The Press Box - More on the Washington Post Bloodbath, Don Lemon’s Arrest, and the ESPN-NFL Deal

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and Joel discuss the layoffs at The Washington Post this week (00:43), whether there's any reason for people to continue subscribing to the Post (12:07), and when does The Washington Post stop being The Washington Post of old (22:46). They continue by talking about what Jeff Bezos has to gain from continuing to own the newspaper (28:21), before diving into the NFL-ESPN deal (34:53). After that, Bryan and Joel analyze Don Lemon’s arrest (42:46) and contemplate whether it concerns them as journalists (44:56). The show rounds out with a look at Tina Brown’s appearance in the Epstein files (54:50), and what's happening in the James Talarico-influencer story (59:28). All that and more, here on The Press Box. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel Anderson Producers: Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello media consumers. Welcome to Press Box Thursday. It's Brian Curtis. It's Joel Anderson. It is producers Bruce Baldwin and Isaiah Blakely. Coming up, how worried should we be about the arrest of Don Lemon? The ESPN and NFL media deal went through the Epstein Files and Tina Brown and a fascinating story about a Senate candidate and an influencer that takes place in Texas. But first, Joel.

We got to talk more about the Washington Post layoffs. Yeah, man. I'm not nearly done talking about this. Well, you guys, first of all, you guys did a great job talking about it yesterday. I mean, talking about a very difficult subject. I mean, it was informative and also just really smart and sensitive to the people going through it. I thought that was great. And your piece on it was great, too, about the sports section.

So for people that haven't read that, they should get them caught up on how a lot of this happened. And, you know, what we're all losing as consumers and journalists with the Washington Post Sports section going to lie. For those that need to be caught up, the Post laid off more than 300 journalists yesterday. Crazy. That's several newsrooms. Several newsrooms. There are about 800 in the Washington Post newsroom before the layoffs. Former postee Paul Farhe tweeted,

it's possible today's Washington Post bloodbath was the single largest one-day layoff of journalists in American history. Man, that's, I hadn't thought about it in quite those terms, but yeah, I would struggle, because there's just not even many places that have 300 journalists anymore, right? So there would only be a few places

that would be in contention anyway. So that's a hell of a legacy to leave, Mr. Bezos. This is a rally at the paper's headquarters today as the guild there tries to negotiate severance among other matters for those laid off employees. I want to start here. What do you make of what happened yesterday? Where is your mind at after watching all of those jobs just go away? A lot of things. It's the death of a dream for a lot of people.

I mean, just like you, I know a lot of people. I have a lot of friends that lost their jobs yesterday. And they went to the Washington Post thinking, I've kind of made it. Like, this is, you know, this is the height of American journalism. And I have a measure of security here that I don't have in a lot of other places. Like maybe they left a place that was doing pretty well, but you go to the Washington Post owned by, you know, depending on the day, the wealthiest, the second wealthiest person in the world. and you think, I'm probably going to be good for a long time, which is not, that's something that very few journalists have anymore.

And so there, as you guys just so eloquently discussed yesterday, I mean, they're heading into a job market that is horrible. Like, there's just, there's no way for all 300 of those people to get absorbed back into media immediately, right? So that's going to take a long time. And that sucks, and I hate that for them. I hate it for those of us who, you know, I don't want to work at the Washington Post, certainly now. But it's just like one of those places.

You're like, if I work there someday, cool. That would be really nice. That's quite a legacy if you have the opportunity to work there someday. And I'm, I've interviewed there before, and it felt like a big deal. Like, oh, okay, the Washington Post knows who I am. It's the final straw, for me, at least. what is the compelling reason to subscribe to the Washington Post right now, as you guys talked about. If I care about politics in a particular way, Axios, Politico, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, any number of other places.

But I'm a Washington, I'm a DMV resident. I want to read about the local news. I want to read about local sports. You know, I want to read about the high school teams, University of Michigan. Maryland. I want to know about the great high school sophomore coming up in Maryland who's going to be whatever. Where am I going to get that information from? How am I going to learn about what Montgomery County is doing? And it's, I think, you know, it's the latest example of newsleaders failing, like outright failing, like just fucking it up. Like just being horrible, like horrible

leaders. And shifting the burden and the blame to the people who followed. their orders. Right? Like, if, if those guys had any integrity, if those guys valued their reputation in any real way, they would have stepped down yesterday, too. They'd have been like, obviously what I did didn't work, the ideas we had, the plans that we had for this company, it did not work out. Obviously, I'm not the person to leave this place.

Like, we should bring somebody else in who has a different plan or somebody else who can talked about Jeff Bezos in a different way to convince them of a different plan in this newsroom. But like they're going to sit up there, lay off a third of the newsroom, and then convince people that they still know what the hell they're doing. It's preposterous. Utterly preposterous. Like, why does Matt Murray need this job? What is in it for Matt Murray other than the amount of money that's deposited in his account every two weeks? Yeah. I, what possibly, what possibly, Matt Murray ran the Wall Street Journal. Yeah. Matt Murray had his at-bats.

Like, why do you want to do this? Why do you want to be that guy on that Zoom call on Wednesday morning, telling your employees that you're laying a bunch of them off and they're shutting down the sports section? I don't, I mean, and I've quibbled with this with some other friends. I think that we live in a post-shamed society, and he feels like people won't remember this in a year or two. There's a lot of bad things going on.

And I'll still have a very prominent job. People are more inclined publicly to blame Jeff Bezos than Matt Murray. Not very many people know who Matt Murray is. And Will Lewis, too. I think if we're doing who's to blame power rankings, Murray is no higher than third. And he made me lower. He made me lower than that.

Yeah, right. Like, so yeah. And again, yeah, like, where's he? I assume he has friends in the industry that would hire him, because all these people who are at masthead people, they always, they just move to the next place. Like they fuck up someplace else and they go someplace else and people forget.

It's like the NBA coach on their fourth job and you're like, I'm sorry, did you, would you win playoff games at the previous three that I was aware of? Yeah, like, Doc River. I can lose forever,

you know? And so, yeah, so I think that he probably is like, this good money. Nobody's really going to blame me. I still have a shot to do something. I still have a shot to run the Washington Post.

And we can talk about this later. I don't think their goal is to succeed. But, you know, he can move past and people will forget about him. And he can just, you know, the people that are there are captive. You know, they're hostages. What else are they going to go do? So, yeah, he still gets to be the ostensible leader of the Washington Post or whatever used to be the Washington Post.

I struggle with coming up with secular grace for Will Lewis or Jeff Bays. Those. Yeah, man. I'm in, in, in Murray's case, it's like, I've heard that he has stabilized the newsroom a lot, even post Sally Busby. Remember, like, Sally Busby was not a well regarded. We've kind of now forgotten about everybody that came before these people because of what these people have done or have done. But a lot of people have said, stories are better now. They're better written now.

