The Press Box - Trump vs. (Almost) Everybody | The Press Box (Ep. 523)

Episode Date: September 12, 2018

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker take a look at Bob Woodward's new book 'Fear: Trump in the White House' (03:00), the anonymous New York Times op-ed (27:00), and the ousting of Les Moonves from CBS (40:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, it's time to experience New Mexico. And I say this is somebody who just got off the plane from Albuquerque after an incredibly fun long weekend. New Mexico is a second home to me. I hung out in Albuquerque this weekend. I went up to Sandia Crest. I went up to Santa Fe and had some delicious brunch. You can go to New Mexico too and soak up the unique beauty and rich cultural diversity with influence from native tribes, the Wild West, and even Georgia O'Keefe. You can marvel at New Mexico's breathtaking.

landscapes from ski areas to white sands and natural hot springs. Learn more and plan your next trip at new mexico.org slash press box. New Mexico true. David, last week Kentucky Senator Rand Paul proposed that administration officials take a polygraph to prove they were loyal to Donald Trump. And Mike Pence said in fact he would take a polygraph. Oh my gosh. I've really just got a general question here.

Okay, go. How do you think the administration of a polygraph test to Trump administration officials would go? Just paint me a picture. Do some scene writing. Oh, man. Okay, I'm going to not take this too seriously. First of all, how do you set the baseline in these? Aren't you already in the grounds of self-incrimination?

I guess you can lock you hook up Pence and you're like, is your wife's name Karen? From that point on, it's pure comedy, right? Is it true that you refuse to meet with female staffers? Ooh, that's good, yeah. I mean, like, what are the, I don't know, I mean, I'm not sure that my guess is that Mike Pence's polygraph test would be a pretty, would be a pretty steady line because he's, you know, a robot, it seems. Yeah. Should we, by the way, say also that polygraph tests are not like they are in like Hannah Barbera cartoons where they, like, explode when the subject lies? I'm pretty sure on Face the Nation, when Pence was asked, they asked if he would take a lie detector test, which is, which immediately made me flash back to some, like, childhood cartoons for sure.

I mean, polygraph tests are so problematic in so many ways. I just love that they just asked, like, whoever was interviewing him, just asked him with, like, full credulity, like, would you take a lie detector test? Like, how are we really at a point? And he said, yes. How are we at a point where I am the vice president, the duly elected vice president of the United States? You can take my word for this. How is that not good enough? I guess that just says all you need to know about the space we're occupying right now.

I'm picturing Pence all hooked up to the machine. like they used to do on the Howard Stern Show and that kind of guy who was there, polygraph guy going, he was Howard, he was being deceptive. Who was that guy? I love that guy. Is he still around?

We're going to look up his name. We haven't done a lot of research. We're going to look up his name. We are the most truthful media podcast in the world. This is the Press Box, a part of the Ringer Podcast Network. The Press Box is the Lodestar of Media Podcasts. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of The Ringer.

That was too easy, wasn't it? Thank you, friends, for suffering through our abbreviated emergency pod last week. David, I sloppily tweeted that given all the media news, the press box was going to go into emergency mode for the foreseeable future, which a lot of our very nice listeners thought met through the press box had been canceled. It was just an emergency podcast. No, that is not true. We are weekly. And by the way, just a note to all listeners out there, in Ringerland, emergency is like the highest designation of podcasts.

That's like operating Thayton level. If we're doing an emergency podcast, that means we've made it, baby. We're here to stay. Anyway, on this not emergency podcast, we've got three topics. First, David, we'll talk about Bob Woodward's new book, Fear, because that is all anybody is talking about. And the Woodward editorial process that seems to ensnare so many high-ranking officials. Second, we'll talk about the anonymous op-ed column that dropped like a bomb on Washington, D.C. last Wednesday, and has also infuriated the Trump administration.

