The Press Box - The Day-After-the-Election Podcast: Donald Trump Will Be President Again

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

Hello, media consumers! Bryan welcomes the newest member of The Ringer, Joel Anderson, to 'The Press Box' with a huge announcement that the listeners will love moving forward. Then they get into the election, which saw Donald Trump chosen as president of the United States again. They reflect on last night’s election and its presentation, the upcoming think pieces on what Democrats need to do, what resistance 2.0 will look like, and more. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel Anderson Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A restaurant's best dishes tell stories. Their flavors embed themselves in our memory like song lyrics or lines from a movie. So much so that a little slice of a restaurant's story can become part of our own. I'm Danny Chow and this is ShiftMeal, a new video podcast from the Ringer where we're sharing a bite and chopping it up with chefs and restaurant people during their off hours. All episodes of Shift Meal are out now on Ringer food. Media consumers, welcome to Press Box. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Brian Waters. I want to bring in today's co-host because you've heard Joel Anderson on the press box before.

Well, guess what? He is a brand new senior staff writer at the Ringer. Before the Ringer, he worked at Slate, where he did excellent slow burn seasons about Biggie and Tupac and the L.A. riots and Clarence Thomas. Joel worked at ESPN. He worked at newspapers. He is importantly a fellow Texan. and he has a person about whom I've said, man, I would love to work at the same publication he does someday. Here we are. Joel, welcome to the press box.

Man, Brian, thank you so much for welcoming me on. I wish we were talking, like we said, before we got on there, about Joel Embed today. But I imagine that we're not going to get to that. But no, man, I've been a big fan of yours and press box and the ringer. And we've threatened to work together before. And now finally we're getting to do it. So I'm really, really excited, man. So before we get to the business of the nation, let's address the business of this podcast because I am delighted to announce that as of right here and right now, you are the new Thursday co-host of the press box. What? You have the power to do that? Well, mostly. The people have spoken, Joel. Well, I have nothing to do on Thursdays. Don't tell my editor.

So yeah, I'll, I'd love to show up in a hangout every Thursday from, it definitely, as long as we're allowed to do this. This sounds fantastic to me. I got so many ideas already. But guess what? We get to hold hands and jump into the deep end of the swimming pool today. Because Donald Trump was elected president of the United States last night. Again, what are your thoughts as of Wednesday morning? You know, I thought I knew better.

You know, I remember in 2016 when Trump got elected, I actually, I mean, if you guys want to see the emails between me and my wife, fine. But I predicted that Trump would win in 2016. I was just like, I don't know. There was just an energy around him in the campaign that I thought we weren't doing a really good job of like tapping into. But, you know, as we got closer and closer here, I just thought, okay, like, you know, the vibe seemed good. Beyonce showed up in Houston and Houston packed it out. That's, you know, Houston is blue. Texas is not blue.

As you know, Brian, and I thought, you know, okay, like maybe they know something we don't. And then the, the Seltzer poll out of Iowa a couple days ago, and I'm like, that is crazy. But again, maybe they know something I don't, right? Like maybe these people, you know, for people who like me who are like, I don't know if there are a lot of Liz Cheney fans among Republicans and Democrats, but maybe they know something I don't. But yeah, I guess I feel. fell for it. I was seduced by the optimism of people who I thought knew better. But what about you? How did how did you feel last night? I mean, first of all, I would love to flush any vibe stories down the toilet this morning forever. Yeah. I mean, what the hell with that? I mean, now you can see why the analytics movement has so much purchase. Right? I want hard data. You know, I don't want the eye test. So absolutely. And I'm like you. I was, I was seduced. I found myself editing my own Twitter feed the last 72 hours. And I was like only going to fellow traveler accounts who were like,

hey, long lines in Philadelphia. And Seltzer never wrong or rarely wrong. What does this mean for Midwest middle class voters? It could be crazy tonight. Well, man, they really got Puerto Rican voters out, right? You know? Oh, my God. How many anecdotes do we hear about that?

Yeah. MSG rally really breaking through. Yeah. Yeah. Really breaking through. And, you know, you realize as a media consumer, how skeptical you have to be about that stuff and about how when election time comes, right? Your heart is going in a certain place and your head wants to follow it.

