The Press Box - The One-Month-Till-Iowa Campaign Check-In, Draymond’s Swing, Belichick’s Silence, and the Campaign Reporter’s Reading List

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

For the 'Press Box: Final Edition,' Bryan is joined by Washington Bureau Chief at Semafor, Benjy Sarlin. One month out from the Iowa Caucuses, they discuss Nikki Haley pulling in front of Ron DeSantis in the polls (2:21), and the low ratings for the campaign debates (19:49). Later, they react to Draymond Green’s latest flagrant foul that got him suspended indefinitely, and his apology to Jusuf Nurkić  (31:34). Next, they react to Bill Belichick’s response to a reporter asking him about his future in New England (38:25). They close the show with Bryan asking Benjy who does he read and watch that makes him feel smarter during a campaign (43:10). Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Benjy Sarlin Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, humanoids. This is David Chewaker here with a very exciting announcement. Your favorite wrestling podcast feed, The Ring of Wrestling show, is now going daily. And you can hang out with me and Kaz on Mondays and Thursdays for the Masked Man Show. And you can join me, Peter Rosenberg, alongside Stack Guy Greg and Dip every Tuesday with cheap heat. And on Fridays, I'll welcome a friend or special guest from the world of wrestling. Now, on Wednesdays, we have a very special new show called Wednesday Worldwide that you're going to want to check out. Paperview reaction, one-of-a-kind interviews, fantasy booking, talking about bagels, that's what we do here on the ringer wrestling show.

Follow the show now on Spotify and do us a favor. Give us five stars. And do us another favor and stay major. Hello, media and consumers. Welcome to Press Box Final Edition, Brian Curtis of the Ringer here along with producer Brian Waters. Coming up on today's show, a bunch of nosy questions about the 2024 campaign. Like, what does it matter if Nikki Haley? overtakes Ron DeSantis for distant second place.

And is it too early to write the DeSantis campaign obituary? Also, the Warriors, Draymond Green clocked another player in the face during a game this week and then told NBA writers he didn't mean to. We cosplay as those NBA writers. We also cosplay as the NFL writers who were trying to get answers out of Bill Belichick about his future in New England. And we learn, what do the pros covering the campaign read and watch that makes them smarter.

Joining me today is one such pro. He is Benji Sarlin, Semaphors Washington Bureau Chief, my old cubicle mate at the Daily Beast, many, many campaign cycles ago. He is also my pal, Benji. Welcome back to the press box. So good to be here again, Brian. All right, I got a bunch of campaign 2024 questions for you,

because as of tomorrow, we are one month out from the Iowa caucuses. It's crazy, right? sneaks up on you. But it's actually going to happen. Time flies when the polls don't move at all, doesn't it? It does. It does. It's just been kind of a stasis for a long time. I have to say, this is

probably the least attention the run up to Iowa has gotten in a very long time. So the one little blip we've had over the last couple of weeks is that Nikki Haley, at least in some national polls, has overtaken Ron DeSantis. Meaning she is

the very distant second place to Trump. Is that a meaningful story in any way? Well, it depends on how you look at it. If you are of the perspective that those same polls have Trump up 25, 35, even 40 points above his opponents, and this is all a sideshow and it doesn't really matter, then no, it doesn't matter a lot. However, if you do think kind of like work your way backwards to what a plausible defeat of Trump might look like, or at least someone giving them a run for their money, it's one of these remaining candidates,

and really just Haley or DeSantis, consolidating support, knocking out one of them, knocking out the other one decisively, getting a base of all the people who are dead set against Trump, and then from there, hoping that the enthusiasm and the momentum and the sudden, you know, burst of attention

that comes with, you know, voters actually voting in Iowa and actually voting in New Hampshire, brings them a new level of support, with people who are kind of, quote-unquote, soft Trump supporters who are saying they're voting for him, but maybe they're not 1,000% committed. That is, as I've been putting in the office,

that's the thermal exhaust port in the Death Star. You're starting to see kind of what it looks like there. But it is very much like a thermal exhaust port in the Death Star. You have to hit this tiny mark where everything goes right. And, and, but it is a basic prerequisite to even starting that trench run and firing a missile at that little spot, that, you know, Haley or DeSantis, one of them decisively knocks the other out. And to stick with your metaphor here, Luke Skywalker and Biggs Darklighter, have to carry out

this mission as quickly as Joe Biden did in 2020. The momentum would have to flip that fast during a primary campaign? Yeah, and there's at least a little precedent for something like that. It's not that there's a precedent for someone ahead by as much as Trump and as well, known as Trump losing at this point. I mean, no one has had leads like this going into Iowa, for example. It's just like another level. But there is a precedent for people really rapidly swinging towards someone who has maybe not been polling that well once they see them actually winning or once they start really paying attention to the race and starting to really get a sense

of their options or even once they think that it's possible a race is more competitive than it used to be. I mean, the example people cite most often is the incredible burst of momentum that Obama got from winning Iowa in 2008, where, you know, he was really quite the underdog nationally to Hillary Clinton pretty much the entire time. But that set off this sort of chain of events that made it a competitive race overnight. And it's not like he won immediately. They had an extremely long, drawn-out fight that went state by state. But that's what made it competitive to the point that Obama eventually ended up winning. So the short answer here is that Nikki Haley getting to distant second makes it slightly more

likely that Nikki Haley then pulls off a huge upset of Trump if 19 other things go right. Yeah, and I can get into a little more of the detail of how this works. Now, it's not just her getting ahead of DeSantis nationally because, you know, like we said, there is no national primary. And we just gave the Obama example, right, where Hillary Clinton was leading him nationally and then once he wins in Iowa, that changes. Here's the situation now. Trump looks like he just has Iowa unclosed to lockdown this far out.

