The Press Box - The Biden-Harris Switch, Three Weeks of Political Scoops, and Farewell to Skip Bayless and Pete Wells

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David react to the news that President Joe Biden will drop out of the 2024 presidential race and has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. They discuss the following: How cable news moved slowly with its coverage and reactions (5:00) Reporters who could have taken a bow after the news broke (7:55) How Harris will be covered by political reporters (33:24) Hulk Hogan's and Dana White's appearances at the RNC (40:35) Then, in the Notebook Dump, they discuss the following: Skip Bayless leaving Fox Sports (48:36) TNT's plan to match Amazon’s bid for NBA media rights (52:40) Pete Wells stepping down as the New York Times food critic (56:46) Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, humanoids. It's the Maskman David Shoemaker. It's a new era in professional wrestling, and that means a new era here at the Ringer Wrestling show. Kaz here, every Monday and Thursday hang out with me and my guys' shoes on the Masked Man show. And Ben Cruz here. Come kick it with me, Cal and Brian on Tuesdays for Ringer Wrestling worldwide, where we hit on the most interesting headlines and even react to some of Maskedmans and even your hottest takes. Don't tap out. Tap in to the Ringer Wrestling Show feed now on Spotify. or wherever you get your podcasts. Worldwide. David? Yeah.

Should we start with these Skip Bayless news? Today? We could. We could. Might be a welcome respite. Well, I found that people on Twitter don't love it when you mix politics and sports in one podcast. Yeah. Kind of blows their mind sometimes.

Yeah. So let's start with the self-definestration of, the embattled Joe Biden. Oh, God, yes. Because you know what comes after in battle? Former. Yeah, that's true. As in former 2024 nominee of the Democratic Party.

Mm-hmm. I want to go with you through how this all went down on Sunday afternoon. Biden tweeted out his announcement at 146 Eastern Time. Less than an hour before that, Wolf Blitzer had tweeted. tweeted a picture of himself having a drink at a restaurant in Washington. I saw that you retweeted that, yeah. You might have noticed that the drink was called

and wait for it, strain pun fans. The Wolf Spritzer. Wolf Spritzer. What did you make of Biden posting a formal letter to Twitter rather than just putting the news in a tweet? Well, you touched this on.

on some, when you're on Bill's podcast. And by the way, normally when our show is running second to a Brian Curtis appearance on the Bill Simmons show, it's not presidential politics that's being discussed. So I was a little caught off guard. But I guess this does qualify as big news. It's a little bit, you mentioned, you know, seeing his reaction and sort of extrapolating how small his circle, his inner circle, it actually become. this feels a little bit like

like, you know, your parents trying to send you an attachment via text message that isn't really there. You know, you get the text from your mom that's just like check out this Facebook post and then there's no link or anything else. Now, I know that he probably didn't send the letter himself,

but it was very much like, like, I got to send a letter to the American people and they're like, well, you can tweet it. You can just tweet it. And he's just like, okay, and this is what came out. This is his interpretation of the of the rules. But yeah, you know, I mean, all things told, I wasn't as shocked by the delivery, I guess, as some. It's a, it's sort of uncharted territory. So what are you supposed to do? I guess you're just going to make it up as you go along. It also had a reproduction of his signature at the bottom, which was a nice touch.

I have written a letter to the American people and I signed it. Yeah. In real life. He wouldn't want him to think this was forced in any way. So there was no endorsement of Kamala Harris in that letter. Yeah. And then almost half an hour later, we get a proper tweet with the endorsement of Harris. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. So that kind of got the media looking sideways a little bit. I was like, uh-oh, open primary, open convention, here we go. we're going to realize our dream decades in the making.

Yeah. Whispered about it, mid-level Marriott's from coast to coast. But then no Biden's endorsing Kamala. Kamala quickly started working the phones. And it appears, it appears that she's going to be the nominee. Well, I mean, I don't think we know anything yet. But yeah, I mean, I don't think that part, again, I think I agree with your just sort of weird. I mean, you know, back of the napkin assumptions there that it's just like,

maybe he just thought those were two different thoughts. And so they needed to be two different tweets or two, you know, whatever. That made sense to me. And also, this wasn't, I mean, given that all this has obviously been in the works for some time, there was a lot of signals over the past week, particularly the past several days of Kamala Harris, kind of taking the lead in making public appearances and fundraising and stuff like that. I don't think this was an afterthought to his to his stepping back or stepping down. In a world where everything feels so instant, cable news yesterday seemed to be moving

incredibly slow. Ben Smith of Semaphore noted that CNN was airing a rerun when the news broke. And he says a glacial 11 minutes passed between Biden's announcement that he was withdrawing for the presidential race in the channel going live. I'm not sure what plan for success for CNN doesn't include immediately covering the news that the Democrats are replacing their nominee. Yeah. It's weird, not just that that wouldn't be a general plan. There wouldn't be a general plan in place for news of that scale or scope, but also this

specific one, which really did seem to be, not only did it like seem to be in the ether, did it seem to be in the offing, but as I know we're going to discuss, Mark Halper. Alperin literally predicted this exact timing in a tweet last week. I mean, somebody had to be, should have been on standby for that just in case, right? Yeah, and Axios too, by the way. I'm not sure where Mark Halperin falls and everybody's let's run with it power rankings these days. But the Axios guys, yeah, let's be ready. Let's have people on the set.

Yeah. Yes. I mean, with all the success, again, your mileage, vary in terms of success, but, you know, MSNBC and other stations have had with countdown clocks. It's kind of shocking that there wasn't just a Biden, you know, steps down countdown clock going somewhere that somebody was ready to update the leaderboard on. No, everybody's working summer hours. What is this book publishing? Everybody's off on weekends? I turned over to MSNBC at 620. So a number of hours to pass to this point, and they had a little

logo in the corner that said Rachel Maddow and Nicole Wallace and the A team, we're going to be on at 7 o'clock. Like 7 o'clock, no rush, guys. Can we just be on right now until further notice? Joe Biden has stepped down as the nominee of the Democratic Party. Kamala Harris or someone else might be the nominee. And we're just kind of low. The other funny one was Chris Hayes tweeting that he was starting a vacation.

and he was saving all of his takes for when he got back. Now, David, I'm a fan of personal time off and having some separation between work and life, but this is kind of a big deal. Yeah. And if you had time to get on Twitter and say, hey, I'm on vacation, maybe, you know, fire off, fire off a few thoughts. Yeah. So we'll have something from Chris Hayes.

