The Press Box - More on the Siege of the Capitol. Plus, The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins.

Episode Date: January 7, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker dive deeper into yesterday's events, where Trump supporters rioted and stormed the U.S. Capitol. They break down the aftermath and discuss everything from Trump being deplatformed to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham saying his piece (0:25). Later, journalist McKay Coppins joins to discuss his perspective on the siege, Mitt Romney's response, and what we can expect from the media moving forward (26:32). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Guest: McKay Coppins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. Coming up on the press box today, the Atlantic's McKay Coppins joins us to talk about what Mitt Romney did yesterday and how the resistance and the political media are headed for a breakup. But we have to start, of course, with Wednesday's siege of the U.S. Capitol. And I've got seven points to run by you, David. Number one is a narrow journalistic question. What do we call these people who stormed the Capitol yesterday? I wish I had a concise answer for you. I think even, you know, last night I made talking to you, I made the case for, you know,

to not be reserved in the language that we used to try to be as honest as possible. But then we also get caught up in this sort of like, you know, use of synonyms that sort of blinds you to any sort of definition, right? You just start bouncing around between words. And by the time, like even Joe Biden, God bless him. By the time he got to like sedition, he was so deep into the sentence. into the, you know, into the, the, thesaurus page that you kind of didn't know how direct you should take him as being.

So, yeah, I don't know. I mean, listen, we had, there's a real power and a real, there's a real, you know, candidness and truth to domestic terrorists and, you know, the notion of domestic terrorism. But I think that we've come to experience the usage of terrorism as such an abstract thing. and that's, you know, a real poor habit to be in for a lot of reasons, but we think of terrorism in this sort of abstract way, and we can see what happened at the Capitol yesterday in very unabstract, very specific terms.

All of this is to say, I like terrorists, but I'm not sure that that even gets to the point that will hit people in the right way. So weird that a formerly abstract notion would suddenly be right in front of our faces during the Trump era. Who could have predicted? that such a thing would happen. I did like the linguistic journey we all went on yesterday.

Pretty much everyone agreed that protesters was way too kind and a very insufficient word to describe those people who went to the capital yesterday. At some point in the day, the journalistic safe word, which was also used in the title of our pod, excuse me, was mob.

Trump Insights mob was on the front page in the New York Times. And then by the end of the day, Chuck Schumer, Kentucky Governor Andy Bashir, various journalists, went to domestic terrorists, as you say. And I just looked up the definition of terrorists, just to refresh my memory, the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians in the pursuit of political aims. I'm okay with it. I think that might be the right place to land. Yeah. I don't know that there's a better one. I mean, I think mob is not inaccurate. It's just not precise. that doesn't do the horror of the day justice.

No. You know, I think that this, I mean, we need to, we're very close to this event. And, you know, the news cycle is such that it feels almost distant at the time that we're talking about this. But, you know, we can't, I'm glad that we did a podcast yesterday for posterity, but also for my own mindset, because we can't let the abject horror of what we experienced yesterday kind of be mellowed with time, you know, and, and frankly be mellowed by the overall ineffectualness of it, right? I mean, it was exactly. We, we would, I mean, there is a sort of poetic justice to the fact that

that, like, Trump actually did fulfill his dream of staging a revolution and all it amounted to was a, you know, a bunch of meth heads taking selfies, but, like, that was real, horror and potential and real I mean tragedy on some level and potential even potentially even a much greater tragedy and let's not let that get lost especially as you know now we start pursuing charges against all the people involved

that brings me to point number two and it's something we touched on a little bit yesterday in the immediate aftermath of this thing which is look Trump and his allies have been doing this since November everybody said well this isn't shocking this has been

going on since November. That's exactly right. Did we all, and by we all, I mean, media members, citizens of America, everybody, did we all yell the word coup loud enough before yesterday? I really do wonder. And I also wonder, David, before you answer that question, if we all weren't taking our cues to some extent from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, because if anything, they have underplayed the idea that Donald Trump, was trying to steal the election from them. They weren't denying it, but they weren't going out in front of a camera every day and saying that we won the election and that guy is trying to steal it from us.

Whether that was because of Joe Biden wants to try to reunite the country or whatever he wants to do on January 20th, I don't know. But they were not beating this drum as loud as they could have been. And I just wonder whether it was the comic nature of much of Trump and Rudy Giuliani's plotting or whether it was. is Biden and Harris, I wonder if we didn't yell that word loud enough before yesterday. Well, I mean, the answer to your question, your first question has to be no, right? I mean, anyone with a microphone from, you know, insignificant people like you or I all the way up the food chain has to be feeling a little bit guilty today.

They weren't screaming coo louder, right? I mean, there's obviously, we measure our words. We make these decisions, you know. I mean, you and I don't think talked about it explicitly, although we may have. But, you know, on some level, everyone's making some sort of calculus, right? You want to save it for what it matters or, you know, you want to be able to make an effective appeal to your audience or whatever. Or you just, by the way, your attention just gets diverted. Because you've had that in the right-hand top slot on the newspaper for four days in a row.

And you're like, okay, what else happened today? is there a climate story? Is there something else we should lead with? Yeah. Which is a very natural human emotion, I think. Yeah, but the question about Biden and Harris, or the answer is different there. I mean, they are waging a political battle, right? I mean, they're using the same playbook.

I don't, I'm not, let me get straight to the answer. I'm not sure that they should have done anything differently. But they're clearly using the same playbook they were using throughout the campaign, which is to more or less ignore President Trump, right? If you get in the get in the mud with him, et cetera, et cetera. Yep. And overall, even in the transition period, I think that's been the right approach, right? I mean, Trump would have probably preferred to have a bunch of Joe Biden quotes to be reply tweeting to for the past month, right?