There is just zero sign that anyone is especially gaining on him. Candidates drop out and their support just seems to go towards Trump as much as anyone else. You know, the gold standard pollster, the Des Moines Register poll, you know, they found him above 50%, which is a pretty good place to be a month out, you know, and no one even remotely closed. I don't think anyone cracks the 20s. However, New Hampshire is a bit of another story. And they have an entirely different set of voters than Iowa, who often like to go the exact opposite route of Iowa.

They have a long history of, oh, you pick so-and-so in Iowa, we don't care. We're picking someone completely different and we're proud of it. That is the opportunity maybe for someone like Haley or DeSantis to get some momentum with maybe a better than expected performance in Iowa that maybe decisively knocks someone out, and then really try to actually tie or beat Trump in New Hampshire, which is a long shot, but not quite as crazy as it sounds for a few reasons. One, New Hampshire tends to be a little more moderate, more secular. Someone like Nikki Haley has been pulling quite well there. She seems to be a better fit for the place.

Someone like Chris Christie has actually, who you probably forgot was running, actually is sitting on a decent amount of support in New Hampshire, because he's the kind of candidate who often wins in those states, kind of these more northern, relatively more moderate, relatively less pro-life Republicans who has an appeal there. The other factor there is that independence and Democrats can switch pretty easily and vote in the Republican primary, which is something that Christy and Haley are probably going to need to have happen if they are going to have a chance at winning it. and, you know, to varying degrees are pretty actively cultivating it. So this is especially relevant because there might not really be a competitive primary in the Democratic side.

It's a weird situation where Biden is facing a threat from Dean Phillips, but Biden is also not even on the ballot in New Hampshire because it's being sanctioned by Democrats for going out of place in their calendar. So there might be room for a bunch of Democrats who assume that the primary is over there to be like, well, maybe I should go and take a look at Haley and at least screw. with Trump. So tease that out first just a second because I think that's one of the more interesting subplots on the Democratic side. Dean Phillips, who is a congressman mounting this, I don't think Joe Biden should run again candidacy, is on the ballot New Hampshire. Joe Biden, who wanted to switch the calendar around and reward the state of South Carolina, which gave him all that 2020 momentum, is not on the ballot in New Hampshire. But if Dean Phillips were to, to quote unquote beat Joe Biden in New Hampshire,

then maybe that would be interpreted symbolically in some way? Yeah. In fact, there is an effort on the ground to try to write in Biden, to spare that situation from happening. Even if the president, you know, the sitting president by his choice is not on the ballot there, and he's facing someone who just has their own run of things and is trying to, you know, make a go at it,

it obviously would be embarrassing if he lost to, you know, a virtually unknown congressman, doesn't seem to have much traction so far in general. And one of the ironies of this is that Dean Phillips is trying really hard to get on the ballot late in other states where he's complained he's been left off. And some of the state officials there disagree. They say he just hasn't met basic deadlines or procedural requirements yet. And maybe he'll get on later in some of these cases. But there is an irony that the situation is such that Dean Phillips is begging to get on the ballot in later states and in the first state, he's going to try to get the big spark for his campaign by

competing where Biden is not on the ballot. So it's an unusual case. One of the great cherished rituals of a campaign cycle is that political reporters get to write the obituary of a campaign the moment it ends. And with Ron DeSantis, I don't think we should wait. I think we can go ahead and do it right now. So if you're writing the early chapter in Game Change 24. Here is where it went wrong for Ron DeSantis. What moment would you point to? Well, first of all, I would say, yes, you are right. There are certainly a lot of word docs in a folder somewhere at the major newspapers of people who have been gathering quotes and string and writing their best hot takes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guarantee you it would be a lot of fun to go through those

right now. But I would pick a few moments. To me, the biggest mistake, tactical mistake, that I I think everyone in Ronda Santos world is going to be thinking about the most is the time immediately after the midterm elections, where Trump actually looked pretty weak for a minute. Everyone was blaming him and his candidates that he personally endorsed and who sounded the most like Trump for blowing all these winnable elections in an off-year election that usually the party that doesn't control the White House does spectacularly well in, and that Republicans had done spectacularly well in under President Obama. And Trump was really falling in the polls.