A couple of reporters who could have taken a bow if they'd allowed themselves to on Sunday because they were talking about Biden's vulnerability or even calling for him to be off the ticket earlier than most. One is a Sted Herndon, host of the New York Times' run-up podcast, and one is Ezra Klein, the New York Times columnist, who used all of his accumulated power

and the liberal firmament to call for the Dems to think about. Should we really have Biden on the ticket? Mm-hmm. earlier this year. You and I did a podcast that was titled the Ezra Klein Heat Check

back in February. And I got to say, I thought our segment was fine. When I was tweeting that out or maybe even sending the title to Brian Waters, I had a moment where I felt a little shame. I felt I'd been a little too

fully ringer pilled there. The Ezra Klein Heat Check from Friedman Island. Whoa. But it turns out that's what it was. And he was right, number one, and number two, it worked. Yeah. The ball began to get rolling.

And, of course, thanks to that debate that Joe Biden has with Donald Trump, it rolls even farther. Ezra Klein also came back to Twitter after having not tweeted David since October 2022. Yeah. He did not take to Twitter. He retook to Twitter. That was pretty exciting. A point that Herndon and Klein both hit on, and I'll quote Klein here from yesterday, the Democratic, quote unquote, elites got here long after the voters. What the debate did was making it impossible for them to ignore what the voters already believed.

Yeah. That's a really interesting spin on the question we talked about, which is what did the media miss about Joe Biden? we talked about it from a standpoint of Biden's stamina, his ability to run a good campaign through November, not to mention the president for another four years. But there's another way to look at that question, which is what the media missed or at least didn't put enough emphasis on was the fact that Democratic voters had tons of doubts about Joe Biden. Yeah. That Democratic elites or elected Democrats in Washington were papering over or ignoring or felt they had no choice but to ignore. Yeah. And that's a real interesting soft underbelly of the media, isn't it?

It is. I mean, for all the salivating over a broker convention and we can make all the jokes about that. But just in general, I mean, you know, hypothesizing fantasy booking, if you will, about all the different ways that this could go, the institution still has all the gravity in terms of coverage, right? I mean, it's part of why Trump was able to use the media writ large as a weapon in his first campaign. And in this one, too, the expectations are sort of set and defying those just sends everybody sort of scrambling. And I think that that for all of the reporting, you know, post-debate about Biden's viability,

there was still just this institutional assumption that the person who, the candidate who won all the primaries, was going to be the nominee of the party and without a really clear path forward, without, you know, reporting about what the succession plan would be, without someone else coming and trying to, you know, actively campaigning as the candidate to displace Biden. I just don't think there was anyone had any concept that outside of the hypothetical that that was going to change. Well, that it was going to change, but that also the people weren't going to be along for the right.

Yeah. All you had to do was look at the polls even before the debate, but especially after. And you see Democrats, a lot of voters, but a lot of Democrats too being like, I don't want him to be the nominee. I have very, very grave doubts about him being the nominee. And to quote a great man, there really are shades of 2016 there, where the voters are trying to tell us in the media something. They are telling us this, and it's up to us to try to listen to that.

Yep. Now, it could have been in another world, David. That first debate isn't in June. It's in September. And Biden just sort of coasts along until then. He has a disastrous debate in September, and there's nothing to do. But in the world we live in,

there was data out there, right? There were voters being like, I don't like this. I don't want either of these two people to run for president again. In terms of Democratic voters, we don't, I'm not sure why is Joe Biden running again?

This seems strange. Yeah. I mean, and really, I mean, to the point, the thing that I heard over and over again outside, you know, in the real world on the grass outside was people, Democrat voters, reliable liberal voters, kind of resigning themselves to a Trump victory.

Right? I mean, and that is sort of, at first was the sort of harrowing thing to hear, you know, the first time someone in my extended family gave voice to it and then, and then you started hearing it more and more. I mean, it was, it's right there. And listen, we hear every time, just like, you know, the first debate is, in every presidential cycle, is in so many ways a chance for the candidates to introduce themselves to the American public. I mean, so many people have already cast ballots for them, but, you know, there's a lot of voters out there that just sort

of hang back until the general election starts in earnest. And again, as you point out, this debate happened very early on the schedule, which I know is actually part of the Biden campaign's strategy, apparently, to sort of, you know, put some of those fears about his viability to rest or whatever, but, and it didn't work, obviously. But it also introduced the general election in an earlier way. Obviously, the fact that this is kind of a double re-election campaign up to this point changes the the the calculus a little bit on that front too the both you know both these people have a very high um you know a level of visibility to the average voter but i think it was the first time we kind of saw 2024 Biden or a lot of people did and they were just like wait like i knew i cast my vote even the

ones that have voted in the primary that's what you know i did i did my civic duty but in terms of actually picking somebody like was this like this was the guy? You know, and like this, and that was the beginning of the conversation for a lot of people. And as such, the beginning of the conversation in earnest for America and for the Democratic Party. And, and, you know, in retrospect, happened pretty quickly after that point. When instead, Hernan was on the pod two weeks ago, he was talking about the MSNBC problem the Democrats have. And if I can define it for him, it goes something like this, that if you hear about the election on MSNBC or on resistance Twitter, more broadly.

What you often hear is this idea that there are two doors you can walk through. Door number one is Donald Trump and the end of democracy, as we know it. And door number two is not that. It is not that. So you're going to want to take door number two. Now, as, as, you know, in terms of like things to worry about in this election, looking at the just the genuine moral stakes of this election, that is absolutely and completely defensible.

The problem is when you talk to voters or just looked at voter data, voters were not seeing the election that way. They had concerns about Joe Biden that they were acting on, whether or not they were concerned about Donald Trump of the fate of democracy. And so what was happening is, if you were sitting here, saying, well, of course, they're not going to, and this, by the way, was also the Biden campaign's theory of the case. Of course they're not going to vote for Donald Trump.

because we're going to tell them that that's that's the end you can't walk through that door voters weren't seeing it that clearly no weren't seeing it in that binary way no not at all i mean there are a lot of reasons for that but i think in some sense just the sort of moral failure of the republican party and i mean i you don't need to i don't need to harp on it but i think that trump is in a similar way of the fact that like all the media sort of point and laugh attention at Trump eight years ago actually helped his campaign in the sense that it legitimized him

as a candidate. I just think that there's January 6th, all these trials, nothing, I mean, all of that is erased by the fact that the Republican Party nominated this guy.

You know, and I think that to the average voter that, you know, if he's allowed to be nominated, then he's more legitimate than he's ever been, right?

