The Press Box - Sizing Up Biden’s Potential Veeps, Jonathan Swan, and Listener Mail

Episode Date: August 6, 2020

Joe Biden will choose his running mate next week, and Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker weigh in on the pros and cons for his potential vice president nominees (3:30). They then discuss Jonathan Swan��s AXIOS interview with President Trump, and how Swan’s interview tactics worked in his favor (22:10). Then, Listener Mail, when they answer the question, “Why do sideline reporters have to wear masks but coaches and players don't?” (37:10) 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

Okay, everybody expects us to have an anime podcast. Michael Peters, Justin Charity, at long last, are they podcasting once again about anime? No. I'm Justin Charity. And I'm Micah Peters. Honestly, this podcast might turn out to be like the Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence movie Life, except neither of us is in prison, and in fact, we're not even taping in the same location. But we will be talking a lot about the millennial life.

you know, music, video games, strange stuff from the dark corners of the internet that piques our interest. People think this is going to be, oh, a little topic A. Oh, what's topic B? Oh, a little, you know, chit chat. No, every time you tune into this podcast, we are going to lock you into a room for 45 minutes, and we are going to do criticism. We are going to get to the bottom of every Scooby-Doo mystery that the discourse produces

for us. each week. Mark my words. Man, that was, that was a lot. But anyway, we are excited about it. We are excited. We're excited. We're excited. I'm Justin Charity. And I'm Micah Peters. And this is sound only. We're back on August 11th. Catch us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Let's go. David, in his interview with Axio Sunday, Donald Trump brandished a number of

charts. Not always to good effect. What I want to know is what visual aids would he have had to produce for the memes to come out in his favor? Oh my gosh. If he had been holding what like charts from basketball reference.com, I think Twitter would have probably reacted more positively. Goldsbury shot maps, do you think? Yeah. And now I'm thinking of all those like Andy Reid holding the holding.

the play card memes. If Donald Trump had just pulled out, if Donald Trump had just pulled out a multi-page menu from the cheesecake factory and he was like, in my next term,

all of this will be yours. I don't know. Yeah. My supplement to the American people, you will be able to afford the food from cheesecake factory for the first time. Cheesecake factory was free.

Free. It's flowing like milk and honey in a second Trump term. I don't know. Wait, what do you do you? you think? Yeah, I just think the giant golf check is also a good option for this, right? We're having a little bit of recession here. Here we go. I would like to commit to the American

people this giant check, which you will cash in my second term. This is the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. So media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here with a lot of great stuff for you today. We'll break down Jonathan Swan's interview with Donald Trump. How did an Axios reporter everyone used to hate outbox the president? We'll answer your listener mail, including the question, why do sideline reporters have to wear masks, but coaches and players don't? All that plus, David, guess is a strained pun headline in the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, the biggest story in politics is Joe Biden's running mate. It's going to choose next week.

There's a little bit of a political segment, but knowing how marginal the actual effect of a VP pick is on voting, I'm sort of convinced this is as much a media story as anything else. Why don't we do some pluses and minuses for the finalists who could be the next vice president of the United States. Oh, good. Maybe I can learn something. Let's do it. Let's start with Elizabeth Warren, who I think has kind of fallen out of the, I don't know, the sort of top tier of this, maybe at least in terms of the discussion about this. Plus is for Elizabeth Warren.

she would make a great vice president. She is a, if the whole, if the whole theme of this campaign is the country is in the grip of at least one crisis and maybe two at the same time, who better to be a steadying hand in the White House than Elizabeth Warren? Yes, cosign. I mean, I'm sure people have listened to this show for more than, you know, any length of time, know, that I'm a big fan of Senator Warren's. I guess you can make the, you know, if you want to play devil's advocate, I guess you can make the case that separate from their political ideology,

which, you know, as far as Democratic politics go, probably couldn't be much further apart. In terms of the campaign trail and attractive voter blocks and that sort of thing, she's a little bit duplicative with what Joe Biden brings to the table, right? you think so even though she's different policy-wise certainly there's no like former Bernie supporters that are going from Bernie

to Joe Biden and they certainly might go to Elizabeth Warren but I think in terms of just sort of a steady a steady seeming hand that can appeal to a sort of wide range of blue state and red state voters I mean they have a lot

in terms of of presentation at least to me they actually have a lot in common now like I said, ideologically, you know, we should hope and pray for some involvement in the White House by Elizabeth Warren or someone of her own. Yeah. It was a piece of New York magazine this week. It was really interesting, which reminded me of the fact that when Joe Biden was thinking about running for president in 2016, he told Elizabeth Warren he wanted to pick her as his running mate, which is something we somehow all forget about now. Now, here's Joe Biden with a chance to pick Elizabeth Warren as his running mate four years later.

she's still there she's still the same Elizabeth Warren there've been a lot of policy differences that came up right in the primary between them I will say just as a point of reference people can change their mind over a four year span

and I think if the Democrats have any chance of winning the election then they better hope that a lot of voting Americans have changed their mind over the last four years but yes there are certainly more there are a lot of distinctions shall we say, that came up during the primaries between the two. And part of it's because they were both

front of the pack for so long. And part of it was because, you know, Elizabeth Warren was sort of had positioned yourself in a way very, I mean, deliberately, very contrary to the status quo or, you know, to the establishment. And so they found themselves in opposition a lot of the time. I don't think there would be a problem just practically speaking, because I think Elizabeth Warren would follow Joe Biden's lead and just try to have as much influence as she could behind the scenes. on which direction Biden is going. I think one thing her candidacy would bring up is it clearly Donald Trump wanted this election

to be Donald Trump versus socialism or Donald Trump versus, you know, leftism in some way, right? He was prepared to run against Bernie Sanders. He has tried to bring this up against Joe Biden, right? He's saying, well, Joe Biden's a centrist, but when he gets elected, all the lefties are going to be in charge. It's going to be AOC is going to be running the government. if Elizabeth Warren is on the ticket,

he's just going to reboot that campaign. He's going to say, okay, here's the Donald Trump campaign for the next couple of months if she's on the ticket. Joe Biden is old and Elizabeth Warren is going to be the real president of the United States.

