The Press Box - The Coronavirus and the Media, the NBA and the Protests, and the Week in Trump.

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

It's been 49 days without a formal White House briefing about the virus. Politico reporter Dan Diamond joins to discuss where to find critical information about the coronavirus and what he anticipates the virus will look like going forward (1:10). Then, Ringer sportswriter Paolo Uggetti joins the show to break down the latest on the NBA’s return to play, the players' interest in activism, and how it could affect the return in the fall (17:30). Then the week in Trump, in which Curtis and Shoemaker touch on the latest briefings, rallies, and more (31:10). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers. This is the press box. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer here. We're going to talk to the ringers, Paolo Ugetti to get the latest on the NBA's return to play, some of the players' interest in activism, and how that could inform the return of basketball this fall. Out of solemn duty, we'll also review the week in Donald Trump

from scheduling a rally in Tulsa on Juneteenth to demanding an apology from CNN for a poll that showed him trailing Joe Biden. But first, David, I thought it would be useful to spend a moment on the coronavirus, particularly the information about the coronavirus, because the White House stopped formal virus briefings 49 days ago. Anthony Fauci no longer has a daily time slot. Dan Diamond, reporter extraordinaire at Politico knows all about this stuff. Here's Dan Diamond on the media and the coronavirus. All right, Dan, well into April, there was a daily cable news. event known as the White House coronavirus briefing. Donald Trump, often center stage, experts like

doctors Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx at his side. We studied not only their information, but their facial expressions. What happened to those briefings? Those briefings got taken over by President Trump and quickly perverted from being a health and science briefing to essentially an election rally held in the White House press briefing room. And eventually, the feet of the feet of got to the White House and President Trump, that these briefings were not helpful, that they ended up undermining the administration's message on coronavirus, often stepping on what the science experts were trying to say and backfiring on the president. I mean, famously, near the end, he talked about the use of bleach or light to eliminate

coronavirus. That was almost the death knell for the briefings as any going concern as a health and science update. And now they don't happen at all. It's been, I think, 49 days since we've had a formal coronavirus briefing from the White House. That sounds right. And was this on purpose to the extent of President Trump has said many times that he doesn't think the coronavirus is as deadly, as as important as other people say it is, is there part of this where it says, well, if we just cancel the formal briefing, that will give an idea to the public by extension that it's not as much of an emergency as we might think it is? Well, there are a few things that we're going on here. First, if you go back and look at the pandemic playbook that the Obama administration developed or other strategies and playbooks,

the advice is consistent. The government should have some daily briefing, usually led by science experts, or just a consistent leader who can update the people on what is happening with the virus. That is not unusual. What made it weird was the president co-opting it. And it became increasingly the Trump show and not the Tony Fauci or Deborah Burke Show, which is what it probably should have been. So I think the reason to discontinue it was not about necessarily coronavirus. It was more about the political hit to the president. But what we have seen in recent weeks is the resurgence of the virus in areas of the country that had largely escaped the early hit that fell in New York City, New Jersey, Seattle. This would be a perfect time to have those

briefings, the White House is not interested because you're right, Brian, there is an underlying desire to move past this story, but the coronavirus is not done with the United States, and it's certainly not done with President Trump and his team. Now, Anthony Fauci didn't just go on vacation. He's still making pronouncements. Where does he make pronouncements now? I thought this was really interesting. Dr. Fauci went on WTOP, a local radio station in D.C. to break a big story. He spoke to the Times of London to talk more about the risk of the protests, not taking anything away from those media outlets, but there's a big difference in talking to local radio versus talking on cable news on every channel at 6.30 p.m. at night. He is still

working hard on vaccine development, on the coronavirus fight. He's just doing it with a much lower profile. That's so interesting. I saw this. The story, it was two weeks ago in Politico. Deborah Birx was warning against lulling us into a false sense of security this summer. She spoke to the German Marshall Fund president during the organization's Brussels Forum webcast. Now, nothing against the Brussels Forum webcast, but there may be a bigger platform to make that point, is there not? If the White House wanted Deborah Berks and Tony Fauci to speak to Americans, that would happen every day. They are still findable. They still will respond to requests. And I've had some senior your officials contribute to stories or even sit down with me virtually for interviews. But