There were some polls showing Ron DeSantis pretty competitive with him, like right then, which was amazing because Trump was, you know, almost an incumbent. And Ron DeSantis was still just, you know, a first-term governor with only so much, you know, name recognition. And still Republican voters were saying, yeah, we're seriously giving this guy a look over Donald Trump, who we've organized the entire party, So what does Ron DeSantis do with that? Well, he gets a serious case of governor brain and decides that for a variety of reasons, I am not going to start running my campaign then. I'm not even going to start unofficially running my campaign for president then. I'm not going to start, for example, attacking Donald Trump or doing a bunch of national events to try to show contrasts between me and Donald Trump or start laying the groundwork. He starts focusing on his big legislative session in Florida, where he passes a bunch of legislation. that is very high profile, also moves the state further to the right, especially on issues

like abortion. He sets aside questions about whether he's going to run for president for months. And then by the time he shows up in May, which is six months later, Trump is mostly recovered. He's been, you know, I believe he's been indicted by then, at least in one place, which has, you know, rallied a lot of Republicans to his defense. And DeSantis is, you know, already looking a little weak and already facing some questions about does he still have it? So right off the bat, you miss this chance to kind of hit Trump while he was down and let him recover through all the usual means through which he always recovers from, you know, something. It's always a very brief window of vulnerability whenever he's on a bad news cycle, you know,

because the entire conservative media ecosystem is trained to tell you that things are okay with Trump when they're not. Like, this is not a problem that they haven't had to deal with before. And so it really was kind of unrealistic, I think, to think you could take this above at all attitude and not start getting, you know, down and dirty with him rather than later where Trump is way up in the polls and you look desperate when you start attacking him. So he insisted on governing. Is there another moment you think that got his campaign off to a bad start? I can think of one, which was literally the first day, which is, so after all this buildup, what is Ron DeSantis do to announce? Well, he goes on this website that I believe was then still called Twitter. And rather than a traditional campaign announcement where you go and you stand up on a stage and there's a huge American flag behind you and you're up there with your wife and your kids waving everyone and you give a big speech, he decided to go on Twitter spaces, which is like a audio format that's like that's native to Twitter to do an interview with like Elon Musk and his buddies who are not really like trained interviewers either. you know, and Elon Musk is famously an awkward kind of weird guy himself.

People warned him this was a terrible idea for a wide variety of reasons. One, you're, you know, you're subsuming your alpha brand to the richest man in the world, you know, so you're becoming part of his routine. But also you're seating all the infrastructure of your campaign to this website that's prone to crashing that, you know, just is under new ownership where things go wrong all the time that's not famously good at things like live events like this and doesn't really have experience with them. And lo and behold, what happened was it crashed.

The event crashed. They had to move it. It took like 20, 30 minutes to get it started up. That ended up being the entire story. Nobody even cared what happened after that. It just became like, this is supposed to be the hyper-competent governor who's here to show how Donald Trump is like amateur hour and how the adults are back in charge. And he can't put together the most layup of lay-up things for a camera.

I feel like that just did a lot of damage right out the gate. And then furthermore, it set the tone for another problem that is going to show up in a lot of obituaries, which is Rhonda Sanchez was extremely online. This is a guy whose campaign was very, very steeped in Twitter culture and kind of like meme culture, which ended up biting him in numerous ways. And it turned out, and this wasn't as obvious at the time, but it is decisively proven true since then. There is a lot less appetite and interest in that among kind of ordinary voters, then they may be expected. And none of this seemed to light the world on fire. He eventually abandoned a lot of the kind of, you know, culture war topics that Elon Musk is obsessed with, but that ordinary voters seem to care a lot less about.

So true. And it went to a big problem he had on the stump, which is that he's a lot more appealing as a Twitter account than he is as a human being, which is a big, big issue for any presidential candidate. And even that fourth debate where people are making fun of him for sort of powering down between answers. And I know, that's Twitter and it's silly and it's probably left. He's doing that for the most part. But it's just there, I think it is absolutely fair to say that it's very hard for voters to embrace Ron DeSantis the human. Yeah. Brian, I feel like our obituary is getting extremely long already because I can keep going on this. But yes, you are naming a really important point, which is one is I think Ron DeSantis and

his supporters made a mistake. There was one Democratic operative. who I think summed it up very well, they said, Ron DeSantis has not been vetted on a national stage, but the really dangerous thing is that he thinks he has, which is that Ron DeSantis seemed to assume because there's been so much attention on his work in Florida, that people already knew him, that he didn't really have to introduce himself,

you know, that everyone's going to rally behind him. But the truth is most people just experience Ron DeSantis, even when they were fans, as like a Chiron on Fox News. You did not really see him speak at length a lot. you mostly would just see little snippets about him. And very importantly, and this is another major early mistake, he did virtually no media whatsoever with anyone who could ask him, even a slightly less than, you know,

even the slightly harshest question. He seemed to exist in a media ecosystem that was designed just to support him. He would do things like do interviews with like weird Florida, new media outlets seem to exist only to tout his campaign, some of which are already closing now, that it doesn't seem to be, you know, of use anymore. And as a result, he didn't get a lot of reps, you know, training himself on the harder questions. He didn't get to speak to people directly, you know, and get some questions out of the way and start actually being able to expose himself in formats that might help him a little more with various different voters. And they discovered pretty early

that like, like, oh, this is not actually the world's most likable charismatic guy. and maybe the whole obituary could just be that sentence that as soon as you find contact with real voters, it turns out that your raw animal charisma is a little less than maybe you thought. And Trump does not have that problem. He would not be the first presidential candidate to run into that problem.

