The Press Box - The President Has COVID. Plus The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin.

Episode Date: October 5, 2020

President Trump has tested positive for COVID-19. Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss the president’s well-being, the impact it has on the election, and how the media has responded (0:38). Then on Listener Mail, they answer the question “How would the media have covered the last four days if Joe Biden were the one in the hospital?” (26:58) Then, The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin joins to talk about his new book and his career in journalism (36:30). Plus, David Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers. This is the press box. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of The Ringer here. I always say we've got a big show, but David, this is a planet-sized edition of the press box. We'll do an emergency session of listener mail, including the question, how would the media have covered the last four days if Joe Biden were the one in the hospital? Plus, the New Yorker's Jeffrey Tubin stops by to talk about his new book, The 25th Amendment, and his career in journalism. All of that and more coming up. But first, David, I think I know what we're going to talk about. talk about today. Here's the voice of the President of the United States in the hospital. A very interesting journey. I learned a lot about COVID. I learned it by really going to school.

This is the real school. This isn't the let's read the book school. And I get it and I understand it. And it's a very interesting thing. I'm going to be letting you know about it. In the meantime, we love the USA and we love what's happening. Thank you. That is Donald Trump from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethleh, to Maryland where he's being treated for COVID-19. David, before we get into this, can we just talk about what a gobsmacking couple of days this has been, even in a presidency, we're seemingly every day as a gobsmacking day? Yeah. I mean, there's so much. I don't, I don't even know where to start, but I guess, yes, just in terms of gobsmack. Yeah, I mean,

it was a pretty incredible perfect storm, I guess, of, well, nothing could have possibly be, almost nothing could be this newsworthy, right? And to have real, real time reportage going on on social media and then, you know, obviously in the conventional outlets at the same time as like mass conspiracy theory mongering on both sides. And, I mean, it was just almost an unbelievable, I mean, I guess, yes, an unbelievable turn of events. A lot of people were comparing this to fiction. I saw people passing around. I even saw pro-Trump people passing around Joseph Campbell,

Heroes Journey charts, which I think, if nothing else, sort of underscores the fact that this just feels like a fictional world we're in all of a sudden. If the last four years didn't make you feel that way, this is just the cherry on top. And I think one thing that really contributed this fact was that it happened at night, the announcement that Donald Trump had in fact tested positive for COVID-19 at the risk of doing where I was when the news broke thing.

I was finishing a ringer piece and I had like 30 minutes to go. And you know how you do that thing where you go to Twitter and say, I just want to find anything that will distract me for half a minute while I put off finishing what I need to do. Oh, yeah. I get on Twitter.

That's the danger zone right there. Yeah. And I'm thinking I'm going to find like a new New York Times Sienna poll from Arizona or something like that. In fact, find out that the leader of the free world has tested positive for the coronavirus. So just like, oh, this is going to be hard to concentrate now. Let's do a little timeline here, David, that focuses as usual on how this story was covered.

One, because it's absolutely essential that reporters know how sick the leader of the country is. Is he going to be okay? Is he not going to be okay? And two, it was, as we said, amazing to see reporters kind of figure out this story in real time. in the open because there was so much information missing from all the various tellings of it. I think we can start with last Thursday, a little afternoon. Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg breaks the news that Hope Hicks, senior counselor to Trump, has tested positive for the virus.

That was a huge newsbreak by Jacobs because the White House was not revealing that information. And it just made every reporter stop in their tracks and ask, whoa, is the president sick? Then 1 a.m. Friday morning, we get our answer. Trump tweets, tonight Flotis and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this together, all caps. And man, did the media go to battle stations at that moment?

Because I don't know. Is there anything short of the United States going to, war that is bigger than the president of the United States having what is potentially a deadly virus? No. I mean, and I mean, I can't think of it. I'm turning this over in my head. I don't even know that, I mean, that war would even reach, a declaration of war would

reach that level. Certainly like an unprovoked attack or some sort of surprise. But even that, I mean, this came, it came out of nowhere. And like I said, it has the attachment. of not just this incredibly significant news, but everything, I mean, everything else, conspiracy theorizing the whole, I mean, it has the sort of TMZ element to it, right? It has the political, I should say, it has the sort of political backdrop to the whole thing, that he's not only potentially gravely ill, but struck ill by a disease that is a political

hot button issue right now. The next big question then for the media was, okay, if the president's sick, how sick is he? And on Friday, where you struck as I was by this really eerie period where we didn't hear from Donald Trump on Twitter for a long time? Yeah. And it made you realize like he has been this constant, often obnoxious presence in our lives. And all of a sudden, it just went silent. And it was like, oh my gosh, why? I don't think, I didn't think we'd ever ask this, but why isn't Donald Trump tweeting. Yeah.

Isn't he saying anything? And boy, that made your mind to go to some really, really weird places. It did. It did. I mean, and you were left to sort of read tea leaves. I was talking to my wife about it and saying like, I got a really bad feeling, but it's only from the sort of tinner of the headlines

that are popping up on my phone, right? It's the sort of, if anybody knows, it's people who aren't allowed to say anything. So let's see how they're, let's try to read the tone of their voice, you know? And yeah, I mean, it's very, it's just a surreal experience. Later on Friday, it was announced that Trump was going to be taken by helicopter to Walter Reed for further treatment. Now, this in itself is a big moment in how the media perceives the story. Trump isn't just sick. He's sick enough to go to the hospital.

Team Trump at this point was saying, don't worry, it's just an abundance of caution. But on Friday morning, as we would later discover, Trump's oxygen levels dropped below 94%. He had a high fever. he was administered supplemental oxygen. At this point, though, all we know is that he's going to the hospital and we see this almost surreal video. I know the word is overused of Donald Trump walking very slowly to Marine One, his helicopter, gives a kind of small wave and a thumbs up.

He does not talk to reporters, which a lot of reporters said was notable because he almost always does. What did you make of that whole scene as it unfolded on television? Oh, man. Yeah, I mean, you know, you try to read as much into it as possible in real time, right? I mean, the fact that he was walking, you know, obviously under his own power spoke volumes, but that he was going and, you know, a clear sort of lack of enthusiasm. You could read that a million different ways. I mean, I don't know that stopping to talk to the journalist was that shocking of a deal.

