But first I want to talk to you about Natalie Harp. Oh, man.

Because this is a fascinating political story that touches the White House and the 2008 Democratic race for the presidency. And it may even be a more interesting media story. Now, if you have been under a rock listening to preseason football podcast, writing your college football previews, no problem. We'll get you caught up here. John Ossif, who's the senator from Georgia, was at a rally in Atlanta on Sunday.

He was making clips. John Ossif is Mr. Clips. He's really got a neck for it now, doesn't he? Well, it's all by design. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In one made-for-resistance Twitter soundbite, Ossuff said this. And while the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war,

While he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar. Natalie is Natalie Harp. And with that comment, all of a sudden the media had permission. you might even say instructions to write about her. And he said it like that you think,

I mean, that was a very knowing wink, right? Like that's, uh, Yeah, okay. This is, I just want to make sure we're on the same page about that, right? That he's, he's trying to get that and inject that into the mainstream of the discourse.

He later tried to throw the car into reverse and say, well, you know, I was just talking about the sycophants that surround Trump. But he didn't say fly with Stephen Miller he didn't pick anybody else in the White House. He picked Natalie. One name only.

I mean, we knew who we were talking about. Everybody, I mean, I think the applause, first of all, John Ossoff gets applause like he's in a black church, you know? There's a lot of echoing going on back there. As he worked up to that big line. Yeah. Well, really more is like, go on now, take your time. You know, there's a lot more that at black churches. And that may be going on there, too.

I didn't hear it, but he has a really good chorus behind him. But everybody knew what he meant when he said it like that. Here's what we know about Natalie Harp. She's 35 years old. She is both special assistant and executive assistant to the president. She sits at the door of the Oval Office. And according to the Wall Street Journal reports only to Donald Trump. That is unusual for somebody who is executive assistant to the president.

Can I ask you a question? and is just beyond the pale here. Does it matter that she is blonde and conventionally attractive? Does it matter? I think it makes this a bigger story that she is. Right. Well, I mean, if, oh, God. There's some, a lot of people that he could be flying with, women included.

If he said Susie Wiles, I don't know that it gets that kind of applause. Like Natalie is sort of, when we were talking about how that's sort of a knowing, wink to an audience. I just wonder if that's a part of it that gets everybody's eyes sort of raised, you know? It's got to be. It's absolutely got to be. How is it not? We know what he likes.

I mean, he's been in the public spotlight long enough that we have some sense for what Donald Trump's taste is and she's somewhere within that range. How Trump and Natalie Hart met, according to Sean McReach and Maggie Haberman in the New York Times, that Trump saw her on Fox News on 2019, speaking of a particular type.

He had her speak at the convention in 2020. She had been suffering from cancer and said that Donald Trump had helped her or made laws that helped her get the treatment she needed. She had a run on one America news as an anchor. And then she started working for Donald Trump when he was in exile. And according to the Wall Street Journal's Philip Wegman, Meredith McGraw and Josh Dossy, White House officials say Harp hasn't taken a single vacation day

since joining the Trump administration. So wait, does that include when he takes vacation too? Is she working when he's golfing, for instance? I bet she is. Yeah. I mean, New York Times says she doesn't even take Sundays off. Really? She's working all the time.

Man. I mean, yeah, I mean, she's just lugging around that portable printer. All even. That's been in her non-down time. That's funny. She got the nickname the human printer because she carries a printer around. And this is, by the way, this is not just reporting.

There's video of this because they made a Trump war room-style documentary during the campaign. But she brings a printer around. And then just like here, Mr. President, is a hard copy of the thing you want to see. I want to know more. See, now that we brought this up and we have been reading about this leading into this and watching segments. But now I want to know what she's doing when he's playing golf.

Is she there like a little cart right behind him with her laptop out and, you know, that little portable printer and a stack of like Trump 20208 hats? Or like, what is she doing when he's hanging out? Did you see the note, the New York Times, that she was chasing the golf cart in Scotland? I did see that.

So Trump's riding in the cart and she's racing to keep up with it. The Times that they had watched videos to that effect, which also made me wonder what other people in the White House or other people in the Trump entourage think of Natalie Harp. What a bizarre scene. Her job is that she brings Trump information, and I put that in giant air quotes.

New York Times says it's often conspiratorial style information. Gateway Pundit, apparently, is part of the Natalie Harp media diet. she helps Trump with his true social posts and according to the journal at Trump's direction Hart posted a video that included racist imagery depicting Michelle and Barack Obama as apes and an AI generated image of Trump

as a Christ-like figure. Wow. Two of Trump's most notorious posts. What a job to be like, I need you to go find that that image of Barack and Michelle as apes. Do you know where to go get it? and she's like, on it, boss, and she's able to get it for him.

Our friend, Jamel Bowie, he's cut a couple of videos about Natalie Harp, and he's called her the most important and powerful person and Trump's White House. And the argument being is that Trump is at the top of this huge bureaucracy, right, like this federal bureaucracy, and there's all these crises going on around him. Somebody has to get information through to him, through all that, Like, this is, this are your priorities. These are the things you need to know.

And I kind of see Jamel's point because the person feeding him all that information appears to be Natalie Harp. In regime change, she's described as an aide who supplied Trump with a fresh stream of positive news stories and social media comments that she would often read aloud and later follow up with copies from a portable printer she carried around. I mean, so she's the one giving him the news, basically. She's also a way to get to Trump. Mm-hmm.

This is Maggie Haberman, explaining to Aaron Burnett on CNN how Trump views harp. Part of it is, you know, he will describe to other AIDS that, and said this during the interregnum period, that, you know, everyone else will go off and make money. She'll never leave. That essentially she is the person who loves him as much as his wife and children. And she serves a specific purpose.

In a White House, in a government, There are other channels, official channels of information. You know, she doesn't provide him with his national security briefing, the presidential daily brief. She is not the White House staff secretary, which is supposed to be the last step for paper flow. She's not the press secretary from whom certain media requests are supposed to come. She is a channel by which, as you said, foreign leaders try to reach him if they can't some other way. She is a channel by which he reaches people he sees on television, who he likes what they are saying. that he will just send out notes to.

She is with him so much of the day during those meetings. And she is talking to him throughout the evening about social media posts. So she is a specific channel of information. I got a comparison for you. Okay. You remember when Johnny Mansell was at Texas A&M? And he had a guy named Uncle Nate who was handling his affairs.

I do remember Uncle Nate. Natalie Harp is the Uncle Nate of the Trump White House. That's hilarious. That's great. Well, that didn't work out great for Johnny, unfortunately. All due respect to the Aggies. You know, yeah, and Uncle Nate. That's great.

I tried that on him. Vans in the office today, and I tried that out on him before we got on the podcast. I was like, I'm about to hit Joe with that. He's like, give me a nice nod. I was like, okay, there we go. Yeah, I'm with that. I'm with that. I like that.

Man, we got to get article Nate on this show. But if you read regime change and you, you go through every reference to Natalie Hart, it's her just running off him. She's sitting next to him, or he's making, she's sitting next to him and he makes her go get something. But there's also this one incident from a year ago where he's in a meeting with the economic team and they're talking about tariff strategy. And like, his team is like, no, this, these will be the impact. So this is what, you know, what will happen if you levied his tariffs. And he's going to her, Trump, and it's saying, hey, find me better information.

Give me better information. So he's inclined to believe her, even over the people that he has employed to give him good information. Absolutely. And that's what's so funny about regime change. She's just everywhere. She is ubiquitous. When Trump did the plane switch in Turkey the other day, she got on the military plane with him, whereas Marco Rubio and others were still in the decoy plane.

There was a story from CNN's Kristen Holmes. That's the reporter who dared to ask Trump about this and then got the response from that Twitter account about her children. Kristen Holmes and Adam Cancran and CNN reported that when Trump was going to a trial appearance in 2023, there was not room in the SUV for Natalie Harp, so Harp got into the trunk of the SUV.

Yeah. And once again, I'll point to this, according to the two sources and confirmed by a photo obtained by CNN, which just makes me think there are, are people around Trump who are like, I don't know about this. Well, I mean, that's also sort of the story of the Trump circle, too, is that it's not just, I mean, everybody is this sort of doing their own thing. Like, everybody has their own particular mission working for Trump.

