The Press Box - Return of the Veepstakes, Peak Sports Docs, and Will Sommer

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss the veepstakes that includes Elizabeth Warren, Stacey Abrams, and Amy Klobuchar (1:35). They touch on the seemingly endless cycle of sports documentaries (21:40), and then talk with 'Daily Beast' reporter Will Sommer, who gives the inside scoop on the QAnon conspiracy theory (33:10). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Shoemaker guesses the strained-pun headline.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. This week, the Ringer is launching a new podcast feed called BoomBust, a new hub for narrative podcasts documenting the rise and fall of companies, celebrities, and trends. Season one, hosted by our own Alyssa Boresnack, takes you through this spectacular journey of HQ trivia, the once $100 million industry-altering company turned disaster. Alyssa interviewed dozens of former employees, investors, journalists, and fans bringing you the behind-the-scenes story of how HQ crumbled from within. Subscribe to Boom, Bust, HQ, trivia,

and check out the first two episodes out now on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, media consumers. Ryan Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer here. This is the press box. And on today's agenda, we've got new movies out about Michael Jordan, Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods, and now Tom Brady.

So we ask, have we reached peak sports documentary? answer yes, we'll talk about why. We've also got an interview with one of our favorite reporters, the Daily Beast, Will Summer, who will talk about covering the internet, the right, and the new Q and on Republican Senate candidate. Yes, you heard that right. Plus, David guesses a strain pun headline and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, let's begin with a segment called How to Run for Vice President. All right. Because Joe Biden's Veep stakes, as I believe were contractually obligated to call them. We're back in the news this week.

Point number one, Mark Liebevich in the New York Times notes that something important about the Veep Stakes has changed this year. David, let's pretend it's like 2008. Ask me if I would consider becoming a party's nominee for vice president. Senator Curtis, this is David Chimager,

with NBC News. I was wondering if, what's your stance on potentially being the vice presidential nominee in this cycle? There's a lot of rumor in innuendo out there that your name has come up in the discussion. David, I don't want to engage in hypotheticals during an unprecedented crisis like this when 100% of my focus has got to be on my constituents. I'll be frank, I'm flattered, but I'll leave the Washington parlor games to you folks in the media, etc., etc.

That's the old way politicians talked about being VP. Here's the new way via Elizabeth Warren. If he asked you to be his running mate, would you say yes? Yes. I'm so happy you just gave me a concise answer to that. Wait, what? She just said yes. She did.

And to prove it's not a fluke, here's Stacey Abrams on CNN. You're taking a different strategy when it comes to this. You're openly advocating for yourself to be picked to be the running mate. Why? I would say this. I've been asked this question since. last year. I was brought into the national conversation and I've been very honest about my willingness to serve. As a young black woman growing up in Mississippi, I learned that if you don't raise your hand,

people won't see you and they won't give you attention. But it's not about attention for being the running mate. It is about making sure that my qualifications aren't in question because they're not just speaking to me. They're speaking to young black women, young women of color, young people of color who wonder they too can be seen. My responsibility is to follow the process if I'm included, and I trust that Joe Biden and his team are going to put together a process that will pick the best running mate for him. Because fundamentally, it's his choice. What I try to do is tell the truth and be direct, but I understand that there is a process that will be at work and that he has no shortage of qualified candidates to choose from. Well, I mean, this certainly is a different way of saying things or saying yes or of obfuscating the answer. And honestly, it's, it's refreshing.

Yes. Stacey Abrams is, I mean, for the record, not an elected office right now. So she is a, she's, I mean, she's not obligated in the old sense to, like, stick with her candidates to fulfill the job she was elected to do. So she's a little bit beyond those old constraints. But Elizabeth Warren's position is certainly instructive. I know that there's a lot of different theories on this, but my gut instinct. is, you know, it used to be what, all politics is local. Now it sort of feels like all politics is national, right? And I don't feel like there's any politician who'd be doing their constituents

a disservice by having one of the most important jobs in the country and it's silly to pretend otherwise. I think that's a great point. And it sort of dovetails with the whole Trumpian notion of just say whatever it is you want out loud. If you're Beto O'Rourke and you lost a Senate race in Texas, just say you want to be president, right? Right. If you're Pete Buttigieg and you've lost every big race you wanted to other than local, just say you want to be president. And Leibovic makes that point, too, that we're just kind of,

we're kind of in that mode. I mean, I would say other than Elizabeth Warren, the people who have come out and said this are the people who probably have a smaller chance of Biden actually picking them. Abrams said it. Susan Rice said it. So there's a little bit of like the less of a chance you have, the more direct you're likely to be

in announcing your intentions. Maybe that and maybe hopes that carries you over the top. We should also say there's a separate category for accidentally revealing your ambition. Yeah. This was back when the Democrats were rallying around Joe Biden during the primaries. Listen to this slip from Amy Klobuchar.

I could not think of a better way to end my candidacy, as hard as that was to do with our beloved staff and everyone else. then to join the, to join the, the, the, the, the, Joe Biden. Kidding. To then to Joe, I was going to say, you guys, I was, I was going to say, then to join the terrific, the terrific, terrific, terrific campaign of Joe Biden.

As, as tempting as it is to think that's just a, you know, good old fashion slip at the Hell knows we do worse on a biweekly basis over here. The Clovachar campaign always had a ring of being a vice presidential campaign. And actually word just came out this week that she was being vetted, that she'd agreed to be vetted for the vice presidency, which either means she's an under serious consideration or, you know, in that weird game of those weird Washington parlor games you alluded to, or you mentioned earlier,

maybe this is Biden's way of paying her back just by making it seem like she's a, a viable candidate. I don't know. Well, that brings me to an interesting point because, okay, you've stated your ambition that you want to be vice president. Here's the next thing you do, clean up the uncomfortable parts of your record. Speaking of Klobuchar, you remember when she was running for president, there was a lot of questions about her record as a prosecutor in Hennepin County, Minnesota. Well, Annie Linsky and Sean Sullivan in the Washington Post report that Klobuchar is now scrambling to buff up her reputations with black voters in order to have a chance at the nomination.

