The Press Box - Reports From Brooklyn and Minneapolis, Plus: Trump Goes to Church

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

After a week of protests around the country, Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker are joined by Ringer writer Tyler Tynes and Washington Post reporter Robert Klemko to discuss their perspectives from the ground of both cities, Brooklyn and Minneapolis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers. This is the press box. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. Our topic once again is the protest across the country in response to the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis. Later in the show, David and I will touch on Donald Trump's photo op in front of the church near the White House. But first and much more importantly, we want to get the perspective of two reporters who are actually on the ground covering the protests. In a second, we're going to talk to the Washington Post, Robert Klimko, who's in Minneapolis. But here first is the ringer's very own, Tyler Tynes, who's covering the protest movement in Brooklyn and now Washington, D.C. He's got a great, beautifully written new piece up of the ringer, which you need to read right now, a night of protest, pain, and peace in Brooklyn. Tyler, thanks for doing this.

Got out of vibes, nor Philly. You know what's going on. You started covering the protests in Brooklyn on Monday. First question for you, what was the biggest difference between the protests as you saw? and experienced them firsthand versus the version that got filtered back to the rest of us on social media and cable TV. Right. And so let me kind of preface this with a bit of context, right? I've been covering protests more or less since 2015 as a national reporter in summer respects since I was 21. I'm 26 now. And so that's five years since the robust start of this, which was the slaying of Trayvon Martin in Florida. Since then it's been Michael Brown. It's been Sandra Bland. It's been a time. Natiana Jefferson, it's been countless names to the point that we don't have the time to even get through all of them because it's over a thousand per year by police. And so that perspective sort of kind of, it's a bridge for me when I go into these places, which I've been doing since 2015, like I said, both for athletic protests and both for national protests.

And so Brooklyn, in so many different respects, was an anomaly for me. we saw kind of the rebellion and the civil unrest going on in New York and in all 50 states at this point, the United States, internationally, between London and Paris and so many more. But that moment in Brooklyn on Monday was peaceful. The rage was there. Do not get me wrong. The rage was in everyone's eyes, but it was peaceful. It was a respite, you know, in the sense that it felt like a party. Like it felt like you were supposed to be there for a moment when everything was actually going right. It felt like those people were heard.

I can't tell you that's actually going to do anything or that's going to bring about substantive, radical, or even small-level change, what I can tell you is that for blackness to exist uninterrupted, for it to exist at a moment by itself, robustly, without anyone to stop it, to hear it for what it is, and those people in between, that is something worth recording,

that is something worth remembering, and that is something worth to allow the white onlookers who care to kind of dip their toes into this at moments instead of consistently. I think we need to remember those moments as much as you remember the outrage because the outrage comes from a place of peacefulness sometimes

and it also comes from a place of discord. And the biggest example of that too is that a lot of Americans should be grateful. If black Americans especially wanted back the actual revenge that came to them from this land from the beginning of 1619 to now, we have a horrible problem on our hands.

But we don't want that. We just want equity. And so the moment right now, take it in. understand it and specifically listen. Listen more than you speak and you think. Because it's a lot for y'all to learn because people are willing to let you know about yourself.

Well, then let me, Tyler, let me listen. It's been five years you've been covering this. And I think that I don't know this because I don't associate necessarily with a lot of the people who'd be dissenting from the marchers or from the politics, the people who are out there protesting. But I get the feeling that for a lot of people in the world, it's a lot of white folk.

There's a lot of, there's some of like, oh, this again. Like we thought, like we were told that that was done or we thought we already dealt with that. And now it's back.

But I get, my question for you is, you've been doing this for five years. Does it feel like one continuous movement to you? Is it one, is it a never-ending process? And if so, or if not,

how does, how does the past week or so feel different to you? So yes and no, right? I think the thing that people kind of need to understand is that, in my generation, like I said, I'm a young bull. And so for my generation, this is very new, right? For the decade of protests happens since Trayvon Martin, it's new for us and the fact that

there's a new generation of protesters who have come up, who have learned from their ancestors, who have learned from their forefathers, who have taken those notes and who are outraged, who were children of Barack Obama just like they are Trayvon Martin, who were radicalized by the consistent 24-7 news cycle and the killings and slayings of people who look like them, put in high definition and put on every single timeline. And so in some ways, because I've been doing this for a while, yes, it does feel like a lot of the same.

But I also wanted to be clear that rebellions, whether they be civil unrest or peaceful, have been going on in the United States by the sake of white and black people since the inception of this country, right? That rebellions were happening on plantations and that those plantations also went back to the Boston Tea Party. Rebellion and to a certain extent, a word that I don't use, but looting and violent protest to even a certain extent, consistently has happened across the United States of America and its history and internationally. So I think the thing that we often forget is that, especially when it comes from the perspective of whiteness

and the gaze of whiteness is that we expect black people to be seen and not heard. And a lot of times you don't even expect them to be seen unless it's in the specific paradox that we want them to, athletes, entertainers, cultural icons, right? Adjustable bits of blackness that we then can replicate ourselves and get back to the world.

That ain't going to cut it no more, right? Like the moment that you were seeing right now in the beginning of this moment, because it is not going anywhere at all. And we saw it in 2016, we saw it in 2014, and we saw it in 2012. This moment is just beginning again. And these moments have happened consistently.

