The Press Box - NBC’s Chuck Todd and The Athletic's Tim Cato

Episode Date: June 21, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker are joined by NBC moderator Chuck Todd. They discuss the format of ‘Meet the Press,’ weigh in on the impacts of moving to streaming, and talk through the media’s coverage of the Trump era (7:06). Later, The Athletic’s Tim Cato joins to discuss his piece covering the Dallas Mavericks and their front office. He talks about the process of writing and sharing the story, the resignations of Rick Carlisle and Donnie Nelson, and Mark Cuban’s response (39:07). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Guests: Chuck Todd and Tim Cato Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The NBA season is heating up and Kevin O'Connor and Chris Vernon have got you covered on the mismatch. They discuss all the news, the trends, and transactions happening around the league. They also offer their on-court analysis and occasionally get into heated debates. Check out the mismatch on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David, I have been cleaning out by office here in Orange County. Oh, no. And part of what one does when one cleans in office is to get rid of. of books.

Oh, okay. Take books to use bookstore, give some of them away that you can't sell. And part of that process is flipping through the books you're giving away to look for things you might have left in those books. Yes. Oh, yes. Is there any cooler category of stuff you didn't know you had than stuff you left in books? Oh, no.

Well, I mean, through must, I would say, like, most of our adult lives, like post-college lives, well, I'm not going to speak for you, but I can certainly speak for myself and saying that, like, shoving something in a book was about as functional as a filing system as I had. Yes. Knowing that it would probably be lost, but that it could be reclaimed someday in the future. sure. So yeah, I mean, so you can really find some gyms, right? I got a lot of like letters in there or just kind of, um, uh, just other keepsakes, you know, I mean, uh, there are certainly like receipts that are hilarious to find, just places where you were spending credit card money you didn't have way back when. Um,

and there's also the weird category of this wasn't something that you put in the book, but something that might have arrived in the book? Have you ever done the thing where you bought a book from a used bookstore on Amazon and it arrived with a note, like a thank you note? I've pulled some of those out of books years later I've been like, who is Jennifer? I don't even remember. It's just like, oh, this is just somebody from like ABE books or something. That's a really weird one.

They thought you were going to come back to them to all your used book needs online. The other one you find in the old ones is the publicity materials. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. When you got publicity books, sure. And I found one in a Calvin Trillen that was like, thank you from Scribner, whoever the publisher was. for this press copy of a book that came out in the early 80s.

Another one had a press photograph of Roger Angel, the New Yorker baseball writer, holding a dog, which I just love because it was like a black and white, glossy photograph that I guess the person reviewing the book would have been using for the newspaper they were writing for. And I also love that dog because only after you write like 20 books do you get to do the author photo with the dog?

Right? Like that's not your first book. It's not your second or third book, but it may be like book 15 that you are posing with the dog. I love that. The other category I found that was really weird was official letters.

Like, congrats on completing jury duty was often one that I found in a book. A bank statement from like 15 years ago. There was someone I found the other day. It's important documents. Yeah. Important documents.

because as you say, you're saving them. You're not throwing them away. I found one and it was a company apologizing to me for having sent something to me later than they should have. And they had enclosed $1, a dollar bill in the envelope. Oh my gosh. For my inconvenience. I found that in a book the other day.

That is fantastic. I will tell you the best one, though. So I went, as you'll remember, on my honeymoon with my wife to Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Yeah. This happened 10 years ago. And we got these, because you had to get visas to go in these countries, we got these beautiful stamps in your passport.

Like it took up a whole page and it was a gorgeous, colorful stamps. And I was like, oh my gosh, I will have these forever. This is so cool. Well, guess what? I lost the passport like two or three years later. I lost the passport. And of all the things I've lost in my life, I regretted that one so much. was I'm like, oh my God, you had one job and it was to keep this passport and you lost it and

it was this beautiful memory and you can never replace it. Well, let me tell you something, David. I was looking through a book called New Wester's, the West in Contemporary American Culture. No. By Michael L. Johnson. Oh, my gosh. Does that sound like a book that would have sat undisturbed on my shelf for the better part of a decade? Yeah. Yeah. It also sounds like an author who was, really upset. He had to throw that middle initial in there to compete with the famous runner,

but go ahead. I'm looking through New Wester's. Oh my God, there's the passport. The passport with those beautiful stamps, all these things that I was so happy. I have never been happier to find anything. So this is a lesson to everybody. One, look through those books you haven't read in a while. And if it's from an academic press, definitely look through those books. Because you never know what you'll find. It could be a huge. huge treasure and something very meaningful to the relationships in your life. Coming up on today's show, David, we talked to meet the press host Chuck Todd. Yeah.

About hosting a Sunday show in 2021, plus a press box post game interview with the athletics, Tim Cato about his explosive story about the Dallas Mavericks. What did Tim Cato know and when did he know it? All that more on the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here along with Erica Cervante. David, we got a special guest today. You want to let the people know who it is? It's his first appearance on the press box,

but not his first mention on the press box. I guess that's the way these things go sometimes. Moderator, moderator of NBC's Meet the Press. Chuck Todd is about to pop on the show. Yeah, we don't have the rights to the John Williams Meet the Press theme song. But I feel it's been playing in my mind as we've been preparing for Chuck Todd.

is there I mean is there any way you can get that out of your head doesn't it feel like a stately occasion oh for sure for sure when you're when you're thinking of meet the press and it's really it's really generated by that theme song which we played on here before what was it called the the mission the pulse of events it was called the pulse of events truly a fantastic piece of music anyway let that be the soundtrack to your mind here is NBC's chuck Todd all right david Chuck Todd is here. He is the moderator of NBC's Meet the Press. Chuck David and I were talking the other day about how there aren't many moderators left on television. I think it's just you and Washington Weeks, you michel, send her at this point. It uses that as a title. Yeah, is moderator better

than host? How do we feel about this? I look, I don't know. I think it is because I actually do, would like to think there are times, particularly on the panel that yes, my job is to moderate a conversation. right so i i would say by the technical definition it um at it parts of the show i do play moderator and then there's obviously host but yeah i i i uh you know i don't want to lose the i don't want to i don't want to see that title sort of become obsolete how's that well that leads to another question i mean so much of the job on meet the press the sunday edition i guess specifically although a lot of it carries over to the daily edition um sort of came pre-packaged for you right i mean So much of what you do there was sort of set or when you when you walked in the door,

I mean, so much it was already established. How what of the show, what part of it is yours? It's funny you say that. It's actually, I think, the biggest challenge of doing it, right? Like so much of today's media, people, everybody's putting their own stamp on everything because every day is reinventing or inventing a new broadcast or a new podcast or a new thing, you know, all the time. So, so you're right.