We talked about she prosecuted this black teenager, Myron Burrell, in Minnesota. She's now calling for a review of that case. She's got a new voting rights bill out. She's trying to lower phone rates for prisoners during the coronavirus. She was giving interviews to African American journalists, some of whom she stiffed during her presidential campaign. Politico notes that more than a dozen. black and Latino activists are saying, don't pick Amy or at least think twice about picking

Amy. Charlemagne the God, who we'll get to in a second in this in this segment, said, I think it would be suicide for Joe Biden's campaign, quote unquote, to pick Klobishop. So there is his whole scramble of these are my vulnerabilities, right? Here, if Joe Biden was coming up with the reasons not to pick me, this would be somewhere in the top three, five, Yeah. And I'm going to go out and try my best to mitigate that, at least as much as I can at this point. It's a weird thing. I mean, because I hate to be so callous to it all, but I mean, I don't, or cynical, I guess.

I can't quite decide whether trying to shore up those sort of, or tie up those loose ends in your record at this point is just trying to, is actually trying to convince anybody that you're, well, certainly you're not trying to convince anybody that you were, that you've changed your mind, right? It's either that you're open to changing your mind, and that's a positive thing, or you're just trying to do an end around, around, you know, the media asking these questions in the near future, right? It just sort of like, it puts, if you've, if you've bandated something up, then maybe that's, like, that goes from question number two to question number 10 on the list and you won't have to deal with it. But it is, you know, it is at least somewhat promising that, you know, people seem to be aware of what their problems are, as oblivious as some of them seem to be in the actual, in the actual,

presidential campaign or primary campaign. In some cases, David, we've seen candidates for vice president actually just change their issue positions. Sure. Altogether. Elizabeth Warren was very in favor of Medicare for all, the health care plan during when she was running for president. You remember her saying that anyone offering anything less to voters was quote, running in

the wrong presidential primary. Well, Politico's Alex Thompson detected some signals that Warren is sending to Biden, who of course was not for Medicare for all. I think right now people want to see improvements in our health care system, and that means strengthening the Affordable Care Act, Warden said in a recent speech. During the campaign also, David, you'll remember that Warren was against private fundraisers. She said, no fancy receptions or big money fundraisers, only with people who can write the big checks. Well, according to the New York Times, Warren is going to hold a fundraiser for Biden,

on June 15. I wonder if it's in a wine cave. Is that what it was called? The wine cave? It seems so long ago now. Yeah. Wow. I mean, I guess I'm not terribly surprised that this is the attack that Warren is taking,

especially if she does want to be vice president and feels like she can be most effective in that role. I guess I'm slightly surprised because word, I feel like a story broke within the past two or three weeks that Biden was like, had like formally let it be known that he was, he was open to what reopening his platform. Was that the terminology or the phraseology that was used? And so, and it seemed to me like that was a kind of an olive branch to the far left or the,

the more, the leftier candidates. Now, there's a million other, you know, interpretations of this that like, he did reopen his platform philosophically and sort of came to some agreement with Elizabeth Warren that,

and that her saying this out loud was part of the deal. But yeah, I mean, It feels a little bit like a letdown for the Elizabeth Warren and certainly the Bernie Sanders diehards. But as far as like the, you know, the horse racy aspect of it, it is intriguing. You know, I mean, it's incredibly telling. And you're right. In the olden days, you know, the olden days being one presidential cycle ago, you would read what Elizabeth Warren is doing as a surefire sign that she is the vice presidential nominee, right?

But in this, in this cycle, maybe it's that maybe you have to. to be that straightforward or that over the top to even get in consideration? I had forgotten until the New York Times reminded me this weekend that when Joe Biden was thinking about running in 2016, he talked to Elizabeth Warren about being his running mate in that election. Joe Biden ultimately didn't run, of course, but like he was really interested in her running with him, which was fascinating to me. Yeah, but to your point about changing positions, I mean, I feel we've sort of run into this wall lately with a lot of Bernie supporters. You know, oh, oh, you know, this guy turns out to be a politician, right? We thought this

was about ideology, but at some part of his soul, he turns out to be a politician who's making compromises, right? But the thing you have to consider is how different is the Biden administration potentially going to be with Elizabeth Warren as his partner in the White House versus Amy Klobuchar, right? Or Kamala Harris or somebody else. you know, you can read those kinds of moves and you're totally free to as her sort of, you know, bending for ambitious purposes. But at the same time, she's probably thinking I would do a really good job and I would be able to influence Biden in a lot of really positive ways if I got in the White House. And that's sort of how politics works. And I sort of feel we sort of forget this a lot of the time.

But it's, you know, politics in the United States doesn't work with president. We love doing things we love without opposition. That just doesn't happen, right? Or compromise. So this is also at the same time, it's frustrating, perhaps, but it's also perfectly natural. Well, I mean, and I certainly don't want my, you know, a fandom of Elizabeth Warren to cloud my judgment here. But of all of the times that it would make that you could imagine a vice presidential hopeful actually being. or feeling confident that they could influence the presidency from that position.

And Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, duo, it does seem like she would have an incredible amount of sway there if she chose to exert it. So, you know, maybe that really is the idea. Yeah, and she might be the nominee or the president in four years, you know, so for sure. One last category here for you. I guess we can file this under external events that might change the potential nature of your vice presidential candidacy. like say Joe Biden going on the breakfast club and saying this to Charlemagne the God. Listen, you got to come see us when you come to New York, VP Biden.

I will. It's a long way until November. We got more questions. You got more questions. But I tell me, if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, and you ain't black. It don't have nothing to do with Trump. It has to do with the fact I want something for my community.