I mean, he was tested positive for coronavirus. But he probably shouldn't be out there talking to, anybody, you know, more than he has to. But yeah, it was, it was, it was definitely, it definitely had just an odd specter. I mean, I'm just so unusual. And you also think just in the terms of Donald Trump at this point in the White House trying to project strength, it sort of raises the obvious question of who is he and they trying to project strength to? And the answer's a bunch of people, right? There's anybody in the administration? that would sort of get the idea in their head that maybe Trump needs to seed power even temporarily to Mike Pence, which presidents have done in the past, right, when they're when they're facing a medical situation. There's other countries that might look at this and say, oh, wow, the president of the United States is going to the hospital, right, including our adversaries around the world. Then, as you mentioned, when you talk about it being a politically charged issue, there is the matter of voters. You know, this is a guy who has run a campaign.

almost centrally based on the idea that Biden was a feeble old man who was not well enough to be president. And now here is Donald Trump walking very slowly to get on a helicopter that's going to take him to the hospital. All those things have to be mixed in there, right, as the White House just desperately tries to project the idea that this is, no, don't worry, just an abundance of caution, just a small thing, he's okay, he's going to be fine. we wake up Saturday, David, with the same question we had Friday. How sick is the president? Well, that day, Sean Conley, Trump's physician, flanked by a group of doctors in white coats, gives a press conference in which he says various versions of the president is feeling fine. He also does the great hospital cliche. He'd love to go home right now, right? We're just, we're making him stay, you know, we're making him stay, but he's ready, he's ready to walk out of here right now.

But listen to what happens when Conley is pressed on specifics about the president's treatment. I'm not going to go into specifics of what the findings of any of that are. If we just put you down on one thing, has he ever been on supplemental oxygen? He, right now he is not on oxygen. I know you keep saying right now, but should we read into the fact that he had been previously? Yesterday and today, he was not on oxygen. So he has not been on it during this, his COVID treatment. He's not on oxygen right now.

That did not sound trustworthy. No. And it leads to this almost comic episode where minutes later, we get a report from an anonymous Trump official that basically contradicts everything Connolly just said. The anonymous Trump official says the president's vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning. And the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care. We're still not on a clear path to a full recovery.

Well, guess what? that anonymous official turned out to be Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff, who was sitting there when Conley was giving the earlier press conference. And afterwards, Meadows calls over a group of White House reporters and says, I want to do something off the record. I want to tell you this off the record. There was one problem. A camera was running. And that footage went up very quickly on Twitter and immediately became clear who the previously unnamed source was. So to the question I was asking about earlier, how sick is the president? You now have conflicting reports from the president's doctor and the president's chief of staff, which is not terribly unusual, right, for the Trump

administration, but man, in a situation like this, yikes. Well, I mean, obviously everything comes from the top and no one should be too surprised for that. But without even getting too accusatory yet. The clip from the president that you played at the top of the show where he said he went to school by getting coronavirus or whatever. The real school. He closed it by saying and I'm going to tell you about it later or whatever, which is just like Trump Lie 101, right? We're going to, we got beautiful

new health insurance plan. We'll tell you about it later. My tax returns will be released as soon as the audit is complete. Yeah. So I mean, it's just like the tone and tenor of this is not an administration that we should expect more of but if the administration were interested in reflecting something and in seeming like they were being more honest now, they have to sound,

they have to act, they have to present themselves differently than they have for the past four years because the expectation for a lot of Americans is that they're going to be dissembling or lying the whole way through. Even the supporters, people sit back

and slap their knees and gaffa at the way that Trump treats the media at times. know, but that's, that's not, I mean, I don't know if you want to say he can't do that now, but like it, the lies just seem really, really just detrimental to our country right now. He can't do that now, but he will do that now. And there was no, there was no real suspense that they were not going to, to level what the American people about his condition. I mean, come on.

Why, why would they pick this one moment? Even though this moment is as serious or more serious than anything they've dealt with in the last four years, there's no way they were going to start now. There's no chance of that, especially since, as we would later find out, Donald Trump was watching the news and was angry at Mark Meadows, who then went on to Fox to praise Trump's unbelievable improvement, contradicting his own message from earlier in the day. I am sort of fascinated by like why Mark Meadows gave that gloomy briefing to the press. I was listening to Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker on the daily today. And they sort of portrayed it as Mark Meadows, you know, thought that information

should be out there, like thought that there was some sort of bigger duty to the country or the media or American people or all the above to say that. But that was just, I guess, you know, and if they, they would be in a position to know whether that was the answer, but that sort of floored me, right? Like, why did he, why did he decide to tell the truth at that moment? was he was he really so struck by the artifice of that doctor's press conference that he needs to go out and completely contradict what the what the president's personal physician just said i don't know there's there are photos there were photos of him i said while the doctor was speaking kind of just sitting on the sideline with his head and his hands you know and i i don't know

you know i think we were all sort of exhausted from saying that people in the trump administration need to be the grownups in the room or whatever. I mean, that was a nice refrain for the first two years of the presidency, but people do seem to be sort of infected by Trumpiness when they get to the Trump White House, but it's a bit of, but, you know, no, no, these are-

No pun intended, by the way. Yeah. Oh, God, no. But they do, but, you know, it's not, the idea that Mark Meadows might have a line in the sand or a just moral reaction to one thing that he suppressed for the past, you know, year or whatever, it's very feasible. is a really incredible moment in our country's history. And to see a doctor, a physician of all

people, to go up there just bullshitting the press and the American public. I mean, it got a reaction out of everybody that I know. I mean, everybody that, you know, I mean, there's so many people that we saw right and post online that it got a response out of Mark Meadows. It's not too surprising. Trump responded to Meadows's appearance on Fox News first by tweeting, I'm feeling well. And then later posting a rambling four-minute video to Twitter that included this. We're going to beat this coronavirus or whatever you want to call it. And we're going to beat it soundly.

So many things have happened. If you look at the therapeutics, which I'm taking right now, some of them. And others are coming out soon that are looking like, frankly, they're miracles. If you want to know the truth, they're miracles. People criticize me when I say that. But we have things happening that look like. like their miracles coming down from God. So I just want to tell you that I'm starting to feel good. You don't know over the next period of a few days. I guess that's the real test. So we'll be seeing

what happens over those next couple of days. I just want to be so thankful for all of the support I've seen. Let us stick with that idea of what Trump sees on television. Because listen to this subsequent omission, David, from Sean Connolly, Trump's physician. on Sunday when asked why his Saturday briefing was not accurate. It's a good question. So I was trying to reflect the the upbeat attitude that the team, the president, that his course of illness has had. I didn't want to give any information that might steer the the course of illness in

another direction. And in doing so, you know, it came off that we were trying to hide something. which wasn't necessarily true. And so here I have it. It wasn't necessarily true that we were trying to hide something. It might have been true. And in fact, it was true.

