The Press Box - Kanye Goes to Washington, the Art of Sidling, and Elizabeth Warren Makes Her Move | The Press Box (Ep. 536)

Episode Date: October 16, 2018

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker break down President Trump's new media strategy (03:00), the reportorial tactic that separates NBA insiders (25:45), and Senator Warren’s preemptive strike against swift boaters (41:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, it's Liz Kelly, and I want to tell you about the second annual Ringer NBA Palooza on Tuesday, October 16th. We'll be streaming a live marathon countdown to tip off with Bill Simmons and the Ringer MBA crew, featuring live podcasts, special guests, Ringer original shorts, and culminating in a Sixers Celtics watch party. You can check it out live on Tuesday across all of our social media platforms. And don't forget to check out our brand new NBA Paloosa merch on the ringer.com slash shop. David, retail giant Sears is closing 142 stores as part of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. What I want to know is, as a child of the 80s, which extinct or highly downsized retail store would you like to see brought back from the dead? Oh, my gosh.

I feel like the right answer to this is Spencer's Gifts, but it still exists. That's what I was going to say. Wait, what? Yeah, when I was in L.A., we would. spent a lot of time at various malls and there was a Spencer. I found a Spencer's. It was like totally remodeled and new and it was sort of yeah, it's like a hot topic now. Can we, can we agree that the coolest thing in 80s retail was thing that only existed at the mall? Oh yeah. A better thing that existed at the mall that wasn't close to you? So it was a really special

treat? For sure. I mean, I was going to say all those, all the, you know, there's the, the, the, the sense of wonder. I mean, I know you can get anything now on Amazon or whatever. whatever else. But the sense of wonder of going into a music land or a Camelot music or whatever and seeing like stumbling across like an aerosmith box set that you didn't know existed is something, you know, that's like there's nothing that really replace that or even just going to a KB toys or whatever and having to like dig through a pile of discarded Star Wars figures and then all of a sudden there's like one rare one at the bottom. Like that is impossible to replicate now. But I will say, do you have another answer besides Spencer's gifts?

KB was definitely my list. And also, let's just throw in Walden Books, which I just learned ceased operations in 2011, so Walden Books officially RIP. Which living in New York and even like in any kind of like big sort of urban area, you realize that, you know, Walden Books was like swallowed up by the advent of Barnes and Nobles and borders and everything. But Walden Books just had the size of the bookstore correct, weirdly. Like that was the one mall-sized store that probably was better off as a mall-sized store.

If you just have good quality. My final answer for this, by the way, is, service merchandise. Because to this day, I don't know what they sold. I only know what it looked like from the outside, and I would like to go check it out and see what was in there. I had some fond memories of my grandmother

taking me to service merchandise to buy me a little toy. We are the Orange Julius of podcasting. This is the Press Box. Part of the Ringer Podcast Network. The Press Box is the media podcast we are not allowed to make confident declarations about rookie NFL quarterbacks. They will all be wrong.

We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the ringer. Big show today, David. First up, they don't show Donald Trump's rallies on TV anymore. So Trump and Kanye West have gone unplugged. We survey the president's new media strategy. Second Tuesday marks the start of the NBA regular season, which I know will come to a shock to a lot of ringer readers. Probably didn't know this was happening.

We go inside the locker room and talk about the repertorial flex that separates the insiders from the boys. And finally, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren fends off one of Trump's attacks by cleverly releasing a new video. What else is she up to? Plus, as always, the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, should we start with Trump unplugged? See, let me tell you something. Donald Trump has a problem, which is that even Fox News has stopped carrying his rallies live.

Last Wednesday, he had a rally in Erie Pennsylvania that was only shown on C-SPAN 2 or the deuce as nobody in. Washington calls it. So what Trump's doing is increasingly stunty kind of media things to force himself back on the air. In the last week, he has invited Kanye West into the Oval Office. He gave what New York Magazine's Olivia Nuzzi described as a personal press conference to her inside the same Oval Office. On Friday, he called into Fox and Friends, and Steve Deucey, the host, pleaded with Trump at one point during this live interview saying, I know you're probably running short on time. At that point, as ABC's Karen Trey, points out, the president had been on the phone live for 35 minutes. After 48 minutes on the air,

Ducey comes back and tells Trump, go run the country, at which point Trump finally ends the interview. This is the Trump unplugged phase, which is Politico's Annie Carney says, the president appears to be virtually unavoidable for comment. And in the New York Times, Katie Rogers and Maggie Haberman report, there is no grand strategy, shockingly, people close to him say, his aides are simply clearing the path as the president speaks and speaks and speaks up for himself. This means that members of the news media are apparently no longer the enemy of the people, Haberman and Rogers Wright, but the people he calls before bedtime. Before we survey this strange week of media strategy, if that is indeed the right word for it,

what did you make of the Trump's audible play here as we get close to the midterms? The thing I kept going back to was that you'll hear people, throughout this week, but especially in the past, especially today, when this is sort of coming to, I mean, kind of becoming a real thing. People are saying that Trump is sort of his own press strategist now, right? He's running his own, he's running the press office on himself. And I know that's by himself, I know that's rhetorical. Yeah. But clearly it's true to some extent. And I think, and you can't help, or at least I can't help, but think back to the time when Trump was actually masquerading as his own PR agent to get both. Pre-presidency, he would call an act. Yeah, he would pretend to be his own publicist. He gets a lot of flack for that because it is just sort of inherently funny, but he was successful at that. Yes.

And for better or worse, I feel like he's been fairly successful over the past week. Now, I don't know, and we'll get to some of the specifics. He said, you know, that if he hadn't made that speech or he kind of, imitated Dr. Blasey Ford. He said that if he hadn't done that, they would have lost the vote. I'm not sure if something specific like that is true. Especially like you said, Fox isn't even carrying the big speeches and rallies anymore.

