The Press Box - Remembering Anthony Bourdain, the NY Times Doc, and 'Fire and Fury 2' | The Press Box (Ep. 480)

Episode Date: June 12, 2018

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker sit down to reflect on the legacy of Anthony Bourdain (02:15), conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer announcing he has weeks to live (13:45), the Showtime doc series 'The Fourth Estate' (21:00), and the 'Fire and Fury' sequel (34:00). Credits: Hosted by: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker   Produced by: Jim Cunningham Brought to you by: The Ringer Podcast Network Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David Michael Wolfe is writing a sequel to his Trump Exposé, Fire and Fury. What I want to know is, what other journalistic masterpieces? And I am making air quotes when I say that. Deserve a sequel or reboot. This is too hard of a question. Can I just say... Too hard. Well, there's too many options out there.

I immediately go to like the classics. Can I, can we do like in cold blood too, the return? In cold or blood? Yeah. Oh, in Cold Blood 2, T-O-O. Yes, exactly. Right? I thought maybe like silencer spring.

Oh. Yeah, right? It's a classic. The jungles. That was a big one. And finally, let us now praise famous men reloaded. Oh, that's great. Yeah.

Just a few more, a few more, let us praise a few more famous men. Yeah. How many famous men could we possibly praise? You're listening to the podcasting equivalent of a shameless cash. grab. This is the press box on the ringer podcast network. The press box is the media podcast. We are not allowed to write that Trump's time in grade school prepared him for the Kim Summit. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the ringer. Your ringer syllabus today. Check out all of our NBA finals aftermath, including Kevin

O'Connor on the Warriors. Sunday night, no spoilers, was apparently a great episode of Westworld. Check out David on the recapables and Allison Herman, kind of offering a counterpoint in print. My arch nemesis. Sean Fennessey and I convened a very special rewatchable summit to discuss Jurassic Park, which just turned 25 years old. We are old. We are old, my friend.

When you get to a certain age, you get to do 25th anniversary editions of your childhood movies and host politics podcasts. We're there. There we are. I look for that this week. All right, David, four topics for you today. First, we talk about the legacy

of the writer, traveler, and man of the world, Anthony Bourdain. Second, ditto for conservative columnist Charles Crodhammer, who announced this week that he has sadly just weeks to live. We'll talk about the fourth estate, the Showtime Doc series about the New York Times. And finally, we'll talk about that

Fire and Fury sequel. Plus, as always, our overworked Twitter joke of the week. But first, when I heard Friday that Anthony Bourdain had committed suicide and watched Twitter for the next couple of hours, I think the thing I was most struck by was here's a guy, David, who had something like 100% acclaim in American life.

Yeah. Which is pretty damn rare. Especially for someone who is relatively politically outspoken as he was. Yeah. I think that he had the sort of politics, ethos, whatever, of a, that the kind of blue America could glum on to. But he also just had it just sort of object manly. that a kind of transcended, you know, whatever your personal affiliation was.

You also have made one or two of the greatest, like best shows, most universally beloved TV shows of the past decade, you know? I mean, like, you can't, you don't have to watch. You didn't have to watch parts unknown, but everybody that did, I felt like loved it. So let's drill down a little bit to the universality of Anthony Bordauntan's appeal. A couple of things I thought about.

This is pretty specific But He made the food critic Into a rock critic Yeah Right You know No offense to Jonathan Gold

Who I love reading in the LA Times But nobody looks at Jonathan Gold And goes that is my idea Not just of a writer But of a Sure Absolutely Didn't we talk recently about how

Didn't you tell me a story About how all the old rock critics In Brooklyn are becoming food critics Yeah I wrote it on the ringer Oh that's right Okay Yeah But yes, that sort of has like you age into food criticism.

But he gave it this, he made it punk rocky, right? You know, there was like his stories about drug use. He was just kind of like, you know, the way he wrote with a meat clover to attempt a very bad metaphor. He just was like, I think he just made that world very fun. Yeah. And that is, I mean, that's just like, you know, I don't think we can totally credit Anthony Borda and with the giant amount of food writing there is in the world. but probably a pretty big chunk of it, right?

