The Press Box - Strange Times at The Messenger, and Weekend Audio. Plus, McKay Coppins on Mitt Romney.

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

Bryan and David dissect what’s happening at ‘The Messenger’ with a recent partnership with an artificial intelligence firm and news that the publication is out of money (0:33). Then, they tackle another round of ‘Weekend Audio’ that touches on Fox’s Kevin Burkhardt’s comment about Miguel Castro, as well as NC State football coach David Doeren firing shots back after a recent comment about his organization (10:49). Later, reporter and author McKay Coppins joins to discuss his new book, ‘Romney: A Reckoning’ where he discloses what the reporting process was like working with Mitt Romney and what he learned while writing the book (26:29). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Guest: McKay Coppins Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What would you do if you got scammed? Would you suffer in silence, or would you do something about it? Well, I got scammed once, and this is the story of what I did. I'm Justin Sales, the host of the Wedding Scammer, a true crime podcast from The Ringer. And for seven episodes, we're hunting a comment. A guy with a lot of aliases, a guy who's ruined a lot of weddings. And with the help of some friends, I just might be able to catch him. Listen to The Wedding Scammer on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

David? Yes. We have so far avoided talking about the Washington, D.C. based website, The Messenger on this podcast. And you might say the Messenger has avoided making us talk about it, but now there's trouble in Messenger land. So we arrive like vultures. New piece from Lachlan Cartwright and Justin Barragona

in The Daily Beast reports the following. The Messenger's president, Richard Beckman has told people the site is out of money. The editor, Dan Wakeford, that's bad news generally with a website. The editor, Dan Wakeford, has been less than present, according to employees. The messenger said the same employees complain has too much clickbait, too much aggregation. And now there is a partnership with an AI firm. Ooh.

What do you make of the goings-on at the messenger? Well, you know, just to pull back the curtain a little bit for the listeners, the messenger was a low-key version of our, you know, Joe Biden's social strategy running gag where we like almost touched on it a number of times. It would always be in like the text messages and the kind, you know, our emails and stuff back and forth to each other, never quite floated up to the top. And, you know, people at the ringer would discuss it in certain Slack channels or whatever.

Just kind of keeping an eye out of it or whatever. But it was, you know, it's one of those things. It was from the very beginning, or from its launch at least. No, that's even before the lunch. I think before the lunch, what was it? The first article that I remember seeing about it said it was like the Daily Mail Meets the Washington Post or something like that. It's had some incredibly lofty crossover, which is what you do when you're pitching

something, but that was a long time before launch, right? Trying to make money to put this thing together. And then it came close to launch time and everybody's watching. You know, everybody's in this, in our line of work, is interesting to see because anything seemingly could be the next thing, you know, could be the thing that the place that we're all going to work someday or the place that redefines the place that we work because it changes the expectations of the audience or whatever.

And then it launched and it was just, I mean, clickbait just seemed, it's so pat that it almost doesn't do justice what it was. It was, there were rewrites. it was really just sort of just obvious stuff. And they seemingly employed a bunch of people whose jobs were not to do, you know, write-throughs and regurgitations and just general, like, you know, writing about Reddit in memes or whatever. And so immediately all this internal strife sort of bubbles up to the top.

People are quitting online, you know, on Twitter from like day one. and the whole thing Yeah, before they ate one even. Yeah, the whole thing to see it was such a mess. So, you know, it's more of a thing that you just like are watching out like a car crash.

And, you know, frankly, I didn't expect it to be that long for the world, but at the same time, it's like, if you're, you know, they made it, they seem to make a choice to pivot fully towards, well, aggregation and clickbait, as you said.

And one would think that there was a little bit more of a financial upside to that, at least something that they could, that they would be prepared for, you know, I mean, you know, it seemed like at the, the best possible read of it was that the, the kind of clickbait and aggregation and all that kind of stuff was, was going to keep them afloat for a while while they figured out the rest. And that doesn't seem to be the case either. It's still very much TBD on what the rest will be or was going to be. It's funny, because clickbait and aggregation, yes, but also just very grand ambitions

about what they would cover. Yeah. You know, all the media startups we've seen that have really worked, puck, semaphore, even the ringer, though now we're a little old in the tooth. They've picked one thing or two things at the start and said,

we're going to do this and we're going to do this really well. Yeah. We're going to try to make ourselves somewhat essential to your life within this. part of the universe. Yeah. So Ringer, that's going to be sports and it's going to be pop culture. Someday we'll even add a media podcast,

but sports and pop culture, we wouldn't be awesome at that, right from the go. Yeah. The Messenger, it was like, I looked at the website today, just looking at the headlines on their latest news column, and it just give you a sense of what we're attempting here. These are actual headlines. Man pointed gun at a head of six-year-old

who knocked on his door in misunderstanding over Halloween, candy. Dak Prescott reunites with longtime Mississippi State fan and heartwarming sideline exchange. Netanyahu holds a press conference. And finally, Creed are going on tour for the first time since 2012. Here's their full list of 2024 dates. I just pulled it up too. And the first thing that got the second, no, the third piece in the latest, uh, breaking

news column is fire country, season two. cast release date and everything to know, which is, this is not an opinion. It is definitionally the lowest form of, of SEO farming and aggregation. Right. So we're not just doing aggregation and SEO for it. We're just doing that about everything.