Rather than just trying to, like, stir up his own stuff. And Joe Biden didn't give him that. And certainly that I think that probably contributed to Trump just looking sort of lost and ineffectual. Although I'm saying this. I mean, he just led a armed protest onto the Capitol yesterday. I mean, there were some people that were certainly invested in his arguments. And these are different stakes. This is not a campaign where I'm not going to give my opponent talking points today.

Right. I don't know. I guess I would have to. try to wrap my head around what it, what it is that Joe Biden would have said, that would, I mean, and whether or not it would have made a difference and to really answer the question in the abstract. I don't know as effective a communicator as Joe Biden has been at some points, including yesterday, I don't know if he's that guy. He's more of a, I mean, he got elected, well, he got elected for a lot of reasons, but I take it face value his, his claim to, you know, the mantle of being a uniter, being a healer.

you know, in the in the in the in the post-Trump America. And I think that's that that's an important part of why he got elected, but I think more importantly, he's sort of a counterpuncher, you know, I mean, he's not he's not going to go out and give a Barack Obama style like, you know, speech that lifts up the country in the same way. He will, but he can respond to moments of, you know, great crisis very capably. And we saw that yesterday. I don't know if him. I, I don't, I just don't know if he, if he had been louder about it, if that was. would have taken away some of the gravitas that he is going to walk into the office with, presumably. I don't know. I don't know. Number three, watching those pictures on cable TV and on Twitter yesterday, I felt like I was watching something from a different century. Yeah. And I don't mean the 20th century, more like the 19th century. I mean, if I told you that there was a moment in America where somebody dressed in animal skins walked into the U.S. Capitol and stood in the dais or a man sat in the chair in the office of the Speaker of the House, would you think I was talking about 2021 or 1821?

Some weird little curlicue of history that we read about, you know, way back in AP history and had forgotten about. I mean, it just, you know, and it's weird, right? Because as everyone was saying, yesterday was the logical conclusion of the last four years of American political life. Yeah. It followed in a straight line. And at the same time, David, it was totally anachronistic. As, as speaking of anachronism, as terrifying as all of that was in real time, scrolling back through the pictures today, I kept being reminded of Michael Fagan,

the kind of imbalanced guy that made his way into Buckingham Palace, which happened on this last season of the Queen, but also was an actual thing that happened in history. It really felt like some, his, like you're right. It was like a terrible potential tragedy that could almost, that should have been able to be explained away by, you know, the security wasn't up to snuff back then or something, you know?

But like, certainly we have now evolved past that point for better or worse. We thought. Yeah, right. But you're right. I mean, it's, it seemed like such a, it is just so hard to wrap your mind around. It's hard. I mean, it's, I just can't, I still can't quite understand.

understand it. But yeah, it seemed like it did. It seemed like something from, from if you would, if you would describe it to me, yeah, I would have thought it was something out of a, you know, a quirky, don't know much about American history book or something. And, you know, and, and, and, yeah, certainly not what happened yesterday. And speaking of which, I'm not sure if you were asleep or not, but there was a near fist fight apparently on the floor of the house last night. No, I caught up on that as best I could. Speaking of the 1800s, I guess we're, I guess we're doing it all in one day. Yeah, I mean, just to be fair, I mean, to the listeners and everybody else, I'm not sure of like, you know,

hoodies and affliction t-shirts existed in the 1800s, but what happened on the house floor was maybe a little bit more accurate. I don't know if there was any, like, you know, wrapping of someone's knees with your cane or whatever, but apparently two guys, yeah, almost got got to it. Yeah, the guy in Pelosi's office would have been looking for a spittoon, I think, in the 1800s rather than just trying to steal mail off the desk. number four so these domestic terrorists if that's what we're calling them did what they set out to do

yesterday which was prevent the certification of the electors then Congress comes back last night and guess what Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and 147 total Republican lawmakers

voted against certifying the election that is they voted to subvert democracy. After everything we saw yesterday. Do you see that infographic in the Times that had all their pictures? And it looked like an uncut sheet of baseball cards. Oh, like, here's the, here's the 1987 fleer set of people that voted to subvert democracy. So let's just get past the political part here because you and I could get mad at this and

be angry and be aggrieved. I want to talk about in a very narrow sense, the media part of this. how much will this really follow these people around? Aren't, aren't we programmed as a media and as a society to be mad and to write the editorial like that was in the Casey star yesterday in the Washington Post today and then just kind of forget about. Yeah. Yes. I mean, I find it hard to imagine that any of those, I mean, even, you know, no matter what George Will says, I find it hard to imagine. I find it hard to imagine that Holly or Cruz is going to have any kind of actual charges

of levied against them, leveled against them by any court of law. By the way, prior to yesterday, George Will had the great line about Holly saying, and it was a line that's so great, you almost can't parse it. He said, has there ever been such a high ratio of ambition to achievement, which is to say he has way more ambition than achievement and almost no achievement? but I do wonder if in a post-Trump era pointing at non-Trump politicians like Holly and Cruz and saying he should have known better, he or she should have known better might carry some weight.

I don't know that it will. You're right. We're programmed to let it slide. But the fact that, you know, well, the fact that someone like George Will isn't just like preparing to be pro-Hawley in four years is. sort of meaningful, right? I mean, I, it is. It's not, it's not nothing. But if it's just the never Trumpers and George Will, you know, I don't know. I think, I mean, it's, it's really fascinating. You and I had this conversation before those people voted yesterday. And we said, okay, the incentives

before people storm the Capitol. Yeah. Was to pretend that Trump won the election because you'll be rewarded by Trump himself, by Fox News, by whomever. Then that happened. And they still did the same thing. Yeah. Clearly, they think the incentives, they could have backed off and said, for the good of the country, I have my, I have my doubts, but I'm going to let it go. A couple people did do that yesterday. But they clearly think the media incentives are going to be that way.

