The Press Box - The Mystery of Trump’s Cellphone, Washington’s Newspaper War, and the Art of Covering Congress With the New York Times’ Carl Hulse

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

Today on the Press Box, Bryan and David start by discussing a social media and journalism trend of screenshotting or sharing a part of an article with no attribution or sign pointing to where the article is from. Then, they discuss Trump’s cellphone (20:57), the coverage of the War in Iran (30:05), and the Washington’s new newspaper battle (35:46). They wrap up with Tales from Capitol Hill with the New York Times’ Carl Hulse (45:28). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline! Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David ShoemakerGuest: Carl HulseProducers: Bruce Baldwin, Isaiah Blakely, and Jamie Yukich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David? Yes. Over the weekend, I was scrolling through Twitter, as one does, on a weekend in March. Yeah, absolutely. I came across a tweet from Tommy Veter. You know Tommy Veter, one of the Pod Save Bros. I do, yeah, absolutely.

Oh, the way that you're saying his name, which I believe is the correct way, it sounds like funnily, like hilariously dismissive. Like, it's just like, you know, like, national policy voice Thomas Veter and you're just like Thomas Vitor and you're just over here like you know Tommy Veter you're sensing this night might not be a positive segment go on I didn't say national treasure yeah Tommy Veter Tommy Veter had some very interesting information about Jared Kushner and some of the fundraising that Jared Kushner is doing oh yeah well also serving a

semi-official role in international relations. Here's the problem. There was no sign in National Treasure Tommy Veter's tweet that the info about Jared Kushner came from the New York Times or that it was written by Rob Copeland and Maureen Farrell. There was no link to the story that would... He just attributed it to them, but without linking it to them? He just screenshots it some excellent paragraphs from the New York Times. Okay.

You know, David, I don't like to sound like an old man on this podcast, ringing his hands about issues in journalism. Sure. But if I may, this is a real problem. A real problem. This business is going down the toilet. And somehow media people. Yeah.

Not people, media people. still think it's okay to screenshot some good paragraphs from a news story and tweet it out without any attribution at all. Now forget even plagiarism or rooking an idea. If you were writing a substack and you just screenshot it a couple of good paragraphs from someone else and just pasted it in the middle of your story,

that would not be cool. No. That would be an enormous... I mean, plagiarism. Or something like it. Yeah. It would be in a different font, so I guess you could argue that nobody would think it was your story. But why is that okay on social media?

And more importantly, what could we do about it? Well, I want to address one more thing first. I mean, it's, it's, there's not just the attribution problem. There's also just the, just the more, like the deeper kind of, you know, epistemological problem, which is that, well, the best reading of it is probably not that he forgot the attribution, but that he just assumed by looking at the picture, one would know it was from the New York Times, right? All these New York Times screenshots from cell phones look exactly the same. It's a proprietary Times font. It looks that you can tell it's the New York Times, right? But that's even more

problematic because that means that anybody that has access to a similar font can pose as the New York Times without any question. Because if the norm is to not put any language, links next to it, right? I mean, all it does is by not linking to it, you're normalizing the potential for misinformation out there, right? Yes, yes. So I think, it's been normalized into oblivion at this point. Sure, absolutely. But I mean, but if the limit, I mean, but if the, if the, if the, I mean, if there's really the assumption that we all know what a New York Times story quote looks like, if that crosses your mind, then you're making, you're creating a bigger problem monster for yourself on the back end. But why is it okay? I mean, I think,

that there's just an in that on on the platform and this is not a defense on the platform of twitter or x or whatever there is a sort of i think that the predominant mode of communication is like points and points and comments right that like you would put it just as you would put a picture of like your laundromat with one of the one of the letters and the sign missing and saying look it's funny it spells something else that you would just like instead of citing an article in sort of a real way, you to sort of point to the existence of the article and say, that guy's a dummy or look what they just said. And so in some ways, a screenshot becomes the same as a photo from your photo real. I mean, it is probably a photo from your photo real before it goes up.

But why would not putting the link be okay? I mean, there's no real defense for it, right? I mean, I'm sure that a lot of the people commenting on it, commenting on anything in the moment, feel like they're part of such a massive immediate conversation that the attribution is always just one tweet behind, you know? And it's like it's not, you're not really commenting on the piece so much as you're commenting on the, the conversation around the piece and blah, blah, blah. But it's, but in terms of like not citing your sources, especially when you're in the journalism world, especially when you're someone of, of, of, you know, someone with a bunch of followers, no matter what world you're in. Like, you should, you should take that upon yourself to do it the right way.

completely agree about we all think we're commenting on the thing that everybody's commenting about. Yeah. So we just assume everybody knows. The thing is, it's social media. So we know people just read stuff all out of order. When was the last time you tried to track down the source for something? Not like you felt like it was being malicious, but you're like, you saw like the fourth generation tweet and you're like, let me figure out what he's talking about. And it's like half a day of, you know, just going backwards, going to someone's timeline to read their previous tweets.

It can be such a boondoggle. The biggest point I can make about why this is not old man shaking fist is that all of us would be pissed if this happened to our work. Yes. If it happened to a piece we wrote if somebody, you know, posted some sound and said, here's a dude making some good points on a podcast. Didn't identify who it was, didn't identify the podcast. We'd be furious. Yeah. Rightfully so.

