The Press Box - Kamala Harris Picks Tim Walz, Evan Gershkovich Is Free, and the RFK–Bear Cub Affair

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David stop their vacations to discuss Tim Walz being picked to be Kamala Harris's running mate and the reactions of Democrats to the selection (1:27). They also discuss the following: Claire Malone’s profile of RFK Jr. (14:53). Evan Gershkovich being released from Russian prison (21:09) A botched Summer Olympics call (28:38) Donald Trump at NABJ (37:26) Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Tara Palmeri. I'm Puck Senior Political Correspondent and host of Somebody's Got to win. Brought to you by The Ringer and Spotify. The 2024 election has been upended with Joe Biden off the ticket and Donald Trump facing a new challenger, Kamala Harris. If you want to hear what the insiders are really saying about the race, join me Tuesdays and Thursdays as I break it all down with lawmakers, journalists, and political strategists.

We'll go deeper than the headlines to the anxieties at the highest levels of power. And of course, we'll chew over all. the hot political gossip as we head into this historic election. Be sure to follow, somebody's got to win at Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David? Yes.

So much for our vacation. We Chris hazed ourselves. But we're back. We're back and we're back to run through a bunch of stuff. Kamala Harris has a running mate and it's Tim Walls. RFK did something with a bear cub.

Evan Gershkovich is free, summer Olympics, Trump, NABJ, and last but certainly not least, my Niagara Falls travel log. All that and much more on a vacation busting press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Brian Waters here. David, we have a running mate. It's someone who I guess you'd call a bit of a dark horse. someone who was not on the lips of the political commentariat,

say three, four weeks ago. It's Tim Walls from Minnesota. Yeah. And let's start the journalistic bidding right here because Helen Lewis of the Atlantic described Tim Walls as, quote, a cheery red-faced man who looks like a mall Santa who's just taken off his beard. So when we have the obligatory paragraph,

high in the profile and you have to flash your writerly chops that is what you're trying to top at this point. Just a memo to all the political writers. Setting the bar, yeah, okay. We are setting the bar.

Tim Walls had an interesting public audition for this job because he gave Kamala Harris and her still new campaign the weird attack. Yeah. Against Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. So not only was he

looking like a plausible running mate, but he was like, oh, here is the thing we're going to say. Yeah. Here's our subtle attack against Trump and J.D. Vance. Yeah, it's like you go into a job interview sometimes and you don't know if you should just put all of your ideas out there because they'll just take him if you don't get the job, you know?

But he put all his cards on the table. And I think it obviously proved to be a really effective line of attack and a really effective audition process. for him. It feels like he's the right pick. And not just because he came up with weird. By the way, he didn't just come up with the weird line of attack, but he came out, he was at the forefront of modulating it to appeal to Trump voters by saying, we don't

think you're weird. We just think that these guys at the top are weird, right? This is like he's, he got ahead of the deplorables, the potential deplorables trap and did it in an incredibly compelling way. And Walsh is an incredibly impressive guy. He, you know, I don't know if Mall Santa is necessarily where it would go, although I don't know that it's exactly wrong. You don't think they'll be introducing him that way at the DNC in Chicago?

No, I think, but I do think that his appearance, the DNC in Chicago will be interesting. Presumably he'll be in a suit, but he is a guy that has, like, to see him in a suit, you must first see him in a T-shirt, right? To understand that he's not another one of these just, you know casting couch like old white guys you know whatever from that that appears on on news news tv all the time he's he's he's kind of he's just sort of salt of the earth and he knows how to look that way and a kill of those voters and and um and uh i you know i i think i mean i'm i'm actually incredibly impressed it felt like shapiro was was the leader just in turn leader in the

the clubhouse just in terms of um Shapiro was the pick it felt like it would have been the pick if the if the if the advisors and the and the you know numbers people had had their way and walls is just actually the right pick um and and uh you know i think it speaks well the harris campaign that's where she went to see him in a suit you have to first see him in a t-shirt can i nominate that line for the third paragraph of the wall's profile because that's really good that's really good i'm really interested in how the political press will talk about him and write about

him because this is a person that's relatively unknown nationally minus the cable news hits of the last couple weeks. Dave Weigle notes on Twitter that he's got a very conventionally appealing political biography. Small town, Army National Guard,

he was a teacher. Big policy wins. Weigle notes in Minnesota. He says very comfortable talking, contrasting the Democratic and Republican agendas. But it's always funny when that person has discovered anew. Yeah. And written about through fresh eyes. Yep. Which is to say eyes will also be looking for parts of Tim Walz's record. It'd be like, well, what about, we saw that with Josh Shapiro over the last week. What about this editorial that you wrote way back when they were certainly fine things. But it is interesting to me when

you have somebody, and there's no hillbilly elegy here, right? Yeah. We don't know that much about him. And that is, but I totally agree with your analysis. I mean, I think the salt of the earth claiming that you are like voters is what every campaign tries to do. That was Trump with Hillary, right? No, no, no. I'm the regular person.