Netanyahu to Dak Prescott. I mean, everything is in this. And Jimmy Finkel. It seems like the goal is to be a one-stop shop for like stories that Reddit news posts will link out to, sort of. You know, like I'm not exactly sure to put that in the words better than that. Jimmy Finkelstein, the owner, and this was the guy who helped build up the hill into what it was before selling it, which might have been a telling detail for all of us before the messenger

was created, said at the outset he wanted to have 550 journalists, which the New York Times noted was about as many as the Los Angeles Times, one of journalists in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, 100 million monthly readers. So this thing was just launching kind of as an alternative to

CNN, the New York Times, old school Huffington Post, just something that was going to be everything to everybody all at once. Huff Poe is a good, old school, Huff Poe is a good point of reference. And I do think that the British tabloid model is meaningful to, you know, it's everybody, if you're not a daily reader of the Daily Mail or whatever. I mean, we've all had the experience

of landing there to read a story and then just kind of becoming immersed in whatever the site, you know, the links, internal links are to because you're just like, what world is this? Look at all these crazy different directions I could go. And it all seems more over the top. than the one before it. But to kind of create that from nothing in a market that is not, where that's not the conventional choice and certainly in a world where, like you said,

that's not what startups, media startups look like. It might have been biting off too much. Lauren Thiessen has a good piece about this over a defector. And notes the speed at which all this is happening, quoting here, in about six months of operations, it's already passed almost every stage

that a media startup experiences on its path from VC Darling to Baron Husk. Six months, David. This is all happening. Wow. Feels like, you know, this should be like we're talking about year three where things get a little, you know, the money starts running a little bit dry and things start getting a little, you know, itchy in the editorial offices. No, no.

It was just the spring that this thing launched. I do think the messenger is testing the premise of the idea that there is such a thing. as a bad media job these days. Considering the state of the industry, you know, we used to have conversations with young people like, no, no, you don't want to go there. You don't want to do that for your career. You don't want to do that for the things you really want to accomplish.

Don't make that move. Now I just say like, if it's a job and it pays, you should probably take it. Unless there are 10 other fantastic options put in front of you. Yeah. because even at publications that go haywire, you can often do good work, right? That's like an exception to the rest of the publication

and also pay your bills and have insurance and stuff like that. Well, certainly from like the, you know, the time that we were coming up, I remember you specifically getting advice for your career about based on opportunity, based on when are, when am I going to get the opportunity to write good stuff? and what kind of stuff will that be? And, you know, what kind of promotion will it get? What kind of, you know, attention will that get in the wider world? You're right.

Everything's sort of on an even playing field now. And if the mission statement is create, then you do have an opportunity to at least, you know, build up the, build up the resume. Indeed. All right, David, coming up on today's pod, we have weekend audio with sports radio declarations and memories of the Castro regime. We will look at the idea and possible twilight of the dial-a-quote. Plus our pal McKay Coppin stops by to answer the question,

how do you get Mitt Romney to tell him all that stuff? I'll add much more on the press box. A part of the ringer! Podcast Network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Erica Servantes here. Weekend audio, David. Let us begin in New York City.

and you and I both love any media moment that could have happened in the exact same way any time over the last 30 years. Oh, yeah. We got one of those last week. It was a sports radio proclamation from Chris Mad Dog Russo of Sirius XM. Russo said if the Arizona Diamondbacks

win the National League Championship series, well, let him tell it. I would not be stunned if they won tonight. I would be floored. And I'll say this right now. Just I'll say this right now. And Bob Raisman, write it down. If they win the next two days, they win the next two games.

And win this series in seven games, if they win, I will retire on the spot. First of all, you have to appreciate the generational divide between nobody. aggregate this and Bob Raceman write this down. I love this because this is my whole childhood was stuff like this. There was a guy in DFW one time and said,

if this Texas Rangers pitcher makes the All-Star team, I will do an hour of my show standing on my head. And then, of course, the Ranger made the All-Star team and they had to bring in this contraption so he could do the sports radio. show upside down. And isn't it better when it's a transparently

phony declaration like this? Chris Rousseau is not going to retire. Nobody, Chris Rousseau will do sports talk for the next thousand years. Maybe he's making so much money, you know, from ESPN now that he's just like, he's just looking for an excuse to go do that full time. I'm retired for my radio show.

I think he actually did tell that to Stephen A. He's like, I didn't mention television. I didn't mention television. So he is not retiring. He went on the Howard Stern Show. And I guess Howard gets to be the arbiter here, gets to be the solomonic ruler, if you will, because they're both on serious.

But he went on the Howard Stern Show, and it was determined that he will wear a Diamondbacks bikini and will parade around New York City holding a sign. And the sign will say, I'm a liar and a dope. Yeah. that's according to awful announcing rousseau rejected some of howard's earlier suggestions for what he might put on the simmons he

did not find that to be in good taste perhaps another sign of the generational divide we're talking about here anyway amazing stuff i i think we should come on this podcast every week and just threaten to retire unless something happens that has a 50 50 shot of happen i think so too i think it's a great look it definitely gets attention right because we wouldn't be talking about him if you'd been right niki haley haley finis a second in Iowa. I will that might be

too easy. All right, David, Dateline Arlington, Texas, where your Texas Rangers won game one of the World Series when Adolice Garcia hit a walk-off home run off Miguel Castro.

Fox's Kevin Burkart doing baseball duty, had an observation about that. Adolese Garcia, who defected from Cuba long ago, hits a winner, off of Castro. If that is in poetry, I'm not sure what is. He's superhuman. Unbelievable. If that's not poetry, I'm not sure what is. Now, just one note before you weigh in here.