Right. Desperately. Yes. But you and I both know that if you look at those articles and those anecdotes with any amount of skepticism or critical thinking, they, fall apart pretty quickly. Right. And I also just, I mean, what was the optimism based on again? Because I remember distinctly looking at these polls again and again and again. They're like, oh, it's a dead heat. And I'm like, that doesn't actually seem that encouraging, does it? Right?

I was like, when did the dead heat give people so much optimism before? I don't think I'd ever seen that before in politics. So, yeah, like, why didn't that ring some alarm bills for us, I wonder. You would think it would ring a lot, especially when the one side of the coin flip was Donald Trump getting reelected again. I thought the image of last night being online and watching TV was not the New York Times needle like it was in 2016 when that scared the hell out of everybody when it started pointing toward Trump. But was this map, the New York. Times did, which shows the changes city by city, county by county in America since 2020, which is to say it's all red arrows pointing to the right.

Man. Including places like South Texas that have not voted for a Republican in over 100 years. Yeah, man. I mean, that shows the extent of it, right? I mean, this was not, you know, this, you know, again, we can look at the popular vote. We can look at the margin in the swing states, which is somewhere three. points, sometimes less. This doesn't feel like a football game you lost 24 to 21.

No. It's like the, it's like the, you were fighting uphill and you just didn't know, right? Or like maybe, you know what? It's kind of like the difference between TCU making the national championship game and Georgia making the national championship game. And it's like, once they fill each other physically, like Georgia gets their hands on you, the first place, they're like, oh, this is going to be easy, actually, right? The facts on the ground told us something different. And yeah, man, like, I don't, I mean, it could be that Kamala was a bad candidate.

It could be that people, you know, actually, I'm going to say this, right. I'm wondering why the Bradley effect didn't come up more. Like, why people don't talk about that more as a factor in polling now? Because it just, it seemed obvious to me, but I was like, why aren't people talking about, hey, maybe people just aren't going to admit who they're going to vote for, even if you you do happen to pull them, which we already know is unreliable. We think that went away just because of the last vestige of, oh, everything's different now after 2008 and 2012. The world's changed.

We're not going back to use a phrase I heard a few thousand times during this campaign. Is that the last vestige of thinking that, oh, yeah, it's not around anymore. Because you're right. I didn't hear that term once a cycle. Yeah. Yeah. I just kind of thought it didn't. I mean, you had so many factors.

Like, just in retrospect, hey, man, we've never elected a woman before. The last time we elected a black person, people got really mad, you know? In a South Asian, we never had a South Asian president before. There were just so many. And then she was not a great candidate the last time we saw her do this either. And it just felt like all of that got smoothed over because, well, we wouldn't do that, would we? You know, we wouldn't do that again. He's not even making any sense.

He's performing, he's simulating fallacious on a microphone. Like, he's lost his mind. We wouldn't elect that guy, right? Really? I don't know. Yeah, a lot of thinking like that. As election nights go, there was almost no good news for Democrats last night. I don't know that I've experienced a night quite like that.

Like, what was the highlight, Ruma Gallego? Yeah. Across the line in Arizona? Well, before we, I want to ask you this before I go into that. You're on Twitter, Brian. Did you get the Colin Allred ads? Yes, all the time. Yeah, I was like, what polling was he?

Because I was like, oh, man, the polling shows a dead heat. The polling shows us slightly ahead. And I'm like, really? Oh, my God. I saw a news anchor last night, and I would love to remember who it was so I could blame them and make fun of them on this podcast. But they were like, Colin Allred making a lot more inroads than Better O'Rourke did back in 2018. I'm like, have you compared the outcomes of those two elections? I mean, bro.

I mean, man, I look, I met, you know, Mr. Allred a couple years ago. He came to a live event I did in Austin for Slow Burn. Nice guy, you know. But I just felt like if Beto wasn't the guy that could get it done, I didn't think Colin Alred was going to be that guy either. But you did ask me about good news. I think this is count as good news. Mark Robinson is at least not going to be office holder.

Like, right? Like, I mean, that would be really beyond the pale, right? I had sort of priced in that after the nude Africa new cycle. Mark Robinson wasn't getting across the line. But yes, that counts. We got anything else? Well, I mean, depending on where you follow this issue, and I, you know, I'm somebody that believes women should have their reproductive rights. If you believe in that, it was decent news.

like, you know, in the 10 states where that was up for a vote, it passed in seven different states, right? Florida not being one of them, which is kind of surprising when I lived in Florida, Florida was a purple state. Remember that? Yeah. Hillary was like seriously contesting Florida in 2016. I mean. And her losing that and that getting called was like the first big, uh-oh of the night. Yeah.