I would love to see you. Take a look at my record, man. I extended the voting. rec's 25 years. I have a record that is second to none. The NAACPs endorse me every time I've run. I mean, come on. Take a look at the record. All right. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Anyway, thanks. I will come back. Ooh. Well, that was fun. What did you make of that? Yeah. I actually had that interaction. I think the first time I heard of that interaction was when speaking to a, how do I say, a close friend,

someone who's very close to me who will remain nameless, who is, I'll describe them as a big Joe Rogan fan, if that's helpful. When I said something, made some offhanded joke about, or said, no, I didn't say, he made an offhanded joke about President Trump and that I was slightly, I guess, I got to say, relieved to hear. And I was like, yeah, you know, whatever, or said something in mild agreement. And he was like, but what are you going to do? I mean,

Joe Biden just goes on the breakfast club like he did. And then, you know, basically it's a toss up. Oh, man. We're in the but her breakfast club portion of the campaign. We're definitely in the butter breakfast club part of the campaign.

I mean, listen, uh, the degree to which Trump is self-aware enough to take credit for the kind of, you know, memes that propelled him four years ago as I guess up for debate, but certainly, uh,

anything to, anything that goes viral like that, anything of that memic quality can do a huge amount of damage to a campaign. And, you know, Joe Biden's campaign has to be careful of such things. I agree.

I do sort of line up with what Aestead Herndon was tweeting over the weekend where if we think that every one of these gaffs is going to undo Biden or do any sort of huge damage to his candidacy, we don't really, we're probably not quite understanding why Joe Biden won the nomination to begin with. right or did so well with African-American voters to begin with you know there's there is a certain he has an appeal to Democrats that obviously goes beyond gaffs at this point which are legion right so the idea that this is going to be you know this is where Joe Biden falls behind Donald

Trump in Michigan I just don't I don't know that that's I don't know that's going to happen well it's also it also raises a really interesting media point which is um well I mean I guess if you want to presume that, I mean, from a leftist point of view, and I guess I'm separating the media from its, it's ingrained liberalism and democratic party credentials. But if, I mean, certainly you would say, if you were just defending Biden as a Democrat, you would say, well, it didn't matter when Trump did that shit. We're not going to like, we're not going to act like it matters now. And the more we clutch our pros about it, the more we're doing a disservice, the more we're actually hampering Joe Biden's campaign, right? The best thing to do would be, to, to

do what all of Trump supporters did four years ago, which is basically pretend the bad stuff didn't happen or pretend the bad stuff is like secretly good stuff, right? But from a media point of view, then you get back kind of the question, I mean, the inverse of the question we talked about, was it last week, about whether how much you actually cover some of Trump's, you know, Obamagate shit or whatever else he comes up with. Like, how much do you cover Joe Biden's gaffes, not based on their content, but based on their gaffiness, based on the existence of a gaffing. when we are in a political climate where the coverage is what matters

more than the actual content. We're in a world where the gaffs themselves probably don't matter so much as the insistence by mainstream media outlets that Biden has a gaff problem, right? That's the but her emails problem. Exactly. Yeah.

And you say, okay, so the President of the United States, so Biden said something pretty unfortunate on the breakfast club, and then the president of the United States says he is taking hydroxychloroquine. so so what do you do i don't know i mean the biden thing obviously got a lot of play biden himself obviously realized he made a mistake he used the word i said something cavalier which is a really good i'm not quite taking the blame for it uh word it was a little too cavalier

just use adjectives from like 50 sitcoms or whatever and that and that and you get out of just about anything in the world it's fantastic and charlemagne the god continues to be one of the most interesting interviewers in American politics. We've seen this like a bunch of times now. All right, David, time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod. David, the Twitter video of the weekend was the one from Lake of the Ozarks.

Everybody into the pool. Everybody having a great time there, despite all the things going on in the universe. pretty obvious opening for people who like a certain Jason Bateman Netflix series. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write Marty Bird said fuck lockdown. We have money to launder.

Thanks to Don Steele. David Ivanka Trump wanted to make a statement about the coronavirus, I think. She tweeted on the other side of this challenge lies the extraordinary. I'm getting a very

successories poster kind of vibe from that tweet. As you can imagine, everyone teed off on, on the other side of this challenge lies the extraordinary. But to pick one response, it was an overworked Twitter joke to write when I'm about to inhale an entire sleeve of saltines. Thanks to Scott Tobias.

And finally, David, we end with a look toward the sky, the firmament, if you want a $5 word to impress your editor. A New York post tweet reads, NASA scientists detect evidence of a parallel universe where time runs backward. Parallel universe where time runs backward. A lot of good responses. Welcome to Florida.

You mean at some point we have to do 2020 again? I'm out. Maybe people on this parallel universe won't cry about having to wear a mask in public. And finally, my favorite, if I go there, does that mean I can cancel my myself. Thanks to Josh Peterson. If a Philip K. Dick style dystopia sounded good to you in 2020,

congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, in the notebook dump. You and I watched ESPN's The Last Dance about Michael Jordan. But which of these TV sports documentaries are you already behind on? Oh, no. Here's

a list. ESPN's Lance Armstrong, Doc. Yeah, I'm 100% behind on that. the Tiger Woods Dock from the Golf Channel. 100% behind on that. I've heard it's very good though. Oh, I was going to say, did you know that existed? Quibby's blackballed.

Yes, I'm behind on that one too. The Undertaker Doc from WWE. No, totally caught up. Totally caught up on that one. Oh, wait, no, no, no. I'm saying that episode three has been released. I'm an episode behind on that one. David is also behind on that one.