Yeah, for sure. I think in order to head off this behavior. And by the way, I don't want to pick on noted policy analyst Tommy Veter because I did see him linking to some reporting about Mark Wayne Mullen in the New York Times later on. But to head off this behavior, David, we can do a couple of things. One is, let's not call this stealing. That just sounds a little dramatic. Let's call this shoplifting. Okay.

Which I think carries the proper. matter of shame. Yes, I agree. Winona Ryder, shoplifting. You are shoplifting from the New York Times. It's a little bit inverted because I feel like in the modern era the right cares far more about shoplifting on a day-to-day basis than the left.

And I think the priorities here might be a little bit switched, but shoplifting is a perfect term. It doesn't indicate a petty crime like I used to. They're interested in shoplifting and jaywalking unlike previous administration. Yeah. So let's call it shoplifting.

the next question is what's the way to properly shame people is it a passive aggressive tweet where you quote tweet and say hey great reporting here by so and so in the New York Times

blink well yes in some sense what's the what's the traditional penalty for actual shoplifting is generally just like having your photo up in the store right either don't serve this person or customers watch out for this person right

do they do that at like a gap or something put your picture up in the store and say well now i think they might keep some if they had known shoplifters they might keep him in the back you know keep a photo in the back somewhere but but i feel like when we were kids like a like a shoplifter would just get just aired out in front like by the front door you know just like these people not served here you know in some sort of like really broadway i remember also as a kid learning about the existence of store detectives yes somehow we were on to the idea of store detectives which I'm not sure is even a real thing. I think it's just a security guard.

Before that was like, maybe you didn't want to say that you had a security guard. What a cool job that would be to be a store detective. It would really be a cool job. It would sound like a cool job. Every time someone shoplifted,

you're like, guy, he's distracting me from the big case again, you know? Yeah, that would be, yeah, that's pretty awesome. Anybody has a good line that we can add, that we can use as a quote tweet. Read it for yourself. Maybe you need to just set up shoplifting

like the shoplifter's Twitter account, you know, like actually start because that's, that's the bulletin board that I think would really get people's attention, like one of these freezing cold takes or, you know, like, whatever, like you can just if you have an established account on the platform in question, then that's a great way to really, really tisk, tisk somebody. And then maybe you do put their picture, like it's just taped on the bulletin board and you just, and then have their, their, their, um, problematic tweet. Two final notes. on this. One is if you're a reporter, you don't get to complain about Google AI. If you are acting as Google AI, number two, it just sucks to be a reporter right now.

Can you imagine being a New York Times report? Now look, New York Times. So maybe that's a different category. Can you imagine being a reporter at a newspaper, let's say? And podcasters are going to take the work that you've done, even honestly, right? They're just going to go on. going to summarize it on their podcast. They're going to use it to have a show. They're going to have way more fun than you're allowed to have. But if there's like a story that you write that they deem to be, you know, way too even handed or a headline that the framing is off, you're just going to get roasted. What's in it for you? You're like, well, those guys look like they're having tons of fun and, you know, just crapping on me whenever they want. Yeah. I'm here doing the, doing all the legwork. And sometimes,

he knows, but that stuff appears on Twitter and nobody even knows I wrote it for better or worse. All right, David, I'm deputizing you now as a store detective of media Twitter. Here's your bad. We need to bring some law and order to this

to this town. All right, coming up on the press box, more on Donald Trump answering his cell phone. Plus, is J.D. Vance really skeptical about Iran? Washington, D.C. has a newspaper war, and stories from the Capitol Hill beat

as told by New York Times reporter Carl Hulse. All that and much more on the press box. A part of the rigor. Podcast Network. Hello, media consumers. It's Brian Curtis. It's David Shoemaker. It's producers, Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin.

David, we got to start with Iran because the war is now in its 18th day. 18th day. A couple of stories that surfaced over the last week that I wanted to talk to you about. one is the idea of war skeptic j d vans yeah this took flight after a political story by dana narazi and eli stokels see how easy that was which said the following white house officials revealed that the vice president made his opposition known in the lead-up to the war that is pulling the curtain open after months of speculation about vance being far more tepid about military action than trump

They continue. Vance is, quote, skeptical, is, quote, worried about success and, quote, just opposes the war on Iran, a senior Trump official said via text message. The official was granted anonymity to speak about the vice president's views. So that's Politico. On Monday in the Oval Office, standing in front of a big gold eagle, J.D. Vance tried to address this issue. I know what you're trying to do, Phil. You're trying to drive a wedge between members of the administration between me and the president. What the president said consistently, going back to 2015, and I agreed with them, is that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon. We have taken

this military action under the president's leadership. I think all of us, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, should pray for a success and pray for the safety of our troops. That's the approach that I've taken. Make it as successful as possible. So there's no hesitation. What do you mean there's no hesitation with my past statements? Given your... Well, I think one big difference, Phil, is that we have a smart president, whereas in the past we've had dumb presidents. And I trust President Trump to get the job done to do a good job for the American people and to make sure that the mistakes of the past aren't repeated. Absolutely. How should we treat J.B. Vance's alleged skepticism? His anti-war skepticism or is media skepticism? Which one do you want to focus on?