It happened during the Civil Rights Movement. It happened during the 80s. It happened during a moment of the activism in the 90s, and it's happening right now again. And it's not going anywhere as long as the people who are in the middle of these protests have anything to say about it. And so many of these protests have

similar notes, right? The chance are similar, the people are a little bit of the same, the ideas and the policies are similar, but at the same time, they're all different. When Stefan Clark got killed in in Sacramento, that was different than Freddie Gray in Baltimore. When Michael Brown was killed

in Ferguson, that is extremely different from right now, when George Floyd and Brianna Taylor and so many more have been murdered as well. And so that's the thing that we should understand is that It might feel the same to some white folk, but I promise you, you ain't looked and heard every single protest that you would know it's the same. I want to ask you about a couple of details in your piece. You write about how the coronavirus has disproportionately affected and killed black citizens.

And you have this amazing quote from a protester named Rhonda Brumeir, who told you, the risk of police is greater than the risk of a pandemic. When you were talking to protesters, how did you see them balancing those two things? violence on the one hand and this incredible pandemic on the other hand. I found this really interesting because there have been a bevy of organizers and protesters who have talked about that, right, in that we should understand this pandemic is not over. But at the same time, folks have fed up, right? And so folks have been fed up with the disease of police brutality, with the disease of systemic racism, with the disease of how the black body is treated consistently over generations

every day in every workplace, including our own. in America. And so for so many of those people, they feel as though that is much, much, much more important than a pandemic. And whether you believe them or not is one thing, but it's easier to disbelieve when you're not in the position when your body and your livelihood is on the line

every day when you leave the house. And so I understand it. There were plenty of organizers out there who felt the same way. Hell, I'll be that way a little bit. And so it's difficult because my mama is a nurse. My daddy was a cop. And so I'm somewhere in that in between where I care a lot about health care a lot about social distancing. I care a lot about making sure that we do not contract this disease, especially one that disproportionately affects black people differently than anyone else in this country.

Equally, I wanted to be understood that it's important to document this moment, whether that's coming from the perspective of the organizer or the journalist. Because when history reflects this, when we teach this in classes and when we look back at this time period, we need to be. a bevy of understanding, a bevy of different outlooks and lenses to know exactly what happened and exactly how it happened. And so that young lady, she's strong, man. She's strong, you know, because she definitely didn't want to be out there if she ain't have to be. But in so many ways where people believe the global pandemic is the fight of our lives, this has been the fight of mine. So I woke up. So taking a step back. You've been in New York. You've been in D.C. where are you going next and where do you think what do you think you'll see is that too vague a question

what do you think what do you think Friday morning what do you think Monday morning will look like when you look around I mean I take the seat of people and that's the most important thing right is that and specifically when you think about Washington you're talking about the presidency of someone who has specifically used their perch from the executive office to wage a war on black people, specifically on the black athlete, and specifically on black people and especially on protesters,

to the point that he has said, paraphrasing that he wants them deported from this country on numerous occasions from 2017 to 2018. So the point that he came out in his public address and said that you can wage war on these protesters, that you can get rid of them. And when you're thinking about white supremacy and you're thinking about the policies of white supremacy, especially in the Republican Party,

and the way that his resolution, Rick has trickled down not only into the election cycle, into our ads, into everything that that party has been made up since 2018, especially coming off the back of the party who said an autopsy in 2012 that they weren't going to do this anymore. This is their shining night, and they're proud of him. They're proud of him. And so in Washington, it is especially pressure because Washington is hell of red lines. It's extremely segregated. It is gentrified beyond the leap. I used to live here on the Broadway of these. on 8th Street and Northeast, and that place is gone.

And so it's not just about the fact that someone was murdered by police, and that several people were murdered by police. It's about the fact that an entire way of black life is being stolen from us. And that matters. That matters more than you can imagine, because black people and blackness especially is the culture, it is the soundbeat, and it is the currency of this country. It is the unpaid labor that built this land on an indigenous land that is not ours. And so when you think about the White House, which was built by slaves,

when you think about this city which was built by black folks, burned down by black folks, and then rebuilt by black folks in Washington, D.C., think about that the essence and soul of blackness lives here. It is under attack every single day by developers, by president, and by police. At least one of them need to change. We're going to move forward. All of them do, but at least right now, one of them can change. I know you just got to D.C. a few hours ago.

What have you been your first impressions? My first impressions is the DEA officers is yoking your boy up. I'm just trying to drive around, park my car. You know, I can't even go down side streets. It's interesting to CDC this way. Like I said, I lived here for three years. I started my journalism career in national media here for Huff Post when I was 21,

five years ago at this point. And it's so disheartening to see a city that I really grew up in and that I fell in love with look this way. Look partially destroyed. look completely anonymous. There's no one on the streets. A piece of that is obviously the pandemic, and a piece of that is fear.

There are coffee shops that are boarded up because we're afraid of black people. And to think that that is the environment in which we live right now is absolutely outrageous, but equally, it's one that needs to happen. And I'm hoping on this for a reason because the way in which we think about protests

when it comes from the black body is something that we assume should be peaceful. They ain't worked. They ain't worked too well. Colin Kaepernick's protested and worked for people, right? Muhammad Ali's protesting and worked for people. Even though we'd like to repurpose it this way, Jack Robinson's protesting and worked for people.

