The Press Box - Kamala Harris Vs. Bret Baier, Who Will Run the Next Administration, and Being a Campaign Embed With NOTUS’s Jasmine Wright

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

Hello, media consumers! Bryan welcomes NOTUS's Jasmine Wright, who is the journalist you need to read to understand Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign. She comes on to discuss the following about the campaign: Highlights of the VP’s interview with Bret Baier (1:45) How the VP feels about adversarial settings (0:00) Reasons for the current media blitz (11:15) The quiet planning of her transition team (13:11) Things that worry Team Harris in the closing stretch (21:10) Then she closes out with how she got into political journalism (24:10). Plus, David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Jasmine Wright 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. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Pressbox. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Brian Waters.

Let us bring in our guests because she's got a hot story we need to talk about. Jasmine Wright is a reporter at the website, Notice. She's a journalist you absolutely need to read to understand Kamala Harris and her campaign. before going to notice, Jasmine worked at the news hour and at CNN, where she was embedded with Harris and Amy Klobuchar during the 2020 campaign. She is Chicago's very own. Jasmine, welcome to the press box. I feel like I need some come out music.

Like, woo. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited. I'm such a huge fan. Oh, you're very nice. And let us know what we can play. We'll just put a podcast later for your walkout music. Before we get to your piece,

Yesterday, Kamala Harris did an interview with Fox News's Brett Baer in which she said, let me finish several times. Someone who's covered Harris for a long time. What stuck out to you about that interview? Honestly, my first thought when it finished was why hasn't the campaign been putting her in this position before? Because somebody who has covered Harris since 2018, that was my first event I ever went to her during the 2018 midterms of hers.

She likes to be in this position. You could see on the screen that she, I think for some people, maybe she looked a little irritated. And I think that maybe she was because of some of those questions or because of her inability of Brett to allow her to speak when she wanted to or kind of, as he put it afterwards, filibuster some of the questions. But she likes to be on the back foot. She likes that type of back and forth confrontation because it reminds her of what she used to do as a prosecutor. And this is a place where she kind of really shines. And I think that so often, just because of how her trajectory has gone since she's been in D.C., particularly her first two years in office, there's this idea that she's not necessarily good in these spaces. But if you let Kamala be Kamala, she actually is pretty good in those spaces.

So that was kind of the first thing that I thought about was, you know, why not put her in these positions more? Why wait to the last three weeks? I think that the tone in which that she brought to the conversation was really well calculated in the way that I think it is really hard for black women to push back and not be seen as aggressive, not be seen as not in control of their emotions. And I think that she did a good job of matching his energy. I think it was good placement for her. I think it was good placement for Fox. I know people have been really negative about Brett's performance. I actually thought it was pretty in line with what it would have been either way.

Yeah, he had something to prove, maybe even more than what she had to prove. And I think honestly, like my largest thought, and maybe I'll just pull on like my media hat or my media strategy hat on right now is, you know, I think that the former president's team in denying her a second debate, yes, maybe it was because Trump felt like he didn't like. like his performance or whatever the emotional connection was to that. But what they really did in essence was deny her the ability to have oxygen around her messaging, denied her another moment that would bring her momentum in her campaign. And I think that the campaign or the Harris campaign is trying to figure out a way around that. And that was very clear by this Fox interview, by her Charlest interview and kind of the stuff that we've been seeing. Now, I think if you were to argue like, okay, did the vice president have a declarative message about who she is in that Fox interview?

Maybe the answer would be no, but I don't even think that was necessary. What was necessary was to dispel all of the accusations that she's stupid or she's dumb. Let me tell you, Vice President Harris is not dumb, right? She's probably one of the smartest people in the room at all times, regardless of how you feel about the way that she maneuvers politically. She's not dumb, right? So dispelling those notions that both former President Trump and Fox continuously recite the notion that she's not good on her feet or in the moment, right? That was the goal. And I think if that was their goal, they probably succeeded in showing these people who only watch Fox more of who she actually is, even if they didn't necessarily get to what her message is. Do you think she likes adversarial settings like a debate or a Fox?

or a Fox News interview? I think she loves it. I think she loves it because she's really good at it. She is not somebody to be trifled with in those kinds of scenarios. I mean, I think what was so difficult about the 2019 run is that, you know, she basically becomes a national name, in part because of her grilling of Jess sessions, of Brett Kavanaugh, of those moments where you see her put her hand to her temple and look at you like you're crazy.