And sometimes those that they interfere with somebody else's. And so they always kind of seems like they're knocking off the other person to get to Trump. And apparently, if you really. read about Trump a lot. He likes that. He likes it as a competition for his affections among the staff, which can make it be very dysfunctional and people are getting all their information leaked to the media or whatever. But Trump likes it. He wants them to be fighting for his affection. Absolutely. Absolutely. And he also wants people to have affection for him, to be loyal to him. Right. So you see with her, hey, she may be the single most loyal Trump staffer. I don't know if we do a power ranking with Stephen

Miller where everybody would fit, but she is one of the not the most loyal Trump staffers. So she's right at the top of the list. That's exactly what Trump wants. Well, Stephen Miller is mission-minded. Like, his thing is that he hates brown people and immigrants. And so that's he, like, I feel like Trump is a vessel for Stephen Miller. But when it comes to Natalie Hart, like, I don't know what her particular ideology is other than Trump is the greatest.

And that's what they've said over and over again. her brother has said that in interviews. So, I mean, he's probably right. I mean, she does, I mean, to spend that much time around somebody to be around them in the way that she is, to be as devoted, to not take a day off of work. I mean, that's, I mean, Trump may actually have, that might be the most loyal person in his circle. She also written letters to Trump. And this is once again from Haberman and Swan, you are all that matters to me. that's what she wrote in one of the letters

I want to bring you joy to feel like we can get through a day without ever having to talk work quote unquote Wow that's another letter Preston Harp her brother who has appeared on CNN to talk about Natalie Harp said that she was writing letters to other presidents

Yeah And he was talking about George W. Bush Yeah and he said it when he's like Well George Bush obviously I was like oh yeah it was Yeah, of course. He's right. It would be George Bush. It probably wouldn't have been Obama or whatever, but it was just funny that he was assisted about it like that. And he, I mean, the guy as a character, he also said something to the effect that their mother raised them with the idea that slavery wasn't so bad. So, you know, they're a very interesting family. And to the extent that she appears to have any ideology at all, it just appears that Trump is the vessel through which all things flow. he's just one of these amazing walk-on characters in American history.

Books will be written about this and that there was this guy with long hair and a trucker cap who was the brother of the Trump assistant who appeared on cable news to fill out the biography. If they do a made for TV, can you imagine the number of people

who would love to play him? Just like just even the way he looks because if you, people should go watch the clip of Preston Hart because I mean just the visage of her pictured next to his sister today. Like they just looked like they came out of a totally different nest. You know what I mean?

Like it was like, oh, those people do not look like they're related at all. They went in different directions. Very much. Very much so. I got a bunch of questions for you. Okay.

Question number one. What does John Ossoff get out of mentioning Natalie Harbin a speech? Well, you know, so I was thinking about this. And clearly, and Ossoff could come on here and tell us, you know, whether we're wrong or not. It seems like he's gearing up for some sort of larger office. The only larger office in Senate is president, right? Yep.

And I was thinking about when Tim Walz became the VP that was joined the team, the Harris ticket. And he went around, he was calling Vance and all these other people weird. And it seemed like it was effective. Like even a lot of Democratic voters in that moment were really excited about it. Oh, yeah. Fight back. Say these dudes weird.

Yeah. And then somebody on Harris's team was like, no, we don't want to do that. That's not us. That's what we want to do. And I felt like after that their walls had been defamed. And I could see somebody smart seeing that moment and being like, if I ever get in that position, if people start listening to me in a certain kind of way or I want that kind of attention, that's a real good way to do it. Just point out how, you know, the oddities and their personal lives. That's a good comp. You remember Walls, too, when he had his introduction speech with Harris made the joke about the couch? And all of resistance Twitter was like, oh, I see what you did there. Yeah. That to me is what Aosov is doing, too. And if you think about him in 2028, he is going to be one of the quote unquote establishment candidates. He's not a lefty.

He's not AOC. He's not Rokana. He is an establishment candidate. candidate. So what better way to... And a senator in a red state. From a red state, or at least a purple state. If a red state.

So what better way to paper over the differences with the lefty wing of the Democratic Party than to say, ooh, he went there. He went there. Yeah. He wasn't afraid to go there. He may be policy-wise different than me on a couple of different things, but he's out there fighting. He's going low, to quote Michelle Obama.

He's willing to do it. and that makes me like him as a Democratic primary voter more so than maybe I would if this were just a pure referendum on his policies. Nobody has really tried this for any length of time, right? Like Gavin Newsom has, but it's different in a way. Yeah, but it's just the thing about you can sort of write off what Gavin Newsom is doing,

it's sort of cartoonish, you know, or it would seem for a lot of people, I could imagine those theatrics seeming beneath the dignity of the office, right? Because if you want a certain kind of a president or you want some sort of a political leader, you don't want them to be, you know, you're rubber and I'm glue, whatever you say, bounce off me and sticks to you. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's kind of the Gavin Newsom strategy.

Whereas Alsoft is just, I mean, he's still a very serious politician. It was a, he didn't even say the Natalie thing like it was a joke or it was some sort of thing. he was just like a part of a bigger message. And so seeing that kind of a person try to merge that with that kind of a strategy, like, hey, man, we kind of poke at you guys now. Like, you know, you don't always get to make us mad. Sometimes we're going to make you mad. And yeah, I mean, it's a, it's good.

It was smart of him to be one of the first people to get out there to do that. I think just performatively, too. He's got the statesman-like speech-making politician thing down. He looks the part. He sounds like he sounds the part on the stump. But when you saw him in those interviews where he was backpedaling, oh, I'm just talking about sycophants. He's much less, he's much less smooth in those.

So like the part of himself that he needs to work on, and this is a little, this is not totally unlike the calculation that Gavin Newsom made is that part. Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah. You know, the shit posting part, the tweaking the other, the tweaking the other guys.

playing dirty. Like that's what John Ossef needs to show primary voters that he can do. This is part of that strategy. The thing about Gavin Newsom is kind of a surprise that other people haven't picked up on it. If you punch back, I mean, nothing is going to, whatever the Trump administration or the right is going to do to you, they're going to do to you anyway. So if you don't punch, all you're going to do is get hit. And Gavin Newsom has shown people, hey, there's a model for throwing.

and a lot of punches. And they're going to do what they're going to do, but it's not going to affect me that much. And so you could imagine somebody for Democratic voters that are looking for an option that is not Gavin Newsom. It's just really smart a John Alsop to do that. And you can kind of, you know, I mean, like you said, we're 2026. We're not even through the midterms yet. This is a good time to start working on all that stuff, just building a track record.

Here's another question for you. If Trump had tossed out some innuendo about, let's say, James Tala Rico. And reporters wrote about it. Wouldn't we be mad at reporters? Wouldn't the same people on Twitter who are right now be like, yeah,

he went there, he went there. Oh, look, see, reporter, here we go. We're finally writing about Natalie Harp. Wouldn't they be upset? Wouldn't they be calling reporters dupes and that they're taking orders from the president of the United States instead of doing their own work?

Part of the reason they get upset is because they perceive it as being one-sided. And so they're just like, all right, you know, like, let's see, they want to see the media truly call balls and strikes. They want to say, well, all right, they're able to call names and, you know, Donald Trump can, you know, mock Rob Reiner after he was brutally murdered in his own home by his son and kind of get away with it. but if you know they perceive it as that any democrat has what would be a gaff that was a gaff in 2004 they get hit for it in the media and so I my my thought is that those same people are just like hey just let let us do it too and don't and don't be inconsistent in how you and how you criticize it like let us do it too okay but it's then then you're not really mad at the media for violating what you

perceive as procedure or, you know, doing something they're not supposed to do, you just actually want them to do it both ways. You just want them to do it the other way, too. Well, I mean, so many people, I mean, the thing is, is because journalists do a terrible job of this, and I'll talk about it later, about pretending that objectivity is the highest possible value of journalism. And people interpret that to mean, they get one turn, you get one turn. And the public eats that shit up. And So they see it that way. They're just like, all right, these people are doing it. Allow them to do it too.

Call it from my side as well. And I just think because media has been bad about saying what the work is supposed to be about and what is the highest and best possible values of the work. A lot of times people just say, well, we just, we call it fair. We're just right down the middle here. And so readers hear that and they're like, well, all right, we'll do it. Be fair. All right, I take your point.