Yeah. Despite being a New York City millionaire. I'm the regular person. She's not. That was Joey from Scranton versus Trump. no no no and part of that weird attack is no no no I'm the Midwestern

salt of the earth man yeah it's them that's weird they have weird ideas that's why you should vote for us not though yeah I mean I think he's I think being relatively unknown is is a real positive

I mean I don't think Josh Shapiro had an incredible national platform you know either but I I think newness is is a incredibly significant part of presidential politics in the modern era. I think that everybody has to feel like they're kind of part of a voters want to feel like they're part of a movement.

And, you know, it's hard to feel like you're part of a movement when you're talking about some senator who's been around for 40 years. And Kamala Harris, I mean, it might end up benefiting her that she was, you know, relatively relatively speaking, had a pretty quiet profile over the past four. But certainly I think Tim Walts, it feels like, it feels not just like there's some freshness,

because he's not a young guy. I mean, I think there will be some, you know, balancing out there. But it does feel like she's being, Kamala Harris and the campaign in general are being responsive. I mean, they're like actually reacting to things that are happening in real time, in reality. And that,

think speaks more to, you know, I mean, it speaks well of the campaign more than just about anything else. Not a young guy, but only months older than Kamala Harris. Just kind of a funny wrinkled at this whole thing because he certainly presents differently. What did you make of the vibes argument about Tim Walls? You saw various versions of this. A, Democrats for once are actually happy and united. It's not the usual infighting that characterizes the party. I like this tweet from populism updates. Tim Walls is a vibes candidate,

and this is the vibes election. I have no idea what either of those things mean, but I tweeted them anyway, and I'm right. I think that's absolutely right. I think that he's, I think that he is a vibes guy. From the moment he appeared on the screen, he seemed like, you know,

I feel like national politics at this point is just a steady procession of seeing people give speeches and pop up on TV where you say, man, why can't that person be president? Like, as opposed to all these other fools that we have to deal with, you know? And that's, I think that the,

he's definitely part of that vibe, you know, and I think that, if you'll allow me to use vibe repeatedly here. Well, once and only time on the press box podcast, we normally try to avoid such things. And yeah, I mean, and he's, he's, he's the, listen, he's the weird guy. I mean, he's not weird.

He came up with a weird line of attack. And I think that that is, That is significant, you know, it would have been, not the story of the campaign, but it would have been a little awkward to see Harris and Shapiro or Kelly or whatever out there on the campaign trail dropping weird left and right while Tim Walls is like stuck in a, you know, MSNBC recording studio or something. You know, I mean, it was, this is, this is definitely the way to go. It's amazing how Joe Biden created the environment you're talking about. Why can't this person be running for president? Why can't this person be on the ticket by? insisting on running for president and then kind of running for president for a few months kind of not only because he was trailing in the polls

but because he wasn't actually campaigning or doing that many candidate like things. So all of a sudden, people are struck by Kamala Harris. Oh my gosh, she's like making phone calls all day. She's on the campaign trail.

She's figuring out lines of attack. She's embracing brat. She's acting like a candidate who wants to win this race and knows that she's behind or was behind. Now we see the new numbers from Nate Silver and others.

Same thing with Tim Walls. Oh my gosh. He's going on MSNBC and talking about this race, Democrats say, in the way I wish a Democrat would talk about this race. He's taking the fight to them.

But that, again, that's like, you know, the minimum standard for any candidate, but because Joe Biden was the candidate for a while,

all of a sudden, that seems like refreshing. Yeah. And mind blowing. both for Democrats who want their ticket to win and for, I think, political reporters who are like, oh, here's something to cover now. Yeah. Here is something to grapple with. Here's something that seems new to us and different to us.

Yep. Than everything we've been doing. I love the way this was reported this morning. So around 8 a.m. Eastern Time we got a tweet from NBC's Peter Alexander, who said, as of last night, VP Harris has not yet made a final decision. decision and wanted to sleep on it one more night, according to a source familiar with the process. Now, I'm not doubting that detail or I'm not doubting that that detail came from the Harris campaign, but doesn't that sound like the detail you always plug in in situations like

this? Is she really not know last night and didn't decide until this morning the morning she was naming her running mate? Yeah. Yeah, it's like a reality show. Everybody's waiting behind the curtain and you announce them. No, I mean, yeah, I'm sure it was. Predetermined.

But now we're in this whole, in a bizarre like optics game, right? I mean, and I'm sure for Kamala Harris, those kind of internal discussions are different than they would have been with a male candidate. You know, I mean, everything is being measured by perception. And probably unnecessarily so. But, you know, it's a, it's a, it's, it's. It is good. I mean, listen, you have to cover what you're given to a certain extent. I'm not sure that she was waiting until the morning to decide. But, you know, you and I both

had like hard decisions to make. There's no way we didn't know 99% what we were going to do when we went to sleep. Well, not if you had to announce it the next day. Nouncing to the nation the next day. She wanted to sleep on it just to make sure. So that was around 8 o'clock. 8.30, we get this in from the Associated Press. Vice President Kamala Harris has decided on a running mate, AP sources say, with an announcement coming in hours, but not the name of the running. Yeah.