There is this sort of idea that, you know, there's somebody handed you the, baton, but it's somebody else's baton, right? You know, so a word we, I was, another word we like to, I like to use is that I'm a custodian, which is both a positive and a negative, right? I do feel the, the weight of not being the last moderator of Meet the Press, right, type of thing and things like that. So what I would say I tried to do to make it mine when I got it is I viewed, I viewed my job as to make sure it didn't fade away. You know, when, when one of the things that are, my EP reminds me of all the time is when we got handed the keys to the show, there was a lot of

commentating going, well, the Sunday shows are dead. They're irrelevant. They're less relevant than ever. Because of cable, it's only a weekly thing, which is, you know, I took that as saying, well, they're right. If we stay a Sunday show and only a Sunday show, I do think over time it could become less and less relevant. So I would say the stamp I tried to put on it is don't think of the show as a weekly show, think of it. And I, you know, I hesitate to use the word brand because we all, you know, but what other word do you pick at this point? But it is that meet the press has an identity. It stands for something. So why does it only have to do that on a week, week to week basis? Why not daily? Why not in print? Why not online? Why not in different ways? Why not in

documentaries. I've always wondered why we didn't before I got it. Why wasn't Meet the Press in the documentary business? So in that sense, I'd like to think the stamp I put on it, one is this, is sort of this idea that, hey, meet the press is bigger than just one Sunday show. But the other thing that I feel like that I tried to help mainstream arguably before it was cool and it just happened to be where I worked before NBC, which is to make data a bigger part of the coverage of politics. And that is something that I've always sort of gravitated to. And it's something that I felt like we brought it to Sundays before. And now it's sort of a mainstay.

But I'd like to think we laid that marker down first. You were the Bill James of the Sunday morning shows. You know, you did the Bill Jail. I'm not going to do that. I don't, I don't buy that. Charlie Cook gets to be Bill James. Okay. So you were like Rob Nyer or something like that, one of the James acolytes.

Fair enough. You mentioned bringing meet the press into other forms. You brought it to the streaming service, Peacock, NBC streaming service. I have a really interesting question, and interesting to me anyway, about streaming. There is this particular vocabulary of television news. The three of us have sort of ingested for decades and decades. What do you think streaming is going to do to the vocabulary of TV news?

Well, I assume it makes the word cable obsolete. Like what, you know, right? I mean, I say this is like, you know, But that said, I do think that, you know, we, I wonder when CNN, MSNBC, and Fox stop being, stop referring to themselves as cable channels. You know what I mean? They're in all, in all essence, they're all bigger than that. It's more.

I will say this, I think as a company, we're trying not to organize around platform, right? And so in that sense, I think that's what we're all, you're asking that question is, when are we going to stop thinking sort of platform specific? because I think we're headed for, if we've, you know, we've been fragmenting as it is, I think we're going to be fragmenting more if that's even possible. You know, I expect CNN at some point to figure out they ought to be ESPN as an app. And there ought to be 40 feet, news feeds on any given moment that I can follow if I just go on the app in the same way that if I wanted to watch any baseball regional, I had a nephew that was playing on one of the sub-regionals during the college baseball tournament.

and on the ESPNF, I could watch any of these games, right, at any moment in time. And I keep waiting for sort of that transition where it's sort of, yeah, there's this sort of the scheduled programming version of a news brand, right? You know, so with SMSNNN and whatever. And then there will be these alternative feeds that different views. So that's what I assume we're headed in the world of streaming, what that means, which is more it becomes an umbrella for a whole bunch of offerings that you have underneath it. I would argue ESPN has transitioned from the, quote, cable, it's not a cable channel anymore.

I think, and so I think at some point, all of the news side is following suit soon. I would imagine this lexicon feels outdated in just another year or two. I would just, I guess the question I would ask then is that, okay, let's say we can find Chuck Todd on television. find Chuck Todd on cable, we can find Chuck Todd on streaming and the difference between those things is less important. Do you think, though, when you go to streaming, you can do the kinds of stuff you do on television? Here's a reported package, and then I'm going to interview an expert about this. Or do you need to give people who have never watched much network news, maybe don't even have cable, do you need to give them a totally different product? So I guess I view it is,

the answer is, I think you've got to offer all of those products. Like, you know, I view that there's going to always be a live feed of a news feed that you're going to that you can follow on any given day. But there is also going, you know, I'm also mindful, for instance, right now for the show we're doing for streaming. I think about it is it better have a six-month lifespan, right? When we do an episode for Meet the Press Reports, which we've been doing seasonally, we did eight episodes this year, it's something I hope doesn't feel outdated at least for the rest of the calendar year. I can't pretend when you're doing news or news adjacent, things are going to feel like. outdated just because events happen. But at least the try to come up with something where it

lasts. So I think in the interim, in a streaming offering has to have that where you feel as if you, you don't need to know anything about meet the press when you come into it. It's more of a of a complete, you know, almost whatever you want to call mini doc, magazine, however we want to refer to this. I sort of, I view it as sort of a magazine piece, meets. a documentary short meets a panel segment, you know, is what I'm trying to do. A shorter hand for you guys that you would get is I'm trying to do real sports versus, you know, where it meets 60 minutes on that front with this. So I do think it has to have some sort of timeline. But I do think we're headed to, you're going to have your news junkies who feel like they need a constant feed of what's

going on right now, what's today's thing. And I, you know, what I'm assuming we're building, and I say assuming where I'd like to go to is that, yes, we can offer that. We can offer sort of perspective from a maybe less partisan ideological driven, but then yes, you have the more partisan or ideological driven perspective offerings as well on different topics of the day. I think that's where this is headed for all of us in some form or another, and that our job is to offer the various different, the different offerings based on where people, you know,

where we're not expecting them to find us where they stumble, instead of they, you know, they sort of stumble upon us. You mentioned the term news junkies there, which I think is really interesting. I mean, Brian and I are probably fit the description of a news junkie about as much as anybody else in the world. But talking about those different platforms, and I think if you specifically look at the daily show and the weekly show,

Are you, do you feel like you're speaking to news junkies? Do you, like, what do you see? I mean, obviously, you're trying to speak to a lot of different audiences at the same time, but what do you see as the audience for, for meet the press? So on Sundays, I definitely think it's a different audience on Sunday versus who I'm talking to on MSNBC. All right. So in Sundays, I feel like I'm talking to the person that feels that they need to keep up, you know, we've, when I got the job, they handed me some, um, fewer research, um, less about the individuals.