that is not the same as a daily press briefing and all of the opportunities that go with it. So I was going to ask you that. You can get these people. If you need these people as a reporter, you can call up and say, I need some help on this story? Can I get five minutes? Something like that? Well, it depends on the story. It depends on the person. The surgeon general is someone that I've interviewed dating back well before coronavirus. I know his press team, I had negotiated with for a sit down with him virtually for a while. Not just on coronavirus, we talked about structural racism, too. He's an African-American, arguably the most prominent black doctor in the country. He's the top doctor in the country. So we had a conversation that was more than just COVID-19.

But someone like Deborah Birx or Tony Fauci, I'm probably not going to be able to get them for 30 minutes unfiltered at this point in the response. There are ways to get comment. I have to go through the press shop, but those aren't going to be the raw response of asking Tony Fauci on stage, do you agree with a President Donald Trump just said about the virus? There was this moment early on where Fauci got this kind of celebrity, right? He was getting booked all over the place over and over again, and we heard, you know, either from unnamed White House officials or someone that the president was getting a little tense about that, that they thought Fauci's press strategy was maybe different than their press strategy.

Can he call, can he have his people call a cable newsbooker and say, I have some really important information. I want to say this tonight or I want to talk to Nora O'Donnell tonight. Is that the way this can work? So Tony Fauci has been doing this a long time. He has pulled the full Ginsburg where he's on every Sunday morning TV talk show more times than I think Ginsburg did it. People have said it should be called the Fauci.

If he wants to convey a message that can get out, I'm sure. I'm trying not to step on any relationships or give any details away of how things work when you're a Politico reporter. But it is easier for someone like Tony Fauci to break from the president and get a message out in ways that other officials who have not been serving the government for 50 years like him have been. At the same time, Tony Fauci has had to get his press appearances signed off on by the White House for a number of months. there are positive reasons to argue for that, too, that we need a concerted singular strategy. And if all officials are booking their own media, that could cause problems, even if you are a believer that Tony Fauci, Deborah Birx, all these others have important things to say. So without a daily White House briefing, where do people get their coronavirus information from,

do you think? Well, hopefully they get it by reading Politico Pulse every morning, the newsletter I co-author. I think this is the problem, Brian. There are myriad experts and officials who take to cable news every night. If you're watching MSNBC, you're getting a very different story than on Fox News right now. Fox News is very much playing down. Some of the risks and threats has turned on some of the experts argued that they've been hypocritical by not calling out the Black Lives Matter protests after criticizing earlier protests. I actually do think there's some merit to that argument. Some of the experts who had been positioned as the impartial referees did hint at their at their progressive beliefs at times and urging

people to get out not everyone but some experts did this urge them to join those black lives matter protests either way we are now in a moment where it's hard to find a singular trusted voice outside of maybe tony fouchy and a few other people and the message is getting very muddled at a time when it looks like the virus is surging back and maybe americans aren't ready to trust the expert who want us to lock down again. And I would think the actors that step into that breach are state governors, local officials, perhaps, right, that suddenly have this larger pulpit because there is this kind of information vacuum coming from the White House a lot of days? Is that fair?

What do you say on the press box? I think that's right. I think that's right. The local officials have generally been pretty good, but they've also been getting beat up. There was a story just a few days ago. I can't remember if it was on PBS or the AP or ABC, but there was a great story about all the local officials who have been either hounded from office or terrorized for telling people, even in like Orange County, California. Right here, yeah.