Let me play devil's advocate a little bit. Okay. John Ossev mentions Natalie Harbin of speech. Times runs a piece, the Walsh Journal runs a piece, CNN, MS Now. Very few of these pieces move the ball at all because all these places have been reporting on Natalie Hart for years now. So what exactly was this week? She got mentioned in a speech, so we're going to write about her again. And, you know, unearth a funny story or two, the SUV thing, maybe a little more detail on the Scottish

golf cart, but that's fine? Because John Ossev mentioned it in a speech? Yeah, because it's, I mean, it's, I mean, it is catching on down. Like, it's a, I, you know what? Again, I have to be honest. Like, I mean, my attention is going a million different ways. I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about Natalie Harp until this week, you know, and this is why we're doing a segment on her because that is, that is, that is actually

effective for them to do that. And that's what people. Effective for blue, though, is critical of the media. effective for Democrats and liberals who want to make fun of Trump or effective for the media who wants to inform the public. That's the question I'm asking for you. Like, I don't, to me, reporting on Natalie Harp, and I'll get back to the previous reporting on her in just one second,

reporting on Natalie Harp is completely fair. I always think we should know way too much about people who are elected officials or in this case, somebody who's working closely with an elected official. We should know way to, I'd rather risk us knowing way too much than way too little. Like, I'm all in on that. What I find interesting about this is that

because John Assoff says it in a speech, then everybody rushes to their computer to just write about her again, largely writing what has already been written. You see what I mean? He becomes the assignment editor of the political press.

And to me, that's just worth interrogating a little bit, because I don't mind people writing about Natalie Harp. I don't mind them asking questions. I don't mind them wondering loud. That doesn't that doesn't hurt my feelings at all. That doesn't violate my ideas about journalism. I just find it funny that because the Democratic Senator said it, that's why we're doing it right now. Well, yeah. I mean, that's true. But also, I mean, the thing is you just never know what the opportunity is to remind people or something. Like, I think, and I remember talking about this,

either with somebody ESPN once about, like, why they ran sports center over and over again or why they might cycle through the scores two or three times within an episode. You just can't take for granted that people know what you're talking about, right? They're like, you know, and that, that, yeah, wasn't, maybe John Oshoff is the assignment editor then, but again, it clearly, it clearly was of interest to readers and listeners. And so if he was an assignment editor, it was a good assignment because it drove more interest than like, oh, yeah, this person that is always near the president, I'd not read about this before, now I'm interested in it.

We use this word in journalism called a peg. If you're not a professional journalist, a peg is essentially a reason to write a story that you probably wanted to write already. Pegs are funny things because Natalie Harp is no more important this week than she was last week, but journalists have a reason to write about her. By the way, they had another reason to write about her

because she was one of the people that Trump chose to come on the military plane rather than be on the decoy plane in Turkey. It's multiple points. If you have three pieces of evidence, you have a trend story and you have permission to write about it.

All I'm saying, and again, I don't mind increased coverage of this. I totally take your point that sometimes repetition is a good thing. I'm just amused or interested in the idea of, oh, this was the peg. This is why we all got to go here and have Natalie Harpweek in America.

because a guy said it's a thing yeah no it's just it's it's done and I take what you're saying but I mean that is just I mean news pegs are that arbitrary you know like we don't we I mean we tend to think that like there's some sort of order to it but newsrooms are just like chaotic organizations different people news cycles changing and so sometimes newspegs are just that that uh senator made an innuendo about the president's assistant we've written about it before but this is what he's talking about. Sometimes that is a story. And I mean, if you go look, for instance, I mean, Republican insults or innuendo about Democrats are always there. They write about it whenever they say it. So calling Tilarico low T. It doesn't happen all the time, but every now and again,

you know, there's enough of a back of a trend that they feel like they got to write about it. And so, yeah, but I do take your point there. I mean, you don't want to be following the orders of politicians, but I mean, it is news. you know, I think this cycle sort of shows that a lot of people didn't know who she was, even though we assumed that we did. I was reading social media the other night. And my feed served me up a tweet from National Treasure Tommy Veter. Oh, I do, man.

Yeah, Tommy. What's up? One of the hosts of Pod Save America. And I don't know, you know, there's a lot of talk about Elon Musk trying to feed you rage to get you worked up, to get you to post more. I don't know if the algorithm said, you know, Brian, normally a mild manner. guy needs a Tommy Veter tweet just to get a little bit excited, get a little bit hot. But I read this tweet and I'll read it to you.

Tommy Vita writes, it appears that Aosov touched a nerve by mentioning Trump's odd relationship with human printer, Natalie Harp, seems like something that media should explore. This has 700, 763 retweets as we speak, 763 retweets. And my response to Tommy Veter, also on Twitter, and this shows the success of the Elon Musk algorithm, was, dude, everything we know about Natalie Harp, everything I know, everything Tommy Veter knows, everything John Osif knows, comes from the media. The media has been writing about Natalie Harp forever. We mentioned regime change, which I'm holding right here. Back in 2024, Haberman and Swan wrote about her in New York. Times article that included the first mention, I believe, of the Scottish golf cart incident. There's a big piece about Natalie Harp from 2023 in the Washington Post. Again, this is when Trump

was in exile and about to run for president again or already running for president again. Everything we know about this person came from the media. And you do not get 700 plus retweeds unless unless resistance squitter thinks you are scolding the media for not doing their job that is the implication here and he came back to me and said no no no I just think it's another incident

okay but you know what the cheap media scolding we're like if only the media would do their job and report on this person we would know who this person is if it weren't for the media I mean everybody loves to do that and it is an effective way to get people mad because

it's so cheap though like the whole thing. Nobody was reporting on that everybody's reporting on this. Every, every big time political White House correspondent has reported on Natalie Harp. But do you know it's different now, man? I don't know how big of

a deal this is. You know what's different now? TMZ isn't on the action. And a year ago, that wasn't true. And I do wonder how much the introduction of TMZ to political media is going to change the way everybody goes about this

Because as Tommy was saying in that tweet that followed up after you tried to punk him in public, is that basically suggesting that there's more to this than her just being a sycophant that works for Trump. It's like, I mean, I'll be nasty. Are they fucking? That's what people want to know. That's the implication. Yeah. So, like, that's why people are.

I know people want to know that. But do you think people in the White House who've been chasing the story who've been getting that close. I mean, what was the line here? I actually marked this in the in regime change. But here we go. Oh, man, look at you, man. Harp wrote Trump adoring letters that she left in his personal spaces.

That personal spaces phrase has gotten a big workout this week. Trust me, the people who are covering the White House, they are chasing that possibility. Whether it's true or not. They would love to break that story. And again, I totally

understand the absolute demand and interest in it, and I think it is a valid demand and interest in it. But the idea they're like, well, if somebody just do their job and tell us the truth, dude, they're getting as close as they can or they don't know, right? That's what's happening here. If you think those people are just like, well, this is nobody's business, except there's, you're wrong. You don't understand how political reporting works, especially in the Trump era.

I'm a media guy through it through. Support the media all the time. You know what I mean? Like, I'm, you know, like this, I felt like I was a calling. I've known I wanted to do it was a child since I was a child. But I also know that in having, you know, given what my politics are and given the community I'm from, I also know that sometimes the media doesn't respond unless you criticize them, you know. And that they want to know that people are out there.

And then people are out there are paying attention. And so like this is one of those things. It's just like, hey, man, make sure, you know, they see that the right. And actually, we could talk about the Clay Travis thing, some of it. other time. But they see that people are just terrified of the right, criticizing them, and that they will back down or bend to their will or do whatever the right. Whenever the right starts making accusations of the media, they prostrate themselves. They say, oh, I don't live in a bubble. I didn't actually go to an Ivy League school and my mom isn't actually paying my rent. Like people start

telling you about the time they worked at McDonald's when they were 15 years old, because the right wing knows that the media can be punked like that. And so I think this is just an, an instance of people on the left being like, you know what? Maybe we should try. Maybe we should try working the refs sometimes, you know? And that's what I think. I'm not saying that's right, but I'm just saying I think that's what people see here. It's an opportunity to scold the media and make them do more work, make them do more the dirty

work that you want them to do. Okay. Okay. But it's cheap. It's cheap. It's easy to tell other people to do work. And again, I say this is a media critic on a media podcast, but, you know, there you I love this tweet from Politico's Jonathan Martin.