It was like, never mind. Yeah. Florida's Georgia. Florida is Texas. Yeah. Yeah. And abortion rights won with 50 percent, but didn't get to 60 percent. which was the threshold.

Right. So it lost. Right. Which was definitely a weird result. Yeah. I mean, it was built in. It was going to be difficult, but they, you know, they did it. And it ended where we thought that that was going to be more of a winning argument, at least with women.

It really didn't seem to kind of turn out that way. Like, you know, which is, again, it just throws into question what the hell we thought we knew going into this thing in the first place. Are you as excited as I am about the stampede of, opinion writers getting their think pieces together today to tell the Democrats exactly what they did wrong and what they need to fix going forward? Why are you so interested in reading like that sort of dark theater? I don't want to read. I don't want to read any of that anyway. But yeah, I mean, it's just really tough because I know that there are a million different reasons why the election turned out the way it did last night. And like, everybody could

kind of be right. Right. And it didn't, I don't feel that were that many people that went out on a limb this time either. Right. Like I felt, you know, one person who really is going to get redeemed is Nate Silver? Because people was, people were really mad at Nate Silver for like months. Imagine that. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's not like he does himself any favors. But, the way he engages with people on social media, but it was just like, what does he know? What is he seeing that people aren't seeing? And he saw something. And so like, that guy's going to be redeemed, but everybody else kind of hedged their bets. And it's like, well, if you knew the answers, where the hell were you two weeks ago? I completely agree. And I cannot tell you

how many people I saw make the argument. And Nate Cohn nodded that this was like somewhere in the realm of things that could happen. But they were all like, look, see, the pollsters, they undercounted Trump in 2016, they undercounted Trump votes in 2020. So this time they are purposely overcounting him. And it's going to turn out that those are all Harris voters that are being undercounted. There were people that said there were people that wrote that on their substack. And then I saw at least one of those people last night

immediately when things went South War Harris, he would just start getting mad at Joe Biden. Oh, this is his fault and all the stuff. And I'm like, that's a very valid thing to think. But you had no idea what was going to happen in this election. I am sorry. Like, you were dead wrong with that theory. So we can just maybe take five minutes

before you have the prescription to fix everything. Absolutely. I mean, well, look, man, Stuart Stevens of the Lincoln Project, I'd read a long thread. He had the other day talking about how Elon Musk was getting robbed and that like he's going to be so mad. He spent all this money on his get out the vote efforts or whatever. And he's going to be so mad when this is over and he's going to sue people. And so he just, he'd created this whole fictional world where Elon Musk failed. And he's mad at people.

And I haven't checked back with his Twitter account. But I do hope that he was like, I don't know what the fuck I was talking about. Because I mean, you got it totally wrong, please. I just, I demand one tweet of contrition before you move on to telling us what needs to happen. Absolutely. You are a pundit. And I am all for pundits shooting their shots, right? Like, you and I are hosting a podcast.

We're going to be James Harden in our own way every week on Thursday. Right. But like, you have to own it when you were wrong. And there were a lot of people that were wrong. Yeah, those GOTV anecdotes about how many doors got knocked on. Again, flush those with the vibes. Yeah. I mean, man, it's just we're really just finding out that whatever the infrastructure we've been using over the last.

I mean, maybe, you know, when this really seemed to become an issue, it was 2000 election Gore v. Bush, right? We just felt like, oh, man, like, these polls are not really getting getting it things the way that we assumed. And like, there's questions about the coverage or whatever. And I just wonder if there's going to be that sort of. you know, the people are going to have a little come to Jesus about, well, maybe we need to reconsider this infrastructure and like how we cover all this stuff. And maybe we should not spend so much time trying to guess what people are going to do. Because we're bad at it.