At least a kind of following in his example. The attitude for sure. I mean, I can't, on more than one occasion, I can remember sitting in a restaurant, sitting in like a hot new restaurant, hot, whatever, restaurant in Brooklyn,

and noticing that there would be a guy, and not, this is not the same guy, there would be a guy sitting by himself against a wall with a meat cleaver tattooed on his forearm or like the fork or something like that. And you would just be like, oh, that's the food critic.

He's come to write about this for whatever website or, you know, and that was like he was the coolest guy in the room. Totally. And the idea, I think, too, that like, he could have been a lot of things, right? So he writes, he writes, he writes a novel first, bone in the throat is, I believe, the name of it. Then he writes Kitchen Confidential, which becomes this giant book. And he could have gone a lot of ways with his career, right?

He could have been guy with show on Food Network who's, like, cooking or doing something silly, come out with a cookbook, right? This is the conventional path. But what he does is he's like, I kind of don't think I'm that interesting just on my own, so I'm going to go explore the world, right? Sure. To the shows you mentioned. And I think that's the other thing. It's interesting that he does is help.

And again, he didn't invent this, but use food as a way to like the idea is that in food we could find clues to what the world is about. Yeah. And what people are about. And that just sort of expands a whole journalistic genre. Yeah. And I think part of his appeal is that he was sort of unapologetically a man of the world too. Yes. Did he, a citizen of the world, I guess I should say?

That he could go to all these places. And he's not coming in as a celebrity, even though he certainly was, right? He's not sitting at the finest restaurants and expecting, you know, he doesn't come in with an entourage and like, you know, give me your chef's best food. He kind of goes in through the back door, finds connections with his subjects through oftentimes non-food related, you know, points of character or whatever. or we both, you know, we went to go see a chicken fight, you know, a chicken fight before we, before we were we going to go get food or we, you know, we're the Muay Tojo before we go eat or whatever. And then, yeah, and then just sort of like becomes part of one with the place and then back doors into, you know, street fair or whatever. And that's, it's, there's

just, he, yeah, there's a lot of, the relationship, he, he showed it a lot of ways that the relationship between us and between food is, is it more than just an A to B sort of scenario. And it takes sort of an interesting mind to wrap your mind around that. And that to say that's where I want my TV show to go. It takes it like the pitch meeting for the show must have been incomprehensible to whatever execs greenlit it. It's on the travel channel originally. Yeah, I think so. So maybe it fits a little more comfortably there than CNN. Yeah. And then there's so there's, I mean, the, the weird thing is it's not, no one would say it's a fit at CNN, although it's a perfect show for them

because it's one of those things that can eat up weekend hours and reruns and late night and that kind of thing. But in a lot of ways, it's one of the very few successes that CNN or news television broadly defined has found in recent years, as far

as kind of transcending the norm. Exactly. And still not feeling exploitative or out of place or whatever, you know. That's what's not to catch a predator on MSNBC. Exactly. Or lock up raw you know like as much as I love jail shows uh yeah it was um yeah it's it's there's just something like it is you know there's it's not just news every cable channel over the past 10 15 years has tried things that just seem wrong for what we perceive it to be right scripted stuff

on the history channel or you know take your pick reality shows just you know whatever the chrisley's on USA coming on after w wrestling is always just like why don't understand what we're doing here you don't even have what you don't have what you don't have whatever. But, Anthony Bordaena's like, parts unknown. Like, it made,

it didn't make complete sense, but it made enough sense. And there was a way in which, like, they had the symbiotic relationship. CNN legitimized his enterprise a little bit. And he, um,

legitimized them in a totally different way. Yeah. He pulls them out of red breaking news alert, Trump world, you know, and he did seem like of a piece with like, Jake Tapper, right?

Like certain CNN personalities, who seemed to be, slightly bigger than whatever subject was in front of them. There's another reason people liked Anthony Bourdain. Everybody knew Anthony Bordan. I learned on Twitter on Friday. Everybody has met Anthony Bourdain. That's sort of the, I mean, I don't want to knock anybody.

We're not at the, you know, making jokes about people's Twitter jokes section of the show yet. But there is a sort of the very modern form of humble brag obituary where you're just like, I just want to say I was, you know, had the honor of having dinner with whoever just passed away. And, you know, and this is what I learned from them. And they meant everything to me. I'm so glad you said that because I wanted to say that. I was weighing whether it was just the right time or not. There was a certain cred established, you know, on Friday by saying, oh, well, I was delighted to have known.