They are betting on this. Working under the assumption that they're not just like so slow footed so many of these people that they, it was too much trouble to actually rethink what their plan was. I mean, I don't, I think you're right. I think that the fear, regardless of what was happening yesterday, I think the fear of getting, you know, raising the ire of Donald Trump is too real for too many of these people. People that ran on as Trumpy candidates or have just curried favor of his voting base over the past four years. I think that they probably made the calculus that, you know, a vote that they could defend as being a vote for the people to, you know, whatever. was probably a small price to pay in balance.

I hope they're wrong. I think that practically, you know, there's got to be, I think I said it yesterday. At some point you got to just come clean, you know, I mean, at some point you have to be honest with yourself about how much stick this is. And yesterday was the kind of day that you would hope that people would, you know, put their gimmicks aside, but clearly that wasn't going to be the case. number five Donald Trump was

deplatformed yesterday finally Facebook has blocked him from that platform and from Instagram until after the inauguration Twitter followed suit and locked Trump's

account for 12 hours I believe it is still locked as we record this writer and broadcaster Andrew Ross Sorkin tweets so Trump has access to the nuclear codes but he can't tweet

or post to Facebook I mean it's pretty amazing Because not only that he can't do it, I mean, it is pretty stunning just to think about the fact that this incredibly powerful person can't tweet, but also that it, everyone seems to think it,

I mean, and I agree that it might actually be really effective, you know, it might be a really effective way of sort of reining him in. Now, Maggie Haberman, I believe it was, tweeted, and I trust her that, you know, Twitter acts as a kind of release, release valve for him, you know, and he lets off a lot of steam that way and it's going to get redirected somewhere else. And whether that means yelling at, you know, his press secretary in his office

or something much worse, I guess that remains to be seen. But if he is, if his worst tendencies are put into check by these bands, I don't know, it kind of gives a, it makes you sort of wish that they had done it sooner, right? Yeah. I mean, I agree to this like all those resignations that were coming out of the administration last night. Yeah. Well, now it's easy. Yeah. To do this.

Oh, well, he's in time out. It's a 15 day ban, right? A 15 day ban seems like a reasonably light punishment. And the fact that it's like going to run out the clock on the administration is sort of. And there's almost no downside now. Just like you're quitting is, you know, the first lady's chief of staff. Like, come on. I mean, that's just weird to me.

It's, to me, it's more interesting that we don't know his thoughts on a moment by moment basis right now. Mm-hmm. I mean, this is really, if really Nixon final days territory here. Or I just was picturing last night Trump stalking around the White House, obviously watching television because we know he's watching television. But, you know, the fact that he had to put out that statement where he committed or at least semi-committed to an orderly transition of power through someone else and couldn't

just pick up the phone and tweet, it's weird. It's weird to be cut off from Trump's thoughts. It's obviously the right decision given the fact that Trump was fomenting violence and inciting a riot against the orderly transition of power. Well, I mean, it's almost a historical footnote. I mean, even though it was late last night, but the fact that Mike Pence was acting as the commander in chief, it seemed like, through much of the evening, through much of the afternoon evening, right? I mean, he was the one that was actually calling in the National Guard and assorted and doing anything else it took to defend. The Capitol, you know, I think that that's sort of a part and parcel of this, right? I mean, it's, Trump is, is going to be ignored now, you know, even, even through the government

that he's still nominally the head of. I think that I don't know that ignoring him is enough at this point, but people are going to try really hard. Number six, David, was the highly, highly, highly bogus idea floated by everyone, from people on Newsmax to Alabama Representative Mo Brooks, that it was not Trump fans or just Trump fans storming the Capitol yesterday. It was Antifa. Oh, my God.

Now, did you see the guy who was in Nancy Pelosi's office? Yeah. You saw the picture. You saw the interview with him. He gave his name and age to the New York Times. Now, whatever Antifa is, did that person look like a member of Antifa to you? That person sound like a member of Antifa to you. Whatever is in your mind about what Antifa might be, even in the fever dreams of the right?

Was that guy a member of Antifa? I'm going to guess no. No, but that's sort of the whole, you know. Like I have, I have a picture of what Antifa is like to certain people. I don't believe that guy fits the picture. Absolutely not. And they don't. Come on.

I mean, no one is, no one is. is making this case with a straight face, right? Although there are a lot of idiots out there. I mean, you can see in Twitter, I mean, if you go find anyone, one of the source tweets about this, you see in the replies, there are many people, many pro-Trump people throughout the country

that are on the bandwagon already. This was an Antifa false flag, whatever. Britt Hugh tweeted this yesterday. Do not be surprised if we learned in the days ahead that the Trump rioters were infiltrated by leftist extremists. It would be a little bit reassuring if some of these idiots

actually thought that, right? I mean, if they were actually were in such denial that something bad could come from the right wing of American politics, then maybe that gives them a little bit of cover for fomenting hate for the past 30 years plus, but they don't actually believe this, right? I mean, nobody actually believes this. Because it doesn't take any sort of, I mean, if you've actually read some of the pieces about it, something's dumb blog posts, I mean, you just have to literally turn a blind eye to the fact that, like you said, there were interviews. There were real-time, like, live streams. Live streams about this, I mean, with these people inside,

this is not Antifa. And if you're somehow dumb enough or unaware enough to think that none of these like proud boy or otherwise addled white supremacist pro-Trump groups, or if you didn't know that they were coming out in public in paramilitary gear, if that's what threw you off, then, you know, woe be to you. this whole thing is just so dumb.

And listen, I don't know who pointed this out. It might have been Dave Weigel. But these people who are promoting this Antifa conspiracy theory obviously are not doing it in good faith, but they're not even doing it in their usual form of bad faith reporting. They're doing it because they're fucking scared because they know that they went from some, you know, some like half-ass keg party yesterday to suddenly the police or the FBI is coming after them.

And everybody has to have plausible deniability, not just for being there, but also for potentially stirring this shit up. It's just amazing. Of all the invocations of Antifa that have come from bad faith actors over the last many,

many months stretching back to the protests this summer, this has got to be the most comical. Oh, it was Antifa, those guys carrying Trump flags? That was Antifa. I saw a picture of one of the,

I mean, there was a dude who was like scaling the front of the Capitol and he had a mask on, but so did everybody because it's a, you know, that we have a coronavirus epidemic.