I also loved his, didn't you love his phrase? I didn't want to give you any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction? I spent way too long thinking about those choice of words, right? I mean, practically, you would assume the idea is you got to stay upbeat to keep the, you know, patient's spirit.

it's high because that can affect the outcome. But presumably the president is aware of his situation, right? I mean, maybe they're misleading him. Maybe they're letting him to tell him that everything's going to be okay. And even though things were looking really bad, but how bad were things looking that they needed to disguise the truth from the president, right? That that was so significant. It seems a lot like they were deliberately trying to mislead the American public. But to give him the benefit of the doubt, what was the situation that Trump had, you know, an oxygen matter, mask on and tubes in his arms and was and needed to be told everything was going to be

okay, you know, if things are better than it looks at it's just, it's hard to understand. There was this also weird moment on Saturday where Bob Woodward, who we talked about on this pod many times, including recently, goes on CNN and basically gives this message that the press

should stand back, stand down for some period of time and sort of wish Trump well rather than trying to ferret out the actual details of his illness. I was stunned by that. And basically everything that happened before and after Woodward's comment just showed how ridiculous that is. That is just that is not possible. First of all, that's not the job of the media at all. This is way too important to be bashful at this time. But just this idea

that if Bob Woodward were a daily reporter, that he would say, you know what, I'm going to take the day off and just think some good thoughts about Donald Trump. That's not how this works. And he's got to know that's not how this works. I did not understand that at all. He does. I mean, I do think that there's a little bit of a, you know,

generational thing when you see all this report, you know, reporting coming out on Twitter and whatever else and his response is I think we can afford to wait 10 minutes, you know, but, but no, I mean,

you know, there's a big difference between not saying things aren't clear right now and outwardly lying, you know, and just, and withholding information that's, I don't know. Sure, we could have waited, but what is the benefit of that? You're right, that's not the job of journalists.

They're supposed to find the truth. No, and this, if anything, is important to find out the truth immediately, it's this. Okay, so Meadows and Conley's conflicting press conferences were Saturday. On Sunday, David, Donald Trump had a surprise. What a group. I also think we're going to pay a little surprise to some of the great patriots that we have out on the street, and they've been out there for a long time and they've got Trump flags

and they love our country. So I'm not telling anybody but you, but I'm about to make a little surprise visit. So perhaps I'll get there before you get to see me. But I just, when I look at the enthusiasm and we have enthusiasm like probably nobody's ever had. Our people that love the job we're doing, we have more enthusiasm than maybe anybody.

The surprise, it turns out, was a parade, basically. Donald Trump briefly left Walter Reed, he got in his armored SUV, and slowly drove by and waved at a group of supporters who had gathered outside the hospital. Dr. James Phillips, an attending physician at Walter Reed, who was also the chief of disaster medicine at George Washington University, tweeted that presidential SUV is not only bulletproof, but hermetically sealed against chemical attack. The risk of COVID-19 transmission inside is as high as it gets outside of medical procedures. The irresponsibility is astounding, my thoughts are with the Secret Service forced to play along.

So there's that. Also in the background here, David. A flood of positive COVID cases in and around the White House, including Melania Trump, Chris Christie, the RNC's Ron and McDaniel, multiple senators, including Mike Lee of Utah and Ron Johnson. Reporters are still trying to track down a full coronavirus timeline of Donald Trump, right? You've heard them asking several times, when did the president get his last negative?

test and not getting any answers. Still more positive tests are coming out. Monday shortly before we started this recording, Kaylee McAnanating, who had pointedly been holding briefings without a mask, even after Trump's positive test, announced that she had tested positive. And then even fewer seconds before we started this pod, we learned that Donald Trump is kind of directing his own departure from the hospital.

CNN's Dana Bash tweets, The source familiar with POTUS phone calls today tells me he said, I need to get out of here. Then Trump himself tweets on Monday. I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6.30 p.m. Feeling really good. Don't be afraid of COVID. Don't let it dominate your life. We have developed under the Trump administration some really great drugs and knowledge.

I feel better than I did 20 years ago. I don't even know what to say about that. I mean, of all of the things, I mean, you went through a lot there. I mean, you and I don't need to rail on the little one car parade and how irresponsible and cruel and stupid that was. I think enough people have done that. But to just go home. I mean, and not even say, oh, but like I have the truth. I mean, the fact of the matter is, you know, has functionally a full hospital available to him at the White House.

at all times, right? But just to act like he's going to walk away. And it just doesn't make, it doesn't make sense, uh, under, through any lens except just pure irresponsibility. And there's also a lot of questions about the timeline that you mentioned, right? I mean, you're, when you see the president walking away from a hospital at a time when we've been told by doctors for the, over the past several months, that this is the most significant time is can, will continue for the next couple of days. Yep. Um, then you start wondering, when did he, are we another wrong impression out when he was infected?

You know, I don't think you have to be too conspiratorial to at least question the timeline. And, and yeah, I mean, the denialism don't let coronavirus get you down, you know, whatever. I mean, it's part and parcel with, I mean, I think it's been pretty well established that Rona McDaniel appeared on CNN or appeared on one of the networks

after her positive diagnosis without admitting it. And there, and there's this whole, kind of moral question, I guess, that comes up, or maybe it's just a functional one about our elected leaders. Like, do they have to tell us when they tested positive for coronavirus, even if it's the first test and you don't know, right? I mean, is it, is if you're there to talk about something else, you have to let people know. I mean, it kind of feels like you should in this moment in time, right? Yeah, how about if you're around reporters, several of whom have now caught the coronavirus? Well, yes. And Trump, you know, obviously is potentially, it's an even greater liability.

to the people around him if he was holding that under wraps for 24 hours or something like that. I mean, I just I don't know. I don't know. I mean, it does seem like the narrative that we got and I apologize for the tinfoil hat coming on. The narrative that we got from the beginning, if I

I'll just say if I found out in six months from Bob Woodward's next book or whatever expose we get that Hope Hicks was a patsy, I would not be surprised. Wow. I don't quite know how to interpret that Hope Hicks was a patsy. That seems to be borrowed from another conspiracy theory. But David's on record. So it's six months for now when Woodward writes, you know, cough or whatever his sequel to the, what was the last one?