Maybe they did. Maybe they did. I don't know if they did testing on me the person or not. Perhaps they did. Perhaps they didn't. But they were doing survey work of what did people, what did people think of meet the press? Why did they watch a Sunday show? The number one reason people watched a Sunday show they said was to get educated.

And it would be, and then sort of like, okay, what does that mean? And they said, well, I'm maybe I want to keep up with people at work. I want to be able to have a conversation with friends or, you know, there's various issues that are important to me. There were different reasons. but in some form of I want to catch up, I want to keep up, I want to feel better informed, but I'm pretty busy during the week, and I'm not going to sit here and be glued to my, you know, cable news channel of choice all the time. And maybe they're not an hourly news consumer and they're not social media junkies.

So in that sense, I think Sunday I feel like I am talking to a crowd that's sort of like, okay, my job is to sort out. There's a lot of headlines you saw during the week, what mattered and what didn't, right? Filtered out a little bit. Give me that sort of larger, like, I'm assuming that if you're focusing on it, this is what matters.

So there's a little bit of that. I assume on my daily show, and I make a presumption that I have a smart, a viewer that is totally savvy when I'm about, about news and politics, maybe they definitely have point of view, too. I assume that even the folks that have point of view know that maybe I'm not going to be their channeling a point of view per se, but I'm trying to cover politics as it is, you know, where it could be headed, explaining why things happen, but for that sort of

savier political junkie. So that's how I've always viewed the daily versus the Sunday. I want the savvy political junkie also to want to watch Sundays. And there's certainly ways that I feel like I also talk to them. But I do think on Sunday there is this larger, okay, give us a larger perspective. What the hell happened this week? Especially during the Trump era, where we always felt as if there was so much noise, you know, that our job was to try to filter out the stuff that mattered versus what didn't.

When you have politicians on Meet the Press, Chuck, I know they hate to answer hypotheticals. They never take that bait. So let me try a hypothetical on you. Let me just going to, I'm going to kind of reverse, reverse the thing here. By the way, when you, when you're pre, when you, when you're giving me that preamble, you're almost offering me a way out. I am. But wait, but wait.

We can talk about that in a second. But wait, there's more. But wait, there's more. All right. Hypothetical. Donald Trump's office calls you and your EP this week and says, the former president wants to come on, meet the press and talk about his future political plans and his. and his stewardship of the Republican Party

as their de facto leader. Do you do that interview? Not live if I did it. And I'm not sure I would. If he was president of the United States, the answer is yes, but I wouldn't do it live. I would tape the interview. I do think that there are some people,

you know, that you have to be careful of live television for a whole number of reasons. But, you know, I view my job as sort of surfacing information that folks need, what it is to understand what politics is today. And I'm, you know, I know I just took this bait and gave you guys a little clickbait and the aggregators are going to go bonkers on this on social media. But, you know, I, it is, I do wonder how much. I mean, the problem I have is, is that there's so much with Trump you don't know what to separate. That's truth from fiction.

that don't know how much good comes right now from putting them on air. But if you were a candidate for office, I'm sort of thinking as we go here, if you were a candidate for office, I think it's a different conversation than if he's not a candidate for office. I don't know if I'd put him on television. Maybe I'd have a podcast conversation with him. But I think that it wouldn't be dismissed out of hand, but I think you think long and hard about how you do it.

Look, you know, Vladimir Putin, office called me, right? I'd want to figure out how to do that interview, but I'd also be thinking about how to do it very carefully. If Erdogan's office called me, you see where I'm going here. I think that there is, if there is something to be learned, something to be gleaned, something that is necessary to sort of understand where the political situation, where the Republican party is going, where there's some accountability and unanswered questions where a certain person needs to be put on the record, I think there's a case to be made. But I'm not going to sit here and say it's an easy call. Obviously, that leads to the question that I know you have been on the

record about very recently, but we have right here in front of us. I mean, you have taken a lot of criticism, I would say, for allowing the, I mean, I don't even know how to phrase the question, for allowing the January 6 deniers to come on the show, people who... In fairness, who have I allowed to come on the show? Oh, no. I've been... You know, when I say this, I haven't. But that doesn't mean I would...

I've been asked whether I would never do it. And you said you would. And I said, I can't do it. That's correct. What I was saying is, you know, I just don't believe in the absolutes on this. I think there are different categories of folks. Again, I think there are people that... And I said this before.

There are people that are pretty... professional interview hijackers. And I don't want to name names because they'll use it as fundraising material on me. I mean, it just, look, this is a trap that I feel like all of us are in in mainstream media right now. Right. We get asked these questions about, okay, would you do X? Would you do Y? And it's, you know, the activist community.

I mean, the criticism is really only coming from an activist community on the left. It's not coming from a professional journalism community. and which I think it says something here. I mean, I do think most of this is about more coming from an advocacy position, would be my argument on this. But I just think it's a, I just think this is a slippery slope. And I just am not comfortable sitting here. And I also, look, I'm on a network that does, that is on the public airwaves.

So, you know, I'm not all, I'm only. also not comfortable where, and saying, getting into absolute bans, again, you just, you can't, I just don't think you can ever, ever say no. And if, where do you draw the line? And then if these folks become governors, senators, presidential, you know, speakers of the house, you know, I, I don't think my viewers are snowflakes. You know, I think I have a responsibility to make sure my viewers aren't gaslit. That's on me, which is why I advocate, I wouldn't advocate live for all of these folks either. I think that, you know, because there are people that just want to throw crap at the wall and at a live interview,

it can, you talk over each other and all of this stuff, and it can, you can end up doing more harm than good, even if you think you're holding them accountable. So I just think that there are different ways to do it. And my job is to figure out how to do it in the most responsible way if that's possible. If there's not a responsible way to do it, then you don't do it. But I'll say this. I do think it's weird that only television is held to this standard. New York Times just admitted today that they use Tucker Carlson as a source.