And so if peaceful protest is something that is not working and justice is something that is not on the table, then every avenue of equality must be searched, every single one. And the thing I can tell you for the people that are upset is that buildings don't breathe. Buildies can be rebuilt. You kill a black person in the street, they're not coming back.

That neighborhood's not coming back. That family will never recover. A sea of people of citizens that own this land will not be the same. And so I don't give a damn that some Target got hit. I don't give a damn that some Foot Locker got rated.

I don't give a damn at an Apple store and Philly got messed up. We're talking about a capitalist society with billions of dollars in it and none of them is being given back to the black folks in it. And equally, I can't even tell you as black folks is hitting all these places uniformly. So we have to think about what we care about. I care about black folks and I care about black lives. First and foremost, it's the pathos of why I get up every day and the work that I try to do. And so if the centrality of what we're doing is taken away or distorted with the idea that property is more important than people,

than we've lost. Yeah, I mean, listen, what I'm about to say, you just said everything that I could possibly say way more eloquently than I could. I just spent some time in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which is a lovely place. But my departing memory of the place was watching two very, very, I'm sure, well-meaning white folk talking about protests

and harkening back to the 60s and trying to, I mean, just you, it's the worst fallacy, but saying like, listen, if you want to protest, you're supposed to put on your suits and your nice dresses and go out and be peaceful about it. And I couldn't help but think about that when you're saying it's supposed to, people have this expectation of peace and how useless that's been or how insufficient that's been over time. And, you know, we've talked a lot on this show about shut up and dribble. I guess the central fallacy of that always was that, all those shut up and dribble critiques is even as silly as they were on their face, the fallacy of it was that it wasn't never about dribbling. I mean, the argument was just shut up, right? And that's become the platform of our president, of an entire half of our political infrastructure.

So I don't even know if I have a question except when we're talking about politics, you said one of these things can change, right? The president, obviously you're talking about the president of the United States of America. Is there a political path forward that you see? or are the protests in and of themselves louder than any political decision, political movement could be? I think you see the issues with both parties in this, right? I think you see the Democratic Party is at a position where they don't actually know what they want from a leader. You saw people who supported Bernie Sanders and this insurgent movement into the Democratic Party

for a person who didn't really want to be a part of the Democratic Party, who was usurping ideas that mostly came from black Southern women, who were making movement protests and making policies against voter suppression against for Medicaid for all and et cetera, et cetera. And you get that side of this. And that was really enticing to young white people. But Bernie Sanders is somebody who

couldn't find a coalition within a Democratic Party. Like the only important thing you actually need to do to be a president is with votes. And if people don't rock with you, well, you can't win a presidency, right? For Joe Biden, Joe Biden has a slew of issues that make him incapable of being a president. But he is the best choice at the moment.

Right? And so James Baldwin said something like this when it came to the vote of I believe Jimmy Carter, where he had said, and I'm paraphrasing, with my little cousins and my nephews and my brothers come to ask me how excited I was to vote Democrat, I told them I did it to survive. Because if the reality here is that as a Republican Party who has committed to the idea that they don't want to actually be tied centrally to racism anymore, and then they decided this is their candidate, you go from that to the idea that this has been this party for a while. And so if I'm black, am I supporting my absolute best option or racism? It's a very easy choice in that regard. And so that's the thing here is that I don't think anyone's happy with the two-party system as it currently exists at the moment. But I think they're happy enough to vote for their lives. And that's what it comes down to. It comes down to policies that are supported in white supremacy, both consciously and

unconsciously, or it comes down to something that might be more collaborative. that's at least the way that I see it. But at this point, when you look at the protests and where they've gone nationally, it has been a very long time since you've seen this level of civil unrest. Freddie Gray, Ferguson, moments like those,

and even Sevel Smith to a certain extent in Milwaukee, where the last times you really saw this much of mass action, either by the fact that people are tired and fed up of what they've seen or by organized protests by itself. And so what else is louder, except disruption?

And I think the country's got the message at this point. Tyler Tines' current piece is a night of protest pain and peace in Brooklyn. There's much more to come. Thanks, Tyler for joining us. We really appreciate it. I know what it is. It's North Philly. All right, David, I also wanted to get some perspective from Minneapolis because I know

you like me have been riveted to the images coming out of that city since the killing of George Floyd, reached out to Robert Klimko. We know him as a sports writer at the Washington Post, but since March, he's actually been covering coronavirus and now the protests for the post. He went from the sports section to the A section. So we talked all about what he has seen in Minneapolis and a little bit about his journalistic move from one part of the paper to the other. All right, let me start with the broadest possible question. Most of us have been experiencing the protests on TV and social media where we get a sense of their power, but just a sense. What was it like to be in Minneapolis

actually talking to protesters? Yeah, you know, it was fascinating. because you meet people from all different walks of life with these things. For a little context, you know, I covered Ferguson when I was with Sports Illustrated and I was on loan to Time magazine for a few days while they're actually doing a sports story about the high school football team. And then I went and covered some of those protests. And what was so unique about these Minneapolis protests and really the protests all across the country compared to places like Ferguson and Baltimore where we saw

activism in 2014 and in previous years is that it was so widespread here. You know, you had police and authorities, state police, scrambling all around the city trying to get a handle on the various tiny uprisings, especially at night. And also during the day to try to manage them to make sure that, you know, that people weren't hurt and that it didn't escalate into violence. But it was all over the city. It was in all different sorts of neighborhoods, whether it was downtown or South Minneapolis or North Minneapolis.