But the latter might be a, might be an hour-long conversation. So why don't we do the war first? I mean, There's a lot of assumptions being made in this field. And some of them, many of them are probably almost certainly right. At the beginning of the conflict, the war, whatever, he was pretty invisible. And I think the widespread assumption was because he was, you know, very vocally anti-intervention, then he was probably sidelined than a lot of this decision-making and continued to be. And then he obviously went out there and got in front of the cameras to probably at the problem,

I'm sure the rest of the administration's behest to be like, no, I'm not being, I'm not hiding, nor am I being hidden, you know, like we're a functional administration here, which might also be true. You know, like, who knows? It's not, it's not wild to consider that, I mean, it's not wild in the time of war that only the president and the, you know, Department of Defense would be the only people out there, like making public statements. The only reason we're interested in Vance is because he spoke out against this war, and he's sort of a proxy for Donald Trump's own voice and all the rest of the anti-war voices

on the Trump campaign on the Trump platform. I don't really want to hear what he has to say, to see if there are any wedges, you know? So dismissing that question is obviously ridiculous and play acting. But it does call on the question, just the degree to which everything we're seeing is sort of play acting, you know?

It's like you're every, every public statement, every, I mean, even down to these like crazy videos of Netanyahu that people are like, you know, dissecting like the Zapruder film every day. And like, I mean, just everything, every public facing aspect of this conflict is just sort of a blurry question mark. You just don't know what to believe. This administration did not invent blustering about the war. No. did they invent claiming they knew this was all going to happen they had prepared for every eventuality and nothing like you know shutting down the straight of four moves surprised them of course it did we were planning for all this long that that's that's pretty normal but i agree there's a level

of bluster here that's fascinating so reporters see vance's skepticism is kind of this way to get inside that to get past the public statements from I'm a hexeth behind the mic at the Pentagon. Or Donald Trump, I guess. I mean, the other thing that's interesting about this, right, is that we don't think of Trump, too, as a team of rivals in any way. Yes.

Trump, one was full of people sending signals through the media. Remember all those Jared Navanka stories? They're not really, you know, down with all this. They're just, you know, just make sure that they, make sure that we know that they're a little bit skeptical about all this. And then, you know, you're Rex tors. Listen, there's some of that going on with, I mean, with Vance as well, certainly before he spoke publicly, there was, there was a big article about it.

I feel like there was like a number of sort of leaks that like, Vance is quietly against this, but not saying anything in public because he wants to be able to run against it when he runs for president or potentially just say, yeah, I was there the whole time, you know, like whatever, but like that he's, so he was doing some pressing, it seemed to be pressing some of his own PR strategy at the same time. And you're right. We don't think of, we do think of the current Trump administration is sort of being in lockstep on all of their, diabolical plans. And I think that's all,

but also, I think that's what makes, what makes, uh, Vance even more interesting here is because, I think there's an element to which we think, we think that not only was, has Trump,

Trump didn't like do a 180 on his no war stance that he was maybe just BSing the whole time about his anti-war stance, right? And so the interesting thing is like, was Vance doing that too and or what happens if you're if you have if you're a person that has one or two like actual points of moral clarity and you've signed yourself up for this absolutely amoral administration that has this not tethered to anything concretely and he go and they they start

rocking against this one thing you care about right I mean that's that's what's really intriguing how much media fun has been had yes we're like okay you have actual ideologues in the administration or something like an idealogue. Yeah. And then Donald Trump does something. Mm-hmm. And they have to pretend that this is the right decision. Yeah.

In this case, because before it was the dumb president. Yeah. Now we have the smart president, so he's handling it differently. Sure. Even though I specifically cited war with Iran as something the United States shouldn't do. Yes. Also, I think something here about. J.D. Vance being a shapeshifter.

Oh, yes, for sure. When Tim Miller was on this pot a couple of weeks ago, he identified that as Vance's political superpower. Go back to that. And maybe the kryptonite as well, you know, if he gets tagged with it. Maybe, yes, exactly, right? Maybe there's a little bit of an Al Gore

kind of, you know, you don't stand for anything. Yeah. But I still remember that VE debate with Tim Walls, where he came in there and I'm a conciliatory nice guy. Mm-hmm. And he is also capable of absolutely playing the other character on Twitter. Yeah.

I'm not a nice guy. I'm just quote tweeting journalists all the time and being a jerk. Yeah. So now you see him thinking about running in a couple of years.

And what's he going to run on? What wing of the movement is he going to try to capture, you know? Then he's also having to deal with the idea that he cannot distance

himself from Donald Trump. That is just completely impossible. No one's been able to do it yet. No one's been able to do it yet. No one's been able to do it yet. Trump might not even want an air, so who knows how Trump's going to treat J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio. We've had reports that he's been asking audiences, who do you think?

Yeah. It should be the Republican nominee in 28. And remember, even Joe Biden, we found out later in the Obama White House was like, don't get rolled by the generals. Don't get rolled by the generals when it comes to Afghanistan. And then, oh, you let yourself get rolled by the generals. He wanted us to know that he'd been in Obama's ear. Yeah. as a skeptic about Afghanistan and about war.

And he would use that later as a way to increase his political standing or sort of, you know, British his credentials. It's a fascinating game that's being played right now. It is. Yeah, I mean, it's all sort of jockeying for some point in the future. And like I said, every statement has to be just dissected. You know, like there's nothing, nothing is being said. I mean, and you talk about all the.

misinformation coming out of this administration. I mean, didn't say explicitly that like Trump isn't saying the same thing, you know, if he gets interviewed twice in one day, he'll say something different. And that's not necessarily deliberate misinformation so much as it is just like Trump being Trump. But there's never. But there's certainly never been a conflict like this in terms of just the information that's coming out of it. Speaking of which, this is the week that Donald Trump's cell phone. became president.