And finally, the ouster of CBS's Les Moonvess and the reporting from Ronan Farrow of the New Yorker that led to it. Plus, as always, our overworked Twitter joke of the week. But should we start with Woodward? And let's start with a surreal telephone call in August that President Trump made to Woodward

to talk about his new book. Trump, how are you? How are you doing? Okay. Real well, I'm turning on my tape record. Well, I just. spoke with Kelly Ann, and she asked me if I got a call. I never got a call. I never got a message. Who did you, who did you ask about speaking to me? Well, about six people.

You know, they don't tell me. All right, David, the day that that book was going to be released is finally here. And by the way, true story. I went to my, an Albuquerque, New Mexico, Barnes & Noble this morning to pick up a copy for me and for my mom. And they said that 170 copies had been placed on hold in Albuquerque. That liberal bastion. This is not Kramer books or politics and prose. Albuquerque to Mexico, 170 books. Saibodyishishers already printed more than a million copies.

They've done six reprintings. This is before the book was released. We'll go through some of the early revelations and the denials from administration officials, the very, shall we say, carefully worded denials. But what did you make of Woodward coming back? And this felt like, we've had nothing but great political muckraking, right, for the last couple of the first couple years of the Trump administration. And this felt like, I'm back, baby. I'm back from the 70s, you know, like I'm going to put, this is, muckraking goes up a level when Bob Woodward is involved. And it just felt like, you know,

the way other reporters were kind of reacting to him, the way that this, strange way you had former administration officials from Obama and Bush saying, oh, look, if Woodward says it, it's true. He's scrupulously fair. What does you make of the whole return? I mean, the reputation that he has as a writer is worth commenting on. I mean, I remember last week we were talking a little bit about, when we were talking about Bannon, there was the implication that, you know, that say what you will about Bannon's appearance at the New Yorker Festival, but maybe that was. the Edward R. Murrow moment

for, you know, if you look at Bannon as a McCarthy figure. Certainly Woodward is appearing, I mean, is kind of being put over or putting himself over as the sort of Edward R. Murrow of this moment, right? I mean, he is, he is the muckraker above reproach, as you said.

He's the, you know, if there's going to be a journalist that can sort of just break through, you know, break through the the chaos and noise, this is, this is the guy, right? So, so, and, and I've been impressed with his, I mean, not impressed. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's not just, you know, he's out

doing media. He's out there, um, he's making himself into a figure, which is not unusual for him doing, you know, doing that sort of press or for anybody writing this sort of book, but he's definitely, um, he's not shying away from this moment. And I love, I'm just so fascinated by the figure he makes himself into because it's it's it's it's woodward as he ever was which is mr just the facts right it's never you know this is you know this i'm gonna i i you know trump is a maniac and he must be stopped you know we're we're we're so used to kind of a you know dialogue of chris hayes versus sean hannity versus racial maddow whatever and then you get this guy like i'm just a reporter you know these are these are these are where the facts led me right

And he'll make these, he'll make these kind of assumptions. He said that on CBS Sunday morning, people better wake up to what's going on, right? All kind of leaving what we're waking up to and the implications of, you know, to his reporting. But I just love the figure that he cuts. It's very, it's very, you know, again, on purpose. And he styles himself as is for sure. It's very old school. It's very gum shoe.

It's very much the straight out of all the president's men would, that we've always known. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's, he's been, you know, very serious,

but also, and listen, his, he's written, all of his books have a hook, right? I mean, there's no,

there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, breaking news, with some significant insight into the,

the current administration. But yeah, I mean, you know, for him to go out there and say he's never seen anything, like the Trump administration, the extent to which he,

the extent that he's that he's, you know, hammering on it. It's, it's, it's, this is different. Yeah, it's funny. His former reporting partner, Carl Bernstein on CNN always just, I think like every 10 minutes declares that whatever is happening in Trump world is worse than Watergate. Quote unquote. It's just like one of those, one of those things where you just get, you just kind of say that every once. I was like, oh, my, Carl Bernstein.