Can you imagine if any of the Sunday show host? said that? Sure. I mean, you were talking about the difference between the Sunday show and the weekly show. And, I mean, from where I'm sitting, one of the biggest differences is that after the Sunday show, your name trends on Twitter every single week. Do you ever pay attention to what? Any more. Because I used to think it meant something. And now you realize it's a small group of people who professionally do this, right? It's just driven by a handful of folks. So who, who, have their own agenda and they're upset that I'm not channeling it the way that they want something to be done. On one hand, I take it as a weird compliment, right? Meet the press. At the

end of the day, we're Kleenex for Sunday shows, right? So there's this assumption that if somehow we draw this line, then everybody's going to follow suit type of thing as well, or, or I guess, you know, in some form of that. But I, it just, I mean, have any of us learned the lesson? how what happens on Twitter just should stay on Twitter. I mean, look at the Democratic primary. Joe Biden was never going to be the nominee. We're about to see what's happening in New York City, but it sure looks like the progressives' whiffed on that one.

We've seen what happened in Virginia, Terry McCalloff. I mean, my point is that, you know, I'm not sure Twitter's got this right. And I'm not sure Twitter's not is speaking for basically anybody other than the hyper-engaged. folks that are activists, active on the left or active on the right.

One way that's interesting to think about the question of Republicans who either outright denied the validity of the election, as you point out, or did the thing, as you pointed out with Ron Johnson back in January, who did they, just asking questions, just asking questions about voter fraud, which had the effect of undermining the validity of the election. How long do you ask these people about their actions between November and January? because I could see you doing an interview and saying, let's talk about infrastructure,

let's talk about X, but also let's talk about the fact that you sort of undermine the current president of the United States. How long is that question part of your, on your notes with these people? You know, until they feel like they've answered the questions in a way,

I mean, I certainly wouldn't let it go. I mean, when I had Dan Crenshaw on, I just never let it go. I don't think I wouldn't let this go until there's some sort of, you know, it's sort of like, you know it when you see it, when you feel like there is a resolution. But at this point, it's hard to imagine with some of these folks where the conversation ever shifts to another topic. you know, I mean, I look at it this way. I try to only invite folks who I think accept the premise. All right.

That's not to say that you end up with folks who sometimes don't accept the premise of a question. But if they don't, you know, I don't think you can let this stuff go. And look, and, you know, one of the perceived critiques is that somehow we, you know, we will move on. I think others have done that. I would argue I'm not somebody who's who's done that. I've had many a high profile back and forth that this sort of never ends and you just sort of have to have the interview just ends because you decide, well, this isn't worth our time anymore or you've sort of exhausted the point here. But there is on these questions. I can't imagine you're asking about January 6 and you're going through this back and forth. Okay, now about infrastructure.

I, you know, I'm aware of the viewers, what the viewer's digesting, if that makes sense. When it comes to specific guests on the show, to what degree are you chasing the people? Like, if you have Bernie Sanders on the show as you did, is that, is, is that more frequently him being offered up to you? No, no, it's never, I mean, look, I'm not saying people don't offer, hey, they pitch themselves, I've got this. Are you guys interested in this this week or something like that? But most of the time, you know, I wanted somebody that was in the middle of the infrastructure compromise, and I wanted a leading progressive. And obviously Sanders was my first choice on this.

So, you know, this was a week where we sort of wanted to do this story. What are the red lines for progressives? What are the red lines for these folks that are doing this, trying to put this bipartisan? infrastructure deal together. And if, you know, the cheapest staff had been available to talk this week from the White House, I would have wanted that too, right? You'd have felt like you'd have had that story triangulated, right? Of the sort of the three important sort of tent polls of that story.

So in that sense, we sort of, I pursue guests most of the time based on what the topics that we want to do on a certain week. That's not to say there aren't those top four or five of five. guess that you constantly want. I mean, I want Biden any week. I hope it's not Fourth of July week. You know, I hope it's a week in September, October, when more people are watching.

But you're certainly never going to say no to the president. When was the last time Biden was on me at the press? It was during the pandemic campaign, but it was pre-Kamala Harris. It was, I want to say it was right around Father's Day. It was about a year ago. and when he was doing everyone, you know, when he was doing a handful of Zoom interviews. But I would say suddenly all of us had a harder time booking him right around when they became a ticket.

I wondered this about the structure of Meet the Press. You had Sanders, as David mentioned on this week. He was on for about seven minutes. Rob Portman, Senator from Ohio, his interview ran about nine minutes. Is there a version of Meet the Press where you could have those guests on for a half hour? say and have more time to develop questions, develop lines of questioning with them than the current format? Right, right now it's called my podcast. And I look at it and I say it this way because I do, we have this, my EP and I have this debate all the time. Right. I, I would prefer two guests

a show. The rhythm of television production and sort of the way people are viewing and viewing habits suggests that that's not that's that's not a good idea. So I would say that is the push and pull. And now you've gotten to why I want to have multiple different platforms to use because I think you do need 30 minutes with some people. You do need, you know, sometimes eight to 10 does it. What I've tried to do now is stick to single subject interviews. If we're going to only do seven to 10 minutes, then let's, you know, I, we used to do a lot of pot-pari, what I call the pop-per-re interview. You know, you can get, oh, I can get Senator to comment on this topic and on this topic and on this topic. You know, I could have added Putin questions this week to everybody.

I'm like, I'm doing a Putin segment. So I'm not going to, you know, bother with that with Portman or bother with that with Bernie. You know, I had somebody asking me if I would ask Bernie a question about the Alzheimer's decision with the FDA, could have done that. You know, So, you know, the balance we've struck is I try to stick the more single subject interviews for the shorter interview span and find different platforms when you feel like you've got the opportunity to do to do a longer interview. Now, the politicians themselves don't necessarily want the longer interview. Some do and some don't. And, you know, Bernie's a guy, if I can get him for 30, I'd love it. But he's not, you know, he, you know, he's funny, you know, he's kind of a fidgety guy. It's hard to get him to sit down to get the interview started sometimes.

He's like pacing back and forth, you know, when we, when we do things. So he's not on some of these things, I don't think he always wants to do a 30-minute interview. He's not alone, is my point on that. So some of this is that. But I would say that the modern viewing habit has, has, has, has sort of made us shrink that hole a little bit. But I do try to, I think I try to have longer interview segments than some of the other Sunday show.