Rage? Fear. Fear. When he writes a sequel to Fear, which is fever. Cove. How about fever? Fever is good, yeah. Fever is good, yeah.

David's on record. Here, let's do this, David. let's just blow out the comedy elements so we can keep talking about this. All right, go. We sent out a request for listener mail. We got a bunch of great questions. I do want to mention at the top. Amazingly, there is still a vice presidential debate scheduled for two days from now.

Wednesday night, Mike Pence and Kamala Harris, they will be 12 feet apart instead of six feet apart because that's how we react to this week's news. Pence at this point is the torchbearer of the Trump campaign. I mean, he's it, the only person capable of. traveling. So we will see what happens. We've got a live reaction show here on Wednesday night. I cannot wait to see how this week's news is filtered through that debate. I imagine we'll see the heroic treatment of Trump from Mike Pence that we've talked about. It'll be very interesting to see how Kamala Harris handles this. And one, I mean, listen, this is the most, this is the most dire podcast we'll probably ever do, or one of them. I mean, this is, we've been staring,

staring death. Don't make those kind of predictions. I'm just saying subject matter. Subject matter-wise, I mean, this is, you know, an hour of staring death in the face, and we've all been doing that for 72 hours. It has to be said that a vice presidential debate, when both presidential candidates are at 73 or 74 and 75 or whatever, and one of them just contracted a life-threatening illness, it takes on a whole new level of significant.

That's a great point. It's a great point. All right, listener mail. Richie Hopkins asked, been reversed and Joe Biden was the one in the hospital with COVID, what would be the media narrative Trump response? What would be the what? Media narrative and Trump response. Oh, and Trump response.

I think that, do you know your answer to this? Because I'm going to do this off the top. I'm going to say that the media reaction would have been more, there would have been a kind of underlying hopelessness or like help i don't it would i think the the media narrative would have been more about joe biden's campaign being over um i think it would have i think they would have been a little bit less reluctant to draw direct lines to the to the candidacy of course because he's you know the president is currently the president and then the other one is running for you know is as more of a strictly political role in our lives right now and so i mean i i'm not sure it would have

been totally different. It's just so hard to disentangle it from all the lies that have been told or the misinformation that we've gotten. I think we all know what the Trump response would have been. I mean, he was tweeting about Hillary's imagined infirmities four years ago. And people have dug up some even older tweets along those lines. I have absolutely no doubt that we would have seen a, you know, your mask didn't help you to this time. Did it, LOL sort of tweets from the president. So I don't know. What do you think about that? What do you think about the media narrative? it would have been, I think Biden's health would have been the central subject. And by the way, it should have been the center.

It should be in that case the central subject. When we talk about the Woodward thing, I hope you and I are on record a number of times saying that Joe Biden's fitness for this job, not the comic book Trump version, but the actual version absolutely should be a topic in this presidential race for the media to cover. It is absolutely valid. And watching how he performs at these various debates should absolutely be fair game for everybody. So of course, if he had any medical challenge COVID or not, that absolutely would be. That would be this singular issue and singular obsession of the media and should have been until it was clear that he was out of the woods. Yeah, I agree.

I just think that's, it's pretty simple. Let's answer Jay Fisher's question here. What should it be called when there's a big news story and the top cable news anchors are on TV at weird times? You know, it's an important story when Wolf Blitzer is anchoring an hour on Sunday night instead of his usual weekday 5 p.m. slot. This was really striking on Friday early in the morning when Anderson Cooper was on CNN at 3 a.m. I don't know if you were still up. I went to bed. I fell asleep with it on. He roused Carl Bernstein from bed to talk about this stuff. And by the way, I was really struck over the weekend that how many decades later are Woodward and Bernstein still are just

absolute go-to authorities whenever anything happens with an American president? I know. We've had like nine generations of White House correspondence and people reporting on the presidency that since then, but we're still going away. 3 a.m. is Carl Bernstein available? Can we get him on CNN? Okay. Also, it was really funny.

It's Carl Bernstein's phone kept ringing. And he had like, like, this is like a landline, you know, which is not as easy to just silence during this interview. And eventually, Anderson Cooper said, I'll let you go because I think someone really wants to get in touch with you. It's a weird way to end an interview. This is from Ditcho 17. Probably those jerks over at MSNBC.

Yeah. Can we get Carl on here? We got, we're doing a special midnight show. This is from Ditcho 17. If you were watching this whole saga as a movie, would it be one of the worst or best movies you've ever seen? Well, we don't know the ending.

No. I think we kind of need to know that, right? I mean, I think it's, I think it's a pretty compelling movie, right? I mean, I don't... Oh, yes. Absolutely. Are you kidding me? Even as a morality play, as a political satire, I mean, I think I think it'd be pretty good.

If there were a novel that had the president of the United States mocking and belittling his opponent for being too concerned about a deadly disease, and then just over two days later, that same president was. diagnosed with the disease, you would tell the author of that novel, hey, put a few more days in between those things, just to make it more realistic. That is what actually happened this week in American life. It's true. It's truly amazing. This is from listener Eric. Can you discuss the rhetorical strategy of claiming that COVID is not a big deal while simultaneously extolling the strength and perseverance of certain specific and well-known COVID patients? Ah, good question, Eric. and it turns out there is a soundbite for that. Listen to Trump Flack Aaron Perrine on Fox News.