And it always gets like secondary news items. Oh, Carl Bernstein has said this is worse than Watergate. It's time to really pay. I just kind of think he says that a lot. Some of the some of the, some of the, we're now, this is, this is Tuesday when we're talking and we're starting to get the first wave of serious denials. There was that amazing thing last week where all the people were coming forward to say they didn't write the anonymous op-ed, which we're about to talk about. And today was kind of the day that you come forward and say that you didn't leak to Woodward, but you don't exactly say that. Rob Porter, who was a staff secretary, and one of the guys in the opening chapter of this book who is, let us say, pulling things off the president's desk and kind of rerouting things they don't want Trump to do into this bureaucratic morass.

He comes out and calls the Woodward book a, quote, selective and often misleading portrait and says it would be wrong to say documents were stolen, quote unquote, from Trump's desk, but does not deny any specific incidents. this is Peter Baker the New York Times his tweet during Watergate Woodward got a lot of what we're called non-denial denials

and Gary Cohn who is also part of the take stuff off Trump's desk caper is issued an even more nebulous denial which does not prove anything at all but it's just so funny

because I guess and this kind of ethical question came out today of let's say let's just imagine that Porter and Cohn completely cooperated with Woodward

and everything Woodward wrote in the book is true that they did. But then they come out and put on this show of denying it or kind of sort of denying it. Does Woodward have some impetus to come forward and say, no, no, actually they told me all that stuff. Or does

the grant of anonymity, as he calls a deep background, cover them, no matter what they say to the press? I mean, I'm sure you can make the ethical case that that outing them is permissible, but I'm not sure that, that, you know, a philosophical argument would really hold any, hold any water right now, you know, I mean, it would still, it would still

open up that, open up the sort of rear flank to attack. And I don't, and that's the last thing Woodward needs right now when he's making a pretty compelling case on his own, right? I mean, you don't need, you don't need, you know, 500 bright barter daily caller articles about how Burnt or Woodward has proven himself to be dishonest or dishonorable, you know? I mean, that's, that it seems sort of unnecessary, but it seems a little bit beside the point, especially considering, and again,

all this ties in with the op-eds that we'll talk about separately, but also some together, is that I don't think there's anyone in the world that expects the author of the op-ed or the people who are, you know, who have opened up to Bob Woodward to be honest about that after the fact.

I think that's one of the most permissible lies, you know, possible. Yeah, and I guess your move, if you're a politician, you don't answer the 50,000 press requests you're getting to want to know if you cooperate with Woodward. And let's just say also the criticism of the Woodward method is that you pick people as heroes of your book who almost certainly cooperated or, you know, let us say, you know, allowed their emissaries to cooperate with you, right? They become the kind of putative hero of the book. This happened with some of the, with Colin Powell and some of his staff during the Bush war book.

of which he wrote three, I believe, that they became these kind of noble, ideological guys who couldn't believe what was happening around them, right? And this is the same thing with the Trump guys. The criticism here is these Trump people who participated in this, who knew exactly who Donald Trump was when they took the job, are now trying to say, look, look what I've done, right? I stopped him. The Woodward book is showing that we civil servants are the real heroes here.

Yeah. I mean, but then again, but as, but as you just pointed out, no one's really taking credit for it. I'm not sure. I think for it to the same, in the same way that no one's going to be upset at someone for denying they did something that they may have done just to, you know, temporarily, uh, save face or, or, you know, avert repercussion. I don't think you get credit down the road. I mean, even, even, even if there were a story about pulling a document off Trump's desk that, that literally averted a disaster of someone. some sort. A large scale disaster. I have a hard time imagining any of these, any of the people in this book as future deep throats, whether or not they're, you know, lightly painted as heroes and what it's retelling. Yeah, but you know what? I think for Washington people know, because they have a complicated idea of who Gary Cohn is, but for the one million people who

are going to read this book, what do they know about Gary Cohn? Cohn other than these anecdotes in this book, right? I mean, so there's a, there's a different audience here. There's the audience that reads the New York Times and reads Politico and all that stuff. And then there's this audience of people who are vaguely familiar with these names from Fox News or CNN or whatever. We're like, oh, Gary Cohn, you know, he was the one. And look, he'll become a villain to 40-odd percent of that audience.