All that stuff either doesn't matter or is clearly part of some. campaign just to, you know, get him off the ballot. All right, David, coming up on the pod, the three weeks that Joe Biden twisted in the wind was a golden moment for a certain kind of political journalism. We replay some of the highlights. Plus, how Kamala Harris will be covered, the hulkster, the hulkster at the GOP convention. And if we dare, in some non-political news, Skip Bayliss in the New York Times as Pete Wells

are changing jobs. We say farewell. All that much more on the press box. A part of the rigor podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, David, Shoemaker, and producer Brian Waters here. We got to replay the last three weeks, David, because I cannot remember a period of American life

where I was more bug-eyed every day to read articles in the newspaper or in Politico or in Puck. Dude, I was pretty well logged off all weekend doing family stuff. We had some friends over and I was like, let's throw on a movie or something we can watch whatever. And I was just like, if you don't mind, I just got to check CNN for 20 seconds every hour because I just felt, this is on Saturday. I was like something's about to happen. Like it just felt like, you know, the really kind of completely different but emotionally similar version of like the NBA trade deadline or something where you're just like, okay, the news is going to be breaking.

I just want to make sure that I'm not just falling away behind as I'm deliberately falling behind. You had a situation where all these liberal figures or figures of the Democratic Party wanted Joe Biden to be off the ticket. But as we heard over and over again, only Biden could choose to take himself off the ticket. Yeah. So everyone was left to use the media as their means of giving Biden a shove. Some of this happened in a fairly straightforward way. George Clooney, for instance. George Clooney wrote an article for the newspaper.

Yeah. We've seen that before. James Carvel also wrote an article for the same newspaper, The New York Times, and then beamed into seemingly every cable news show on Earth from a cruise in Alaska. Kevin Clark and I used to talk about the all-availability

team, meaning those people that would answer the phone in any circumstance. James Carvel won himself a permanent spot on the all-availability team by... He was already there. He's the he's the, he's the, he's the, He's the captain. He's the chairman of that committee. But yeah. He was there.

This was the icing on the cake. This was the last line of his Hall of Fame resume. You had the crooked media guys, David, who are from Obama world, which is partially estranged from Biden world. Right. And they seem to be using the Jason Kidd reverse psychology on Biden. Mm-hmm. Saying, look, if Joe Biden is the nominee in November, we'll do everything we can to support him. but you have an opportunity to do something great here, Mr. President.

You have an opportunity to be a hero. Yeah. And as you and I have pointed out, usually when the whole world understands that what you're doing is reverse psychology, it is not effective reverse psychology. Yeah, well, it worked. It worked. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer also did interesting things with the media.

And they never could come out and say, hey, we want Joe Biden off the ticket. But they didn't exactly not say it, which, as we read, gave other Democrats the permission to say it. Yeah. In their stead, Nancy Pelosi in particular has had an amazing three weeks. I mean, that quote in Politico, I think Eli Stokel's was the lead byline on the piece yesterday where it said somebody was saying, you know, she said we can either do this

the easy way or the hard way. The first three weeks were the easy way. it was about to become the hard way. I think back to when she went on Morning Joe 12 days ago. Joe Biden's favorite TV show, Morning Joe. And Biden had called into the show earlier that week and made a big stand of saying, I'm running.

Yeah. I'm in. Here is how Nancy Pelosi responded. So Madam Speaker, you just went through the president's record, but let me ask you about the current moment. Does he have your support to be the head of the Democrat? As long as the president has, It's up to the president to decide if he is going to run.

We're all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short. The, I think, overwhelming support of the caucus, it's not for me to say. I'm not the head of the caucus anymore. But he's beloved. He is respected. And people want him to make that decision. He has said he has made the decision. He has said firmly this week, he is going to run.

Do you want him to run? I want him to do whatever he decides to do. And that's the way it is. Whatever he decides, we go with. So team Biden was saying, we've made the decision. And Nancy Pelosi was saying, I want to give him some time to make the decision, a.k.a. the decision I want him to make. Yeah.

Which turned out to be exactly what Biden did. Yeah. I was rewatching that clip before we came on. I did not remember that Nancy Pelosi was sitting next. next to the Democratic opposition leader of Belarus for that segment. And Mika Prasinski had to be like, introduce them both and be like, well, here's a kind of a more narrow political question than perhaps our other guest is facing at the moment. Yeah. Yeah, it was very strange.

I think in watching all of this as a little bit of an outsider to me, the thing that was most confusing, compelling. I don't know which one is the is kind of wondering the degree to which what we were seeing on TV was a reenactment of what was happening in real life. You know, like it seems sort of, I don't know, it seemed almost implausible that they'd be having all these sort of secret conversations and then that result in nothing. And then you really say, well, let's just go say it on TV because that's the only way to really get it through to them. We have these, we talk about this all the time. But to see it happening in real time just seemed almost implausible, right? I mean, go ahead. You say it on TV, I was just going to add, or it leaks in the newspaper.

Sure. But even some of the leaks. Joe Biden says, hey, I need another week or I'm not getting the message in real time. And then all of a sudden it comes out in the newspaper. Yeah. And that seems to be exactly what happened. I just think watching it, I'm just sort of like, you know, I mean, there were, there were multiple times where there were stories about people having conversation with Biden. the team Biden denied occurred, right?

It's like, oh, no, no one, President Obama did not say any such thing or whatever. And I was just like, you know, it's totally plausible that he didn't say that thing. I don't know. Like, who am I to object to this, whatever? But, yeah, that's what we were seeing. You know what it is? It's power being expressed in different ways. Yeah.

Joe Biden had the power here. If he wanted to be the nominee, he could have been the nominee in November. Mm-hmm. He didn't have to drop out. But Nancy Pelosi also has lots of power in Washington. Yeah. And a specific power with Joe Biden. So does Chuck Schumer.

You know, so does Representative Lloyd Doggett from Texas in his own way. Yeah. The first congressman to call him to step out. So does Adam Schiff in a much more profound way. Mm-hmm. And then they also have a collective power that if lots of them get together, or let's just say, David, by pure coincidence, they all drop out on like, successive days. There's a steady drip, drip of Democrats trying to get Biden out of the race.

Yeah. And that's just what's so fascinating about this, right? Like, this is power in Washington we're seeing expressed. And it's not one of those things where you, you know, walk up and have one meeting and he goes, okay, I'll do what you want me to do. That's how it works. Yeah. But levers are pulled.