Fox Nations guarding Jordan with Jeff Hornaceg. I did manage to watch a couple clips of that. that just to make sure I understood the depths of the humor, the inherent humor there, but I've not watched much of it. And finally, are you preemptively behind on the just announced Tom Brady Megadoc that's airing next year? Well, I've watched all the content that's been made available, meaning that one, I believe there's one trailer for it, but I'm already clearing my schedule to avoid that when it comes

out. Good luck. It was back in 2015 when FX's John Landgraf coined the term peak TV. He said there is simply too much television. So here's my question for you. Have we reached Peak Sportsdoc where there are simply too many of these things out in the universe?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of... I mean, listen, there was a period where an insidery a kind of thoughtful sports biography, a book, was rare enough that we would have treated just about anything that came out with some amount, or that the book media, that sports media would have treated any book that came out with some sort of gravity, right? That went by the wayside, by the, I mean, I'm just spitballing here,

by the 90s, I guess, when just like every single athlete had an authorized memoir by the, you know, fifth or six year of their career, then another one to come towards the end and everything else. And there's just not, no one has the bandwidth to cover them all. Only the ones that are like truly groundbreaking, newsbreaking, everything else. And I feel like that's kind of where we suddenly are with sports documentaries. You know, I mean, with the, there's certainly more of an artistry.

So, I mean, you could have a really beautiful documentary, like a really beautiful, well-made documentary about an athlete you weren't that interested in. That could, that could really surprise you. But it's just a, sort of it's just a, the sports documentary is just a sign of the cross now, you know? I mean, it's like everybody just does a sports documentary as part of their career. It's either their, their last season or it's, you know, for the bigger athletes, it's, you know, their trip to the finals. There are some, for a lot of them, it's the off season, choosing what team to go to next.

There's an endless appetite for these out there for good ones and, you know, seemingly especially bad ones, mediocre ones, I guess I should say. And it's, there's just a never, there's going to be a never-ending amount of them. And, I mean, especially with so many athletes trying to get into the movie-making business, you know, trying to get into the media world. What better way to jumpstart your studio or your, you know, your production house than by doing your own eight-part documentary for, you know, to be or whatever. I agree.

And I think the biggest single factor in this is athletes sort of gaining control of the means of production, right? That's why we have so many of these. And if you want to include like ESPN getting into this cozier mode with athletes from stuff like the boardroom to detail, right, which are kind of not quite sports documentaries, but but in that zone, that sort of athlete produced, athlete starring zone. There's just a lot more of that. I think the other reason is just streaming services just need stuff right now. So if you were a person who was directing these, we've seen this lots of different kinds of documentaries. And I'm pretty sure everybody has written the documentaries are having a moment piece at this point in history.

But like sports docs are also in that zone where it's like, okay, I'm trying to start Quibi. I know. Let's have something about Donald Sterling. That'll be something that we can advertise on ESPN that pulls part of a new audience into Quibi that might not be interested in the Anna Kendrick show that is our other like one of our other big attractions. By the way, because every streaming service now when they start having Anna Kendrick original series, is that, am I just imagining that? Didn't the HBO one have that too? Anyway. I think what you, I think the different audience part is exactly right.

I mean, I think you have to have, you have to look at it as either an attempt to get a sports audience and attempt to get, you know, a piece of a more traditionally male audience, but also a signal that, you know, that our kind of scope is wide. than what some of these other launch shows might say. And they're relatively cheap to produce, I think, compared to a lot of, you know, scripted stuff. And they're, I mean, and they are having a moment. I mean, it's great. I mean, it's, you know, when Bill and the guys at ESPN started doing 30 for 30, that was not that long ago.

But it was before, that, that signaled this moment, right? I mean, there was, there was not a market out there for this stuff. And certainly the explosion, of streaming platforms is part of that. I mean, it has contributed to that a great deal. But, you know, those 30 for 30 documentaries are some of the most rewatchable, no pun intended content that's been produced

in the past decade. You know, I mean, it's more, I would, I think not just me, everyone in my household would rather watch, you know, the Bo Jackson doc for the third time than to watch an episode of, what do we watch, like the good place, which we all love for the second time.

You know, I mean, it's just, it's a different, It's a it's a really good genre to be in. Right. It lives on your streaming app. Unlike games, you can show it a thousand times, right? We've seen all this weird like secondary market in old games over the last two months. Yeah, yeah.

Docs have been that forever. They were that already. I think that the reflected glow of 30 for 30 is a great point. Not only because that was so successful, but that birthed this whole generation of filmmakers, right, who were able to work, Jason Hare being one of them who were able to work in this genre. and got big and now have other projects and can take it from there. Watching the Lance thing last night,

this is my confusion and this is one of my objections to Peeke Sportsdoc, which is I'm watching it, I'm like, how much of this is new? You know, Lance Armstrong has been confessing for a long time. Now I wouldn't look this up because I wrote a piece for Grantland about athletes who were just giving serial confessions over and over again, called Donating Your Body to Sports Writing. And Lance was part of that piece.

And I looked up and it was in 2014. So six years later, Lance is still confessing. And I'm watching this thing last time. I'm like, has he confessed all this stuff already? Are we breaking new ground here? Are we just kind of putting it all together for people who may not know this story in all its intricacies? Yeah. Well, I mean, to take the book example again, there's sort of a, I think every editor, every publishing house probably has their own stopwatch.