And he was sort of like, hanging from a ledge. And, you know, with a mask over his face and people were passing it around saying like, well, this is obviously Antifa. Does this look like a Trump supporter to you? And I guess the implication was Trump supporters can't climb things, you know? I don't know, which might, which, you know, might be true for some of them. But, you know, I don't think that really was an honest representation.

I don't even care about the true squatting of this. I just find it very common. I just find it comical. And finally, David, number seven. I regret to inform you that South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham is back. Back in the sense that the former John McCain disciple is trying to reclaim his mantle as a lovable, quotable maverick. I don't know if you saw when he took his turn on the Senate last night to do all the speeches. I did.

I was watching life. Yeah. And he says that maybe I among any, above all others in this body, need to say this. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are lawfully elected and will become the president, vice president of the United States on January the 20th. Big applause. We need to start the countdown clock to the Lindsey Graham is back movement in media. I don't know quite how it's going to play out if he does a hit on CNN where he plays

the reasonable conservative or, you know, if he does the opening interview for Bill Maher's show and Marr gives him shit for a few minutes and then they just move on. But he's going to be back. he he speaking of people who will people will forget he is going to be back he is he i think he craves that corner of american politics where you're the reasonable guy where you're quoted he loves media attention obviously it started last night well we should keep it we should we should have a lindsay graham watch and we should keep track of it on this on this show because the media for their part desperately needs lindsay graham and if they don't they don't might not need lindsay

Graham, but they need a Lindsay Graham. There just isn't. Desperately seeking Lindsay Graham. Cable bookers everywhere. There's just not that many options out there. How many times do we watch, we've talked to it? How many times do you turn on the Sunday shows and see the announcers, I mean, see the

host say, you know, we asked every Republican senator to come on and they all decline, you know? Like, and even when somebody comes on, when somebody comes on, I mean, Lindsay Graham is a deplorable human being. But when people, when, when, when, if there's someone more reputable him than him on there,

they're certainly not as entertaining. And by the way, not more informative either, you know, Lindsay Graham, at least, you know, we all know exactly how much bullshit is, is coming out of him and it's all of it, right? Yeah.

But, like, it's just, but, but that said, it's unnecessary to have them on your show. You don't need him on your show. If he's not the sponsor of a bill, or if he's not, you know, directly tied to whatever's in discussion,

there's just no excuse for putting him on television. But as you point out, they love balance. He is, he is to the political talk shows what Tony Randall and Marv Albert used to be at a late night with David Letterman. Oh, well, we have an opening. And Lindsey Graham is willing to do it. So here we go. Lindsay Graham.

All right, David, we got a special treat. McKay Coppins is here. He's a staff writer at the Atlantic. He was one of the young guys at the Daily Beast when I was working there. I always say this, turning a certain age doesn't make me feel old. it's when someone like McKay turns a certain age, that makes me feel like. Yeah. Thanks for coming on the press box, McKay.

Thanks for having me. I'm sorry if my hair loss has triggered you. It was very, very triggering on this podcast. We're both very sensitive to that particular question. I think you look great, man. I want to start by asking you about Mitt Romney, because you have written as much about Romney and his heresies against the Trump GOP as anybody out there. What struck you about Romney's actions yesterday?

Well, it's funny because I actually talked to Romney the day before for a piece that I wrote that ended up going up like an hour before everything melted down. So it was kind of overtaken by events. But he said a couple things that I thought were pretty prescient. You know, he had like a very eventful trip out to D.C. from Salt Lake City. He was, you know, heckled in the airport and they got on the airplane and people started chanting traitor. And it was weird because he could almost, I could sense in talking to him the night before that he felt like things were going badly. Like I'm sure he didn't predict what was going to happen.

But, you know, he told me that when things get as kind of combustible as they are right now, you can either be a fire extinguisher or a flamethrower. And he said Trump is always a flamethrower. And so, you know, I think that he had already planned to sort of, you know, call upon his Republican colleagues to end this whole kind of charade of rejecting electoral college votes. And then he didn't get a chance to give that speech before the capital was stormed by this mob. And so it's funny, there's this report that he had like, when they were all being removed from the Senate chamber, he shouted at Ted Cruz. what you've gotten. Yeah. And when I saw that, and my immediate instinct was like, I don't know.

That sounds like, you know, maybe that kind of exaggerated. And I texted somebody who was at the Capitol with him. And she said, no, that's true. That happened. And said he's furious. And you could tell he was furious later that night when he got up and gave his speech. You know, he was just, he was mad at the road. His party, he's mad at people like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, who are,

inciting this kind of thing. He's mad at the president. And I think that that was the thing that stood out most to me because he's done these kind of dramatic, thundering, you know, Save the Republic type speeches before. But I don't think I've ever seen him as angry as he seemed yesterday. And that was kind of the thing that stood out to me. So John McCain, when he was alive, liked being Save the Republic, smite the party guy. Right.