And as a journalist, she has looked at me multiple times like that and gaggles and moments when we're just like on the side of her campaign. And she just looking at me, you know, after I asked a question or something like that, that she didn't particularly favor. But like that book, that's what made her so popular. That's what people really liked. And in 2019, they did not lean into that. They leaned into the idea which they brought back in a way of her being a joyful warrior,

but people just didn't at that time feel like it was authentic. But that is what she likes. I mean, she likes to have fun. She likes to be self-deprecating. She likes to crack jokes. But she also likes to tap into that prosecutorial nature where it's a give and take. And she wants to excel as being the one with the best points. When you were asking her question, did you find certain questions got better answers from her than others?

There is a method to her badness, I would say. I think if you, I think I'm with a lot of politicians, right, you try to game out. how you can get them to answer. Like a lot of times when Joe Biden would be walking, say, to the helicopter and you try to throw him a softball or a question, you know, that he may come and, like, try to laugh at unless, you know, he was really pissed off about something that day. And I think that she's similar. You may know that there's something that she wants to talk about that day, either from talking

to her AIDS or understanding, like, what's been. happening behind the scenes, what they've been discussing, what she's been briefed on. And so you may ask about that. Or, you know, you may come in like, how are you feeling about it today? She responds to those. Are you feeling good today? She responds to those type of questions. So there is a method to her madness. But sometimes, you know, she really just wants to get something off her chest. And that's when you start to see her really go and approach reporters. And you're just hoping that afterwards that she responds to your question. But she do be looking at you sometimes, like at the side of her I like, what are you about to ask me?

Or like, don't be asking me nothing crazy. Because, you know, that's just what she is. She's a prosecutor. And she takes her job very seriously. Something we heard from Democrats and reporters to before the Fox interview or the 60 Minutes interview was that she was running a risk-averse campaign for president. What do you make of that idea? I think that that's totally true.

I mean, she was, I mean, I think you have to take a statement. step back, right? After Biden drops out in July, she hit, she, although, you know, everyone else was kind of waiting for the clock to run out on his time. She was surprised that day. And then they just kind of hustled and hit all these markers when it comes to endorsements, when it comes to making sure that people who may have ran for the nomination didn't run, making sure that their delegate operation was in a row. And so when I was talking to people back in July, August, when she's going to do her first major interview, when she's going to do a press conference, right? It was all of them saying, well, we have to get through these markers. We have to make sure that she's officially nominated.

We have to make sure that her spending is in a place. Her fundraising is in a right place. You know, we have to do X. We have to do Y. We have to get through the convention. That's what we're focused on. We don't want to mess up the message. Those were kind of all the things that they were saying to me. Past the convention, it was. like, all right, time to put up or shut up. So they do the CNN interview that they believe goes pretty well for her first one. She does some more, you know, little sprinkles here and there. I personally don't think that they focus enough on local interviews, certainly not at that time and not right now. But she does some locals. And it's kind of just like a drip, drop,

drip, drip, really trying to ride the vibes and the momentum without getting sunk in the details and without having to really put her in front of some of these either friendly places like the podcast or difficult places. And I think that they saw that as a lucrative plan because the polling was in a place. Remember, this is a campaign, kind of like the Hillary Clinton campaign that relies on these polling numbers, relies on these analytics. So they saw that they weren't facing any kind of demerits from this risk-averse strategy. until I think just a couple weeks ago, they saw those numbers plateau. And she stopped pulling away from Trump. In fact, Trump started to pull towards her.