I mean, this is the sort of best version of Trump PR. I completely agree. And he seems to be, he's swallowing up the entire media with it. I hate to descend to the theater criticism level of political analysis. But he is clearly most effective. when he's doing this, when he's just chewing scenery, doing an 80-minute press conference, as he did a couple of weeks ago now, just being endlessly available. When you say he's his own press strategist or media keeper or whatever, he just reminds me of a lot of people in entertainment and sports who have a communications director whose job it is just to say yes to interviews, which is where Trump is right now. I was like looking at some of the other bookings that I didn't list there in the open.

He talked to the Washington examiner's Selena Zito. Okay. This week is going to be on Trish Regan's Fox Business Show. I have no idea what that is. I just have no clue. This is also for Manny Carney's piece. After his Fox and Friends interview, he addressed reporters in the Oval Office, noting, among other things, that he has no plans to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. So that was just like a special moment.

with the press. I am not going to fire this person. Let's look at Kanye. So much sound we could re-listen to from this very, very strange encounter. But here is Wes talking about his Make America Great Again hat. I think it's the bravery that helps you beat this game called life. You know, they tried to scare me to not wear this hat, my own friends, but this hat, it gives me, it gives me power in a way. You know, my dad and my dad, and my, my mom separated. So I didn't have a lot of male energy in my home. And also, I'm married to a family that, you know, not a lot of male energy going on.

It's beautiful, though. But there's time. Can we stop it right there, Jim? Trump is saying there's stone face during this entire interview. Oh, yeah. Just like kind of in the, I don't know what I'm seeing. I don't know what I'm hearing face. And I've been told that I'm not allowed to talk over.

room. That's a part of it. Right. And I think this is kind of good for me in some way. I don't quite understand, which is a lot of Trump's brushes with celebrity. But as soon as there was a Kardashian joke made, Trump just started laughing and smiling, which you don't actually see Trump do very much. It's just kind of an amazing moment. Anyway, Jim, please continue. I'm married to a family that, you know, not a lot of male energy going on.

It's beautiful, though. But there's times where, you know, it's something about, you know, I love. I love Hillary. I love everyone, right? But the campaign, I'm with her, just didn't make me feel as a guy that didn't get to see my dad all the time, like a guy that could play catch with his son. It was something about when I put this hat on and made me feel like Superman. You made a Superman. That's my favorite superhero. And you made a Superman cape. For me, also as a guy that looks up to you, looks up to Ralph Lauren, looks up to American industry guys. Non-political, no bull-h. to associate myself with this sentence that Max Reed wrote in the newly redesigned New York Magazine Intelligencer, which is if people aren't paying attention to your outrageous rambling tirades, find someone else giving outrageous rambling tirades, and stand in the frame with them. That is clearly what is at work here, no? Yeah, I think so.

I don't know if Kanye, I mean, this isn't the first time that, you know, obviously Trump and Kanye have interacted. This is the first time they put it on TV in such a, you know, kind of, um, first time became a moment. Sure. You know, I mean that, I feel like there's a million different ways to parse that meeting and, and,

but I think for the purposes of this conversation, yeah. I mean, I don't know if the idea was, was, you know, to make the Trump look presidential by comparison, um, or just to, just to get some attention either way. I mean, I, it's, um,

it was it was definitely a bizarre moment. I mean, the, the weirdest part about it was it's not careful where you go with weirdest part about it because it's going to be arguable. It's not the weirdest part about it. It's not like, I mean, there's different levels of, I mean, the whole thing was a little bit perplexing, especially the way that it was covered. You know, I heard some people on the liberal side, or just unbiased, more or less apolitically say that, I mean, kind of, kind of tisking his presence there at all. I mean, I don't think that a musician of Kanye's stature I don't think there's any reason to like second

guess his presence at the White House for in general Oh no there was a lot of salinas about he was cussing or something and that was somehow besmirching the Oval Office or something that that's not sure I mean that That was a lot like Obama rolls his sleeves up when he comes to work and I mean it doesn't like

That's kind of neither here nor there But just in so in so much as it Was you know like I said Deliberate and performative and And frankly I mean listen I'm not I'm not one that I don't I'm not Kanye West doctor Lord knows but there there's it certainly felt a little bit exploitative and I don't and you know I'm sure it was a you know a mutual exploitation society going on in there at the time but it but it was a you know it was it was it was

it was definitely uneasy to what it made you uneasy to watch it and then maybe that was the point it said it had people watching the uh over on CNN Chris Cuomo said why give it all this hype why fan the flames of the the foolish CNN was one of the networks, by the way, that rushed to put the video on the air. Also, I saw Chris Cuomo calls the meeting a travis sham mockery by which he meant, David, a travesty inside a sham inside a mockery. I would just like to say, I was sitting in a hotel lobby this week, and it was late at night, and Chris Cuomo repeat was on.

Is there any more preposterous fake voice of God guy on game? on cable news right now. I know I know that's a high bar, but it's just coming out there going, folks, it's rough out there. Let me be the kind of 20, 21st century,

Dan Rather, just shrugging his shoulders and giving you the truth. It's just, I was just, it's a laugh a minute for me. I got to say, be honest.

Let's talk about Trump on 60 minutes. Again. I believe, by the way, I believe that the term shamockery is credited to, to former Detroit Pistons great Ben Wallace.

So he just added Travis sham mockery so he could. Yeah, I have no idea where that came from. He did want to Rob Ben Wallace. So many things to pull out from Trump's 60 Minutes interview with Leslie Stahl, which aired on Sunday night. The quotes, I'm not a baby. And also, I'm president and you're not. Somebody pointed out on Twitter has not been uttered since Chevy Chase was on the weekend update. Let's listen to this bit, though.