Talk show segments are booked. Things are put into the newspaper. leaked to the newspaper, and you eventually get a result. I think you mentioned it before, the Pod Save America guy's sort of template is what's most intriguing to me, because I think it is a sort of, as a group of people who are, like you said, from Team Obama, but obviously worked very closely with Joe Biden and the people around Joe Biden for a long time. It seemed like they were operating in a pretty linear fashion, which is just like the only way to get through to Joe Biden is to appeal to his ego. And I don't mean that as a knock,

but like you're like you're you're you're you're you're out here every day fighting for your place in history fighting for this this greater good and you're not wrong to do it you're just wrong about what the greater good is right you're wrong you're wrong about what is going to make you remembered as a great man and and here's the new version of it you know um but yeah to watch all that that I mean those those mechanics I think are what's most intriguing the sort of like Biden team, like, quietly seething at the Obama team in 2024, you know, Obama world. You know, you see you're like Clinton world all the time and it all just seems so sort of ambiguous and imaginary, but I guess, you know, we're seeing the, we're seeing the reality of those things.

I also want to say, by the way, just to the great to the larger issue of not the, not the political intrigue, but, you know, Biden's viability as a candidate. I mean, I was, I spent part of part of the last week just watching footage from the last election, from the last campaign, and just realizing maybe for the first time and how much Biden was diminished from just four years ago. You know, I mean, just like how significant the decline had been. We always joke about presidents losing their hair, you know, during their time in office and aging so rapidly. But he obviously come down a lot.

And he's just an older guy. I mean, it's really sad. And you mentioned the people who had pointed at this, some of the journey. journalists that have been on this trail early and everything that they missed, but it's hard to see in real time. You know, and then you, and then you kind of can, when it becomes clear, when it comes into focus, it is really hard to deny. I'm sure it's an incredibly difficult decision for Biden, for the people around them, to just come to grips with that. But, I mean, I texted you this weekend from outside our apartment building, or like, you know, how 20, 20 years ago, the apartment that we lived in in the lower east side of Brooklyn. The building was gone. Of Manhattan, sir. I mean, sorry, of Manhattan.

Lower East Side. The building was raised, replaced along with the empty lot next door with a 15-story luxury apartment building. Jesus. The check cashing place downstairs is still there for the record. Western Union is just the cockroach of the, I shouldn't say that. I'll lose sponsors. No, a lot of the Lower East Side had not changed at all.

That was what was most surprising. Some of the restaurants, some of the bars were the same, you know, like whatever. But, you know, there were just giant. skyscraper apartment buildings everywhere. But the biggest thing for me was walking around as a 46-year-old man, just remembering some of the fun that we had back then. And I was just like, if I was just teleported back into that life now,

it wouldn't be the apartment buildings. It wouldn't be the, you know, more upscale restaurants. It wouldn't be the general clientele of the region that changed me. That seemed the biggest difference to me. The biggest difference to me was how much I needed to pee, when I was just like walking around the street. As a 46 year old man, just a general ink. And if you took, if I had to live the life I lived then to go to a bar for four,

five, six hours at a time and only use the bathroom occasionally and just hang out and just keep my constitution in general going, keep a smile on my face and the good times rolling, I would be incapable of doing it. And I think I would have to tap out too. I felt a little bit like Joe Biden in that moment. where I was just like, I hate to admit it, but I'm not built for that life anymore. If we were like music, rock and roll music critics

on the Lowery side of this age, we would be failures, you know? Like, you just can't do it like you used to do it. David, with a heartrending midlife confession here on the press box. Unbelievable. Did you like the particular kind of pros that all these developments

over the last three weeks were rendered in? Oh, yeah. because it feels like, you know, Theodore White, Woodward and Bernstein, the game change guys, pick your fighter. Yeah. But it's that kind of campaign reporting that we usually see in a book

after the campaign is over that includes a sentence like in Biden's Rahobit Beachfront estate. Yeah. The mood was grim. Yeah. Everybody, and poor Biden is like rendered as this like Nixonian figure.

He has COVID. Yeah. The symptoms from COVID were lasting a little bit longer. And he's like walking around the beach house with his trusted advisor, Steve Roshetti and Mike Donnellan, or I guess are playing Kissinger, at least if I've got my Nixon movies like Secret Honor correct here, in the beach house, contemplating whether he should get out of the race or not. Yeah.

I mean, that is apparently a real scene. It, by the way, is a journalistically fertile scene for people to learn more about. because there are not very many people, David, who know what really went on in that house over the weekend. I mean, it's Donald, it's Roshetti, and it's Biden. Yeah. You know, do we get two or three memoirs from those gentlemen about what that scene was like?

This is a group that did not talk much, if at all, about Joe Biden, at least on the record. Yeah. During the administration, apparently off the record either. Mm-hmm. I mean, that's, you know, that's whatever happens from this point out, whether Democrats win, Democrats lose, Trump's back in office.

That scene to me is the stuff of books. You know, the whole four weeks is the stuff of books. But that scene especially, and that just feels like fascinating. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's been a lot of talk about Biden's inner circle as it relates to his family, you know, but the trusted advisors

or what I was thinking a lot about over the past week or so, as you see all these defiant statements from quote unquote Joe Biden, out, you know, going out to the media, but I'm staying in the race. And, you know, one thing that's not really reported on much, and so because it's not really, I don't know,

it's a third rail of reporting is like, to what degree the people who are typing out these statements, jobs, continued employment depends on Biden staying in the race. You know, I mean, I don't mean that it's necessarily that, that, you know, A to B, but, I mean, they're, they've dedicated a huge portion of their life to fighting for this man's political career, right? And they're just going to give it up because like some doofus on MSNBC said that they should, you know? Like it's not just about Biden.

There's a lot of there's a lot of personalities and egos involved. Absolutely. When we heard the news from that call yesterday that were Jen O'Malley Dillon campaign chairwoman said something like, oh, you all will have the same jobs. Yeah. You saw someone else to fight for. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, wait a second.

Do we, did the Democrats get to vote on that at an open convention? Are they taking the entire Biden campaign team? And sure enough, we learned today that David Pluff, this is from Christopher Catalago of Politico, David Pluff, is going to get a job on the Harris campaign. There's a 100% chance there's some layering, if not bureaucratic intrigue on there. We're not going to roll the whole campaign team out again.

Yeah. For Kamala Harris. Speaking of Kamala Harris, I did want to talk to you before we leave this segment about how she's going to be covered by political reporters. So I think if we gave true serum to the White House press quarter, they don't or maybe didn't have a ton of respect for her political instincts. Part of that is the campaign she ran in 2020. Part of that may be the way people on team Biden have talked her down over the years. Yeah, that's big. To the extent she's been covered at all,

It's been some unflattering stories about the turnover in her office as vice president. But more than anything, I think the press just hasn't paid all that much attention to her for four years. Yeah, and I think, I mean, what you just said touched on it a lot. And we've talked about it on this show before. But I think that there's this sort of, at least the average media consumer, a sort of ambiguous, there's sort of a mystery, you know. Like when she was nominated vice president, I mean, as his candidate, as is running mate for the presidency.