Anthony Bourdain, right? I just want to step you out. There's a little bit, there's a difference between a close friend than someone who, you know, shared a bowl of, you know, fried rice with him one time because they were covering,

you know, writing a story about him. Will you ask me for the listeners if I have had dinner with Anthony Bourdain? I was about to do that. I know the answer. Have you ever had dinner with Anthony Bourdain? Funny you should ask, David. I have.

Did you tweet about it? I didn't. No. 2007. It was at a Japanese place in New York. I wish I could, it was, it was, you know, perfectly off the grid for Andy Bordeaux. A piece for outside. Yeah. And so here's a couple of funny things about it. He just come back from Southeast Asia and he was very done some shows about Southeast Asia. And he was very in like, Brian, the colors, the feelings, you know, just sort of like a wrapped traveler, which I wouldn't understand until I went there a couple years later that does kind of thing. The other thing he did in that, which I think explains purpose. popularity is he decided to start blasting away at Rachel Ray. Oh, yeah. Now I remember this. And then Bordane really picked, like cleverly picked his enemies, right?

And I remember, I don't remember asking about it. Maybe I did. I had to look up the quotes. She's got a magazine, a TV empire, all these bestselling books. I'm guessing she's not hurting for money. She's hugely influential, dot, dot, dot. And she's endorsing Dunkin' Donuts. It's like endorsing crack for kids.

I'm not a very ethical guy, Bordane continued. I don't have a lot of principles. But somehow that seems to me over the line. Juvenile diabetes has exploded. Half of Americans don't have a necks. And she's up there saying, eat some fucking Dunkin' Donuts.

You look great in that swimsuit. Eat another donut. That's evil. That's what he said. That is just fantastic. The quotes were picked up by page six, which is the only time of my life that's happened, you'll be shocked that none of my sports media stories

have caused the same tidal waves in New York gossip circles. But anyway, another thing about us he picked the right, right enemies. And by the way, this is something else I saw in a few of the Anthony Bourdain remembrances and Obitz. People said, he said what was on his mind. He was never afraid, right? Yeah. I think that is, I think Anthony Bourdain might have gotten as close to that as a media celebrity could have. But as Pete Wells noted in his little remembrance in the New York Times,

he could also do like, oh, you want to hear me, you want to hear a chef cussing in front of your trade group? Yeah. Here you go. Want me to attack, want me to attack like a lameo celebrity chef here you go you know Andy Greenwald wrote that piece for us at Grantland which he was remembering on Twitter

about like when he became kind of allowed himself to become like a goofy reality TV star himself for like five minutes yeah and that's totally like you know again nothing nothing against that but but he definitely you know

there was there were moments in his life was a put a quarter in me and here here comes the here comes the pain right here comes here's exactly what you want yeah yeah I mean there was a, Mark Maren re-released in his interview,

his WTF podcast interview with Bourdain this week. And they start off the show by comparing their lives that he sort of had become more of a, like something akin to a stand-up comic as his career progressed because he was doing all of these speaking engagements. Like that's where the money is. It's corporate boards and whatever else. And there's a little bit of the,

I'm sure there's a little bit of, you know, dancing monkey to that whole thing. You know, I mean, you're just, you're doing, you're, you're showing up to, to do what someone else wants you to do for a certain amount of money and whatever. But like, there was a, there was just a, whether or not it was real,

there did seem to be a sort of legitimacy that, you know, a realness underneath, that undergirded the whole thing. It's easy to get up there and talk to a, you know, a group of businessmen, you know, for money if you're just sort of being yourself the whole time. If it's a put on, it's actually harder. Let's say a few words about Charles Crowdhammer. Oh, yeah. Washington fixture, Fox News contributor and Washington Post columnist who also announced on Friday, he wrote this very touching note where he talked about the fact that his cancer is returned. He said, my doctors tell me their best estimate is that I have only a few weeks left to live. This is the final verdict.

My life, my fight, excuse me, is over. And then at the end, he says, I leave this life with no regrets. It was a wonderful life, full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave. But I leave with the knowledge that I live the life that I intended. he is an interesting guy to me because when I got to Washington in 2001 or 2000, he was still, I feel it was sort of like it's a little analogous to sports columnist, right?

There was this last generation of the op-ed columnist as this towering figure. Yeah, yeah. When it was like Mike Kinsley, George Will, Charles Crowdhammer, Bob Novak was still alive. And that was like this, that was the job, right? Yeah. You were in the elect and you got column collections and you got. and you got a gig on TV. Yeah.