He has kind of come in. And, you know, the post, the part of the post that still works is politics, national security. That part of the post. It's or let's say not just works, but it's at something like what we would imagine a section of the Washington Post to be. Right. So there's that. And, you know, can he think in his mind, I'm not quitting because like I want to make, I want to do the best. If Bezos pulled the Kamala Harris endorsement and screwed up this newspaper badly, if Will Lewis had no ideas about how to innovate and help this newspaper at all, I can do something here in whatever,

limited way I can despite having to be the bearer of doom on the Zoom call. I don't know. But that's the best I can come up with for like why you still want this job. That's kind of like those folks that worked in the Trump administration and the first, the first administration, right? And they were just like, well, we need to put some guardrails on this guy. And so if I don't do it, you know, nobody will be here to do it. And I mean, that, that didn't work out. If that's what he, if that's the position he's in, I know he can never say it. But, you know, I'm not inclined to offer that sort of grace because I don't think it matters. Like, he's fine. He's got a job. You know, he doesn't deserve it.

Like, there's a lot of other people. And if, you know, and, you know, if he's hurt by this, well, you know, I hope the money is enough, right? I'm also, like, Lewis didn't show up yesterday. And I just, I continually, I'm just surprised at how. poorly, people who work in the media business. Like, there's a couple things that you want to do as a leader. At least I would, if I was like, I want to tell a good story

about what happened, right? Like, I want to tell the best version of what happened. Like, this is really difficult for me. I still believe in the future of this paper. And I know that this is tough for you guys. And I don't do this. You know, like, this is something that I don't want to do that we have to do it for the health of the paper. It might be

a lie. People might think it might be alive, but at least like, give them that, right? But you couldn't even be there to do that, dude. And I just, I'm always just done. Even when I remember when I got laid off, and I was just kind of shocked at, like, the absence of humanity in the process.

And I feel like this is the thing that goes over and over and over and media. And I'm like, what, like, we're supposed to be communicating to the public and not just to the public, our subscribers and to the newsroom. And you can't tell a good story about what's going on. You can't show up and fake it for, like an hour, dude. Like, I mean,

be real, man. Among the many mind-boggling things that happened yesterday, it is utterly mind-boggling that Will Lewis was not on the Zoom call. But there's nothing you were doing in the world that was more important than that. And let's throw up another one, at least as this morning, there's no article on the Washington Post website about the layoffs. We're just not covering this anymore.

Okay. Again, apologies if I missed it. But we're just going to put our hands over our eyes and pretend that 300 of the, of the roughly 800 employees didn't just walk out yesterday or be pushed out the door yesterday. Right. Can I ask you a question? So if you were, if you lived here locally, right?

And I know that you were subscribed to the paper because you're a good citizen in that way. But if you subscribe to the Washington Post today, what am I supposed to think? Like you just cut a whole hell of a lot of the things that like I was looking forward to if I was a newspaper subscriber. I was like, oh, the product is a lot smaller than it is. It's going to be less ambitious than it was. So what am I supposed to think today? Like, what are they saying to those people? Can I get a refund since I'm not getting a sports section?

Like, can I get a partial refund? Like, what is the case that they're making to people who have a subscription to hold on to it today? Let me answer your first question as a member of the post-customer service team. No, you will not be getting a refund. Even though we made the paper worse yesterday. Shaffer asked the same question. And by that I mean, Jack Schaefer, my old boss and spiritual advisor on Twitter, he's like,

sorry, what's the cell here? Yeah. You know, I had 800 journalists working for me as a subscriber. Now I have 500. Right. Whole sections are decimated or gone. What's the reason to subscribe to this paper? And the thing is, it's actually a terrible vice they put people like you and I in.

You want to support journalists because I saw people just like they did. back in 2024 yesterday saying, canceled, let me tweet out the picture, I'm out and journalists at the post are like, actually please don't do that because that's going to screw us up even more. Absolutely. You have every right to do that,

but please don't do that because that's going to make things worse. And I'm like, so what is our recourse here? How do we vote? How do people that don't have a media podcast register how pissed off they are today? You can't cancel the paper because that will mess up the lives of the people that are still there and still trying to do good work.

But you can't subscribe. What are you supposed to do at a time like this? Who was it? Somebody passed along some advice about maybe you get rid of your Amazon Prime subscription as a way and say, this is why I'm getting rid of it. I want to pass out along the people in case. That's something that interests them. That's one possible thing.

But yeah, other than that, I don't, yeah, I don't know. how do you register your discontent? Because again, I could, I'm a DMV resident. I just, I mean, I want to know about the stuff going on around me. Like the trends with the local governments have planned, all this other stuff. Like there's a huge gap now that is not being filled. And why would I keep giving you money for that? I want to, I want to pay for somebody that is willing to give me that sort of information.

I want to come back to something you said just a few minutes ago. I don't want to work at the Washington Post. Yeah. think about that oh yeah so think about think about saying those words i don't want to work at the washington post yeah i mean so prior to that what can i say about this i didn't want to work there because it didn't seem like a fun place you know like to be frank like even when it was being run well and the times were a little better like it didn't seem like a very fun place, but now, I mean, how could you ever possibly trust the leadership? Like, they've shown you

nothing. Like, everything they did before yesterday was bad. And then it's not like they cleaned it up and put on a good face yesterday, right? How could I trust those people? How could I ever work for those people? If you, if you're there, that's the quandary that many of our friends who are still there are thinking about the day. And that's what's going to be so hard is keeping those good people they have right now. What is if you're if you're there and if you have options, what's the case for you staying at the Washington Post? What's the what's the possible case? You don't know if your job's going to exist anywhere. I mean, the only other thing is that it's not great out there right now.

There's not very many other options. Right. That's it, right? And look, it's still in our very diminished universe, it is still, it is still, you know, up there on the power rankings, especially among newspapers. I want to diminish anything that people do with the Washington Post that are still there. Absolutely. By people, I mean the reporters and the editors.

They're working their asses off. But if you're there and you do have an option, you know, there's a lot of people like, imagine people who took the buyouts and then took another job last year. They're like, hell, thank God I did that. Oh, the people that went on to the Atlantic or the New York Times got the hell out of there. Like, they must feel like when there was free money at stake as opposed to just getting laid off. Yeah, man. And having benefits till April and then audios. Okay. I wonder if even then, because I mean, the thing is, it's tough to go into the job market at any point in journalism

in like the last 20 years. Like, you just don't want to be out here if you don't have to be out here. But back then, because at that point, it was clear that they were going in a different direction anyway, right? The things had sort of changed. And I wonder if they were just looking ahead. They're like, I don't trust this leadership. The trends aren't going in the right direction. Do you think Bezos is really going to be a generous, a generous leader when times get tough? Which I would have never thought anyway. But I wonder if those people were just like, hell yeah, and the Atlantic is right here.