But to the other 50 percent, he's going to become this kind of strange, you know, ideological heroic figure. A couple other things. Well, just a butt in. I mean, 40% is, I mean, he'll become a villain to 40% of the country theoretically, but probably not 40% of the people who are purchasing this book. I think that that probably skews in a relatively more open-minded slash liberal perspective. Yeah, no, that's definitely true.

A couple of notes about the Woodward method and the related question of, why do all these people talk to Bob Woodward for every one of these books? There was a tweet from Josh Dossi of the Washington Post who said of the 13 former current and former White House officials I spoke to today. This is last week. Seven said they spoke to Bob Woodward for his book. So it's like, you know, those are the seven that admitted it, right, off the record. You know, and part of it is jockeying to, again, I think, you know, some of it is like, I want to be known.

I think the most extreme example of this is I want to be known. The Trump administration could be known as an epic disaster in American. politics and I want to be known as one of the one or two people who was trying to do something, right? The kind of John Dean lately, I have a crisis of conscience figure, right? And I turned on my employers. But the other is just the usual Washington thing, right? I want to make myself, I want to make my role known. I want to be a part of the story. I want to scramble for credit. The kind of stuff that infuses all, basically every article you ever read. And just with Woodward, it's like that times 10,000. Yeah. And there have been

people talking about Woodward's actual, I mean, his sort of style of reporting or interrogation or I'm sure I'm failing at the right word here, but he would, that he'll interview people over and over again, you know, he'll interview you and then, and then come back when he has more information. And he has a, you know, a famous phrase about this, but basically it's like, the more you know, the more they'll tell you. And, and, you know, it's not like, I mean, I'm sure there, I'm sure for some there's this perception that he's, you know, you know, getting phone numbers off of, you know, from people's friends and calling them late at night and trying to get this inside information.

I mean, no, what we've discussed this a million times on this podcast and it's, you know, it's out there. I mean, administration officials are very available to journalists who are covering the Trump White House, you know, I mean, on the record or off, and particularly off maybe in this White House, this is, this has been a, you know, this is a, this is a, this is a leaky administration and the idea that, that, you know, there's anything abnormal about having a conversation with Bob Woodward. I mean, especially in the Trump era, he just keeps kind of hammering away until he feels like he gets the truth. Do you like how Crazy Town has, I don't know if it's entered

the lingo or re-entered the lingo? As a result of the one quote of this book, which is it's pointless to try to convince him of anything. He's gone off the rails. We're in Crazy Town. Do you think, would you rather visit Crazy Town or Flavor Town? Do you have a, do you have a you have a preference? I'm a big Flavouredown proponent so that one's easy for me

but you know Crazy Town is I think we've all we've all been a crazy town every now and then the the litany of

euphemisms for the degree of kind of just nuttiness in the in the Trump White House has been

sort of amazing too yeah I mean you know we get these every once in a while there'll be like

a real blunt quote from somebody you know he's a fucking idiot or someone that gets leaked out and of course there's denials again forgivable denials um i would i would guess but but uh but yeah i mean it's it's amazing like it's it's kind of impressive how many different ways people have just saying like you know this is a fucking disaster

my favorite is always in in new york times east is the word extraordinary that's what they used to me just like just this shit is off the rails you know is as extraordinary like and there was a piece they did about the adotabas op ed which we'll talk about the second but It's like a line of people pleaded not guilty on Thursday to writing an extraordinary anonymous essay. And then later in the same piece, it said that helped incite an extraordinary parade of top officials marching into news media microphones to disavow the piece. So it's like a double extraordinary. Times have been using extraordinary pretty frequently since the beginning of Trump. But this is a double extraordinary day means something really amazing happened.