It felt to, I think, a lot of people that she would be kind of put in the position to be the next person up, right? The next candidate for president, presumably in four years, but even in eight years, like whatever. And then she just disappeared as soon as the Biden presidency started. You know, she was given the border as one of her jobs. She sort of sequestered into jobs like that,

but you never saw her standing next to Joe Biden on the national stage. all the things that I might have assumed you would do to someone who is your you know the next person up for this job she didn't get so you just sort of start to wonder why was it just was it was it was it just a

Biden ego thing or was there just some sort of perception that you know she didn't get along with them she wasn't suited for the job like whatever there's just all these things and questions that still frankly haven't been answered although you know the degree to which

Biden sort of has clung to the election for so long, the fact that he ran again at all. And then the fact that he endorsed her, I think helps us start to put the pieces together. But I, but it's, it's still, it's still kind of hard to understand. And I do, and I think that is when you're talking about the coverage, that's it. They don't have a lot of information because there wasn't a lot of, there wasn't a lot that was being handed to them, at least not in a traditional, in a straightforward kind of, you know, manner. So it will be interesting to see how she's covered. What is your guess?

But how it should be covered? Yeah. Well, I think a lot of, a lot of it will depend on her first couple of weeks on the trail. Remember how closely reporters were analyzing every appearance she made over the last couple of weeks, especially the last seven days or so. Putting a lot of stock on that, right? Because they just have not thought about her as a figure at the head of a ticket in a really long time. Yeah.

I bet almost nobody's had that thought. Had that thought before the debate, certainly with Biden and Trump. So now all of a sudden is not only are you thinking about, okay, she's got this much bigger role than she ever had before, but she's doing an entirely different context. In 2020, she was trying to say, hey, vote for me, not Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg. And Joe Biden. Now she's saying, I am the standard bearer of the Democratic Party. Yeah. I've got this huge campaign apparatus behind me.

Don't vote for me, not for Donald Trump. Yeah. Those are your two choices. Yeah. So just she will be seen in a completely different way. I agree. And just from completely different angles and she would have seen before. I agree.

I think it's going to be a lot of just, it's a sort of soft reset in terms of the way she's going to be covered. And I also think, I mean, talking more about just sort of unanswered questions, when she ran for president, I mean, we've all read and heard the stories, right? I mean, the campaign was just sort of singularly dysfunctional, not singularly. There's more bad campaigns than there are good ones. But I guess the question, and you mentioned David Pluff, is to what degree her previous presidential campaign was a reflection of her and to what degree was a reflection of the people she surrounded herself with, right? I mean, she was. in so many ways a very effective candidate. I mean, she got up onto that debate stage. I mean,

she was, you know, she was one of the people rang for president and taken seriously to, you know, for a long time. So it's just a, I mean, but is she a candidate that with an incredible support system can thrive? I mean, I think that's, that's the sort of horse race question. Or what, to what degree was 2020 just somebody running their first national campaign? Yeah. You know, who run disorganized campaigns, Joe Biden. Mm-hmm. So much of he was saying other people's words when he was on the stump. Yeah.

I mean, you know, could she, could she have grown? Was she ready for this in a way she wasn't ready for it in 2020? To be determined, all of it. I did see one more note I wanted to talk to you about, which was this came from David Roberts, who's a veteran of Vox, now writes a newsletter called Voltz. He tweeted this out. He said, hilarious watching the press. which wants a chaotic open convention so badly,

blinking innocently and saying, gosh, it could be so it could go great. We're definitely not a pack of effing soul as vultures who will exacerbate and amplify every factional disagreement for clicks. I was thinking about that tweet, because it is absolutely true that the media roots for news. Guilty is charged. if you go up to a political report and say,

are you rooting for this election to be between Joe Biden and Donald Trump and for that matchup to stagger all the way to November? Or are you rooting for interesting news to happen in which we have a once in a lifetime replacement of a candidate in summertime by one of the political parties? Every reporter being honest would say they're rooting for the lap. They want to be around to cover history. But there is this implication, I think sometimes you hear

on Twitter about the media where it becomes like, oh, you guys are ginning this up. Yeah. This is your doing. And it's one of those times where it feels like it's important to say the media didn't make this up. No. You know, the media was used as a vessel

absolutely for, as the way we talked about for Nancy Pelosi, George Clooney for people to express their opinions. The media didn't make up the rift in the Democratic Party. No. They didn't. That's a real thing that happened. And was an absolutely huge news story.

Yeah. So what you're seeing is media professionals, and you and I are guilty as charged here, too, saying this is an enormous story, an enormously interesting story happening right in front of us. Are we excited to cover this story in whatever way we cover it? Absolutely we are. Yeah. Yes, we are. Didn't make it up.

Important difference, though. Speaking of politics and entertainment, David, I don't know if you know this, but Hulk Hogan appeared at the Republican convention last week. Yeah, I heard, yeah. Hulk Hogan. What did you make of the Hulksters address to the GOP faithful? As much as I have been, and you as well, been just pushing back on everything is pro wrestling.

the think peace championship belt politics is pro wrestling yeah as much as we've been pushing back on that stuff mostly because everybody thinks they're they're figuring it out you know every month there's somebody new who's just like i've got it i've got my hook it's just like we've been talking about this for a while i mean it is but as much as i push back on that this did feel like and and setting aside all the idiocry parallels and everything else the Hulkogan one listen I'm not a big fan of the guy. Everything that he's done outside of the ring just, you know, makes me question my wrestling fandom.

But, come, it was just like a cartoon character saying rah-rah to Donald Trump. Like, this is, this is like the, I found it hard to be up in arms about it only because it was just so obvious. It was just, like, there was no amount of shock in me at all. And the fact that he just did his cartoon, his cartoon pro wrestler bit, tearing the shirt off and whatever. I mean, it just, it was just, again,

issues with the man as a human being aside. Yeah, I mean, it's a pro wrestler, just going on giving a rah-rah speech. You know, like, that's what pro wrestlers do. It was kind of funny. There's other speakers that I think I would take more exception to. Now, if you want to talk about his placement

on the, in the structure of the, of the convention, again, I find a little bit hard to get particularly animated about those discussions. They seem a little bit like, you know, arguments about seating charts at weddings or whatever, but like it's, but, you know,

I guess that makes more sense. Were they, were they taking him more seriously than they took, you know, a straight-laced, very thoughtful politician. Were they putting more emphasis on that? I don't know,

man. I don't know. The Dana White thing, I think, is actually, is actually more of an interesting conversation. And not just... He was there in 2016.