You know, the New York Times wants me right here. I might as well do it. And again, you have to remember, like a lot of those people are walking out the door right after Bezos pulls the Harris endorsement, which chases off hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and after he neuters the opinion section. You learned a lot about your boss in those days and about whether you trust your boss. I mean, again, Brian, again,

not making a great argument for retaining your subscription, because again, it's like, oh, man, the opinion section. I'm paying for that now, too, right? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. I really don't. Like, and I don't have a good affirmative case

to make to anybody who's not a journalist who's not like us who's like, you know what, I care about the people that are still there. I want to see them do. I don't want them to be hurt anymore than they've already been hurt. I can't make the case. I'm sorry. People said that, by the way, about all the newspapers that Alden own too, you know, don't cancel because the hedge fund will make things worse for us if you cancel.

I'm like, you're just telling people like buy a product that got so much worse, continue to reward the people that own it. even if you're really just trying to reward the people who work there. We don't live in a society where that sort of charity is financially reasonable to ask people to do. Like, maybe the more financially responsible thing is to contribute to the GoFundMe for the Washington Post reporters and staffers who got laid off, right? As opposed to re-uping and getting a subscription. But, yeah, the Alden things makes a little bit more sense because it's sort of a nameless, faceless, they're just bad. you know, like they're, but again, you're hurt, even with the old example, you're hurting the

journalists who are at the Denver, who at the Denver Post, right? Like, you know, they're journalists too, right? They're just, it's very clear that those people are victims, right, of victims of capitalism. This is a little bit more complicated, but even then it's just like, yeah, I don't want to hurt those people, but I don't want, I don't want Jeff Bezos. I don't want Matt Murray. I don't want Lewis, Will Lewis to feel like, you know, my subscription is affirming what they're doing because I don't know how they were reading it, but I don't think that they know how to read the room. So I don't want to affirm whatever their worst impulses are here. It's not that much more complicated. Fair. Fair. Fair. Point. Some scenes from a mass layoff, Martin Wheel, who has worked at the

Washington Post since 1965 was laid off. He worked in Metro. He actually heard the report of the Watergate break-in over the police scanner. Eric Wimple's profile in the Times today says that 25 years ago, the post Metro staff had 200 reporters or thereabouts. Wow. After the layoffs, it had fewer than 20. Unbelievable. Lizzie Johnson, foreign correspondent, was laid off while reporting from Keeve.

Her post really resonant. People that don't follow John. journalism sent me that tweet yesterday. Like that, the way that she was abandoned over there in a war zone, essentially, that broke through to a lot of people, too, yesterday, including people who don't necessarily follow journalism news. Same fate befell Shavano Grady, who tweeted, it's been the honor of my life to serve as Washington Post Bureau Chief in Ukraine.

Cairo Bureau Chief Claire Parker tweets laid off from the Washington Post along with the entire roster of Middle East correspondents and our editors. Hard to understand the logic. And that's not including the entire sports staff minus three people who are going to stay there to cover sports as a societal phenomenon or whatever the wording was. You also saw Peter Finn. This came up in New York Times piece who edits foreign.

Yeah. Is that actually, if you're just decimating my staff, if you're leaving people behind in Ukraine, I'm out too. Please lay me off. Yeah. You know what? I mean, that is the honorable thing to do. I hope he's okay.

Like, I hope that, you know, whatever his rebound is, he has a soft landing. But yeah, I mean, that's an honorable person, a person with a leader with integrity. You know, that's, yeah. I mean, I don't blame. I mean, what is he staying there to do? Also wanted to draw people's attention to this.

There was so much blood on the floor at the post yesterday that what happened to the features and arts coverage might have been overlooked. Oh, man. I'm seeing some names here. That section was also pulverized. Jonathan Fisher. Yeah. Former Slate.

From Slate, Stephen Johnson, their editors who were in charge of much of the coverage of what used to be called the Kennedy Center. Oh, man. Laid off yesterday, TV critic Lily Lufbroe, laid off multiple critics laid off beyond her. Oh, man. That department, many features and arts, went from about 60 people to about 30 on Wednesday. And one person told me, I'm not sure if we're covering arts anymore. That's where that is.

By the way, those people resided on the eighth floor, which was the same floor as the sports department. Oh, man. What a great town that's going to be. Yeah, that's a graveyard right there, man. That would be spooky to have to go up there on that floor. So I wanted to talk to you about this, David Marinus, longtime post. had a quote in a big New Yorker story yesterday where he was talking about this idea of if you cut the paper this much, when does it stop being the Washington Post? Like, what's the point where you say this thing still does a lot of the things the old post does still does a lot of them quite well?

But when does it stop being the post? That's a great question. I mean, you know, I mean, I don't think it's the post until the door closes and they stop, you know, they stop publishing, period. Like it all, that's when it stops being the post. That's when it stops being the post. Like even, even if you, even if you amputate, you know, you're still, it's still the same. It's still the same thing. Are there any limbs left to amputate?

Yeah, they don't have very many wins. But, you know, but I mean, they're, there's still the post. But, I mean, it's just, you know, any. great thing can become not great. Right? Like anything, any great thing can become diminished. I mean, America, you know, right? There's a lot of things, um, degrade over time, but you don't stop calling them what they are until it's officially over.

And, uh, you know, maybe also by calling at the Washington Post, we breathe life into the idea that someday it can, it can be reborn again, right? Like, like, it can become the Washington Post that it was. Like, it's, it doesn't have to, this can be reversed, you know, in the most optimistic world there is, right? Eventually, it could be rebuilt, but I mean, we don't know, but I'm not giving up on it becoming the post again. And staying the post until other, until other notice. I hear you. The reason I ask is because, you know, newspapers other than the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, they don't really go away anymore.

Yeah. they just slowly get cut back or quickly get cut back. And so you wind up with this organism that's half alive or a quarter alive. And you look at it and, you know, I think about that with the LA Times all the time. Like there is, there is a thing called the LA Times. I suppose we can still call it the LA Times until it stops publishing it all. But man, it's not the LA Times. Yeah, and there's still like great reports.

You know what I was thinking about when you said Sports Illustrated? We still call Sports Illustrated Sports Illustrated, but it's not Sports Illustrated, even though there's still some great people there. There's still great people. We made a flip comment about that the other day, and I felt bad about that because I'm like, if you worked at Sports Illustrated and you heard me say, you know, Sports Illustrated doesn't exist anymore. It does exist.

And there are great people working there doing good stuff over there. They're doing great work, doing good stuff. The Pat 40s, everybody else. But again, like, I think everybody, would understand that it's not the Sports Illustrator that was of the 90s, right? No. And we've seen people do this in sports departments. I mean,

that, that to me was part of what shot me so much about the post because the newspaper playbook is we'll gut the sports department. We won't replace people. We'll cut your travel. We'll take away all of your tools of putting together a great sports department. But we will still have something. And it will just sleepwalk enough that people who are true believers in the paper will

keep subscribing because I'll open it up and hope it's going to be good today. Even if the people who are, you know, charged with putting it together don't have much of a chance to make it good. What if I want? What's so different here? What if I want to read about the nationals, man? They just won the World Series a few years ago. Like, what if I want to read about the national every day or just follow them? Like, what I mean, again, there's plenty of people out there doing it.