but like there's there's a general whenever if someone if you were to go to a publisher and say I want to write this the quintessential Muhammad Ali biography they would all look at their spreadsheets and be like well how many years has it been since the last quintessential Ali biography came out right and they were and honestly it would be just like well it's actually it's been seven years since one cracked you know 20,000 copies so maybe maybe now's the time to make the move you know maybe we do this I mean there is it is you can redo you can go over the same ground as long as you have some minor claim to new information new material uncutely never before seen blah blah blah and then you know just kind of a new point of view and a new package and i mean that's that's nothing totally unusual but then

also in the in the documentary era we have as we've discussed before the sort of question about the authorship of the athlete you know to what degree it's an authorized biography or you know they're they're producing it, they're involved. There are a lot of different, and we actually saw this specifically, it's not a sports documentary, but with the dueling Firefest documentaries that came out at the same time, you have different interested parties who have rights to convey, right? You don't have to have the agreement of Lance Armstrong to do a Lance Armstrong documentary, but you certainly have to get some number of people to agree to sit down in front of you,

and you're not paying them, presumably, but they might, but, you know, that goes towards this question of authorship. And so there's, there is, you know, there was a time in the not too distant past where that would have limited the amount of documentaries that can be made. Now, when there's a market for these things, we saw at least two, maybe three Houston Astros documentaries, documentary projects announced right at the same time. And presumably there are just different people who have inside information, be it, be it journalists who wrote about it, being players, whoever it is, who are sort of farming out their authorship, their rights, they're, you know, conveying their authority to these various documentaries. and certainly that's going to be an aspect of it too. There are people who were just like, I didn't get paid to do that.

You know, I have no idea of what Lance Armstrongs, if he has any, I don't think he's a producer of this 30 for 30, but you can certainly imagine someone seeing a documentary that they were involved in tangentially and being like, I'm going to do my own because I didn't get paid for that one, right? So there's, you know, there's a lot of different opportunities at the same. And there's going to be an endless amount of platforms that are willing to do the lesser version of a successful document.

just to rope more people in, right? I mean, if you enjoyed the Tiger King, how much you can enjoy the authorized documentary version by the one, by the dude who got his hand bit off? You know, I mean, it's like, there's going to be a platform for all of these things. There's already a Nancy Grace investigates the Tiger King. So I think we've already,

we've already kind of worked out your hypothetical there. Yeah, I agree with all that. I also think, like, these docs are getting more attention right now because we're in pandemic mode. Yeah. But honestly, if you look at my inbox during,

happier times, I get more press releases about sports documentaries than anything else with this nice note saying, hey, Brian, I know you're busy, but really would love you to check out. This, it's a real winner. And honestly, like half of them, I don't even read about it in sports media columns. They just sort of come and go. So there's a lot of churn in this category too. And I think it's one of those things where right now it just, they seem so present and they seem like such events. I mean, I saw probably a lot more people in on that last on Lance Armstrong last night than

there would have been in normal times. Like normally it would have been Jason Gay and then a couple of other people, right? And even I even saw Jason last night complaining on Twitter. Jason Loves Cycling, by the way, if we don't, you don't get that joke. But he was like, is this the one cycling story we have to tell? Right now? There's literally nothing else. Yeah.

But it just seems bigger because we're in the pandemic. But trust me, these are just coming out constantly. And like I said, I don't even think a lot of them are really getting a ton of attention. Anyway, peak sports talk. All right, David, whenever we do a segment on what you could call fringe internet movements, Q and on, other Trumpy stuff, I feel like listeners can hear you and I fish tailing around a lot because it's so complicated. Well, yeah, and I'm trying to avoid admitting how involved I am in all of them. But yeah, it's complicated.

Let's go with that. Yeah, and I feel the best thing, the best you and I usually do is, a glorified explainer. I wanted to call one of our favorite reporters, Will Summer, who does an awesome job on this beat at The Daily Beast. I asked him about some of the movements and ideas he's been writing about, and also what it's like to cover the weird internet beat. All right, in a week when Republicans nominate a Q&ONO follower for U.S. Senate,

and then the candidate disavows her own campaign statement to double down on her support for Q&ON, we have to pick up the bat phone to call the Daily Beast Will Summer. Now, I took a few stabs at this Will this morning, but I'm just going to pass the buck to you. How do you describe the beat you cover at the Daily Beast? Sure. I mean, so most of the stuff I do, I would say,

is, you know, fringe right-wing movements, weird internet stuff, you know, conspiracy theories, all sorts of kind of oddball stories that I think often end up having kind of a disparate, a larger than you might expect impact on our regular world. world. So I was going to ask about that because we've covered right wing movements going back to the

militias in the 90s, Operation Rescue before that, but weird internet stuff and fringe movements become a more legitimate beat, would you say, in the eyes of editors when Donald Trump and other people begin to mainstream? Yeah, absolutely. So I was sort of working on this stuff on the side since the beginning of 2016. And then, of course, once Trump gets elected, that's when, you know, if everyone's like, oh, you know, we got to get a handle on all these characters. And, you know, I mean, obviously Trump himself is like the king of the birthers. So, you know, he really fueled a lot of that stuff on the ride as well. So you saw this happen in journalism.

Editor say, oh, we need to have people that know who these people are that can allow us to tell the characters apart without a program, as it were, and why they're important. Absolutely. I think we saw a lot of, frankly, mishaps when reporters who weren't used to covering these characters would kind of get thrown in. And the thing you have to understand with a lot of these kind of personalities is they just lie relentlessly.

And I think we've kept up with, you know, like New York Times, like the Nazi next door story and that kind of stuff, where people who weren't really familiar with these guys would just say, oh, you know, I'll just run a story about them. And then, you know, it ends up being a big disaster.

So I think, you know, we've seen a big expansion, not just me, but, you know, a lot of other reporters being hired specifically to handle conspiracy theories, disinformation, and that kind of stuff. So how do you deal with subjects that lie? relentlessly. I mean, you just have to follow them for years and years and kind of know their deal. You know, I've been into these characters since, you know, gosh, since I was in college,

10 years ago now. And it was only sort of when they became a bigger deal in 2016 that basically my girlfriend said, you know, stop bugging me about these people. Why don't you make a newsletter about them instead? Bug somebody else. And so that's what I did. And so, you know, that kind of took me to hear. Yeah. And that's what it is, right? When your partner says, please stop telling me about this thing you're obsessing over. Just go make some money off doing it. Right. Exactly.