And, you know, like, it also doesn't really serve our readers anyway. You see political pundits and political reporters actually undergoing that metamorphosis today? The one thing that I will say, I don't know if it's going to hold, Brian. I do wonder if there's going to be more of a move toward talking about voters and not politics. By which I mean, people have always, people have said, well, you know, people, they don't want mass deportations. This is just an expression of economic instability or like frustration with the way the world is going on or whatever else. I felt like I felt a little bit more in the conversations over the last few hours. Hey, man, maybe this is just what, maybe there are more voters that.

like Donald Trump because he promises to be mean to people, right? And I don't think that's something that we've really grappled with as a people or certainly a media. Like, maybe that's a conversation. Some people like bad things to happen to other people, right? And like, that's part of their politics. And like, maybe we can have a conversation about that going forward. The only way you would get that is from voters because I don't, I don't know how that sort of leaks its way up to into the media without just talking to people. Man. I mean, I think it's an excuse. newsmaking in media that is going on for a long time, I guess, about that, right? That is just like, well, we've talked to some people in this diner in Steubenville, Ohio.

And then Joe says since the old tire factory shut down, things haven't been the same. Well, you know, it also might just be like, we could be a little bit more skeptical and a little bit more critical with what people are saying than even with what voters are telling us directly. Yeah, yeah, like we can sometimes just look on the facts on the ground, like, hey, if you actually felt this way, more pillowings. political, your political priorities would be reflected in some of the choices you've made. That's not actually what's happening. So what's actually really going on here? It's interesting with the think piece market we're going to get over the next 48 hours and next two years, I guess, at least two years.

I mean, John Stewart sort of made this point last night. I was actually weirdly thinking about this as I went to sleep last night after drinking a gigantic gin and tonic. Really? Which was, yeah, you know, why not? Which was, you know, in 2012, Met Romney, loses to Barack Obama, and there's this whole soul searching within the GOP. There's a memo and everything. You know, we need to get right on immigration. We're going to lose Latino voters for a generation if we don't do this.

We don't moderate our policies. What happens in the very next presidential cycle is Donald Trump comes along. He is not moderating his policies, let us say, to put it as gently as possible. And here we are in 2024, and everybody's immigration policies look, a lot more like Donald Trump's immigration policies, and this is both parties, I would say, than whatever memo was written about what the GOP needed to do in 2012. So all of which is to say, whatever we think right now, whatever the parties think right now, history doesn't usually work that way. You know, it's not a straight line. Oh, here is a solution.

Let us follow the game plan. And then the problem will be solved. It's weird, right? It's unpredictable in its way. Right. And I guess, you know, there's two sides of that. It could be unpredictable and that it could be much worse than we could even possibly fathom. Or it could be that it's, you know, there's a positive side and it won't be quite as bad as we think.

And I kind of lean, obviously, I hope it's the latter there. Because, you know, it's kind of like in sports. And as we know, there's a sports arts, we'll look at a team or we'll look at a guy and like, oh, Trayvion Henderson at Ohio State is an example. I looked at him and I was like, man, that dude's going to be an NFL in three years. he's one of best freshman running backs we've ever seen. He's still in college and he's like behind Beanie Wells on the all-time career rushing list, right? Like we will predict things.

They're like, man, you know, the Seahawks, man, they're going to get out of here. They're probably going to win like four or five championships. And they got Russell Wilson locked up and they got this great defense. And like life just doesn't happen like that. So worth it, where it may, for people that have a propensity toward doom and gloom like me,

like I hope John Stewart is right. I got an email today from the New Yorker. and it was a Barry Blit New Yorker cover about Donald Trump getting reelected. And it felt like a telegram from Resistance 1.0. We were also like, oh, look at the New Yorker. They got him. They got him with that cover.

Very Alfred Hitchcock looking. It is. Donald Trump's going to give up and you see that. He's not going to do anything he wants to do. I know. They gave him an extra chin. Yeah. He gave him an extra chin.

it did bring to mind the question. I was talking to Shoemaker a little bit about this last night. What do you think resistance 2.0 is going to look like? Man, Brian, that's, you should not ask somebody who's a negative Nelly me this. Because are we sure that there's going to be space for resistance? I say this a couple days ago, Donald Trump was in his, was one of his rallies and invited essentially the audience to shoot into the press box, right? I don't know.

Like I guess it depends on how seriously we take Trump at his word. And I kind of at this point in terms of like malice and like getting revenge, like I feel like he's true to his word of that.

Like he will hunt down Rosie O'Donnell until she's dead. You know what I mean? Like that's his thing. Like he'll beat that. So I'm worried that there won't be much resistance. And I talked with the buddy of mine

Adam Serwer at the Atlantic. And he said, I just like, man, so you're a civil warhead. Like, what is this? He says, well, this is worse than redemption. He's like, in redemption, it happened that, you know, that government was put into force and you can't say that they had a majority support.