I'm sure of it. You know, there's substacks, you know, independent blogs. know, the journalists that are out there covering it. But like usually for me, because I'm of a certain age, I always started with the local newspaper first. Right. And yeah, I mean, I haven't, maybe I should look it up and, you know, before, but like the Anthony Davis trade. Like, when Anthony Davis and Trey Young finally get a chance to play together at the Verizon Center, like, who's going to write that story? Yeah, Dan Steinberg tweeted about that yesterday. Like, What's the, oh, big post story on the Wizards beat, which is not exactly, you know, the highest traffic beat.

If we finally have this huge story, it probably leads to the paper today, you know, if not, it's not a Super Bowl story. Something you're like, now what do we do? Who's going to figure that out? I guess we just cede that to the, you know, basketball podcast just like the people at the ringer. And that just doesn't exist on a local level, at least like it once did. Right. I mean, yeah. And then again, I mean, there's just no hope that we're going to get any.

I mean, this is what I'm just one, like the University of Maryland. Like what, they're sitting here thinking of Georgetown, like basketball? Like, what are they, what are they thinking about today? Like, how, how is our, how's our information going to get out there? Like, who's going to be covering our games? Is anybody going to be covering our games anymore? I feel Maryland was the real prove it beat in the sports section. A lot of, yeah, a lot of people got started there, man.

That was like Albany is to New York Times. You know, you got to go to Albany first. got to go to college park before we send you to cover the commanders that give you one of the choice beats over here absolutely i mean but it's a big it's a it's a it's a big 10 university a major program here they play all the big schools like who's going to is anybody going to cover that here's another question i was wondering about yesterday maybe this has no answer but at least we can talk it out what is in it for jiff bezos at this point oh man why why does he want to own the Washington Post.

So I've been thinking about this. And in the middle of all this, I was reminded of how Jeff Bezos ended up divorced in the first place. And if people go back to 2019, the National Inquirer published a trance of private text and photos,

Dickpicks, maybe, of Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, who was in his girlfriend. Do you remember this embarrassing text? I love you a live girl. I will show you with my body and my lips and my eyes very soon. I mean, it must be okay. I did not remember that. And thank you so much for putting that back in my head. They got, they got. Think about what has befallen the Washington Post.

Yeah, right. Yeah. And you know, and at the time, reports suggested that his now wife's brother, a huge Trump supporter, was the source of that information, right? And so the basically that the new, the national inquirer was pursuing this story with Trump's, quote, knowledge and appreciation and Republican operatives who, quote, think Jeff gets up every morning and has a meeting to plot its next diabolical attack on Trump. Okay. So when I think about all this stuff, this, this change in course, and in concert sort of like all the ether around the Epstein files and how much blackmail and bribery seem to motivate a lot of what happens around us, it makes sense that Bezos isn't worried about trying to sell it, that he's either actively or passively allowing for the decimation

of the paper. That, like, if you've already sort of kowtowed bent the knee to Trump and you know that Trump is paying attention to you, he already is inclined and not like you, doesn't trust you. And if you sell the post to somebody who makes it better, you could see Trump getting mad at Bezos for that. I guess. You don't think that's a part of this? I mean, I, I'm completely willing to entertain the decimation of the paper part of it.

Okay. I just think if he got rid of it, I'm not sure that Donald Trump would be like, see, this is what happened. You sold it. Now they're attacking me again. Now the opinion section is a real opinion section again instead of a tame opinion section. But I get, but then if that's not it, then none of it makes sense because you don't want to spend any money on it. It loses a lot of money.

Which is money. You're not getting any adaboids. anymore for like saving a newspaper, which he certainly was getting at the beginning of his ownership. There's no way they turn a profit now, right? Like, I mean, what you've tried to do, like, maybe, I assume cutting all that salary was an attempt to try to call back some of that money. But there's this when you balance that against, would they're sure going to be another

loss of subscribers? Oh, yeah. And all the other stuff. Like, there's no way for David Falconflick to report that number. How many people walk out the door? partly because I'm fascinated just by how many people are invested in the post as the post. Like if you're invested in this is like this is one of my three go-toes for Trump news, what happened yesterday may not affect you all that much.

Maybe perhaps it affects you more than you realize, but like you're going to open it up and find your Trump stories today. That's not going to change. Those scoops are going to keep coming. But like how many people out there are like, you know what? This is a big reason why I subscribe to the post. Yeah. And you've gone too far. The book section, the sports section, Metro, foreign, features. And now I've hit my breaking point and I'm out. I just, I just, I really, really interested what that number is. I know that a lot of people don't read the paper like this anymore. But you, you probably, I mean, I, we're very similar in this way. When you got the newspaper, it immediately got pulled apart in your house and different people started reading different sections. But like the cool thing was that I'm reading. somebody gets to read sports section first, but I'm going to come back to the funnies.

I'm going to read, like, the culture coverage, and then maybe I'll read the Metro section or whatever. Like, the cool part of owning a newspaper is that, like, you've got this whole thing that covers the area you live in and covers people, places, and things that you care about. And, like, you've actively stripped that from people. So it's just like, again, what's the, you're going to give me the kind of coverage. And again, the Washington Post has great reporters. They still have a lot of people that are going to be doing fantastic work. But like, I mean, you're putting them up against all these other people that are doing the same kind of work and hoping that like, I'm going to come back to check it out. And I just don't see a lot of

people, the people that were invested in the future of the Washington Post wanting to stick around and see if it's going to see how it's going to work out. I just don't. Let's end with this tweet from Ross Barkin who writes a column for New York Magazine because this made me smile today. contrast to the Washington Post is the Wall Street Journal. Bezos should place a phone call to Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch. The WSJ has done bad things like Killed New York coverage, but still has robust reporting a functioning sports page and a very good arts and culture section. So we've reached the point in this news cycle where we are having strange new respect for

Rupert Murdoch. I mean, man. That, what a place to be. Rupert Murdoch. Now there's a man who knows how to run a newspaper. media is in a really bad place. It's like the example, the example for how to get it done is Rupert Murdoch, man. But yeah, I mean, that's just, I mean, that right there just tells you how bad it is out there for us.

And, you know, yeah, I mean, nobody who was smart would have thought that Bezos would be the long-term answer. Like, you know, because, I mean, again, billionaires, man, I mean, the best of them, this is still like a line item. I don't want to be bothered with that anymore. And as soon as things get tough, you knew that they'll walk away. But this is something worse. Like, you know, he's strangling that newspaper to death and full view of everybody. And the honorable thing to do would be to sell it to somebody. But I don't think I'm going to be confusing him with honorable anytime soon.