Big picture. We are, what now, five months removed from the Trump presidency? How do you feel like Meet the Press did overall in covering it in real time? And if you want to go, if you want to take another swing, how do you feel like the media overall did? Well, I think it's, I think we survived. I think if some of us are still in our, in our same jobs, it's remarkable in some ways,

considering how tumultuous you think about everything that happened in the five years of the Trump era, including in our industry. But I think it took us a while to get our sea legs on Trump, but I would say we did better the last two years than we did the first two years collectively. if you want to try to judge the media collectively. I struggle with that because when people say, you people in the media, and I'm always like, define media.

You know, and why are we all mainstream media, but the number one news channel is not mainstream media, right? I've never understood that definition sometimes. But I think that the best news that came out of the Trump era, and I just look at it for myself, is I was reminded, this is not a popularity contest, and I think journalists that worried about their popularity performed the worst. I think de-clubbifying Washington was pretty important. I haven't socialized in official Washington, and frankly, since I took the job, but even a little bit before

then. So I would say that some better habits have been developed here in the, and the, and, and in the later stages, and that the press in general is realize that we probably need to be, needed to be a bit more adversarial than we were. And I think that that will serve us collectively better going forward, as long as we sort of keep these same instincts, no matter who we're dealing with. Did you change anything about the approach of the show or about your own approach during the Trump years? I think I've changed a lot. I feel like I've, I've been more declarative on things. You know, I've not, what I used to call, I think in Washington media and certainly the environment I was brought up in, you know, or, you know, sort of the generation that I came up in. I used to say we used to round the edges on politics.

Well, you know, what they really mean is, or they're doing that because they're just trying to cater to this demographic group. You shouldn't pay as much of attention to it. I've tried not, I've tried to have sharper edges, not try to, you know, say what, as I've said, sort of a playoff of after 9-11, you know, if you see something, say something. My attitude has been, just say what you see. Don't try to, don't try to rationalize it. Don't try to sand it down to make, to make sure you're somehow not offending one side on a given day versus the other.

So on that, that's, if you're asking how I feel like I've, tried to change. That's how I've tried to change. Chuck Todd is the moderator, not the host, the moderator of Meet the Press. He's on MTP Daily on MSNBC and Meet the Press reports on Peacock. Chuck, thanks so much for coming on the press box. Thanks, guys.

Appreciate it. All right, David, it's time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to At the Press Box Pod, where they are always gratefully received David, it was a very weird week in these streaming wars because subscribers to HBO Max

and I am one of those people received a surprise email the email read integration test email number one obviously an error but integration test email number one it was an overword Twitter joke to write see the difference between HBO Go and HBO Max

is that HBO Max includes every season of integration test email number one. Thanks to Bryce Taylor Rudal for that one. In NBA news, David, during game six of the Atlanta Hawks Philadelphia 76er series, the lights at State Farm Arena in Atlanta

abruptly went out plunging the arena into darkness. It was a level one overworked Twitter joke to write Trey Young just shot the lights out. It was a level two overwork Twitter joke to write through hellfire and brimstone it's cane.

Correct. That's the correct Twitter joke. Go ahead. And by the way, I made it. So I just sometimes, sometimes you think you're a diagnosis and you're really a symptom. That was, I stole that line from Stephen Metcalfe. But that's me. Thanks to G. Combs for pointing that out. And finally, and also in NBA news, David, the surprise hero of game six of the LA Clippers Utah Jazz series was the Clippers Terrence Man.

Terrence Man. It was an overwork Twitter joke to reference the James Earl Jones character from Field of Dreams who, by the way, I cannot stop thinking about every time I see Terrence Man having a heat check for the Clippers.

Thanks to the epic May Ray McSriff, if you made us think of people will come, Ray, people will most definitely come. Congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump, David, we periodically like to do these

press box post game interviews where we play the role of Chris Haynes on the floor after the big game. We talked to somebody who is just, who's still sweating, they're doing the Jersey exchange with someone from the other team. Today that guy is Tim Kato.

Because he published a story back on June 14th with Sam Amick in the athletic called Inside the Mavericks front office, Mark Cuban's shadow GM is causing a rift with Luca Donchage. Now, to say, this lit up our little corner of the sports media universe would be to undersell it incredibly. We want to unpack all that.

Tim Cato, welcome to the press box. Hey guys. How are you? We're good. We're good. You're the first guest to ever ask us that. So thank you for caring. I'm just in that light, like you said, I'm in that moment.

It's the game just finished. Ready to swap this T-shirt for that nice looking plaid flannel. I don't know if it's flannel. It might be a little too hot for flannel. Yeah, it is flannel. I just kind of. I work against type here in California. All right.

So, Tim, people may have been distracted by the recent spade of what happened to the Philadelphia 76ers pieces that are appearing online right now. If they have, refresh our memory, what did you and Sam find in your what happened to the Dallas Mavericks piece? Yeah, this has been a month-long reporting project for me and Sam. Um, you know, I'd heard whispers and rumors about stuff going back years just in terms of, you know, this one key figure, Bob Volgaris, you know, the former sports gambler who was officially hired to the team in 2018. I'd heard stuff about his influence, but, you know, a person in a front office having influence is not a story unto itself where it really got, you know, where I was really triggered knowing, oh, there is actually something here. There's something I need to aggressively be looking into and recording on.

and it's probably something I'm going to publish after the season was I got a text, I want to say it was February and March and it used the word catastrophic and it was kind of talking about what was happening within the front office, the competing lines of power. And that was the thing that tipped me off. It was funny in that moment in February March, most of the focus on the Mavericks was about Luca Donchich and Christops Brazingis, their relationship, whether they didn't like each other.

you know, the tip-off was vague. It didn't go into more details. But at that moment, that's where I assumed, that's what I assumed was happening. That's where I thought the reporting would lead me. And then within the span of weeks, especially around the trade deadline and as things progressed, it became much more obvious to me and the reporting continued to lead in the direction of these these two competing power dynamics in the Mavericks front office to the point that team sources were saying we have two general managers to the point that another team source said you know the most important the most powerful person in the Maverts

organization is Mark Cuban and the second most is whoever he's listening to and that was something that was bearing it out you know bearing itself out in real time and then there's just you know all these other random competing interest and dynamics and power struggles you know whether it's Rick Carlis and Luca Donchich or, you know, whether it was Mark Cuban himself and the people he hires. And so that's all, you know, what I spent those months reporting on and working towards. And it was something that I had, you know, even headed into the postseason. I think I had most of my details kind of in a row at that point.