The pitcher Miguel Castro, who gave up that home run, is from the Dominican Republic. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure how much that matters. This is maybe one of those examples. We actually said this recently, that, you know, sometimes you look to announcers to say the thing that you're saying on your couch. That's probably a joke that you were making on your couch that the announcer definitely doesn't need to say. Real Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln vibes there, right? See, it's somebody named. It's like, well, is he, is he, you know, worried about the surname so much that doesn't matter who's named Castro? It's extra motivation for him? Yeah, no. It's always a little bit of a bear trap, isn't it, when you have a legitimately cool story?

like Garcia defecting from Cuba. But then the announcer just takes it one step too far. It's a little too cute with it, yeah. Thanks to our friend Trialer for that one. Let me take you David to Dateline Raleigh, North Carolina. Yeah. We had another college football coach cutting a promo on a media member after a win. This is, I believe, number three.

We had Ryan Day on Lou Holtz. We had Coach Prime on Edward. That was weird. And then during the college game day pick segment this week, the former wide receiver Steve Smith dismissively referred to NC State as a basketball school. So after beating Clemson, Wolfpack coach Dave Doran returned serve. Tell Steve Smith in the studio, this ain't a basketball school. He can kiss my ass.

That was on the field after the game. I mean, do you think coaches watch the other coaches and like, okay, he did his bulletin board material promo there right after the game. So I'm going to take the same opportunity. Well, sometimes I think we read into this too much. But I do think that, yeah, probably. I think that coaches can look and see that there is only upside to telling someone to kiss their ass on national television, whereas that might not have been smiled upon in years prior. now it's only positive. And really, what are you doing?

I mean, what's your job as a head coach? It's to recruit. So, right? It's a, this is a, it's a PR game. Yeah, why not? Get out there and get a news cycle. If I were a head coach, I would just pick an obscure media member every week

who most certainly did not say anything about me, much like Edwarder had not apparently written anything about Dion Sanders in Colorado, and I would just go after them in the postgame interview. Oh, yeah. Ryan Rucco, you know you were talking all that mess last week. You think you're pretty smart, huh? I would just pick somebody and eventually you'll get down to just, you know, the eighth tier ESPN announcer.

Just, okay, let him have it. One more for you, David, Dateline Houston. ESPN's Brock Osweiler was calling the Tulane Rice game. He was talking about Tulane quarterback Michael Pratt. and I want you to count how many distinct examples of announcers speak you hear in this clip.

He's a tough guy. He plays the game the right way. He's the leader that you want here, humble. He's a tremendous ambassador for the University of Tulane. He does so much in the community, volunteering, given his time.

His teammates have so much respect for it. He goes about it like a pro. He's someone that you're going to hear his name called in the upcoming NFL draft for a lot of reasons. His intangibles and his leadership is just absolutely off the charts. I'm not sure what the

announcer cliche bingo card had in front of me, but I'm pretty sure that's a bingo. What if we fill up the whole card? Do you get extra money from the church at night? If you don't just get a bingo, we get the whole thing. I want to talk to you, David, about the concept of the

dial-a-quote. Oh, yeah, okay. One more time. Eric, let me start that. Three to one. Next up, David, sometimes as a journalist, you declare the death of something. Sometimes it's not quite the death.

So you declare, wait for it, the twilight of something. Oh, love a twilight. I would like to introduce you to the concept of the twilight of the dial-a-quote. Oh. I like this. Go on.

I was reading a Washington Post piece about Jesse Waters by Jeremy Barr. That is Jesse Waters, the Fox guy. Yeah. It was a write-around, as I say in the business, because Jesse Waters was not having any of this. And one of the people quoted in the story was Robert Thompson, a professor of television and pop culture at Syracuse universe. Oh. Now, if you know that name, it's probably because you've read Robert Thompson, Professor of Television and Pop Culture at Syracuse, quoted in news articles. Yes.

I, many, many moons ago, called Robert Thompson, Professor of Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse for a quote, for a story I was writing about pop culture. He's that guy. You call him, you're going to get something good. And by the way, he says something interesting here. There's so much that Jesse Waters can get away with saying out loud because there's always this sense that it's couched in that tongue and cheek, elbow and rib sense of irony. Yes. Pretty good quote. It made me think about how for millennia now in the news business, there has been this list of people that you call when you need a pithy quote.

Uh-huh. Robert Thompson for pop culture Larry Sabato for politics the name for this practice is dial a quote somebody who is going to answer the phone or answer my email

be on the phone quickly and say something that is going to help me get from point A to point B in my story kind of an amazing practice is it not it's great and it probably has gotten even worse I mean worse I mean it probably

narrowed in a little bit in the internet era, right? Because it's not just who's in your Rolodex. It's who people are Googling to see who gave quotes for similar articles in the past. 100%. That is absolutely right. I mean, I'm sure I found out about Robert Thompson because I read him quoted elsewhere. Yeah. And it was interesting in like the old days when newspaper style dominated, where newspaper writers couldn't just assert something. No, you had to have someone else say it out loud. You had to find that beat. even if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Yeah. So you needed that person to say something sometimes. And then the other thing was, again, we're talking, you know, 20-ish years ago, it was really hard to find a pop culture expert in the world who could talk about a variety of things. Yeah. Think about that. If you're sitting down writing a news article, it's like, you can't just say that, man. I need, I need you to, you know, give me an authority figure making that point.

It's like, dude, who am I going to call? Yeah. Do I have Chuck Closterman's number? Do I, you know, like, who are the people who can just be well-versed on so many things? Aha. Robert Thompson. From Syracuse, he will be the guy that I call up. Yes.