Because we had multiple stories about journalists ringing Trump. Yeah. To use an old-fashioned word. To get the exclusive on what's going to happen with the war to Iran. By the way, I forgot to mention this when we talked about this the other day, but during Trump won, I had a media person, a sports media person tell me that Donald Trump was still answering his cell phone. Anonymous sports media person, you were right.

Let me tell you over the airwaves right now. Listen, I just want to say this. I know that this is totally fantasizing on my part. Not in like I'm fantasizing in some wonderful way, but like I'm making this up. But I imagine that in a time of war, Trump has probably more free time than ever. Because, and I'm reading some of myself into this situation too,

he's probably not super involved in the military campaign but because it's a time of war he has like he feels the freedom to cancel everything else on his agenda right there's no there's no piddly meetings there's no boring meetings there's no like obligatory with the Chinese yeah well big meetings too and he's just and you know if there's if you're going to have a photo off with one of your ministers or whatever like you just forget

about it just like whatever we're in a time of war just let me you know but in but in reality he's just like not getting out of bed You know, he's just like, well, I don't have anything to do today. This is great. My first free day in three months or whatever. So he probably has a lot of time to answer his phone. And it's like, oh, it's Natalie Alice in the Washington Post. See what she wants.

Michael Sherer and Ashley Parker, who have partaken in the presidential cell phone, wrote about this in the Atlantic. I'll quote you a few lines here. Officials say substack authors have started to call forcing White House staff to look up names they don't. recognize. That made me smile. I wish they'd been name some of them. Like, what level of substack? Like, is it whoever has the phone number is going to call? Or is it just like, like, is there a hierarchy here? You think the press secretaries are just like, I mean, the press people are like, yeah, you need at least like 100,000 substack subscribers to get through to the president? There's no way. Have you seen the list of people to call? You don't

necessarily have to have lots of readers to get through. That's great. It's just where the president picks up. Don't you? Doesn't it feel like in our childhood this would be just exclusively that, I mean, wouldn't like Howard Stern be calling in three times a show just to see if you get him on the phone? Like, where's radio in all of this?

That's exactly right. Can I get Donald Trump on the air right now? Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, it's sad we don't have a functioning morning radio business. Or even live on TV. Like, wouldn't that be a great, like, Chris Haynes gimmick? Just like every show ends with him trying to call the president?

You're talking about Chris Hayes? But I say, Hayes. I'm talking about Chris Hayes. I apologize. Chris Haynes could be great, too. Let's get him calling, too, because Trump might pick up for that as well. Let's see if Trump's tuning into halftime. Sherer and Parker continue here.

We were recently approached by another journalist who offered to trade more than two dozen cell phone numbers of significant stature for the one number of most significant stature. We declined. One person we talked with has heard that the going rate for this sort of swap is one-to-one trade for another major world leader. The crazy thing about a phone number swap is like you don't know if you're being played, right?

Like if you're the one with Trump's cell phone, and they're like, oh, I got Yijan Ping right here. It's like you're just getting a, what are you getting just like a piece of? of paper like you're like taking a photo off their phone are they actively sending it to you it does bump still work where you just exchange you know that's your own number um this is like the old days at a bar where you didn't want to give somebody numbers to give him a fake one yeah yeah exactly i call it later that night another one happened why would you know and you don't know if they're

giving you a real thing so why on earth would you be giving them a real thing right wouldn't you if you're the guy with jing jing ping's phone number wouldn't you also have fake jing ping queued up just for these situations. One of all these other world leaders answering their cell phone. It's a great point. Keir Starmor just picking up and giving you quotes about this and that. Yeah, that would be funny if you had like, again, Kier Starmor, another major world leader and you're like, I can't believe I have this and you call it up and it's just his office

that dialed through. Or he's like, please call my press office. Do not contact me again. Yeah. And you've traded. Well, right. If somebody, but if a president did it properly, then what? they would have switched over to the Android or whatever the maximum security phone is.

And that phone would have presumably been put on ice or be running through a different channel or switchboard or something like that, right? I mean, it's, it's hard to imagine that many, most other world, first world leaders would be as, would be as interesting as having Donald Trump's. A White House official tells Semaphore's Max Tanny that during the calls, quote, Trump is often preoccupied, puts them, meaning the reporters on speaker in front of a large group of people. And he is loosely chatting and has fun messing with them. Reporters who think they are being serious journalists by calling him are frankly doing

themselves a disservice. Now we can correct there for a little media bashing from this anonymous White House official. But there is a really interesting question about what you do with this information. About what you do if you're in a meeting with Trump and he's like, hold on, I got a phone call. This is going to be funny. No, not of your Not if you're Oh my gosh, the generals are sitting in front of you

And you're just like, hold on, you're going to love this. Don't worry. There's the old question of like, is everything the president says news? Even when he's lying or just saying things, making things up on the spot to get through the next two minutes of his life.