So she slept on it. And then we had, she's picked a running mate. And this is when Stephen Shepard of Politico tweeted a picture of that graphic we see during the NFL draft that says the pick is in. Oh, yeah. But we're not going to tell you the pick.

Yeah. That was a weird interregnum in this whole thing. It also gives, I mean, the campaign, if there was any, if there was any uncertainty internally, I mean, it gives them opportunity after opportunity to just sort of feel out the responses, right? You just look at the tweet. You know, she's picked her running mate. She'll decide soon. And every response is a, you know, straw poll of online Democrats, right?

Just being like, Jesus, I hope it's not so and so. Or like, please, please, please be so and so. You know, I mean, every step along the way is another, you know, casting of the net to sort of feel out potential reaction. I think that's right to coin a phrase. And I also think what the Harris campaign is doing is just eventizing every step of this process. Oh, yeah. So we heard last night or the night before that it was down to Shapiro and Walls. Okay, so we got a final two.

And then this morning we got that she slept on it. And then we got that the pick is in. And then we got who the pick was. So if your idea is to own this news cycle with what you regard as good news, you were doing it not just by announcing the pick, but doing all these little sub announcements. Just to make sure everybody's eyes are on the TV screen and on social media.

It's coming. It's coming. Oh, now we're down to two. Oh, now we're down to one. Can't tell you who it is. Yeah.

And of course, as soon as that AP update went out, every political reporter was like, well, there's news to be found out. Yeah. And then within minutes, we got the reports.

I don't even think we have an official Kamala Harris tweet as we record this at, 930 on Tuesday morning, but it is known, it is said to be, to use the language in the New York Times. Tim Walls, the governor of Minnesota. Speaking of weird, David, how about RFK Jr. and the bear cub?

Talk about getting out in front of something. Well, you tried anyway. This all came from a good old-fashioned New Yorker profile by friend of the press box Claire Malone. The New Yorker sends me the TOC on Monday mornings an email. And I'm looking at it yesterday and it's Claire Malone profile of RFK Jr. David Remnick reporting from Israel and the West Bank.

And Sloan Crosley bidding farewell to her cat. Magazines are back, baby. Yeah. We got an old-fashioned mix. unbelievable stuff. So I'm going to read you the paragraphs from Claire Malone's profile. And I want you to just stop me if anything sounds interesting or alluring to you as we go through this. Okay.

One day in the fall of 2014, Kennedy was driving to a falconry outing. I'm just going to stop there on your behalf. Wait, wait, wait, wait. A falconry outing. A falconry outing. He's going to go do some falconry. Remember when you and I used to spend our weekends in New York City on falconry outings? Yeah, well.

Driving to a falconry outing in upstate New York when he passed a furry brown mound on the side of the road, he pulled over and discovered that it was the carcass of a black bear cup. Kennedy was tickled by the find. He loaded the dead bear into the rear hatch of his car and later showed it off to his friends. In a picture from that day, Kennedy is putting his fingers inside the bear's bloody mouth, a comical grimace across his face. When I asked Kennedy about the incident, he said, maybe that's where I got my brainworm.

And here we see the photo of Kennedy sticking his hand into the mouth of the dead bear cup. Good get by the New Yorker there. After the outing, Kennedy, who was then 60 and recently married to Cheryl Hines, got an idea. He drove to Manhattan, and as darkness fell, entered Central Park

with a bear with a bear and a bicycle, a person with knowledge of the the event said that Kennedy thought it would be funny to make it look as if the animal had been killed by an errant cyclist. The next day, the bear was discovered by two women walking their dogs, setting off an investigation by the

NYPD. This is a highly unusual situation of spokesmen for the Central Park Conservancy told the Times, it's awful. In a follow-up piece for the Times, which was coincidentally written by Tatiana Schlossberg, one of JFK's granddaughters,

a retired Bronx homicide commander commented, quote, people are crazy. So that was two paragraphs of a very long profile. But as you say, Robert Kennedy Jr. wanted to get out ahead of the story. You know, bad news is coming. So he tweeted this, looking forward to seeing how you spin this one at New Yorker,

and then tweeted a video of him telling the story of the dead bear cub to rosan yes rosan i'm not making that up he's sitting in a chair in a kitchen rosan is drinking coffee and he is telling her the story of the dead bear cup and the the the note to the new yorker was see how you spin this meaning what that he's openly talking about it like it's not a deep dart secret is that's that the implication yeah the profile had not come out at this point. So he knew he had been asked about it and certainly asked about it by a New Yorker fact checker, I'm guessing.