I was going to say, is that a word you've used anytime in the last couple of days or last two years when it comes to? the ownership with the Washington Post? Nah, not at all. Let's talk about the NFL ESPN deal. Okay. On Saturday, Andrew Marshand over the Athletic reported that government regulators have approved ESPN's billion-dollar blockbuster acquisition of multiple NFL media assets,

and the two sides close the agreement late Saturday. It's part of the agreement NFL will take a 10% ownership stake in the Disney-owned network, which is valued in the billions. ESPN will own and operate in a NFL. network become the official home of fantasy football by merging the NFL's product with its own and have the linear rights to the Red Zone channel. Okay. Not bad.

Not bad for ESPN and the NFL anyway, because of course the specter here was that Donald Trump would get involved in this merger. Because how many things in media now happen as a result of people being worried Donald Trump will get involved in their merger? Yeah, you got to sweeten the pot somehow, right? You got to indicate to him, I promise you that this is not going to affect what you want to do. Like, we're not going to be a thorn in your side, I promise, right? And so I don't know what kind of beat sweetener they had to do to get this done.

But I felt like Mike Florio had indicated that, like, there are ways to get around this or to make sure that, like, Trump wasn't going to intervene. We may not know what that is or how it went down, but I'm certain that like he was a prize of all this, right? Don't you think? Yeah. And being in business is these days is one of those, you know, that's, you've got to, you've got to know the ways, right? That's just what it is. That's the reality. I mean, we operate.

I mean, and something less than. than a democracy. And so if you want to do business in this country at a high level and it involves a government, you've got to make sure that the people that the regulators are on your side. You can't do anything that would cause them to question you to investigate you or anything like that. So yeah, I mean, so we can leave it at that, right? But surely they were notified and this was run by them and things went through. Who knows how that happened, but it happened. Remember when Clay Travis came out and said after the news of the merger originally came out and said, he came out and said, well, you know, we got to get rid of all the DEI programs.

President Trump must, must extract something or his FCC must extract some concession. Just a reminder that that's. I don't know who Clay Travis is. Never heard the name. I'm not familiar with him. In a related story, we learned Monday that Josh DeMorrow is going to be the new CEO of Disney. Yeah. I hit you up about that.

And I usually leave all the high level stuff like that to Matt Bellany. You and I are more down in the weeds, in the in the trenches to use the word used a minute ago. But it is interesting here that it's not ESPN chairman Jimmy Petaro. Yeah. Like was he would he would he would he would he have been considered like the front rudder for that probably or? I don't think so. Okay. I never heard it like that. In fact, when I talk to people, they thought that he was somebody who was on the list. Yeah. But not the likely person to get it. Okay. And if you think of what he's done at ESPN, it's pretty unfinished. Yeah. Like you and I are usually talking about the editorial aspects of. you know, canceling around the horn or enabling Pat McAfee. But the big save the network stuff that he's done is gone out and spent money on sports rights. NFL deal Super Bowl next year. We got the entire SEC, which only because national reporters don't know much about college football,

that is not a bigger deal, right? That is an enormous treasure chest of program. Absolutely. The entire college football playoff, NBA, including NBA finals, WW pay-per-views, premium live events, as they're known now. He went and spent a ton of money, and I think if there's anything he's done well or the thing, if you wanted to point it like, what's he done really well?

It's that he went out and said, okay, we're in a fight to survive. And the way we survive is we get stuff you absolutely have to watch. You want to want to watch and make ESPN indispensable to you, whether you get it through YouTube TV or you're going to subscribe to the app, whatever it is. Right. But,

and again, I think he deserve a lot of credit for going out and getting all those deals done. We've seen other media titans not get them done. Absolutely. Yeah. But it's unfinished because none of us know what's going to happen to any outlet in the media world, including ESPN. I mean,

I think the one thing about that NFL network deal, though, is that it kind of assures ESPN's future for at least, the near term, correct? I mean, because you're in business, I mean, now you are effectively in business with the NFL. That just means that- More than effectively. Yeah, you are in business with the NFL. You're their business partner, right?

You get to keep Monday night football, probably going to get to keep your rotation in the Super Bowl and, you know, broadcast super bowl and all that stuff. You may get more when the NFL renegotiates a deal in a couple years. Yeah. Yeah, you got the advantage of everybody else. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I would think that's part of the calculation. here. We're keeping what we got and we're potentially looking for more.

So, I mean, again, who knows about, you know, the future of everything, but like the NFL ain't going nowhere. And if you've got that, it just seems like that's a real, that's a real important piece of the foundation to be, to have going forward. So, yeah, like, I don't know, that kind of assures your future at least for, I don't know, another decade or so. two things we'll be looking forward to learning more about. One is staffing. Mergers usually don't turn into more jobs. Yeah, right.

And, you know, we can talk about Adam Schaeffert and Ian Rappaport and, you know, oh, do we, you know, how many insiders do we have? How many NFL reporters do we have? But what about camera people? What about behind the scenes people? Right. What about producers? Right.

That's going to be a fascinating question, number one. And number two is, I know this was 900 media ethics stories. go. But what happens when the NFL owns 10% of ESPN? Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, matter what everybody said, Ptaro said it, even Roger Goodell said it, but what happens? Imagine ESPN was working on a 10-year anniversary of Colin Kaepernick thing this year. Not that I know anything about that. So sick, but say something like that was in the works. You think that the NFL would be like, I don't know if we want you to do that. But see, I think that is genuinely fascinating.

Yeah. What they would intervene on or what ESPN would self intervene on, maybe more to the point. Right, right. Like, I don't know if Colin Kaepernick is off limits. I really don't. I generally would believe anything, you know. Again, yeah, I would love to hear like that pitch brought up. And then Jimmy Pataro and his whole crew like, okay.

How are we going to do this? Are we going to do this? Want to talk about Don Lemon's arrest? Yeah. Yeah, let's catch up on that. So, yeah, Don was one of nine people arrested for filming a protest at a St. Paul, Minnesota church that is reportedly led by an immigration enforcement official. Lemon in his role as a journalist accompanied a group of protesters who disrupted the service. And he then started interviewing some of the church members. And we got a clip here that we're going to place.

You can hear all this chaos going on in the background. So right now is kind of mayhem. We're not part of the activist, but we're here just recording on them. Did they explain you why they're here? They did not. They said that there is someone here at Easterwood, who is a member of ICE and he's a pastor of the church. Our church had gathered for worship, which we do every Sunday.

We asked them to leave and they, obviously have not lived. So this is what the First Amendment is about about the freedom to protest? I mean, it's unfolded and live right in front of you, man.