He liked the act of doing it. and he liked the attention that he got from doing that. Does Mitt Romney like being that guy, do you think? That's a very good question. That's an insightful question because I think that it's not a comfortable, like it's not as comfortable, I'm sorry, it's not as comfortable a position for him. Like he's not, he's not somebody who, like when he ran for president both times,

he was like the presidential candidate robot, right, who was like reading his lines and giving his talking points. And I covered his 2012 campaign. And by the end, I could recite the entire stump speech because he gave it literally hundreds of times, almost word for word identical. So I, you know, like any politician, I think he likes attention. I don't think he is, he's an institutionalist. So I don't think that he likes necessarily having all the people on his team and his party mad at him all the time or like yelling at them all the time. So I don't think it's that he like seeks out these opportunities. But I also think that he's at the end of his life, end of his career. This is kind of the final act of his, you know, political career. And I think that he is more liberated

than he once was. So I think that he feels like he needs to make the most of this. The other, you know, we probably shouldn't do too much psychoanalyzing him a bit wrong on this podcast. But I also think he's always been kind of haunted by his dad's legacy. You know, his father, George Romney, was like this famously iconoclastic Republican and civil rights champion in Michigan. And I think he always felt like he wanted to live up to that legacy and never quite did. So I do think he is enjoying the opportunity to sort of fill that, follow in those footsteps, as it were. Yeah, I mean, he was certainly angry in a speech, you know, You know, one has to listen to him and hope that when his line about, you know, being honest

to the people that were skeptical of the election results, regardless of what you think of Mitt Romney, that line felt like it might have a chance to cut through to like register with some of the people who he was speaking directly to. Who knows if it will, but hope steered you in that way. I mean, he also had two incredible performances over the past two days. You mentioned the airport. I mean, his performance being accosted in the airport was one of the most impressive of political feats I've seen on the film in a while. And also, let's not forget, the most, my favorite thing he did yesterday was sit behind Josh Hawley when he was giving

his speech and his posture without with two masks over his face. His posture said more than Holly did in that, in that limited amount of time. But you mentioned the piece that you wrote about Romney. I thought it was really interesting just to look at your, let me look at your author page on the Atlantic, we initially asked you to come on here to talk about a piece that was titled The Resistance's Breakup with the Media is at Hand. We're talking about Trump and the media. We talk about it all the time, but it was, you know, it's a media story more or less. And then the next is the bitter reality of the post-Trump GOP. The headlines are sort of ramping up here. And then,

like you said, the moment that you published that piece, I mean, just everything goes to shit. You talked metaphorically about the world burning in your piece on media. I mean, were you, as someone who covers, you know, the Republican Party a lot and has covered the Trump White House and people in it a lot, how would you, well, just I'll ask it personally. How did you feel yesterday? Would you say that you were shocked, surprised? I mean, like, what was the, what, how did it, how did you process everything? Yeah.

I mean, this is like a very different conversation than the one that, you know, we probably all thought we were going to have when we were first talking about this. Yeah. I guess like I actually, and this is kind of surprising to me because I am not, and I don't think that this is necessarily a virtue of mine, but like I'm not somebody who gets angry a lot about the stuff that I cover. Like when I see the hypocrisy or bad behavior by politicians, I don't get, that's just not the emotion that it triggers in me.

I definitely am eager to expose it and write about it and, you know, all of that stuff. but I just don't get personally angry. Like, I'm often sad by what I see in the news. I'm not always angry. I was actually really angry yesterday. And it's a weird feeling for me. And I almost feel like it's like not, it's like a confession against interest because I don't think it's like good for me as a reporter to say that I'm like angered by the,

the figures that I'm covering necessarily. But like, it just felt. And I think the very first thought that I had and I tweeted this, which also is never a good idea to tweet the first thought that you have. But when I first saw the image of the breach at the Capitol, you know, it was before they got inside the building, but they had broken past the first few layers of security, I tweeted something like, this is what happens when a political party indulges the worst instincts of its base over and over and over again. And that was the thing that I kept thinking about. I thought about, you know, I wrote a entire book about the Republican Party five years ago, been covering the Republican Party since I, you know, sat at a desk near Bride. in at the Daily Beast. And like, it's just, it now feels so inevitable that this is where we would end up, that like,

as it turns out, the chickens do come home to roost, right? When you lie to your voters constantly and convince them that there are these conspiracies against them and, you know, humor the worst people in your party, eventually you get to a point where there are these violent, scary, terrible episodes. and you can't just wash your hands of them. And I think that what made me angry was not just what was happening, but also seeing all the Republicans who had kind of flirted with this and indulged it and encouraged it, you know, then tweeting,

violence has no place in our politics. And enough is enough. And even like in the last 24 hours, the kind of resignations from people in the Trump White House who suddenly realized that he shouldn't be president, two weeks before he's out of office. Like all that stuff, I don't, I just, I don't know. I just, I think my, my personal reaction was I was just angry.

David and I were talking about this earlier. Do you think there will be any consequences, if any, within the party for Josh Holly and Ted Cruz based on the events of yesterday and then how they voted last night? It's a good question. I do. I mean, I don't know what the consequences will be, but, you know, Ted Cruz already has kind of suffered consequences from his being kind of this extremely, you know, and this is probably underselling it, but to a lot of Republicans in the Senate, seem as kind of this obnoxious

gadfly, who's constantly grandstanding and showboating and deliberately kind of messing up the work that they're supposed to be doing. You know, you go all the way back to the government shutdown that he kind of orchestrated in, I think, 2013. You know, know, he had a lot of bad will with his colleagues. And that bad will did hurt him when he ran for president in 2016. If you'll recall in the 2016 primaries, it kind of came down to Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. And there was just no effort at all by the institutional Republican Party to back up Ted Cruz because they all hated him, right? And so I think, and that stuff does matter, right? Like that stuff, that stuff has consequences.

He, you know, he almost lost reelection in Texas. He ended up pulling it out. But again, so I guess to answer your question, I think that Josh Hawley certainly has like fully now emerged as a new figure of loathing for a lot of the more establishment Republicans in the Senate. And how that will affect his career, I don't know. But I do think that he's going to have to deal with the consequences. I don't see, for example, you know, future. you know, Mitch McConnell in the future giving him like really ideal posts on the committees that he wants or, you know, a lot of Republicans going to campaign for his reelection. That said, maybe he doesn't

need that. Maybe he thinks that he can follow the kind of Donald Trump path and circumvent the establishment altogether. I think that that's kind of what he's thinking right now. Yeah, I mean, he's got four years. I mean, really, not even that, three years. I think the timeline for him is pretty clear. Cruz is a really interesting one because he clearly thinks he's going to run for president again. But he's probably in part because of the feelings of other people in the party. He's sort of doubling down on it. You know, he's like the, I was, I was looking at, I was looking at Breitbart's Twitter feed the other day. I hesitate to say. And when was the last time many of us discussed Bright Bart on a media podcast, right? It's been a while. But the way that like,

when Herman Kane died, you know, like somebody else like bought his account and took it over, like, Ted Cruz has functionally done that with the husk of the Bright Bart Twitter account. Like he's just, like there's, the whole account is videos of Ted Cruz, like, like, like, you know, just like, like, or rating. You know, it's the craziest thing. But he's, he's figured out that this wedge is the wedge that's going to work for him, if anything, will. And, I mean, I think maybe the question is broader. Obviously, there were a lot of congressmen and women who voted to, to, to, I mean, voted against, uh, reality, we should say last night when it, when it came to counting the ballots. And, and all of them were not going to face some sort of very specific.