Exactly. I mean, I'm sure you've been there as well. Oh, yeah. That's all of sports media for me during the week. I mentioned the U.S. Canada earlier. Her name is Joe Ray Perkins.

She won the GOP nomination in Oregon with almost half the vote despite or maybe because she is an adherent of the Q&ONN conspiracy. Right. So for those who don't know or like me know, but then forget. Can you just give the brief summary of what Q&ON is? So Q&Mega conspiracy theory. If people remember PizzaGate, it's kind of like PizzaGate's older brother, or it's the evolution of PizzaGate. So QAnon started over 2017 with these 4-Champ posts made by this character named Q, and we still don't know who it is. It's got to be some grifter or some trickster,

but, you know, these claims, someone in the Trump administration, making these claims like, you know, Hillary Clinton is eating children in the basement of kind of ping pong, and we're going to send her to Guantanamo Bay. So it's really like expanded, you know, people show up the rally, I mean, as well as a host of other crimes. And so kind of the fundamental thing that Joe Ray Perkins appears to believe in is that Trump is basically about to arrest, you know, Barack Obama, John Podesta, and execute them. And they're going to wind up at either at Guantanamo Bay or Guantanamo Bay before their execution. That is how all this ends up. Right, that's exactly right. And so, you know, there's just this belief that, you know, like the hospital ships, for example, they thought the hospital shifts were rescuing Lutheran and stuff. And so there's, I mean, it's just sprawling. They think JFK Jr faked his death and was going to come back and run his vice president. So it's a lot to kind of keep in mind. But it's, I would say it's like kind of latest version. It's a very, it's very religious-based movement. There's a lot of like evangelical Christians who were into it. And they're sort of convinced that Democrats are like cannibals, essentially. which as one does.

It's so funny that Q hasn't been unmasked, to use a word we heard a lot over the last couple of weeks. How is that possible? And how is it possible Q has not come forward to be unmasked and take credit for this thing? There are a lot of theories about it. You know, there's kind of different YouTube people who bring it. There's kind of an anti-QAnon faction within the Trump base that is led by people like Sebastian Gorka and Jack Piscay. of One America News, and they kind of have their own claims, but I don't know if they're necessarily true. And so, but it's a great question. I know a lot of journalists have tried to

track it down. Certainly, I had, when this kind of all started blowing up, I had sort of my own kind of Q&on crazy moment where I stayed home for like a week trying to figure it out. And then, you know, I talk to people and I'd be like, you just got to follow the money. Like, I got it. But I haven't figured it out. Did you have the bulletin board with the pictures and the string connecting various characters? Yes. So like to understand Q&ON, you have to be yourself like a Q&ON. adherent connecting the dots. Right.

A lot of the QAnne people think that I'm secretly on their side because they'll say, you know, this guy has to, he knows so much about it. You know, he's writing about it to secretly promote it. I was, and a friend's relative who was a big QAnon head grabbed me on the dance floor and said like, you really not believe in this? You know, because we're really convinced. At a wedding. Yeah.

So, I mean, it's everywhere. Yeah. So QAnon has had some big moments where they sort of penetrated, larger American consciousness. Roseanne's tweets, which now seem like a billion years ago, or at least the original round, retweets from Donald Trump, where does getting someone nominated for a U.S. Senate seat fit into their arc? It's a big deal, I would say, for them.

And, you know, the difficulty with all this stuff is in the real danger is that each of these incremental steps, you know, fuels Q&O and convinces the people involved that it's real. And so in this case, you know, in this, I should say, Joe Ray Perkins is not a person who's tweeted. maybe once or twice about it. I mean, she is going on some of the craziest Q&N shows and, like, decoding the clues with them

and stuff like this. And so, I mean, she's basically like a QNOM promoter herself. And, you know, we've had some, like, city council members in the past that have mentioned Q&ON. But, you know, certainly a Senate nation is a new pinnacle for that. Yeah, always funny when I read mainstream stories about Q&ONN, it's always funny. There's this distinction they try to draw between Q&ONQ&N, curious.

You know, like maybe I retweeted something. maybe I kind of dabbled and then I'm all in like I am I'm way in right and she's very much I mean this this YouTube show she went on the guys who run it are affiliated with a literal cult or an legend call and you know there is so there's a lot of kind of dangerous elements that we see kind of getting mixed in there and she's right in the middle of it so david and i had not heard of joe ray Perkins until last week but as a reporter whose job it is to know about stuff like this how and when does she come on your radar sure um so in fact she's you know, the, I think Media Matters has a count of over 30 congressional candidates this cycle

who have openly supported QAnon. She's certainly at a higher level because she's running for Senate. So I'd say back in January, she gave an interview and she said, you know, yeah, I'm like really into Q this really turn off voters or they might love it. And, you know, I think at least in the primary, they loved it. Love it, love it, turned out to be the answer. And where do you, what do you read defines it? Are you reading Reddit? Like, what are you, what's your day? daily sort of read to get up on. Yeah, so, I mean, so much of this, this beat is kind of figuring out what the trends are and sort of, you know, when something goes from one person posted about it to something

catching off. And so I have like a huge number of bookmarks in a folder. And each day I just kind of like flip them open. And so it's like Reddit, there's Q&M blogs. It's the Gateway Pundit to kind of keep up with the broader, hokey, right? And then like copious amounts to them. I will say Q&O supporters sometimes are the friendlier. people that I deal with compared to, say, with the white supremacists.

And so there are something that are pretty friendly. I got a guy who lives on a houseboat and kind of call it sort of helps me keep abreast of it. Yeah, so I was going to ask you about this. You had a very funny story last week about right wing talk show host Dennis Prager. And during one of his fireside chats, and I'm going to admit here that I did not know that was a thing, doing a fireside chat, he's bragging that when a fork falls on the Florida restaurant, his fork, he picks it up and then just uses it. Even never mind coronavirus, Dennis Prager does not need a clean fork.