I guess that doesn't quite go with the word certainly, but asked about it, let us say by a New Yorker fact checker. So I think he's like, well, I'm just going to go ahead and tell the story. Right. So that that dastardly New Yorker and that Claire Malone doesn't spin it to make

me look weird. Yeah. That I put a dead bear cub in Central Park in hopes that people would think an errant cyclist killed it. He also added the detail in the video that he had been at Peter Lugar's Steakhouse. Oh. That night. And then went to...

While you're messing around with the bear corpse? Yeah, the bear was in the car. Yeah. Unbelievable. Would this be like when they, when a political consultant teaches a class on how to respond to negative information in the press? Will this be an anti-example? Yeah.

just air it out with Roseanne. That's the lesson here. It's just weird. I mean, it's just such a bizarre thing to do. I don't even... To say the least. And he's had some bizarre animal stories.

This isn't even the first one. Yeah. Yeah. It's... I mean, yeah, I just don't, I don't even know what to say. You know?

I mean, listen, in our New York City days, when we weren't falconing, we were wandering around the streets. And if you had found like a, you know, mounted buckshead or something that had been discarded, like, that probably would have made its way back to our apartment. And then we would have realized it stunk or whatever. We would have had to toss it out. But a carcass of a bear, a carcass of a bear. And even if you were so addled on whatever substances that we had a conversation on what we could do, with this bear carcass and somehow landed on the exact same idea of RFK that RFK did.

That's where it ends. It's the laugh, right? It's the laugh that would be ridiculous. And then you leave the fucking carcass on the side of the road. Let's go back to the bar. I don't want to let this dead bear to interfere with our night out. Yeah, exactly. All right.

Much more serious news, David. Evan Gershkovich is back. Yeah. Wall Street Journal reporter freed from captivity in Russia. last Thursday. He was in Russian custody, David, for 491 days. Yeah.

491 days. He came back as part of a prisoner exchange. What his paper, the general reminds us, was the largest and most complex east-west prisoner swap since the Cold War. Gershkovich, of course, was a fake prisoner

because he was grabbed by Russian authorities for doing journalism. It's 32 years old. It was a huge day for him and his family and for his paper, which marked the occasion with a big headline, Evan Gershkevich is free. I know you saw those pictures

from the runway in Maryland. Yeah. Where Biden's there to meet him in his blue suit. Gershkevich is coming off the plane in those cuffed jeans. Yeah. Grabbing his mom

and lifting her into the air. So it's such a happy story that Joe Biden even got a political victory lap out of it. Yeah. Had had too many of those recently. But you heard him talking about, this is why I have relationships with allies. This is why we participate in diplomacy

to make tricky things like this happen. Yep. There was a great story in the journal that was a TikTok of the negotiations to get Evan Gershkovich home. So apparently Russia requires you, to do a few things when you are a prisoner leaving custody

of these circumstances and one of them is to fill out an official request for clemency from Vladimir Putin. We've all filled out forms we didn't want to fill out in our lives, but this certainly takes the cake and this is from the journal.

The pro forma printout included a long blank space the prisoner could fill out if desired or simply as expected leave blank in the formal high-Russian he had honed over 16 months imprisonment, the journal's Russia correspondent filled the page. The last line submitted a proposal of his own. After his release, would Putin be willing to sit down for an interview?

Wow. So Evan Gershkovich, after 491 days in custody in Russia, on his way out the door, finally seeing this moment that he has hoped for, asked Vladimir Putin for an interview. Now, is that journalistic professionalism or what? Yeah, for sure. He doorstep Putin on the way out of a Russian prison.

Unbelievable. I'm heartbroken to inform you, David, that this happy news was marred, only in journalism, by some intrigue about how the Gershkovich story was broken. Oh, yeah? So last Thursday, Bloomberg News, decided to woge bomb this thing and publish their stories saying that Gershkovich was free before 8 a.m. Wall Street Journal, Gershkovich's own paper, did not break the story for a further three hours. And there was an embargo attached to this news.

Yeah. Which is slightly different than the embargo they put on a James Patterson, Mike Lupica novel, same things don't review this until it's on the shelves. Yeah. Government said, hey, we will give you the information. because reporters had found out that this prisoner swap was happening. But we ask you not to publish it for a couple of reasons. One is this is a very delicate act of diplomacy.

Yeah. You know, Gershkovich is flying in a Russian airplane to a neutral country, Turkey, and until he gets off that airplane and is in our custody, this isn't done. Yeah. It's not over. And then, of course, there's another attached matter of journalistic accuracy there saying, until that act happens, he is not free. He is technically in Russian custody to that moment.