And you met people that were from the area and had personal experiences and were sick of the treatment. But then you also met people who were from the suburbs and didn't have any personal experiences with institutionalized racism and just came down. to support the people who had. And I think what was really special, and I ended up writing about this and a story that's going to come out in a few days, is seeing people with families come out, seeing people bring kids that are 10, 11, 12 years old,

you know, as young as babies and infants, bringing them to George Floyd's memorial site or walking them in a stroller down I-35 in a protest, led by a bunch of Minnesota area athletes. And talking to those families about why, they felt it was important for their children to begin to have these conversations. And it made me think about my life. You know, I wasn't aware of any sort of police killings until I read about Rodney King

in school. But these kids, this generation is learning about it right now, you know, via social media and videos and their parents are struggling to like provide this context for them. That is fascinating. I did want to ask you about the scene of George Floyd's killing, which is at 38th Street in Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis. you went there. How were protesters treating that space? And what did it feel like to be there? You know, it was a very reverential space. And the only place in the city, I think, that you could reliably

say, you know, this is not going to get violent, you know, come nightfall. Because there were a lot of people that were connected to George who have stayed around there, you know, whether they're friends or relatives. Terence Floyd spoke there the other day when I was there. You know, there's countless tributes and flowers and signs dedicated to him. A Native American activist group came through the other day and did, you know, a dance to a ritual dance to spread healing and safety around the area. So there was a real spiritual feel in that area compared to everywhere else. And that's where I saw, that's where I saw the most families. And so my story is specifically about actually mixed race families and interracial couples who, you know,

the conversation around their child's racial identity is already complicated, right? And then family tensions are exacerbated in the age of Trump. And then now they're further exacerbated with this national tragedy hitting so close to home. The charges yesterday against Derek Chauvin, who's the police officer who killed Floyd, were upgraded to second-degree murder. The other three officers who had not been charged with anything were charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. How did you observe the protesters reacting to that news? So, you know, I think a lot of people were really happy with that because, you know, that was the rallying cry. First, it was arrest Chauvin, then it was arrest the rest as they were chanting.

And now, you know, I think they're at the point where some of the organizers and some of the people who have been in this space for a long time are fighting and pushing for institutional change. And they're starting to see a little bit of that with the University of Minnesota backing off of their relationship with MPD, the public schools backing off of their relationship with MPD. And obviously there are going to be pros and cons to that. I mean, I'm sure there are fantastic school resource officers across MPD that are going to be missed at their schools. So I do hope they find a positive resolution there. But a lot of these leaders who have been talking about these issues for a long time are now trying to mobilize people to care about institutional change. And I think that's harder. That's harder to get, that's harder to build a chant around.

That's harder to get people to drive in from the suburbs to fight for. And so, you know, I don't know where the protests go from here. But the response from the district attorney, from all of the authorities that these protesters are calling on for change has been really swift in these early stages. You tweeted you did not go looking for a sports story in Minneapolis. But you found one because on Friday, Royce White, former NBA first round pick was leading a protest that began at U.S. Bank Stadium. You wrote that he is perhaps an unlikely emerging spokesman for social justice. Tell us what got Royce White to take action.

Yeah. So I feel like only if you're like a hardcore NBA fan, you'll remember Royce White getting picked in the middle of the first round a few years ago and then never really logging any minutes in the NBA. And he kind of bounced around some of the developmental leagues. But his big problem is this generalized anxiety disorder where he can't fly, right? And he hasn't been able to overcome that. And so he has been an advocate for mental health in sports and also in schools around here at Minnesota, where he's from,

and has written about police brutality and racial injustices, but never really been on the front lines of a protest, certainly never been an organizer. but there was something about the very visceral nature of this killing and the fact that there was no ambiguity in the video. I mean, it's not as though you can make an excuse for the police officer and say, well, he feared for his life, he got jumpy, the gun went off. You know, there's a knee on this guy's neck for nine minutes. And I think that that inspired Royce specifically to kind of jump to action. He texted a group of 30 Minnesota athletes, you know, college guys, pro guys, ex-pro guys that actually had started a group chat because they were, you know, looking for a place to work out together last year. And Roy said, you know, I think it's time for us to, you know, who have voices, who have prominent voices in this community to stand up and say something.

So they had about 200 people initially last week gather in front of U.S. Bank Stadium for a March. And then that thing swelled to several thousand. And they ended up, you know, blocking traffic, walking down I-35 West and taking a knee and all listening to Royce White. And it struck me because, you know, I was, I'm staying at the hotel across from where they were walking. And I just walked to the front of the march and got this giant bald guy. guy's phone number. I had no idea who he was. And then reading more about his story, it struck me as really important and cool and kind of exemplary of how this movement doesn't really have, you know, a Martin Luther King or a Malcolm X or even a Jesse Jackson, which is what I wrote.