Yeah. The old thing for Maggie Abrams is Trump is just entirely situational. So I'm on. the phone, what am I going to say to get the question number two or just get off this call completely? That's the old question about Trump, which definitely applies here. The interesting part of this is when it comes to the Iran

war, which is what everybody's calling him about, he's the answer to the question. When will the war end? There's one person who is going to make that decision. It's Donald Trump. So he actually,

I don't know if he has the information but he is going to going to be the one who is going to end the war whenever it ends. So he is the person to call. He's the primary source in this case. It's just that I don't know that you can take anything he says seriously or that it's a quote of exclusive rather, you know, worth running to Twitter with. I think some people might quibble with your saying it is the one that makes the decisions. But again, even if you think it's somebody else, then it's him one of two. Then you're trying to trick Trump into a green with you, right? I mean, it's like Trump does sort of have to green light.

at least like go out and go out in front of a camera and say yes the war is over but i think that the deeper question that you're getting at that everybody's getting at is that there's a widespread assumption that trump will decide the war is over sort of capriciously right that it'll just be like that whatever day it occurs to him that it feels like it should be over that will be the day that he's that he proclaims it over regardless you know logistics be damned and um and that part in so much is you're calling trump you're you know cold calling trump on his cell phone is unknowable, right? You don't, if, if, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, we're, we're going to proceed according to a plan, do a blue, to a blueprint, then you wouldn't have to ask Trump.

You would know, you know, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and that's exactly why asking him is, whatever. Um, um, but it's, but we don't know. We don't know. We don't know, because it's all up to Trump's just sort of. Wim. Whim. Whim, exactly. And that's exactly why asking him is utterly worthless. All you can do is you're just calling and calling and calling, hoping that you'll be the one that calls the second before he's just like, yeah, fuck it, this is over.

And then you're like, I got the exclusive. Yeah. But like. And you were right. Yeah. But there's, but up until that point and it's, you know, it's all fake. And that point itself is unknowable. Like, we'll just never know until Trump decides it's or is, you know,

compelled to decide it's over. I was listening to his press conference this morning as I was driving into the office. It's just like, you're like, I don't know what to make of any of that. You know, it's going to, we're going to end it pretty soon. Again, we're on day 18. We've been saying pretty soon for a number of days. Yeah.

You sent me a note the other day about how much the media is covering Iran or maybe how much Iran news is in each of our personal feeds. You want to expand on that? man. Well, I was texting you, I think, because I hopped in my car and where I am in, in, um, uh, South Jersey, central Jersey, Jersey, whatever we can, like we get New York and Philly in PR. So I have like those two and, you know, the Philly Sports Radio or like my go to radio stations when I'm just tooling around. And it was fairly early going in the war, probably like right at the week, one week mark or something like that. And, um, and the first

channel, you know, I turn on the car and NPR wasn't talking about the war and I popped over to the other one. NPR wasn't talking about the war and then I popped over to sports radio and they certainly weren't talking about the war. But it did occur to me. I was just like, it was surprising to me that neither of those channels were covering this major event at the moment, that's a random moment that I turned on the car, right? Like, this is not, this is, this is an anecdote. There's no data here at all. it was a random moment, but my gut reaction was like, damn, why aren't you covering the important thing? Well, I'm only listening to it for one second. But then you do sort of notice driving around. You're like, well, now they're talking about, you know, the Iraq, I mean, the Iran situation.

And like, but now they've decided like, A, B, and C have enough newsworthiness to be, to be injected in there, you know. And so you just kind of wonder, like, what's the calculus? Like, like, how much do you cover a war when the war's going on? You know, our experience with this is is still not very deep. I mean, what's the concentric circle for like an international conflict that America has been involved in and 24-hour cable television? I mean, 24-hour news TV, you know, CNN was certainly there during the first Iraq war to some extent, but it was nothing like the coverage that we have now.

And I think by refusing to really, I mean, they kind of kept the war on terror and the war in Afghanistan sort of vague enough that there were embedded troops, I mean, embedded journalists, we heard all about that. But it was never the top, it didn't ever feel like the top priority, maybe because it was going on for so long,

beyond the first six months or so on cable news. All that's to say, I'm sure they probably have a number, don't you think that if you go to CNN headquarters, if you go to NPR headquarters or whatever, they're probably like, we, like, we want to hit but not exceed 50% of our, of our coverage be about the war?

I think so. I mean, I think they start with. It's definitely the top story today. Yeah. Especially at a place like CNN or one of the big papers. And then you work from there and think how much of what we're doing should be devoted to this. And it's a fascinating question in 2026 because most of us,

besides us holdouts who still get a paper on the lawn every day, most of us have moved away from the idea of a front page. Yep. So we're consuming more news than we ever have. We are not consuming it in a hierarchical way. We're less aware of what the hierarchy is. I mean, you're even thinking if somebody sits down to watch, you know, Wolf Blitzer in the situation room for a minute one.

Yeah, how many segments are directly related to the war, right? Would you even know? I mean, you know, you could turn on your car radio and sample it pretty well. but you're less aware of it than you've ever been. And if you want to avoid it entirely as a consumer, you can pretty easily. You know, maybe your Twitter feed's going to be consumed with it, but otherwise you can find your way around it.

So that's part of it. But I do think the question is fascinating, especially since, I mean, forget all the domestic policy issues that should be important, should be in front of our face right now. Yeah. We have another foreign policy adventure right now happening. It's in Cuba. happening right off our shores.

Trump got asked about it in the press conference today. This is not a critique of the quote unquote media. They're covering both. But when you talk about level of importance hierarchy, how much should Cuba be on the front page if there is still such a thing as a front page versus Iran? That's a great question. I come back to the interview I had with Tim Kane. I'll actually play just a little bit of this.

This is what Kane said about Cuba, which is, I think, a very interesting way to think about. The United States is trying to oppose an economic clampdown on Cuban. If any nation was doing that to us, we would view it as an act of war. Call it a blockade, call it a quarantine. But, you know, imagine if China and Russia said, we're going to block all commerce into ports in the United States and deprive you have access to, you know, energy or food or medicine, even if they weren't using, you know, military missiles lobbed in the net.