I do wonder if this whole concept is going away a little bit. Because now what I'll see when I read a news article is a previously published tweet from an authority figure being quoted. Oh, yeah. You don't need them to say it because someone's already said it. it's not fresh material, but you can link to something, especially link to a tweet in a way that's a little more natural than you probably could in the prehistoric era. And that counts as somebody made this point.

Yes. Somebody had this reaction, therefore, as a newswriter, I can put that down in the stone tablets and move on with my story. Yeah, absolutely. That's how, I mean, the origin of half the articles you read, they seem to be somebody tweeted something. Twitter reacted to blankety blank. Yeah.

So we're moving away. This is the twilight of the diala quote, but the dawn of the diala tweet. The site of tweet? Well, I think we're past the dawn, but yes, this is the era of the, of the diala tweet. I just hope that, what was the professor's name?

Robert Johnson. Robert Thompson. I hope he's active on Twitter. He's got to keep his profile out. Honestly, called him the very first time I remember this was about TV Guide. I was writing about TV guide and he

answered and was fantastic. He had stuff at his fingertips. It was amazing. And I was like, wow, this guy knows about everything. Got some only in journalism for you. Actually, this is only in sports writing. Upstart. Oh, for like an upstart athlete,

an upstart at a position or something? Yeah, the Diamondbacks and Rangers were both upstart's, playing in the World Series. Oh, yeah. Because they haven't been good for very long. And then Matt Catalana sent this one over. Before the Tuesday NFL trade deadline, various players have garnered interest.

And she loved to have a journalism time machine so we could see when players started garnering interest instead of getting interest around the league. All right, David, coming up in 30 seconds. How do you get a retiring U.S. senator to fill your book with interesting quotes? But first let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week when we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all the media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the Pressbox pod

where they are always gratefully received. Got a lot of tweets during Game 7 of the American League Championship series when Astros manager, now former manager, Dusty Baker was leaving his pitchers in too long. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. Dusty Baker is going to have a lot of fresh arms for game eight. thanks to the great sports writer Richard Justice for that one.

But this week's winner, David, the presidential campaign of won Mike Pence. It's come to an end. It's become clear to me. This is not my time, Pence said on Saturday. It was an overword Twitter joke to write, Mike Pence can still be president if Mike Pence has the courage. Was it the New York Times article about campaigns with dwindling funds that it finally just made him look in the mirror and say,

it's over? Yeah, I think so. There's a photo that accompanied it had just him standing in front of like four people at an independent bookstore somewhere. It was pretty rough. Adam Rand had a piece the other day about him and said like, you know, you often go into debt for these campaigns. And then so it's not just like, oh, hey, my campaign didn't work. Time to get on with the rest of my life. It's like, now I have to do stuff to pay off my campaign debt. Yeah.

So, anyway, if Pence reminds you, you of another former Indiana vice president who didn't do so well after he leaving office. Congrats. You made the overword Twitter joke of the week. All right. In the notebook dump, when I first met McKay Coppins more than a decade ago, he had just broken the news of John Huntsman's presidential ambitions. Remember John Huntsman? Last week, McKay hit the upgrade button and released a biography of Mitt Romney called Romney a reckoning. It made Coppins the first person in recorded history to get the words Mitt Romney and tea spilling into a New York Times headline. He's here to tell us how that tea got spilled.

McKay, welcome back to the press box. Thank you for having me, Brian. I'm honored to be here and to spill some tea with you. All right. 45 interviews with Mitt Romney. A peek at Romney. A peek at Romney. private journals and emails and text messages. How did you pull that off? So I had been covering Romney for about 10 years, actually, since I was sitting near you in the Daily Beast, the headquarters in New York, I think. But, and, you know, I had profiled him for the Atlantic. I had covered his presidential campaign.

And he, after January 6th was like in a real, you know, in a real. really weird, different headspace for a sitting politician. Like he, I could tell from talking to him that he was really kind of like asking himself difficult questions about what had become of his political party, what was happening to the country, and also kind of looking back over his own career in an interesting way and kind of wrestling with where he had kind of indulged some of the far right elements of his party that were now, you know, storming the Capitol and that he had to run away from on January 6th. And so basically, I went to him and kind of laid it out. I was like, look, I think you would be a super interesting

subject of a book right now. And I think your journey from like presidential nominee to pariah and your own party is interesting. But I also told him that I didn't think it would work if he was going to be like less than forthcoming. Because most of his career had been defined by like he's been super cautious and stuck to his talking points. And so I basically said, I need you to be candid. And if you're not willing to do that, that's fine.

We can like revisit it down the road or whatever. And he luckily was in this kind of place where he, was ready to unburden himself almost. And so, I mean, I wish that I could, like, say that there was some, like, superhuman journalistic feat of, like, access getting that I used. But, like, I think I just got to him at the right moment. And I knew that I had when just a few weeks in, he sent me a text and was like, hey, you know, check your email.

I'm sending you something that might be interesting. And it was just hundreds of pages of his personal journals, which, like, is not very common. You profile people, right? It is not very common for people to give you that level of kind of access and make themselves that vulnerable. And I later found out, I actually really just found out recently the extent to which he hadn't even reread his journals before he gave them to me. So he was really kind of like all in from the beginning. That's incredible. Yeah, that's right up there with let me tell you about the dream I had about my father last night in terms of things you want from a profile.

Yes. Subject. Now, he had put aside a lot of these materials and thoughts and ideas with an eye toward maybe writing his own memoir at the end of his political career. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's interesting. He had kept really detailed journals during his second presidential campaign, I think, because he thought he had a good chance of being president and he would write his presidential memoirs one day.