Yeah, to wear masks. So it's hard to be an official delivering tough messages, especially three months into this when it feels like the message has been evolving. Even if you were listening to someone like Tony Fauci, who's tried to be consistent, science changes, the message changes, and Americans at some level tune it out. Here's something that I think you probably understand more than the rest of us who are just reading and consuming this. Is there a big difference in level of expert on this stuff? Because I have a

feeling that if I wanted to scare up somebody with doctor as their title to talk about the coronavirus today, that would be pretty easy. But how much variance do you find as you read other stuff as you watch television between people who have a really good handle on this stuff and people who might not. Oh, man. That's a question. I'm going to get you in trouble. Let's go. Yeah, that's something I've been thinking about for weeks because in my job, I have talked to a lot of the people that I now see on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News. I talked to them back when they were speaking on panels or people who had never done TV before and now they are being called on to give answers to the nation. Someone like Ashikha, who is all over cable.

news now, the Harvard Global Health Expert, he's wonderful. I've known him for years. He's an incredible communicator. But there are some folks, I don't know if I should single anyone out or not, but there are some people who, in a moment when public health information is needed, the call goes out, they get called up. There is a cadre of expert who has been put forward by a local university or hospital and has never had to advise on something like this before. So what What I normally look for is someone who is either a long-term public health official who's been through a number of different crises, someone who is an epidemiologist specifically and works on virology, tracking of disease spread, infectious disease specifically, and not someone who

there are a lot of different doctors and scientists from a lot of prestigious institutions, but actually being an expert on something like COVID is very different than being an expert on something like cancer or nutrition. So this is an election year, though it is sometimes easy to forget that it is an election year. Do you expect this level of coronavirus information to persist through the summer and fall, where it's in the hands of local officials largely? It's in the hands of who gets called up by a cable news show or a reporter. And without this kind of, you know, national focused sort of, you know, shot of information,

every day? I mean, I'd be curious for your perspective, but I honestly think it's only going to get worse. The coronavirus crisis is a political scandal. It might not feel like that in the day to day, but when we were reporting back in February and March, it was pretty clear that the White House was not doing everything it needed to do in that moment. Now, in their defense, this is a historic crisis.

It's almost impossible for any administration to have been prepared for something like this, But it was clear at the time that President Trump and some of his top aides were ignoring the warnings that were coming. What that means is this is going to be a political issue through the election. And Joe Biden, who is out there in January and February, warning on the coronavirus, will be able to say, here's what I would have done instead. So I think there's going to be a lot more information and specifically misinformation as politicians on both sides of the aisle will battle over who is to blame, who could have done better, this crisis. And that makes me really concerned because the more that public health gets politicized, the harder it is for everyone to join hands and fight a crisis like this one. Yeah, and a battle over numbers too, right, which we've seen not only in the UK, you know,

with the government over there, but in Florida, right? What do those numbers you see every day actually mean? And are those the correct numbers? That's another battlefield, right? Right. And I think what you're referencing is in Florida, there was a data scientist who said that she was pressured to change numbers about coronavirus, and when she refused to do it, she got fired. I think there might be more to that story because some of the data that she's put out, I took a closer look at it, and it's not clear to me that she's putting out any more accurate data than the state of Florida, to be frank. She's combining what are called serology tests, antibody tests, with a diagnostic test. That has been considered a big no-no when CDC and others did it,

because it's conflating two different data sources. She's doing that in Florida. It makes the numbers look bigger. But I think that gets to the core issue of who do we trust and how much do we question what even government officials are telling us. And it's a murky moment because there have been enough screw ups along the way to raise serious question. Something you mentioned on CNN this weekend. We keep hearing the colloquial use of the term waves.

I've got to watch out for that second wave. Second wave could be coming any moment. What wave are we in of the coronavirus right now? We are in the first wave, and I am not even sure wave is the right word for it, because a wave almost implies going in and out, and instead we're just kind of swamped. The number of cases has been pretty constant between 15,000, 30,000 per day for months, and sometimes it's been lower, sometimes it's been higher. Right now it seems like we're trending up after a period when it looked like things had

gotten better after New York had gotten the coronavirus outbreak under control. But waves feels like the wrong analogy to me. Did you suggest tides as a perhaps better aquatic analogy? I did. I said that off the air to Brian Stelter and he liked it enough that he brought it on cable TV. But it's the complexity of this, right? Because tides could be occurring in the United States, if I'm following this metaphor maybe to the ends of the earth here. But tides could be occurring in different places with different ferocity, right?