We're actually approaching. I'm sure there's some like, you know, onion zones of whatever. onion version of the Tyson zone is, but we're actually approaching the great onion, the onion our dumb century headline of holy shit, man walks on fucking moon. I feel like that could be every Trump headline. Yeah, we're going to put aside the extraordinarily at some

point and just get to the point. A couple other funny notes. From Politico's excellent media newsletter, I learned that veteran, liberal host and commentator Bill Press also has a new book out today. It's called Trump Must Go. So,

and I don't know if this helps Bill press? Are people going to Barnes & Noble or are seeing like people also bought Bill Press as Trump must go? Quite a thing to be buried under the Woodward avalanche. There was of course an old Trump tweet praising Woodward

which is only the Obama White House can get away with attacking Bob Woodward. Not anymore. Also in a you put vulture in my Politico moment, our pal Chris Solentrop did the Bob Woodward books ranked?

Yes. which was kind of amazing. I had, you know, the ones that came out in our adult lifetime, I sort of vaguely remembered a couple of my head to read. I had, Chris found out that Woodward had written a Dan Quail book,

which sounded like a weird sort of clip job that Woodward was even too embarrassed to put on his website, which studiously listed all his other books. Oh, wow. And then this one for you, because you are a book publishing correspondent here on the press box. Vanity Fair's Joe Pompeo reports about, all the other Trump books we're still going to get at this point.

Michael Schmidt, who's breaking scoop after scoop at the Times, is writing a book about Robert Mueller. James Stewart, who's a fine Times columnist who's read at The New Yorker, is writing a book about,

quote, the relationship between the White House, the FBI, and the Justice Department. There's a Matt Drudge book coming out about Matt Drudge. Wow. And I'm probably forgetting some.

Yeah, I mean that... And I'm sure Judge Jeanine has, you know, four more coming out next year. I think that in another administration, I mean, you would see those, I mean, those books would probably not even merit mentioned. I mean, of course, their authors would get on the Sunday shows for one week or that, you know, whatever.

But, and, I mean, if it, I, there would always be this vibe in publishing where it's like, well, we know what word's coming out, so we just got to get out of the way, you know, or like, what's, you know, you can, or, you know, publish conservatively. Is it like a movie? Lose a lot of money. Is it like when you know Star Wars is coming out, you move your movie to next month? There's different ways. I mean, there's different thoughts. There's different theories about it. I mean, there's certainly, like, if you think you can, if you come out at exactly the same time, you get the double review for sometimes with a big book.

You know, yours is the lesser book, but it gets there in the New York Times. But for the most part, a book like this, you would clear out. And that's what you would say, like, the Michael Wolf book. And I know nothing about how that was purchased. But like, you know, you might see a book like that and just be in another administration and say, okay, if you can, if we can publish this at this very moment, then, okay, because it'll be far enough away from the other stuff, you know. But with the Trump administration, you got to imagine that, like, all these books are going to have something, you know, I mean, they're all going to have, they're all going to carry a couple days or a week of the news cycle because it just seems like, like, crazy town is

leaking out left and right, you know? I mean, you don't have to be Bob Woodward to get a major scoop, although Woodward's done a pretty good job of telling the comprehensive story, it sounds like. If there's a Woodward Bill Press double review, I just somebody please email it to me. Just find my email address and send it to me. All right, David, now it's time for the overword Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious

that all of Twitter made it at exactly the same time. In NFL news, David, it was week one of the NFL and the Cleveland Browns kicked off the season by not losing. They tied the Pittsburgh Steelers 28-28 and overtime in a game that featured Josh Gordon pulling down an amazing ball in the end zone and the Browns kicker

of course missing a kick in OT that that would have won the game. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. The Browns are going, oh, oh, and 16. And we are all witnesses. That was one thing. Someone added. Thanks to David Trinnis, Trinnis for that one.