Right, which nobody seemed to remember, which is very strange. And again, my favorite part of the whole week was watching commentators on literally every channel trying to find the vocabulary to lump him and Hulk Hogan together. It was like we got two professional wrestling personalities or two ultimate fighters up there on stage tonight. Like not even like clocking who Dana White was at all or and not, you know, and not being able to just put him and Hogan in a sentence together without getting it wrong. The Dana White thing is much more interesting because the, I mean, I'm sure it's only a matter of seconds before someone writes a, you know, David Brooks writes a giant think piece about UFC voters. But this is a real, real thing. Like, there is a huge segment of Trump voters for whom Dana White is a very significant public figure. And to be dismissive of him in the way that you.

you should be dismissive of Hulk Ogan, I think, is a real, real error. Right? It's like, it's not just that Joe Rogan was also tied into the UFC, but it's, but it smacks of the way that people are so dismissive of Joe Rogan is just a public figure for so long, right? Just like, well, nobody listens to this dupus. And it's like, turns out everybody's listening to him and now we're scrambling to figure out why, you know?

I mean, Dana White is, is a, is a clown in a lot of ways and is a, you know, deplorable person in a lot of ways. but I mean, this is not just some, everyone's just talking about the hyper masculinity of the whole thing. It's like, no, man, like, when I go see my family that has Trump signs in their yards, like, it's, I'm not just talking to the 35-year-old dudes about the UFC. I'm talking to their moms about UFC, you know,

like this is, this is an entire wave of, of, of, of the voting public. And, yeah, I think Dana, Dana White deserves a little, little bit more, a little bit more, uh, circumspection. So this is the think piece we should be writing. Politics is not pro wrestling. It's UFC. Yeah. Politics is the is the is the, is the, you know, it's, I don't know. I mean, it's, it's the same situation that liberals always get themselves in just sort dismissing the opposition or whatever. But it's like, you know, someone tweeted this actually a while ago. And I just remembered this. I'm talking about. I don't know who it was. But someone tweeted like about this type of voter. It's like, these people don't care about cultural issues, but, it's like, you know,

they will turn a blind eye to them in elections, you know? And this is just a sort of like, this is, but they're, they're much more enthused about this sort of the vibe, the winning, the, the, the, they, they're the anti, whatever, the anti-woke agenda, you know, and I, and, and, and there's a, there's, I don't know, I mean, it's, it's a, it's a real thing. I think people should think more deeply about. one side effect of the hulkster appearing at the republican convention was it a very special analyst

appeared on the on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation David I want you to see if you recognize this voice now we don't always talk with pro wrestling experts about politics but today we are Brian H. Waters is the host of the Ringer Wrestling worldwide podcast and we've reached him in Baltimore Brian thank you so much for making time for us how you doing thanks for having me finally a cable news talking head worth paying attention to dude i had no idea that happened

brian you're supposed to run those things by me for i'm just kidding that's fantastic that's so great it was so awesome i'm glad the woman on the cbc had the same experience i do every week here talking to a pro wrestling expert about politics that were even coming up at 30 seconds david the updates about skip bayliss and pete wells that american democracy has been waiting for but first So let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the Pressbox pod where they are always, always gratefully received. A lot of runners up this week, including one that came to me from Bobby Wagner about the Nationals calling up Kamala Harris from AAA and sending Joe Biden down. That was baseball Twitter's take on the whole, on the events of the weekend.

but David, this is this week's winner. We know that Joe Biden in his final days as the Democratic nominee occasionally mixed up names. He said Putin when he meant to say Zelensky. He said Trump when he meant to say Harris. Would you like to hear a few of the examples of Joe Biden mixing up names

that you might have missed over the last few weeks? Please, yes. All right, here we go. In another embarrassing gaffe, Joe Biden has confused. Olympus has fallen for White House down. Joe Biden has confused Pixar's

of Bugs' Life with the DreamWorks film Ants. In latest gaff, President Biden has called the monster Frankenstein. And finally, this was my favorite, by far. I'm hearing Joe Biden has confused Chris Heast's GQ piece on the Zanesville, Ohio Zoo Escape with the Esquire piece on Zanesville by Chris Jones.

that's good. Very niche but very funny. If you missed the long-form podcast, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, in non-Joe Biden news, you saw that Skip Bayless is out at Fox Sports. News broken by Ryan Glass-Spegel and the New York Post. What did you make of Fox parting ways with Skip? I mean, I feel like it was. it would have felt less surprising had we not had had been like writing shotgun to you being on this beat for so long right the fact that it'd be but do you understand why they hired him in the first place the kind of you know big statement of like we're here whatever but it always felt like and i'm not even getting into viewership numbers but it always felt like a little bit of diminishing

returns right i mean it's like it's more of a statement to have him than it is necessary to produce the content with them and we've seen in recent years especially they've been able to sort have developed from in-house more and build, you know, their own next generation of, of, um, I take commentators. Uh, I mean, Nick Wright, guys like him are obviously much more than that, but, you know, to be able to fill those hours of television time, I think that they've, they've gotten a lot better at it. And yeah, I mean, listen, they, they, they, they, they, you know, bought that fight for a long time. And now I think they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, prepared to try to go without him.

I think it's more important now to look. And, you know, I'm sure they want to look younger and more vital. And, you know, and Skip's not really part of that plan anymore. Speaking of the next generation, we should note that Shannon Sharp, who was the co-host of Undisputed, and who has a massive podcast, whether he's doing, you know, his sort of normal pods or those big soul-bearing interviews with Cat Williams. walked out the door. He left Fox Sports. And not only does he have this huge podcast empire that's growing, he is now on the competition.

On first take with Stephen A. Smith. That's fascinating to me. And the other thing that I thought about with this is, whenever you have one of these shows where two people are debating, there will inevitably be a battle. a climactic battle over who the star is. Yeah. Every time.

It's almost like the president and the vice president. These are highly ambitious people that have been brought together in a marriage of convenience. Yes. Because they get ratings because people think it's a good, you know, TV one two punch. But one of them is going to want to be the star. Well, yeah. I mean, in the pro wrestling, sorry to bring it back here, but the pro wrestling term is to work yourself into a shoot when you're just like you get so revved up and cutting promo. mose on your on your on screen opponent that you actually just start believing that you hate them a little bit.