He's talked about it all. And listen, he has experience as commander-in-chief. He has experience as a businessman. He has experience now fighting the coronavirus as an individual. Those firsthand experiences, Joe Biden, he doesn't have those. Yes, Joe Biden does not have the firsthand experience of having the coronavirus. Thank you for that, TIG. I mean, you know, Joe Biden,

suspended, you know, a lot of the negative ads during this whole thing and, you know, kudos to him, whatever. I mean, it was the right thing to do. I think, you know, morally it's the right thing to do. And I think tactically, out of an abundance of caution, you just go, you kind of got to move a little bit slower on this. It's kind of wild that the Trump White House or reelection campaign was like workshopping just wildly offensive bullshit like that on TV in real time. I mean, that's, that's pretty, pretty incredible. It is worth note. that they, their tone has changed, not at all, right? We saw Biden pull his negative ads off the air. And Donald Trump's campaign came back and said, I can't believe you guys in the media

are falling for this because Biden went out there while Trump was in the hospital and criticized him. And people looked at the Biden speech and Biden had basically drawn a couple of contrasts with like Trump's policies, not even, some of which weren't even about the coronavirus. Right. And just said, like, I don't want to, you know, give tax breaks to billionaires. And that was seen as being like a, like a shot at Trump. I mean, talk about just the absolute. Okay, anyway, moving on. Michael Avery, which storyline besides proud boys, was lucky to be buried immediately because

of Trump's diagnosis? Do you even remember what like Friday at noon was like? Well, can I give you like Monday? Trump's taxes. How about that? Yeah, yeah. I was joking with Jeffrey Toobin earlier about this and I said, that was seen as the ultimate get for any reporter of the Trump presidency, right? Finally revealing what Donald Trump

has been hiding from the American public. When was the last time you thought about Trump's taxes as a news story? Yeah, well, certainly not this weekend. This is from Matt. Recently, I've noticed that Brian begins every show by saying, big show for you this week. Is this just indicative of the current climate where will we ever have a regular size show? Dare I say it, a small show? We get to do a small show. I would love to do a small show. I think you and I've got one on the calendar, don't we? After all these debates are over? We're going to have

a very special edition of the press box coming up. Very small, very petite press box. And we say that now, David, but who knows what could break? It'll probably six hours long, but emotionally and metaphorically, it will be small. Well, it could be six hours long,

but who knows what story will break 30 minutes before that episode begins? And we get a note from Ringer High Cabo. It goes, can you, that funny thing you guys want to do? Can't you just push that down maybe a couple of years? The news slows down. Oh, my God. Remember when we were talking about going to twice a week for the election?

We didn't really have to say out loud that we were targeting, you know, election day or like, you know, the couple of days thereafter as the end of election season. Now, we could be talking about January, February. I mean, this is, press box is going to be just chugging along into the indeterminate future now. I put this one in for you. This is from Mike Makesh. Which North Carolina Senate candidate had a worst weekend? Oh, God. Or worst weekend, I should say.

So Tom Tillis, the sitting senator from North Carolina, Republican, has coronavirus. His challenger, Cal Cunningham, who has been ahead in numerous polls, this week admitted to a sexting scandal. So quite a big news week in North Carolina. our thoughts and prayers are with all the political reporters in North Carolina today as they attempt to fit way too much news into the news. Yeah, I don't, I don't even want to compare those two things. That's, it's a, yeah, yeah, bad situation for everybody. Bad comparison, but just again, in terms of like news, just, just avalanche, absolutely incredible. Yep.

David, I had an awesome talk this morning with New Yorker staff writer Jeffrey, too, and we talked about Trump in the 25th Amendment, Bob Mueller in Ukraine, OJ Simpson, and how he reported on that trial, the works. Here's Tubin. All right, you know Jeffrey Tubin, longtime New Yorker staff writer, CNN analyst, and now the author of a new book,

True Crimes and Mistameters, The Investigation of Donald Trump. I've got to start with this, Jeffrey, between the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the selection of Amy Coney-Barrid, the potential election law crisis we've got coming in November. And now the possibility of presidential

succession, what has your last three weeks been like? Well, just to go back to the purpose of our conversation, you know, the Senate trial of President Trump's, you know, for impeachment ended in February of this year, not in February of 1956, but it feels like, I mean, so long ago that, you know, this work of journalism, which I have written feels inevitably like a work of history just because the pace of events has been so fast. You know, Donald Trump's tax returns were disclosed by the New York Times last week,

and I can barely remember anything about it. And that, I think, is just characteristic of the insane pace at which we've all been trying to absorb and some of us report the news. But that's the world. That's the world we live in. The taxes are amazing, right? The single biggest prize, journalistically, of the Trump years, potentially.

And yet, it disappears within 48 hours, 72 hours, as a major story. It has. I mean, I think, you know, the life-threatening crisis, literally life-threatening crisis of, you know, the president's help, will be one of the few stories that endures more than 48 hours in the, in the Trump era. But it really is one of the touchstones and one of the extraordinary things about this experience, particularly for those of us in the news business, we sometimes say that life has been measured in dog years during Trump's presidency because so much happens in a given period of time. All right.

Let's back up to 1956, as you put it, or actually May 27. when Robert Mueller, former director of the FBI has tapped to be special counsel to investigate links between the Trump campaign and Russia. One thing I really liked in your book is how you get at the difference between real Bob Mueller and this sort of fantasy resistance hero who appears on the Twitter timelines of many Democrats during this period. What was a crucial difference between those two guys? Well, actually, there's another fake Robert Mueller out there, which was the right-wing creation of Robert Mueller. There was this right-wing idea, largely spread by Rudy Giuliani, that Mueller was a sort of fanatic Democrat leading a group of fellow fanatic Democrats determined to bring down the presidency. The MSNBC version of Robert Mueller was the one with the Robert Mueller action figures and the Mueller-time T-shirts. and the idea.

And so the paradox was the extreme left and the extreme right sort of had the same idea about him, which was that he was on this crusade to bring down Donald Trump. And, you know, as I tried to do in my book and, you know, to look not only at the real investigation, but the real Mueller, you know, he was, at is, a very skilled, but conventional law enforcement figure. He is someone who believes that prosecutors and investigators

try to find identifiable federal crimes, prosecute them if they do find them. But they are not, and he is not a political crusader, not someone with, you know, a political agenda. And someone who was, I think, above all devoted to institutions rather than individuals, the Marine Corps, the FBI, the Justice Department. And I think like a lot of people, his greatest strain also turned out to be his greatest weakness. In terms of the media, Mueller's office did not leak to the press. And for a time, this was seen as a great virtue of his office. Do you think that ultimately hurt his investigation in any important way? Well, I, I, I'm not sure I would say it hurt his office.