Now, that's funny. And that's a really good piece, which I really enjoyed reading. But did you have to listen to an entire 30 minute long fireside chat to get that nugget? Oh, yeah. I listened to two or three months of his firefight chat. So, I mean, we're talking, you know, 10, 15, 30. Yeah, so I just sat down. Because my editor had a theory that, you know, maybe Dennis Prager, it seemed like he was going a little crazy.

And sort of his thing is that, you know, he's not really like a supposedly, like a real like fire in the belly type guy. He just, he has these elaborate philosophical arguments that are like, Democrats love to lie and Republicans love the truth. Like, you know, that's kind of what it boils down to. But he's trying to assure it to worry and he's like, you know, you got to live life, you know. And if I drop a fork on the floor, I just offer me a new fork and I say, no, no, no. And he's like, what is this guy talking about?

You know, just the attempts to sort of downplay the coronavirus, you know, in his case, I think certainly went to extreme. And so you hear hours of this and you hear something like that and your ears just perk up and go, that's the piece right there. Right, because you're looking for something that, you know, it's not like a big breakthrough to be like maybe, you know, Trump-pundit downplays coronavirus risk at this point. And so it has to be like kind of especially crazy.

So in the case of like at Fox News, they had a host who said, you know, it's a great time to travel even as they were, Fox News was cutting off its own business travel. So you're kind of looking for that like particular moment that I think will will pop. And certainly. in this case, the guy eating

with the dirty work. And he had repeated so many of the arguments and that really kind of struck me as a particularly unique one. If people haven't seen this, Dennis Prigar is sitting in front of a bookcase. This is the classic. I saw one still where he's holding a cigar, like we've been watching Michael Jordan, you know,

holding the last dance documentary for the last couple of weeks. It's very, it's very like I'm a smart pundit. You know, I'm just just speaking to the people here from my cozy den and a literal, a literal fire crackling in the bankrant, if I'm not mistaken. You, here's another thing.

You report on Q&N or Dennis Prager, whomever it is. What do your mentions look like when that story goes up? Well, I got to tell you, you know, because sometimes I'll get mentioned in a Q post or something, it'll be like, you know, look at this creep defending the deep state or whatever. And so long

ago, I had to turn, I only see mentions from people. So that has really, I mean, it basically makes it, you know, so that I don't see, you know, a huge amount of, like, the haters on their say to me, oh, I don't know how you look at your mention, but I'm basically oblivious to it.

You know, I kind of exist in that sort of happy ignorance. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. And that's what's so funny to me, because the people you report on dislike mainstream media or let us say it's in their playbook to denounce mainstream media. But at the same time, they also crave attention. Absolutely, absolutely.

And how do you see that play out on your beat? Sure, I mean, sort of in the same way that we see Trump is obsessed with, you know, being on the cover of Time magazine, or, you know, Graydon Carter's follies or whatever. I mean, these guys are really, like, they're obsessed with, you know,

not just me, but the reporters covering them. And so, like, I went to the Ron Rally and everyone wanted selfies with me because it's like, look, like, it's the infamous, you know, the Pizza Gate reporter or whatever. And so, you know, the reporters and who's written the most

and, you know, they kind of ranked us. And, you know, in some ways, it's sort of ominous because it kind of reads like a hit list. But on the other hand, you know, they're clearly, very media obsessed. I was going to say, do you ever fear for your safety?

Because you go to a lot of stuff. I often see you with shooting, you know, a Twitter video at a protest or whatever it is. Do you ever fear for your safety? Yeah, I mean, not, certainly, you know, I would just say, I think, you know, women and I think members of minority groups who cover this more than I do. But yeah, you know, I like to wear a little, you know, sunglasses and a hat, you know, so I can sort of blend in. Because, you know, it's really not to your benefit to have, you know, because so many of these events.

And so they'll just, you know, oh, well, summer, that doesn't, you know, if I'm being harassed on a live stream, I can't get interviews, I can't send tweets, that kind of stuff. So you got to kind of, you know, go a little low profile. It strikes me that the default setting for your beat is, look at this crazy thing I found on the internet. But when I read your pieces, your tone is not newspaper both sides now, not at all. But you are trying to tell the story in an explanatory way without just throwing together a string of jokes. What's the tone that you strive for? Right. When I started covering this, I think there was a lot of, I guess I saw a hole in it,

which was, or a market that could be filled, which was not, there were plenty of blogs and stuff that were like, you know, look at these dumb Republicans, what are they up to now? But I thought there was a place for people who could, for someone who could contextualize it and sort of explain it to an audience. And in a way that didn't, as you say, sort of pull any punches, but at the same time would hopefully educate people and perhaps. you know, written in an entertaining way, so people want to read it. And I especially focus on when it spills over into real life.

And so, you know, when people are getting murdered or whatever, then, you know, that's especially, you know, I think when the audience deserves to know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of like self-reflection on this feed. And, you know, people say, oh, are we just promoting Q&N, for example? But, you know, I think at a certain point, the audience deserves to know what's going on. And I think you can have enough respect for the audience

to tell them the truth about the situation. For sure. Big issue in the presidential election this year will be Donald Trump's management slash mismanagement of the coronavirus. How have the movements that you cover gotten tangled up into that question? I mean, I think we've seen the social media networks that have been built up during Q&ON during groups. I think we've seen them really gain a lot of power and be very effective during the pandemic. You know, I think the highlight of this was the pandemic that he, which, you know, blew up, you know, this doctor making all these, we saw that, you know,

someone did an analysis of it. And it was really pushed by these really fringe Q&N groups, anti-vaccine outfits on Facebook. And, you know, for whatever reason, that video really resonated with people who weren't that politically engaged. And suddenly they're seeing it on Facebook and going, oh, geez. And more broadly, I think, just the past several years of, you know, even on Fox News, the idea that the bureaucracy is just out to get Trump, I think we now see, just as it was useful during the Mueller investigation and during Ukraine, we now see that sort of being active, just raise all kinds of very vague questions that aren't really, like, there's no, like, specific conspiracy theory people are claiming.