This is majority support. You know, for everything that they project 2025, what Trump says he wants to do to the media, like, you know, not prosecuting people that hurt protesters. Like, that's a, you know, if you do that in Texas, you can do that and kind of get away with it. So I would be a fool. to predict what resistance looks like under those because like maybe I'm catastrophizing. But I don't like you can't say that it's stupid to consider that maybe that's the environment

we're going to be looking at going forward. I think there's another way to think about it too. I mean, like if we put that in one one possible outcome box, there's another that people just sort of give up on some level, right? They're just like, you know, I saw this on Twitter last night. That's worse almost. It's almost worse, but I saw leading liberal thinkers being like, like this is what people want maybe we should just let them do it and then and then people will see the

the outcome of what they voted for and i'm like that's pretty that's pretty dark um but you know i think i think if we you know actually polled people and got honest responses to the polls among democrats and among the left i think we get a very wide range yeah of responses to how much people are up for at this point man that's um you know i don't i'm trying to i'm not going to be a cornball here. But I saw a clip because I wasn't going through Instagram. It's something James Baldwin said about the world is held together by the love of like a very few people, right? And it just makes you wonder like people now, like in a really critical time, there's a lot of ways to break down into recriminations against blaming Muslims in Dearborn. Black people who wanted to vote for Trump

in barbershops in Philadelphia. You know, Latinos that live in Nuevo Laredo and, you know, Harlingen or something like that. You know what I mean? Like there's a lot of ways in which you can see these coalitions fracturing and it working to the benefit of Trump, the Trumpsters, man. So I don't, I don't know. That's, that's kind of scary to me. Resistance 1.0 featured a lot of people subscribing to the New York Times or the

Washington Post or Mother Jones as an act of anti-Trump resistance. Do we think that's going to happen again? I would ask you that. I want you to answer that first because let me think about that. It feels like it's going to be muted if it happens at all. Yeah. And I sort of wondered that, I sort of wonder about that from two different perspectives. One was that was kind of in retrospect of a false spring for the media.

All these structural things that are weighing on us, it got put off a little bit. because all of a sudden the money started flowing. From big publications to small publications, both. And I think it also in a way, and again, here's me being courted, but it gave journalists a big sense of purpose to their work. And not just the people who were breaking scoops about the Trump White House, sports writers like us are people that were sort of standing next to those people. There was a contact high as well about being a journalist

and the importance of doing that work. And I just wonder what that is going to look like beginning in January. Yeah, man. I don't, I mean, I guess it's like, who is actually going to replace those Washington Post subscribers that gave it up? Like, it's not going to be people that, you know, support Trump. They already believe that's a liberal rag, you know. And then, yeah, I mean, I feel like, don't you kind of feel like the New York Times has all the subscribers? Like, I don't, I, I don't work in sales.

So, you know, I could be wrong. But I kind of feel like they got who they got. Yeah. There are probably more people in, like, Australia, you know. I think we're looking around the world now if you're the New York Times. Yeah. And like just in those four, like this 2016 and 2024, like, local journalism is like hemorrhage.

And like, we've lost so many media out. Like, I don't even know, like, what's left, like, you know, in media. But like, maybe of those that, survive, like maybe they will do well because they've already got, you know, the people that they've got. But I, you know, it's, I don't think, I don't think it's going to be the boom that it was the last time for whatever reason. I just, I don't, I don't see that coming. Part of the reason it feels like that is because Donald Trump just avoided the mainstream media. Yeah, man, in his campaign. Yeah. Very explicitly, especially down the stretch. Well, remember, that was the criticism of Kamala at

the start, too. They're like, oh, she won't do it. She won't interview with the mainstream media. She's going on with Charlemagne the God and whoever else. And, you know, that was a big thing for a little while. And they were like, well, you know, you guys know what you do. You know what you guys do political media. Like, why would she talk to you? But I think people have already kind of figured out that they don't have to go through. They don't have to do the big New York Times Magazine sit down, man.