By the way, I'm so glad you remember the Twitter spaces thing because, first of all, that is so perfect for our political obituary because it brings in Elon, which is the other just giant overwhelming subject of 2023, generally. And I still remember listening to that. Even when they got it to work, the audio quality sounded like my grandpa sitting around the radio listening to FDR give a speech. Like, if we'd run that as a

ringer podcast, we're like, God, what happened today? No, it was terrible. I mean, like, this is a problem that, all right, in all fairness to Elon Musk, I want to give this in all fairness, Twitter has really struggled with this since before he bought it, you know, which is one of those funny things. as soon as he showed up, he was like, we need to do this big pivot to audio and video. But those had always been terrible on Twitter, and they haven't improved that much since then. I mean, to this day, if you open like a video clip on Twitter, if it even loads at all, it'll be like, you know, look like it was filmed on like a Game Boy camera for the first like 15 seconds before you get to, you know, it's snapping into place as something decent.

It's just like, it's not very good. And so, yes, this was a predictable problem when you put your entire campaign into that creaky infrastructure. Thank you for being the first person in the history of the press box to use the phrase, in all fairness to Elon Musk. We like to, we're glad we're finally regaining some balance. I thought it was the Game Boy camera reference that was going to do it. That too.

I pulled that out of some recess. A couple more media questions for you on the campaign. As I mentioned, we have not had anything resembling a horse race since April. What do you think that has done to campaign reporters? Well, there's just been a lot less attention to it. I mean, this has usually been the bread and butter for, you know, an election year for pretty much every media organization. You assume that that's what's going to be getting the clicks.

That's what people are going to be interested. And that's when you're going to devote all your resources to getting in this incredibly granular, granular minute-by-minute account of what's going on in the trail and every little detail. And it just hasn't really happened the same way. You know, there was like a flurry of initial interest in a lot of the candidates. but it's been a background story to all these other things going on in the news in a lot of ways. You know, it's been, there's obviously been the war in Israel dominating things the last, the last couple of months. And all of this has seemed kind of pushed into the background.

And, you know, if you want a real metric on this, you know, Brian, you've been following the debates. You know, we've been there together. The ratings on those have just been, like, gradually falling off a cliff. now there might not even be any more of them. But like the last one was just barely watched by anybody. It's just like there's no sense that voters feel they urgently need to tune into any of this. They seem to be working under the assumption of just, you know, wake me up when it's Joe Biden versus Donald Trump and we're close to the election. For a variety of reasons, this has just not had the same buzz in the news media in general as it normally would.

Do you think the lack of attention for the debates and maybe more importantly, Trump choosing to skip the debates means that when we do this again in four years, the debates will bounce back? Or do you think they're kind of done as a institution as we've known them so far? It's tough to say. Candidates' relationships to the debate is always completely context-dependent. So, you know, if you're the candidate who really needs a lot of exposure, you're always going to be demanding, you know, a debate. at all times. Like Ron DeSantis, his main campaign message,

I say the last few weeks has been like, debate me cowards. It's like, why won't Donald Trump debate? Why won't Dickey Haley commit to another debate? We need more debates.

You know, that's what you do when you're kind of losing a need exposure. Sure. This was an unusual situation where you had one candidate who absolutely everybody on earth knows through and through

and had a pretty huge lead to start and could just say, I actually don't need any. of this. And, you know, I think there were risks to it. We talked about that. I think after the first debate the last time we discussed, but it clearly paid off. I mean, he really, without him, people kind of wondered what was the point of these debates after, you know, maybe some initial interest in the first one. And it really did kind of kill them. But that was an unusual situation. A more common campaign is something like you saw with like the Democrats in 2020, where they had debate after debate,

because there wasn't one massive frontrunner. You know, to the extent there was, you would have said it was Joe Biden, but he was an extremely weak frontrunner and only really consolidated support at the very last second when it was just truly a choice between him and Bernie Sanders. And there you had every candidate had a reason to show up to those debates, to pop, to make their case, to show how they look next to the other candidates, to get, you know, a rare chance to speak directly to voters when you're competing with 25 other candidates or whoever for attention, even just on the newspaper pages, even just on Twitter for their attention on social media and their feed. They're really important to all of them. It was hard to imagine anyone voluntarily skipping in that

case. So I think it will matter a lot next cycle, just what that dynamic is. Is there some guerrilla in the room who has the clout to skip debates? Or is it a situation where there's a lot of people trying to introduce themselves who can't say no to free media like that? Been a lot of bad press, and that's putting it mildly for Joe Biden's reelection prospects over the last couple of weeks. There is another cherished campaign tradition where we have scare the Democrats' content early in a cycle. I am old enough to remember when the New Yorker sent George Packard, Ohio, and he came

back with this article about how nobody in Ohio wanted Joe Obama to win and Obama won Ohio twice. And the panic, so the panic, you got the bite out of the panic and then Obama won anyway. How much stock do you put into the reports of Biden's weak position? in terms of his reelection? Well, first of all, it's important to know that, yes, there's a reason people don't usually pay that much attention to polls this far out. They're not historically that well associated with the eventual outcome for a variety of reasons.