And so now you're seeing them kind of throw everything at the wall, what sticks, get out of the bubble. And I would say that that bubble didn't include friendly folks, right? She hadn't done the view yet. She hadn't been on this podcast media strategy, which I would say was largely successful. I would say the only gaff that came out of all of these interviews was her saying, you know, nothing comes to mind when asked what you would do differently than Biden on the view.

And so now I think that they're in the get out the boat mode, everything sticks mode, because let's say that she is not successful come November. I don't think that they want to be accused of not having done everything that they could have done to make her victorious in the same. way that Hillary Clinton was accused of that strategy in 2016. So you think this media blitz, or at least the size of this media blitz, is a direct response to the numbers tightening in the swing states for her? Absolutely.

I mean, why else do it, right? Like, this is an election where you talk to anybody on the campaign, anybody outside of the campaign. They're not saying, oh, she's lost already. But they're not saying, oh, she's won, right? They're saying we're hopeful she's win. But what they're saying is we're at 50-50. And so because Trump starved them of that oxygen, allowing or really denying them the ability to kind of keep that momentum train moving, they're trying to find other ways to make these viral moments really kind of launch a reverse of what Trump is doing,

which is having a media first, national media first strategy where all news is good news. because even if she did do a bad job at the Fox interview, which I don't believe she did, but even if she did do a bad job, she still would have met the mark of going on it, right? Which no running Democrat has done a long time. And so that still would have been good news for them. So I think this is a media first strategy trying to kind of throw everything at the wall, see what, if anything moves a marker. because, you know, I think that the door knocking is still happening. Volunteers are still out every day, really trying to make sure people know or have a plan to vote, know when to vote, no, and a lot of these states aren't really voting is happening. But I think at this stage, if there are still undecided people, which I don't even know if there are, but if there are still undecided people voting, what moves is probably what they see in the media versus somebody coming knocking on their door saying, hey, do you have a plan to vote? we've heard a little bit about what the second Trump administration could look like.

You've got a new story up today inside Kamala Harris's. Beo, beo, pew, pew, yeah. Peeo, pew, p, p, small, quiet transition team. So how quietly is Harris planning what her administration could look like? Oh, it's really quiet. And, I mean, that was kind of one of the reasons why we launched the story to really answer two fundamental questions is, what is the Harris transition team doing? And why does it seem like they're operating so much more quietly than Biden's did in 2020 and even Hillary Clinton's did in 2016? And it's because they are.

So it's a small skeletal cruise, what I found out in talking to lots of sources for this piece. It's purposefully small, something that the vice president wanted because she wants him to fly under the radar. She wants them to be able to quietly plan how things or quietly plan, plan to build the infrastructure, should she win, without having it rise to the level of national attention, without having it take away the message that she's trying to drive home every day, which is that she is a better option than Trump come November. And so that's what they're doing. She has made it very clear to the folks in the transition that she is totally focused on November, but they're still checking in with her weekly to give her updates. They're small, they're skeletal,

but they're slowly growing. We're looking for researchers and lawyers as they try to really get or be in a place come November 6th where they can really launch a full-scale vetting effort once the vice president turns to who's going to be in office because of the fact that this is the first this is the first time or this could be the first time if she wins since 1988 that an administration transfers from a sitting president to a sitting vice president. So that brings its own, I think, pluses and minuses. A huge question that is kind of surrounding this transition that's a lot on a lot of

Democrats' minds is what does she do with all of Biden's political appointees? And that that's kind of undergirded by this, by the fact that the Senate could flip to Republican, meaning that there may not be the same goodwill in a 50-50 Senate, Democrats, Republicans, as is a 52-48 Senate Republicans leading to get some of the Senate. these top names confirmed that need to be in office in day one. So a question that they're kind of grappling with in real time is how do they deal with that? So even though all of this stuff is happening, right, it's led by Johannes Abraham, somebody who ran Biden's 2020 transition, got close to Harris. And that time is, honestly, this really doesn't happen that much in D.C.,