Here's Stahl quizzing Trump about family separations at the border. What about the forced separation of children from their, migrant children from their... Well, that was the same as the Obama law. You know, Obama had the same thing. It was on the books, but he didn't enforce it. You enforced it. You launched that, the zero-tolerance policy to deter families with children coming in. No, but then everybody decided and the courts don't want separation.

And frankly, when you don't do separate, when you allow the parents to stay together, Okay, when you allow that, then what happens is people are going to pour into our country. So are you going to go back to that? Well, we're looking at a lot of things. Really, what we want to do is change the immigration laws because they're a laughing stock all over the world. Are you willing, though? I think that you're saying it's under consideration.

No, I want all the laws changed. There have to be consequences, Leslie, for coming into our country illegally. And part of the, I mean, part of the reason I have to blame myself, the economy is so strong that everybody wants to come into the United States. Can I just ask this simple question, yes or no? Go ahead. Are you willing to reinstitute that policy? You said we're looking at everything.

Yes or no? You can't say yes or no. What I can say is this. There are consequences from coming into a country, namely our country, illegally. I'm not going to ask it again. You don't have to. But it's the same as Obama. Okay. Changing subjects again.

I thought that interview was about as well as a TV journalist can do with Trump. She was really good. She was really quick. And, you know, I don't know that you're going to get to the ecstatic moment with a him ever. I'm saying, you're right. I was completely wrong. I've completely misled the American public. But I thought she sparred with him about as well.

And while trying to get information. and not make it look like a gladiatorial confrontation. Yeah. And I just don't, I don't even know, I mean, sometimes soon we'll be talking about as Trump's written responses to the Mueller investigation. And, you know, I'm sure he'll be on the record saying things that are more, you know, potentially legally damning than this interview. But you come to the point where you're just sort of like, I'm not.

damning. Yeah. I mean, I guess things with more, with more actual, with more like concrete consequences than just like, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the once-presumed political consequences that don't really matter anymore. Um, you know, I think, I think, I'm as best as, as, as someone can interview him. And, and, and I think that we saw the sort of limits to that, too. I don't know. I mean, it was, it was, it was, Trump in his way was, was about as, for his part was about as, as, as, as I can, recall him being and about his substance-free too. I mean, I think there was, I mean, certainly there was some substance there if you want to hold him to every letter and word that he said. But I think that, you know, functionally, there wasn't a lot of, a lot of there. We can hurry through the interview last Tuesday with New York's Olivia Nuzzi, who was at the White House reporting on John Kelly, specifically why he still has a job. This sort of kicked off the week, right? I mean, the sort of Trump-unplugged tour that we're on right now. And I think just this is a small point, but just we talk all the time about how

incredibly rapid the news cycle is in the Trump in the, you know, the Trump era. The fact that like this interview seemed like a wild outlier four days, five days ago, how long ago was it? It seemed like a what the hell is that? And then slowly. And then it's literally happened to that extent or worse six times since then. Like it's crazy. He was pretty on message.

By the way, just reading that piece, it really. Did you see the movie, The Death of Stalin? I'm not comparing Donald Trump to Joseph Stalin, but just the madcap comic style where he has her into the Oval Office and then John Kelly himself appears, who the interview is ostensibly about. Then Mike Pompeo appears. Then Mike Pence appears. He turns to Pence that is Trump and says, this is Olivia. She's a disruptive writer, but that's okay. And, you know, like Trump is constantly asking, does he to speak louder?

Because he does. So have you ever, have you been told that you speak very softly? I mean, it's just, it's just, as a just comic set piece, it's absolutely incredible. It feels like it was written. Yeah, it's like half comedy and half like he read the game one time and is using, and is like deliberately trying to neg the reporter this in front of him. That's one of Trump, I think you've found one of Trump's hidden, hidden influences. Yeah.

Yeah, we thought it was Jeff Sessions and some other guys, but it turns out. I highly recommend, I mean, we're just talking around the piece. I highly recommend everybody read it. But the scene at the end with Kelly and Air's hugging or like embracing to prove their friendship? That's why I thought that the Stalin thing. It just felt it's so weird. Really bizarre. I think let's cut to an interesting question, which is why is this happening right now?

A couple of notes, a couple of speculations. Rogers and Haberman in the New York Times say several people close to the presence that Mr. Trump was encouraged by what he regarded the success of his 81-minute news conference. During both, the president seemed energized as he engaged in conversational fisticuffs with the reporters. Annie Carney writes, former aide said it makes all the sense right now. If the White House is viewing the midterms as a base turnout election that is framed as an up or down vote on Trump himself, in order to do that one former White House official tells Carney, he needs to make sure people are thinking about him on election day. So Trump is doing a very Trumpian thing, right? He's saying, I want this election to be about me, just like I want every second of every day.

be about me. And I think that if I make myself available and make myself available in these increasingly strange ways, I will, I'll just capture everybody's attention. And I'll remind my base that when they go vote for their relatively anonymous US rep, that they're really voting up or down on me. That makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense to me too. And I mean, And listen, this is clearly what, I mean, we've been hearing that this is, this is what he's been wanting to be doing from the moment he got elected, right? And it seemed like there was a sort of unbelievable amount of, you know, capital being expended within the walls of the White House to keep him away from the cameras, to keep him away from doing interviews, to keep him from talking to Bob Mueller, or, you know, whoever wanted to talk to him, it seemed like that's what, that was always his, what he was most excited about. doing and certainly there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of reasons why that could be true. But I think that, I mean, you said, we talked about the fact that this might be what he's most effective doing.

And this is his most effective way forward. This might also be, I mean, it's kind of amazing how much energy they must have spent stopping this from happening for so many months when this probably is also the most effective way to keep the country and the government running, you know, just to occupy his time by touting his own credentials, you know? Yeah, it's like if he's doing, if he's talking to the press, he's not doing 18 other things. The one final note about this, I thought that was fascinating. And I read this came up in a few stories, but I read it mostly in one by political piece by Jason Schwartz and Gabby Orr, which is that one of the reasons, interesting reasons that Fox is not always running these rallies live anymore is because they get better ratings sometimes when they just put Tucker Carlson on in the same slot.