But it does have all of these local leaders who have sprung to action in the last few years and mobilized large numbers of people. You've always been interested in the places where sports and politics collide. And I thought it was so interesting that this march began at U.S. Bank Stadium where the Vikings play. Was that symbolic? Did Royce White intend that to be symbolic? Yeah. Well, he's one of those guys. You know, he sees and finds meaning and everything. And he wanted to start it there because, you know, so many taxpayer dollars go into building and maintaining these NFL stadiums. And he asked the question, you know, how many billions or millions that were spent on U.S. Bank Stadium and the Vikings could have been spent on police

reform to prevent, you know, killings like this and to prevent really the daily abuses that communities in poverty and communities of color, you know, go through, you know, at the hands of police. One thing that I think's been kind of hard for us to understand just watching on TV is the way police tactics in Minneapolis and elsewhere have changed from day to day, from going from somewhat passive to, I would say, hyper-aggressive. You described a big shift on Saturday night. They had previously let the third precinct burn down

and then they sort of went to the fifth precinct and said, this isn't happening, even though the protest around there, as you described, it was very peaceful. How did you observe those tactics changing from night to night on the ground there? Yeah, it was, I mean, it was night and day. I mean, one day they're protecting, like,

the ruins of the fifth or the third, very passively, and a group, of protesters, you know, about three quarters of them peaceful and then a quarter of them throwing rocks and sticks and bottles, essentially run them off the spot and back them up about six blocks until the police completely disperse. And then the next night, there's an enormous peaceful protest around the fifth, nobody throwing anything. And they don't even create a line of police officers blocking the, blocking off the police station. They just, rush the area, tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper bullets, flashbangs.

And, you know, they're shooting at journalists. There's that photo of that NBC journalist that I took who had had his mask completely covered in blood and had a head wound. And I think that that approach honestly stifled a lot of what was happening at night here. because the next couple days were very quiet and you didn't see a lot of the burning structures that you saw, you know, in the previous nights. I did want to ask you about that

because there has been so much aggressive, even violent behavior from the police toward reporters. In a Minneapolis alone, the CNN crew detained, LA Times reporter and photographer injured, CBS crew fired on with rubber bullets. You mentioned the NBC crew. What have you observed about the way police have acted or interacted with the press.

Yeah. You know, I think there's a few different things happening because I think back to Ferguson and I didn't see a lot of protesters with nice cameras or just even like riot gear. Like you'll see photographers with helmets and thick vests. But a lot of the normal people, the protesters or the rioters in Ferguson,

didn't have any of that stuff. But now you're seeing folks who are participating, participating in the protests who are not affiliated with any media outlet who have nice cameras, who have helmets, who have, you know, vests and knee pads. And they're, they look like traditional media, but they're not. And so I think, for one, the police are being told that let's not, let's stop trying to differentiate between media and not. And let's detain first and ask questions later. Well, and then I think additionally, there's this dynamic where you have members of the police who have a resentment towards the media for whatever reason or they're taking out frustrations,

and they're taking that new degree of leeway that they have and they're extending it into situations where they're obviously assaulting members of the press, you know, where you're shooting reporters holding up microphones and talking to a large, steady camera with a boom mic over their head, where you're shooting rubber bullets at that person. So I think that, you know, there's been some ambiguity and some level of permission for the police to just ask questions later. And the ones that are bad actors are taking advantage of that. Since you temporarily moved over from the sports section to the A section in March,

most of your writing has been about the effects of the coronavirus. And I was struck Keisha Lance Bottoms, Mayor of Atlanta said the other day that she hadn't actually looked at her city city statistics in two days just because of the urgency of the protests in front of her. So I want to ask you this. How did you see protesters balancing the importance of being heard with this very natural fear of potentially getting sick? Yeah. You know, there's a diverse group out here, but the vast majority of these people are very young. And I think you've seen across the country, even before these protests, you know, because of the early messaging that this virus wasn't going to affect young people, this idea that they were, you know, invulnerable.

So I think that's a factor. I see probably 60% of people in these things wearing masks. A letter that I read the other day that was, you know, signed by dozens of health professionals from across the country in support of the protests kind of encapsulated the thinking of these protesters for me on the topic. The letter said, something to the extent of the problem, the issues of white supremacy predate and contribute to COVID-19. So the sense that this is a bigger problem and the reason you're seeing racial disparities in who is most affected by the COVID-19 virus is a symptom of white supremacy and institutionalized racism and all the ways that people of color have been marginalized in this country, whether it's

you know, access to care, whether it's, you know, cycles of poverty. And so I think that's kind of the justification that a lot of these people who have thought about this would use is that, you know, the reason our communities are suffering more than they're suffering in the suburbs from COVID-19 is because of these problems we're here protesting. Tell me about moving to the A section, which initially was because of this national pandemic. Why was that important for you to do? You know, part of the reason I wanted to go from Sports Illustrated to The Post was to, because of the broad interests of a place like the Washington Post where, you know, you have this opportunity to work with people outside of sports on, you know, different stories. I mean, even before the pandemic came, I was working with a guy who is a data expert on the investigative news side who was helping me contextualize. a bunch of college football data that we got a hold of.