but it's fundamentally liked by both of the teams that people trust that he's kind of doing what he needs to be doing and he's running a tight ship. There are other folks in that transition. Josh is a longtime lawyer for the vice president, somebody that she really implicitly trust and that she installed purposefully on the transition to make sure that her equities, her business was being taken care of. Lorraine Bowles, Harris' current chief of staff on the official side is in consultation. And then they've hired some other folks like Dana Remus, Rachel Palmeiro also to help with it. So that's a really small team. And even though they're small and even though they're focused on infrastructure and preparing for if Harris wins versus

versus them making decisions before she wins, even though all these things are happening, there are still Democrats who are coming to them and giving names, giving their own names, some people are, giving names of people that they like that could feel the positions, people that should be replaced, people that should be kept that are already at the White House And it's really fascinating because there are so many names in recording this piece that we heard. But some I think the most interesting ones that we included was that Econ advisor, Brian Dees, who we know was National Economic Council chair for Biden, went over to the Harris campaign part-time, has been advocating for Federal Trade Commission, Lena Kahn, a very controversial person right now,

somebody who Harris donors do not like because of how she takes. on competition has been advocating for her to stay on. Folks like Senator Chris Coons, major ally of Biden, and now a major ally of the vice president, has been privately talking about how he wants to be Secretary of State. I think what's getting the most traffic right now is our little bit on New York Governor Kathy Hockel. I said that right, Kathy Hockel, and how her aides, we reported, express interest. in a potential position for her.

Now, this is something that she was asked about this morning. She said it was categorically false. And she said that there are dark actors trying to make it seem like she's not running for re-election, even though she is pretty deeply unpopular in New York right now. I'll just say for my own, I stand by my reporting. Jeffrey Zines, people have floated his name for Treasury. So there's a lot of non-DC. D.C. folks' names kind of in the ether.

in this kind of palace intrigue, chattery way in D.C. that we report about, but it's real because it's a fascinating look at how transitions set candidates up for success or for failure once they win. And I just have to say that just because people's names are being floated in no way, shape, or means that, you know, Harris is going to pick them, but these are the, these are into some of the names that we heard, and we think we're really credible to put in the story. Kathy Hokel's name was the one that made me set my coffee cup down and make sure that I was reading that correctly. I mean, you know, she's really popular right now. Why not?

You know, just like, for the little, see what, see what the possibilities are. But, you know, she says categorically false. The other one I want to ask you about is Pete Buttigieg, who is the Transportation Secretary and also the Secretary of Going on Fox News when Harris isn't on there. What's he being floated for? So what my sources told me was that his aides had reached out. for a possible foreign policy position, which would make sense because if you look at his resume, that's kind of the only thing that he's missing, certainly as we know, that eventually he is

going to run for president again, right? He had in 2019 and 2020 really been derailed by his lack of, I personally think that he was derailed by his inability to make gains within the black community. There were a lot of talk about, you know, he don't know no black people, so no black people about to vote for him. And so at his position in Treasury with the infrastructure bill, he has been going to a lot of these towns with black leadership, meeting with them, saying, hey, we've given your talents of money. And he's kind of built up a base within the black community because he's been the bearer of good news to these communities. And so if that was one of the major impairments to him in 2020, you know, he's been working on it.

Another thing in 2020 that people talked about is that even though he's a veteran, he didn't have any foreign policy experience. And so what they're looking at for this role sources told me was that foreign policy experience to kind of tick that off, tick that on the resume so that when he eventually does run for office, you know, those two ailments are, you know, no longer viable. What are the things that worry Team Harris as they go down the closing stretch? I think the polls worry, though. I can tell you very honestly that in my conversations, I haven't heard people say, oh, this is over.

I don't think that they believe that. I don't think you would go on Fox News if you thought it was over. But I have heard people say that we really are kind of walking in there, not knowing what happens on the way out, that the pools are so tight that they see places where they need to increase or they surge money, particularly in the black community, even though I kind of reject this idea that if she loses, it's going to be on the back of the black community. But they see places where they need to search money. They see places where their numbers are softer than other Democratic candidates, like in the Latino community. And then they see moments that they are excited about, like her kind of unprecedented numbers with white college educated women and hoping that that gender gap that exists, even though they're kind of putting money and emphasis on. people of color, men of color, working class people. They're hoping that that really carries them. So I think that there's a lot of things that are keeping people up at night.