Sorry, David, about your pronuncious union of your name. In fight of their political lives news. And by the way, David, it is a great time of year for a newspaper to use the phrase. So-and-so politicians is in the fight of their political lives. This is the time. If you're on the ropes. I'm sure you've been following the Texas Senate race in our home state featuring Ted Cruz versus Beto O'Rourke.

There was a tweet from Raw Story over the week over last week that read like this. Ted Cruz warns that Beta O'Rourke will bring, quote, tofu, silicone, and dyed hair, in quote, to Texas. Tofu silicone and dyed hair. It was an overboard Twitter joke to say, breaking Ted Cruz has never been to Dallas. that was a good one

and by the way I love the you and I love Texas the lowest form of Texanness is just saying like stuff from the coast is coming to Texas

yes I love that even my favorite radio station Dallas says we don't have any any of those hosts from the coast given hot opinions

you know like oh yeah those people from like just imagine those people from the coast you imagine that is a real the worst part is that you know

the worst part is that you know you workshopped that like that was a very like it works That line in particular is terrible. It's absolutely terrible, but it has this weird appeal. And the campaign he's running is no tofu.

Like the other guy will bring tofu. I will bring, you know, lower taxes. Like that is the tradeoff here. In other bitter political news, Thursday finally is primary day in New York State. And with apologies to Zephyr Teach out the main event, David, is Andrew Cuomo versus Cynthia Nixon. For the gubernatorial nomination. There was a tweet from Gothamist, a very notorious tweet, Monday that read, See it.

Cynthia Nixon orders cinnamon raisin bagel with dot, dot, dot, locks and capers. This was, this was seen. This is like the annual like someone ate pizza wrong, you know, political hit. Cynthia Nixon ordering a cinnamon raisin bagel with locks and capers. It was an overwork Twitter joke. And boy was it. I mean, there were a bunch. to say, quote, this is a devastatingly effective smear campaign.

Thanks to, yeah, I know, but it was everywhere. It was everywhere. Thanks to Matthews. I had a bagel this morning for breakfast. I think my first since I came back. At least I think I had won the first day I came back. But it's strictly because of this conversation. This conversation made me hungry for a bagel.

Thanks to Matthew Sightland for that. All right. Topic number two, David. In other Trump administration news, here is Kenneth Vogel, reporter of the New York Times, tweet sharing a voice. voicemail he got from a reader. Oh, hi, Ken. I don't even know you. I'm calling from California. This is a number that Sarah Huckabee Sanders posted, and I just want to thank you a million times over. It is the most helpful.

I have felt about our government in a long, long time for publishing that article yesterday. Good work. I'm so grateful for it. Thank you, thank you. Keep up the good work, whatever support we can give you. Thank you. I know I was supposed to call this to complain, but this isn't a complaint. This is a, okay, maybe it doesn't matter, but what the heck, I felt compelled to do this. Bye, bye. That is in response to the New York Times, of course, publishing an op-ed last Wednesday called I am part of the resistance inside the Trump administration.

And Sarah Huckabee Sanders, part of the administration's response was encouraging people to call the New York Times. It just turns out that some people called with, you know, kind of the nasty, message on the phone. And some people called, as in Vogel's case, praising the New York Times say, thank you for publishing this. Please publish more things about Trump. We seem to have settled in this weird stasis,

at least in liberal Twitter land, about the anonymous op-ed, David, which is this person, this senior administration official is trying to, as we said a moment ago, get on the right side of history, right? You know, they are, they're happy with a lot the stuff Trump has done.

They are, by writing this, they are trying to plant their flag as the guy with a conscience or gal with a conscience inside the Trump administration. And isn't that cheap. But dot, dot, dot, liberal Twitter continues, isn't it amazing that this happened? Because this is the greatest story ever. What do you, what do you make of the op-ed? Wow. You know, it's funny.