And I continue to respect what he did in terms of the integrity of his investigation and not leaking. I think particularly at the end of his investigation when he was releasing his report, the Mueller report, his refusal to engage with public disclosure, public relations, was a weakness. And I think, you know, he essentially turned over the entire matter of public disclosure to William Barr, either not realizing or not caring, that Barr had turned into this complete partisan and Mueller's refusal to engage about the release of the report allowed both to mislead the public about the contents of the report and delay its report so that Barr's version would be the only one out there. So in that respect, I do think his failure to engage with the media

It was a mistake. I mean, reading your book, it strikes me there's a non-crazy universe where somebody from Mueller's office calls a report at the New York Times or Washington Post right before the report is released and says, we are about to release a report that says that Donald Trump that provides evidence that Donald Trump committed obstruction of justice. That would not be a crazy thing to do in Washington. Do you think that changes the narrative or the outcome in any material way? Well, you know, I think that's a very important question.

And it certainly changes the narrative and it changes how the story and how the report would be, how would have been received. I continue to believe that in the contemporary Republican Party, there was no way anything Mueller could have done, even for the things I criticize him for not having done, could have led 67 senators to want to remove him from office. the Republican Party has turned into too much of a Trump cult to have ever allowed that to happen. So it's not like but for Mueller's mistakes Trump would have been removed from office. I do think impeachment might have hit Congress earlier, hit the House of Representatives earlier, because the obstruction of justice evidence was so persuasive.

But I don't think that that would have led 67 senators to vote against him because that would have required a very substantial number of Republicans to vote for, to vote for removal from office. And I just don't see any scenario where that would have happened. When an office like Mueller's doesn't leak, how does that complicate your life as a reporter? Well, you know, I've written eight books, and this was by far the hardest, in part because I agreed to write it almost as soon as Mueller was appointed in May of 2017. And I, you know, it hoped I was going to have some access. I counted on the fact that I was going to get some access when he closed up shop, but I didn't know when that was going to be. So it was incredibly unnerving to have to try to write this, you know, report the book. with no access. Fortunately, I got some access later, but I didn't know if he was going to, you know,

Lawrence Walsh and Ken Starr continued their investigations for five or six years. Now, I think Mueller was, was wise to set a target much, much slower, much faster than that. But still, I, you know, I didn't know how long it was going to take. You know, fortunately, one of the things you can do as a journalist, you can talk to people who dealt with the office, you know, defense lawyers, witnesses, that that's actually, you know, one useful way of doing reporting. But it was a challenge. And the timeline was, you know, having to, you know, I knew I had to have this book out during the campaign. So I had to write it.

And then, of course, completely unexpectedly, the Ukraine story happened. And we had this whole other chapter where Mueller wasn't even involved that I, I had to report about and then write about. And again, I also didn't know how long that was going to take to unfold. Sure. I don't want to make this sound like, woe is me. I signed up for this, but it was just, it was a challenge, journalist. Going back to the run of his life, which was the first of your books that I read,

that's your O.J. Simpson book, you clearly like writing about lawyers as characters. You clearly think they make good characters. Why do lawyers make good characters in nonfiction? Well, I guess it's not so much lawyers as law and trials. And, you know, one of my writing mentors, Phyllis Graham, you know, she was always, you know, the thing she was always telling me about nonfiction is you always have to think about narrative. You always have to think about a story that you're telling. And trials are stories.

And investigations are stories. And they begin at one place and they end at another. And one thing that I, you know, frankly think I'm pretty good at is telling different stories at the same time. Because, like, one of the things that is consistent across several of my books is that you have a story of an investigation, whether it's the OJ investigation of OJ or the Clinton investigation, the Star and the home office. Monica Lewinsky's story, you have to tell the story of the investigation, but you also have to tell the story of the underlying facts of what happened. And that can be tricky narratively because, you know, you have to sort of discover things as the investigators are discovering them. And that's a challenge. So it's not so much that I like writing about lawyers is I like writing about the investigative process.

and the, you know, and the conflict between lawyers. I like writing about lawyers more than I like writing about judges. I mean, I've written about judges, too. I wrote two books about the Supreme Court. But I like, you know, partisans because that's, you know, that's conflict, and that's always good for, that's always good for stories. And, you know, again, you were asking about the Mueller, you know, what it was like to report about Mueller. fortunately I also got to report about the extremely colorful cast of characters it was defending

Trump you know Rudy Giuliani and John Dowd and Jay Sekula who were you know characters in and of themselves and to that note I do want to ask you about Rudy because he becomes Trump's lawyer in 2018 he has these bonkers appearances on cable news I believe I am choosing my adjective correctly there we play them on this podcast that's a technical legal term I'll leave that thank you Jeffrey for making that clear. We played them on this podcast and we laughed at them. But you argue in this book that inside that crazy performance art was at some level a canny bit of lawyering for Donald Trump.

How so? There was. You know, Giuliani is such a fascinating eccentric figure. You know, when you think about, there were two things he did for Trump in the Mueller investigation that were very effective. One was behind the scenes, which I write about the book, which is this conflict over whether Donald Trump would sit for an interview with Mueller. And Giuliani, in a pretty canny way, along with his colleagues, stretched out that negotiation into such a point where Mueller felt if he were to go to court and fight over a subpoena, it would extend the investigation for another year. and he just didn't think it was worthwhile.

So essentially, Giuliani used delay, which is a classic defense lawyer technique, very effectively. The other thing he did was, it's important to remember that in May of 2017, when Mueller was appointed, he was greeted with bipartisan respect. He had been a Republican official in the George Herbert Walker Bush administration, appointed FBI director by George W. you Bush, he was respected by all sides and he had a credibility that in this polarized environment was very rare. With those bonkers TV appearances, Giuliani basically mobilized Trump's base against Mueller and created in Mueller just another partisan figure. Now, I think Mueller, I think Trump, Giuliani was wrong,

but, you know, he had the megaphone. He had that he had access to Fox News. And that limited Mueller's options politically because his, he became perceived as just another Trump opponent. And I think that was,

that was pretty savvy on Rudy's part, even though he sounded like a lunatic during some of these appearances. Now, I should ask, And I don't know if we want to go into this, but as effective as Giuliani was in the Russia investigation, he was a disastrous failure when it came to the Ukraine investigation and almost single-handedly got Donald Trump impeached. So I think, you know, before we, you know, I engage in too much praise of Rudy Giuliani, I think it's important to emphasize just how awful and ineffective he was in the second part of this case. Absolutely. It leads him straight off the cliff in terms of Ukraine.