And I think if you looked at the cross tabs at the polls, you would see where they are. So this is not just political operatives who are nervous by nature. And this is not just a campaign that says the word underdog as many times as humanly possible on the stop. There is, there is mystery. They feel there is mystery of what's going to actually happen on November 5th. I have not talked to any single person that knows what's going to happen on November 5th. fifth. And I think that that's really different from 2020 because people in that campaign were pretty confident that Biden was going to win in 2020. And I think in 2016, which is kind of cosmically

funny, people were very confident that Clinton was going to win. And now that is just not at all what I'm hearing. I think that they feel, I think that they, in their heart of hearts, wish that they could be in a better position, wish that maybe she was a little bit over the two to three points that most polls show her be ahead of Trump because of this idea that we have created that, you know, polls under count Trump support and that the Democrat typically needs to be in between two to points ahead of him to win the electoral college. So I'm sure that they wish that they were in a better position. But I don't think that they are in a position where everyone's is on fire and they've started submitting applications for jobs at all of these K Street lobbyists

first. I don't think that they're the area. That's a bad sign. Yeah. Once you see one resignation, then they're kind of fucked. Let me ask you about your career before we go. I mentioned you're from Chicago. Your dad was an aide to Mayor Harold Washington.

Why political journalism for you? We just always talked about politics. My dad was a hugely influential in my life on this because he really loves politics. I think he's actually very good at politics. He was an aide to Harold Washington. He honestly, I wish I'd call him right now because you'd be on this podcast for 10 hours. Have he told you everything that he's done in politics? But he worked with the 92 Clinton campaign. And he, he, He has just always surrounded us with politics, even if we'd be really young in his office, and he'd be meeting with folks, and he'd be talking about politics. It was just part of our bread and butter. And then I actually wanted to be a journalist and not go into politics because one time I was home from school and I saw Oprah. And I was just really transfixed about the way that she was able to talk to people and

really frankly, get them to say things on camera. that they probably did not want to be saying, right? And I just thought that that was such a talent and that she was just such an icon. And then, you know, growing up, I learned that you could do both. You could do politics and journalism. And that's just the way that I went. I, you know, at one point I wanted to be a surgeon, then I wanted to be a journalist. You know, I wanted to be a psychologist.

I even took Psych 100 and it definitely weeded me out. And then I wanted to be a journalist. And so it's just always been a part of a part of kind of what I wanted to do since I was a little kid. And I think I just learned so much about politics from both my parents, but certainly from my father. You were an embed with CNN during the 2020 campaign. We can see you being an embed in the max dock on the trail. If anybody wants to check that out. If you want to see me cry for hours.

Oh, my goodness. Give me a sense of what you had to give up to do from in your life to do that, Oh, you give up everything. I mean, I don't think that people, anything that you say or anything that somebody tells you to prepare you for that job just pales in comparison to how difficult it is. Particularly before the pandemic, I think after the pandemic traveling was just its own headache because you were like, oh my God, I'm going to die every five seconds. But before the pandemic, it was just like exhausting because back then in 2019, in the beginning of 2020, media companies still had money. And so they're spending tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars making sure that us reporters and embeds are picking up every moment of the election. So I sublet my place because I just wasn't using it enough. And I was kind of younger and poor.

And I was like, oh, I could get this money back. So I sublet my place. I would talk to some of my closest friends. only every couple of days because we were just so busy. I remember one day it was in February of 2020, we had gone in the same day to three states with Amy Klobuchar, who at that point thought that she was kind of in third or fourth of all the Democrats. And so she was really hanging on. And so she was just hitting everywhere across the map. And I mean, we went from Utah to Colorado to, I think, Kentucky in one day and we woke up and I was just like, holy shit, I can't believe that I have to do

two more weeks of this. I'm going to die. So you really give up everything. I mean, sometimes it feels like you're giving up your sanity because so much of your life is not your own because you're just constantly hitting the road. And it's not just, I think, people think about like, oh my God, you're just taking your pin and your pad and your computer and like traveling. Like what's the big deal of that? No. Right. Like we as embeds, because I was a TV embed. We had, yes, my pin, my pad, my computer. But then I also had, at this point, a 20-pound camera.