That's one version of it. I mean, I'm sure you could have sat, you know, Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless or Skip Bayliss and Shannon Sharp down at the first day that they started working together and said, now eventually, you might start hating each other. They're just like,

that would never happen. We know the score. Like, this is all I put up. But yeah, it's inevitable. It is. Like Stephen A and Skip. You know,

and I don't know if that was like a, an unhealthy divorce, but Skip wanted to go somewhere else and have his own show and get the big money from Fox. We've seen Stephen A and Max Kellerman. We've seen Mike and the Mad Dog. We've seen Mike and Mike. It always winds up here. The argument for television or for radio is one thing. But then there's an argument behind the scene.

Maybe it's not even an argument. Maybe it's totally passive aggressive and they never actually say anything to each other. but somebody wants to be the star. Yeah. ESPN already came out with a statement saying they were not interested in Skip. We are set with the current first take rotation and wish Skip the best on his future endeavors. Stephen A had his own statement saying something similar. There's no negativity or shade being thrown on Skip Bayless.

I have moved on. Also, David, breaking news as we record from Andrew Marshand and the athletic TNT Sport. has informed the NBA at plans to use its matching rights to continue broadcasting the league games. The network is targeting

the 11-year package signed by Amazon Prime Video sources briefed on the move set. So that's interesting. Yeah, I mean, this doesn't come as a terrible surprise based on just some of the reporters

that came out right when they quote-unquote announced the new rights deal. It seemed like Turner was trying to get that fourth package of some sort and was willing to match one of the smaller packages in BC or Amazon as a lever

to get that or maybe just to match it out, right? And I think that according to what I read before, it's, you know, the NBA will now argue both as a point of fact, probably as a point of preference, since they seem to be happy to walk away from T&T and also as a commitment to their potential new

partner in Amazon, they'll argue that Max is not comparable to Amazon Prime in terms of viewership or in any other number of ways. And so they actually don't have the right to match, which all means that will probably be tied up in litigation for a while, unless there's some settlement built around a fourth package or who knows what other, you know, the, you know, rights to Charles Barkley and his future descendants. I'm not exactly sure what would mean, what would seem suitable. But yeah, it seems like they're probably going to

to be tied up in legal squabbling for a while. Is that, is that your read? I think that is my read. It also kind of explains the recent statements of Charles Barkley. I'm only ever going to work for Turner. I didn't, I actually didn't get a chance to mention this to you, but of all of the, in all of the ways that you pointed out that this is just like the reverse of everything Charles Barkley has ever done, it did cross my mind that maybe there is a, I don't know, a late summer bonus in it for him if he helped the Turner position by insisting upon that he

was never going anywhere. I think there's a lot left to happen here. Although I guess the most shocking thing would be, I mean the least shocking thing would be if they just ended up in exactly where they are right now, which is with the rights packages that have been announced.

Turner's problem is that it's a cable channel. Yeah. Well, it's been the problem all along. They had a window to get in on this, pay the money that the NBA wanted, they didn't do it. And then when the NBA said, okay, let's open up all the bids.

They said, okay, we've got ESPN, which is also ABC. We've got NBC, which is not only streaming, but broadcast television. And we've seen sports drift back

to broadcast television. And then we got Amazon, which is streaming, and not only a streamer, but a big, big stream. Yeah. So all of a sudden,

Turner is like, well, we're a cable channel. We'd also like it on this. And NBA is like, yeah, that's not, that's not where we want to go.

Yeah, if you can't, I mean, Max did a good job, I thought, with the playoffs in terms of, you know, putting them over the top and having all that stuff accessible. But if you can't really exert ownership or partnership to a more significant degree in the streaming era, you're right. Cable networks are exactly who is getting passed by, right? The broadcast networks still have some gravity. But outside of that, everyone's just looking for streamers. I mean, that's, that has, that has, just much more possibility than than a cable channel, you know? So, yeah. So it's a weird situation. Perfect. All right.

Should we go ahead and stop this thing? Yeah. Another person changing jobs in the media, David. Pete Wells is stepping down as the New York Times' restaurant critic. He's been in the saddle since 2012. He's still going to write for the food section of the paper. And he is leaving because of health issues, among other reasons.

He says this, my scores were bad across the board. My cholesterol, blood sugar, and hypertension were worse than I'd expected even in my doomiest moments. The terms pre-diabetes, fatty liver disease, and metabolic syndrome were thrown around. I was technically obese. Okay, not just type. He also notes, typically, I'd bring three people with me to a restaurant and ask each to order an appetizer, main course, and dessert. And he would do that three times for every restaurant he would review. So you come to the restaurant with three of your friends, you're ordering all the courses, and then you do it two more times to review a restaurant.

It's good to see he took his job seriously. I mean, that's great. He did take it seriously. That's the thing. He had some funny stuff in an interview with the Times. He said, when I first started, I brought a novel to a restaurant with me, a perfect spy by John LaCare. Oh, I love that one.

Because as we know, the restaurant critic is not supposed to be known when they walk in the restaurant, right? It's supposed to do the fake name and the reservation and pay with a different credit card and all that stuff so that they're not being treated, especially. Wells continues, and I just thought I'd get some pointers on what he calls tradecraft, the art of blending in, the art of not being noticed. So I was carrying this around, meaning the book, and I carried it one night into a restaurant, and then I left it behind.

A week or two later, I got an envelope in the mail and I opened it up and it was the book. So Pete Wells trying to be incognito, carrying around a copy of a perfect spy, leaves a perfect spy in a restaurant and it is mailed back to Pete Wells. That's so great. And it turns out he had left his pay stub from the New York Times in the book as a bookmark. that was his attempt to sneak in New York restaurants oh that's so great that's so great I mean that's kind of I don't know if that's a fireball offense but you know for a restaurant reviewer but that is just an incredible story is this the nirvana for critics can you get us interested in reading about things that we are never going to consume ourselves

the restaurants that he went to yeah I'd say the same thing about film critics whom you read even when you're not going to watch those particular movies. Yeah, I think so. I think so. I mean, listen, I hope that his health recovers in his post-regular restaurant beat lifestyle. I'm glad he went into detail because there's a whole lot of like, yeah, I gained too much weight that your first reaction and you're probably your first 10 reactions are just like, give me a break. Like you had the greatest job in the history of mankind. Oh, you weighed out too much.