So if Trump is in the Midwest somewhere saying kind of off the wall things for an hour, running Tucker in its normal slot gets higher ratings, which is fascinating to me because we think of Fox News as this organism that has been milking Trump for ratings and direction and everything else. But what happens when they have mastered the Trump audience so much that they don't need Trump anymore? that live Trump is actually inferior to live Tucker Carlson. That's a fascinating twist in the whole thing. I don't know where that leads. And obviously, they'll happily take a live Trump phone call on Fox and Friends any day of the week. But I thought that was really, really interesting.

Well, I mean, that Fox and Friends is a longer show and it's a, you know, probably a tougher hang. Even the, you know, regular Fox viewers would probably agree. And I think that's just, I think that it's smart programming, Frankly, you know, I mean, if there were, if you're, you know, there's going to be highlights of everything that he does later on, you know, anything that matters, you're going to get to see. There's no lack of Trump on TV, especially not in the past week or so. So I think it makes some sense. All right, David, now it's time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. A little cleanup from last week first.

First lady Melania Trump completed her trip to Kenya. I know you were following these stories. This is the trip where she wore the pith helmet, the symbol of colonial oppression and got some criticism for that. As the trip concluded, the first lady tweeted out some footage of the visit. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write footage of Melania looking. for Barack Obama's birth certificate. That's thanks to PJ Kinzer for that one. We also got a tweet from Steve Seideman who said that Brian Curtis and David Schumaker

don't talk about Melania as the bad guy from Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Overword Twitter joke of the week is dead. I don't like to do the judge of the first lady by their clothes thing, right? Yeah. But there were some side by sides of her and Renee Belloc from Raiders that were pretty amazing. Also from last week, the Washington Post reports, David, that Bill and he, he, Hillary Clinton are going on a 13 city arena tour next year.

The event will have the preposterous title of an evening with President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. I love that time. Because we needed to get the full titles in there. We just said the Clintons, who could possibly figure out who we're talking about? It's going to be at the forum in L.A., among other places. You saw this, and Michelle Obama is also doing the arena tour for her book. So you're still going to Kramer books and doing a reading.

You're doing this completely wrong. Or Walden books, for that matter. At the news of the Clinton's tour, it was an overworked Twitter joke to say, but is she coming to Wisconsin? Yeah, that's great. Too soon? Thanks to Shane Nyman for that one. And finally, David, did you see the Fox News tweet from last Wednesday about the reboot of the movie Halloween?

Oh, no. What did they do? They tweeted, Jamie Lee Curtis wields firearms in the new Halloween movie, despite advocating for gun control. Gotcha. Gotcha, Jamie Lee Curtis. Oh, my gosh. So that led to a whole movement in Twitter.

Can I give you some of the highlights? Please do. Tim Allen murders Santa Claus in 1994 movie despite advocating for celebration of Christmas. I'm in favor of anything that references the Santa Claus. That's my. That's great. Dwayne Johnson wrestles under Moniker the Rock despite being made of human flesh.

I'm not sure that's accurate. And finally, Mark Hamill wields laser sword and armor piercing firearms. Spacefighter jet with megabom kills tens of thousands of security professionals and innocent contractors aboard security outpost twice, despite advocating for gun control. So if you realize the characters you play in a horror movie might not perfectly track with your political beliefs, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the war. topic number two David it's NBA season here at the Ringer this is officially our favorite time of year right oh absolutely

don't we have like a telethon tomorrow preview Palozo as a recording as people are listening this it should be today but yeah the NBA preview pelusa on the ringer.com is it's going to be going for like 12 hours 12 hours amazing let's talk about NBA insider reporting I did a piece last week about a particular high art of NBA locker rooms which I've seen and I've heard people talk about.

And I just wanted to explore at some depth. And this is what happens. NBA locker rooms, like all of the locker groups, are very pretty rigorously controlled. After a game, a player sits at his locker and he decides at some point, after shower, before shower, whenever he wants to do it, he's going to talk.

Okay? And he comes, it says, once everyone comes in with the cameras and he talks for like two minutes and he doesn't say very much, and then the cameras go away. And that's it. player is now finished talking. That's the way it goes.

And there's actually a hierarchy in a lot of locker rooms where the most famous player talks last, I heard. So, you know, your guy on the bench and your, you're, you're going to kind of fourth best player will talk. Go down down the line. And then finally, Anthony Davis will talk. He will be the last one to talk. Well, that's conventional NBA reporting. But when you're an NBA reporter with some status, you can walk up to the player after the media availability is over. or before. In fact, you can wait for the player to get dressed and then walk along side by side

with the player as he walks to the team bus when they're playing on the road or to his car when they're playing at home. And I wondered what is the name of this tradition, which I've seen. Everybody in the NBA does this. Chris Haynes does this. Ramona Shelburne does this. Everybody does this. And I talked to Brian Winhorse who said, we used to call it sidling like you sidle up to the player. So good. And that is the true man. of power, I believe, on the NBA beat. Who can you sidle to, and what can you extract from the sidle? It's really good.