It's just like, hmm, suspicious. Like, the government is, you know, is up to no good. Yeah. So it's sort of like the Obamagate playbook, where we're just going to insinuate 100,000 things at one time. Right, exactly. the idea as it all adds up to Trump as this persecuted figure who was trying to do right for America, if only it had been for the dastardly bureaucrats and Hillary and Obama and all these other people.

Right. And in the same way that QAnon, I think, kind of takes this idea to an extreme. But it's sort of like QNon really emerged at a time where Trump was just like fumbling constantly. And I mean, not that that's changed really. But like, you know, this was this was kind of when I think expectations were kind of starting to deflate for Trump voters where they were. He was bogged down on all these congressional things, and it's like, you know, where was the utopia we were promised? And so the answer is to say, well, he wouldn't do it, but it's these dang deep state people who are constantly undermining him. And in the same way, I think we're seeing that with, you know, oh, it's the CDC's fault or it's the governors. You know, if only Trump was allowed to do what he wanted, we would just solve the coronavirus and the economy. Sure.

Before we go, let me ask you about the Daily Beast, which kicks ass. Thank you. I helped Tina Brown found the site in 2008. That is not a humble brag, because I don't think we did a very good job of figuring out, what the site was supposed to do. Brown leaves in 2013, and the beast reinvents itself, I think, with all these great, eerily productive muckrakers,

like you and Aesowen, Sube-Sang, am I saying his name even halfway correctly, Olivia Messer, Spencer Ackerman, on and on and on. What is the Daily Beast Lane? How would you describe it in this media world we live in now? Yeah, you know, that's a great question. I mean, you know, so much of this, obviously, he's being driven from the top.

Noah Shackman, Sam Stein, Finich. I got to give these shoutouts, you know, so I don't. There you go. Good reporter here. Got to get a compliment. It was all my bosses allow me to do this. Absolutely. And, you know, I should really say before I was doing this kind of coverage,

before I came to the Daily Beast, a place that seemed to me like a place that would let me really kind of spread my wings. And so, you know, it's an interesting place. I think they, certainly, as you say, I think it's scoop driven. I think things people want to read. I don't think we're, you know, we're not afraid to write. I think shortest stories that might be considered tabloid stories, but in a smart way. And, you know, I think it's a good place to work.

And as you say, I think a lot of people getting scoops really across the board. I saw this headline on there, one of the most red column today. Leonardo DiCaprio's big middle finger to the Confederacy, which is like such a daily beast headline. Because it strikes me now as it has notes of like a liberal tabloid, maybe a little bit of the old New York observer. A little bit of media matters in there, right? You know, and a little bit of other stuff. Is that, that's right, right? I mean, it's sort of, it's, and I don't mean that it's derivative,

but it just, it brings together the things you like about a lot of publications into one roof. I mean, I think the New York Observer reference there. I mean, that's great. That's a great compliment for us. But yeah, I mean, I, you know, it's not to, you know, get to, not to be too much to a company man. But I think there's a nice editorial vision. And I think, as you say, I think there's a lot of folks on letting talented people

kind of go crazy on their beats and, you know, really pursue it to the extent that they can. So it's an interesting place. And obviously, you know, it's kind of a crazy, you know, it's a tumultuous time for digital media. But, you know, it's an interesting place to work for sure. Will Summer. Thanks for joining us and Viacondios on your book. Hey, thanks for having me. I should say, I'm a big fan of the podcast. So this was very fun. All right, David, my favorite part of that interview, and I really should have followed up on this, is the idea that QAnonon has power rankings for reports. reporters. That is just fantastic. Now, if they can just come up with like an NCAA style bracket

for best reporter about Q&on, they'll have truly merged with the Ringer editorial style. That will truly be a moment. All right. Time for David Schuemaker, guess is a strain pun headline. All right. Let's do it. Monday's headline about the cancellation of Chef Alison Roman was stewed awakening. We got votes, David, for decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Roman Holiday. Orugola Awakening. But I love it. Yeah, but even better,

Rue Awakening, R-O-U-X. Settle yet powerful. Today's Strainpun headline comes from our pal Stephen Kahn. It's from the Wall Street Journal. Remember that Texas hairdresser who, in defiance of orders

back in our former state, reopened her hair salon? Sure, yeah. Her name was Shelly. Luther. She became a hero on the right. And there was a column in the Wall Street Journal treating her as such. David, here's your clue. Her Dallas Salon was called Salon Alamode. Salon Alamode. What was the Wall Street Journal's strained pun headline? Mode. You're going to want to go with Alamode. Whole thing. Alamo. Oh, oh, oh. Remember the Alamode? There we go. Yeah. Bang. Texas sticks with you. That's great.

Almost too easy. A Texas train pun headline. That's good stuff, though. Remember the Alamote. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. Log rolling, you're going to want to listen to Bill Simmons's interview with The Undertaker, if you haven't already. It's so good. That was incredible. Also really enjoyed Michael. Lewis on flying coach. I don't know if you've had a chance to listen to that yet, but that that conversation was awesome. Bill Murray was also on flying coach. So last week. Oh, I know.

They're bringing them in, man. Flying coaches become like 60 minutes. You get all the big guess. We're back Thursday with listener mail. Send that to us as soon as you possibly can. Also, David, a segment I'm really excited about Joe Biden's digital divide. I am prepped for that one. I cannot wait. Joe Biden's digital divide. Have an extremely safe and socially distance Memorial Day. We're back with more lukewarm takes about the media then. See you then, David. See you later, man.