We would view it as an act of war. And... So if it's an active war, how much screen time should it share with another active war? Yeah. Interesting question. Well, that would be the biggest instance of the flood the zone, the Trump flood the zone theory and all in his entire, in both of his presidencies, right? Just, I'm going to start a second war so that nobody will have the energy to cover it, basically. Kind of what we're doing.

It feels like right now. Yeah, I mean, let's hear of Cuba and Iran have come right on top of each other. Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, it's like the Iran thing was conspiracy theory. I'm not saying that it's wrong, but there is, you know, a lot of people are like, we're doing this to distract from the Epstein list or from like whatever else. But if you launch a war in the midst of an unnecessary war in the midst of another unnecessary war, then clearly you're just trying to flood the zone.

In other news, David, the Washington Post lost three more writers on Monday. Mm-hmm. That's not new. What's new, as Tanny noted in semaphore, is that Washington, D.C. now has a newspaper. A newspaper war? A newspaper war, if I may use that in non-war sense of the term. The departing post writers are Dana Milbank, columnist who had been at the paper 26 years, congressional correspondent Paul Kane, and economics reporter Jeff Stein.

As to why he left, Stein tweeted, my faith in the paper's current leadership is broken beyond repair. Wow. Just one way to go out. Now, these three writers did not tell us they'll have some news to announce soon like a lot of journalists do. Watch the space. Go on. They told us where they're going.

They're going to notice. No, T-U-S notice. The oddly named website that was founded by Robert All Britain, who once upon a time founded Politica. Well, notice is getting rebooted. Just to be clear, it's a funny spelling of notice, N-O-T-I-C-E, right? Like it would be like a, like a, some sort of a pamphlet. But is it supposed, are we also supposed to see not us in the title?

And what is the implication there? I get so confused whenever I see a link to it, because I always assume that I'm looking at a government website. that I don't understand. Oh, yeah, not U.S. So it's going to get a new name. Tanny notes that they have trademarked the name the Washington Sun. I like that.

So it may sound like a newspaper. Yeah. But in a muscular internal memo yesterday, notices Brain Trust said that they are creating the next great Washington Newsroof, a team of reporters and editors who will cover government, politics, policy, local news, and D.C. sports with the power of the Washington Post in the 70s. That's Woodstein's time. The punch of Politico in the 2010s.

That's Savannah Hyan Harris's time. And the audience focus required to build a sustainable news organization in 26. They're going to take their staff of 50 and nearly double it. I already hired Sam Fortier, one of those refugees from what we used to call the Washington Post Sports page. So add that to the. athletic and the Baltimore banner elbowing in.

Yeah. On DC sports coverage with veterans of that same sports page. Isn't this just the absolute, isn't that like the dream job? Isn't it weirdly just like the most perfect thing in the world to be working, you know, whatever, to get your VC by being like a fake Axiost style startup. And it's weird that it's notice and not one of these existing institutions that's just swooped in. I mean, I'm, you know, I can assume that the axioses of the world,

maybe don't have all the interest in sports that you or I might, but like you would assume the guys at Semaphore would be in a day, you know, like somebody with a bunch of VC, maybe not, maybe not. Ben Smith's a sports fan, I'm not sure.

Yeah. I just, and he thinks likes the Lakers, but we'll do more research on that. But regardless, to be coming from the, the VC world, right,

the tech world, even though you're just being a journalist, but like being one of these sort of like journalism startups. And then when the, Washington Post makes such a gaff that you can be like, you know what the real way forward in this modern ages? You know, the real way to really grow? It's pretty, you're going to be shocked.

It's printing a daily newspaper. It's a vanishingly small line item, but there's like hundreds of thousands of people in D.C. who just wish something else existed. And you get to do it without all the accumulated historical stuff that has built up at newspaper. you mean the staff size or you mean the reputation of the paper the staff size and i just think the approach on covering some of the stuff yeah like if you were creating a sports section now you wouldn't create a sports section like it was from 1982 no you know even i might not say

i don't know you know 162 baseball games we're on the we're on the road for half of those really oh yeah we you know we have beat writers instead of kind of columnist slash beat writer you know you just You start over in a different way. Sure, absolutely. So now that you're doing this, you don't have to, like, change anybody's job or take away anybody's job. You just create the jobs you want to create. Yeah.

You might say, we're not covering hockey really at all unless the capitals get really, really good, and then we have to do it. You know, like you just sort of figure your way of the wizards. It's a better example, you know. We'll wait until the wizards are really good before we spend time and money on basketball, right? We'll start here. We'll start with the commanders.

You just think about it in a completely different. way. It's true. But the Washington Post, by abandoning it completely and filling their sportsics with wire copy, has given you that opportunity. At one million percent, yes. I mean, that's obviously what happened. Yeah, it is, it is interesting.

I mean, obviously the athletic has, you know, did things on their own terms, but did it in a kind of buy the books, very robust way that, you know, at the beginning, especially, we're having major staffs and all the big sports cities and someone covering every team and all that kind of stuff. So it's interesting to see how you would start from scratch. It would obviously be very different than the athletic. It's also interesting, like you said wire copy. You mentioned wire copy.

It's interesting to see how many, to see how much of the calculus is, how do we do this in a vacuum too? If we're not relying on ESPN and wire services and stuff, like what would be the right way to build a sports desk that had to rely on, it had to stand on its own, even in the modern era. But that's sort of esoteric, I guess. I'm going to guess what they're going to do is do what people had suggested the post-try, which is, what if we built a sports desk or something that's primarily now of politics newspaper?