I mean, this combined with the Woodward thing and these two things are inextricable on the podcast, obviously, but just in general, it just seems like the revelations, I mean, we've talked over and over again during the Trump era that, you know, even the wildest news has a very, very short lifespan because there's just something else wild around the corner to knock it down a peg. I sort of feel like as, I mean, in some ways this is the inverse of that, that we, that we finally feel like we're settling into a level of agreement, of like, of understanding of how dysfunctional,

of how like all of the sort of wildest, um, imaginations of what the, what inside the Trump White House might be like are actually true. And it's, in some ways it's alarming. And in some ways it's just sort of calming isn't the right word, but it gives you some assurance that like,

you know, that you're not, dwelling purely in the land of conspiracy theory. So it's essentially saying that the people who publish the op-ed and the people who are gloring it are saying, look, look, the Trump administration is off the rails, which we already knew. And the people on the Trump side of it saying, look, these people are trying to sabotage the administration.

It's off the rails because of these people. This is a total sidebar. But I mean, I wonder if there's a lot of the hunger for the Mueller investigation. And given it's an incredibly serious investigation, especially if it bears any. any fruit. But like, you know, a lot of the hunger for for that and for the question of whether or not there was some outside influence on the election is goes back to this sort of just widespread disbelief. I can't believe some, I can't believe that someone this dysfunctional was elected president. There must be a deeper reason. I wonder if like at some point it will become enough

that there's, there probably was not a direct correlation. If indeed there was not a direct correlation, between Trump and Vladimir Putin that just this is an incredibly dysfunctional administration. Like if the premise is correct, is everyone going to be okay to let the, let the Russia half go? But I don't, all that is a sidebar to this op-ed, which was really, really, I mean, it was very significant and very spectacular. And just the language. I mean, it reads like a Woodward, you know, joint. The dilemma

the anonymous author writes is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know I am one of them. Yeah. So a little bit of how this

came together, by the way. The Times was the Times op-ed page which does not in cases like this talk to the news pages, right? The news, the reporters who covered the Trump White House would love to know who this guy is or gal is if they don't already know. This is a story they would love to get and the people at the paper who know won't tell them.

They were contacted James Dow, who's the Times' op editor, told Brian Stelter through an intermediary. They talked to the person, obviously did some background verification to make sure they weren't being taken for a ride. He said there was a tiny number of people at the Times who know the author's identity. they didn't do anything to disguise the prose in, you know, to try to take out any words or change the writing style so the person wouldn't be known. This led to Lodestar Gate, which is the word Lodestar was in the piece. And then there was some sleuthing saying, oh, well, you know, it's like Mike Peds has used this in a speech a couple times. Anyway, that was guessing game number one.

The guessing game is phenomenal, right? I mean, you know, people have referenced now both deep throat and primary colors as our two Washington guessing games. And as the Times reported, like, everyone is, you know, coming to a microphone saying, I did not write the op-ed. I would like to. And I like the people who were just ridiculous, like Steve Mnuchin, you know, did not write, you know, okay, we almost didn't need clarification on that way. He's fine, right? He's not upset. Also, we got a great Rachel Maddow tweet.

You and I have been, or Rachel Maddow quote, you know I have been chronicling all the times when people say this is the end of the Trump administration or this is the turning point, Rachel Maddowton. Right. This feels like the end. end of something and I don't know what happens next. So once again, the flag has been planted that this is something is going to change after this anonymous op-ed. Yeah. The literary guessing game is fascinating, is it not?

Yeah, I mean, the language. Thankfully, I have some semblance of a long-term memory. And I think previously on this podcast, when the story, when the Axio story came out, I remember discussing, this is on May 13th, I remember discussing the Mike Allen quote, quote, Mike Allen story about why White House leakers leak where someone in the Trump administration says, to cover my tracks, I usually pay attention to other staffers idioms and use that in my background quotes to throw the scent off me. And I was like, I came off the top robe like Moutreman Randy Savage into ring or slack when

everybody was like flipping out about this op-ed and the Lodestar tweets started circulating. You know, Lodestar is a perfect way to throw your, to, you know, throw the scent off. And, you know, I find it really hard to believe that, I mean, I found it hard to believe anyway that Mike Pence would be the person writing this, you know, that Mike Pence would be the culprit here. But it is really, I mean, the fact that everybody was just going there. I mean, I guess that's just where we are in the Twitter age and in 2018 in general. You know, you got to do the sleuthing because, you know, that's just how we function. Yeah, and people want to know, right? I mean, it's a legitimate, it's a legitimate news activity.