And then, you know, he lost. And he still, for a while, had people. his circle kind of telling him, like, you should write a memoir. Apparently, when I approached him, and he was kind of mulling this, he, uh, he like, you know, asked his little brain trust, these like advisors who have been with him forever. And some of the people told him, like, you should just write your own book. Like, don't let this guy into, in, because part of the deal was that I was, you know, I wanted all the access of like a fully authorized biography, but without the, with the stipulation that I had.

full editorial control, right? He wasn't allowed to kind of like make edits or, or, you know, say, read it and then say, you have to take certain things out. But he had kept all this stuff for the memoir. He decided not to. And what he told me in the first meeting that we had about it was that he couldn't be objective about his own life. And so that was why he decided to basically give all this material to me instead.

And one thing I'd add to that is politicians often write memoirs because they need money at the end of a career of public service and Mitt Romney doesn't need money. That's a good point actually. I hadn't totally thought about that, but yeah, you're right. The million dollar book deal that he might have gotten,

you know, for like a memoir, really it doesn't make a dent for him. He also probably like didn't want to, you know, write a book. Like, you know, I think he likes to, he actually likes to write. I write in the book about how he had once considered himself a future English PhD.

He briefly considered that career path and a professor steered him away from it. But, you know, like, I don't, yes, he didn't need to write his own book. He didn't need to hire a ghost writer. Like, he was willing to work with me. I will say it's pretty unusual, though, for a sitting politician to give up that level of access. Like, there is kind of a tradition of books where a political figure will kind of give a biographer all their papers and notes and journals, but the deal is like, you can write this when I die, you know? And not only did he wait, not wait until he retired, he, you know, didn't even wait until he

was out of office to, like, give me all this stuff. And, uh, and in fact, there were some people who, who have questioned, you know, the timing because the first excerpt of the book ran in the Atlantic the same day he announced his retirement, which, you know, I got a little heads up there. And so we got the excerpt ready. But I'll just. tell you, like, for most of our, you know, process over the two years of interviewing him, he still thought he was running for reelection. And he thought the book was going to come out sooner. He kept wondering, like, when it was going to come out. So this wasn't a thing where he was like, you know, you guys always talk about the now they tell us story, you know? Like, this isn't actually

one of those where he was like, okay, now that I'm on my way out, I'll tell you everything. He was ready to kind of like, you know, unleash himself even when he was thinking of still being a sitting senator. That's fascinating. So he was prepared to nuke Ted Cruz and J.D. Vance and everybody else and then run for reelection in 24 and go back to the Senate and face them every day. Yeah. I mean, I think he thought that that was like a live possibility. That's amazing. Where did these interviews with Romney typically happen?

Most of them were at his house. He has a townhouse near the capital, which is kind of an interesting scene. I write about it at the beginning of the book just because it was fascinating to me, seeing this guy who's worth hundreds of millions of dollars, he's a sitting senator, he's been a presidential nominee. I think we conjure certain images of people at that level of wealth and power of, you know, like the kind of life they probably lead. And whatever it is, that's not really the life Mitt Romney leads,

at least when he's in Washington, like his, his house, which is very nice, you know, obviously. But it's kind of like a bachelor pad. He's got like, you know, like crumbs on the counters. He's, you know, has like a, he has a giant TV on, on the wall of the dining room and a like leather recliner where he would most nights sit there and eat dinner by himself while watching like Ted Lassow and Better Call Saul.

And it was funny, somebody I saw on. responding to that part of the book was like, man, it is kind of crazy, like, the universality of human experience that like all of us just end up like eating our dinner watching Netflix, you know, like even Mitt Romney. But I mean, it stems from the fact that he is like pretty isolated in Washington. Like he's not, he's not well liked in his caucus, you know, Republicans are, you know, distrust him because of the various stands he's taken against Trump. And he's not really a Democrat either. And so he's not like, he was not one of these guys that was out there every night, like going out to dinners and functions and stuff. And that really worked

to my advantage because he would often keep me at his house longer than I planned because I think he liked the company. Like I would, there would be literally meetings where I would finish my questions. and then he'd be like, so what are you reading? Like, what are you watching any good shows? Like, he literally just, like, wanted to, like, kind of, like, hang out. This is two interesting roles in the journalist, right? There's a kind of psychologist, psychiatrist, whom the subject is unburdening themselves to,

and then there's the good hang. Right. Well, he actually said, it's funny, I didn't not know this, but he gave an interview to the Salt Lake Tribune last week where they were doing some, like, piece about me in the book. And the reporter asked him about me. And he said something like, you know, he's, he's so, he's so personable and, you know, easy to get along with and friendly that you kind of forget that he's not necessarily your friend, which that was, I guess, like, kind of like journalism

achievement unlocked, right? I mean, that is, that is the reality. But I'll say this for Mitt Romney because somebody asked me this recently. They were like, what kind of hang is he? Because you can imagine like, you know, from the very beginning of this process, knowing, like, I, you know, I knew that it was going to be good material because he's giving me his journals and he, you know, is ready to like dish, right? But I didn't know what it would be like necessarily to hang out with Mitt Romney for two years. Like, that could have been like a daunting, you know, prospect. But he actually is like a pretty good hang himself. Like, to a degree that probably would surprise a lot of people, like, he's dishy and gossipy and funny and, like, has a very kind of, like, well-attuned sense of the absurd in politics, which really, like, made it enjoyable to spend time with him. Because that, like, that could have been a real slog if he was, you know, the Mitt Romney that I think a lot of people got to know as a presidential candidate.