And in fact, the journal told New York Magazine they had one of their correspondents waiting with binoculars at the airport in Turkey. And they were not going to publish their story until the correspondence spotted Evan Gershkovich through the binoculars. Wow. I see him off the plane. That's fact-checking right there, my friend. Yeah. But Bloomberg decided to report the story. One of their editors went on to Twitter slash X, according to Charlotte Klein of New York

Mag and says, it's one of the greatest honors of my career to have helped break this news. I love my job and my colleagues. Well, that was not received well by either the White House or fellow journalists who were observing the embargo. Bloomberg News's editor-in-chief said in an email that they've taken disciplinary action against, quote, a number of those involved. And one of the Bloomberg reporters who wrote the story, Jennifer Jacobs, she's a big deal political reporter, broke the news that Trump had COVID back in 2020. She, according to Charlotte Klein of New York Magazine, was fired. Other accounts say that she was dismissed. she gets on Twitter

and says this and this is an interesting wrinkle to this whole embargo breaking story reporters don't have the final say over when a story is published or with what headline the chain of events here could happen to any reporter tasked

with reporting the news this is why checks and balances exist within the editorial processes so certainly this was not me whether setting aside whether or not she's telling the truth. I mean, yeah, that's exactly right. Like, all the reporters

that were, that were, that were obeying the embargo, they all had their pieces written also, right? They still, they already existed in the ether, but it was taken one editor to push, push publish for any of those outlets. So that is kind of bizarre, uh, if she's the only one that takes the fall. But it is sort of like, like, whoever made that decision for Bloomberg. I mean, it's just, it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, is just so juvenile, right? It's not, you're not breaking a story. Like the very, by the very nature of an embargo, you know that everybody, all of your competition has the story as well, right? You didn't like get a secret, you know, get some sort of like privilege information that

led you to publish this. Everybody also knows it. And then everybody's obeying the embargo. So it just, it just is, uh, it just seems kind of weirdly petty. Exactly the wrong time. I mean, know that's the normal MO for a lot of the journalism world, but, you know, it's a weird, weird time to do it. It's fine to see her invoking the whole, hey, I didn't write the headline. Yeah. Thing that journalists give to subjects when they're pissed off or their PR team when they're pissed off. Mm-hmm. Like the much more serious diplomatic version of that.

Hey, I didn't choose, or at least the implication is I didn't, I didn't choose to publish this. Yeah. someone else that Bloomberg did. Summer Olympics, David. Have you been watching since we last spoke? Mm-hmm. Speaking of vibes. A lot of gold zone action, yeah.

A lot of gold zone action, I agree. Same here. And I don't want to use the word vibes any more times on this podcast, but the vibes of the summer games have been really good. Mm-hmm. We've seen big ratings for whatever that's worth, but we've also seen a key ingredient for American enjoyment of the Olympics, which is American athletes kicking ass.

Mm-hmm. Like Sabone Biles, like Noah Liles. It's funny because I think NBC was so worried that the Summer Olympics had slipped off the public's radar. So that's why every time an athlete did something, they would cut over to the celebrity in the stands. Sometimes Savannah and Hoda in the stands, be like, see, you're enjoying this event and so is that famous person. And this validates your enjoyment of the event. It's okay now because you see the famous person also having a good time. They were so worried about that.

And hell, maybe that's part of why it worked. But it really has worked. And it reminds me of Olympics when we were young, 88, 92, 96, where America felt very, very locked in in a way. Yeah. That hasn't happened in a while. I think that's right. And I think just NBC has just done an incredible job with the whole process. You know, I mean, I think it would have been.

easy for them to get caught in, you know, lost in the weeds for the issues that you just described, you know, is like, is this thing even going to work and not spend as much time with the sort of technical innovation that they've, that they've been able to accomplish, you know? I mean, it's, it's, um, just a viewing experience is, is kind of just modern enough, you know, and it feels like you're getting absolutely everything that you could possibly want out of these broadcasts. Even, even when you, you know, you go to Peacock and it's at first a little bit mind-boggling to try to sort through. It doesn't really matter. You just push a button. You push play on something and suddenly you're like fully immersed. And it's been, I thought it's been a

real triumph. You know, I was worried that they were, that they would either, I mean, frankly, there's part of me that worry that they were going to get too lost in the innovations. Oh, we're just going to do all this interesting stuff. It's just going to be, you know, AI voices and highlight packages and whatever else. But for all of the detail, the experience has been incredibly immersive. We both said the Gold Zone channel has been, I mean, that's exactly, that's the one thing we, we've always wandered without really knowing it. And for watching the Olympics and, and the fact that this, you know, just sort of fell into their laps. I mean, it's literally named after a highlight of like the NFL network, you know. And you got the NFL network guys and the non-NFL network

guy to do it, right? By the way, incredible talent there. I'm always impressed. I've said this in the show before. I'm always impressed just when a play-by-play announcer moves from one sport to another just because of the amount of just like knowledge there is built into that. I mean, to be able to do the Olympics, which historically has been the realm of, you know, they have your Mike Torikos and Bob Kosses and stuff for the big events. But it's a lot of experts, right? It's a lot of former Olympians and that kind of stuff that know all the granular stuff.