If you look at the clip and go look it up on YouTube, I mean, yeah, you can just see people having it out, arguing, debating right there in the pews. And later, Lemon, independent journalist, Georgia Fort and others were charged with conspiracy to deprive rights

and interfering with religious freedoms. The explanation for their arrest and the charges I've seen most cited frequently is that they're filming in the church, and this was on January 18th, disrupted the attendance constitutional right to practice religion. It's a very sort of arcane way of making the case here. So Lemon was taken to custody. A few days later, his attorney says this unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration,

will not stand on the other side. Pam Bondi, one of, you know, the Attorney General, one of our favorites, said Lemon and others charged in the case participated in a, quote, coordinated attack on the church. Brian, there's a lot to digest there. Does any of this concern you as a journalist, though? Pam Bondi, one of our favorites. I'm still, well, man, you know.

Still smiling on the inside. I don't even know if concerned is a right word anymore. Okay. How can we upgrade it? Are we terrified yet? Man. From press freedoms. You're ready.

You're okay. We're somewhere in that, you know, headspace. I mean, how many times do we have to ask a question is what Donald Trump and his administration are doing to the media the same as what countries that don't have functioning democracies doing to the media? Right. Right. Suing media companies. As a result of stories they don't like. or things set on the air they don't like.

Right. You know, taking away privileges from journalists, places like the Pentagon or the White House. Right. I mean, Hannah Nathanson of the Washington Post, again, it's a lot going on. Remember that? Oh, yeah, man, absolutely.

Devices seized. And now we are at, we're going to arrest the journalist. Yeah, I mean, I guess the thing is, because you're right. And that's why I kind of said, we're in something less than a democracy right now. But there's no guarantee that if you go out to do anything and you piss off a cop or a government agent or official that anything is going to really

protect you, right? And it's always sort of been like that. Like the law is whatever the cop in front of you says it is. Like I don't know if people knew that before in life, but that was something that I was educated on a long time ago when I first started to drive. There's a young black man in America. My dad said the law is what the cop in front of you says it is. Right. And like just live to fight another day, basically. But even more so, like, there's just been a real degradation of our protections. And so, yeah, like, there's, you know, yeah, people feel comfortable confronting journalists, arresting them, charging them in ways that would have seemed inconceivable five, six,

seven, ten years ago, right? And so it's an atmosphere ripe for all sorts of bad actors to take advantage of it, too. Does the administration think they can win standoffs like this? And related question, do they care if they win standoffs like this? So I'm curious because I don't think they care. As long as they make your life difficult. Like they can make your life hell and scare other people. And that's enough, right?

So it's the downstream effect. So you bring, you, you know, you bring in Don Lemon. He has his press conferences. You get, you know, a million television segments out. of this. And then what you're hoping is that people will do what you say. You flinch a little bit. You worry that your rights aren't your rights anymore. Right. And you and as and there's this sort of, you know, this generalized effect in the media that you're just like, oh, we're watching what we say. Yeah. We're watching what we do because we're not sure that the rights we think

we're guaranteed are actually there anymore, at least in the same way. If you were going to cover a protest in Minneapolis, right, right now or anywhere. Like, you wouldn't, how would you know how to conduct yourself? Like, how do you know that what you're doing would allow you to get away without getting arrested, right? There's no guarantees. No, I got no answer there. Yeah.

I got absolutely no answer there. Yeah. And arrests feels inevitable, doesn't it? That we would get to the arrest stage of this story. I was in Ferguson in 2014. 2015 when and I was right outside that McDonald's when West Lowry and Ryan Riley got arrested by the cops there and they were taken in nothing else to become of it but it was just sort of enough to kind of scapenter like huh what am I I guess I've kind of got to do whatever the cops say

I've got to do like that's not the first the first amendment has nothing to do with what I'm supposed to do when the cops are telling me to move or they're going to arrest me right and so But we've already kind of been in that world a little bit, but it's just so much more flagrant now. Why do you think they went after Don? Because this, like they arrested him days later, though. It's not like they arrested him on the scene of the church. Why do you think they went up to the time? It's not like a chaotic situation where we're arresting everybody in here.

Yeah. Which does happen during protests sometimes. We're not making differentiations between why you're here. You're in the wrong place as we judge it. So you're under arrest. Right. Why do they arrest him? It's a fascinating question because I thought about this when Mark Kelly was at the Ringer HQ the other day.

Because I'm like, you know, clearly what they've done is give this guy a ton of juice to fundraise, to be a spokesman, to go on television. And they know that. Right. And they've got to know that their chances of winning in court as they are with Don Lemon are pretty low. So you're creating, you're giving power to an administration critic or a journalist. in this case. And does, do they make that calculation? Does, does Trump say, you know what?

In the short term, I need enemies. Yeah. I need people to play off of. I need people that right wing media can go bonkers about. Right. And it doesn't really matter who they are. And if they come out the other side stronger, if they come out with more of a following,

people paying more attention to what they're saying, okay? I mean, does he even get to part? part two of that calculation? Yeah, maybe not. Right. And also, like, it's sort of a, if you're not, if you're inclined to side with Trump and MAGA, I'm sure that you could look at these group of journalists and activists, most of them black,

going into this church and harassing these good Minnesota folks going to church, it probably is like the kind of image that would be like, that's outrageous. Like you can imagine that like the images of that would probably could, could rather they're not going to give a shit about like your first amendment. They're like, I don't want these people running into my church and disrupting our service. So you could,

it probably plays well for a certain kind of person visually, right, on TV. I was weirdly thinking about this yesterday because I posted my story about the Washington Post sports section. I tweeted out. Yeah. And the first couple of hours, It's like mostly people that are interacting with that are either journalists or people that grew up in Washington and they're reading the story and okay, you know, like whatever their opinion is about it.

The second wave and then what became the overwhelming wave is people reply to that story and being like, as Joe Biden said, learned to code. Oh, the code to learn to code. First of all, even coders are having difficulty finding jobs now. So like, please stop. It's not a good example. aren't they getting swamped by AI? Like that's not a field that we can really go into now.

But it's just like, I'm like, there's this whole cohort of people out there. Ironically enough for the people that run the Washington Post of right wingers who are like, ha ha, Washington Post hurt. Funny, funny story to me. And it's just like, I wrote an article about sports writers. Like you're mad at the Nats writer? Yeah, man. And they're like, you know, the wotteness, all it was like, really?

you thought you thought the sports page was just you know brutally and dismally woke like that that's your whole take on this okay well but that's just that thing like we you just need enemies and it doesn't matter who the enemies are and it doesn't matter the long term strategic value of having that enemy it's just like okay here's here's here's the other person here's the person that has an unflattering image on fox news today that's next to sean heavy's head right and we'll go We'll figure it out later. The rest we will figure it out later. A lot of people were already inclined to hate Don Lemon.