And it just, you know, it wasn't the right time to drop it. Then, of course, you know, with the team in the playoffs, especially after they won the first two games of their first round series against the Clippers. But that was the genesis of the story. And it was something that I, you know, I'd always wanted to write about the front office and the weird way that they intersected and made decisions. And I assumed it would be something that I did, you know, on my last day of the beat. But the story caught up to me and it was the right time to kind of share it. As far as timing goes, I mean, when Brian and I talked about this piece at the end of last week, and Brian mentioned the Sixers, I mean, we obviously kind of put it in the category of, You know, postseason, what happened to fill in the blank pieces that happened in most basketball markets, most sports team, professional sports teams, college sports teams all over the place.

But when you talked about it, it not being the time during the season, I mean, we would agree. But what is the thought process that goes into that? Are you kind of, do you have the piece written and you guys are waiting for just the opening paragraph, like to just to know exactly how they went down? Or is there more going into it? I mean, are you still collecting information up into the last minute? Yeah, I thought, you know, I listened to your guys' podcast last week as well, and I thought you framed it well that there's like a flavor of beat stories that come out where people wait until the last of the season and then just kind of dump everything they've heard.

I would say there's some fairness to that. You know, like I said, it was something I was reporting on and had details on. It headed into the postseason. I think that I think that I knew it was leading there and I knew that after the season would be the time where it made sense to publish this because it was going to be a season where all this dysfunction came to a head anyway where I didn't know specifically that Donnie Nelson, long time general manager and Rick Carlisle, the head coach of course, would both be leaving the same week that I dropped the piece. But both of those things were reflected in the story that there were things that I expected could and, and probably would be happening, certainly in terms of Donnie and possibly in terms of Brick. And that's kind of why I wrote about it then. But yeah, it was something I was reporting, you know, even through the postseason.

And it wasn't, you know, I didn't start writing until after the season was over. You know, I didn't, I didn't feel like I was in a place where I wanted to drop it the day after. I felt like, you know, I wanted to do the proper job writing and reporting it. and then, you know, just doing kind of a sources tour at the very end, kind of going around to everybody and saying, hey, does this check out? Is this, you know, just confirming, is this what you heard, et cetera, et cetera. And so, I don't know, I've kind of lost the, the trade of where I was going with this, but it was definitely, it was definitely a story that, you know, it always made sense to publish it after the season based off that's when I knew decisions

and things would be coming to a head. And, you know, any thought of going sooner or just not using all the time I had allotted to work on it just didn't really make sense given the circumstances of what I knew and just where I was with the story. It wasn't set in stone even when Game 7 ended. There was still a bit that I was finding up then, although I would say that most of the story and most of what I wrote was kind of already established and had been told to me. You mentioned, Tim, that Donnie Nelson and Rick Carlyle left the team in short order after the piece was published.

Would those two moves have happened anyway, or were those spurred on in any way by the fact that all of this stuff came out in public? I believe that they were inevitable to happen anyway. I do think it's an interesting ethical, moral journalism question of, am I publishing something that is going to affect real life? organizational results. I tried, honestly, my only answer to that was trying not to think about it was that, you know, I have a job to do that these are things that team sources feel very strongly need to be public and need to be public for these reasons that I put into that piece last week. And so I tried not to think of the ramifications, but as I think ESPN first reported and then

we followed up in confront with our own reporting, the Nelson firing actually happened a day before we dropped the piece. we were actually planning to drop the Thursday before, you know, and just weren't ready with the writing yet. But I do think that the Nelson firing, and especially even things I've kind of heard since publishing the piece, that was always going to be in motion. As for Carlisle, it's possible what I reported affected that.

I couldn't say for sure. But I think that, you know, again, as kind of shown in the piece, there was already tension there with his relationship with Luca Donchich. and it doesn't surprise me that both given the dysfunction but also given the widely open head coaching market that's out there the summer and just given all the details that were in the piece

whether I reported them or not that it did seem very possible that he would also kind of do something similar as he ended up doing. Well, Brian said that this kind of lit up Twitter, basketball Twitter, probably regular Twitter, certainly the ringer slack rooms. certainly every message

my DM's messages it's really lit those up you also got a response from Mark Cuban Maverick's owner on Twitter he called he wrote I believe the response was total bullshit quote tweeting the tweet about the piece how does

how does it feel to get total bullshit tweet from from Mark Cuban I guess knowing that it's not total bullshit and then I guess secondary question have you started selling total bullshit t-shirts yet? Is there any...

What is the total bullshit expanded universe look like? I think if we're talking ethics and morals, that's probably not a rat I should go down, although it would be fun. But no, I think I'll refrain from that. Yeah, I mean, Cuban can say what he wants to say. I think it's very clear. It was not total bullshit.

Total is a very big word. And, you know, the idea that all the reporting framed within, you know, even, even from his perspective, clearly everything that I reported was not total bullshit. I understand why he needs to say stuff like that. I'm not, I'm fine with that. He's someone I have a relationship with and, you know, when we need to talk about stuff, we talk about stuff. You know, I won't really go into that beyond. But, you know, he's someone I've known for, you know, the better part of a decade at this point. And so it certainly was, um, We weren't able to get more of a voice of him in this story.

But it's, you know, he can respond how he needs to. And, you know, I guess the one thing, and this isn't even really me, gloating or doing a celebration lap, but, you know, I thought it was interesting that after the past few years and the various, you know, things that the Mavericks have been involved in, it seemed like the initial reaction when he said that was a lot of people saying they're going to believe someone like me over over him and so you know that's that's a that's a credibility issue that lies on Cuban and lies on not any single comment that he can make in response to one story but a but a longer track record he has over the past few years and and so you know especially as as the

timing of it particularly validated the recording and again I didn't know that you know both those things would happen the same week that I dropped the story um although they didn't shock me But as the timing especially validated, you know, that that story that we dropped, it was, it was interesting just to see even on Monday that at least from what I saw, at least to the extent that I was on Twitter, a lot of people, you know, were telling him, look, you can say this. But as far as we're concerned, your credibility is, it's not up to, you know, what a reporter who's been around the Mavericks as long as I have, you know, that they're going to side with my, you know, a Tee blue reporter story I release. rather than anything Mark says in response to it. Mark Cuban is very available as sports owners go and as billionaires go generally. He gives good interviews. He gives, he makes news when he talks a lot of the time.