That's what he's going to do. Now, again, there are some of us who hear that and go, okay, sounds good. What else you got? But that to me is going to be his attack ad for the rest of this cycle. Yeah.

And I think that this sort of defense is, for the campaign that Joe Biden is trying to run, you know, there's not a great defense to that line of attack. Because the real defense of that line of attack is like, is yes, oh, like you just said, right? But if Joe Biden's trying to run a, you know, let's flip Pennsylvania campaign, I mean, if that's sort of the beginning and the end of it, what are you going to say? Like, oh, yeah, well, that, you know, she's sure, and she says she has some leftist tendencies, but she's not in charge. I mean, what would the argument be? That doesn't really reflect. Well, that's not a winning argument in either direction. Now, Kamala Harris, David, senator from California, probably the frontrunner in all this.

Yeah. Her strengths, I think you would say, is that ideologically, she really gives off the same vibes that the Biden campaign is trying to give off. She was a good debater, as Joe Biden can tell you. I think the downside is a couple of things. One is there is the whole Bernie Sanders wing of the party, you know, looking at that pick and kind of sighing going, hmm, we got Bidenism and we got Bidenism in the two slots on the ticket. And then there's just a sense that, you know,

Kamala Harris's presidential campaign didn't make it to Iowa. Didn't even really make it close to Iowa. So is she going to be, is she going to be an effective campaigner? Do we know that? I don't know that we do. And I guess what we're trying to do is just kind of see like,

would she really work in the number two slot? You could have said a lot of that stuff about Joe Biden's campaign 12 years ago or whatever it was. Absolutely right. And I think that... He was a failed presidential candidate himself. I think that what we, you know,

what proved to be really significant. I mean, honestly, well, let's be frank, he balanced a lot of irrational concerns that people had about Barack Obama, he, he, and probably the practical effect, more than anything else, was that he performed so well in those first round of vice presidential debates that, you know, everything else, I mean, ideology, you know, history, you know, history in running for president, all that kind of stuff went way by the wayside. And one would hope that if Kamala Harris got the nod, she could, she could do the same

thing, right? I mean, if she could just blow Mike Pence out of the water, then that, a lot of those other fears might be quelled, although, you know, there's a lot, so it feels like there's a lot more at stake ideologically now than there was 12 years ago.

Peter Hamby of Van de Fair in other places tweets, it's a very underplayed factor that Obama personally likes Kamala Harris and Biden talks to Obama constantly. A very good data point as we think about this, speaking of Obama,

Susan Rice was the U.S. ambassador of the United Nations from 2009 to 2013, later national security advisor. Pluses for her is that she would be or represent a restoration of the Obama Biden team,

right? Essentially saying, wow, we tried Trump for four years. That didn't work. Let's go back to the last thing we had. Politico on Wednesday, a Trump campaign official called Rice absolutely our number one draft pick because they want to do

reruns of the Benghazi raid of 2012. You remember the Rice went on the, went on the air and said something on television, which was a, you know, sort of that she later walked back. But they want to make this about Benghazi. I have no idea what the salience of Benghazi is going to be in the 2020 presidential election. It's hard to imagine much. But I think the real downsides of Rice of this, right? She's never held elected office.

She's never run for anything. She does not have much of a national profile. So it really is a governing competence kind of pick rather than a campaign trail kind of pick. Yeah, I go back and forth. I mean, I've gone back and forth. I feel like several times a day over the past couple weeks on Susan Rice. And just in terms of, and we talked about this a little bit in the last episode, in terms of, you know, her kind of.

totemic place in this in this list really is. Is she the, is she a safe pick? Is she a safe pick because she has this sort of real governing, I mean, credentials that you were just discussing? Because she has a sort of gravitas, which is a word I'm sure we'll say way too many times over the next couple of months. And because she's, you know, a direct line to the Obama administration, obviously. Do all of those things sort of add up to her being a safe pick?

I'm not exactly sure. I just don't even know how to answer that. Because sometimes I look at the list and I say that she's the safe, that she's far and away, just the low-risk, high-reward sort of candidate of all of these. But then I just, I'm not quite sure I believe it. I'm not quite there all the time. I don't even know what safe pick means. I feel like those are the kind of terms we throw around in previous elections.

And now we kind of have to like knuckle down and figure out what it means in the Trump era. and I don't know at all. Yeah, shouldn't a Hillary Clinton campaign have just retired either the word safe pick or just the concept of playing it safe forever? Right? No, as long as we don't screw up, we won't lose this guy, Donald Trump. How did that turn out? How did that whole thing turn out?