Like, Trump has already gone after him. Don Lemon had that highly publicized falling out with Elon Musk a couple of years ago. So, like, he's got already a lot of enemies out there, people that don't mind seeing him get arrested. And, yeah, with the Washington Post thing, it's just like, yeah, they don't. Yeah, I hope, you know, the Bezos is or whatever, even though I'm a lot more cynical about why they're doing this. but like you are not going to make a brand new version of coat, bro. Like it's just not going to happen for you. Like those people,

they want the pure uncut Alex Jones level shit. Like they're not going to come to you. They're never going to trust you. That is going to fail. I don't know how many times people have got to try that out and think it's going to work. It's not going to work, my brother. But, or sister.

But yeah, that kind of pisses me up. I would, and so, and I heard Van, our friend Van Lathan, say this on high. learning that this was actually a miscalculation because Lemon is very good. Don Lemon is very good at drawing attention to himself. He's been in the media for a long time, a very experienced journalist, and maybe he could make this more of a fight and rally people to his side than people might think. I don't know. I'm skeptical. I don't know how popular Don Lemon actually is. I don't know how many people are inclined aside with him. But I felt like the Trump folks are like, I'll take any fight. Any fight you want to have, we'll have it. They don't really care about getting asked

it. I think that's exactly right. I think at the end of the day, I just don't, I don't think part two of that calculation exists. Yeah. Like, Don Lemon will be stronger. What does that mean for us? I'm just not sure anybody's thinking about that. Yeah. In advance. Two more quick things for you. Okay. I got a text the night the Epstein files. Oh, man. Yeah. Way to start. And the text was Tina Brown is in the Epstein files. Oh, man. my old boss. But then the text continued that Tina Brown came out of the Epstein files looking good, journalistically speaking.

There was a there was a couple of notes. She tweeted her, she herself, she's my old boss of the Daily Beast, by the way, that's why I was being apprised of this. She tweeted one of these at ourselves from 2010. This is Epstein writing to Peggy Siegel.

Why did you tell me to invite Tina Brown? She is sending me hysterical emails. Call me ASAP. I just spoke to her. To which Siegel replies, it's all coming from Tina Brown and her fury about punishing you. How can you neutralize Tina?

Wow, man. What a legend. That's how you want to be remembered, right? When it's how this shit goes down, right? Oh, my God. And Tina tweeted, while I am gratified to learn that I got under Jeffrey Epstein's skin,

just being mentioned at all feels like being splashed by the putrid wash of his venal world. I love what. That's very Tina Brown sent. too love this. That putrid wolf of his female world. I used to be able to do a better impression. That was

2011. The year before the files contained an email from Tina's then assistant, another person I worked with and sat not too far away from in the office. And apparently Epstein had talked about coming to Daily Beast headquarters

presumably to talk about some of the reporting the website was doing on him. And this is what Tina's assistant wrote. Mr. Epstein. If the meeting involves any discussion of Daily Bee's coverage, we will want to have the reporter on the story present as well. If you do wish to discuss coverage, please understand that the presumption of the meeting is that everything that is said is for publication and attribution. Thank you kindly. She signs the email. You hope you work for some. I don't,

we can talk more about what it was like to work about for Tina Brown offline, but you kind of hope at a minimum that you work for somebody with that kind of integrity. And it's a way to handle pushback on stories. And they're all not going to be like Jeffrey Epstein making the call. But it's the right way to me to handle a lot of those things. It's like, oh, you have an issue with it. Let's turn on the recorders. And let whatever you want to say, let's say it for attribution.

Yeah. Because I think that would, that just shuts down a lot of people because they, they want to talk about a lot of stuff, but they don't want to say that on the record. Absolutely. Uh-huh. Call their bluff. That's right. Yeah. So, okay, you have something to say. Great. Let's do it. Click. Is it any small wonder that, I mean, there's been so many Epstein emails that I've saved and hoped I could go back to and read.

And I assume that this was one of the real ones that he allegedly offered to help front some of the money for the lawsuit against Gawker. is it any wonder that he was right in the center of that thinking, you know, I want to punish journalists, right? This is one way to do it. And so, yeah, I mean, again, going back to the earlier story, this is, the Epstein stuff has really been revelatory to me in a lot of ways about, like, how the world is working outside of our, outside of our view. Like, and I'm trying to collect all my thoughts about this because I don't know if I want to write about it or whatever, but it has, shaking me in a way that I'm kind of surprised by. Like, I'm just like, oh, man, all this shit is going on outside. Like, the way things happen, the way people get jobs and media,

um, why some media, people talk to each other. Yeah. The way people have dinner with Woody Allen. Like, I learned a lot about that. I mean, so the Sunni prevent emails to, to Jeffrey Epstein, like just, yeah, man, it is, it has been jarring. And it's been kind of, it's been, it's scary in a lot of ways.

because, you know, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. Like, I just, you know, I believe in some, like, low-level conspiracies or whatever, but, like, the idea that, like, there's a cabal of pedophiles or pedophile curious people who are blackmailing people and holding a lot of, pulling a lot of the levers in the background. Like, that sounds crazy. And I think that's kind of what we're being confronted with a little bit here. And I don't know what that, what I'm supposed to think about us. Like, maybe being a misinterpreted.

rope is like the way to go. That's the only safe ground you can return to. Last item for you. Remember this James Tolariko influencer story? I've heard a little bit about it. Yeah. So for people who don't know, there's a big U.S. Senate race in Texas this year. Joel, do you know the last time a Democrat won a statewide office in Texas?

Any real Texas should. Ninety-four. That is exactly right. Yeah. They won a bunch of, actually, they went like, Like a lot like I'm sure like railroad commissioner, maybe attorney general, some other stuff, like a Supreme Court seat. Yeah, that would have been Bush's first election when he beat Ann Richards. So, but there were still a couple.

Texas, by the way, is a state that elects its entire cabinet. Yeah. So we're talking not just about governor and senator, but we're talking about all kinds of lieutenant governor, all kinds of statewide offices. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, real road commissioner is always like the fun one that I like to bring. Railroad commissioner, which is which has to do with energy and oil. Right? Right.

Yeah. This is a fun place. This year's Democratic Senate primary is going to involve James Telerico and Jasmine Crockett running against each other. But before that, it involved James Tala Rico running against Colin Allred, who dropped out of the Senate race in December and decided to run for Congress instead. Right. Jasmine Crockett and Colin Allred are black.

That brings us to the story. an influencer named Morgan Thompson posted a video about a conversation with James Talariko. Here's what Morgan Thompson said that Tala Rico said in that conversation. James Tolariko told me that he signed up to run against a mediocre black man, not a formidable and intelligent black woman. And I want to explain why this is problematic, especially as he shifted his current approach in the Texas Senate race. So the context here is that Tala RICO, according to Politico, was sending out, fundraising messages from James Carvel. Carvel has been anti-quote, quote-unquote,

wokeness. Yeah. And Morgan Thompson, the influencer, said, hey, I don't love that you're associating with a person who's throwing that term around because we know what that term is often used to mean. Right. So last month, Thompson was granted an off-the-record conversation

with Tala Rico. And if you watch Thompson's videos, you see all the messages that were put up from the Tala Rico people. There are a lot of receipts, as the kids like to say. Oh, yeah, receipts. And in this off the record conversation, Thompson said Tala Rico made those remarks. Huh.