One of the other lawyers who kind of claws his way into this story and into your book is Michael Avanotti, who was the lawyer for Stormy Daniels. You're a guy who's covered many and ambitious plaintiff's attorney in your days. What does your spidey sense tell you when you first see Michael Avinati appearing basically nonstop on cable news? You know, that's an interesting question because I think my spidey sense was off. I think, you know, and I spent a lot of time with Athenati. I thought about writing a piece about him. Thank goodness I didn't because I wouldn't have uncovered everything awful about him and there's lots. I saw him as someone who was publicity hungry, but effective, someone who knew what he was doing in those early days of representing Stormy Daniels. And,

And I was just wrong. He was and is a terrible lawyer. He's a terrible person. He's a convicted felon now. He has several more trials coming. I think at the end of the day, he may be spending double digit years in prison. So I think I think like a lot of people, I, I think like a lot of people, I, I just, I just, I just, so, I think, I was so besotted with the story and the, and the, the, the bizarreness of the whole thing

that I didn't realize just what a dubious character I was dealing with. And I think that was a mistake. It was true of a lot of cable news, right? Because I remember him appearing one night on cable news, teasing something that he was going to reveal two or three days later on CBS. Now, I've never seen a news program give themselves over to somebody who was going to reveal something on a different competing news program. That's incredible. It was incredible, but also I think you have to, you know, remember, and this isn't exactly a defense, but, you know,

one of the, one of the challenges of covering this story on the news is that there were not a lot of protagonists who were willing to appear on television. You know, Giuliani did somewhat, I mean, but mostly on Fox. And the Mueller people didn't appear at all. And the Democrats in Congress didn't really know enough to say much of anything. And so you had this person. And also, look, let's not bullshit. I mean, he was talking about representing a porn star.

I mean, that's like, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's interesting. It's fun. It's bizarre. And, and I think, you know, that was part of it. Also, I mean, he was correct that the president of the United States paid hush money to this poor sir. That happened. I mean, and, you know, you know, so, as we discussed earlier, so much has happened that, you know,

that seems like ancient history now and almost no big deal. But imagine if someone told you that Barack Obama had paid $150,000 to silence a porn star with whom he'd had a one-night stand. You know, your eyeballs would fall out of your. head. This, you know, just became folded into the whole crazy Trump narrative. But, you know, it's worth pausing to remember how bizarre it is and perhaps criminal. Absolutely. Bill Clinton's impeachment, which you also wrote a book about, has gotten a revision of sorts in the Me Too era. You know, there may be, there were things about power that we might think of differently now than we did then.

Do you think either of these two Trump investigations, Russia and Ukraine, are ripe to be. revised somewhere down the line in history? Well, I think it's sort of history's job to revise. And so I'm sure it will happen. They're actually, the folks at FX, Ryan Murphy and company are making a mini-series about my Monica Lewinsky book, just as they did with my O.J. Simpson book. And it is interesting in working with them to see how much, you know, the Me Too movement has led to

some reconsideration of that story. And I think that's entirely appropriate. I don't I view what I do as if not quite the first rough draft of history, maybe the second, but I have no illusions that anything I write

is the last word. I happen, I mean, just when it comes to Donald Trump, I don't even think we've begun to scratch the surface with his pathologies. I mean, I think when we see, you know, how he has conducted himself in office and how he has conducted, conducted himself in the private lives, as bad and corrupt as we think he is and have established

that he is, I think there is more out there that will come out. But, you know, I could only deal with what I could find out. It's certainly bad enough. Let me ask you a few questions about your career before you go. Raised in New York, you go to Harvard and write for the crimson, where you're the sports editor. Is it true that you wrote a column under the name Inner Tubin? Is that correct? Totally true. Totally true. And I love, I love being a sports writer. I still like to write about sports. I write for Golf Digest, usually once a year. No, and I also think sports writing is a great training tool for any writer,

regardless of what you wind up writing about. I mean, first of all, you have to be accurate. Because, you know, like, you've got to get the score right, and you got to, you know, get how many points, you know, in a basketball game somebody scored or, you know, who scored the touchdowns in a football game. And also, it's drama. I mean, you know, why do we care about sports at all?

And if you can tell a story, a sports story in a dramatic way, you're on your way to being a writer that people want to read. So, yes, indeed. Intertubin was a formative and fun experience. Was it more of a lyrical George Vessy type sports column or a crackling Mike Lupica type sports column? I would say it was, you know, it was kind of in between. I mean, I'm not a big lyrical guy. but I also I'm not I wasn't like a

you know a tabloid guy either like Lupica much as I admire both SESE and Lupica I think it was sort of you know my I don't I mean I was a college student so mostly what it wasn't was very good

but it was more analytical I would say you know talking about you know why the Harvard basketball team was so terrible which it was in those days now now it's now it's much better but my day you have to tell the truth yeah yeah pretty bad after an assistant as an attorney and i'm relying here on a 2007 crimson profile excuse me by samuel p jacobs

you go and have a drink with david remnick himself newly hired at the new yorker in a dive bar it says to talk about switching careers what was that drink like well um you know i i it wasn't as as crazy a change as as it seemed i had been I wasn't as a newest attorney in Brooklyn at the time, but I had been one of the prosecutors in the Iran countercates, and I had written a book about that. I had also done a good deal of freelancing for the New Republic and other publications when I was in law school. And so, you know, I did sort of have a foot in both worlds. Tina Brown had just been hired as the editor of the New Yorker, and she was sort of, of in a wonderful way, flailing around, looking for new people, new voices. And she had hired

this Englishman named Alexander Chancellor as the editor of Talk of the Town. And he didn't know anybody. I mean, he was from London. And David sort of introduced me to him. I sent him clips. He said, come on in. Anyway, long story short, I had a new career in about 48 hours. Now, I didn't No, this was 1993. I didn't know how it was going to work out. And I knew that, you know, if I spent a year as a writer, so what? I'd go back to being a lawyer. But the year after I started at the New Yorker, the OJ case happened.

And that, you know, I wrote a bunch of high-profile stories about it. I ultimately wrote a book, started appearing on TV. That's what really sort of sealed the deal that I was going to wind up being a journalist. But, you know, to the extent my career office. anyone a lesson, it's that you can't plan for anything. It's that, you know, like life happens and good fortune and bad fortune happen. And you just, and I feel like I've been blessed multiply by good fortune in timing and opportunity. And that's really the story.