To be able to do every sport in the Olympics and at just a massively, like, just such a quick pace is just amazing. I mean, kudos to the talent and to the army of people off screen who were putting these words in front of their faces at exactly the right time. It has been, it has just been impressive. Your point about the tech catching up with the Olympics finally is exactly right. I mean, this was not a recent problem, an internet age problem. This was a problem way back when.

I mean, I remember like during the Olympics and the 90s listening to sports radio. and they would go to the, you know, whatever, the twice hourly sports radio update and they'd be like, turn down the sound on your radio if you don't want to know what happened today during the Olympics. This is even before we all had the internet

so that you can enjoy the NBC presented package in prime time without spoiling it for yourselves. Then we went through the period where people were kind of watching stuff during the day, but everybody was spoiled, so nobody wanted to come back for prime time. And now we've achieved a happy medium thanks to the gold zone, thanks to Peacock, where it's like we can just watch it live. We can spoil it live.

I'm getting New York Times news alert saying Simone Biles won another medal. Hooray. But then you can also come back to prime time and watch the digest of the day. Yeah. It's not watching all day. It's so simple. It almost felt like it was too simple to work. But I think in a large part, to a large extent, it's just kind of being honest with the viewer.

right? Like we know, like you're giving all the, you can watch all the stuff in real time. That's how, first of all, it's how we're much more accustomed to watching sports that way than we, than we have been in the past, right? I mean, we know what it's like to, to wake up at 6 a.m. to watch a soccer game or, you know, whatever. Some people do, but. Well, right, but it's a little bit more built into the call. I mean, listen, early morning. You said we, you and I have never woken up at 6 a.m. to watch a soccer game. Just, full disclosure. NFL games in Europe then. I'll take that. I think that part makes it a little bit easier.

And also just the way that we're acclimated towards, if you're not watching something live, keeping track of something on Twitter or whatever. You know, I mean, just like the highlights are like slightly trailing highlights are part of the way that we consume things now. So that's fine.

But I think that having everything so, so front and center in real time, it somehow makes the prime time stuff much more palatable, right? I don't feel like you're being tricked into thinking this is live. This is just the sort of, this is the, this is the immediate release documentary of the sports thing that you read about before. You know, this is like, this is the quick behind the scenes. And it, I don't know, it just, part of it is, I mean, a lot, most of it is, is NBC. Part of it is just the way that the we consume sports media has changed sort of around the margins.

And it may, it just makes more sense, you know, you don't spend all this time. saying how is this going to work? It just sort of works. Completely agree. We should also know that the last summer Olympics was COVID delayed. Oh, yeah. So the Paris Olympics are like the candidate that replaces Biden. The vibes are going to be better. This is definitely a vibes Olympics. And I don't know what that means, but that's true. Also, whenever they keep showing that picture of the beach volleyball happening, and I saw Steve

Pallidi, the New Jersey columnist actually covered the beach volleyball from the top of the Tower the other day. Didn't that look like something that was a picture taken at a world's fair a hundred years ago? Oh my God. We were like, I can't believe this happened. It's happening right here in 2024. We did have one play-by-play screw up at the Olympics, David. Men's 100 meters. Noah Lyles of the USA versus Kishane Thompson of Jamaica. Here is NBC's Lee Diffey on the call. So on first glance, you're like, wow, how did he know that Thompson won the race. Like unbelievable to be able to see that.

It turns out Thompson did not win the race. Noah Liles won the race by five one thousandths of a second. Unbelievable. And there was an interesting question because, I mean, first of all, you hate to screw that up. You'd like to say, let's go to the tape. We've got to go to the replay. It's so close. You know, and figure out the winner.

But then NBC was showing this in prime time later. Yeah. So there was a question that came up on Twitter of, do you tidied up this call? Do you re-record it? So that you do not have your play-by-play announcer calling the wrong thing on the air. Yeah.

And then learning the correct result, 10, 15 seconds later, they ultimately went with the same call that they added some sideline interviews with Noah Liles and kind of put more material around the race. I don't think you would want to, I don't think we want to get into re-recording

sporting events because it didn't come out exactly the right way. Yeah. Long tradition in wrestling, I will note of re-reporting things back in the studio. One more serious matter for you, David. NABJ, the National Association of Black Journalists,

at a conference in Chicago on July 31st, and Donald Trump was interviewed on stage. And boy, was there, a lot of angst about this because it was part 9,000 of the platforming Donald Trump debate. Should this happen?