Man. Now, it's an interesting story, right? Because there's no recording of that conversation. Man. It was nominally off the record, but I'm not sure how important that is at this point. I mean, there's a small media story. and, you know, the fact that somebody would not honor an off-the-record conversation. It's only off-the-record if both people agree.

You know? And it's only off-the-record till it's not. It's only off-the-record till it's not. And, you know, it's just so funny because, I mean, that, an off-the-record remark to reporters is how Ann Richards probably got to be governor in the first place. Back in 1990, you remember Clayton Williams, the Republican front-runner, made a joke about rape. Was that off the record? That was an off the record.

Yeah. It was an off the record conversation, allegedly. And somebody reported it. And again, his, you know, his numbers plummeted. And Ann Richards was able to prevail. And also he treated Ann Richards really terribly, like throughout the kind. He didn't shake her hand because she did alcohol problems previously, things like that. But so it's just interesting to like, yeah, man, the off the record thing coming back around in Texas, which could port 10 good things.

But yeah, I, man, I would, I would have thought that Tala Rico was smarter than this. Like, I don't know. Like, maybe just, he did deny it, we should say. He did not. Okay. He says, in my praise of Congresswoman Crockett, I described Congressman Alder's method of campaigning as mediocre, but his life and service or not, I would never attack him on the basis of race. Yeah. That's a quote of a statement.

That's kind of the thing. I just, I kind of feel like he's smarter than that and that maybe this is like, um, the influencer Morgan Thompson, who I don't know. is using some shorthand that was unfavorable to Tala Rico. What do you think? Well, that's the thing. We don't know the context. Yeah. We don't have a, we don't have a recording.

Yeah. We don't know, we don't know what was said. Colin Allred, on the other hand, has made a video about those alleged remarks. And here's what Allred said. All right. I understand that James Talleyco had the temerity and the audacity and the audacity. to say to a black woman that he had signed up to run against a mediocre black man meaning me not a formidable intelligent black woman meaning jasmine crockett let me just break this down

into a few segments here first of all let me just give you some free advice james if you want to compliment black women just do it just do it don't do it while also tearing down a black man already just worked out so there was a lot of uh there were a lot of vibes to that video that were really interesting former baler uh linebacker Tennessee Titan linebacker. Played the NFL. Absolutely. Tough guy.

This is, and of course, all the, you know, liberally minded folks on, on Twitter were just like, no, no, no, no, no. We're trying to win the Senate. Right. Can we figure out a way not to do this in such a way? I mean, just think of what happened here, right? Influencer makes a video, made multiple videos, in fact.

Colin Alrid makes a video. James Talarico then goes and has to, you know, defends it or says, I didn't say it and says, you know, clarifies that's not what I was talking about. Jasmine Crockett, of course, has come in on this. I mean, what a just utterly strange media story this is. I don't know about you, but one of the ways that I, and again, I read the Texas Tribune,

love the Texas Tribune, I read a lot of the Texas newspapers, but one of the ways that I've kind of kept up with this race, in other words, is through influencers. Like there's howdy politics who I don't know if she listens to this show but we would love to have you at some point we would love to talk to you because she does good good content

and really informative and clearly she knows a lot about what's going on because if what she says is true there's just a lot of infighting above the Texas Democrats right now about like who was supposed to run and who was supposed to sit it out and everything and so yeah it's just a

it's just a very messy set of circumstances that, you know, like, how bad could it be? Like, it's probably good that, like, the Texas Democrats have some attention on their race and a little bit of heat. I don't, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but I think the introduction of influencers into this who operate by different standards and you might have a misunderstanding about what off the record is, you know, that's kind of the interesting thing here. It's like, oh, yeah, Tolariko thought it was important enough to talk to this woman, an influencer, and talk to her off the record. And like, that's just, that's kind of new. Like, this is a new development and the coverage of

politics, right? It is, you know, there have been instances. I think we can go back and find. There's one famous one with Jesse Jackson and Milton Coleman to the Washington Post. You know, when, when you hear something on background or off the record that you then judge as a report, this is so important or this is so, you know, this people, especially people who potential voters need to know this, that I am then moving it to on the record. Yeah. On my own volition. Like, That's not unprecedented. The influencer part's interesting. And I would just say the generational, you know, political parts interesting, too.

Because James Talrico and Jasmine Crockett are politicians who are either very online. Yes. Or very interested in courting the online world. They understand how the game is played there. They're not John Cornyn. Oh, man, John Cornyn. They want to play in that sandbox. Yeah.

And, you know, they're, like I said, if an influencer says, you know, one, I'm interested in talking to you and two or two, I'm upset with you. And here's why I'm upset with you. Like, you know, they are, you know, the kind of politician, like, I'm interested in figuring this out. Like, this is important to me. This is part of my campaign. Yeah. They're very much creatures of the internet and like their fame and prominences in no small part because like you said, they've been very fluent in the language of the internet and knowing those influencers. And so, yeah, it's just like a really. fascinating new dynamic. Like, again, just imagine you work at the Austin American statesman. You've probably been trying to track down James Talleyco forever. Like, I want to do a sit down with James Talarico. And they're like, oh, we'll put you on hold. We'll put you on hold. And it was like, oh, he had off the record conversation with the influencer.

And it's like, no disrespect, but that's just like a change that we're all going to have to get used to, I guess. I hear you, by the way, on that by the old media versus influences, but I've had James Talley talked to the statesman without knowing. Like, he just talks to everybody. He's a big. He's like Beto.

Yeah, Beto. There you go. James Talarico has said yes to your interviewer. That's right. I think that's probably something that happened. He's Joel Anderson.

I'm Brian Curtis. Predection Magic. By Bruce Baldwin and Isaiah Blakely. Thank you guys. Instagram. Please follow us at Press Box Ringer. You follow me and Joel on Blue Sky. Under our given names, right?

That's right. Joe Anderson on Blue Sky. Yeah, I think it's Joel, Anderson. That's right. Yeah. Totally Anderson. I'm blue sky. We'd love you to tweet and retweet and skied and re-skied the podcast if you have a chance. Next week on the press box, we have a special guest on Monday? I'm just, I'm just, I want to make sure special guest arrives at ringer headquarters because that's where that interview is going to happen. So put it out there. Look forward to something special on Monday. Tuesday, Shoemaker's here. He and I will go over the

Super Bowl and Super Bowl broadcast Thursday. Joel's back. Can't wait to have more Luke warm the blah blah can't wait to have more lukeg with you joel see you guys like for you man