And you're right. There's safe meaning it's a safe pick that's going to help me win the election. And not offer Trump a big target to sort of. of, you know, throw his attacks at, it's safe that's going to allow me to safely run the United States government in the middle of a pandemic? Mm-hmm. I don't know. I don't know what that means.

And it just, it, it really, it really seems strange to me to go out and give this job to somebody who's never been on the campaign trail at all, ever. And I know, and I know it's a virtual campaign trail this year. I know, you know, Susan Rice is likely not going to be barnstorming through Michigan and Wisconsin in the same way. But man, that seems that seems like a big

reach. Karen Bass is another candidate, David. Representative from California, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, has a long history as an activist and an organizer. She has had quite a couple of weeks since her name first came out as a possibility for Biden. Fidel Castro and visits to Cuba came up. Scientology, by the way. She spoke

glowingly of a church, said the church was in her district and she was merely doing a thing that you do as a representative. Turns out the church was not in her district. She said this week, I'm not a communist to NBC News, which is usually not something somebody says immediately

before their pick to be the running mate of a major party candidate. You really don't have to declare that. Dave Weigel tweets this, in my opinion, the best revelations would be survivable if she was well known before this. The last two term, Democratic president had a close communist friend, but as the stories that introduced her to most of the

country, not ideal. Yeah, I think that, I think the biggest problem with Karen Bass is that point, is the concept of introduction, right? I mean, it's like, it feels like from our perspective, and our perspective is this, you know, Twitter-infused media, naval-gazy perspective that the vast majority of voters are not aware these conversations are even going on, but from ours, feel this even feels like a milkshake duck sort of situation. And that's not to say that any, that these accusations are particularly damning even if true, but, you know, she kind of appeared on these lists seemingly out of nowhere and then, you know, temporarily anyway. And then all these revelations started coming out immediately. I can only imagine for anybody who is going to be

making up their mind about who to vote for, even remotely based on the vice presidential nomination, this seems like a little a little bit too much right off the top i cannot yeah i just cannot see joe biden picking somebody who the first two weeks of media vetting a media that's scrambling to learn about this person right has turned up all this because it's not as you say it's not that anything in here is so terribly damning it's that what do the next two weeks look like if you pick her for vice president what are the next two months look like and she's just not somebody who's much of a known quantity the other name david is tammy duckworth Senator from the Midwest, of course, she's a veteran who lost both her legs in combat, moderate,

not particularly outspoken on the economy or on policing. She is somebody, to me, of all the names that would count, I guess, as a little bit of a surprise, or perhaps even a genuine surprise. She is this person I could imagine Joe Biden picking out of this list that would qualify as at least somewhat of a long shot. That is, wow, I never thought about it in those terms. But yes, that I feel like that's correct. I mean, I think there's a lot of people

who I can totally imagine in picking. But Tammy Duckworth does feel like, for some reason, it feels like a Joe Biden pick. I think you mentioned last time that she's been very available on the talk show circuit. So I don't know if that, I guess the assumption is that does not bode well for however. Yeah, I think that there's,

I think that she's got more of a chance than it might look like from the outside. You say you can imagine Joe Biden picking a lot of people. Can you really imagine Joe Biden picking a lot of people at this point? Because I'm not really sure that I can. Well, okay, that's a great point. I mean, of the people that we've discussed, and even of the people that, you know,

are a little bit further out on these lists, I don't think any of them would surprise me terribly. But you're right. There does seem to be a sort of, I don't know, some sort of vibe that Tammy Duckworth has that you think that feels kind of Joe Biden-y. Yeah. I just think when I look at the last two weeks of media coverage, and again, we'll have to wait for the tell-all book to come out after the campaign to maybe fully assess this. But I think there's a really good chance that Kamala Harris was basically a done deal or that Biden was really, really moving in that direction.

you had people within his orbit that were either worried about that or actually opposed Kamala Harris. Therefore, names get thrown out. There's this kind of whole thing about movement and what's going on and what's going on. And that might have actually been a reflection of how close Harris was to getting the call or is to getting the call more than anything else. And I just wonder if that's what we're seeing here rather than, oh, there's this big genuine universe of choices out there. that he had actually basically settled on Harris, and this was a couple of his advisors, sort of effort to kind of at least, you know,

put the brakes on that a little bit. That's probably more true than anything else that I would suggest, even hypothetically, but... Just as a working theory. Yeah, I mean, I can imagine other working theories, too. There's a lot going on in the world right now, you know? It could actually be...

The process is taking longer. And it could be that they want to... The flip side, the total opposite. They could be they want to give the appearance of a... of a very in-depth decision-making process. And so they leak a release date and then they push it back. You know, I mean, there's a million ways you could look at this.

But I think that I'm tempted to believe that you're right. It does seem like that feels more right than anything else. Let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week, David, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received as we came on the air Thursday, we learned that New York State Attorney General Leticia James has filed a lawsuit

to dissolve the National Rifle Association. She tweets, the NRA is fraught with fraud and abuse. Do you know where we're going here? It was an overwork Twitter joke to write thoughts and prayers. Thanks to Chad Orzel. I think we're on like year four of this as an overworked Twitter joke. Fantastic.

Sports news from Monday, David. the Field of Dreams game, which is going to feature the Chicago White Sox and St. Louis Cardinals and was going to be played at the ballpark from the 1989 movie was pushed back to 2021. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. MLB has discovered that during a pandemic, if you build it, they won't come.