And so you get to this thing where it's very hard to explain to people in any kind of concise way what's happening. Arizona is high tide right now. New York is low tide. And it's very changeable. Americans move around a lot. Maybe we haven't so much the past three months. But this is not Korea or Japan. We are a country of people who travel for spring break, travel to see our families, trucks travel crisscross the country.

virus can spread a lot more easily here than in other nations. And I think high tide, low tide, if that's an analogy people want to use more power to them, but the problem is less the tide and more just that we're all drowning under a coronavirus caseload that looks so much worse than nearly every other nation around the world. Dan Diamond, read him at Politico, subscribe to his newsletter, and please check out his haircut on Twitter because he definitely wants you to. Thank you so much, Dan. it's been a pleasure long time listener uh first time first time zoomer i guess not the last either sir thanks for doing this thank you all right david let us bring on palo ugetti nba reporter and volume

shooter at the ringer palo thank you for joining us thanks for having me i really appreciate it all right so early last week it was sort of a fait accompli that the nba was going to come back on July 31st in Orlando, there was at least this sort of veneer of consensus between the league office and certain superstar players. Give us an update. What has happened since then?

Basically some faction of the players started speaking up and saying, you know, maybe like doing a double take and being like, should we do this? Is this actually a good idea? Obviously,

the number one guy at the forefront of this was apparently Kyrie, which I think if you look back. Irene Irving to those press box listeners who may not be huge basketball fans. So I think if you look back at when the MVPA voted for the proposal, I think Kyrie even came out and said like, oh, I might not play because he's coming back from injury,

but I'll be there to support as a fan, which on its own wasn't even sure that he was going to be able to do that. But now a week later, he's talking about, you know, maybe we shouldn't go. There's these, you know, social justice issues happening with George Floyd. and everybody should reconsider, you know, going. And it's kind of, I don't know if it's created a split, but I think it's created a discussion,

which I think on its own has its value. Does it feel like the problem, or not I wouldn't say the problem? It seems to me, from an outsider perspective, that the entire kind of opposition has sort of been subsumed into the mythos of Kyrie. It's both being sort of hand-waved because of whatever, the presumption of his personality or whatever is, but it's also, I guess in some ways, kind of taken a larger than life. Almost a myth, it's kind of grown to mythological proportions

in some way, even though the stories are being told, we're hearing about a big, you know, about a conference call, you know, I mean, it's not like there's necessarily like giant changes afoot, but I don't know. I mean, is this, is it more about the person? Or do you think that there's a lot of, there are a lot of people that he's speaking for, and he's just the one with the loudest voice. I think that inevitably was everybody's initial reaction. Like, they wanted to combine the coverage and even the takes of Kyrie of the past with this current Kyrie discussion. And I think, like, that was a little bit off-putting because whether he was speaking for, it sounds like he was speaking for more than other players, like Lou Williams came out and,

you know, express how he felt like there was dissonance in, you know, ESPN talking about the NBA returning while CNN is showing, you know, all these issues that are going on. So I think it wasn't just him, but I do think it was interesting to see how everybody reacted to the fact that it was Kyrie who was, you know, giving this message, given that he's been such a interesting figure in the past. I think at the end of the day, like, it also isn't one factor. I think it's easy for us to be like, well, this is why some players don't want to play. But it's clear that there are so many other issues, whether it's the safety inside the bubble, restrictions inside the level or the social justice component. And there's so many, you know, issues flying around that it's kind of hard to pinpoint it, not just on one player, but on one issue too.