How do you think that has affected the coverage of him and the Mavericks? It certainly has. How has it? That's a good question. It's not one I've directly thought about. It's, I think that he is one of the, I think that it's fair to say that he's been cast as one of the good billionaires as, as one of the good figures that represents what's right about team ownership. And I think that the past few years have painted a more nuanced picture of that in a lot of ways. He's always been someone, of course, in the news and always been someone saying more than he should.

There was even a piece in Mad's Moneyball, the side I used to. to write that or used to run back in back in college and when i was at s b nation and it detailed all the various you know public missteps and just comments you know not even actions but comments mark made that he really didn't need to you know the one that immediately comes to mind is him saying that or questioning whether the laker should amnesty covey brian in two thousand through 2013-ish and cobi beats the mavericks has a great game and tweets amnesty that right after the win in the regular season. And it's a long track record of unforced errors.

And I think that Mark has done a really good job and the Mavericks have done a good job. And I think a lot of this is fair framing this, you know, kind of gunslinger mentality, maverick mentality, if you will, that Cuban has. And they framed it as a, there's no other owner in sports like this. And that's a good thing. And I think there is a lot of good stuff that has come from it. I think that he has been for many years an actual asset and an actual benefit to the team in a lot of ways due to his unique structuring and approach. But he's also led the way for a lot of owners to kind of copy what he's done right without copying all the negative that comes with it, the unfirst errors and comments to media.

And I think that I've seen far from just me, but I think I've seen a broader national media. reckoning or recognition that everything that Mark Cuban has done may not be working out as much. I mean, I saw Bumani Jones talking about it. And he was really going at Mark. And certainly on the local level, there was more newspaper columns than I've ever seen, kind of directed at the front office in Mark's role. So I think we're reaching a bit of an inflection point on Mark Cuban. And that's why there's so many questions about, you know, not just who they're going to hire for GM and head coach, but what level of influence and control will any new basketball decision maker have in this front office?

Because, you know, nobody is, nobody is poking around the bush or just hinting at the fact that Cuban is the actual general managers of the Mavericks. Those days are over. It is very easy and to say overtly, this is the guy who's in charge. and who he's listening to is the second most influential person. And I think that's the new framing of the Mavericks and of Cubans' role with this team. Maybe it's just the Mavericks fan of me that wants to drill down on that a tiny bit.

Let's do it. Is the who he's listening to part, is that aspect of it, is he beholden to the person who has his ear in that moment to a particularly damnable degree? Like, is he more beholden to? the person sitting next to him than another GM or another owner? Or is this just, of course he is.

And so we need to structure, you know, get more structure to the front office. I think, you know, my understanding of Cubans total bullshit, a large reason why he thought the story wasn't fair, wasn't framed correctly, was that he doesn't feel like he is, that he is someone who talks to and takes input from a variety of sources at all times. the framing and the reporting that I did through the sources, you know, I had in that story painted a different picture. And that's the thing about journalism in writing a story like this is that you're always going to, you know, you try to balance perspectives and narratives and the way that different

people see it. I'm like there is, there has to be an absolute truth to the situation. But I don't know if there's a single person who can give you the absolute truth. You know, Mark Cuban is going to have. have his own level of truth and his own framing of what's actually happened, just as a lot of people within the front office and, you know, perhaps people who are, you know, more supportive of Donnie Nelson over the years, those people are also going to have their own framing of the events that happened, the actual true events that I reported on. They're going to have their own,

their own framing of what that means. And it's really hard at, you know, when you're, you know, that's the hardest part of doing a story like this. And it's something I'm still reflecting on, whether I accurately balance the two sides, even as I reported, you know, factual details, is that it is really hard to get the exact right framing because there's nobody that's going to share the exact, you know, truth of how it should be framed. And, and that's a, that's a murky job, especially in an industry where information is only shared, you know, if there is a, if there's a desire, influence, or reason to share set info, that, that it gets really hard to nail down to the absolute core truth of what's going on. And so, you know, I,

I don't know, you know, I do think, I believe the, you know, the reason I published the story I did is because I came to a point that I, I believed the framing of the sources I talked to, that it had reached a point that, you know, this guy, Bob Vergaris, the gambler analytics person they hired in 2018, had an undue level of influence on the team and as many circulating issues that were causing that, causing the dysfunction that existed, that, that, that he, he was a huge part of it, even if only in some ways he was a vehicle to show all these competing interests and, you know, people in narratives and powers, you know, and through lines clashing against each other. So, you know, according to the story I wrote, according to the people I talk to, yes, I do think that Mark is too influenced by, you know, a singular person he's listening to. But that person also changes. It's been Donnie, you know, it had been Donnie most often in the past. It had been Mark Carlisle. For one summer, it was a single person. Chandler Parsons, where that's the person Cuban was listening to and kind of coming up with

team decisions and what the team was going to do in free agency. So he's a complicated person, and only he could tell you, I guess, in truth, whether he does have a broader perspective of influence he takes in. But based off the actions and based off people who are very close to the situation and seeing how it unfolded, yeah, I think my understanding and belief through the reporting is that you know he does lean a little bit too much into any single person who has his ear I think at the moment. The piece opens

Tim with this anecdote from February where Bob Volgaris who you just talked about is sitting court side and Luca Donchitz the Maverick star comes off the court. Vulgaris makes a motion to him to kind of that Luca interprets as calm down, calm down and Donchis says you don't have the right

Mr. Gambler or analytics guy to tell me what to do. Here's the theory I heard on Dallas radio. The fact the Mavericks didn't have many fans in the stands made those kinds of interactions more hearable and seeable to people than they might have been if the stands were packed as they were before and now after the pandemic. Is there any truth to that? I think there is. I don't think, or I can say definitively, that's not why or how I first heard that anecdote. I, you know, and again, this is a story.

that initiated internally and wasn't something that was brought to us by by leak sourcing even though once we started diving in it was clear that it had all these info and details that had spread league-wide but i think that's fair and in you know conversations i've had to people who you know we're not sources at all and couldn't be but you know people who have understandings you know they you know in conversations of them, they've asked me as, you know, similar questions. It's like, so you just heard about this because everybody's in everybody's business, right? Like, is that how this game about? And, no, I don't think it is.