If I can ask you to tell one OJ story, you find information indicating that Mark Furman, LAPD detective, who had investigated the case, had used racist language. And will you remind us how you were able, now possessing this information, which is going to be a bombshell in this case, to sidle your way, I think I'm remembering this correctly, into Robert Shapiro's office to get an interview of sorts with Robert Shapiro? You know, this is like, you know, the day that changed my life. I mean, I did find those records just sort of on a hunch. It was in the basement of the L.A. it's the LA Superior Court, not even the courthouse where the trial took place, the civil courthouse a couple blocks away. And I had these records. And I knew I, I mean, I didn't even know if the, if the defense team had them at this point. So I, you know, I tried to call Shapiro, who was the lead lawyer at the time, but, you know, he was surrounded by secretaries or whatever.

So, you know, in the spirit of journalistic enterprise, I just sort of went to his office in Century City. And I discovered that he, his office was one floor above the main reception area. And it's important to remember in 1993, this was before 9-11. There was not the kind of security that there is in most office buildings today. And it was a time when if you were wearing a tie and you sort of looked like you knew where you were going, you could sort of walk in and I just sort of barged into his office. I'll tell you another, just a peculiar story about that. One day when I was, when they were shooting the OJ miniseries, they had actually rented an abandoned law office a couple blocks away from where Shapiro worked. And I happened to be on the set that day.

I wasn't on the set every day. And the character playing me is there. And the thing that really shocked me was one of the things I remembered about Shapiro's office is that there was this spiral staircase that you walked up to get to his office. Completely coincidentally, on the set, they had a spiral staircase that looked exactly like the one that I had walked up. But it was, it just, I had never, it just never came up. I'd never told anyone about that.

But it was sort of spooky and kind of wonderful that this spiral staircase reappeared magically out of, in the TV show as well as in real life. And you just go up to spiral staircase. And if I'm, again, I'm not mistaken, there was no receptionist. And you just walked to Robert Shapiro's office. I mean, you know, it's a long time ago now, but I can picture it in my mind. I remember thinking of my. myself. Like, what the hell? I somehow knew he was on that floor, but I didn't know where he was

on that floor. And I was like, what am I going to do? Just like wander around that floor. But when I got to the top of the Spiro staircase, I saw straight ahead. It was Shapiro's office. I saw him there. So I just sort of walked into his office. And the rest is sort of history, I guess, by now. Certainly old enough to be history. As we talk at Midday Monday, we have not had yet an instance of Donald Trump surrendering his duties as president even temporarily. What does an episode like this reveal about the constitutional mechanisms we have in place, do you think, for such an eventuality? Well, you know, like a lot of the rules regarding our presidency,

we have norms rather than Ironclad rules. And, you know, the 25th Amendment presupposes, that the president of the United States is concerned enough about the country, that if he, and it's been a he, recognizes that he is going to be incapacitated, he will have the good judgment to surrender his authority to the vice president. And it's been, and it's happened three times. Ronald Reagan, when he was going in for cancer surgery, did it, and George Bush did it twice when he was going in for routine colonoscopies because they were both knew

that they were going to be under anesthesia and they said, we want to turn over the powers and then when they came out from under the gas they signed a new letter, you know, taking back the power. The question about Trump is, does he have the interests of the country at stake

in recognizing that he has physical limitations that make it impossible for him to, to carry out the duties of president. You know, everything we know about Trump, everything we've seen in Trump, is that he will never surrender this power because he never wants to display weakness, especially a month before an election. So, you know, I think, you know, there is no way that the law can always account for people who are not acting in good faith.

but, you know, the 25th Amendment does not really consider the possibility of someone who is not act to good faith unless it's so extreme that the next section of the 25th Amendment when the cabinet rebels and says, you know, we have to take this power away from you, but I don't think that's in the car. My least important question I say for last. I'm watching CNN not too long ago. You're on the set. I think you were talking about Brett Kavanaugh.

On the screen behind you is CNN political director David Shaliyan. Now, I just glanced at the television. I'm like, here's Jeffrey Tubin. And here's this guy who kind of looks like Jeffrey Tubin projected behind him in a giant image. Yeah. Do you ever get mistaken for David Shaliyaniel. I have often referred to David as my younger identical twin. Now, David, I am pleased to say, or less pleased, but he's pleased to say.

that he is considerably younger than I am. But you are not the first person to notice that we look somewhat alike. You know, when I was at ABC, I used to be on Good Morning America fairly often. And there was one of the newsreader for a time was a correspondent named Antonio Mora. And we also kind of looked alike. And there was an executive at ABC who issued a decree, they cannot be in boxes at the same. time on the air because it's too weird and unnerving. So we have, we don't have that role with Chalien, but, uh, no, yes, David and I, uh, we're, uh, we are pals and he is a younger person.

You can read Jeffrey Tubman's new book, True Crimes and Mistemeter's the investigation of Donald Trump right now. And you can see him on the set of CNN, possibly with his doppelganger. And he will not be leaving CNN, by the way, until November 3rd or possibly long after, because you've got way, way, way too much to analyze. Jeffrey, thanks for coming on the press box. Thank you. All right, it's time for David Shoemaker, guess is a strain pun headline.

Yeah. This week's strain pun headline is from me. Yeah, me. Really? Brian Curtis. She read the New York Times book review yesterday. David, I saw a book review by Amanda Hess. I get excited because she's such a good writer.

I'm going to give you the subhead and then a little help. The subhead is this. two books explore the intersection of technology and intimacy. Technology and intimacy. This is a pun on the title of the movie, When Harry Met Sally. When Harry met Sally. What was the New York Times' strained pun headline?

When horny met... When technology and intimacy? When horny met. When, when, very, very, all right, it starts this way. When Harry met. Oh, when Harry met Siri? When Harry met Siri, very good.

Yes, yes. That was excellent. When Harry met Siri. That's a good headline. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida, production magic by Erica Servantis.

Reminder, we are back Wednesday night, pending world-changing news events after the vice presidential debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris with a live reaction show, as David said earlier, we will fold in the actual debate between Harris and Pence

and the meta debate between Harrison Pence about being the running mates of two very old candidates. Back then with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.