Right now, the embeds have like five-pound cameras. So I'm insanely jealous. But we had 20-pound cameras. We had 15-pound tripods. We're throwing them on a bus back and forth, doing like 10, not 10, doing like five events a day. Not only are you watching what the candidate is saying for 45 minutes. And you probably heard that same stump a thousand times,

but then you're also trying to go talk to people because you want to be able to say what you're hearing from the crowd. Then you also want to try to find an aid of her so you can hear about how they feel about the election, right? You're just like constantly on for 12, 15, 18 hour days, maybe getting three hours of sleep. And obviously we're young and journalists. So we're definitely drinking when we get back, you know, to the hotels or we're trying to maybe find a nice restaurant in the middle of Des Moines, Iowa. And so it's like you are sacrificing every part of your being to cover this election, but it's such a good crash course and what political journalism is. Sometimes what the horse race of it, which I understand people don't like a lot,

but I think it's effective to learn how to cover it. But also how people are engaging with journalism and how people are engaging with politics and how politics is impacting people's lives and the lengths to which they will go out to make themselves heard or people who don't at all want to engage in the political process. I think that that is all a part of learning how to be an embed. And so even though you're sacrificing a lot of yourself and a lot of your personhood and a lot of your autonomy because you're just getting shell-uped around the country on some like jet that you think is about to fall out of the sky,

you're gaining a lot of real experience into what it means to be an American citizen in different places of the country and how different lifestyles kind of all lead people to come to these rallies or lead people to be so disgusted with the political process or not see themselves in the political process that they don't want to have anything to do with it. You said in the doctor that when you got the job at CNN, you felt like I had a lot to prove. How so? Yeah. You know, I'm a, I still think of myself as young.

But, you know, I was a young black girl. I had never done before then I had come from PBS NewsHour, which shout out to PBS News, I love them. And I was a politics assistant for Gwen Eiffel, Judy Woodruff, and on the politics beat. And so I think that that's when I really first got my real instruction into what it means to do. political journalism, but, you know, People's News Hour is a one-a-day place. You know, you go there, you do you work, and then you go home. CNN is a whole different piece. And I think that it really thrives because of that. But, you know, learning how to do 24-hour news was kind of destabilizing for me at first. I'm really lucky that I had some very good embeds that helped me kind of ground myself

and some really good mentors at CNN to help me ground myself. But going from one show a day to 24-hour news. I was like, holy shit, this is nuts. You know, like, oh, my God, people really do news this much. Like, oh, I'm like really sending an email at 9 p.m. and trying to write a story at the bar right now. Like, that was really crazy to me in foreign. And also, I was one of the few embeds that CNN had ever hired from outside of CNN. So that didn't come up through the pipeline. And so people really didn't know me. They didn't know my. what I was good at. They didn't know what I was bad at. They really took this chance on me, hoping that I could really acclimate myself to not just the culture there, but I think the really high bar that

CNN sets for its journalists, particularly in politics, particularly in the role of an embed, because you, you know, your time is not your own. You are the eyes and the ears of the network on the ground. That is what they're paying you for. And so if you're missing something, that's kind of on you, right? And so I think that that is a lot to put on young folks who do this job. And that's why the in-bed job is not for everybody. So I came in and I felt, you know, I did feel like a bit of a fish out of water just because of the change and the scale of the job that I was doing. And I did feel like, oh shit, like, you know, I'm running, this is no, I was like, oh, shit, I'm running with like the big leagues, even though Gwen and Judy are the big leagues, right?

The biggest leagues. But I just think it was a different role that I was in. And I kind of had to very quickly scale up what I was able to do. And I think I did that successfully with the help of others. But I definitely was like, oh, should, I have a lot to prove. Also, you know, I'm this young black girl. I had an afro, a dyed afro. It was orange at the time.