It may not get him the 2028 nomination, but Assov does otherwise have a future as an assignment editor. Big guy came up with tears in his eyes and said, Mr. Asif, sir, can you please free us from one more analysis piece on Trump stuck in Iran? He did do everybody in service. How many of those pieces were going to be written? Come on.

Ossoff was making job recommendations to Grantland on Twitter. That was amazing. So he really knows his media. Yeah, man. I could not wait to send you that tweet last night, by the way. I don't know if Rembrandt watches this show, but Rembrandt, I guess I could ask him offline. But I believe that Rembrandt Brown and John Alsop actually went to high school together at Westminster Academy and Atlanta.

And I feel like Rembrandt was on his campaign and was like kicking it with him when he was running for Senate. So yeah, it was very funny. The family ties go very strong here. I'm sure people will say in the comments. Can we do a quick J-school here, a mini-J-school, if you will? Yeah, that's fine. Let's do a mini-J-school.

Ladies and gentlemen, grab your number two pencils. Grab your notebooks. I'm going to take you to a place that never tried to hire Art Bryles as its head coach. Hey, hey, hey. I'm taking you. Right. Come on. I'm taking you to J-School. Hey, let me just say

the art browsing thing is a very cynical calculation. Nothing matters in society anymore. And so if nothing matters and there are no standards, you might as well have a good football coach. But neither here nor there. So, yeah, so this weekend, I'm sure a lot of people heard about the fact that the NABJ

made this major controversy by giving Stephen A. Smith its thumbs down award. And in giving Stephen A. Smith that honor, so speak, they cited a recurring public pattern of him disparaging prominent black women, Kamala Harris, Jasmine Crockett, you know, Jamel Hill, Kerry Champion, so on and so forth, right? And so, look, I really don't have that much to add to that particular dustup. I mean, my first thought was that I agreed with the charges but wondered if the sentence was a little too harsh. Stephen A. Smith went on, you know, to respond on Monday to like a 45-minute video about it.

And to me, made a real good case that, like, maybe Stephen A deserved a call or maybe we should have shot Stephen A some bill and not done that. Because historically, that's just something you're not going to be able to take back. And if you care about NABJ and the way the Stephen A. Smith cares about NABJ, that's one of those things that's going to be really, really hard to stomach, that your name goes on that sort of a list. So I wish that there have been a way to broker understanding. And I was also sort of concerned about what might happen as a result of the Fisher there that, hey, man, Stephen A. Smith works for ESPN. ESPN and Disney are very big, you know, financial supporters of the NABJ and the convention. people that care about the organization also have that in mind. But then Stephen A, like, ran on Sean Hannity and Chris Cuomo and sort of confirmed everybody's suspicions about him. And I was just like, look, bro, like, if you care about NABJ, why are you running to those folks who have the ear of people of the Trump administration who you know would love to hurt people who give money to the NABJ? You know, that you know that they would love to cripple the NABJ in some sort of way.

why would you do that if you actually care about the organization? And I'm not saying, because Stephen A has done a lot more for NABJ that I ever have, but I found that to be a peculiar move if you care. But the other, the thing that I really wanted to talk about, Brian, is that there's been a lot of talk about whether NABJ should have done this in the first place, if that's beneath the organization, if they need to focus on other stuff, you know, all these, you know, all the black people that are out of work in journalism, you know, the way we're treated in this industry. all that other sort of stuff, you know, the programs, to diversify the field, that NABJ should be focusing on that and not Stephen A. Smith. And I understand that, but I really do like the idea of a journalism organization holding its members to account, right? That like, hey, look, you did something that we find to be offensive or wrongheaded and we're calling in, you know, and, you know, letting you know that we're paying attention to you and we don't like that. And one of the reasons, and I was talking about this with my wife,

she brought, she actually brought this up, my wife, who was a journalist and works at the slate. And we're talking about, man, none of those other organizations ever do anything like this. I've never seen or heard of, like, the National Press Club or ONA or SPJ doing that sort of particular designation. And, you know, and I think about, like, even the White House Correspondents Association, like, they gave Trump a platform to humiliate them again. You know what I mean? And like people, despite all these people in the industry saying, I don't think that's a good idea. You shouldn't do that. Maybe you guys should not do that this time.

And they went ahead and did it. And I'm just like, yo, like, somebody should be willing to call them out, like in some sort of official way. And so I was really impressed in retrospect that NABJ was willing to do that. Because, man, look, journalists, we love to give ourselves honors. We love to give ourselves awards. And I get it. We're not a well-liked group of people. for any number of reasons.

Yes, some of them personal, some of them professional. But that's just what it is. And so because of that, because we're loathe to like call out, because we understand that people sort of loathe us as a profession and we want to praise each other, it just leads to this kind of weird collegiality where we're afraid to call people out. And the reason that that is important,

and I'm asking non-dea, black journalism organizations, read white organizations to do this, is that, look, man, some of the people that were in good standing with you are people that are, everybody acknowledges our problem now. Tucker Carlson wrote for everybody. He wrote for New York Times magazine. He wrote for Esquire. He wrote for Slate. He wrote for the weekly standard, the New Republic, Wall Street Journal, all that stuff. He was a member in good standing. And because of some of the work that he did that I might argue was offensive or could have been called into question about, you know, I mean, look, you know, people say that I use, overuse the word

racist. Sometimes I think some of the work that he was doing, the print journalism work, there was a problem. I found to be problematic and people never said anything about it. Like, it just went on and Tucker Carlson got to be Tucker Carlson. But I also think about Barry Weiss, man, because, like, people prioritize appearing objective and collegial. And then, like, when things go to hell, and it's too far to repair, people start to speak up. Well, that's what's happening in CBS right now, right? And Barry Weiss was a member in good standing in journalism. Very few people organizations were willing to say specifically, this is fucked up. And now she's accrued all this professional power, and it's fucking all these other journalists on the other end. So, look,

I think that what I loved about the NABJ thing is we understand if there's more to this work than calling balls and strikes. I came into this business mission minded. I got no like I'm be honest about you. Like I wanted to write about people who never get written about and tell stories that had never been told before from places that people never went. Like that's the kind of stuff. And like that's the tradition of Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Ethel Payne, Ralph Wiley, whatever. Like that is what we do. When people are hurting our institutions, we speak out about it. We say something. We take the lead. And I just hope other people. start taking a little example from that.

I love that. I also want to circle back to one point. The whole you could have given me a heads up. I always find it so funny when Stephen A. says that, like, don't you host an opinion show? Like, did you call everybody who was going to be on this, you know, you were going to light up today and say, hey, just to know, I got to come after you on first take in the, in the B block.

Like, no, that's just not how this works. Like, that's just very funny to me. Yeah. And also, like, and Stephen A. will let you know he talks to people all the time. And I have not talked to Jamel Hill or Aaron Haines, who's the president of NABJ. But I'm imagining these are conversations that people had had with him one-on-one for a very long time. Like, I don't, I don't have the impression that this was something that just happened in a moment, just out of anger. I'm sure they thought about this.

So, anyway. One note about Natalie Hart that I forgot to mention earlier when we said, when I said that, the story didn't get advanced much this week. I do want to recognize Jake Trailer and Jacqueline Allamaney over at MS Now, who did break the story about her not seeking a security clearance at the White House. And then Trump having to get involved. And finally, Natalie Harp, after working there for more than a year, got a security clearance. That is interesting and important information. All right, Joel.