They don't have to talk to the Wall Street Journal. Man, and I don't know which outlets it was that weren't allowed into the Trump campaign event last night. But several had reported not getting credentials to get in last night. Yeah. So I mean, that's not very white house early, you know? No, it's not. And even Trump, you know, even within MAGA, he is kind of, I don't like to use the word unicorn to describe people other than Janus, but like he does have that weird tendency that

he likes mainstream media attention. Right, right. Ron DeSantis does not crave it. in the same way, let us say that Donald Trump does. He answers Maggie Haberman's phone calls at some point. Oh, he loves that tabloy shit, man. Like that says, yeah, he's really 80s and 90s in that way. Don't you imagine him just getting up in the morning with a well-done steak and like opening

up a newspaper, you know, the New York Daily News or something? Absolutely. Yeah. What's the latest? What page did they put me on? What did it, would Mushnik write the day, you know? Yeah. He's so Mushnik's last reader.

I love that idea. But when we talk about the media, like, the, not only the just in terms of subscriptions, but just the mojo of people in our profession, as soon as the people in power, in politics, are like, we don't need you. Yeah. That doesn't mean the media gives up. Doesn't mean the media has a huge, important, vital role to play, but it does sap some of their powers.

I mean, it does. If they can just be like, I'm not going to talk to you at all, ever, or very sparingly. And then that does, right? That was part of the baked in power of the newspaper era, of the old broadcast TV year. You know, I'll never forget as a young journalist one time, I was like in my 20s and working in Louisiana. And I was just like, you know,

the thing about public records request, I was like, what if they just decide not to give you everything? You know, they give you something, they don't give you everything. And nobody really had a good answer for that for me. I was like, well, you know, it's the law here, the sunshine laws and such such. So I was like, yeah, but how am I supposed to backstop?

this stuff. And so like, there's always just sort of been, there's not been to guard rails in place that we've thought anyway, because there's so much stuff going on and so few people in media outlets and resources to, to take care of it. But, you know, I just, I mean, yeah, the media maybe has never quite had the influencer power that we thought, but like, we definitely have seen from, like, the polling stuff to this, just like, we don't have it, man. And a lot of people have already tuned this out like oh like was this you like during the msg thing i'm like who's killed tony who's killed tony i don't know who killed tony is the only reason i knew is because i'd seen him at the tom brady raleigh excuse me the tom brady roast that was that was my experience with kill tony yeah

yeah yeah i mean i look and i'm i'm just going to come out and say like i have my i clearly i have my own media bubble, right? I live in, I live in Palo Alto. I've been out here for a decade. Like, my wife works in media. I work in media, you know, like, I have family in Texas and other stuff, but like I don't, you know, nobody would say that I'm an activist or working in the streets or anything like that. So maybe I've just missed a lot of stuff, man. And like I'm in the media too. And like, you know, most of the people I talk to are in media. And, you know, like I will say this, the McDonald's Gambit, like when he did the fries, I was like, I don't know, man. It kind of seems like his people might like that. That might seem really cool. Like maybe we're just missing something here,

you know? Yes. Yes. I think, you know, when we look and that, you brought us right to the last question I want to ask you, which is just how well served we were by the media, broadly speaking in this campaign. I do think little incidents like that, the McDonald's thing, the MSG rally. Yep. You mentioned the fallatio on the microphone, grading him on a conventional curve with conventional gaffs. That's one of the things I think reporters have done in a large part they have improved the way they've covered Donald Trump, but they don't

know what to do with stuff like that. Yeah, man. They just don't. Yeah. I mean, because right, like, well, the truest thing Donald Trump ever said, and he said it eight years ago, or maybe nine, I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and get away with it, dude.

And it's just like, you can't, there's not a story, there's not a scandal. This dude is like the real Teflare. Don. Like, I mean, he really, like, what could you say about him? What could he do? Like, there was an undercurrent of stories over the past week about, you know, Michael Wolf came out with some more Jeffrey Epstein revelations, right? And that was supposedly going to be a big deal. I, nobody even talked about that last night as far as I know. And I don't even know that anybody cared by the time it came out. Like, I felt that got zero traction. I mean, I saw it on Twitter,

but I felt that was a nothing. Yeah. Some stories that mattered. Don't you think, though, if that happened to Kamala? Like, they'd be like, hey, man, they found that Kamala has been on Epstein Island. Don't you think it would have mattered, though? Trump would have talked about it in every single speech. Yeah. Every single speech. And yes, it would have gotten into the bloodstream.