And it was just like... My column collections are big. Right. So it was like the 80s was... We lived the 80s through George Will column collections. Uh-huh. The thing about Cranheimer, too, is I think part of the... Part of what I've seen in the tributes for him is a sense that he's a guy.

It was like part of that same era where it's... You're sort of the gentleman conservative, right? The gentlemanly conservative, both in the world of conservative opinion, which we know can somehow not be always so kind. Yeah. And gentlemanly. And also in the world of Fox News, right? He was the guy, he was like the smart guy on Fox News.

He was the smart guy. He was the guy's like, I actually have principles here, right? Yeah, no, absolutely true. I mean, and he definitely has principles. And, you know, I mean, there's certainly a degree to which that, and you can say it about a lot of people. You say it about George Will and MSNBC when he's been popping up there. of the the prince the seeming like the the the principled serious person in the room sort of inoculates you from the repercussions of your bad opinions you know of your problematic opinions well that was old journalism right yeah it's like this person may be seeing an idea that i find or writing an idea that i find revolting yeah but they're doing it in this gentlemanly way and we all kind of pretend to get along sure in this world and one of the things people react to now is some of the people are saying gosh could we can't we go back to this world of a polite society where we all write op-eds and we all go to

the same dinner parties. And some people are saying, no, no, no, that was terrible because it papered over all these differences and there was this awful Washington consensus which excluded certain people. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Crodhammer was an ideal Fox News talking head because he was just sort of, you know, he was, he was the vegetable course. You know, I mean, you can't have, I mean, Sean Hannity's screaming is, I mean, you can eat a lot of, he's the junk food. That's great. Everybody wants to junk through all the time. But you got it,

but like you appreciate it when the, you know, when the real stuff comes in. But, you know, he's never, he nor anyone like him will ever have a hour long

primetime show on Fox. And that was sort of his charm. Yeah. A couple interesting things too. So it's, this is he was when he was at his, in Harvard Medical School studying, he dove off a diving board

wound up severing his spinal cord, which left him in a wheelchair for his entire life. which is amazing. I also knew, and again, this will be the last, the first and final press box where I'd say I have had a meal

with several people we're talking about just because we're going to run out. But he invited the whole Slate staff over to lunch one time. And I remember him like he was quoting the Maltese

lines from the Maltese falcon. Oh wow. Like Sam Spade talking about his dead partner, Miles Archer. And all that stuff. It was like, Guy knows that a flirt.

Yeah, I was going to say, not what you would expect out of Charles Crowthammer. No. But that had dared but he was as he was in print and extremely or is a very gentlemanly guy. All right, David, now it's time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week,

where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Last Thursday, David, Donald Trump tweeted, isn't it ironic? Getting ready to go to the G7 and Canada, blah, blah, blah. Where do you think the children of the 90s jokes went on Twitter at that point? Who is Alanis Morissette? That's right. There were a bunch. I enjoyed this response to CNN's Tom Clutt who writes about the media.

If you made an Alanis joke today, you don't get to dunk on Dennis Miller for two weeks. Sorry, those are the rules, bud. In other news, Rodney Hood of the Cleveland Cavaliers, showed that he had a pulse in game three after generally being silent through the entire playoffs. But it was an overworked Twitter joke to say some version of, Quote, if only Rodney Hood had help. That's kind of good. That's kind of good.

All right. And last Thursday, we learned via tweet from the Washington Post, John Dossie. EPA Chief Scott Pruitt asked his security detail to pick up dry cleaning and find his favorite lotion at the Ritz-Carlton. You know Scott Pruitt has, this is like scandal number 95 for Scott Pruitt. Anyway, pick up his favorite lotion at the Ritz-Carlton, to which an astoundingly large number of people replied, put the lotion in the basket?

Oh, no. Are you kind of as surprised as I am that are Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs has that kind of cultural resonance? I mean, our boss has contributed to that being a cultural force to some extent. It rubs the lotion on its skin, it does this whenever it's told.

It rubs the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again. Now it places the lotion in the basket. now it places the lotion in the basket. Put the fucking lotion on the basket. It's so wild to me. All right, thanks to Matthews Island. Dave and I will be back to talk about the New York Times and the fourth estate after this break.