So he's dishing. He's giving you what you know is fantastic material. How does it feel as a journalist to sit there and receive such material? I don't know what your tactic is in those interviews, but like when a subject gives you really good stuff, like starts to tell a story that is like, you know this is going in the piece or this is going in the book. My instinct is to really like not act too excited, you know, because you don't want to scare them. And so, like, I tried to just, like, poker face it, like, just kind of sat there, took it in. But, you know, I was recording all the interviews, obviously.

And I had my laptop out sometimes or a notebook where I was kind of taking notes. But most of the time, I just tried to, like, nod along and listen. But it was like, I mean, there were some meetings where we would finish the interview and I would leave his house and immediately, like, pull my phone out and, like, start to play the recording just to make sure. I was like, did I get all that? like, wow, that was, I got that's, I have that. And like, you know, and sometimes it was, you know, just like really juicy quotes. Like, you know, J.D. Vance, he said it would be hard for me to respect someone less than J.D. Vance. And like, and then sometimes it was like really dramatic stories about what was going on inside the, you know, behind the scenes in the Senate.

But, you know, you just have to kind of like not, not get too worked up about it in the moment because that, can often, especially with somebody in politics, but I think any subject, like, that can cause them to shut down. Totally. Every once in a while, I'll listen to a recording, I'll catch myself kind of laughing when somebody says something wonderful, you know, not funny, but just good material. Curtis, don't laugh because they'll know you're cackling of glee. McKay, conservatives and people who write about them have this line of thinking about the 2012 presidential campaign, which is that basically Romney was a fairly decent person who was treated shabbily by the Democrats, and therefore Democrats never get to complain ever again about being

treated shabbily. How did Romney feel he was treated during 2012? You know, it's interesting. He has a different perspective now than he did at the time, which I know because I read his journals from the time. And he would complain about his treatment. I think any presidential candidate would, right? But he, you know, he didn't like the media coverage.

he didn't like the attacks on his character that the Obama campaign were kind of waging against him. He felt like a lot of it was unfair. But where he differs from, I think, a lot of the conservatives you're mentioning, is that a lot of people will have said that that was the campaign that radicalized them, right? And that, you know, we had this decent, honorable guy

who just got destroyed in the media, destroyed by Democrats. And, you know, after that, we decided that we didn't need a decent honorable guy and Donald Trump was fine. You were going to get behind the bully who can give as good as he gets, right? Mitt Romney just totally rejects that idea, you know, because it's funny because he's like, you know, none of my sons feel that way. None of them became Trump supporters and they hated the way I was treated.

And Romney himself, you know, it didn't like the treatment he got, but still like feels like the idea that because he was mistreated, you should go support Donald Trump is insane, right? So that's where the breakdown happens. Romney is much more kind of zen about his treatment in 2012 now with some distance. But you can read those, you can read those journals and see that he was often frustrated. The only other thing I'd add, though, is that he was really hard on himself in his journals, too. So while he felt like he was, you know, some of the coverage was, you know, especially small. And I actually think he's right. The 2012 election, like, people have probably forgotten it.

But like that campaign was just like brutally like, you know, focused on the dumbest ephemera in American politics. And so, you know, he was frustrated by that. But he also, you know, journal entry after journal entry is him just kind of like, beating himself up for, um, for, you know, some stupid thing he said in an interview or a gap he made. The, the most notable one is after the 47% tape came out when he, you know, was caught at a fundraiser talking about how 47% of Americans who don't pay income tax, don't, you know, they'll never vote for us because they don't want to take responsibility for their lives. He basically sounded like a, like caricature of a, you know, Republican plutocrat, you know, um, after that, and I had no idea this

was going on. But in his journals, he became like deeply depressed for like a couple weeks after to the point where, you know, every night he'd get, get out his journal and write about how stupid he was and like how could I have done this. And, you know, people in his campaign thought he might be clinically depressed. He couldn't sleep or eat. And, you know, his wife at one point arranged for him to privately meet with Tony Robbins to try to kind of like pep him up. And that didn't really work. So anyway, like, it's all, it's complicated because as hard as the media was on him or Democrats were on him in 2012, he was also very hard on himself and knew he was fundamentally not like

the best kind of person to be a presidential candidate. He thought he would be a great president. He didn't think he was very good at running for president. 2012 was when he accepts Donald Trump's endorsement and rights of Trump in his journal, No Veneer, the real deal, got to love him, makes me. laugh and makes me feel good both. Mm-hmm. What does he think he missed about Donald Trump back then?

Well, he thought of Donald Trump in 2012 and before that. I mean, he actually knew him back all the way in the 90s. I write about like his, you know, first visit to Mara Lago and what that experience was like. But he thought of Donald Trump as basically a fun, gossipy, charismatic, buffoonish celebrity. Like, he didn't think of him as a serious political figure, right? Trump was on Fox News a lot at that point, kind of floating crazy conspiracy theories about Barack Obama. And, you know, Romney said, I obviously thought those were stupid, but I also just thought he was like a celebrity, like a, you know, a crackpot. But like, there are lots of crackpot celebrities that endorse presidential candidates.