Oh, yeah, he couldn't find any time you on the treadmill. No, but it's, but it, but it's true. I mean, it's legitimate. And one wonders if there should be like a separate component for like the, you know, the, the restaurants that most contributed to your medical demise, you know, going forward. He's eating at very rich restaurants. This is a lot of rich food. I know.

There was a lot of rich. He used the term rich in his, in that piece. And I don't know. Rich always just seemed like a compliment to me, you know, I don't know if I would, rich doesn't seem bad for me. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong. But yeah. He, I mean, he was, he was absolutely just elite, elite.

I mean, and sometimes I kind of, you know, raise an eyebrow at the kind of valedictory run of a reporter, especially when they're not retiring and certainly when they're not dying. You know, it's just like, oh, I'm stepping back from this incredible job and to take on another job and you, you know, I won't be going anywhere because I'm rarely am I the dedicated reader that he's speaking to or the anyone, you know, who's doing this is speaking to. but he was a writer that was deserving of that sort of recognition I mean he really read I mean to hear him talk about it was like it was a serial you know story like you would just were like you would read what he wrote and related to other things

you had read that he wrote more so than you related to actual food that you would consume yes very well said and it also just was like I'm never going to eat it per se I'm just not I don't really even desire to eat it per se. But if he was going to go there and say that it wasn't as good as it had been, I wanted to read that. That was interesting to me, which brings me back to one of his most famous reviews, was right when he started on the beat.

You know what I'm going to say. 2012, Guy Fieri's Times Square Restaurant, which is called Guy's American Kitchen and Bar. Yeah. No relation to the late great Toby Kese. I love this bar and grill. Guy's American Kitchen and Bar. You should go back if you haven't read it in a while or never read it and read this review

because it's entirely written as questions posed to Guy Fieri. Sample. What exactly about a small salad with four or five miniature croutons makes guys famous Big Bite Caesar, A big, B famous, or C, guys in any meaningful sense? and he goes on and on. I remember the afternoon that came out, everybody that you and I know was reading that at their desks.

Oh, God, yeah. In New York. Yeah. It also made me think of that's just, it feels like it's from another time because after 2012, I'm drawing an arbitrary line, but let's call it after 2012,

the mode of Twitter would be much more likely to say, how can we celebrate Guy Fierry? Oh, yeah. Even celebrate him with ironic quotation marks. Mm-hmm. How can we celebrate this person?

Yeah. How can, you know, this idea that you're going to come in and write, even if it's funny, a serious review saying, this food is bad. Yeah. This is not a good restaurant. Yep. That just feels like something from a different journalistic time. Mm-hmm. And what I loved about him, and you could say this about a number of times critics, is,

He was doing things the old way. It was not like, let me sit at the elbow of these food masters and imbibe their wisdom. If it was per se, if it was Peter Lugar and it wasn't good or it wasn't worth the money, he'd just be going and say, this isn't it. Yeah. This isn't good. And he did not hold back. It was funny.

It's just funny because I read that. I just remember thinking at the time, like how funny that was. And that's used to where you, how you earned your merit badges in journalism, is to write pieces like that. about famous people especially. Yep. Now it feels like it's totally different world. It does, but also the way that we consume that. I mean, listen, he's writing for a very specific,

he is writing in earnest. If you're talking about like the denizens of the restaurants that he writes about, by and large, he's writing for very specific clientele. Yes, thank you, but I said it out loud. But, but yeah, I mean, I think our culture shifted not just on Twitter, you know? I just think that there's a lot.

I mean, listen, you could, There's probably been magazine feature stories about all the, you know, country musicians and pro athletes that have opened restaurants that ended in dismal failure. That was not necessarily a wise investment outside of, you know, Joe Shula and a couple of others. And it's, our entire culture has changed, you know? Now we're like, you button up your shirt at night so you can go to Guy Fieri's restaurant, you know? I highly recommend, as I have before, his burger joint at the Los Angeles area. airport. Yeah, anyway.

We lost Western Union as a sponsor today, but we gained Guy Fierry's. What was it, Guy Fiery's American Bar and Grill? What was it called? I don't even remember if that's what it was called. At the Burbank Airport, man. That place is the best. That would be Guy's sandwich joint, I believe, was the name of that place you're talking about. I've been there at a time of two myself. It's time for another culinary delight. It's time for David Shoeemaker guest is the strained pun headline.

Yeah. All right, today's headline, David, comes to us from listener, The Laundry. It's from Slate. You've heard some of those Republicans who are unhappy about the Democrats replacing Joe Biden on the ticket using the term coup. This is a coup. Oh, yeah. So I want you to think about the word coup and think about beloved sitcom catchphrases, as you ponder. What was Slate's strained pun headline.

Beloved sitcom catchphrases. Yes, sir. What coo talking about? Coo coo coo um, sitcom catchphrase. Hey, uh, cool. Uh, let's think of the 90s. Let's think of NBC Thursday night.

Friends. Uh, Seinfeld. There we go. Who? Who? Oh my God. Perhaps a New York restaurateur who is selling things. Who's a little brusque and service.

The coop Nazi? Oh, the coop Nazi. He says, no coup for you? No. No coup for you. No coup for you. No coup for you. I like how the coop Nazi was just sitting right there.

It's like a really bad one. The coop Nazi. no we're not going to go with that today that no coup for you no coup for you what was the point of the piece just like no this actually isn't a coup or defining what a what a coup is and how this is not one it is not one yeah that's it's a it's a think piece on slate dot com oh i didn't realize it yeah i guess that makes sense that they got that out quickly i was just reading all that great stuff today there's a lot of people who a lot of people who were very like like measured in their support for Trump that are suddenly very,

that are, you know, very upset about this turn of events in a way that would not match their previous disposition. But it's, it's been a joy to watch. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Brackett's your magic by Brian Waters. A couple of quick announcements for you. Thursday on the press box, we're going to have Logan Burdock come on and talk about

Team USA. We are so loaded with political news that I want to make sure I have plenty of time to talk about, talk with Logan, about the stuff we want to talk. talk about. So Alex Thompson, David from Axios, is going to join us. Speaking of people who've been asking questions about Joe Biden, longer than your average political reporter. Alex Thompson from Axios is going to appear on this podcast. Once again, look forward to having him. You might have heard me make this announcement on a previous shows, but we're going to do a little meet and greet at the suddenly more interesting Democratic convention in

Chicago. You're going to be at the Democratic convention, or if you live in Chicago and you'd like to hear more, shoot me a note. the press box pod or write me brian dot curtis that is brian with a y dot curtis at the ringer.com for more details shoemaker and i flex our muscles in return monday with more lukewarm takes about the media and perhaps he checks too see you then david see you later brian