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I spent the weekend watching the fourth estate The new Showtime documentary series about the New York Times You're already smiling This is what Brian Curtis spends his weekends doing It's really good I really liked it I spent my weekend watching the fifth estate

starring Benedict Cumberbatch So I'm ill-equipped to have this to discuss in this segment Now we will compare the two since I have not seen that one. So you liked it? It was really interesting. I think it's like the cultural resonance here is Donald Trump is attacking New York Times

pretty much every day. So let us show who New York Times people really are. Let us put a human face. Yeah, on bylines like Mark Massetti and Elizabeth Bue Miller and people like that and show them it mostly concerns the workings of the Washington Bureau of New York Times, the way they're covering Trump, particularly the where they're trying Trump in Russia.

But to me, the joy of it was just seeing what normal journalistic life looks like. There's a scene where Trump gives what I believe is this first state of the union. And so everybody's sitting there watching it in the Washington Bureau, right? And they're like, what's the news here? What's our lead, right? This is kind of a wrote story, but you have to look at this speech and quickly determine what is the most important thing here. That's interesting.

They decide it's about immigration. then the funny thing happens, David. A note comes from New York after they've written and filed the story and says, actually, that's not your lead. This is your lead. And it's an idea they've rejected as being too silly. So they have to rewrite the whole story. And they're all mad.

And they're really mad. And it's just a great moment of newspaper big footing. And this is what happens in newspapers and journalistic institutions all the time, right? The cool part of it, the romantic part of it is we're going to go out and rustle up some Russian news about Trump. The actual day-to-day reality is my editor just did something shitty to me and now I'm mad. Yeah. Like that's actual journalism. Yeah.

And those to me were the most amazing touches of it. Stuff about Maggie Haberman talking about spending time away from her kids. Maggie Abramon cursing and she drives down the freeway because she's trying to talk to a source at the same time. See all these journalists at home before they go into the office. Right. And that I think is beyond somebody for somebody like me, the kind of looky-loo value. there is a sort of amazing sense that oh these are real people yeah so this is that's my that's what interested me i actually did watch a lot of i watched everything that was available on showtimes

youtube channel about this and so this is my question coming out of all that yeah i understand the value as a viewer and as someone sitting as a host of the press box a media critic as you are to um in this show it certainly seems like it's incredibly compelling in its way but what is the when the New York Times agreed to make this series what do you think their motivation was? Was it to put a human face on it to

sort of to combat in a sort of subtle way the demonization of the press? Is it just a met just it's another form of journalism so they're signing on to you know to further that kind of broad goal?

I guess I guess I just it makes me wonder one practically well one I'll start with this one philosophically what is the I mean does does making it into a multi

does making their process into a multimedia showtime show really do anything to benefit journalism other than I mean or is it you know other than just making them minor celebrities and two on a practical level from what I saw like isn't this just going to end up burning sources

especially in the White House? I mean, isn't Trump going to be pissed off by just having to relive some of these moments like that? A lot of good questions there. One, I think when you talk about rebutting kind of the criticism, the interesting thing about the New York Times

is they're in a really weird place, PR-wise. Yeah. Which is, they're doing the best journalism right down the United States. But when Trump says something crazy and untrue about them, they can't, it's not like Dean Bekay

can get on Twitter and go, listen, you bum, like LeBron James. This is what it is. In fact, there's scenes in the show was like, don't engage on this stuff. Don't get into fights on Twitter because all you're doing is undermining. So they're in a weirdly like curious position of having to be silent.

And really only through a third party like this, can they kind of rebut the stuff that's coming out of the White House? Okay. Which I think is interesting. On the sourcing, and does it help them just as an aside? Do you think it's a, does it help them to be able to show their staffers with the quippy comeback and then have someone else say,

don't actually say that on the. line because it shows their restraint. Is there is the implicit restraint part of the like like an actual positive for them? There's a few scenes where it were Glenn Thrush is like, I'm about to tweet this and Haberman's like, no, no, please actually don't do that. And he just tweets that anyway. And then it's like, let's go have a meeting in the office. On your bit about sources, you're right.