Well, so let's pull apart those issues because I think they're worth sort of considering separately. What are the issues that are concerning some NBA players in terms of this bubble, which again, if you don't follow the NBA, it's this idea that we're going to put most of the players that are invited to Orlando in this environment, inside Disney World, where they come in, but they can't really leave, right? What are some of the issues with that that are causing concern among various players? Well, I think one of them is that, you know, I think it was Friday, it came out that Disney employees are not going to be subjected,

at least as of this moment, to the same kind of quarantine and testing rules that all the players are going to be subjected to, which is daily testing, you know, and if they do test positive, there's an amount of days that have to quarantine. And if the employees that are working, even if they're not working directly with the players, If those employees are not being tested daily, then, you know, how is that not going to create some kind of spread? And I guess the larger point with that is that the fact that the NBA has pretty much said that they're going to be okay with positive tests is just about what they do after. So the fact that you can go, if you're a player and you're going in there knowing that the likelihood that there's going to be positive tests and one of them could be you, that's a factor in itself, I think. And then within the construct of the bubble or campus environment, as they want to call it, you know, the,

limitations of whether they're going to be able to have family in there or other people or they're just going to be there by themselves. I think that's another factor that's affecting players or giving them, you know, pause. And then I think there's these two interesting sort of approaches to activism, social activism, well, you mentioned. One is, I guess, embodied a little bit by LeBron James, who seems to think, again, from as far as we know, our best platform is to go play basketball. And then that will give, playing basketball will get everybody's attention and that will give us a platform to talk about these issues we're concerned about. And then there's another approach that says maybe these issues are so important that playing

basketball shouldn't be number one on our priority list right now. Can you just help us kind of understand to the extent that we know how NBA players are sort of shaking out on that? Yeah, obviously it's probably hard even for the union to come up with a way to unify both of those sides, right? Because I don't think either side is wrong. And I think where we get into kind of dicey territory, where I've seen people get into dicey territory,

we want to have like takes on each player's types of activism, even though like each player has its own, they have their own way that they think that they should exert that freedom to be active. And I feel like our instant reaction is, well, you know, you want to go play, but also, you know, shed light on these issues. But what about, you know, what about the players who don't want to go play? Are they better? Are they, is that a more right way to do it?

And I think, like, that's where we get kind of an interesting territory because I feel like both sides are right, as much as it might be weird to say, like both sides. If a player feels it's by himself that he, the best way he can sort of push the conversation is to go and play and put his money elsewhere, like LeBron is doing with the voter initiative and all that, then I think you can't even, you can't blame them for that.

And likewise, if a player just doesn't feel comfortable feeding into, you know, what many have said looks optically a little off that you have a bunch of players, largely black players, going to a bubble of sorts and playing there for three months. Like that looks off to some people. If they feel like that's setting the cause back,

then I feel like they have every right to feel that way too. Far be it for me to presume that, you know, NBA's central office needs more power than it already has, vis-a-vis, you know, the players themselves. But it does kind of feel like there, I mean, is there a lack of central leadership that has gotten us to this point? Or is it just the fact that because of the virus, all bets are off, that now everything open to discussion is going to be an untenable conversation?

I think the larger issue even beyond whether there's central leadership or not is the fact that everybody's getting pulled by money regardless of whether they can feel it or not. Like I think if money wasn't such a big deal to the NBA, even to the players, because obviously the season gets canceled, that means the CBA is going to get, reopened and that could lead to players having no leverage. So I think it's almost like everybody's withholding to the money aspect of this because if money was not an issue, then there wouldn't even be a tournament, you know, because safety would be priority. So I think it's probably very difficult for Adam Silver to be the central force right now because he's got the owner's interest,

he's got the player's interest, and obviously the financial aspect of what could happen to the league going forward. So I don't know if there's like a lack of a central leadership. It's kind of hard to say that that's the case with the players, especially because like I said, there's some that believe that the activism needs to be on the court and some believe that it needs to be off the court. And so I think you're, I don't know if you're going to be able to bridge those two divides. I don't, I mean, I can't speak for the players. And certainly the causes that Kyrie is talking about are beyond legitimate. I'm not sure. I mean, there, there's a lot at stake here. in both directions.