Now it's time for our special guest. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. Insurance operations today are fragmented, and policyholders experience,

more. That's why leading insurers run on Adion. From premium collection to claims payout, Adion supports the entire insurance value chain, giving insurers full control over how money moves, a single platform to reduce fragmentation, complexity, and risk. Drive revenue, control claims cost, and power your next move with Adion. Learn more at adion.com. It's so nice to see Alex Michelson during daylight hours. For the better part of a year, he has been hosting the story is on CNN, which you can watch at midnight Eastern, 9 p.m. here in sunny Los Angeles. Alex, welcome to the press box. Thank you so much for having me, big fan of the show and big fan of this setting. It's not bad, is it? Nicely done. The decorator has done good work here, too. Quite a compliment from a veteran of

cable news. Yes. We appreciate it. It's a great set. So you've been hosting the show on CNN since last October, but I read that you were actually pitching CNN a late-night show based here in L.A. for many years ago. Yeah. What was the nature of the pitch? Basically, what we're doing now. You know, it's interesting that cable news, not only CNN, but also then MSNBC and Fox News, for whatever reason felt like at 9 p.m. Pacific, which is middle of primetime TV, that the West Coast didn't matter, that they would just run four or five-hour old reruns of the news that would say breaking news of a press conference that already happened. And so there's this whole region, basically half the country, that was not being well served, especially in a time when news

has become even more 24 hours and more things are happening. And not only is it prime time in the West Coast, but CNN is on in 200 countries. So it's morning time in Europe. It's morning time in the Middle East. I know, you know, is there ever any news that comes out of that region? You know, it's the middle of the day in Asia, which has become increasingly more and more important, certainly to American audiences in terms of what's happening there, the markets there are open. And so there's a lot going on that was just not being addressed and not being talked to. And so part of my pitch was, let's take advantage of that. Also, there are so many players that live and work here in the Western region that you could have as guests in a place like Los Angeles that

maybe they're not in New York in Washington all the time. I mean, those shows do a great job, and there's a lot of amazing guests that come through there. But there's just different people that are here that are interesting and some fresh voices. And so it's been really cool that CNN signed off on this eventually. And it's been great. to experiment, watch it grow. Not to be a naval gazing Angelino, if there is any other kind of Angelino. But has the huge amount of California news

over the last year and change, did that help CNN get the show off the air? I think so. I mean, I think it sort of proved, oh yeah, that's why we did that. But it wasn't just that. You know, I mean, we had a couple incidents that were really dramatic

that happened because we were live on the air. The night that the Venezuela attack launched that Maduro got taken, that happened in the middle of our show. And we were the only show that was on live because both Fox and MS now are in reruns at that time. So we're much faster on the air with that. We're able to go right to it. I remember I was doing a segment about heated rivalry and the gay sex scenes on that show. And then they say in my ear, we're hearing reports. courts of, you know, military action in Caracas.

All right, thanks, guys. We're going to take a quick break. And then we come back and now. And that was one of the moments for me that was like, oh, my God, I'm on CNN. Like, this is real. And we had, because of CNN's, you know, unique reach globally, they have a producer in Caracas. And so she's on the phone and we can hear explosions happening in the background. That was a remarkable moment.

And then not long after that, the War with Iran launched during our show as we were on live. And then all the rest of the shows, other networks are scrambling to try to send somebody to a monitor somewhere and get people up and running. And we beat everybody by 15, 20, 30 minutes or more because we were already on the air. Who do you think of as your audience at Midnight Eastern? Well, I was actually been surprised by that. So I thought we're going to be very, very West Coast skewed. And the data actually shows that it's still very East Coast. So it's actually a majority East Coast audience, which has changed the way that I think about the show.

Because initially I was like, let's do a West Coast show. Now I think we do a show based from the West Coast for everybody. But there's a lot of people in the East Coast that are up late. I mean, midnight's not that late. And then obviously we have people on the West Coast, and then we have people all around the world. It's the rate, the way ratings don't really exist in the same way in Europe or Asia, so you don't get the same kinds of numbers. But it's interesting. And then you think about the live audience, and then now so much of it is the digital audience, how people consume the information in the next day, too, if you do something that's particularly interesting or newsworthy.

We're talking right before noon. so you're going to be on television about nine hours. When will the rundown for tonight show come together? So we do a call every day, I guess if we'll talk in Pacific Time, around 11 a.m. Pacific time, where we go through ideas for guests. And before that call, we've already started thinking I'm usually sent a few notes out. So we kind of have a rough concept of the rundown. We do another meeting around 4.30 Pacific time when we have sort of a rundown that we're adjusting

and talk through, but then, you know, the best news shows are the rundown isn't said until five minutes before or adjusting before. You know, the, if we knew exactly what the rundown is right now, that means it's a bad night because that means stuff isn't happening. And that defeats the purpose of why I pitched the show in the first place. If we're the only live show, we should have live elements. So you want big breaking news like Maduro has been captured. Yeah. An election night like we had Tuesday. That's obvious.

You're waiting for returns to come in from Alaska. You're on the air. You're the only show that's live, as you said. What else do you want to be a part of your show? I think you want to be a part of the big conversation of the day and offer sort of a unique or interesting take on that. I think the best I'm learning, cable news stories are the ones that don't end with a period but end with a question mark,

meaning you don't know how the story ends. I kind of learned that in local news. why are car chase is the biggest thing out there? Because people don't know how it ends. They want to feel a part of something that's live that's still breaking. I think in this era, when people get status updates all day, once a story is done and dusted, people, I think, are ready to move on. Their attention span is different. So how can you create a conversation that feels like an event? And I'm also personally very interested in the intersection of politics and news and culture and technology and sports and sort of how all of those come together. And I like figures

that are in that intersection. Somebody like a Bob Costas is like very much in that intersection and understands all these different worlds. But I like, we did a piece recently about Russell Westbrook, not his basketball play, but his community activism. And that was really interesting. I like humanizing figures and finding different aspects of them that people wouldn't necessarily think of. And I do think here in Southern California, you have an opportunity to do some sort of profile pieces that I don't think have been done that often on CNN that we've found a lot of success on. So here's some interviews you've done recently. You mentioned Russ. Haley Stevens, just lost the Michigan Democratic primary, and Bill Shatner. Oh, my God. One of my favorite interviews

of all time. So we sort of covered the waterfront subjectwise there. Yeah. What is the trick to being able to get quickly up to speed on someone to interview them? Well, hopefully you don't have to do it quickly in that all those are people that are in our consciousness anyways, right? And so then it's about how can you find something that you wouldn't think about or try to get to their essence. But the best interviews, the ones that really stand out is how can you get at somebody's humanity?

What was so remarkable about that William Shatner interview is he was sitting next to his daughter, and both of them had stage four cancer at the same time. And so we've seen interviews with William Shatner for 60 years, but we haven't seen many interviews of him with his daughter. and he opened up and felt much more intimate and much more revealing just watching her talk, watching him watch her and the pride in his eyes and to drill down on their relationship because not everybody's been Captain Kirk, but there's a whole lot of people that have been a father to a daughter or have been a, you know, has their relationship with their father. And seeing those moments happen was really beautiful. That was one of my top five favorite interviews of all time.

I encourage people to check it out on YouTube. It was really magical, and they were so fun together. And so when you can do that, and frankly, it's a lot easier to do that in a taped sit-down where you have more time, and I like that format too, which is what you get to do with a thing like a podcast, and really let somebody breathe. It's a remarkable thing. And the best moments in both cable news and for those sorts of sit-downs, too is when you can get beyond the talking points. People are so tired of the bullshit, right? There's so

much bullshit out there. And so many people play their parts where they come on and I'm on the left and I'm on the right and I'm supposed to say this and I'm supposed to say that. And that can be fun. And clearly there's an entire industry based off of that. But the best moments are when people actually have a real conversation like real people. And so how can you get them to do that? So I love those moments. I don't know. And for me, I'm curious how you prepare for an interview to get back to your actual question after I just rambled for 10 minutes.

But when I'm preparing for a big interview, I try to have the person's voice in my head for a while. So if I'm going on the treadmill, I'm listening to podcasts with them. I'm watching whatever they've done. When I'm driving in the car, I'm sort of listening to them. I'm getting ready for their cadence. I kind of know where they're going to go. I've heard what's interesting from them.

And then I try to think, okay, let's highlight that because that's interesting, but how can I take that in a different way than what other people have and kind of get to their essence? What's your process? Well, exactly that, because as you know, every celebrity has 10 answers that they love to give. It doesn't matter what you ask. They're going to get to those 10 answers. So part of that, right, is listening and then trying to steer toward other areas. You may think, okay, they're going to repeat numbers 1 through 6 on the list. I don't want to go all 10, right?