I mean, it would have been a star Biden guy. Yeah. Somebody said that. I know. And I feel like these are the things that put mainstream newspaper reporters in a very tough position. Because if you think of the, take the MSG rally. And by the way, Tony Hinchcliff's. comment about Puerto Rico, that was like one of a hundred things at that rally.

Right. That was what everybody sees them because it's like, well, there's 450,000 Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania, but like, you could have picked a lot of stuff from that rally from Tucker Carlson from everybody else to highlight. But it puts him in it because if we agree that that doesn't affect Donald Trump like it would a conventional politician, if it doesn't have the same impact on him, it's not like you just can't cover it. It's not like you're just like, oh, well, a really racist.

this thing was said, never mind, off back to work, you know, talking to people in diners. So I do feel like that's one of those things where it's very, very hard to deal with it, you know, as a reporter. Like, what do we want reporters to do in that case? Oh, man, I was, you know, like, as we do, we're in a group chat with some reporters and people that cover this stuff. And there's like a crisis of confidence. Like, what am I supposed to do? Like, what do people want for me? And I'm not, nobody should feel sorry for a journalist in this circumstance, but it's like, what do you, they don't, it, we're sort of in a post-truth environment, man, and we're in a post-scandal environment. Like, if you were shameless enough, if you were

shameless enough, there's not, if you can just kind of walk your way through it, nothing's going to happen to you, man. And I think that Trump was one of the people that figured that out, and it was a permission structure for a lot of other people. And media has not really found a way to combat that yet. Like, you know, and we're still, we still, you know, without beating us up too much, like we're still just like, hey man, Kamlin went on to SNO on Saturday. That's a big deal. Hey, man, I looked at the views on them Joe Rogan and Jake Paul endorsements.

I was like, that's a bigger deal than Saturday Night Live now. But I don't think media's caught up to that shit, man. You know? No, I don't. And instead, Herndon was on the pod last week, and he and I were talking about this idea. And he's made this point a couple of times about the issue of democracy. And if you looked at some of those exit polls last night, democracy was high up on it, but it wasn't always clear that Kamala Harris was winning voters who were concerned about democracy.

And his point was about the Democrats, which I think is totally right. Like when democracy comes up, Democrats are like January 6th, can't happen here, et cetera, et cetera. And they miss voters who are citing that, but they're not saying the election was stolen. They're saying more broadly, like democracy isn't working for me. Democracy, I feel distant from the political process. It's not helping me in my community. And those voters wind up getting seated to Donald Trump. I would tell you there is probably a similar critique with the media where we tend to go very

founding fathers on people when they mention democracy. Yeah. Standing up for other deals and stuff. But there are a lot of consumers, readers, listeners who have the same thing. Democracy isn't working for me. I feel very distant from this process. Well, guess where they're going? They're not going to The Ringer.

They're not going to the New York Times. They're going to Rogan. They're going to, you know, a Paul brother, right? Like, that's where they're going. Alex Jones. And we're not finding ways to talk to them. Right. We're not acknowledging.

And again, we don't have to be like those. I don't want us to be like those podcasts necessarily. But there has to be a way that we convince them that reading us listening to us is important. And I think that critique applies. I think that critique can be applied to us in a certain way too. I absolutely agree. And I think that like, I don't know.

Well, I mean, I think a lot of people like that content and they want to believe what it is they want to believe. Right. And also, I think that, like, it's really good theater. Like, if you look at like that shit, like, I remember one time somebody opened up Alex Jones on the plane next to me. And this is before I really knew what Alex Jones was. And I was just like, there's all this shit flying around on your laptop screen. You know, it was just very.

There was a lot of stuff happening. And I was just like, I don't know. Like maybe I don't know of very many, you know, mainstream media outlets that had that capacity to entertain in quite that same way. Because we're playing sort of by different rules. But like maybe it's worth rethink in the rulebook, man. You know, like if democracy is important as you say it is, then maybe like concepts like old school concepts of objectivity or, you know,

not saying, you know, relying on political. fact to be the determinant of whether something is a lie rather than putting it in print or like writing a story from the angle of this dude's line, here's why. And let me, you know, marshal the evidence and put it together in a compelling way. Like maybe there's a way to do it that way. But the way that it's working now doesn't seem to be working for anybody other than the New York Times. No. No. And if I think about like the misery of those political writers that you're texting about, what do we do? You know how they always get criticized for sanewashing Donald Trump? and oh, you didn't do an adequate job.