at consequence. But, I mean, is there any reason to have conversations about whether or not the Republican Party at large will readdress their relationship with reality over the next year or so? Is that a conversation worth having? Yeah. It's a good question. I mean, you know, I feel like after the election in November, when Donald Trump lost, I was waiting for them. the moment where like the Republican Party had its reckoning and the, the recriminations began and the debates about where the party should be headed began. And it never happened, right? And I think it was partly because down ballot, a lot of the Republicans actually overperformed, you know, and Donald Trump lost, but not by as much as, you know, a lot of people thought he would. And so Republicans sort

of skipped the whole like reckoning phase, right? I think that reckoning is now happening. I think it's the combination of what happened at the Capitol, which was just kind of a visceral demonstration of what happens when you, you know, are constantly inciting your base in the way that they have been. But also the fact that they lost the two Georgia races, right? So the Republican Party now is out of power completely, bitter about it, and fighting with each other, it first, for the first, time really in four years. I think we're going to see now the Republicans actually kind of airing their grievances from the past four years, right? What I don't know is where that leads, right? So maybe we're going to see a reckoning. I don't know if it means that the Republican Party decides to ground itself in reality and return to something more resembling kind of a sane,

reasonable party, or if that reckoning and debate leads in the other direction, right? I mean, the problem is, like, all the incentives now are not for doing what Mitt Romney is doing. Mitt Romney gets to do what he wants to do because he has a unique position of being in his 70s and not really caring about whether he's reelected. And plus, he's, you know, a very famous Mormon politician in Utah and, you know, constituents like him more than Donald Trump for the most part. So, you know, he's in a unique position. When you look at the rest of the conservative media apparatus, it's, you know, I think Ted Cruz,

this is kind of sad to say, but I think he's reading the incentives right. And, you know, I saw Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz both did not back down even after what happened at the Capitol. And Josh Hawley, I think even earlier today, put out some kind of statement saying, you know, I will never apologize for giving voice to the millions of voters who have questions about the integrity of the election. I mean, you know, whatever nonsense he's saying, but he clearly has read the playing field and decided that this is where he should be. And he might end up being more or less right. Let's talk about your pre-catastrophe piece in the Atlantic, which David and I both read

with some interest. Take us back to 2016. Donald Trump gets elected. And reporters, you write, were recast in the popular imagination as resistance heroes fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. What material benefits did that bring to the Washington Press Corps? And more importantly, what did it bring to you, McKay Cuff? Yeah, I had a phone, I had a conversation with a friend the day after the election who's not in politics or media or anything. But, you know, we were kind of just like, wow, can you believe this just happened? Can you believe Donald Trump? The conversation that everyone in America was having the day after the election. And, you know, we were kind of just like, wow, can you believe this just happen? And he said sort of bitterly at the end of the conversation because he sort of understood how this

would work, well, this is going to be great for your career. And he, I kind of knew he was right. And, you know, I have a specific reason for that, which is that a couple years before the election, I wrote this extensive profile of Donald Trump where I, we don't have to get into the whole story, but basically I was supposed to interview him on a flight from New Hampshire back to New York on his plane. And there was a blizzard in New York. And so the flight got rerouted to Palm Beach, where I ended up spending kind of two very bizarre days at Marilago with him. And I wrote this story about him that, like, was very widely read in part because Donald Trump hated it and freaked out and attacked me on Twitter, which, you know, like, I think by now we, hopefully most of the listeners,

at least at this podcast, understand, is mostly a badge of honor for reporters and, and, A lot of reporters like kind of, you know, beg for that moment where Donald Trump is going after them because it's a great thing for their career. So anyway, that had happened in 2014. So when Trump won, you know, became president, it immediately just opened a lot of doors for me. You know, and probably would have anyway just because I'm a reporter who covers the Republican Party in conservative politics. But, you know, I started getting invited onto late night shows.

And, you know, I got this job at the Atlantic. I don't think just because of that. that piece, but certainly they were excited to have me there. I was at BuzzFeed News before. And I, you know, I was giving speeches around the country and getting invited on TV. And, you know, like, I was not alone. Like a lot of reporters, I guess not a lot of reporters. A very certain class of Washington reporters from elite outlets had this experience, where if you were somebody who was seen as kind of an adversarial reporter covering Donald Trump, it created a lot of career opportunities for you because there were suddenly millions and millions

of people paying attention to politics in a way they never had. They were overwhelmingly kind of liberal resistance-type people. And they wanted reporters to be their kind of crusading heroes in the briefing room who were going toe to toe with Sean Spicer or whoever, Sarah. how it could be Sanders, whatever. And so, yeah, it created a lot. It is frankly very, you know, lucrative for a lot of reporters. But it also, I think, you know, the more savvy reporters were clear-eyed about what was happening. But I think a lot of reporters also did like a little bit get high on their own supply, you know, like a lot of reporters started to buy into the idea.

Imagine that. Well, just like, you know, we started by into the idea that we were these heroic figures, you know, like standing up for democracy. And that's just never a good place for reporters to be. That's a good journalism is not produced from that place, I don't think. Well, it's funny. I mean, you dropped the word resistance in there. But I've noticed, especially in the last year or so, certainly throughout the campaign, some combination of Twitter and podcasts, whatever media age we're in.