And his argument was, you know, Barack Obama can get Kanye West and Lena Dunham. and Bill Maher to endorse them. Like, why can't I get, you know, the celebrity apprentice host to endorse me? What he missed, though, I think was that, like, the undercurrent of his, of Trump's popularity among conservatives was not just that he was this, like, you know, fun, newly right-wing celebrity. He was tapping into something pretty ugly in American politics and, you know, the racism and xenophobia and especially kind of the desire for a strong man that exists

in the in the in the on the right romney now sees that but he like his argument and is that he just didn't think about trump in those terms until he was running for president and he realized why he was why trump was so popular brings me to my next question because there is an argument about whether Trump is this unique character who comes in and captures the Republican Party and changes its trajectory starting in 2016, or if Trump is just an outgrowth of conservative and Republican Party principles that had been present, in fact, for decades. Where does Romney fall on that question? This was actually one of the questions I asked a few different times, and he really did go back and forth on this. You know, sometimes he would say that Trump had,

you know, brought about this kind of authoritarian turn in the Republican Party. But then other times he would kind of reflect on the fact that he remembers Mitt Romney going to the 1964 Republican Convention as a teenager when his dad was the liberal governor of Michigan. And that was the year that Barry Goldwater was the nominee and the kind of this new populist conservative movement was taking over the GOP. And Mitt Romney remembers walking around the Cow Palace in San Francisco and seeing the crowds of conservatives, you know, and the way they were acting, like, you know, they drew comparisons at the time of the press to a Nazi rally. And, you know, I think he sometimes will, you know, like entertain the idea that this rot in the Republican Party has.

sort of always been there and that Donald Trump sort of activated it because he was more shameless as a demagogue than, you know, anyone else running for president. But he really does go back and forth than this. What he knows for sure now is that, as he told me, a large, a very large portion of my party really doesn't believe in the Constitution. He was convinced of that after January 6th, but that was not something that he believed, you know, before the Trump era. January 6th, interesting, because you hear lots of senators and members of Congress talk about this day when they truly thought their lives were in danger, and in fact, probably were in danger, if not for some Capitol Police stepping in at the right moment. What was Mitt Romney like when he was discussing that day? Yeah, we talked about it several times. It kind of framed the whole book.

he is really angry about it. Like, in fact, the most reliable way to get him angry was to ask him about January 6th and what happened. He, like, he, he, he was angry about Trump lying about the election. He was angry about, you know, his Republican colleagues who went along with it. He was especially angry and still, it's funny. like he'll still get so worked up about it when you ask him about why they weren't more prepared for what happened.

Because he, I report in the book, he sent a text message to Mitch McConnell four days before January 6th saying that he had heard through, you know, various channels that went back to the Pentagon that, you know, there's all this chatter among right-wing extremists online about their plans for January 6th. Anyway, Mitch McConnell never responded to that text. And then four days later, when they're getting evacuated from the chamber, and the capital police don't know where to send them because there was no evacuation plan put in place, there's no safe room ready for them. They're literally at one point loitering around elevators so they can go a few at a time to the basement. And he just, like, all over again, every time he recounts that, he just gets so angry that his political,

party knew this was explicitly warned that this could happen and did nothing to prepare for it or stop it. I mean, it really is like, again, if not for January 6th, I don't know if he would have cooperated with me for this book or maybe he would have, but wouldn't have been nearly as forthcoming. I think that was like almost kind of a radicalizing moment for him. You said that you reserved the right to write whatever you want in the book. Was he curious at all about how you'd write this stuff that he was telling you? I mean, I'm sure he was. The deal I made with him,

and I actually took this from Walter Isaacson does this with his subjects. This was Steve Jobs, at least, was that he could read the book before it was published. I would let him do that, but that he didn't get to make changes. But I told him, you know, if you have any, like, if you want to have a good faith conversation about anything in the book

that you think needs more context, or you think I've gotten wrong in some way, I'm happy to do that. As you can imagine, I was very curious how he would receive the manuscript when I sent it to him.

I remember I sent him the draft in the spring of this year. And, you know, it was rough in parts, but it was the full book. And I kind of wondered, I was like, I wonder if he'll kind of hang back

and take some time to process it or whatever. He was live text. texting me his responses as he read it. Like he would finish the prolog and then text me his thoughts on the prolog. And then he'd read like, you know, another hundred pages and then text me his thoughts then. And so that began kind of an interesting series of conversations based on his reception to it. I think he had, he did end up having to take some time to process it.

But he was doing it in real time processing it with me as he had been over the last, you know, two years. kind of thinking through things in real time with me there. And anything trip him up, any parts where he's like, no, no, no, that's not the real me. You didn't get that right. So the one thing that I did learn from that, and I actually did find, you know, as I was revising, I think I tried to weave this in a little bit more. And I don't even know if he would put it this way. But in the early draft, I wrote a lot about his tendency to rationalizing.

things that were in his political self-interest. And, you know, that goes back to his very first Senate campaign in Massachusetts where he would talk to me about how he needed to adopt a pro-choice position to have any chance of beating Ted Kennedy in a blue state. But he personally was opposed to abortion. So he, like, walked me through in painstaking detail how he reconciled his moral and religious beliefs about abortion with taking the pro-choice position he needed to for politics sake. And I went through episodes like that throughout his career because then later, you know, he pretended to be more or adopted more right-wing positions than he really, you know, believed in to try to win conservative voters. And, you know, this is why reckoning is in the

subtitle of the book. It's him thinking through all this stuff. The thing that tripped him up when he read the first draft was that he felt like I had portrayed him in such a way that for his entire political career, he had essentially bracketed questions of right and wrong and not considered them at all and was only kind of figuring out, you know, what position he needed to take to win the next election. And what he told me and what I realized is that he actually was always like extremely concerned with questions of right and wrong. He had like this very very, very overdeveloped conscience and, you know, sense of kind of even moral vanity, you could argue. But he was, that's why the rationalization was necessary, right?