There's no way you can show that. So when a guy like Michael Schmidt, who's been breaking a billion Russia stories for them, there is this kind of funny cheating thing where it's like, man, how are we going to get in the story, the Washington Post is breaking stuff, they're on the scent, how are we going to break something today? And then it's like cut and then Mike Schmidt's got, well, here's a scoop. I just found out that X happened. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I want to see like the 50 calls, 48 of which were fruitless. And then the two that you got the story from. Of course we can't see that. I guess I don't mean, I guess it didn't occur to me that they would actually be literally burning

sources. But I mean like if, I don't know, just kind of showing how the donuts get made to call back to our buddy Anthony Bourdain. Doesn't it, I mean, doesn't that just sort of, I don't know, it just seems like, it just seems, it just seems like it just seems like it undermines the process a little bit. Like I don't, I don't know if I want to call Maggie Haberman because I don't know if the camera crew is there. You know what I mean? Yeah.

I mean, it's sort of unclear how many people knew that she was being filmed during these things. Of course, you can't hear the voice on the other end of the phone. Right, but going, but even moving forward, we know it's, we know they're done with this, theoretically, but it's like, you know, you're never going to assume if, you know, if you talk to somebody who was on like the OC on MTV back in the day, you'd never be 100% sure they weren't being followed by cameras

if you saw them now. I guess that's true. Yeah, I mean, it's funny because I think the balance is like, you show these people as real humans. So, and you do give away a little bit of the mystique. Yeah. Right? I think the only thing of journalists with more mystique

would be the New Yorker, like, 15 years ago, right? Sure. You know, you show like Adam Gopnik pulling his hair out while he writes a book review or something like that or David Remnick, right?

I mean, it does feel like a violation in a way, just the fact that it's happening because these are such sacrosanct media institutions. But I guess what they've decided is that, you know, a peek behind the curtain does have consequences. And by the way,

the other thing I'd add is the Times, this is not a New York Times joint, right? This is a documentary filmmaker, Liz Garbus who went into the lines to do this. The Times, I think does, like everybody, including the ringer, think of itself as a content factory now. So now you see this new show they're going to have on FX, right?

Yeah. And this is a way, in a weird way, this is like the Trojan horse for them to dip their toe into prestige television. Because that's where they're going to go, right? They have the daily. They want to do TV shows. Yeah, and they struggle with this.

I mean, it's not a problem with the Showtime show. This is a struggle depicted in the Showtime show that they are, when they had to start laying off editors, I know that's in the Showtime show, like the financial realities of making journalism in 2018 or in the 2010s is a part of the reality that they deal with. And there was a line in one of the segments that I saw

where someone was just like, you can't start firing editors or journalists because you're going to play into Trump's narrative. And this is, I mean, that's really interesting to me. But you're right. The multimedia, like, it was only a matter of time before they started going multimedia because that's the direction of the future. That's how you can make money.

And prestige is obviously the way to go for a place like the New York Times. If you can do this, you do it. The question is, with everything else from, you know, from the very, whatever, the very beginning of the internet until the modern age is how much of your soul you sell in the process of succeeding. No, it's true. It's true. But I think, you know, I think here's the other thing about the Times. It's like, and this comes up in the documentary with this part where they're laying off a bunch of their copy editors, remember that? Which calls a protest, which we see a walkout amongst time staffers and a protest outside the building, which we see in the documentary is they've got to make money. And, you know, it's easy to fool ourselves when they're undressing Trump every day that, oh, they're doing great. Traffic's through the roof. look newspapers are still are still a tough proposition

and any revenue stream helps right and I think that I think that horse is just out of the barn right it would be nice to just be a newspaper that speaks in this very you know high minded voice Mr. Trump said dot dot dot but that's not where we are anymore and there's just there's no way to survive like that

I think they know that they know that too you know it'd be great and there's a sense in which you know I mean I'm sure you see this throughout the showtime show. There's a sense in which they can keep trying to regain trust, but they're probably all the people whose trust they've already lost are not going to be reconverted or many of those people. So do the best job you can and continue to do it across platforms and hope that your honesty or integrity prevails. If there is a second season of this, I'd love to see them confront that problem, the fake news problem a little bit more head on. We see Trump talk about it and we see a few

reporters go out in the field, including one, you know, a couple of scenes in like conservative rallies and things like that where people are telling, oh, you're from the New York Times, I hate you, just on principle. But I think showing reporters like dealing with that in the field, especially people that are out in quote unquote real America. Like that to me is just fascinating. Because sometimes it's just like, oh, you're from the New York Times, I hate you. Like, okay, great. And then they just talk anyway. It's like a talking point for everybody, but nobody actually believes it. What do you think? We got to go, we got to move on. But what do you think the, I feel like we must have talked about this before,

but Trump's anti-Times animosity, Trump's animosity towards the New York Times. Is it, do you think it's based on, I mean, is it based in their reporting since he nominated, I mean, since he started running for president primarily? Or is it, can we trace this back to just like an old school New York, like, you know, I'm a New York post guy, not a New York Times guy? Like, you know, there's a different paper for every type.