I feel in this election, maybe it's just me, but like, I feel people know exactly what Donald Trump wants to do. Right. There would no mystery about it. And they devoted for him. Isn't this where you talk about the distance that maybe we have from people,

man, like maybe people want this shit. Like maybe this is what, you know, rather than casting it, it's like, well, man, if you don't do this, democracy is going to fall. Like, people might actually want this. And we just are doing a poor job of reflecting it and having people in

because maybe because of, you know, I mean, we may find their politics distasteful and not want to be near them on panels or whatever, but like they're articulating that stuff in a way that maybe we're just not privy to, and I'm willing to admit that. Like, I just, I'm not, I don't look at the world in that way,

and I don't want to, but like if media has a, like, a survival instinct, it may, there may have to be some need to tap into it with proper context. Anyway, I don't know. Like maybe we'll go the way of it. No, and I just feel like there's, I just feel like I don't have the great solution. You and I can work on this on future Thursday podcast. We'll solve all the media's problems, I'm sure.

But there's got to be a playbook other than let's hire more never Trumpers to write opinion calls for us. Oh, my God. We got that. Oh, my God. I think we're all good on that. Oh, my God. I was like, if Michael still had a constituency, he'd still be in the Republican Party. You know what I mean?

Like, I was just like, I mean, all that, MSNBC gets all the guys. they don't want anymore. I was like, they don't want them people in those meetings anymore. Stop it. Like, you bring on somebody that is full-fledged Trump shit and just like, lose to see what it is, you know? Yeah, or just something. I mean, like, some, even a, somebody that understands it that taps into some element of that world, right? Like, conventional idea is either like, the person sitting on the panel has to be MAGA or they have to be never Trump or, you know, Stuart Stevens, or they have to be. We can just kind of think more broadly about it.

Again, like I said, you and I can kick that can down the road. Only last observation I had about stuff I've seen over the last couple of weeks, David Pluff, who was an Obama veteran, who worked on the Harris campaign, was kind of brought in when she became the nominee, who was trotted out just to every podcast, to every cable news show, to everything to just settle people down. Let's just think about those hits a little more critically, maybe next time. Yeah, man. He was on Aaron Burnett on CNN this, and she was like, she asked him, do you think you can win all seven swing states?

And he said, yes. And that was somehow aggregated as a news item. And I'm like, first of all, what did you expect him to say? No, I don't. We think two of them are completely gone. And both for if he had best. Of course he said that. And I'm like, David Pluff is the calm down the Democrats guy.

Folks, it didn't work. Yeah. Yeah. I just, you know, have you ever thought like, Obama from like 2004 to maybe 2015-16 is like Tom Brady. And it's just like, oh, you're actually just Eric Mancini. Oh, no, actually, you're just, you know, you're, who's the guy that had the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the guy that was the, the, the lion's coach before Dan Campbell. Oh, wow.

Yeah. You're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're the, you're the, you're the Patriots O.C. You happen to be the offensive coach for Tom Brady during the peak of his career. But Tom Brady is Tom Brady. Barack Obama from 2004 to 2015 was a phenomenon. But like it doesn't mean that all the guys who were around him do what the hell they were doing either. And you can see it because they've never been able, nobody has ever been able to rebuild an Obama even though they've tried. To recapture everything around that.

So it's like, man, I don't, I'm no offense to David Ploaf, but I'm just like, hey dog, you might just be Eric Man Genie, bro. You're not Bill Billichette. That's okay. The name you were thinking of is Matt Patricia. Matt Patricia. I had to look it up because our ringer card keys wouldn't work if we could name former Patriots coordinators. Trust me on that one. I know a lot about the Patriots and Celtics and we'll be good. I'm going to get it together. I'm going to get it together here at the ringer. Joel Anderson, it's great to talk to you. I can't wait to do this again with you every Thursday. Thanks for coming on the press box. Thanks, man. I want to keep doing this with you. I don't want to do it under these circumstances every Thursday, but we'll see what happens.

But thanks, man. We'll get to Joel and being Pat McAfee. Thanks for you. I can't wait. I can't wait. All right, coming up on tomorrow's show, Semaphores, Dave Weigel is going to stop by to tell us how Donald Trump won. You're going to want to hear that. And then on Monday, David Shoemaker and I return with more lukewarm takes about the media.

Have a great weekend.