Thanks to Jason C. Wilson. I've had this text thread with Kevin Clark throughout the pandemic devoted to sporting events we didn't know were happening that got cancel. Like you only learned it was going to happen when it was canceled because of the pandemic. The field of dreams game would definitely be on the top of my list. And finally, David, this is one that the ringer Twitter accounts got in on. All right, here's a scenario.

A player in the NBA bubble in Orlando, Florida, hits a long distance shot. Could be a long three. Could be a buzzer beter from half court. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. So and so hit a shot from Epcon. Hot Center or so-and-so hit a shot from the Magic Kingdom. Literally any place on the Disney campus that is not the court the NBA players are playing on. Right.

Thanks to Ryan Patrick. If you couldn't come up with something else like the site of the original Wet and Wild or Kevin Clark's Boyhood Home, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. In the notebook dump, David, I want to get into some post-game analysis of the interview Jonathan Swan of Axios did with Donald Trump at It's Sunday night on HBO. This thing has already been memed into oblivion. My favorite is Donald Trump holding a piece of paper and saying there's nothing in this rulebook that says a dog can't play basketball.

And then the accompanying shot of Jonathan Swan looking totally incredulous. Can we talk about Jonathan Swan reaction shots first? There is so great. Did this look like a lost episode of The Office at some point? Donald Trump would say something really crazy and then the camera would sort of go to the right and Jonathan Swan would have this look that sort of went between skepticism and it looked like him try not to laugh. Yeah. And Donald Trump kept calling him out for smiling.

It's like Jonathan, I see you smiling as if he was just on the brink of, I do understand as a reporter because sometimes, obviously not interviewing the president of the United States, but sometimes when I'm interviewing somebody and they tell me something good, I just start giggling because I know it's like good material. and I think that's what Jonathan Swan was doing. But anyway, we digress. This David, I'd like to call the Swan maneuver. It's a question, and what he does is he butters up Trump, and then he brings the hammer. Yeah. Listen to the construction of this question,

which is about six minutes into his Axios interview. And nobody says that. I think you misunderstand me. I'm criticizing your ability to draw a crowd. Are you kidding? I've covered you for five years. You draw massive crowds. You get huge.

ratings. I'm asking about the public health. And I cancelled another one. I had to cancel it. Right. We could have a great crowd in New Hampshire and I canceled it for the same reason. But here's the question. You know, I've covered you for a long time. I've gone to your rallies. I've talked to your people. They love you. They listen to you. They listen to every word you say they hang on your every word. They don't listen to me or the media or Fauci. They think we're fake news. They want to get their advice from you. And so when they hear you say everything's under control, don't worry about wearing masks. I mean, these are people. Many of them are older people, Mr. President. What's your representative of control? Yeah.

It's giving them a full sense of security. I think it's under control. I'll tell you what. How? A thousand Americans are dying a day. They are dying. That's true. Yeah.

I mean, first of all, we should be calling it the Swan Dive, I believe. Ooh, I love it. If you want to give it a name. I'm sure like everybody else in the world, not always been a complete fan of Jonathan Swan, but man, he came in with his... Who has been a complete fan of Jonathan Swan besides the people that run Axios? But anyway, continue. He came in with his fight plan and he executed it.

I mean, just punch for punch. He knew how to counter every single thing that Trump said. And he was definitely, he definitely gotten assists, as you mentioned, from the camera crew. Who, you know, because there's a degree to which, you know, if this was a print interview, he wouldn't have walked away with nearly as much, right? I mean, there still would have been some good sound, I mean, some good, quotes and everything else, but it was, what have we been saying about Trump for four years, for more than four years? Like, you got to, you can't let him bullshit his way through the answer

to every question and then just change the subject, right? You got to keep repeating the same question, or at least you have to call him on the fact that, uh, that he's bullshitting you. And if he, and if you're not going to do that, if you're not going to say, excuse me, Mr. President, but that's a steaming pile of horseshit, then what's the next best thing to just show complete and other utter incredulity on your face as he's answering the question, right? I mean, that's the only way to convey to the audience that you are with them in knowing that he's doing it. I mean, he's trumping it up is to show that expression on his face. I thought, but you're right. He's buttering him up. He's getting him into these. And not only that,

he's getting him to agree to every point, to stipulate to every point of the question until he gets to the real question, and then Trump just gets the carpet yanked out from under him. It's great. Yeah, he began the interview with a swan dive as well, where he said, you know, Mr. President, you get so much credit over the years of saying, you have to visualize your own success. I love that. Visualize your success and you will be successful, which is probably something that one of Trump's ghostwriters wrote in his book and Trump has already forgotten about. And then he says, but then everybody is dying of the coronavirus. It's just like, oh, whoa. But you're right. He He sort of walks him up.

I love the swan dive, especially for a subject like Trump, who loves flattery. And by the way, just one other production note, these interviews are really not about TV production. But the other thing they did, besides showing Jonathan Swan's Jim Halpert look, was to, whenever Trump was trying to read one of these charts or graphs, they would just do this merciless close up on Donald Trump's face. Yeah. You know, he's sort of squinting and trying to remember what. he's supposed to say when he reads the chart. That was a really effective, really effective piece of camera work as well.