I come in and I'm like looking around, like, who are these people? So, yeah, I think I had a lot to fruit at that moment. And I'm just happy that it seemed to go pretty successful. All right. Last one for you, Jasmine. You're talking to doc about the art of finessing information from people, from sources. What are some of your techniques for effectively finesse? Fenessing.

Yeah. So I tell, because, you know, now at notice, not only are we a reporting outlet, but we're also a teaching institute. And so we teach young folks out of college, out of grad school, people who've been in the military for a decade and that want to become journalist. We teach them on the ground how to be a journalist by doing. And so what I tell people is that you have to establish where you can, right, relationships with people. I'm not saying that, you make these people your friends. But you establish relationships with these people where you guys are not just talking, where it's not just a transactional relationship of what you're getting from them, although at times that is what journalism is, right? It's what are you giving me?

But it's also like, what are they getting from you? Whether or not your, you know, text, I text a lot of people memes. I text a lot of people, hey, I've got some gossip. Can you talk? I text a lot of people like, ooh, I heard something about, you question mark. And then I also tell them the benefits of what it is to give me news, which is that like I'm going to do it better than other people, which I am, that I'm going

to be more factual than other folks, and that I have a larger base of context to give me context for what you're giving me. But sometimes, you know, it's just calling people like five times in a day. Until they respond. So there's a lot of ways to finesse it. But I think if you come to these conversations as a normal human being who people want to like to talk to, it's not just about the institution in which they're placing whatever they have to give, but about the journalist that they're placing it with, you'll

be pretty successful. But you've got to stay in communication with these people because they provide you. gyms that they don't even know our gyms sometimes, just in conversation. Those are the best kind of gems, right? Those are the best. They come out with something. And you're like, wait, what? Yeah.

And you're like, hold on, explain that. And then they are able to explain it to the T detail first person. We're in the room, please. I'm taking that every day. Every day, Brian. All right. Jasmine Wright, her new piece inside Kamala Harris's small, quiet transition team. It's on notice right now.

Jasmine, thanks for coming on the press box. Thanks so much. I had so much fun. All right, it's time for the second weekly edition, David Shoemaker guesses, the strained-pun headline. It's great to be back. Well, you know, I thought you'd have a few more takes about Kamala. No, more takes about the campaign, but you were saving yourself. Yeah, no, I just like listening in.

Last Monday's headline about the Saints losing their starting quarterback for a few weeks was Car in Shop. Today's headline comes to us from alert listener John Fogda of Denmark Love our listeners in Denmark It's from the Financial Times, David, and it's from 2019, but it was so good I had to give it to you here in 2024.

There is, or should I say was, a new creative director of Lacoste Like alligator shirts, LaCoste? Yeah, I'm very familiar, yeah. Very familiar. Her name is Louise Trotter. She's a woman. so a woman is making the alligator shirts.

I want you to think of French cuisine as you ponder. What was the Financial Times as strained pun headline? French cuisine. Hmm. Maybe a little lunch, a little something, a little casual lunch? Croc. Uh-huh.

Croc madame. Croc madame. That is great. Bang. I thought that would take you a little bit longer. Well, I only know like two French dishes. Better escargo, perhaps. That is the press box.

I'm Brian Curtis. Producing magic by Brian Waters. Great to have you back, Brian. All right. Coming up on this here podcast next Thursday, October 24th. That's right. Chris Ryan is going to be here. What a treat for everybody.

What a treat for the subreddit CR heads. we're going to have a party. We're going to talk election. We're going to talk about stuff. We may talk about how he got into journalism begin with. Chris Ryan cannot wait to have him make his press box debut. In other news, I've been sending out a lot of press box 2024 buttons. You've got two and a half weeks, folks.

Send me a great strain pun headline. Send me a funny, overwork Twitter joke. Send me a great idea about the podcast generally. And you may get a button in the mail from me. hit me up at the press box pot or email me, Brian.curtis at the ringer.com. Our pal David Shoemaker will join us Monday, and you know he will have more lukewarm takes about the media of a fantastic weekend.