I mean, listen, this is, there's a lot of sort of like micro-subject writing in the NBA right now for the past several years. This is made, I was so enthralled by this. I mean, it's not, this is a podcast featuring Brian Curtis and David Chewmaker, but this is not, you know, we certainly don't cover every piece that you write on here. and this is one that I specifically reached out to you. I want to talk about sidling. I want to discuss sidling at some length

and record it for everyone to hear. This is, it's just so perfect for, you know, the NBA and the age, in the media age that it's in right now. Right. And I highly recommend anyone to go read this if you haven't already, but it's incredible that the most important art form, you know, in the NBA locker room is the ability to extract that nugget that only

that only certain writers are able to do. One, it's like particular for this moment, right? Because we've reached this time and sideling obviously occurs in every sports beat in the world. There's an NFL version. There's an MLB version. There's a congressional version in the halls of the Capitol. But we are in this time where

anything Damian Lillard says is basically news. And not just, and Damian Lillard's probably on the high end of that, right? Anything let's help me go like four notches down of NBA player right anything Luca Donchard sets this year is going to be news to a certain extent certainly and there'll be and there'll be and even with the element of like you know whether or not he's he's he's meant to say what he was said I mean Damien Liller talking about how he'd be happy he'd be a happy player wherever he

played I think he said he was a happy camper you know was huge news he didn't ask for a trade as some you know people on his level or above have done but yeah absolutely man I mean if Spencer Dinwiddie has something to say about LeBron and L.A. this year, he'll probably, that'll probably, you know, lead the headlines for a new cycle, too. Yeah. So that just that environment makes that move all the more powerful. And one of the interesting conversations I had for this piece was with Adrian Wodge Naurowski of ESPN. And he was talking about back when this, I don't know that the sidling was invented at this moment in time, but it became a thing around 2009, 2010, when the Lakers were

winning back-to-back titles. And one thing Wodge said was he was, first of all, flying around the country doing these pieces where he'd go watch a game and try to extract something bigger from covering the game. All advances in sports writing like all advances in anything are from competitive advantage, right? People are trying to figure out something. So his idea was I will walk out with somebody like Kobe Bryant, often actual Kobe Bryant after a game. I'll download their thoughts. And then I'll put this in my column, which I will have longer to write than all the newspaper guys. Newspaper guys have to file like 10, 11 o'clock.

I'll be able to write this deep into the night, send it to my West Coast editor and get it up later and then tweet it out first thing in the morning. And I'll have something that other people don't have. But what he pointed out to me that thought was really interesting is so he's getting Kobe right after a game. That's the kind of stuff now that might get on Twitter or might get on an uninterrupted video, right? Holding a phone in the back of a car while you're driving off somewhere. I just want to tell my fans a few things. this is but being eight, nine years ago, this is before a lot of players were on social media. So he's sort of coming into this moment where there's all this stuff out there to be harvested

if you have the relationship with the player and if you can get it. And it's sort of a moment in time. And he didn't exactly say this, but I suspect this is the case that as more that stuff migrated to Twitter and as that, the sidel thing became more competitive, of, he then moves to raking a ton of, you know, basically like stories about mid-level exceptions, trades, trade rumors, that kind of stuff. Because that then becomes the big thing, right? Not the player's thoughts, but that becomes the great hot commodity of NBA. So the CITL was the market inefficiency.

Yes, I believe so. Or it arose at a time where that sort of intimate knowledge. And the players knew it too. The intimate knowledge, and I think people are at that point in time, right, are starting to read more national NBA news online. One thing Wodge told me that was fascinating. It was like, I knew if I did a Kobe Bryant story, that would get on the Yahoo homepage.

Back when that was like still a thing. Now, of course, we'd just be like, oh, you're just going to put it on his Twitter account. Who cares what homepage it is or isn't on? But that was a big deal back then. So, I mean, I think, I mean, yeah, I think that's, you can totally see the logic in that. And you can, and you understand it from both sides at the time, right?

I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's, uh, Woge is I mean Woge is clearly just trying to advance his own career and Kobe's trying to get the word out

I mean that's a very specific example Why do you think Why do you I mean this is a little bit Inside baseball Or I guess basketball But this is I'm sure

What everybody's asking Why do you think Woj and the other people You talk to Were willing to open up to you About the Ciddle in the first place right now Why were they willing to talk to me about it? Yeah I mean it's sort of like

It seems like, I mean, I guess maybe it, maybe, I've never been in an NBA locker room. Maybe it's a sort of thing that's impossible to deny the existence of. It is. But like, but to, but to, you know, for, for Woage to return your call and just be like, oh yeah, let me talk. Let me tell you what I was thinking when I was like scooping other people. I mean, that's, that's not, we don't usually get a lot of that kind of thing from Wojj. Well, it's kind of my, it's kind of my job to Cidal with sports writers, right? That's what I guess that's what I'm getting at, yeah.

No, I, um, I think it's one of these things that, If you walk into an NBA locker room, it's pretty unavoidable. Everybody, it's one of the things there, everybody knows what's happening. Everybody from the reporter who's not getting the siddle to the reporter that's sideling with everybody. And there's a certain status about it that's usually unspoken. That people are the kind of things that people turn to each other and say, maybe not in print, but say. So I think part of it is just, it's just one of those things that everybody knows that it's a thing. and when you write them or call them and say,

I want you to help me describe what kind of thing it is, they're willing to do it. And this is maybe a little bit, I guess this isn't like, you know, like a fact. So, you know, as a serious journalist, feel free to decline to answer. But when I was reading your piece, it sounded a lot like confidence was a big part of this.

You know, there was a lot of it, a lot of like stature was built into the, the definition, but there's also a lot of just like the confidence to go up and do it. And there was, and I started, I started wondering about the sort of chicken and the egg, chicken and the eggness of the whole thing. Like is it, does it take a reporter with either the great confidence or the obliviousness to what other people would think about him or her to become a great sidler? Or do you have, or is it just a matter of professionalism and confidence to go in? Do you set you, do you just recognize sidling as an objective? And,

you accomplish that. Which one comes first? That's a great question. I just think, I think this particular niche of sports writing and basketball writing really selects for people that have a ton of confidence and are fueled by competitive drive. Bravado might be another word for it. You know, when I think of Chris Haynes, when I think of Ramona Shelburne, when I think of a lot of the other people I'm mentioned here, like that is a common link. These people are not scared and they are going to go get what they want what they need to get. Jayadanda is another one in this piece. That's definitely true.