By the way, can we also talk about, I don't know, I don't, I have no idea what the deal is here. Trump seems to have an affinity for like really short-legged chairs that he can just loom forward on. Do we already talk about this? When they go, the other move is like every time they went to the wide shot,

it just seemed to be just implicitly embarrassing, right? I mean, there's this subtext of like, why is this man sitting on a baby's potty. I don't really understand. And it's not, it's not just this interview. I mean, every time he does this, this is the sort of, I know he's a tall man. And maybe it's just, that's what a tall man in a 200-year-old, like, sitting, sitting-room chair looks like, I, that could be it.

But, and then to show that, but it wasn't just that. It wasn't just the weird, the proportions of his own thing. It was Trump, like, leaning forward for, like, obviously for some effect in his chair, while Jonathan Swan, four feet away, was just lounging comfortably and seemingly like totally unaffected by whatever Trump was trying to do. I think that was sort of a metaphor. I mean, the metaphor for the entire interview, but also just the visual of it just kind of made Trump, I thought, look pretty weak. It reminded me of when we go to our kids open house at school, especially elementary school. And the teacher's like, parents, please have a seat in your child's desk.

Yeah. And you sit down and first of all, you're just afraid you're going to crush the chair. Yeah. And then you just look completely ridiculous sitting at this first or second graders desk. Donald Trump looked like that. We also got a note from a reader saying

whenever there's a presidential TV interview, why don't the chairs have arms? If you notice this, like, how many times do you ever sit in a chair that doesn't have arms? Yeah. But when you interview the president on TV, the chair never has arms. Something to consider,

a deep thought to consider for next time. I think I have an answer. Please. so that everyone's blazer hangs correctly. Ooh. Ooh. So it's a kind of sartorial choice. Yeah.

I like that. Another part of the swan method, David, his willingness to argue with the president. Just like Karen Bass saying, I'm not a communist. It's not a normal thing that happens right before you get picked to run as the running mate. Arguing with the president over and over again. It's not something that typically happens in a White House interview.

Listen to a little bit of Trump versus Swan. They're talking about coronavirus death metrics. We're first. I don't know what we're first in. Take a look. Again, it's cases. Okay. And we have cases because of the testing.

A thousand Americans are dying day. But I understand. I understand on cases, it's different. No, but you're not reporting it correctly, Jonathan. I think I am. But if you take a look at this other charge. Look, this is our testing, I believe. This is the testing.

Yeah. Yeah, we do more tests. Now, wait a minute. Well, don't we get credit for that? And because we do more tests, we have more cases. In other words, we test more. We have a... Now, take a look. The top one, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. The top... Jonathan. If hospital rates were going down and deaths were going down, I'd say terrific. You deserve to be praised for testing, but they're all going up. You know, they very rarely talk... 60,000 Americans are in hospital.

If you watch the news or read the papers, they usually talk about new cases, new cases, new cases. I'm talking about death. Well, you look at death. Death is way down from where it was. It's a thousand a day. It was two and a half thousand. It went down to 500. Now it's going up again.

Excuse me. Where it was is much higher than where it is right now. Went down and it went up again. But now it's going down in Arizona. It's going down in Florida. It's going down in Texas. It went up. It went up.

Yeah. I mean, first of all, maybe it goes without saying, but I guess you should always be appreciative. Jonathan Swan had an utter control of the facts in this interview that you rarely see. This conversation in particular was mind-boggling. I mean, not mind-boggling. I fully understand it. It's the existence, the fact that Trump got mind-blowing, the fact that Trump was allowed in

front of cameras with such little grasp of the one thing he seemingly wanted to talk about is mind-boggling. But we've seen that. this before with them. When he just started holding up the graphs and saying, hey, you could tell he was on the verge of trying to say what they recite what the graphs were showing, but instead was just like, oh, here, you just take the graphs. And then Jonathan Swan immediately was just like, oh, you're counting deaths per case. Yeah, I mean, that's a totally different thing and functionally meaningless. And he didn't say it, but it's worth pointing out that if Trump got his way and we

weren't tested, what seems to be his way, I mean, weren't testing nearly as much, then those numbers would look way, way, way, way worse. But, you know, setting all that aside, they found the one set of charts that makes America not look like the most, I mean, just the worst fairing country in the world when it comes to coronavirus. And yeah, at least Jonathan Swan was pushing back on it because, you know, Trump came prepared to bullshit. One thing about these presidential interviews is there's usually this element of politeness where when the politician lies or doesn't answer the question, you get to push back like once, maybe twice. Usually politeness prevents the interviewer from pushing back like 10 times like we heard in that minute long clip.

And whether it's Trump's diminished political standing, whether it's the fact that we think Trump's going to lose, most people think Trump's going to lose, you're not worried about offending him at point, but that was a lot of pushback. And as you say, a lot of very fact-based pushback. No, nope, that's not true. Nope, nope, that's not true. Nope, nope, nope, it's up. You're not, you're not being honest. That was pretty striking. At the result of an extended sports metaphor to here, didn't Trump feel like the heavyweight champ, the former heavyweight champ who stayed in the ring a little too long and came back and did all these fights at the end of his career now? But every interview in this metaphor, or in this, whatever, every interview here is the

fight like he just should not be doing interviews at all it wasn't well yeah like like chris wallis you know was like the was like the you know last fight where he got lost a decision a close decision and this was like the tk o and the third round yeah i mean because he doesn't even really seem like he's trying all that much anymore well certainly not he's going out there with charts he doesn't he hasn't really paid attention to i mean i guess he paid attention enough to sort of argue the point a tiny bit but but yeah i think that's i mean that's that's i think it's i think it pretty accurate way of looking at it. The Trump campaign, even four years ago, was never very coherent, right? I mean, there were definitely moments where it was just like, oh, now we have

to give a formal statement on international relations or whatever. I mean, there'd be like, there were beats throughout the campaign that seemed that they gave the, you know, the sort of hint that there was some organization, but there never really was, and those were very few and far between. The fact that it seems like now, it's like we have made the decision that Trump should be taking national interviews. It's almost damning in and of itself because that's not a very Trumpian thing to do, but to make that decision and sort of fall on your face is, you know, obviously even worse. What do we think about the redemption of Jonathan Swan?