But, you know, even ESPN, you know, shared a detail that we didn't have where Luca looks at Rick Carlisle during a game at one point and says, who's in charge, you or Bob. And I believe my understanding of how they described that anecdote is that it was something that was heard by the team they were playing that night. And then that is how it kind of proliferated around the league. And so, yeah, I think that, you know, it's both true and not specifically how I came to the story, but certainly when we, you know, went to league sources starting cured from league sources.

And they also had a lot of the similar, you know, facts and details that be published. I do think it helped spread it around the league in that manner. I will just ask a follow up here, too, is the pandemic keeps you guys away from players. and I assume away from road games too in a way that you might not normally have to deal with. Did that affect at all the reporting of the story, the fact that you were somewhat more remote than you're used to? I wouldn't say so, no.

Maybe it's something I would have heard about sooner if I had actually been more around the team. And so the fact that I was distant from things, I don't think really had any effect. It's certainly been an interesting season in that regard. that's someone who is, I've written a story about the cliches that are both asked to players and answered and press conference locker room scrums. Well, actually one of my favorite most therapeutic stories I've ever written.

Certainly don't do a lot of my own reporting within those settings, but also, you know, have realized the value of just being able to be face-to-face with a player or a coach and ask them, you know, a question and a follow-up and another follow-up without, you know, the hand-raised function on Zoom. But in terms of this specific story, I don't think it had any effect. You talked a little bit over the course of our discussion today about the sources behind this piece.

And I think early on you kind of said that, you know, your sources felt like this was a story that needed to be told. Obviously, I mean, obviously there's some conversation that has to go on between you and your editors or you and your, you know, brain about, you know, to what degree you're going to be burning future sources. You talked about how you, you know, you can reach out to Mark Cuban, if need be. Talk a little bit about the balancing act that goes on there when you, when, when, this

story and in general, about when you're, when you're reporting something that's going to have some real stakes and, and about how, to what degree you weigh sort of, you know, kind of information nihilism, you know, the truth, it's a truth, so it has to get out against what you feel about your own, like I said before, your future stories, future sources you might have to use in the future and how you balance those things. Well, David, first off, were you allowed to use talk about questions on this podcast? That was absolutely a talk about. We were going to wait for the discipline after the podcast is over.

That's an absolutely fair question, but this is a post-game interview. So if you want me to say what did you see out there and just let you take it from there, you can do that too. What does it say about Tim Kato? I'm just going to have to review the film and we've got to put better effort in next story. I would say, man, yeah, it's obviously a thought that follows me throughout the reporting process I was doing. I'm someone who wants to report what's accurate and what's out there. I think it's also fair to say that I don't want to do beatwriting for the rest of my career. And I don't want to do beat writing on the Mavericks for, you know,

I don't think that I'm going to be a Mavericks beatwriter even if Luke Gurdow were, say, 15 more years. I don't, I would be very surprised if I was still beat writing about the Mavericks at that point. And I don't know if that makes me more willing to publish stories like this, which could have repercussions with sourcing. And as far as I know, like, I don't, I'm not aware of any repercussions that I have to deal with because of this. But I could at a later point that's very possible. I really don't know. And but I think that, you know, we talked about Cuban and how we're reaching kind of an inflection point with his ownership of this team. and I think that I am partially responsible for that as well, to be, you know, as a reporter in this market who clearly has shown I'm willing to publish, you know, more difficult stories like this.

I do think that that is my role to some degree in this beat, that, you know, the reasons I ended up here were very random. I grew up in Dallas, you know, and I came to North Texas as, you know, to study journalism. you know, went in with a, with a thinking there is nothing better than to get paid to go to sports games and ended up graduating with like an actual real appreciation for journalism. And, you know, and it just, it all ended up that I ended up being around a team that has a very, you know, nuanced influential, influencer in a lot of ways. And, you know, I think that's part of my beat. I think that's something that I, I have to report critically on, you know, especially if, if others are not. And I don't, I don't want to say that necessarily.

There's been other critical bits and pieces of reporting on the Mavericks by local media, by local newspaper, by the Dallas Morning News. But I think that's part of my role, and that's how I view it. And, you know, if I get blowback that I haven't had yet at a later point, you know, I guess I'll deal with that when I get there. And I suppose it could affect how I approach stories like this in the future. But for this one, you know, I hope it doesn't. I hope it doesn't and I wouldn't want it to because I think that, you know,

the only questions I have with the story in the past as I'm kind of reflecting about the process is just, you know, literally, you know, how do you, how do you actually get the correct framing of a story like this, like I mentioned? And, you know, what were the decisions we made in the process of reporting the story, you know, were those correct? Was that the right sequence of events, you know, and things like that? So there's definitely reflections to be done. but I hope and don't think that it's going to really revolve about, you know,

around someone who wanted me to tell a story, you know, or just not tell the story. You know, if that's the concerns, if somebody's concerned that I publish details that they think should have stayed internal, I'm just not going to worry about that because I don't think that's my job and that's not how I've approached it. Tim Cato, his story with Sam Amick is up on the athletic right now, along with some follow-ups because Tim has been basically the busiest reporter in America over the last couple of days. Thanks so much for coming on the press box. Hey, I really appreciate it, guys.

All right, time for David Shoemaker. Guess is the strained pun headline. Yeah. Friday's headline about overzealous ski resort restrictions in Australia was pieced off. Today's headline comes from Jeff Van Cleve. It's from AP Audities. The story is this, David, a drug dealer in England

was arrested after he published a photo of himself holding a block of Stilton cheese online. Police were able to use the photo to grab his fingerprints. I did not know you could do that from a photograph, I don't think. Wow. He has since been sentenced to 13 plus years in prison. So the cheese got him arrested. What was AP Audities strained pun headline? It's like the cheese

the cheese stands alone. The cheese this is it? Yes, thank you. Thank you. father of a young child for having that lyric immediately at the top of your head. Mayor McChise. There's a lot of kids' ones in here. Maybe something cheese is made with. Milk.

Kind of like milk, but cream. Oh, there we go. Cream. Oh, my gosh. Cream sounds a lot like when we're talking about this guy, just got sent him. Sounds a lot like cream of the century yeah okay you're close uh cream stoper cream um you might think you can get rich off doing crime but crime cream doesn't pay is that cream doesn't pay that's that's okay i like that i like where they're going with it he is david chumaker i'm brian curtis production magic by

erika cervantes we are back friday with more lukewarm takes about the media see you then david see you later brine