You know, the voters who often matter most are the ones who are less politically engaged are less likely to be paying attention a year out. The candidates have yet to, you know, reintroduce themselves in this case, make their pitch, they're going to spend a billion dollars making that pitch, you know, and reframing the conversation around things they want to talk about in each case. So we just haven't seen, you know, what the actual campaign looks like. That's the reason. Having said that, yeah, like, things look like shit for Biden right now. It's like really bad on a number of fronts. And I could give you a bunch of reasons why he might have a comeback, why things might improve. But there are some

unique things in his case that are really causing a lot of problem. I mean, the biggest thing is that we don't have any precedent for this kind of election on any level. And one thing we don't have precedent for is someone who is over 80 running for reelection. And one thing that's become clear is just like no matter how you ask this question, like voters just do think he's too old. And, you know, some of them think Trump's too old too. Trump is only three years younger than him. It's not like there's some huge difference. Trump would also be the oldest president. to whoever pulled office if he wins and serves out his term. But for whatever reason, and you know, you can argue a lot of it's very superficial about

just some of his appearance in the way he talks as opposed to anything actually does governing. Yeah, people have made the judgment that Biden's old. And the scary thing for them is that some things can get better. Like, there's this conversation going on constantly about why voters are still so down on Biden's economy. Like Biden gets like toxic waste approval on the economy. But by many metrics, like the economic. news, not just like this week, but like the last year has been great.

Like the stock market just hit a new high yesterday because there was like spectacular news from the Fed on inflation. And, you know, jobs, we economy keeps adding jobs. We had 5% growth last quarter, which is the kind of thing you'd expect from like China in the 2000s. You know, it's like the number that you never thought you'd get in the U.S. It's like there's just like a lot of good economic news. So you can make the case that, you know, voters might not have absorbed that yet, but a year from now, they'll understand that we're in a boom cycle if that continues and that inflation is, you know, in the rearview mirror a couple of years at that point. But Biden's going to be older. Like, by definition, that's going to be worse. So there is definitely concern about if voters

have really rendered judgment on that, should you just cut and run at that point? And there's not an obvious answer what to do. Really, only Biden could decide to step down. There's not an obvious way to get rid of Biden for a variety of reasons. Like, one issue is, that the obvious defaults person to run, if you were not to run, is Kamala Harris, who is seen as a very weak candidate for a variety of reasons also. But then in addition, you see Democrats say, even in polls often, that they don't want Biden to be their nominee again, but they've shown next to no excitement about any of these supposedly great backup options also. So, Dean Phillips, right? There's no obvious red flags with that guy. He's just like an ordinary

moderate center-left congressman without any personal scandal or, you know, particular reason for Democrats to hate him. And he announced and he got a bunch of national attention. And as far as I can tell, he's made zero impact in this race. Like, there is just like no constituency of Democrats that is like, you know, there's a constituency of Democrats that is like, I wish I had someone like Biden but 40 years younger. But that guy is sitting there and they have no interest in elevating it. And I think that's part of the problem. There's no obvious way to replace Biden. So I think Democrats are slowly coming around to the idea that unless Biden makes this decision himself, yeah, this is the nominee. You're going to have to rally around him. You're going to have to

defend his record. You're going to have to minimize attacks on his age and find a counter for them. But they're definitely really nervous right now and wondering as they reach this point of no return, if just maybe they're walking into something bad. Does it go back to what you said about DeSantis, is the counter for attacks on his age, just putting him in front of reporters more often, having him sit for more interviews? It's a little tough to say. I mean, it is true. The last time this conversation was reaching crescendo was this time last year, because that was the moment when it was seen as whether Biden really did have to make a decision about whether he's running or not, or at least like clearly signaling, like, you know, all you Gavin Newsom's out there and all you, Gretchen Whitmer's, you know, stop acting like you're running for president. I am absolutely am running for president. You need to shut up and get on board. So what happened then? People were getting nervous. and then he went and gave a state of the union speech. And I don't know if you remember this because the shelf life on state of the union speech is not long.

He did great. Like that was his like maybe high point as president. Like he gave it. It was a strong, forceful speech. He was joking around with the Republicans and improvising. You know, he didn't get exactly a polling bump out of it. But it really did quiet a lot of talk around his age, at least for a little while. And, you know, delayed the kind of conversation we're having now where people are panicking about it.

So one answer is yes. Like, you know, if he gets out there and shows he can still do it, he's good. A few problems with this. One is that Biden gets out there a lot now. There's this myth that, you know, Biden is like in the basement and hiding from everyone. Biden gives like a speech and like talks to reporters every day. You usually just don't see it because people don't care that much about Biden. They kind of tune him out.