Well, this is a media podcast. Let's do it. Two years ago, I think there was, there were a lot of people on media Twitter who thought Jonathan Swan was a tool that he was kind of the sequel to Mike Allen, who was over at Axiose was it Politico before that, which is kind of this just, you know, a news hound for sure, but not somebody who is who was sort of thinking critically about the news he was reporting. The big moment was he put out this clip of Trump saying he could end birthright citizenship with the phrase excited to share. Exactly.

And it turned out it was a clip of Trump just falsely saying he could do something he couldn't, which was, you know, pretty much the media for a long part of the early Trump administration. Yeah. He brought the goods to this interview. Yeah. I think that, you know, the Mike Allen comp is, is interesting. And I don't think there's anything that particularly happened in this interview that disproves that theory. Although, I mean, and he got lots of good tweetable news bits out of, uh, or sound bites out of this interview too. Obviously, we're playing them one after the other. But yeah, I mean, he definitely brought the goods. And I think that part of that is, I'm sure, I mean, you know, know, as his career goes on, as this Axios on HBO show moves forward, you sort of hone in on what makes you really good at what you do. And we talked about the production issues, I mean, the production decisions they made, which are part of that calculus for sure. But yeah,

I mean, I think that we're at a point in time with coronavirus and certainly the looming election where things are really, you know, it's time to get serious. And that's not an ideological, that doesn't have to be a politically motivated place. It's a, you know, These are real life and death questions. And, you know, congratulations. Good job by him, getting in front of the president and actually asking the stuff that need to be asked and not taking, you know, BS answers for an answer. I saw this tweet from Laura Wagner. I'm not sure the narrative is so much, wow, Swan got better at his job as it is.

Trump's coronavirus policies matter to Swan and his audience in a way that Trump's racist immigration policies do not. Yeah. I mean, that's part of it too, right? coronavirus makes everybody into, gives everybody a kind of moral clarity that perhaps was not as right at your fingertips before. Let's do a little listener mail, David. First, a little bit of a correction.

We were talking about James Murdoch resigning from News Corp, and you and I were laughing that maybe Tucker Carlson or Jesse Waters was the reason. Whoops, News Corp post-2013 is just the Murdoch publishing stuff like newspapers, not Fox News. always good for us to be snarky and then screw up the facts. Anyway, thanks to a couple of people

who pointed that out. This David is from listener derp. What would a Zoom presidential debate look like? Oh my God. Just the amount of technical difficulty would be... From Biden?

From both. Somebody would be lit really poorly, right? Somebody's mic wouldn't be on for the first like 30 seconds of the debate. Can't you just see, can't you just see Joe Biden just looking off camera like can we get I'm sorry I just I can't hear him you know just like can we are using that as a tactic even yeah I mean I it would be it would just be a total cluster fuck I mean there's no you could get every you get every like Google programmer and everybody that works the NSA together and it would still be just an utter failure to John some on some very basic technological level you know somebody's electricity would go out and it would be and it would just be a mess the Zoom presidential debate feels like

a Saturday Night Live sketch that everybody pretends is funny, but actually isn't very funny when the show comes back this fall, but be on the lookout for that. This is from Matthew Schoneman. Why do sideline reporters have to wear masks, but coaches and players don't during interviews? Because we've seen Rachel Nichols on the NBA broadcast. She's wearing a mask. Chris Haynes is wearing a mask.

I mean, to me, when I first saw the first round of NBA games, I thought, I know why, because they're trying to protect the players. and they're way more important in the grand scheme of things than the reporters. Yeah, that's probably true. I mean, there's no reason to introduce, like, you know, an extra layer of insecurity. I mean, whatever the phrase would be there. Presumably, they're, you know, around their coaches and teammates to such an incredible, I mean, a degree that whatever happens in game is maybe less significant than what would happen

with the reporter. But also, I think that there's the present, it's a presentation thing, you know, I mean, I think that there's, I mean, it's a safety thing too, but you need to be as safe as you can reasonably be. And it's going to end up in, it's like I was talking, somebody on the ring was talking about Zion's minutes restrictions the other day. And these conversations are all ultimately so ridiculous that it's like, yes, it is crazy every time somebody plays, has a 15 minute minutes restriction and they get pulled in the final minute. But at some point, all of these things are arbitrary. And it's, and it's a similar thing, I think with the masks. At some point, you've got to draw a line,

you know, you've got to draw a line somewhere and nobody be wearing a mask. So you're going to see some moments where like two people are talking. One has a mask and the other one doesn't. And that's just the way it's going to be. Look, you identified the line. That's great. This is from Frankie Beats. I was nodding at this email. It feels like we're two weeks away from the here comes Trump media narrative. What is the most inevitable headline that will be immediately ridiculed by all of Twitter?