I think it's, you know, there's, if you talk to people who are, we know, as NBA insiders or NFL insiders, one absolutely common trait between all of them is that they have that kind of like, that's my story. I am going to go get that. I don't care what it is. I'm going to go get it before everyone else gets it. Yeah. And that, that's just like their,

that's just the way their mind operates in a different way. And there'll be other people who is a brilliant feature writer or a brilliant writer of something else about basketball and they just don't have that gene to them. But I would just think this selects for people who have that gene. Absolutely. I mean, they go stick their nose in. I mean, that's just part of reporting, right?

Yeah, I mean, the style, I mean, the school of writer that you, a school is the wrong word, the group of writers that you described are not neatly organized into a specific school or a specific sort, except for being immensely successful and very good at what they do, right? I mean, there's feature writers, there's, you know, kind of newspaper calmness,

and there's people of very, you know, wildly varying writing, I mean, there's TV personalities, right? I mean, but there's people of wildly different styles, you know, as far as their writing and their kind of mission goes. But yeah, I guess they're all, but they are all big personalities. And all, I mean, I've only met a couple of the people who you talk to, but all, you know, extremely nice people too.

Mm-hmm. Because that's, personality's part of this, right? Yeah. Chris Haynes told me that a lot. It's like when you, like, you have to have about 1,000 informal conversations with NBA players before you get to the good stuff. So, and Chris gave me a list. Like, we're talking about, you know, your wife or girlfriend, your children, or talking about popular culture. talking about what's in the news, everything like that.

It's all built on relationships. You know, it's like, and he, and one thing Haynes told me that was interesting was, it's like, I might not have seen this person I'm sidling with for a year, but I had some significant moments with them. Maybe I had a big moment in my rookie year. I'm sorry, their rookie year. Maybe I had a, you know, and then I saw them six months ago or I saw them last season. But we have an instant relationship.

So when player is looking around a crowded, increasingly crowded, at NBA locker room. And they see me coming up to them. They're like, that guy is, that guy's okay. And Jonathan Abrams, our old Granland pal said, nowadays, you have to almost know the player's security person. Like, the player's security person has to recognize you because they're kind of pushing people away, right?

Random people in the hallways and autograph seekers or selfie seekers, whatever. You have to know that. You have to relationship with that person. So that you can kind of come in and like, okay, yeah, he's good. He's good. We can talk to him. Yeah, well, that's, I mean, it's really incredible. Was there anything else?

I mean, I know that you, you know, probably heard a lot of, a lot of sidling stories that didn't make it into the piece. Was there anything that you like, that you didn't make it in that was like that you just loved as a basketball fan or as a student of journalism? Well, one funny thing is that when you do, when you try to sidle with somebody, you often have to take a lot of shots at it because the person may just vanish after a game. They may be talking to somebody else, especially when basketball players play at home. They often have family or friends waiting for them outside the locker room. So they're giving, you know, giving everybody hugs and talking to people. You're not going to just like butt in and say, hey, do you have a few minutes? So people often, you have to have them wait for their on the road.

But Winnworth told me one funny story, which was the year LeBron James was going to change his number. And there was a certain date that he had to file the paperwork to officially change his number by. So let's call it March 15th. So Winhorst doesn't want the other reporters on the beat to know that he's after the story because he's hoping that all the other reports forget, right? So he knows the deadline essentially is March 15th to get the story. So he starts trying to sidle with LeBron on March 7th and takes like four or five shots at it and doesn't get it, right?

He's just like every night, you know, doing that kind of, I'm looking innocent. I'm not trying to do anything. And the LeBron disappears. LeBron's not into it or whatever. Oh, he doesn't even get in the conversation. No, he doesn't even, he does not even create a sidel. He just doesn't get there at all. Finally, on the last night, is able to grab him at the locker room door, you know, quietly say to him,

hey, did you fill out the paperwork for this number change? LeBron says, yeah, I signed it yesterday. And Winnhorses goes, ah, yes. And as he put it to me, yes, I got it. The sidel worked. So that's. The CITL worked is a great line. How does it feel to have contributed, I mean, I know that you didn't come up with the term,

but to have sort of codified this term and contributed now to the average basketball fans lingo. I mean, the CITL will now live on forever because of this piece. You're very nice to say that, but we'll see. You know, I'm just, I'm just trying, David, I'm just trying to give 110% out there. I'm going to let other people. I'm going to leave the legacy stuff up to other people. I'm going to just, just, just my job is just to go out and write another column next week. Well, listen, you wrote the piece, so you deserve all the credit.

But who was it in the piece that was talking about having your sidels stolen? There was Jason Quick from the Trailblazers. It may have been Jason Quigg. Oh, maybe, you know, it was the anonymous one for sure, because there was that great line where he said, he or she said something in the effect of like, when you're in your sidle and it's 100% your sidle, or it's definitely your sidel.

Like the felicity with which the term sidel, was used by like the halfway point in your piece was one of like the best like storytelling devices of the whole thing. I found that because no one knew that that was the word we're going with. But when I mentioned at the top of the interview, they would just start calling it. That's just one of those things that needed a word. All right, David, let's talk about Elizabeth Warren for a second before we go here. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren in the news today because during her academic

career, she claimed that she was a quote, minority law professor who had Native American heritage, according to an investigation by the Boston Globe's Annie Lindskie last month. month. The declaration played no role in her hiring at Harvard Law School, but that hasn't stopped President Trump from calling her, quote-unquote, Pocahontas and mocking her. Let's listen to Trump at a rally in Montana in July. Let's say I'm debating Pocahontas, right? I promise you I'll do this. I will take, you know, those little kits they sell on television for $2? Learn your heritage. Guy says, I was born in Scotland. It turns out he was born in Puerto Rico. And That's okay. It's good.