Should he be granted this forum to speak? Yeah. He was interviewed by Rachel Scott of ABC News, Harris Faulkner of Fox News, and semaphores, Katia Goba. Trump's response to the very first question he was asked was, first of all, I don't think I've ever been asked a

question in such a horrible manner, a first question. You don't even say hello, how are you? Are you with ABC because I think they're a fake news network, a terrible network? And the interview went on from there. We wound up giving a very, very unconvincing answer when asked if J.D. Vance was ready to be president on day one. But it was so funny to watch the platforming debate turn around as it often does with interviews like this because Trump goes out there. He's asked a lot of very, very tough questions and he makes tons of news. Or rather, we should say the interview, make tons of news. They're the ones doing it. And all of a sudden, everybody's like, well, I'm glad that happened.

Yeah. Because Donald Trump lit himself on fire on stage. Mm-hmm. So why were we so worried about platforming Donald Trump before the interview began? Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of people who are uncomfortable with platforming him. And I think there is some legitimacy to it.

it. I mean, the more sort of, um, the more sort of out of the mainstream, the more sort of offensive, the point of view that's being shared, the more you sort of think, you don't want to give anybody the opportunity to nod their head and say, this guy's making lots of sense, right? I mean, because that's the nature of platforming is, is that legitimacy is built into it. Um, and frankly, I'm sure they invited him without any expectation that he'd show up, you know, I mean, but I don't know that really makes a big difference to this conversation. I mean, I thought that it was, I thought that I find it hard to take exception to his appearance there. And I, on the part of the NABJ.

And I think that, you know, all told, obviously they did a really good job of helping him light himself on fire. I mean, this was a, this is a really particular time in the presidential race where we are very interested into the window into Trump and, and, you know, We might have gone the next month with him not doing any sort of real media, you know, outside of the repetitive Fox News related interviews. So I thought it was important that he was there. You could tell he was on unfamiliar terrain in terms of interviews because he was getting different questions. Questions about black voters, about black communities, about police violence.

And he didn't have ready made answers for those questions. Yeah. So he was winging it, you know, instead of chewing scenery and the way we've seen him doing a lot of those interviews, including Fox News interviews. Maybe the best way to think about this is just to retire the term platforming forever, especially when it comes to Trump and just think of this as good interview or bad interview. Yeah. Effective interview or maybe ineffective interview. Yeah, you certainly don't want to give him the platform to, you know, just run wild. from wild say things about the election that are untrue that are like the things he said about the

2020 election 9,000 times before. I think your, I think your distinction is correct. I don't think there'd be nearly the angst about it if every interview were great. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you watch this. You're like, oh,

this is what people were mad about the Caitlin Collins interview on CNN. This is the opposite. He's being challenged. He's asking good questions. He's being repeatedly pressed. And it comes away with something that was very revealing. about Donald Trump and about the way he thinks. Anyway, just a very, very interesting moment there.

Before we go, how about a Niagara Falls travelogue? That sounds great. I went to Niagara Falls with my mom this past weekend. Talk about an all-American vacation. Yeah, I was going to say. The wonderful thing, as you know, is when you mention anything like this on a podcast, people are like, hi, I live in Buffalo and listen to the press box, and I would like to recommend restaurants to you.

Oh, there's nothing better. So the first night we get in there, we get to a bar called Elmo's, which already I'm already like Buffalo Bar, Elmos, here we go, baby. And I walk in and I have something I call the Farity shirt test in my life, David. As you know, my style of dresses,

let's just say the nice way to say it would be unmemorable. I wear buttoned down shirts almost. all the time. Yeah. Lately they have come from Farity, which is just like unobjectionable button down shirt company. Yeah.

Reped by Jalen Brunson somewhat surprisingly. I've never felt cooler than when I see Jalen Brunson doing an ad for Farity on YouTube. But I'm wearing my normal button down and I walk into Elmo's and basically every wing place we went to in Buffalo because my mom's such a good sport. And I was the only one wearing a button down shirt. Yeah. Like it was Bill's jerseys. It was T-shirts.

It was the cool Elmo's softball jersey because it's the softball team that is repping the bar. Oh, that's nice. And I'm not talking down to anybody here. I'm like, I've come to the right place. Because this is full of people that are looking for great food and have found like their place in the universe, not just weirdos like me who wandered in from the street. Yeah.

That's how I know I've found an awesome place. Yeah, for sure. So we ate wings. We ate beef on weck sandwiches. I don't even know what that is, but it sounds amazing. Look it up, folks. We went to the Frank Lloyd Wright House in Buffalo. We went to the house where Teddy Roosevelt was sworn in after the assassination of William McKinley.

Then we went to Niagara Falls. How much do you know about Niagara Falls in terms of like what level of water flow, how many waterfalls are present? Absolutely nothing. I'm glad you said that because I came in with that same level of knowledge. Yeah. No, no. That was in Niagara Falls was a big fixture in our childhood.