I only have so much time here. I've got to get somewhere different. I've got to ask the question a different way or just point them in a different direction. Right. And when you get those moments, and it's interesting, I'm sure you've seen this too with celebrities. Usually they pause when they've been asked a question they haven't been asked before because they're so used to doing the routine and especially actors. I mean, literally their job is to memorize lines and repeat back lines. as a performance. That's what they do. But if you can kind of catch them off guard and get them

comfortable to a place where they're having a real conversation and then you throw something at them that they haven't been asked before, that's when you get the magic. That's when you get the moments that go viral. And sometimes they say good question. And I always tell people at home, it's not a good question. It's just a question they don't know the answer to. Or that's the way that they're giving themselves time to try to think of an answer to it. Yeah. Let's talk about how you got here. You grew up in Southern California. Yes. In Agora Hills. Why'd you want to be in TV news?

So I remember watching as a kid, the final Bryant-Gumble hosted Today Show. And they did this hours-long montage of his travels and interviewing the president and the Pope and

being on going to the Super Bowl and doing all of these amazing things. And I thought, what a cool job that is. to not only get to be an eyewitness to history, to get to be a part of people's best days and sometimes their worst days, but also to get this access and kind of live life to the fullest and chance to do things that, you know, average people don't get to do, and wouldn't that be amazing? And so I was into the news from the time I was very young. I used to watch the KTLA Morning

News here in Los Angeles. I'd watch Good Day, L.A. here in Los Angeles. I watched the Today's show. I loved a lot of NBC's programming. As you know, Tim Russert was one of my heroes on Meet the Press. I watched Tom Brok and Brian Williams and Katie Kirk and Matt Lauer and all of that. And was kind of constantly thinking about broadcasting. I used to record shows on my VCR of different news shows. I used to create fake news shows as a kid. When I would go on vacation, I'd bring a little camcorder and do stories about the trip

in the cities that were in. I used to host a fake talk show with my sister where we would interview my friends. And if my friends weren't available, we'd interview the dog. You know, I love this stuff from the time I was a little kid. And the idea that I now get to do it for real,

do it for career is so amazing. You got to spend some time around Russard later. Yeah. What made a Tim Russar interview unique? Wow. He was the best researched, right? I mean, he, it was, and that sort of interview doesn't exist anymore, because I don't think the networks give it that time. I mean, Tim Russert, when he started the show, he'd do his intro, you know, and our issues this Sunday, which by the way is where I got my name for the show, the issue is.

That was a nod to Tim Russert. The issue is, was the local political show I used to do. And he'd get right into it, and he'd say, Brian Curtis, welcome to meet the press. And then just go. and it was he'd read everything you'd ever said and he put it up on the screen so you'd have to answer to it. Let me put this up on the screen. That's a service to you. Let me put this up on the screen to remind you.

So he caught people, but because they let his interviews breathe, I mean, what Sunday show now would have a guest on for an hour? Nobody does that. No chance. You know, or even a half hour, which he sometimes would do. And because he had that space, he was able to delve into stuff in a way that other people did. And the other thing, and I talked recently with Tim's executive producer, Betsy, who about what would it be like today? I remember having a conversation with Chuck Todd about this, too, like what would

meet the press be like if Tim was around? And it wouldn't be the same because his ratings were so high. And politicians didn't have social media. They didn't have another place to go. So they had to sit with him. They had to sit for the interrogation. And everybody respected him. and everybody went on the show and everybody watched it,

that error doesn't really exist anymore. And so now politicians have the ability to go to safe spaces, whether that be just their own social media or go to a right-wing influencer or a left-wing influencer. They go to places where the questions are approved in advance. And so we don't really have that communal space

that Tim had created. And I don't know if Tim was still around, if that would still exist. Maybe it would sort of been a legacy thing that, what do you think? Is that, what would Tim Russard be like today? It's a great question. I mean, Republicans, he'd have a trouble getting Republicans on. You'd have trouble getting Trump people on. That's just, that's just a fact, right? I'm sure you have trouble, you know, trying to get those people on sometimes. He'd have trouble getting a great interview out of them.

You could put words on the screen. It wouldn't matter. I think that's part of the problem. But what you said, it's like you could have the exact same skill as Tim Russert and the pulpit has diminished. Right. The importance of it. They don't need Tim Russard or Chuck Todd or Kristen Welker anymore. Right. And the Sunday show itself as a format is not as relevant as it was. I still think it's relevant, but it's not as relevant as it was. And the other thing about that, with respect to everybody that had shows on at the same time as Tim Russard, is Tim's lead in the ratings was so dramatic. It really was. That it was like, you know, there was like one Sunday show.

And now they're all kind of close. And they've all have smaller audiences. And so some people are on Face the Nation or Meet the Press or this week or Fox News Sunday or CNN, State of the Union. And none of them have that same special thing that Tim had when he was kind of the show. Let me read some of the resume you put together as a young person. High school student body president. Yeah. Captain of the high school basketball team. Go Chargers.

And Gore High School. President of your frat at SC. That's right. FISA. Live ever, die never. Did you ever think about going into politics as opposed to covering it? Yeah, I thought. I've thought about it.

I mean, part of the thing that I don't love is raising money. I mean, I've done some charity fundraising campaigns, which were important from a, I believed in the cause, and even that was hard to do. And so much of politics is that. But I have great respect for people that do go put their name out there. And I do think that my experience of being in. elective office as a young person, sort of change the way I think about politicians. I don't think that they're all evil caricatures. I think most of them are human beings doing the best they can

in really trying circumstances. And I think when I'm interviewing them or when I'm covering them, what would I do in that situation or what external pressures are causing them to do this? Or what's the strategy behind this as compared to just reflexively thinking that they're all awful? How'd you get your very first gig in TV? Well, I, so I intern. Well, my first gig was as an intern. And so I started at Fox 11, and I had in high school gone through this program called Operation Shadow, where they would pair the kids in the school with a parent of a kid in the school that has a career that they're interested in.

So there was a guy named Josh Kaplan, whose daughter, Emily, went to a garage. high school. He was the executive producer of Good Day, L.A. He took me in to tour Good Day L.A. I'd watched that show for years, and I asked a bunch of questions, and I was very engaged. And afterwards, he pulled me aside and he said, you know, when you're ready, come intern with me. We may have to lie about your age because they only took juniors and seniors. And so I reached out to him and it was a freshman and I'm going to do this. And he didn't get back to me for a while. And so I, one day, when the deadline was coming up, I didn't know if he would find me to be a stalker, but I just showed up at the station. And they said, you have an appointment?

I said, no. And so they, I waited for three hours for him to be ready. And he came down and he was laughing and he said, you start on Monday. And so that's how I got my first gig. And as an intern, I started, it was a time where they had just lost this national show. They had just lost a lot of people. So I started doing a bunch of jobs that had just been eliminated that they needed somebody for. So I violated a bunch of union rules.

I was a writer. I went out on junkets. I interviewed people. I did all sorts of things at Fox 11. And then I was like 17 or 18 years old. And that was my start. And then from there, it set me up for my next thing and my next thing. And so my first gig,

professionally was in San Diego. And a friend of mine knew the general manager who said, look at his tape. They'd never looked at somebody as young as me before. And they gave me a shot as an, you know, trial thing. But I had already accepted a role as basically an intern for NBC News at the Republican National Convention. This is when Sarah Palin was the vice presidential nominee. And during the day, I was a runner for NBC. At night, I was working for my pal Conan Nolan, who I had interned for and helped him out. And then during all of it, I was shooting special videos for my station in San Diego. And I would stay up at night, editing videos for them, sending it back so it felt like they had a correspondent.

And then that Monday, when I got back, I got my first contract. Speaking of San Diego, what did Anchorman get right about local news? Well, that it is classy in San Diego. That's a great place to do local news. I don't know. I mean, it's funny. I've heard stories that on who that potentially some of those caricatures are based on. And like that local news back in the day, it was, there's a lot to laugh at.

And there's still a lot to laugh at now. But I do think that initially for me going into local news, I thought, I only want to be here for a year or two, or I don't really see, I see myself as a network person and I, you know, local news. And then I never got the networking job. And I stayed in local news for a while. And what I realized was that local news is so important. It's where a lot of the best journalism happens. So much of national news sometimes will parachute into a disaster.

They're there for a couple days and then they're gone. Local news lives in the community. Is part of it. Understands the issues. has relationships with all of these people, feels a weight of responsibility. And I have such an appreciation for local news. And then you see during real disasters,

like the Palisades Fire, which I think was the hardest thing I ever did professionally, and I think the most important thing I ever did professionally when we're anchoring 12, 14-hour shifts in a row for five, six days, seven days in a row. That's when news matters. That's life or death for people. That's seeing if their house burned.