He needed to square with himself taking the positions he needed to take. And he said, like, I could have taken a lie detector and you could, and passed it and told you, I really am pro-choice, because that's the point of rationalization. You convince yourself that you're, you know, that you're doing what's right. And so I thought that was an interesting insight that I really only kind of figured out because I let him read the book. And we had a series of sometimes I will say contentious conversations about this aspect of it. That Senate campaign is the one where Ted Kennedy had the immortal line during the debate. I'm pro-choice.

And my opponent is multiple choice. Exactly. I remember correctly. He also told me that that was one of the moments in those debates where he realized there was no way he was going to be Ted Kennedy. because he was like, I went into this race. He had heard, like, Ted Kennedy had, like, lost a step. And, you know, he was getting older or whatever. And then as soon as he got on the debate stage with him, he was like, oh, wait, no, this guy still has it.

I'm not going to beat him. The old guy still had it in that case. Last one for you, McKay, before you run, let's assume Trump and Biden are matched up in the general election. What do you see Mitt Romney doing during 2024? It's a great question. I mean, there's no way he'll support in. endorse vote for Donald Trump, the question is just will he somehow lend his support to Joe Biden? And I don't know the answer to that. I mean, Romney is still a conservative. That's the tricky

thing about all of this. He feels completely alienated from his party. He thinks that the Republican Party has, you know, lost all its way. You know, feels like there's no way he could, he could really support somebody like Donald Trump. At the same time, he disagreed. He disagreed. with Joe Biden and all kinds of stuff. But he's also struck up this, like, weird kind of old guy, mutual respect, friendship with him. And I write about that at the end of the book. Like, they, like, they get on the phone together and commiserate about what it's like to get older. And, you know, they've worked on some bipartisan legislation together.

I would keep an eye out for whether Romney does something like endorsed Joe Biden late in the election. I mean, I have no idea. I haven't talked to him about this. I would not be shocked if he did, though. Book is Romney, a reckoning. McKay Coppins. Thanks for coming back on the press box. Hey, thanks for having me.

All right, back with David now, and it's time for David Shoemaker. Guesses this strained pun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline about an NBA superstar putting his team's big plans on hold was harden the interruption. Today's headline comes to us from alert listener, Luca B.

It's from The Guardian. It's not good or pretty. particularly clever, but it's a good eye roll. David, something interesting happened in New Zealand. A symphony orchestra went to a chicken farm and played for the chickens. The guardian notes that research has shown animals can respond positively to classical music, and chickens

are particularly responsive to Baroque, according to some studies. I want you to think chickens and a classical composer. the most obvious classical composer. As you ponder, what was the Guardian's strain pun headline? Like Beethoven? Is that where I'm going? There we go.

Beethoven Beethoven. Beethoven's second. Beethoven's is it oven? No. You're a dance. dancing around there.

Beethoven. We, the chickens to lay eggs, we call them. Hens. Beethoven? Henn? Beethoven. Beethoven. Hens.

Beethoven is the answer here. I mean, that certainly is a pun. Beethoven's First Symphony is what the Guardian went with. Told you him strain. It's strange as well. He is David Shoeaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic!

As always, by Eric. Sierka Servantes, programming note, I am trying to finish up a couple of projects. So we are going Monday press box only for the next couple of weeks. Shoemaker and I here on Monday, but no later in the week press box. David Halloween plans, fun costumes. We will be seeing you in on the streets of Princeton, New Jersey. Childhood, illness, willing. I think we will be a family of Ninja Turtles, which is a lifelong dream of mine.

I never got to fulfill his job. Which one did you pick? Well, there's some issues there. I think I was assigned to Donatello. I chose Donatello, but I think that we got two Raphael's in the mail instead. So we either got to do some quick painting or just accept that this is, you know, just an odd blended family version of the Ninja Turtles. I always saw you as more of a Michelangelo because you are indeed a party dude.

that was claimed by the four-year-old, sorry. My son's going as Indiana Jones. Oh. As you can tell from a specific movie or just General Indiana Jones? Good question. From the Last Crusade. And you can tell from this five or six days of growth that I will be going as Dr. Henry Jones Sr.

Oh, wow. You know what the hardest part was is finding out what the name of Sean Connery's hat was in that movie, just so I could find something on eBay that looked like it. The style of hat? What kind of hat is that? Yes. Hat style internet is a very bizarre place to go.

And you always end up on those, like, did you find any of those celebrity costume websites? Yes. Sometimes I'll be looking for, like, as an art director, and I swear I'll be looking for a specific look of a character, you know, something to put in art that someone asked for something very precise. You know, it's like, oh, we got to get, you know, Han Solo from Empire Strikes Back, you know, and you Google it. And somehow, you'll find these image things.

It's just like, you'll find websites that are entirely devoted to replica clothes, but not like costumes. Like, I want the leather jacket that Han wore an empire as my day-to-day jacket, right? And there's just, there are so many of these websites. It goes so deep, so deep. Yes. You can have Alice, you can have the ordinary right jacket. you're going to have whatever you want oh you know what i want for to wear around in the cold weather this year the quote that bain wore and uh in dark night rises you can buy that yeah it looked

warm yeah the mask you know because of covid you know so worried about that on plane perhaps and he was ahead of his time that's fantastic i finally found it under tweed bucket hat that kind of got me in the right category there and you know a couple days later here it comes in the mail amazing world. All right, Shoemaker and I return Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.