And I know my wife went there with her family when they were growing up. But it sort of had that mythical quality of, you know, quicksand. Or it's like what you knew about Niagara Falls was just like the stories of people going over the top in a barrel or like whatever. You know, it's just like we had a checklist of natural wonders of the modern world or the Western world that you just sort of. that were just sort of sweet generous, right? I mean, it's just like this thing exists. It's incredible. All right, that's all you need to know.

And in old sitcoms we used to watch as kids, wasn't Niagara Falls just listed as a honeymoon destination over and over again? Yes, absolutely. It's part of what we knew about it. Well, to quote the great Shaquille O'Neal, Niagara Falls, I was not familiar with your game. It was unbelievable, David, because it's not a waterfall or even a series of waterfalls.

It is a cul-de-sac of waterfalls. Uh-huh. where the river runs in and then you are just surrounded by raging pounding water. And you go into this waterfall cul-de-sac on a boat called the maid of the mist,

which sounds like a character out of Arthurian legend. You're wearing a poncho. You go straight into the falls. You're surrounded. I took some videos on my phone, which I'll happily text you after this. Let me tell you something. This was like an amusement park ride.

Oh my God. It was unbelievable. And then when you get done with that, you go down to this other place called the Cave of the Winds. It was like these moss-covered stairs and you're climbing them up to basically for the privilege of standing underneath a waterfall. And just getting pounded by the water so you can feel like what it feels like to be under the falls of Niagara Falls. Then we went over to the Canadian side, looked at the falls from the Canadian side where you're basically standing on a walk. walkway and you're just almost right over the lip of the falls. I did consider going over the falls in a barrel with the words,

listen to the press box on the side. But I was dissuaded by both Canadian and American authorities from doing such a thing. By the way, all the tour guides did recount all the daredevilry of over the years. Oh, really? Somebody sent their cat over in a barrel and then the cat survives and then they went over in a barrel. also barrel and I saw one of the barrels that someone had used to go over the falls barrel does not mean what it did in like hannah barbaric cartoons where it was like a wooden pickle barrel that definitely did happen but people started building metallic barrels oh okay

to survive the falls well then you're just kind of cheating you're kind of interesting to me but some people did some people didn't even with the space age barrels. So no longer legal to just go over to Niagara Falls and, you know, try your luck. Try your survival. That sounds amazing. Anyway, it was fantastic. Buffalo was fantastic. Niagara Falls is fantastic. The wings were fantastic. They looked up to the hype. You and I had plenty of wings in our life and I would always have to like three or four wings be like, okay, I'm just kind of tired of buffalo sauce at this point. Oh, for sure. But of course it was like,

we had Cajun honey butter wings. This place called Barrow. bill. Oh, man. We had Sicilian wings, which had Parmesan on them, and we're just just amazing. Oh, so much stuff. I could go on and on. Just for the record. I just returned from Cleveland, SummerSlam.

Yes. Very interesting. Good, all American vacations. I've never been there before. Cleveland definitely just was great. Cleveland rocks, you might say? I don't know if I go that far, but the food top to bottom was incredible. You can hear me raving at the

food on the mass man show yesterday. But you mentioned the World's Fair earlier. It's the world's fersiest town I've ever been to. It's like when you're downtown like every building looks like it was like it was constructed for a turn of the century world's fair. The war memorial, all the statuary, it's just like it's absolutely wild and just like largely pristine. Even buildings, they've like, you know, office buildings that have sort of been converted to parking garages over the years and whatever. But like everything is just like it looks like. It looks like. It looks like. like it's out of the devil in the white city. It's absolutely crazy.

A lot more just walking around and admiring than I was expecting to do in Cleveland, Ohio. And like I said, the food and drink were out of this world. The only time I've ever been is for the Trump Republican convention in 2016. It was pretty emptied out, but absolutely co-signed on all like that. Cleveland's pretty. Yeah. I said there was a great amusement park right out of town, which I might have gone to after

the convention ended and written the same. right over and over again because it was just absolutely mind-blowing. Speaking of conventions, David, segue. We'll have a little party in two weeks. Less than two weeks now, 13 days at the Democratic Convention in Chicago.

Another great Midwestern city we'd like to salute here on the press box. It's going to be on Sunday, August 18th, 3 o'clock at the crushed by Giants Brewing Company. If you live in Chicago land, if you are visiting Chicago, if you were going to be at the Democratic Convention, please

stop by and say hi. Already received word that some of our media friends, some of our political friends are going to come by. I would love to see everybody. And there may even be, thanks to the design genius of David Shoemaker, a special press box Chochie. Hand it out at our press box meeting. In the meantime. Chachky is the opposite of an only journalism word because nobody knows how to spell it. And if you do, you don't know how to read it when it's spelled in front of you.

So you just avoid it entirely? Yes. Nickknack. Is that the, what would you go with other than? Yeah, I think nicknack's right. Yeah. All right. He is David Chewaker.

I'm Brian Curtis. Thanks a magic. By Brian Waters. David and I are going to drift back to vacation or at least I am. But we will reappear Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.