I think door number two. And his sort of lifelong inferiority complex, the swells aren't treating him as a swell. Right? Always played in the daily news. He always played in the post. Time's a tougher. You know,

tougher mountain to climb. New Yorker. Mark Singer writes the unflattering profile. It's the, yeah, I think that's certainly part of it. I think he create, it's like any other,

it's like any of the other old money people in New York. He craves their approval, which is why I kept inviting those people in for interviews. I agree. I agree. And I think that that's, I mean, that's what I was hoping you would say,

and that's what I would assume the answer would be. And that's why, you know, I think there's probably a direct line between there and whoever, average voter is coming up to a New York Times reporter and saying, I hate you.

I mean, I'm not sure that, I don't know. It's interesting how that animosity sort of trickles down. Anyway. All right, David, we'll talk about fire and fury reloaded, part two,

after this break. This summer, David, there is a huge soccer tournament. Maybe you've heard of it. Unfortunately, the United States men's team did not make it, but Iceland did, David, and Raka Vodka is recruiting you to be an honorary Icelander and cheer for Iceland this summer. Iceland is the smallest nation to ever qualify,

and they also take the field in red, white, and blue. Perfect match. When you cheer for Iceland, you get to do the Icelandic Viking chant. It's easy. Follow along with me, David. Huh. Huh. Did that sound like a convincing Icelander to you? Most importantly, Iceland makes the delicious rika vodka. Perfect for celebrating any victory. Go to reika.com to get Team Iceland gear and find a viewing party near you. That's R-E-Y-K-A dot com. Real fans drink responsibly, Rika vodka, 40% alcohol by folium, 80-proof, distilled from grain,

copyright 2018, William Grant and Sons, New York, New York. Okay, David, Fire and Fury Part 2. Story was broken by Axios, to which Michael Wolfe, the author of Fire and Fury Part 1, said, quote, it's untitled, unscheduled, unfocused. What is he going to do? I mean, the whole thing, I was going to say the whole premise of the first book is

the fox in the hen house. Probably more like the fox in the barracuda house or something, right? But like, you can't go back in, right? You'll never get, or... Presumably not. I mean, the best possible version of this is if you put on a wig and a mustache and manage to keep getting access to all the loose...

All the blabber mouths in the white house. That would be the best version of this. That would be the best movie sequel. It's like the thick eyebrows thing. No, the movie thing, I mean, I know there's so many easy fast and furious jokes. The movie thing would be like, it would be like the sequels that like the night of the museum too where it's just like, okay, he's out. Now how do we get him back in? Right?

You know, like we got to, what plot can Trivance can put Michael Wolf back into, you know, sitting on that sofa with a pen and a pad? Yeah, like the camera pants to Trump. you again. Yeah. I think that the, I think that, we discuss this a little bit on our, in our work slack, but I think that the outline of the book is pretty straightforward. I think it's cutting room floor stuff, stuff that didn't make it in the first book for, because it wasn't particularly interesting or whatever else.

It's just like sort of, it's like when a band has to do their second album, six months after they spent five years of making their first album. There's a lot of songs that didn't make the first album, you know? Yeah. That's a good point. But there's... The ones he didn't exhaust that may have turned out

to be fake on the book tour. Yeah. And then there's got to be some stuff that he couldn't quite report out. You know, there's a lot of criticism of his, of the, you know, his style or whatever, but it was fact checked

and it got legally read and everything. There's probably some stuff that he couldn't quite source in round one that has either been proven true separately or that he's been able to source since then. And then, you know, as we've covered a million times,

there's no shortage of former White House staffers right now. You know, there's plenty of people to be talking to, even if you can't get onto the grounds. That's true. And now he's got this reputation, better or worse, as a guy who's going to be, I mean, announcing the book in some ways was the flex. You know, we're going to do this book.