It did sort of feel, though, at the very, at the end, when the, you know, questioning of the bubble started coming up, that there's this tension between people who are actively worried about their, their medical safety, you know, with Disney employees and stuff like that. And on the flip side, it did seem to be like the world is sort of easing into this, like, anxiety-inducing nonchalance about the whole thing. We're like, part of me wonders if, you know, they weren't on such a rush timeline, if they wouldn't just be going, you know, keeping everything normal

except just not having fans in the arenas, right? I mean, we're kind of going towards a place, especially in some states where that would seem to be like the obvious choice. Of course, now, you know, we're dealing with NFL players in Texas being diagnosed in mass, it seems like. So maybe that's not really tenable anymore. But do you think that, I mean, do you think that the people are just seeing the world reopen

and wondering why they're going to Orlando in the first place? I'm sure that that's probably the case for some players. And you're right. Like I drove around yesterday and there were people everywhere. Like there were so many more people, some of them without masks. So I feel like there is kind of a nonchalance happening. And I wonder if like players, especially in some states might be looking at that and like, well, what? You know, obviously travel is kind of the one big issue.

But if you give like I think I said this, but like Devin Booker, for example, like he plays for a team that has no shot at a championship. And he's going to get asked to go and stay three months. Well, not three months. but a large amount of time, a month perhaps, in a place where he can't really go anywhere and you can't really do anything. And I feel like that's something that's going to be a heart sell for some players,

regardless of the social justice issues that they're trying to shed light on. One interesting thing, and we've talked about this in bits and pieces on the press box, but do we have a sense of what activism could look like in the NBA this fall? Let's say some number of players are in Orlando, some but maybe not all.

what would that actually look like, do you think? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know where I've heard somebody kind of float at this possibility, so forgive me for not giving credit. But somebody mentioned, like, is this going to be a case where players with this leverage go to the league and say, give us this amount of time at half time or this amount of time before a game to talk about something or just to do a PSA or some sort of thing? I don't know.

Maybe that's the way that it could materialize. Or, you know, maybe it's, you know, using their. attire, you know, usually like with this Dallin-Sterling thing where they took off, you know, the, warm-ups and the shirts were backwards, things like that. I don't know how much that has value at this moment, but I think maybe that could be it. Obviously, you know, I'm sure that guys will be vocal on social media. That's another thing that's going to be interesting, I think, especially if the media is limited. I think, like, the athletes speaking through social media is going to grow even more during this time because they're just going to be there for months and not

how much to do. So maybe they do come up with something creative while they're on the ground. I know Garrett Temple, when I talked to him, the Q&A I did last week, he mentioned that he thinks it's going to be good that they're going to be there for a month beforehand. That way, they can talk about what they can do and how they can, you know, go ahead and say something. I enjoyed your conversation with Garrett Temple a lot. Do we have an idea of what the, I mean, just to follow up on what Brian said. Have there been, have there been people besides, I mean, is there is there a kairi irving of the let's play contingent i mean i know lebron is incredibly active in these social arenas and certainly wants to play for his own legacy um but has there

been any discussion about has there been anyone directed directed a response to kairi or to anybody else who is presuming they shouldn't play right about how they could about maybe how the actor activist cause could be more effective from an ongoing season bubble or no yeah i mean well LeBron notably was not on that Kyrie call. I think Sam Amick reported that. And that's interesting in itself because Kyrie and LeBron have a history. So I think LeBron, I think he's kind of marching to the beat of his own drum. And Patrick Beverly tweeted today that basically if LeBron says they're playing, they're playing,

which I think is a very, very smart observation by him, which is like, you know, at the end of the day, like this is a business. And LeBron is the biggest voice in that big. business and if he says they're playing they're probably going to they're going to play and and you know it's it's hard to even blame lebron at all for that because he's the one who has been in the past vocal about these issues and now you know is is starting up that voter voting initiative voting rights initiative so i think i think if you're lebron you you kind of look at it and say okay you might have a point karee but look at i'm putting my money where my mouth is and i want to go play because i feel like

that's our right and also another way to be on a platform that everybody's going to be paying attention to. You can read Palo O'getty on the ringer.com. It's a good website. Palo, thanks for joining us. Thanks, guys. All right, David, we haven't heard about Donald Trump in a while. Thank goodness.