Yeah. People are coming for Trump news. So let's make sure that most of our sports stories are the kind of thing those people would want to read. Water cooler highlights and big think. Ideas driven. Business and sports sort of features. Business of sports. Stephen A for president, idea-driven stuff.

You've heard about this NIL thing. Let me explain to you what that's all about in college sports. But then it goes back to maybe the most inconsequential, but most central, weirdly question, which is like, how much do you cover Georgetown basketball? You know, like how, like to what degree is this a D.C. sports page? It's, it is. And I think the answer to that at these new places will be you don't unless, unless it becomes something that everybody's talking about.

And then you're on it. You kind of wait for the old sports page approach. We cover everything, everybody and everything. Yeah. And if the team stinks, we either pull the writer off the road for the rest of the season or we just stick the paper. We stick the stories back of the back of the section. Or you kind of invert things and almost like put a lot of that coverage on the back

of your generalists, right? It's just like you write about whatever you want to, but like you should be having lunch which with like, you know, the Georgetown coach once a month. You should be having, you know, whatever, like keep everything on your radar so that you're the one with the inn when the moment comes.

Sort of. Somebody was joking to me that every publication in the world right now wants to rip off the Financial Times as Lunch With column. Yes. So lunch with the Georgetown coach. We don't know. Who is it Georgetown coach?

We'll do that. Isn't it somebody obvious? Georgetown coach. A little little, little, easy for me right now. It should be a little hazy for me. I was the first one that said it without knowing it.

Let's see. Ed Cooley. Lunch with Ed Cooley. Are you in? I'm in. You know the classic story about sticking the teams, the crappy team's stories in the back of the paper? Oh, yeah.

Ray Rado. Great Ray Rado was covering the San Francisco Giants before he became a columnist. Sure. and he started one of his gamers. Meanwhile, back here among the tire ads, exactly how crummy they were that year. All right, coming up at 30 seconds, stories from the glory days of covering Capitol Hill.

But first, David, 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 at exactly the same time, send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always, always gratefully received. Got a couple of great ones from the Oscars. You noticed that Sean Penn didn't show up.

We later found out he was in Ukraine. But it was a small-time, overwork Twitter joke to see Sean Penn got stuck at the office. That made me laugh. You've seen one better after another. Yes. But one of the only truly suspenseful categories this Sunday was the best actor award that went to Michael B. Jordan.

Yeah. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, if there's a young actor named LeB. James, we could have an interesting debate in a few years. Thanks to Greg Horowitz for breaking his Twitter fast to tell us about that one. If you thought, my God, not the Oscars too. Congrats, you made the Overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook, David, we've done some tales from the locker room with the Warriors, with the Lakers. I thought we should do Capitol Hill.

so when I was in Washington, I met Carl Hulse, the chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, kind enough to sit down with me in a senator's office. He has been covering the hill in various capacities since 1985. Hulse told me when he got to Washington, the boys on the bus generation, those Johnny Apples and David Broder's were still the stars in Washington. He's one of the guys now that's a link to that era.

also an interesting guy because Capitol Hill is kind of a way station for political writers. Yeah. You do the hill and then you move to the White House. Mm-hmm. Or you move somewhere else. He has mostly stayed on the hill and he said he did because it is the best beat in Washington. Probably it's the best beat in town because you get to wander around. You can talk to everyone. People don't have to talk to you, but they generally will, right? It's opposed to try and get him on the phone. They can blow you off. these people are big-time politicians and they usually, unless it's some really bad confrontational thing, they usually will try and talk at least a little bit. And, you know, White House is very restricted and where you can move around the Pentagon.

You used to be really good for this too, and now they've kicked everyone out. So in some ways, this is the last place in the city where you have, you can roam. When you say you can talk to people, it's somewhat analogous to a sports writer wandering into a locker room. Correct. Very similar, actually, except most of the time that people are fully clothed here. I asked Hulse, okay, so if the joy of covering the hills, you can just walk up and talk to however you want, do you have a technique for buttonholing a congressperson in the hallway? Yeah, it definitely is. I mean, and everybody has their own style. Mine is sort of the sidel up, I guess you would say.

So good to know that the sidel is predominant. What is the CITL? Is this within Capitol Hill? It's so strange the geography of it. Are you talking, speaking about being on Capitol Hill or in? You're talking about the inside the Capitol. Okay. I guess the CITL. There's that Senate subway. Yeah. Stop them at the subway. Yeah, they never really go outside. The Cydell takes on a slightly creepier ambience outdoors, right? You're just sort of, you're suddenly, you're walking down the street and suddenly somebody's walking right over your shoulder. Yeah, no, it's. It sounds like a great beat.

You know, you can get whatever questions you want. So you brought us to the next thing I asked Hulse's about. What's the line about Washington? It's a small town. You do see everybody, not just inside the Capitol, but outside as well. Hulse lives on Capitol Hill, so he embodies this in many ways. He lived next door to many years to North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad. Okay.

Next door to him. Crazy. Hulse told me sometimes he'll be out walking his dog and he would see a Congress member on a Sunday morning. And they both look at each other and think, I just don't want to talk to you right now. Just kind of go their separate ways without saying anything. Here's one time that walking his dog in Washington worked out for the best. I do tell a funny story. There was a senator from Colorado who was a vet.