So now you can talk to me or not, but probably your coworkers are going to be talking to me. Yeah. It does feel like the kind of sequel that it's just for all those reasons and also just publishing money reasons just inevitable, right? There's no way it wouldn't happen. It's not always like, you know what?

I'm going to go write a travel log about France next. Yeah. Kind of got to write another Trump book. Absolutely. And he's got a little bit of, I mean, as big a deal as that book was, and it was an enormous deal. It felt like it ended on a down note for Michael Wolf.

Right? Like, there was this huge arc and explosion of all the stories that he broke and all this cool stuff. The book tour was not good. And then the book tour, yeah. Then it sort of got to like, you know, is he a responsible journalist and like is he and and when he started making the out the allusions to the affairs or whatever else and then just sort of the air came out and people stopped having

he was on MSNBC every night for like you know two months and then he was just never on never seen again there's a little bit of a redemption narrative for him too yeah that's a good call he does he's another one that just seems like kind of both craves and is denied the is denied the love of the you know in this case the the highfalutin press or whatever it's sort of like the new york times that yeah I mean, it's like how much of your solely you're willing to give away? I mean, when he started making those sort of allegations on random shows, it felt like he was just grabbing on, trying to keep relevant, trying to keep getting invited back and it backfired. He, the other thing about this is, what if Trump is just like, you know what? Come, come right back in.

I mean, that would be the most Trumpian thing of all, right? That's what he did with the tabloids. Now, I don't know if he resents Michael Wolf because Michael Wolf became made a lot of money off Donald Trump. Well, and Trump had, I mean, I don't disagree with you entirely, but I mean, Trump had to, like, formally went after him and denied they ever had dinner or denied he ever gave him permission to be in the White House. Be in the White House. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, Trump would have to go back on his own word, but that hasn't stopped him in the past. That's true. That's true. We do have like, there's, there's a, there's a, there's a forementioned Maggie Haberman has a memoir coming out that she was doing with Glenn Thrush, now being sort of retooled. There's a number. The other thing is like there's, he was important because he was first, right? Right. Having the lead-off slot of Trump muckraking books was huge. Because we talk about this all the time. Like you read your 40th Trump scandal story, you just begin to gloss over and don't

understand what you're reading anymore. You know, it's even hard. It's actually mentioned in the fourth of state documentary. It's just like they're just, even the reporters who do this and like understand the differences and the nuances and the iterative developments in these stories, they just get blown away by it. So the other thing is if this comes out and like, it's got to come out by 2020, right? This comes out in like early 2020.

We may just be so Trump booked out. But I guess maybe there's just like a liberal block of book buyers that was like, I will buy anything. Please write book. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what the other big Trump. I mean, you mentioned the Heyerman book. I mean, I don't know what the other books are. You know, we're not going to get the game change for this election.

I mean, literally that book, you know, like that. I mean, I'm sure there will be other ones. but you know there is a craven there is a very craven book publishing aspect to this too which is that like they will Barnes and Noble will buy copy will pre-order this

we'll order this book based on the sales track of the last book they'll ship way more copies than they're going to sell but that and then Barnes & Noble gets to return them for a full refund and that's fine for probably

the publisher's probably already preparing for that because it's positive cash flow even if they have to give the money back it's a period of really high cash flow and they can write it off if it's a bust. Ah. So there's a lot of like keeping the light bulbs, you know, screwed in at for, for any book publisher in this, you know, in this system. So we have to write Fire and Fury 2, ship Fire and Fury 2.

Yeah. We don't necessarily have to sell all of fire. Well, ideally, yes, you sell it. Yeah, for sure. But like, it's really, you know, shipping those and getting the, getting the cash flow thing is a big deal. So that's the reason to write the book right there. Save the American publishing industry.

Yeah. And for Wolf. I mean, I mean, the second book, I mean, there's always a, The second book deal always has a little bit of a, of a, you know, pat on the back sort of aspect to it, too. You did well for us one time. We'll give it another shot. All right, David, that's the press box this week. Back next week with more hot media takes, thanks to our producer, Jim Cunningham, as always. See you then, David.

See you later, man. This is not a New York Times joint. Huh. Huh. Huh. Huh. It rubs the lotion on its skin and does this one. it's told. It rubs the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again. Now it places the lotion in the

basket. Now it places the lotion in the basket. Guy knows how to flirt.