But some things turn out to be the same. He's still refusing to wear a mask in public. He's still trying to avoid even addressing issues of race or police brutality and he's still just tweeting like wildfire. But these things seemingly aren't working so well. Last week, CNN had a poll that showed Trump trailing Joe Biden by 14 points, 55% to 41% among registered voters. His approval rating was at 38%.

His worst mark since January 2019. Donald Trump, not shockingly, was against the CNN poll. CNN polls are fake. as they are as fake as they're reporting, same numbers and worse against crooked Hillary, the Dems would destroy America, exclamation point. And this really got me in response to Trump campaign sent a cease and desist letter to CNN President Jeff Zucker that demanded the network retract and apologize for the poll. So I guess that's a new one, right?

I know it's a little, it's always a little iffy to say new low or this Trump, Trump is doing something unusual. but please retract and apologize for your poll. Yeah, I mean, never has like the slow descent into totalitarianism been so slapstick, I guess. It's just so ridiculous. It's, I think that the memoir is coming out of the Trump administration. They've certainly been interesting so far, but I'm really just waiting for like the lawyers to break their silence in 10 years, just about like the day that they were asked to do something that made them crack up, you know, and just like how they got through the day.

It's, it's kind of nuts. To me, this was weirdly, I mean, maybe this was weirdly unshocking. When you have presidents that, a president that is like literally responding in real time on Twitter

to like one America news network, it's just like there's nothing that's off the table, right? I mean, it's just, he's so sheltered. and he's in such a little self-made bubble that sure, sure, it makes perfect sense with that victim complex.

It makes perfect sense to go out to demand CNN retract a poll of all things. I think my favorite part too was when they were trying to offer like some countervailing evidence and they come out with this poll that shows Trump up by two points in Arkansas. Now, if Donald Trump wins Arkansas by two points,

he's in big trouble. He's going to lose the election. very, very badly. But that was the comeback. And correct me if I'm wrong, but they were also like citing transitory factor, you know, whatever, just like, well, you know, with the economy where it is or coronavirus or whatever else, it's like, how could you possibly trust this poll? Which is like exactly the point.

I mean, it's like people who are watching CNN are not unaware of how the world is, I mean, they're probably overwhelmed with commentary couching the results of the poll, right? I mean, it's just, it just seems so ridiculous. What is any poll worth if it's not a reflection of the moment that it's taken in? We should note that the drop in Trump's polls comes amid a host of exceptionally cruel moves by the administration. On Friday, Trump finalized a regulation that will erase protections for transgender patients against discrimination by doctors, hospitals, and health insurance companies. This was announced on the four-year anniversary of the shooting at the Pulse Nightclub where 49 people were killed. speaking of anniversaries or important days,

the administration also scheduled a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Juneteenth before delaying it because of the backlash. Kamala Harris' potential vice presidential candidate says this isn't just a wink to white supremacists. He's throwing them a welcome party. Also of note, David, was to attend a Trump rally. Supporters must sign waivers that say the campaign is not liable, if anyone contracts COVID-19. So there's that.

Do you think there's one member of the Trump administration? Is Stephen Miller just there sneaking across these ridiculous things on certain dates hoping correctly that no one will possibly take note of it and then just cracking up at the response?

I mean, how does it, there's no level of idiocy that accounts for this happening over and over again. It has to be deliberate. It has to be deliberate. I mean, some amount of it has to be deliberate at least. I find it hard to imagine

that anyone in the White House wouldn't be aware of Juneteenth, but I find it even more hard to imagine that this, that again, that this is not on purpose. Also, here's Trump talking about the protesters in Seattle. What I mean is very simple. We're not going to let Seattle be occupied by anarchists. And I'm not calling them. Have you talked to them now?

I'm not costing. No, but I got to see a performance that I've never seen. I mean, you think he was a weak person in Minneapolis? Well, the woman, I don't know, has she ever done this before? How can you- In Seattle. Oh, it's pathetic. No, no, we're not going to let this happen in Seattle.