And just sort of the maturation of the Trump term will, call it that has turned journalists into a sort of accidental resistance, right? And I know that there's probably some people on the right who will, you know, who could take this exact same argument and push it into a really problematic area. But like the way that like Olivia Nuzzi, who you quote in your piece writes or pool reports, you know, the way that, I mean, just Daniel Dale on Twitter like full stop, Jim Acosta and in many, his book, especially, by saying things truthfully, by using honest words in a very, in a very deliberate way, people like you have become not heroes of the resistance because you're at odds with people who are not telling the truth. I mean, do you,

I guess, I guess my question is this. Do you think that there will be a corrective and do you think, I mean, could you imagine getting a memo from your boss in three months that's like, hey, we got to start talking differently on social media because we can't just call everything bullshit and use the word bullshit anymore? I mean, is that, well, will we correct? Will we, will there be a corrective? So I actually kind of hope not, right? But what you're saying is true because part of this is just structural. Like the fact was we had an unprecedentedly corrupt and mendacious person in the White House, right?

Like he was lying all the time and he was doing extremely corrupt things in really brazen ways. And so, you know, to cover that White House was to write about things that were really bad and really obviously bad. And so, yeah, so, like, some of this was kind of accidental. You just end up becoming kind of a resistance hero by covering that stuff. But then, of course, like, a lot of reporters, a lot of my colleagues, like, leaned into it very deliberately. And there were moments where I did, too, like, where you just kind of, like, you realize, like,

well, look, the kind of MAGA right is never going to care what I write. You know, they don't, they don't believe any news that's not. coming from places like Fox News or Breitbart. And so you have this temptation. Olivia made this point, like to pander to your audience a little bit, right? Not that you would change the content or substance of what you're writing, but to kind of play to the crowd a little. And so I do think there was some of that happening.

Your question about going forward, that was actually the original question that sparked this idea for the story, because I do have real questions about whether, like, reporters are going to be continued to, are going to be allowed to continue to avoid euphemism in the same way that they were in the Trump era, right? Like, I do think it's worth saying for all the criticism that the Washington press gets and, you know, a lot of it is very fair about how they handled the Trump presidency, we actually, a lot of us did and a lot of outlets did kind of change the way they operate. Like, they broke a lot of their old rules.

And part of that was good because a lot of the old rules were dumb, right? But, you know, the aversion to euphemism, for example, calling things racist that are racist, calling things that are untrue lies. Like, I think that's important. I don't think those words have the same magical impact that a lot of, you know, resistance types think they do. Like, sometimes when I'm just writing a story and I don't want to use the word lie 400 times and I just start using other words like falsehoods or whatever, I get people mad at me on Twitter. for not, you know, using exactly the terminology they want to use.

I don't know if it really makes that much of a difference, but I do think it's good. My question going forward is, will we be able to do the same thing for the Biden presidency? I think that hopefully we will at least, you know, I think that from like the management editorial standpoint, I think most of our editors are not going to abruptly change the rules now that a Democrats in the White House. But what I do think is going to happen is a lot of the new Twitter followers that I accrued in the Trump, the Trump presidency, or a lot of the people who are buying our books or watching us on cable news are going to be very uncomfortable with using those same tools

in the toolkit on, you know, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. You quote a number of people in the piece from Philip Rucker, the Washington Post to Amish Alcindor, and they all say, it's not going to be boring during the Biden administration. political news will not be boring. I'm not sure that is exactly right. I'm also sure not sure that's the right value. I think a bigger problem, and we may even get into the economics of news here if you want to, is there's just going to be less news.

Yeah. And the beat is not going to be the same because there's going to be less news. There's going to be less world rocking stories, we hope. and I wonder if that is going to change the job as much as anything with the resistance stuff going on. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think that's true. I think that's right. Like, Yamish made this point that,

you know, she made the case that it won't be boring. And whatever, boring is a subjective word, you know. Like, I think the real thing is that she said it's going to get more wonky, which I think is true. And I think the actual reality is that a lot of the news that's going to come out of the Biden administration is going to have to be kind of dug up and discovered by the press, right? So instead of, you know, a cast of two dozen people inside the West Wing who leak constantly every meeting and every, you know, moment of infighting,

it's going to be more like we're going to have to dig into the policies of the, you know, HUD secretary and what, you know, what are they doing wrong and what were the decisions that led to the, you know, it's going to be a lot more enterprise reporting and investigative reporting. And that stuff takes a lot longer. And so it means that there aren't going to be daily scandals. I mean, just most likely, right? Who knows? Maybe Biden will turn out to be like a completely different figure.

But he's been in politics for a long time. And I think what we understand about Biden is that he's very. much about kind of following the rules and, you know, following tradition. And so his administration is going to be very conventional. So I do think just the much slower pace of the news cycle is going to change the way Washington coverage happens. I also think that it could end up with a lot of really stupid news cycles, right? A lot of like if you're not doing the wonky investigative reporting, maybe it's, you know, three-day debate. over whether Jill Biden should call herself Dr. Biden, which we already have seen.

So in a way that feels almost like a luxury right now that we could like devote that amount of attention to something so silly. But I do think it, you know, that's a real risk of this era is that we end up focusing on extremely kind of lame controversies just because we're desperate for something to write about. And you know, you know, my heart is, is in the book publishing world. You talk about all the big book deals that have come out of this presidency. And obviously, it won't be the same thing.

But there will still be big book deals. Let's be honest. If you had to, if you were trafficking in book futures, if you were trying to, if you were going to pitch a book and forgive me if you're actually pitching a book and you're going to step on your own toes. If you were pitching a book tomorrow

that was going to come out a year from now, what would you, what would you be pitching? I was going to say, so should I not just recount the conversation? I've had with my age in the last, you know, 48 hours. No, it's a good question. Like, I, well, first of all, I will say that I'm kind of shocked by how many Trump books are in the works right now.