I don't know the headline, but man, that is absolutely happening within the next month. Um, yeah. I mean, I think partly that it's going so, well, is that the, there's so many things going poorly for them right now, right? That it would really only take like, like a halfway decent jobs report for that to be a week-long media angle, right? To like, oh, this is what, this is all that, is all that Trump needed? It becomes this is all, maybe this is all that Trump needed. And then, you know, it sort of actualizes, too, because that's the other thing. When we saw four years ago is that Trump above all other candidates can sort of self-actualize

with the help of like the media just asking questions about its legitimacy. But yeah, I think that's probably inevitable. I think it's worth, you know, pointing at people when they, pointing at news outlets when they ask those questions to see how legitimate the question is or if they're just kind of stirring the pot because, well, we'll see. From John Sullivan, Brian David, have you ever thought about the implications of choosing between the retweet and the. retweet with comment options and what that choice says about reporters. Some reporters seem to refuse to do simple retweets, even adding useless comments like, look at this photo. Are retweeters with comment on the self-centered side, or am I overthinking this?

Thank you for that note, John. I don't think you're overthinking this because this is a media podcast. And what are we here for? There is definitely some, shall we say, reluctance to just retweet the story. when a lot of times that's absolutely what's called for, is there not? Yes. Also, and this is, I'm saying this is someone who frankly retweets your tweets about our podcast almost every time. Well, that's a little different.

No, no, but I mean, there is the feeling that, look, if someone's coming to my timeline or someone follows me and they want to know this thing, I'm doing my, you know, the bare minimum. But if someone follows both of us, then if I add a comment, then that sort of, that is, that is, that is, that is, it's perceived as more than the bare minimum, right? It sort of re-ups it. It recirculates it. It's the fun pod. Yeah, exactly. It's the, hey, I'm not going to do fun pod, but it's the, hey, in case you missed it,

I published this story last week about Jermaine O'Neill and what he's doing these days. For the evening crowd. For the evening crowd, here's the press box again. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I mean, that stuff doesn't matter, I guess. I don't, I was thinking about this the other day that, that whenever newspaper people pull out a newspaper story and say,

this is quite the read from so-and-so, it's always just a slightly more pointed than normal newspaper story. Like, it's not even really a great read most of the time. It's just a newspaper story that's a little meaner than most newspaper stories are, more angled. This is quite the read.

Also, when you appear on someone else's podcast, you always say, this was so fun or it was so much fun to be on film oh yeah that's a good one that is the absolute inevitable thing uh that you tweet when you're on somebody else's pot also i love there's always an expectation that you're you appear on somebody else's pot that you're going to publicize that fact i know it's on you but i just was on the pod so am i and i and if i'm not i'm the bad guy if i don't retweet this see we're already overthinking this is from leo heffler What changes have you seen in media that have been normalized during COVID, but was on an inevitable trajectory over recent years?

For example, podcasts not done in person happened, but now is the norm. So I would like to add one of these, which is the studio show as we know it, whether it's sports or politics or anything, I think it's something post-COVID that is going to be way less glossy than it was before. We've already seen this, right? We're just as happy to have a Zoom call as we are to have someone sitting in front of a camera. And this was something that was definitely happening a little bit. You saw on CNN, right? You know, you would see kind of a little FaceTimey kind of video with reporters in the field before. Yeah.

The idea that not everybody has to be looking into a professional camera. I just think that the polished studio show era in America is probably done because people are going to realize, like, look, we didn't, we don't have to spend that money. and we probably don't even have that money. I feel like we talked about this or at least something tangentially related not too long ago, but I will say, I think that you're right, it's hard to imagine, I mean, I don't even know what shows are being filmed in studios

in which ones are being filmed at home at this point, and unless we're in Chris Cuomo's basement, I can't really tell. And I think that's exactly the point. However, I do think that there are some shows like cable news shows and a lot of sports talk shows where you can't tell the difference.

And I think that the biggest difficulty is going to be, the biggest hurdle will be every employee saying, okay, then build me a studio in my basement or whatever, you know. But like, but practically I don't think that, I think that there's a lot of those. You're right. We're kind of at the end. That will be done a lot more of the filming from home and everything else.

I had a media executive tell me the other day that those shows and that sort of glossy look that they have were being done as much for other media executives. as they were for the viewers at home. Like people at home actually didn't care, but you were impressing your buddies at the competing sports network or the competing cable news network

by making a really cool set that looked like the Starship Enterprise. Yeah. And it's like, it just doesn't matter. But listen, it doesn't matter, but that's not unique to media. This is a thing you see in every business. I mean, every, every walk of life,

every type of industry, that the way to show that you care about something is to spend money ostentatiously on the thing. You know, like how do you know, It's college football. It's everything. Yeah, exactly. How do you know, how do you know what book this publisher cares about the most?

Because they spent the most money on the party. You know, I mean, it's like this is just, it's video games. It's everything that you could possibly do. The bigger the party, the bigger, the more the, the bigger the promo budget, the cooler thing you get in the mail from the TV network that's wanting you to enter it to review their show, the more they care about it. And that goes down to the production costs too, you know. And I think that there's going to be, there's always going to be,

even if they even if half the shows are filmed in closets and bathrooms we're still going to be we're still going to see bathroom we're still going to see an exorbitant amounts of unnecessary money spent on shows just for just because spending that money is the only way that you can communicate to everybody else in the world that this is the most important thing to you right now for Matthew Cox what would actually constitute an October surprise in this election I got this one okay Chris Almeida it's definitely a candidate It dies, right?