If we have to go in, we're going to go in. The governor's either going to do it, let the governor do it. He's got great National Guard troops. He can do it, but one way or the other, it's going to get done. These people are not going to occupy a major portion of a great city. They're not going to do it. Trump would continue in a tweet, the terrorists burn and pillory our cities and they think it is just wonderful. Even the death must end the Seattle take over now.

Oh, man. Well, I don't even know what to say. I don't know what to say. I mean, again, it would be one thing if he were like trying to trick people. But it really feels like he buys in himself at this point. I don't, it's, it's embarrassing. Not the most important thing of the weekend, but one that got a lot of Twitter play. Trump, gave this address at West Point, and then this video emerged of him walking very gingerly down this ramp. Trump then tweeted about people talking about him walking gingerly down the ramp. The ramp that I descended after my West Point commencement speech

was very long and steep, had no handrail, and most importantly, was very slippery. The last thing I was going to do is fall, that's in quotes, for the fake news to have fun with. Final 10 feet, I ran down to level ground. Momentum. exclamation point. Now, again, somewhere down our list of concerns, how Trump walks down a ramp, but we should note that the Trump campaign has been very eager to play clips of Joe Biden messing up a word,

right? Or Joe Biden losing his train of thought with the idea of bringing up these questions of whether Joe Biden has the mental acuity, stamina, et cetera, to be president. So it strikes me that if you're going to play that game, if you're going to go down that road, you open yourself up to the, to it going the other way too. No? I mean,

you open it up to people playing clips of Donald Trump. I'm of two minds about this. One, I don't think as, I mean, I think that, yes, it's fair game for,

you know, Twitter jokes and whatever else. I mean, for us that you joke around with your friends. I'm not sure that, you know, that people should be playing the same game,

as the Trump campaign plays with Joe Biden justifying it like that. I'm not saying they should play the same game. I'm just saying it's a weird thing to complain about when your campaign is playing that game. Well, regardless of the propriety of making fun of the president for, you know, tiptoeing or mincing his way down that ramp.

And by the way, his explanation is so crazy when you watch the tape and it's clear that he's just, he just for some reason thought the ramp was twice as steep it was or something. But all of that aside, whether, propriety aside and everything else, there is no question of propriety when it comes to embracing very clear metaphors. And this walked down the ramp was, there was no better metaphor for Trump's entire presidency than his little like bungled walk down doing the most easy thing that he could possibly have done. You know, it did never occur. First of all, to have a presidency so inept that you couldn't just say like,

Most White Houses have staffers whose whole job is to get rid of ramps if the president doesn't like to walk down ramps, right? Like this isn't, there should be like advancemen who do this sort of thing for you without any question at all, right? And of course Trump got up there, didn't think twice about it. It wasn't didn't think on his feet, no pun intended, quickly enough to be like, I don't want to walk down this ramp. So maybe I'll take, I'll leave the way that I came in or whatever else. And then to just still go down it. So, I mean, it's like he started down the ramp without any self-awareness that it was going to be a disaster. And instead of at any point deciding to walk normally, deciding to walk presidentially, or deciding to like say, hey, I'm just going to stand up on the stage until someone finds me some stairs, he just decided to go down and drag the disaster out longer and longer as he just like I said, just tiptoed his way down this thing.

it was as if he was walking down a really steep ice-covered ramp and that just, it's amazing. He had no, I mean, just, and he was wrong. That was the best part. He could have just walked down the ramp. First of all, I want to see the White House org chart to find out who is supposed to be the guy or gal who gets rid of ramps.

Like that's the... I guarantee that. I guarantee somebody was getting rid of ramps for like, you know, George Bush Sr. And second, so the metaphor you're saying is that there are these parts of the job that should just be easy. And Donald Trump does not do the easy parts of the job. Like, let's say, releasing a statement

when the nation is undergoing some kind of trauma. And you don't even just release the bare-bones statement or just do the minor performative act of being president. Or, you know what? Have the guts to proceed normally and fall if that's what happens. You know, but instead, it's this little, it's

this tiptoe act that ends up making everything so much worse. That's the press box. We're back Thursday. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis on that note. Research by Chris Almeida production magic by Erica Servantes. We're back Thursday. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.