You know. Guy says, I was born in Germany. Well, he wasn't born in Germany. He was born someplace else. I'm going to get one of those little kids. And in the middle of the debate, when she proclaims that she's of Indian heritage, because her mother said she has high cheekbones.

That's her only evidence that her mother said she had high cheekbones. We will take that little kit and say, but we have to do it gently. Because we're in the Me Too generation. you have to be very gentle. And we will very gently take that kit, and we will slowly toss it, hoping it doesn't hit her and injure her arm,

even though it only weighs probably two ounces. And we will say, I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you're an Indian. Before I read the rest of the narration here, should we just know how offensive that was

on so many levels. Anyway, narration begins. Today, Warren began a media counteroffensive. She released an autobiographical video to bolster her claims. And she also released the results of a genetic test in which a Stanford professor said there was a strong evidence that she has Native American heritage. All of this, David, is pretty obviously a media strategy ahead of her coming presidential run. As the New York Times reporter, Jonathan Martin puts it, it's not I'm running. it's I'm running and won't be swift-boated.

What did you make of Warren's attempt to outflank the swift-boaters? One, it was the sort of like self-swift-boating, I think, is the really cogent thing here. But I thought almost more interesting than the fact that she did it herself was that she was the timing of it? One that it came, that it comes now vis-a-vis,

the, you know, the Democratic primary for the presidential nomination, staking out her, staking her out of ground, but also that she held this in reserve for the past, what, three years? I mean, since the, since the, her senatorial campaign. But, but specifically since, you know, Trump's was going after two years ago. And now, who know, there might have been some element of this where she wanted to, she always knew she wanted to do it just right or wanted to save it for whatever. but um you know she's taking a lot of shit for this and and and that and that the you know the i mean

maybe i'm just a sucker for for autobiographical twitter movies or whatever twitter videos but i but i but you know it was really really well done and i thought and i think you could tell by donald trump's reaction to to uh you know hearing that hearing about it today i don't know if you heard about it for the first time in that media you know in that media veil or if he presumably had already seen it, um, he seemed about as, about as saddened,

uh, as he has, as I can remember him ever being. That he lost this joke from his repertoire or that he was proven wrong. I don't know which, what it was, but he seemed like, he seemed legitimately moved sort of,

uh, in an, and, uh, by the revelation. Let's listen to it. Here is Trump's reaction when told of Elizabeth Warren's new video. You know,

I have a, no, who, who cares? Mr. President, you said you paid $1 million to share. I didn't say that. You better read it again. So there's Trump denying.

He said what we had him saying on audio a minute ago. He also said, I will only do it if I can test her personally. And that will not be something that I enjoy doing. I'm really sure where that was going, but that was the other comment. There's a lot of weird stuff. The weird thing is that he sort of does have like a very, very, like, hyper-literal case that he was talking about, like, this conjecture into the future of what he would say in a, debate someday. He didn't formally say, like, if she...

It was all a thought experiment or something? Yeah, I mean, I don't... Maybe I'm just crazy, and certainly there's a lot of evidence of him you know, outrightly denying reality when it doesn't suit him. There was some really interesting moments of that. In the Woodward book, we can get back

to that at some time in the future. But the... But for some reason, the first time I watched it, my first impression was that he, had indeed watched the video and had been, and like one of the people around him was like, remember you said this thing. And then like,

you know, we're going to talk around it. We're going to get out of it. Don't worry about it. I mean, obviously he's not bound to it. But that he kind of already knew he had an escape hatch, but hadn't really thought that deeply about it to be able to say it outright.

Anyway, the whole thing is just so, it seems like so petty, but he's been so petty about it for so long that it's, that it's, you know, he doesn't have any choice, but for this to be a topic of conversation.

And I actually found the warned video to be more interesting than Trump's response, too, and I almost like to hear you on this. Let's listen to one clip of it, if we could. I hear some of your Republicans. I am a Republican registered. Yes. What do you think of him calling her Pocahontas? Well, I think it's ridiculous. I think it's silly.

He's talking about stuff he doesn't have any idea about. It's offensive to me, not just as Betsy's cousin, but as a Native American. They feel like an attack on me and my mom. but mostly I'm a grandmother and my mom's not around to defend herself. One of the fascinating things I think about this, David, is this is billed essentially as a refutation or pushback of Trump.

But it's also a way, and you said this earlier, to smuggle the kind of biographical video that typically runs at a political convention into the conversation and thrust it upon the unsuspecting public, right? So we're getting in a sense the very specific like, look, you know, this is my heritage, this is who I am.

But really, this is, about who is Elizabeth Warren and trying to define her in the minds of Democratic voters. Let's just know another clip too. That was a couple of her relatives and acquaintances in Oklahoma. This is some of the law professors she worked with and four who are essentially coming forward to say that this claim she made in applications did not influence her hiring during her law career. Her heritage had no bearing on her hiring, period. I was chairing the committee that year of ethnicity been part of the discussion I would have known about it. Her name with respect to racial minority hires, no, never.