Oh my God. That's a big surprise. I don't mean to laugh. Yeah, when we're talking about candidates are a little bit on the older side. Yeah, if it's never going to happen, it's probably going to be this election, right? Okay, well, that's a hell of a surprise.

I don't know that you can quite have the playbook ready for that one. I don't know what, well, Brian, do you want to answer this first? I feel like, I feel like. I think Chris got it. No, I think so, too.

I think the bar was pretty raised, you know. I find it hard to imagine that Trump or any of his supporters are kind of like holding anything in the chamber right now. You know, I mean, it sort of seems like. No, they don't. Yeah. That's not their style. And especially with the polls the way they are and everything else. I think it's, I don't know.

I can't imagine what such an October surprise would be. Yeah, I feel October surprises entered the Friday news dump zone where more people talk about it than it actually happens. you know and it sort of just becomes this term it's like oh october surprise october surprise but it's like what what was actually an october surprise this is from christ's patrick why are so many guests being repeated between podcasts lately where there's short term exclusivity agreements in the past that are now gone as competition heats up i had not noticed this but this was one of the reasons i didn't want to have guests on the press box for a long time because i just felt every time i looked at my podcast feed it was the same people and it had a little bit of the feel

the 70s game show where Charles Nelson Riley would just go from from one studio to the other and it would just be on every game show and you said well that that person's on everything. Oh my God, yes. And there was a little bit of a feel with podcasts like that for a while. I wish we combined those two worlds though. I wish it would be like today on the podcast Jim J. Bullock, you know, that would just be like all the all the the the the control V game show host guests. I mean, really, like, is there anybody in the world you would rather have comment on the rest of this presidential election than Bruce Valanche in the insane?

Coming at us from the lower left hand square. No, it would be fantastic. All right. You need to make your list of non-media wishless guests for the press box. And I will do my best. Bruce Valanche used to be a journalist, by the way. So we could probably, we could probably squeeze him in. By the way, my wife once saw Bruce Valanche at the airport. And it's it. It was a, it was. an extremely hilarious story when she came back and she's like, I saw that guy at the airport, the one you talk about. And I was just like, and it took us about. I think

I mentioned Bruce Valanche. I think I mentioned him one time or whatever, but I just had like, I think she was just shocked with how familiar I was with like the Bruce Valanche Uvra or whatever. And so, yeah, that was a very amazing conversation. Did Bruce Valanche predict the funny t-shirt era of

American life? Like now everybody just wears funny t-shirts all the time. It's just giant funny t-shirt industries i felt bruce valanche was on that corner before anybody else all right david from from pineapple suflay we're working on getting bruce valanche on the podcast as from pineapple suflay i have a question for this week's pod can y'all explain how the overworked twitter joke of the week works there's a joke on monday and thursday is the monday joke from last week and the thursday joke for this week but that would mean

the following monday's joke was also last week's overwork twitter joke of the week meaning there were two jokes of the week. Thank you, pineapple souffle for your interest. Here's the answer. This used to be a weekly pod, and then it went biweekly, and we were too lazy to change the name of the feature. Wow. I was really worried he was going to make me explain the conceit of overwork Twitter joke of the week. And even, yes, that's correct.

Also, I used to write a column for deadspin called the Dead Wrestler of the Week, and I think I wrote about, what, 20 of them in this span of five years. It was more of a quarterly than it was. than it was a weekly. All right. Time for David Shoemaker. Guess is a strain pun headline. A biweekly feature. Oh, wait, wait.

Excuse me. Twice weekly feature here on the press box. Monday's headline about a COVID outbreak that began at a French nightclub was pandemic in the disco. We got a lot of good suggestions, David. Discofect was one. Oh. Discovid. And my favorite Sunday morning fever.

Sun, not Saturday night fever, but Sunday morning. fever. Very, very clever. This week's headline comes from Keir Riley, from the evening telegraph in Dundee, Scotland. Turns out, this is not a funny story. Turns out there was an ex-boyfriend who was mad at his former partner, and he threw a brick through her window, through a brick through her window, just out of anger. Now, I'm going to have to help you with this one, because the pun word here is bam, B-A-M, which according to Keir Riley is a Scottish term short for Bampot, which which means idiot or fool. Okay.

Bam. What was the Dundee evening telegraphs, strained pun headline? Wait, what? There was, okay, so. I was going so slowly, too.

I know. Okay, so a grieved ex-boyfriend or whatever throws a brick through his ex's window. Yeah. And what I need to know is it there is a,

there's a regional term. The word is bam. Bam. A Scottish term Okay So which means idiot But your pun word here is bam Bam Bam

Bam Window brick Bam More general You don't need the window in here Just go general Let me give you a little start Winna

When a Bam When a When a bam I'm Almeida's face trying to figure if a... When a bam... I'm so lost.

When a bam... When a bam loves a woman. My God. Jilted lover goes berserk. Oh my gosh. That's... Wow. That is...

Yes. That is a headline. The evening telegraph really did it there. There was a high five given in Dundee when that headline was written. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida. Production Magic by Erica Cervantes.

We're back Monday. It's Biden running mate week. So we're going to have some content there. We'll dig into that rollout. Plus more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you, Brian.