And so that story went on hold. But that's part of the reason that I even wanted to come to the post was to kind of diversify my interest and my coverage. And then this pandemic came and they asked for volunteers. And I thought, you know, I don't have any kids. I just got married. My opportunity to cover a story like this, it may be slim. You know, maybe in 10 years, if I have a kid, I won't want to go cover a pandemic or I won't want to go cover a protest that could potentially turn violent.

So, you know, I've always been interested in these things and I need to start doing them now, now that I have the opportunity. And then that morphed into, you know, can you go back to Denver where I was living before and live there for a while and cover the virus in the mountain west? And I said, okay. And then then that morphed into can you go to Minnesota? soda and be there for a couple weeks and cover these protests. So it's like, you know, you keep getting more and more comfortable with different scenarios as they get, you know, kind of more extreme. And when you get asked about going to Minneapolis, are you, is your answer, absolutely, that's where I want to be at this moment in time? Yeah, for sure. You know, I was attracted to Ferguson to, to write about that struggle because, you know, it's one that's near and dear to my heart.

I mean, my grandmother grew up in Jim Crow, Louisiana, and was able to get out. You know, my father, who's white, his mother disowned him for marrying my mom, was black. So a lot of these issues of race and racial disparity are something that, you know, have defined my upbringing. Let me ask you one sports question, and I apologize for asking you a sports writer question here before we, go. But you tweeted it, but it is of the moment because you tweeted this morning after Chris Ballard, general manager of the Indianapolis Colts, sort of belatedly got religion on racial inequality. And you essentially ask, how do people that interact with black athletes not know more about inequality? Do you have a theory of why they don't? You know, and it's not just interacting with black athletes

because a lot of people in the NFL do that. You know, the coaches do that, the white players do that. But I think that GM's longtime scouts should have an even better understanding of all this stuff because they're doing the background work on the athlete's backgrounds when they're coming into the draft. So they're interviewing people and their families. They're going to these communities. They're talking to high school coaches. They're talking to college coaches about the recruitment process.

and they have access to this data set that sociologists can only dream up. 200 plus people a year, 60 to 70% of them, African American, and you're seeing some of the depths of poverty in this country and you're understanding racial inequality in this country at a level that most people couldn't even imagine. And yet a lot of these GMs and scouts

only see players in the context of how poor is this guy, how educated is he, and how does that contribute to his desire to succeed in the NFL? And never step back and say, oh, wow, the majority of the kids who really do well in the NFL and really improve upon their draft position are from places like Apalaka, Florida, and Pahoki, Florida. And these backwater towns across the south

that are 95% African-American and completely underserved by our education system and our health care system and are fighting their way out of poverty. And that's why they're succeeding in the NFL because they have to. How do you look at that for 20 years and not think about the big picture? So they're taking that data and they're jumping right to, is this guy going to be a good edge rusher for us or not, essentially? Right. Well, the question I think that a lot of these guys talk about is,

does this guy need the NFL? Does he need to succeed in the NFL as opposed to does he want to succeed in the NFL? And they prefer these guys from poverty as opposed to upper middle class backgrounds because nobody wants to draft another Chris Borland who gets smart and realizes that he wants to be able to tie his shoes in 40 years.

You want the guy that isn't concerned about that because he's trying to get his family out of an awful situation. Robert Clemco, you can read his profile of Royce White in the Washington Post right now. New piece coming in a couple of days. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me. All right, Dave, before we go, we got to talk about this. On Sunday, Donald Trump was hustled into the White House bunker for his safety.

But on Brian Kilmead's radio show, Donald Trump hilariously claimed that it wasn't for his safety. Listen to this. I looked. I was down for a very, very short period of time. very, very short period of time. I can't tell you who went with me, but a whole group of people went with me. As an inspecting factor,

I was back up. And Brian, it was during the day. It wasn't during the night. I think they reported during the night. I was just inspecting the bunker. This tweet from, tweet from Chris Hayes said, Big, my girlfriend lives in Canada energy

from Trump on his inspection of the White House bunker. That bunker visit, of course, course, wound up in the New York Times. Trump got mad that it wound up in the New York Times. According to yet another New York Times piece, Trump was raging about sending the military into the streets to confront the protesters, but he settled for a different display of force. He would make a surprise walk across Lafayette Park to St. John's Episcopal Church, where there

had been a very small basement fire the night before. Okay, Trump began speaking in the Rose Garden, and again, according to the New York Times, Attorney General William Barr then goes out and sees that protesters are still in part of Lafayette Square. Peaceful protesters, we should add. Nonetheless, Barr gives the order for the square to be cleared, violently cleared, we should add. A member of the St. John's clergy was even driven away from the church.

Listen to the way that. aggression sounded from this piece of video from Australian reporters Amelia Brace and Tim Myers. We've just had to run about a block as police moved in. We've been fired with rubber bullets. My cameraman has been hit. We've also seen tear gas being used. Here we go. Then moving through again. This is exactly what it looks like. Oh, oh, Amelia, can you hear of? Amelia, are you okay or your cameraman? Hello, Amelia. The police just charged at Amelia and our seven-use cameraman there

and looks like a policeman just punched our cameraman. Oh, my God. I don't even know what to say about this. I don't, I mean, this is, there is so much to talk about. in this, I mean, we could talk about Trump's week for hours and never even get to this, but this was, this was in some ways just the most revolting moment or sequence of events in his presidency. And that's, that bar is really high. I don't, I mean, this is, I don't know, he's just, he's a man who is intent on proving his detractors right.

time after time. And for anyone that hadn't been sold on the totalitarian arguments, I mean, well, I guess we're getting to that part, right? But gassing citizens is a great first step. There followed this recriminations period after the park police and various law enforcement authorities made that move. First, it was, well, who ordered the protesters to be dispersed? Turns out it was Bill Barr.