It's not like Trump or there was like we had to see every single thing he did it every second. And, you know, and calculate mentally whether it meant, you know, the world was going to end or something. This is, Biden is someone who is like, kind of true to his campaign promises, has been in the background. So even when he does interviews, even when he does speeches, it doesn't seem to resonate that much at the moment. The other issue is, you know, Biden does not present as well as he used to.

And I don't think it's appreciably that different than before he was elected, I got to be honest, like as someone who was actually out on the trail at time seeing him, it was like, it was like, I thought voters had made peace with Biden like this then. But, you know, when they do see him, yeah, he has a tendency. His stutters come back a little bit. He sounds a little slower. Substantively, I don't think he says anything too wild for the most part, at least compared to, you know, the Biden of old who also would say, you know, various gaps and slip ups. But yeah, at a basic level, people see that. And they are not especially inspired at the moment. So, yeah, I think maybe if he can pull off more things like that State of the Union, when people are actually

paying attention, you know, at the Democratic convention. If he gives a speech like that, it would be a really big deal. If he shows up at the debates, if there are debates even, and is, you know, even half competent while Trump is his usual self, yeah, he might help himself. But I'm not sure how confident Democrats are that's going to happen right now. All right, Benji, a couple more items to put before you, before we go here. I know you're an NBA fan. And on Tuesday night, the Warriors were playing the Sons. Draymond Green was being guarded. by Yusuf Nurkich. And as Turner's Brian Anderson

and Stan Van Gundy note here, you will never believe what happened next. Oh, man. Well, that's going to be a flagrant. For sure. And now they're going to just try to decide if they think it was excessive. It's going to be at least a flagrant one,

could be a two, which would be an ejection. Boy, that is a swipe. Swipe is probably the nice word for it. What'd you make of that? Mike Tyson's punchout push the select key move when you saw it on Twitter for the first time? Yeah, yeah. It's like the NBA saying, swiper stop swiping.

It is funny, but it is like, you know, you watch that. It is just like a regular flagrant foul. The fact that they're even like debating, you know, is it a flagrant foul at the start? It tells you that this isn't the craziest thing. But, you know, Draymond Green, this is kind of a lifetime achievement award, if you will. where you get the sense of people are getting kind of sick of this stuff. When you get suspended indefinitely and they say, well, but we're not just looking at this.

We're looking at the entire history of Draymond Green. He definitely has a lot of lifetime achievement. So that was interesting, but then what happens to me is also very interesting, which is that Draymond Green goes into the media room and sits before Warriors beat writers and tries to explain what happened out there on the court. Here is Draymond talking to the press.

He was pulling my hip and I was, swinging away to sell the call, made contact with him. As you know, I'm not one to apologize for things I meant to do, but I do apologize to you, sir, because I didn't intend to hit him. I sell calls with my arms. I don't fall to sell a call. I don't, not a flopper.

So I was just selling the call because he was grabbing me and pulling my hip back. So I spun away. And unfortunately, I hit him. And so like I said, I apologize to you, Seth. Who would you think if you're a Warriors beatwriter and you heard Dremont say that a little while after the incident on the court? I mean, I think the next question is like, well, what about the 10 other times you've done something like this?

It's like, you know, it seems like at a certain point, there's like a pattern where you get less benefit of the doubt. I imagine they're slotting it all in their heads. But I also think there's an interesting thing in how these things are presented you know, by sports writers that I already see in play here, which is that, you know, winning solves a lot of things. And especially with sports players who have a reputation as dirty, you know, like Draymond Green, when you were on a championship team, that trait gets like touted as a positive everywhere.

You know, it always gets, you know, it's like, oh, he's like a Dennis Rodman. He's like a Charles Oakley. He's like a, you know, it's like that's someone who's, you know, don't try to get a dunk on him. He's going to just like put you in the hospital and like, you. you know, no layups here. And then as soon as you're a mediocre player on a mediocre team, suddenly it becomes this urgent issue of, like, the league's, you know, health and the Warriors value.

And, you know, everyone is writing about your future with the team and can this continue and do you need therapy? And I do wonder if, like, the way we write about sports is, you know, it influences this a bit. I mean, if the Warriors were like, you know, 18 and 4 right now, I wonder if we'd be talking about this quite the same way. It's so true. And I saw so many tweets of like, oh, no, he has merely become Bill Lambert and Rick Mahorn,

which is, which they didn't mean in the, you know, Pistons dynasty sense of Bill Lambere, but in the, oh, he's just that now. And I totally agree with that. The past history of him is interesting how it works here because on the one hand, if you're Adam Silver, there you're looking at this whole sort of history of behavior. On the other hand, I saw people after the press conference. and saying, no, no, no, Dremont has this kind of credibility that if he really wanted to hit him, he would have told us that in the press company.