And one day I was walking my dog and I caught up to him and he's like, oh my God. And I'm like, hey, Senator, this dog's got a problem. Could you take a look at it? And we had my dog spread out on the street. And I swear it was the happiest is Senator ever been with me. He's actually just doing the veterinarian thing instead of talking politics. And he actually diagnosed what was wrong with the dog? Yeah, he said it was like an infected flea bite. It wasn't super sophisticated. It's an amazing service to get from an elected member of the United States Senate. It paid off. I believe that was Republican. Wayne Allard.

Well, he said vet. I was expecting something else, unless I've just had it wrong this whole time. Is that when they say respect our vets? Is that what they're talking about? Well, in Wayne Allard's case, it certainly was. I was asking about great quotes in the Senate. Yeah. Those members of Congress that you could go up to and know you were going to get something

you could put in the newspaper. Paul was telling me he covered lots of senators who were vet vets. veterans of World War II like Ted Stevens or Vietnam like John McCain. They'd been in war, so they were not afraid of the White House, whether it was the opposition party in the White House or their party at the White House. They would give you good stuff. Hulse also talked to me about covering one Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts. Of course, you could go have a few drinks with Ted and get him to tell you stuff.

and he just, he knew how to really talk to reporters. But the funny thing about Ted Kennedy was he never finished a sentence. He was hard to get a quote out of him. And his staff knew this. It's like, because he always just started talking over his own sentence. So it was always like, finish your sentence, Senator. I'm going to need a full one here. So if you're knocking back a few with Teddy,

was that understood to be off the record, on the record, some combination of the book? Backgroundish, yeah. I mean, there used to be no secret. I mean, there was a lot more sort of drinking around the Capitol than there is now, although you still see it, but it was much different back then. Not to valorize Ted and Kennedy and alcohol. But can you imagine as a reporter drinking a couple of cold ones in a background-ish situation with Ted Kennedy? Yeah.

Hulse was telling me like the cell phone comes around and that ends a lot of that drinking culture on Capitol Hill he's talking about. Yeah. And then reporters, you know, kind of coming through and moving on to other things. There's not the lifer on the hill types, you know, you had the relationships with people to do that. It's just really fascinating. Yeah, that's really interesting too. I mean, obviously cable news that we cover all the time, but indirectly, I mean, more directly through social media, through our cell phones, changed everything a lot because as soon as the Hill reporter became sort of like a minor celebrity,

then of course there's a different career trajectory there. You know, I mean, as soon as you know who all these people are, then there's a certain level of esteem that comes with that. And yeah, people's motivations shift. The other thing the cell phone changes, these people just work all the time now. Yeah. You're not, you know, playing for one big story for the paper

and you've got to get in before it closes. I mean, Jake Sherman has tweeted 9,000 times since you and I started recording this podcast. True. microphones and, you know, the phases of innumerable congressmen. They're just stuff going on. Every, uh, buddy like Holst, who's covered a beat for a long time, has a couple of great stories.

So we'll close with this. Hulse got a scoop that Harry Reid was going to retire from the Senate. Huge story. Harry Reid leaving the Senate. So Hulse reports a story. He gets quotes from Reed. And then he goes down to Florida to report. a different story.

And he will publish his Harry Reid scoop from there. Now, the thing is that there have been one of those so-called votaramas in the Senate the night before. Hulse was publishing the scoop. So all the reporters on Capitol Hill were up incredibly late doing their jobs. Yeah. And here is Hulse on what it was like to publish. He's exclusive from a South Beach Hotel the following morning. So I'm sitting there the next morning about to break this Harry Reid story.

I'm literally looking out my hotel room at the palm trees and the ocean. And I'm like hitting the button on this story. And I'm like, I am just about to ruin the morning of so many people who've been up all night. Right. And just hit this. And within like 45 seconds, people are on to this story. All my colleagues, they're just really bitching. It's like, how could you do this?

We've been up all night. I actually apologized on Twitter later that day for the timing of it. But it was a heck of a scoop. Motion that's very common among reporters, maybe under-discussed. I'm not only going to get one for me, I'm going to ruin your day, too. Yeah. You are going to be chasing this. Your editor is going to be pissed that you didn't get it.

Yeah. You're going to be trying to match it. You're not going to be able to really match it because I already got it. Yeah. Amazing stuff. All right. It's time for a feature that is often conducted from South Beach Hotel Rooms. It's time for David Shoemaker guesses, the strained pun headline.

Yeah. Last Tuesday's headline about a criminal pig was bacon and entering. So good. Today's headline comes to us from seven different listeners. I will thank you on social media. It's from CBS Sports, David. The Big 12 basketball tournament featured an LED glass floor instead of hardwood. Yeah.

It looked cool, but then the players started slipping. So they had to bring the old hardwood back for the end of the tourney. I want you to think of LED disasters. LED pronounced a different way. As you ponder, what was CBS Sports' strained pun headline? Lead, like a lead balloon? Oh, we got it. All right.

So it went over like an LED balloon. That's great. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Great Exit Magic by Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin. We aren't nearly done with March, folks. We've got another special in-studio political guest

as the press box primary rolls on. That's coming next week. We're also going to have the March issue. It's going to be me and Joel Anderson. That will be out Monday, March 30th. David has already submitted an excellent cover. Yeah. Which he labored on for many, many hours.

See, David, I'm just making sure if bosses don't know that you did that instantaneously. Anyway, you'll be able to see that cover very soon on our Instagram page at Pressbox Ringer on Instagram. David will be back next Tuesday where he will be sharing even more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.