That's nonsense. Her reputation as a teacher was stellar. We decided to hire her because she was the best there was on the market. Elizabeth was revered as perhaps the best teacher on the faculty. She is a tremendous teacher, an important scholar. She was a trailblazer. She is the hardest working person I have probably ever come across. Did your ears go up there like mine did?

when all of these people are calling her a teacher rather than a law professor, which sure sounds better in a political ad, right? Law professor sounds highfalut and especially Harvard law professor, but teacher. There you go, right? And to me, that's part of this, right? You just have to think, how crafted was this to, as a way, again, of introducing we in our Twitter world know who Elizabeth Warren is. We see her tweet about to, but to people who vote in a Democrat. primary and haven't spent, you know, more than 10 minutes thinking about Elizabeth Warren,

this is, to me, this is like how we define her to potential Democratic primary voters. Yeah, I mean, I think to what I said earlier about her sort of staking her claim. I mean, I think, I mean, this is clearly deliberate, right? I mean, and I, and I, and I don't mean this with any sort of sneer or, you know, snark or anything else. I mean, there was, we've seen, we talked about this during the Kavanaugh hearings. There's certainly, there's already jockeying going on all over, you know, Washington to sort of be the frontrunner on the Democratic side for the next presidential election. I don't think it was any accident that when, you know, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris were like making headlines for being on the Judiciary Committee and going

toe to toe with Kavanaugh. That was when Elizabeth Warren released her proposals for the anti-corruption law and the, you know, accountable capitalism act, which are both, you know, you know, know, very thoughtful and would be wonderful things for our country. And now this is even more so just sort of like, it's like she's putting out the first presidential, or the first, you know, memoir for pretty much, I mean, for a potential nominee. All of that said, it was incredibly effective and incredibly poignant. You know, I'm a fan of hers and have been for a long time. I mean, just in terms of her style, but also her, you know, politics and general demeanor. And I think that there's a very legitimate question about whether or not someone has to be new.

Someone has to be just, you know, exciting and interesting. I mean, just coming kind of, someone has to come out of nowhere in order to be president in the Trump, after Trump, right? I mean, and Bernie Sanders, who was after Obama, yeah, yeah, I mean, certainly. And Bernie Sanders, I guess, is sort of the model for you can come out of nowhere without actually having, but actually having coming, come out of nowhere. You know, around the whole time, yeah. And I think that Elizabeth Warren has certainly had a higher profile or a higher national profile than Bernie Sanders. I mean, since she ran for Senate and she was, you know, and, you know, it was a huge national story, or not huge, it was a national story in a way that most senatorial campaigns aren't. But I think that what's really compelling about this video is that it places her, you're right, she's not a Harvard professor, she's a teacher.

She, you know, it humanizes her in a lot of ways. It also places her in the context of the political. moment that we're in right now. And, you know, we talked about Michael Moore not long ago. And the one of the sort of loose threads at the end of his most recent documentary, one of the, you know, the many tales of that was this sort of very like heartwarming, reaffirming, you know, sort of, but loose tale of all of these young people coming from various career paths and entering politics to try to make, to try to change the country for the better. And what this, what, and this Elizabeth Warren mini film, whatever you want to call it,

could have been the last chapter in that little piece of the documentary. This is the story of someone who did not spend her life aspiring towards political power but who is actually came to politics

after success in a lot of different areas and her goal is to try to make the country a better place. and seemingly for altruistic reasons. And, I mean, narratively, I thought this was just an incredible success. Her relationship with the media is going to be fascinating. It's something we'll, I'm sure, talk more about as she officially jumpstarts this political campaign, which I expect will have in about five seconds after the midterms.

But she is somebody who you didn't have to work very hard to get congressional reporters to complain about how much she stiff-armed the media once she got in the Senate. She was very, very, very cautious about it. Um, she was not somebody who would stop in hallways to talk, which is a pretty normal thing for just about every senator to do as we've seen with Lindsey Graham in extremis over the last couple of weeks. Yeah. Uh, even this piece in the Boston Globe. I mentioned from earlier in September where she finally released all these records, uh, from her hiring, uh, for various law schools. She worked at a couple of them.

That stuff that she had not released before. She is not, she is not, she is not somebody who would call her. a particularly transparent person with the media. So whether we get from releasing this very choreographed, nicely done, as you say, and I agree it is effective on a political level video, to actually engaging with the media openly and, you know, in non-safe zones will be fascinating. A couple of tweets I'm going to call your attention to, and then we'll get out of here. One is from national journals Ben Pershing. He says, Trump will obviously keep calling her Pocahontas anyway.

So this seems partly aimed at trying to reassure Dems that this will not be an ongoing problem slash liability for her candidacy. And another one from former Obama campaign manager, Jim Messina, who says, argue the substance all you want, but why 22 days before a crucial election where we must win House and Senate to Save America? Why did Senator Warren have to do her announcement now? Why can't Dems ever stay focused? Which I thought was interesting because you are, and again, it's not her, you know, it's not her absolute problem that Democrats win the midterms, but she is dumping this into the political world at a very, very interesting time and which very much sort of, you know, focuses energy on her

instead of Beto O'Rourke or Andrew Gillum and Florida or all these other candidates or all these random House candidates that the Dems are trying to push over the line. That is interesting to me purely as media strategy. It also kind of butts up against the conversation we had earlier about President Trump. I'm not saying, clearly Elizabeth Warren isn't a politician or a national figure on the level of the president right now. But, you know, if it's important to remind, you know, if it's, if President Trump thinks that reminding America of who their president is and what the stakes are in a presidency is,

it's going to drive people to the polls in the midterm. I mean, you can make a loose argument for that the same could be true from the other side and from Elizabeth Warren's side. But I agree. It's a, it seems like a. move without a really defined in-game sort of or game plan. We will speculate more on the presidential election of 2020 and certainly be wrong about it on future editions.

But that's the press boxer today. Thank you to David Shoemaker. Thank you to Jim Cunningham, our producer Chris Almata helps us research. More hot takes on the media next week. See you then, David. See you later, man. David? Yes.

Or the deuce, as nobody in Washington calls it. I'd like to associate myself with this sentence. I'm not a baby. Mm-hmm. And also, I'm president and you're not. Mm-hmm. All of that said. And this is maybe a little bit, I guess this isn't like, you know, like a fact.

But I'm not Kanye West doctor. I completely agree. Yes. Leave the legacy stuff up to other people. Yes.