Why use tear gas was the second one. and we heard this pushback from the White House and Kayla McInney said, correct your stories. We didn't use tear gas. We were just using pepper balls, right? We were using this other thing. I'm going to say it wrong, oleosin capiscom,

which in gas form makes people cry. It may not be tear gas, TM, but it is gas that gives you tears. I don't want to make light of this situation, but if you had mentioned, if you had brought pepper balls out of context, I would have assumed you were talking about something on the P.F. Chang's menu. Yeah, and I think you can make light of the pushback on this.

The pushback is we stipulate all the facts of what happened, what we all saw on camera from Washington, D.C., but we dispute the particular thing that was shot into the peaceful protester. That is where we're going to draw the line. That's so crazy. Another question, why was Defense Secretary Mark Esper being used as a political prop. I believe those are the New York Times's words during this. Esper told NBC, well, I didn't know we were going to St.

John's Church. I thought we were going, and this is real, to a vandalized bathroom that had been appearing all day on cable news. He thought they were going to the bathroom. Then Esper delivered what in Washington, D.C. is known as a cleanup. I did

know that following the president's remarks on Monday evening, that many of us were going to join President Trump and review the damage in Lafayette Park and at St. John's Episcopal Church. What I was not aware of was exactly where we were when we arrived at the church and what the plans were once we got there. Okay, so he did not say, he did not tell the truth the first time. Okay, resolved. That was easy. But wait, there's more, David. Trump gets to St. John's Church. Yvanka Trump pulls a Bible

out of her $1,500 Max Mara bag, because where else do you keep your Bible? And then I had to ask you about this. You are the son of a Baptist minister. That's correct. What did you make of Trump holding

the Bible aloft in the style but without the panache of a televangelist? Yeah, let's first stipulate that like you could go to church your whole life and like only see a pastor hold a Bible aloft at all once or twice, right?

I mean, this is a thing that happens more in, like, John Grisham movies or something than, like, it happens in a lot of actual churches. It does happen in some churches quite a bit. It's not a necessity, I don't think. You mentioned earlier that the notion of my girlfriend lives in Canada energy. There's a lot of my girlfriend lives in Canada energy to just trump holding a Bible and professing familiarity with it.

I think my favorite quote in the aftermath of all this was Senator Catherine Cortez Mastow Nevada tweeting that he handled a Bible like the ape handled the bone in 2001 of Space Odyssey which was pretty much spot on. I don't know exactly what

to say. Oh, I'll say this. I will be forthright and saying I have bullshitted a lot in my life. But I'd like to think I cared enough. If I were bullshitting about caring about Christianity, I would like to think

I would have cared enough to sneak off to a bathroom for five minutes and practicing holding the Bible before I got in front of the cameras and conspicuously looked at it to try to figure out which way was up in front of the cameras as they were running. The first time I heard this story, I gave Trump to, I gave Trump one modicum of a benefit of the doubt thinking it was only him and a still photographer. I didn't realize the entire news crews were covering this whole, well, okay, I'm going to pause from that minor complaint. Here's an actually good, my actual favorite quote of the week.

If you find yourself sympathetic to Trump, you might find this familiar. This is the quote, Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns or figs from thistles? So every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit. All right? Go to your pastor and ask him what a false prophet is. and then look at your president and see if there's any similarities there.

If you're sitting in the White House, you might want to think about that too if you profess love for your Savior Jesus Christ. Because this, what happened there with Trump holding the Bible, you didn't need that to know that this man is a man of evil. But there it is right in front of you, okay? He just took this, he picked up that Bible. He might as well picked up a can of spray paint and wrote fuck Jesus on the side of the church

because that is all that was in that man's heart right then. If you can't find a pastor, David's dad is available. We'll make him available to make that argument. He's preaching on YouTube these days, man. I mean, H. Stephen Shoemaker, check him out, man. I'm, I mean, there's two dimensions to this, right? There is the absolute sickening moral dimension of what happened to those protesters. And then there is both, I guess, the moral dimension and just the complete

failed photo op of the second part of it, right? You mentioned have some familiarity with holding and thumbing through a Bible. Here's another one. Maybe have a prayer ready so you're not just posing with a Bible. Like, who does that, right? Who doesn't bow their head in prayer? Who doesn't, you know, who merely holds a Bible and is like, well, I've done my duty for the day.