Like, he wouldn't have come out and done this preposterous claim, but no, no, no, I was spinning around and trying to sell the call. He would have said it. So that also worked the other way in terms of the way writers were trying to process that whole. Yeah, I love how he tried to appeal to them on that basis of like, yeah, you know, I would do some, you know, crazy stuff and then stand by it. you know me so it's like yeah it was interesting how he appealed to that history there but yeah the league is clearly really on edge about this behavior right now i mean that that is one thing that's clear in

general it seems like they've been trying to you know ever since even when i was a kid they've been really on a you know in like the late 90s they started really trying to clamp down on things like brawls on things like fouls that got out of control they started throwing out like suspensions like candy for a little while and it seemed to calm down quite a bit. But I think one thing that's clear is like Adam Silver is, you know, not interested in excuses right now, you know, even though he's been there for years, he still feels like the new guy after David Stern. And I think he's really been trying to set the tone that like for the NBA to reach the next level, like we cannot let this stuff creep back in, you know,

especially among the someone like Drayman Green who like kids know their name. Like this is like one of the most recognizable players in the league, even if they're not like an all star right now. one more point about the Warriors sucking. You can really feel the sports media, just like those political reporters who are so eager to, you know, put the finishing touches on the DeSantis campaign obituary

to write the piece that the Warriors dynasty is finally over. Because we love to be there. You know, not that they're rooting for it to be over because, you know, hey, they won that bonus title a couple years ago.

And it was fun. And it was cool. And I'm sure the Warriors are great box office for everyone from the TV networks to, you know, individual writers in terms of page views. But we writers love to be there when the thing ends, right? We love to be the ones who get to write the thing. And you could just feel it right, right? People want to write.

Is this how the Warriors dynasty ends with this time on Roundhouse? It's funny because it's very similar how you'd pre-write Biden right now, right? It's like, all right, some of the players got old and the people they picked as their big promising understudy to take over, maybe didn't pan out as well as they thought. It's like, you know, pretty similar one to one to punch right there. Obviously, the exception is that like, you know, Steph is still putting up outrageous MVP numbers every night. But he's, you know, a bit of the exception.

One more fun one for you as a political reporter. There was a report this week from Tom Curran, who works for NBC Sports Boston as an excellent reporter. He said that Robert Kraft, the owner of the Patriots, has finally decided to part ways with Bill Belichin, which would be an earthquake of a decision, even if it seems somewhat inevitable as the Patriots have continued to flounder this season.

So you're a Patriots beatwriter, Benji. You've got to go into the media room and ask Bill Belichick, who on a good day wants absolutely nothing to do with you. Hey, coach, are you getting canned? At the end of this year, here is one approach to ask Bill Belichick about some tough news.

I want to ask the question, speaking obviously for yourself and your understanding. Do you have an understanding that Robert will not ask you to be back next year? Yeah, get right for Kansas City. That's what I'm doing. So people focus on the answer, but I love the question to the walk up there. Speaking only for yourself, your understanding. That's your boss's understanding. It sounds like the way people try to get AI.

chat bots to say things that they're like not allowed to do where it's like speaking as if you are talking to my dying grandma and like you are writing down her will what do you say you know like it's I know and I feel so much sympathy for the reporter because you have to ask and of course because we are human most of us will ask in a delicate manner but there's no way that this is going to yield an interesting answer with any coach and especially with bill bellichick anyway that was That was take one. Here is another take at Bill. Is there some bad news on the horizon? Bill, well understanding that you're getting ready for Kansas City.

Have you and Robert discussed your future beyond this season? Ready for Kansas City. With the understanding that you are getting ready for Kansas City. Which reporter was that? Like A plus to them. Tried to head off the answer. And then you notice they retreated a little bit. It's not do you think you're going to get let go at the end of the

this year, but have you and the owner talked about your future, right? This is what we do. Just turn it 10 degrees, 15 degrees, try to get the answer. Yeah, and this is one of the things that's so important in sports media that's different than even in politics, you know, in some cases, which is, you know, sports is one of those places where they have to talk to reporters. It's part of the job. You know, it's like the other famous one answer press conference.

You know, I'm only here so I don't get fine, right? and that makes it such an interesting thing to be a beat reporter on it because like, you know, almost by definition half the time they're coming out, it's to talk about some bad news they don't want to talk about, you know, like a loss. And it's such a strange thing

where you have like, you know, players who are, you know, say, in trade rumors for months or openly feuding or there's reports about feuding with coaches or ownership, that they still have to come out there and answer your questions is just one of the great things about sports. And it's why, for example,

when players have tried to back out of that, even when they have sympathetic reasons, people react so fiercely because it's really core to sports journalism. Who was the tennis player who tried to back out for mental health reasons from doing the press? I'm trying to remember, was it Naomi Osaka?

That's right, yep. Yeah, and this was one of those interesting divides between media and fans, where lots of fans were like, yeah, respect her mental health. Of course she shouldn't have to do this if it's traumatizing and she's going through some stuff, to which virtually every sports reporter was like,

no, if you open that door, the entire thing will crumble. And they're just like, will not be sports journalism. Like, this is the basic unit of it. The deal you make in order to do sports is that you talk to us, even on your bad days, because that's what we're telling a story about. And so I think it is kind of interesting how that creates just a unique relationship between the media and the players.