Like, I really kind of thought, and I mean, David, maybe you have some insight. I thought that, like, that gravy train would be done by now. But, you know, Philip Rucker, when I talked to him, he was like, oh, yeah, I'm getting ready to take book leave because I'm working on my sequel to. the last Trump book I did. So I don't know how long the appetite is for that, but maybe it's, you know, maybe it lasts another year. It kind of probably depends on how omnipresent Donald Trump continues to be in our politics. You know, like if I was, you know, in the abstract pitching a book, I mean, frankly, and this is kind of the problem, like still some of the most

interesting stories and dramatic stories are still on the right, right? Like, I mean, Donald Trump is going away. The Trump movement isn't going away. is like, I'm using like the lamest like punditry that every, you know, every reporter, uses now. But like that movement is going to be around. And the stuff that's happening in the Republican Party and conservative politics is still really unprecedented. And there are probably going to be a lot of kind of dramatic and important storylines

to cover there. But there will be stories, you know, I'm sure we'll see a biography of Kamala Harris in the next couple of years. I'm sure we'll see a number of Biden biographies. There will probably be books about, you know, inside the Biden response to the pandemic, like the, you know, kind of inside the White House. I'm sure Woodward is going to have, you know, squeeze a couple books out of the Biden presidency. So, you know, there will be a lot of the kind of traditional ones. There will also be campaign books, you know.

I am interested to see what the 2020 campaign books look like because it was such a weird, different kind of campaign season. But yeah, I don't know. David, what's your answer to this? Because you know this well better than I do. The short version is, I mean, Philip Rucker wrote a massively bestselling book, right? I mean, if you wrote a bestselling book about, you know, a one-day flash in the pan, someone would pay you a lot of money to write a sequel, even if it came out a year later. I mean, and I do think that there's an acknowledgement within the publishing world that a, that a Trump book that's, that's too late and that's already been written, is still probably going to sell better than a Biden book, you know, there's still be an appetite for these things. I think there'll be less of them.

I think some people were probably also a little bit late to the market, but their profile is big enough that it's, you know, the deal announcement is still feels like big news, right? It feels like news now. It might not feel like big news when the book comes out. But yeah, I mean, it's it's kind of, it's kind of amazing. It's kind of amazing. But there's been a huge boon in the publishing world just in covering Trump in general, just like in the journalism boon. The difference is book publishing, you know, these books, sometimes, the books come out two years later, and we see it over and over again when Trump's not involved, that you pay a lot of money for a book that doesn't matter by the time the book comes out, you know? So, I mean, like, every, I mean, there was a period of time where every feature story in the New York Times Magazine got a book deal, and most of those didn't pan out to be, like, really current at the time, you know, the books came out. So whatever, it's just the way publishing works. Um, you're, you're the piece that you wrote about Donald Trump, the first piece, I believe in the title. Now, I know this isn't necessarily your words, but you called it,

you referred to his campaign as a fake campaign. And as his presidency is winding down, I wonder, by the, by the, by the, by the, by the argument that you set forth, has the whole presidency been fake? Like is, and I don't, I'm not trying to get you in trouble here. Has, to what degree has, has he, has he gotten? Has this been a real presidency? That's a good, it's a good question. I mean, you know, that story, when, when I called it a fake campaign,

he wasn't running yet. It was 2014. And he was making a lot of noise about running for president. And kind of the point of that story was this is a publicity stunt, right? Like, don't take him seriously. He's done this for 25 years. He always pretends he's going to run for president. And it's usually to sell books or to juke ratings for, you know, celebrity apprentice or whatever.

And then it kind of, and then the story kind of probed why he did this. And the portrait I came away with was this kind of like tragic character who was obsessed with, you know, mainstream approval or elite approval that he never got. And, you know, I think that whole portrait kind of worked and has kind of been confirmed by the six years since then. You know, obviously I was wrong to say he was never going to run for president. But to get to your question, like, in a way, and I've heard this from a lot of people closing for Michael Cohen and, you know, Sam Nunberg, the kind of early people who were there when he launched his campaign. And they will say, like, you were more or less right in the sense that, like, he didn't think he was going to become president when he launched his campaign, you know, like the original plan was for him to run for the summer of 2015 and then get out in time for the celebrity apprentice to start up again. You know, that was the original plan. And then things kind of just got out of hand, right? And, you know, he was at the top of the polls. Then he just kept going. And in a way, the whole presidency has sort of been a publicity stunt, right? Like, he

never showed that much interest in being president. He never showed that much interest in the actual job of governing. He loved being president because of all the attention that it got him and the trappings of the White House and all and the, you know, all the deference that people had to pay to him. But like, yeah, like, it was the presidency fake? I don't know, because obviously the consequences were very real for a lot of people. But was this like, in a way, the presidency was kind of a quintessentially Trumpian enterprise, where it was all about him, it was all about attention and ego and building his other, you know, businesses in a synergistic way. And he overpromised and under-delivered like everything else he's done in his career. And now he's going to walk away,

leaving everything in kind of a catastrophic state for somebody else to pick up. You know, I think that follows the pattern of Donald Trump's career, pretty much. pretty pretty closely all right you could read mackay coppins at the atlantic where he will be writing articles maybe writing another book and much to david and i's work getting older okay thanks for thanks for coming on the press box thanks guys all right david i hope you caught mackay saying i think that's right about two-thirds of the way through that interview i didn't want to stop him but uh obviously a loyal listener of this podcast we will do funny twitter jokes and funny headlain lines when democracy is not being undermined in America.

But until then, he has David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. We're back Monday. I don't want to pretend. I know what we're talking about, but we do have ESPN reporter Don Van Nata, stopping by to talk about his new television investigation of Mantaito

and his career at newspapers. Plus, of course, more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. Later, Brian.