And so that sort of giving information on a local basis for people that are in need, that are in shock, that are scared, that sort of collective holding people's hands, getting through it together as a community is a really powerful thing. You spent a number of years as a general assignment reporter. What was a typical day like for a general assignment reporter in L.A.? Well, I mean, you never know what's going to happen. I mean, the thing about the L.A. market is it's just enormous. So I started in San Diego when we had one county to cover. In L.A., there's five counties. I mean, in the county of Los Angeles, people often will say, well, the mayor.

Well, in the county of Los Angeles, there's 87 mayors. There's 87 cities in the county of Los Angeles, which itself is bigger than almost every other state in the country. So just the breath of driving in a market like that. I mean, that goes from Ventura all the way down to, you know, Temecula, out to Big Bear, Cabazon is just crazy. So the typical day is you spend a lot of time driving and most of the time in rush hour just trying to get where you go. I mean, obviously there's a lot of crime stories and all the rest of that too that you deal when you get real good at breaking news and moving fast. You get good at writing fast and all of that. But also there's so many amazing community stories.

I loved sort of the stories of people coming together, finding ways to get those on the air. Usually they wanted the breaking news if it bleeds a lead story. So I would say to them, if I can get both done, if I can get the good news story on and I can get the breaking news story on, will you run both? And they're like, okay. And so some days I would just drive the photographer's crazy, but we would get both on and find a way to make it happen. But it's, it is strange in that environment when you have some control over your destiny and you're able to pitch stories. but a lot of times in the general assignment, if something happens and you're the closest person, you just got to go. Did I hear this right? At one point, you were on call for newscasts at 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 5 o'clock, 6 o'clock, 7 o'clock, and 11 o'clock?

Well, not just on call. I was doing those newscasts. That was like a standby. Yeah, I mean, at ABC 7, they, when they did a 3, a 4, 5, a 6, 7, which was on KDOC, and an 11 o'clock, And a lot of days I would do every one of them as a reporter and sometimes switch stories in the middle of it. So you learn to be to write really fast. The other thing that I think was unhealthy in going through that is you learn to eat really fast. And so like if you go out to dinner with your family or on a date or something like that, you're just scarfing down your food because you never know, am I going to be able to eat? Because if you get that call, you got to go right away. So I think I created some gastric issues in the process of that. During the 2016 election, you interviewed then-candidate Donald Trump backstage at the Jimmy Kimmel show?

That's right. What happened there? That was an amazing experience. So we're backstage at Jimmy Kimmel. And the deal that the Kimmel team had made, because I was working for ABC, was that if you can book your own guest, they agree to it, we'll give you the space. We're not going to book it for you, but if they agree and they tell us that they want to do it, we'll give you the space. So Trump's team said yes. This was two days after I'd interview Bernie Sanders in the same space.

And he comes back, and I just want to compare and contrast Bernie and Trump in the same week. So Bernie's on stage. He gets off stage, walks right over. He's sort of rumbled. He's like, okay, let's go. And just does his thing and is done. Trump comes off stage after he's already had makeup, goes back for a second round of makeup. While in makeup, this journalist Michael Wolfe, remember him? Yeah, I do. He was there. His staff is telling, trying to keep him away.

And then Trump, like, brings him in. And so the start of that book, Fire and Fury, which became one of the biggest books of the, was right there in front of me. I'm watching this. And then as I'm sort of listening, Paul Ryan calls, which was also they were in a weird relationship. So he's talking to him. So we're just like waiting and watching all this. And then he comes over and he is so aware of the camera angles and the lighting that he tells them how to adjust the lighting and where he's going to stand. I mean, he is like a director and a TV producer.

Like it's kind of crazy. And my strategy for interviewing Trump was to start every question. with a compliment and then get to something challenging because he's so used to doing this that if you can get him to do this, you might actually get some answers. And it was great. And at the end, he was so happy to be complimented. He called ABC and said, I'll do an interview with this guy anytime. So it was like, it was a very productive.

And then we, I mean, I, and then while he was president, every time he came to California, I would be part of the press pool. So I covered every one of his trips to California on the ground with him. and interacted with him. And it was a very interesting experience to see all of that firsthand. You started a political show here locally in 2018. Yeah.

What's the difference between Gavin Newsom, the politician and Gavin Newsom, the character he plays on social media? He's, I think, funnier in person. I think he's more grounded in reality. in terms of the nuance of things, and I think would be more willing to admit, you know, some of the game that's underway.

And I think he's actually a deeper thinker than people realize. You know, it's amazing because of his dyslexia, like he cannot easily read, and he can't easily read a teleprompter or all the rest of it. So he has memorized in his mind everything. He doesn't give speeches that are written for him. He does everything off the top of it. of his head. He does hours-long budget presentations, and he spends so many hours studying and

thinking and memorizing and all of this. And so I think his command of actual issues, whether you agree with him or not, I know there's plenty of people that disagree with him, but I think there's this caricature of him as sort of this Ken doll and his wife is like a Barbie doll and this California and this slickback hair and the whole thing. And he's actually a much smarter person than I think people believe and frankly much more media literate it's amazing kind of like Trump he kind of sees everything and I think where Trump was a little bit more focused on what's happening on TV I think Gavin Newsom's knowledge of what's happening online the what's trending what's getting engagement what's clicking what's not clicking is sort of Trump like in terms of the next

generation of that and I don't know people are as aware of his understanding of the zeitgeist and where the ball is going. And I think that's what drives a lot of the way they think about things. When you had these politicians come through the studio there, your mom, whose name is Crystal, baked cookies and brownies for all your guests. How did that start? So, well, that started when I was an intern. And we thought, okay, what would be a way to sort of make a positive first and last impression? So my first and last day as an intern, we would bake cookies and brownies and And then it causes everybody to come to the desk and say hi to you because they want the cookie. Right.

So it's a great, it's a warm introduction. They've ignored you throughout the internship. Right. Now they have to. Well, it's start on the first day. Oh, the first day, right. And then they come back at the end. And it's like a way to say thank you to everybody.

And so their first and last impression of you is really about the cookie, which has nothing to do with me, but it's a nice impression. And then we said, okay, on the first day of the issue is, and our first day was quite a loaded guess list. We had Gavin Newsom, Adam Schiff, Arriva Martin, Dan Schnter, and Joel Pollock, all there. And we made the cookies, and all of them said, like, we're not coming back without these cookies. And then we made it for a second week. And then it became such a thing that everybody was expecting the cookies.

And then even Gustavo Ariana wrote an article in the L.A. Times about the cookies. that one of the hardest things about the new show, the story is, is the old show we did once a week and usually we'd have one or two guests a week. So it was manageable to bake cookies once a week. Even that was kind of a lot. But now we've got six or seven guests every night. So she doesn't own a bakery or anything like that. So we've had to scale back on the cookies. Was it your idea, your mom's idea, to do it for the internship? I don't remember, but it was probably a combo. She's like being your agent.

She's very savvy. She's very savvy. I recommend it. And full disclosure coming in here today, I appreciate your staff, gave me a chocolate chip cookie. So that was a great nod to that. That happened completely separate of me, but it does make people happy. I'm very proud of them for that moment. Let me ask you something else.

We're two years removed from a presidential election where everybody was talking about podcasters. Yeah. And podcasters authenticity. Sure. I wanted your take on this. How do you communicate authenticity to an audience when you're wearing a suit and you're surrounded by the machinery of cable news? Right. Well, it's interesting because they've told me to not wear the tie as much and other things because that's going to be the thing. That changes it. I'm not wearing the tie here today. look I think you've I tell my team that I want to go off the prompter as much as possible I think the more that you can talk from the heart I think the more that you can do actual conversations I think the more people can sense what's real and what's not and I also spend

a lot of time thinking about and trying to communicate in the digital spaces you know making selfie videos communicating directly trying to break things down thinking about different ways to get to different people in different places. Because the old school, sort of this, it's 10 o'clock at night and let me tell you what happened today, I don't think there's that much of a market for that, and that's not what connects. What connects is when people can feel that you are being real. And those, because there is so much crap out there and so much performativeness that's out there all day long, when you actually have those real moments, those are what stand out.