It's absolutely miraculous that that tradition exists in the form. And when I've traveled around, I've talked to sports writers in other countries. I don't believe it exists in the same way in any other country. But especially after something like that, you would be like, okay, now I get to ask Draymond, why did you hand land on the other man's face? I mean, and of course, no other part of life would somebody be contractually or morally obligated to come talk to the press after a moment like that? And this all seemed very threatened a little bit during COVID when reporters couldn't

go in the locker rooms and when media access sort of turn into a weird and awkward Zoom call, but we seem to have mostly come out on the other side with what we had beforehand intact, at least a lot of it. And that to me is just amazing. I'm floored by it. I got one more for you, Benji, before you go, political reporters and editors and bureau chiefs such as yourself, who do you read, who do you watch that makes you feel smarter during a campaign? Well, this has been a tougher one, I got to say, because normally campaigns are when you really meant like new superstar reporters, you know, or commentators or some columnist captures the zeitgeist and, you know, that's the person or gets the big scoop.

And that just like hasn't happened as much this campaign. There hasn't really been the quote unquote, you know, big scoop or a big movement that everyone is looking towards someone to capture because it's mostly Trump and Biden who are known quantities. So it's been a little tougher to pick like the one name here. I will say first of all, our reporting is great. Semple4.com. Check out our own Shelby Talcott, our own Dave Weigel.

Like Weigel is right now traveling all over New Hampshire, writing about what all the candidates are up to. He had a great story this week on how Vivek Ramoswamy is kind of running this campaign to win over the Elon Muskie and Fringe. He's got a story coming out tomorrow that will focus. more in like Nikki Haley and Chris Christie, battling out for moderates. So with that out of the way,

a variety of sources. I mean, a lot of the traditional outlets have been very good. This campaign, the New York Times, their big addition to the media landscape this year has been, they've been doing these incredibly deep dives with Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman on others on what Trump would actually do as president in a second term,

which is often like one of the least discussed things about him. and sometimes because it can be difficult to figure out. But other times because people are just too much focused on kind of like the day-to-day outrageous things he says. So they've been really diving deep on, you know, who are the advisors who are getting his orbit, getting into his orbit, what is it they want to do to the federal government, to the federal workforce, what would he do on something like immigration, how would things be different in a second terms and how he would push the legal limits, maybe with a new court that's, you know, Trumpier, now that has like three nominees in the Supreme Court.

all of these are good questions that we have been tackling some degree as well at semaphore, but that is one area where I think people have like, they really stood out. People are, you know, the Washington Post has done some excellent stuff along these lines as well. But in terms of things where I've like learned the most, I would say it is those like once every couple of months like 10,000 word deep dives into here's what another Trump term might look like. Totally. And those are the things that media watchers lecture the press that they're not doing enough of. And then you look at times like, I don't know, Times is putting two of their superstar. Yeah, you don't read them, but that's another story.

They're there. All right, Benjy Sarland, see his work over at Semaphore alongside Weigel and Ben Smith and Max Taney and all the gang over there. He is at Benji Sarlin. That is BNJRle, on Twitter slash X. Let us do this again, Benji in 2024. Thanks for coming back. Absolutely. Happy early New Year, Brian. That is the press box. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic. As always, by Brian Waters. Quick note for you on the 2024 plans for this here media podcast. As you know, we do Shoemaker and I on Mondays chopping it up about whatever has gone on, especially over the weekend. And then I do a second show, which we call Press Box Final Edition. And if you are a loyal listener of this

podcast, which I know many of you are, you've heard me casting around for ways to do that second edition. Sometimes we've done interviews with media people that are very fun. We We've done revisits of media movies like we did with Shattered Glass this year. We've gotten a Jake Tapper on the show. We've done all kinds of things. And sometimes I'll do an interview and then a couple of thoughts at the beginning about what's happened this week. So in terms of format, what I have decided to do for early 2024 and maybe the whole year is something that combines a lot of elements from all those things, which is I would love to go. find some people, interesting media people to come on and just do an addition of the press box

with me. So let's meet interviewing them about whatever they're working on. Then we'll probably get to some of that. Then them doing the news of the day with me just like Shoemaker does on Monday. So what I just did with Benji Sarlin, what I did with Jason Gaye last week, that kind of thing. Here is my ask of you, loyal listeners. Who would you like to hear do that with me? on this podcast. It can be anybody. Inside the ringer, outside the ringer. They can be in any part of the media or journalism

or maybe not in the media at all. The only thing I would ask you to keep in mind is sometimes some of our friends who are newspaper reporters sometimes have trouble either with their bosses or with themselves coming on a podcast and actually letting it fly in a free-flowing way. So just keep that in mind.

But anybody you'd like to hear on this show, please hit me up at the press, box pod at Brian Curtis on Twitter X and then over at threads where you can find me now at light underscore and underscore shopper. Love to hear any ideas you have for people who come on the press box next year. Next week, Shoemaker and I Monday and then Shoemaker and I again for a year in media show. By the way, if you have any happy stories that happened in 2023, hit me up on that too because the list looks pretty bleak right now. We will, of course, have more lukewarm takes about the media. Have a great week.