Of all the junk we've seen come from the White House in the last week, and there's been a ton. That was generally, you know, that was right up there. I mean, it was awful. We talk a lot about how standards have shifted in this presidency. If any previous presidential candidate or president had handled a baby with a lack of familiarity that Trump of events holding the Bible, he would be determined to be unelectable, right? I mean, George H.W. Bush almost lost his election because he was as unfamiliar with a bag of groceries as Trump was with a book that he proclaims to be his favorite book, which is the most important

book in our country's history, be you Christian or not. I mean, this is, it is just, just, well, it's not that surprising. It's surprising that, like you said, he was, that he cares so little, that he cares so little that he couldn't see past, he couldn't think for more than one second about the photo, about the photo op. And that to care so little about something, he had people, shoot tear gas at peaceful protesters for something he cared so little about. I'm sorry, please correct that.

It's gas that causes tears. Can we talk just one second about the Tom Cotton op-ed in the New York Times? It's at least tangentially related here because we're talking about this idea of troops bringing quote-unquote order to various American cities. Tom Cotton had been tweeting about this. He's in favor of using military troops. He had one tweet that said, and if necessary, the 10th Mountain, 82nd, Airborne, First Cavalry, Third Infantry, whatever it takes to restore order, no quarter for insurrectionist, anarchists, rioters and looters. Now, no quarter in military terms means you don't accept someone's surrender. You kill them. Cotton then fell back on, oh, I was using a colloquial definition. Uh-huh.

Okay. Yeah, right. Then, for some reason, two days later, the New York Times publishes a Tom Cotton op-ed making the same argument. But without the inconvenient, no quarterback, saying that the United States should bring in the military to restore order. There are a couple of levels on this. I think probably most important is the absolute horror that a number of New York Times staffers regarded this thing with. You saw lots of different people tweeting the phrase or version of the phrase running this puts black New York Times staff in danger, right?

Lots of New York Times, writers, editors, people on the back end, all kinds of things. of people tweeting that. And then the second was just, why is this an op-ed? Right. As many people pointed out on Twitter, why isn't this a news story, right? A United States senator calling for that is news. It's absolutely significant news. But surely it should be placed into the strictures of a news story where you can go out and find people who disagree, where you can push the idea, where you can see if Tom Cotton was really being quote unquote colloquial or whatever it was when he was talking about no quarter. Isn't that the right place for that kind of story? That is an incredibly salient point.

There's no reason for them to have run it. I mean, I don't know the response that the editorial page gave that, you know, some whatever they always say. Some despicable ideas need public airings that you can argue against them or blah, blah, blah, is just incredibly insufficient in time like this. for an op-ed such as this. The no quarter thing, which you touched on with some detail, should be disqualifying in a certain sense, right? That you can't interchange colloquialism. I mean, first of all, he fucked up.

He meant it very clearly, and then he had to walk it back. But if you want to take him at his word, that he was just, oh, I just meant it in a colloquial sense, well, if he came out and said, let's use the big metal cars with the gun thingy on top or the metal birds that shoot Bing Bing's and go to war, nobody would allow him to make any decisions or even propagate them in a public place, right? If you don't know the terminology, if you're going to use weapons of war with such offhandedness

and terms of war with such offhandness, you have disqualified yourself from the public discourse, right? And can I just add one thing to that? Tom Cotton was in the army. No, I know. I know. That's what I mean. He's not. Tom Cotton's political career is built partly on the fact that he was in the army. He was not colloquially in the army. He was really in the army. He was really in the army. So the idea that he would have been using a colloquial... I'm just qualifying his excuse, right? If you want to take him at his word, he's full of shit.

And he knew what he was saying, and he was saying, kill those black people, right? I mean, that's what he was saying. And the idea that the New York Times would give that... I mean, they would even take a second to consider that. It looked like... The neutered version, where he backed off those words, right? He did not use that word in there.

You give an erring to the neutered version of something he's already said on Twitter. It looked like SponCon or an onion parody at first blush, right, at first glance. It did not look. There was, it was so far beyond the pale that I couldn't even comprehend it at first. Absolutely. I mean, look, somebody who worked in the opinion journalism world, there is a long tradition of running stuff that just makes people mad. Like, that's why you run it, right?

You don't, you don't really run it to provoke your audience into thinking differently. You run it to make them mad, right? because you know it will get a reaction. And that I do not believe there's any other reason that they ran this piece. I really don't. I don't think we need to interrogate this idea or we need to have this idea put in. I don't believe anybody at the New York Times thought that. I think they think this will make people mad.

I mean, I don't disagree with you. I guess it had never crossed my mind that this would be the New York Times like doing like slate takes when it's like literally life and death on the street. And I mean, when the subject matter is life and death on the street, I should say. Yeah, I just don't. I don't. And again, the thing, it's not, there is a perfect journalistic vehicle for this. And many people made this point on Twitter. This is not an original point for me.

There's a perfect journalistic vehicle for this, a New York Times news story. Yeah. That is the correct vehicle for it. You try to get Tom Cotton on the phone. If he won't talk, you report it out, right? Set it on Twitter. It's all public. You've got people like David French from the right.

who are saying, do not, you know, don't, don't hide behind this. I was just pretending saying no court, that that was not a real use of that term. You got a story. That's a new story. It's a really good news story, potentially,

but that's wild. Thanks for hanging with us this week on Press Box. We're back Monday. We'll figure it out when we get there. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Thanks hugely to Tyler Tynes and Robert Clemcoe for joining us. Research by Chris.

I made a production magic by Erica Servantes. We'll talk to you all Monday. take care, David. See you later, Brian.