You and I grow up in the cable news era. Let's imagine somebody now who's 25, who's like young Alex. And they're interested in politics or interested in news. What argument would you make with them, that they need to not just look at a clip of your show on social media, but actually pay for CNN, pay for cable? Because I think it's still, when stuff really matters, it's the best place to go.

And we've seen that in terms of the numbers. Like when the war in Iran launched, it was the biggest weekend for CNN subscriptions. Because people saw, okay, there's a value here. I need to see this. Influencers are great. They're an important part of our community. But like when the fires happened, and I'll just talk from the local news perspective, you know, our reporters are on the ground.

We had the chopper. We have the years of experience of knowing the communities. We are talking to the key players involved. We're getting you potentially life and death information. From a cable news perspective, we've got an opportunity to get the access. CNN has more reporters in more countries than any other news organization in the world. There is a breadth and depth when stuff is really happening that you just can't get on social media. So like on an election night, which we've had, you know, the reporters that are everywhere, the interviews with the candidates themselves, the data, the whole thing, it's just not the same. And there is so much fake news, not to use Trump's phrase, but there's just AI slop. There is just crap that's literally made up. And recently we had this whole story of fake polls. You see that? That was wild, that this median strategy.

just made up a poll to see, I guess, how the media would take it, and lots of organizations took it. Karen Bass made a graphic. Look how great I'm doing. The poll was complete bullshit. And so a place like CNN and other organizations, New York Times and others, which sometimes are mocked, but that do have actual liability for getting something wrong, actual consequences for getting something wrong, I think it's really important to have places like that at a time when there's so much crap to have some sort of North Star of what is factual and what is not. I hear you on that, but I do think there are 20-somethings, if we go back to our imaginary 25-year-old, who says, hey, you know, I watched a clip of Clarissa Ward on social media,

and it was interesting, and then I read some more social media, and then I listened to a podcast, and I'm going to call it a day. Yeah. And I never did the thing, which they're going to have to do at some point, which is pay for this stuff. Right. And that, to me, is the problem that cable news is still trying to solve. I don't think cable news has figured out the answer to that.

I think what probably has to happen is not to expect that a 25-year-old is all of a sudden going to have the same media diet of their parents. What is the more likely outcome is to find a way to compete in the spaces where they already are. And Chris says an example of this who does great explainer videos and does interesting things on TikTok and interesting things on Insta. But finding what or even what the next Insta is going to be for the next generation and communicating to them and finding a – but the question is, I mean, doing news in the real way and everything I just said and having bureaus everywhere and fact checking. It all is expensive.

And so the crisis for the entire media industry is how do you pay for that? CNN's owned by Warner Brothers. Yes. What do you make of the still in progress merger between Warner Brothers and Paramount? I mean, it's obviously very interesting. It's way above my pay grade. So I'm certainly not up on the negotiations. They don't go to the overnight guy to get my take on that.

So I'm really focused on what I'm doing from a day-to-day basis. But, you know, we'll see what happens in terms of that. But I think there could be a lot of benefits to it, too. I don't know what will happen between CNN and CBS News. I will say that CBS Sunday morning is my favorite show on TV. I mean, CB, it's obviously 60 Minutes is an icon and one of the most important shows in the history of broadcast journalism, CBS Sports,

the Super Bowl, the Masters, all the rest of it. So if there is an opportunity for synergy between those two, I think that could be really cool. Would you be happy working for Barry Weiss? I don't know Barry Weiss. I've never met her. I've never talked to her. I don't know what her plan would be for CNN.

So I think it's premature to answer that. And we don't know that Barry Weiss would be in charge of CNN either. But if she invests in news, then great. But I don't believe in jumping to conclusions, because I've seen people do this with me, and I find it very annoying to assume what somebody's going to be before they have a chance to prove it. I mean, obviously she's got a record with CBS News, but we have no idea what she would do with CNN or if she would even be given the keys to that. What conclusions that people jump to with you?

Oh, I mean, I think people, I have people that say that I'm super far left. I have people that say that I'm super far right. I have people that think all sorts of things. I'm Jewish. I hear anti-Semitic comments sometimes, or they think they know what I think about Israel. They think I know about these issues. And I find it very irritating in today's world. And sometimes I talk back to trolls on social media more than.

I probably should. But the one thing that I usually respond to people is, did you watch the show? Because people will see a two-second clip. They have never talked to me. They haven't asked me for reaction. They haven't actually watched the show. And they make some sort of assumption based off of that. So for me to jump to a conclusion on air about what Barry Weiss would do or not do with CNN without ever talking to her or without ever listening to her, it just feels, you know, unfair to her. Sometimes the information they want is in the clip and they didn't even watch the two-second clip, it turns out. I often point

that out too. A few quick ones before you go. Sure. You once said your biggest weakness was that you were a people pleaser. How did that manifest itself in your media career? I think it has made it challenging for me sometimes to

ask the tougher questions. I mean, I've learned to do it and I've gotten better at that, but I think I was worried about that. And what I learned in is that people expect like it like I knew you were going to ask about the WBD thing. Like do I wish you didn't ask about that? Sure. But like that's part of the business, right?

I think you asked about it in a fair way. And I'm not mad at you and like it's fine. Right. That's like the way. No, I mean like that's the way it goes. Right. And so I think if you're a professional about about doing something and you're fair and people don't feel blindsided and you do it in a respectful way, then. especially, especially when you're dealing with politicians or actors or people that are media trained,

they know that that's part of the business and there isn't, they're not mad at you. But even if they are mad at you, like the job is to serve your audience, not to serve them. And so you've got to remember what your North Star is. My whole thing is about being fair and about being respectful. And so that people don't feel like they're getting a raw end of the deal. and then people's performance on the other end of the microphone, that's up to them. But yeah, it's a challenge. And then also I think I've learned over the years as I've gotten older that the critics

or all the rest of it, it's like it's kind of a lot of a noise. And you kind of, you got to believe in yourself. And the more that you do what you believe in and the more that you are authentically you, I think the better you feel just sort of letting the chips fall where they may, because it's like, well, if they don't like me, then it's, I'm not in the right place anyways. You're six foot five? Yes. What was the moment in your career when it was helpful to be tall?

It's helpful in big press conferences to stand out or to get attention in a gaggle. I remember we had one instance, and this was a cover picture in the L.A. Times of Elon Musk was launching, he's showing off his new dragon, which goes up into space, and it was at SpaceX, and he's up on a stage, and then all the presses around him, but because I'm so much taller than everybody and I'm closer to him, it basically became almost a one-on-one interview of me and Elon Musk, and then just everybody around, and you can see my head popping up.

So in that situation, or if you're at a concert, it's good to see over people, but it also can be bad if you've got to travel on a plane or something like that. Good for basketball concerts and gaggles. Yeah, and walking shots with Russell Westbrook or Gavin Newsom. Yeah, that's a good one I think about that. Yeah. Finally, how did you get the name Elex?

So Elex comes from my great grandmother Ethel. My parents, as often a Jewish thing, you take the first letter of somebody who's been deceased, who you're close with. So my mom was very close with her grandmother, Ethel. She died not long before I was born. So they made up the name Alexander, which is my real name, Alexander, Benjamin, Michelson, Benjamin. My middle name is for my grandfather, my dad's grandfather.

And the craziest, by far, part of this job, by far, the most surreal thing, is that I have heard from lots of different local news viewers over the years who have named their kid, Elex, because they liked the name from watching me. And like Los Angeles, it's very diverse. So there's like an Armenian Elex, a black Elex, a Mexican-American Elex. There's all these different Elexes that is kind of a rainbow push coalition of Elexes that have been named because they watch me on ABC 7 or Fox 11 or maybe now CNN. And what a crazy. I never expected that as a legacy, a living legacy of this show. You can watch Elex Michelson and perhaps even name your firstborn after it.

Yes. Week nights on CNN's. The story is Midnight Eastern, Nine Pacific. Alex, thanks for coming on the press box. Brian, thanks for everything you do. I really enjoy this conversation. All right. That's the press box.

He's Joel Anderson. I'm Brian Curtis. Production magic by Isaiah Blakely and John Not Bones-Jones. Yeah. Coming up next week, Brian and David, Brian and Joel. More lukewarm takes about the media. I'll see you then, Joe. Let's look at the fort tonight.

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