Like somebody says they're sabotaging the Trump administration. That's kind of a big deal and wrote about it in the New York Times. That seems like a big deal. By the way, yeah, it does. Have you ever used, have you used the word Lodestar before in your prose? I mean, come on. I might have written it in a short story when I was like 21, but I can't imagine that I've used it since. All right.

I've used it in a ringer story in the last two months. So, just confession time. Well done. I am anonymous. I wish I were anonymous now. But yeah, it's kind of a handy word, you know. It takes us back to you when you and I were in SAT class in high school, you know. All right, David, we're going to quit truculent, load star.

Got to ace that verbal section. We do what we can, Brian. Yeah, there was a whole other thing, too, about certain people came forward and said, look, I think Michael Caputo, who's a former Trumpite on CNN's quote, was this is a coup, you know, essentially saying, look, Trump is the popularly elected president of the United States. And the fact that his staff would be sabotaging him, both in examples in the Woodward book and whomever wrote this Times op-ed, is sabotaging the administration. That's an interesting argument.

It's also not something that has anything really to do with the press because of, you know, press does not have any interest in, you know, making administration officials serve their leader. Yeah. They're happy to, and if the administration official wants to tell them, either in extraordinary, quote-unquote, op-ed form or otherwise that they're sabotaging administration, that sounds like news to me. And, you know, the rest is the Trump administration's problem.

Yeah. I mean, you know, it's a little bit difficult, I guess, to sort of tease out what the the endgame of whoever wrote this is. And it should be said that it might not be one person. Steve Bannon came out today. Our constant subject, Steve Bannon, said that he believed it was between six and 12 people. I think that's what he said. Who wrote it as a group, I guess.

But, you know, and there were separate reports that the president's, you know, increasingly isolated, unsurprisingly, since he doesn't know who did this. That we can write every week, by the way. Yes, but he believes it to be a low-level staffer. Yeah. I'm not exactly sure what the, like, if it was one person, I guess, you know, you can imagine this is, you know, that someone would be emboldened by this to come out and put their name to something, you know, or to, you know, to be the, to sit, you to kind of just publicly co-sign, uh, you know, that sentiment. Um, but without that, it does just become this guessing game and this game of morality and treason in all capital letters, you know, and I don't, I'm not, it's, it, it all, it all, yeah, I, I, I, I, Like I said, the conventional wisdom seems to be solidifying. I'm not quite sure what that means for the Trump presidency.

Yeah, well, I think it means the same thing. By the way, there was also this whole very funny, and New York Times wrote a whole piece about who is a senior administration official. Yes. And it's a very nebulous. That's not an official term. And Tommy Veter of Pod Save America said several times I tried to get quoted as a junior administration official. That's for fun.

It never worked. So senior administration official could be. anybody. We'll ignore Trump's tweets for the meantime. Treason, all caps, question mark. He called the person gutless. Huckabee Sanders, as I said, asked people to call the Times and

register their discontent. Also, by the way, in the guessing game, so funny things. System managing editor at the time, Sam Dolnick, tweeted about the op-ed and referred to it as a senior White House staffer. This is according to a political piece by Michael Calderon, Jason Schwartz, which set off another guessing game because

remember, it said a senior administration official, and he's seem to be narrowing it down to White House official, and then he later walks it back and says, I have zero knowledge about the identity. None of these words mean anything, just FYA. Right. Also, a time spokeswoman referred to the op-ed writer as a he in the Twitter account, or sorry, the Twitter account referred to the op-ed writer as he, and then the spokeswoman had to come along and clean it up and say, no, no, sorry, we're not revealing anything with

this pronoun. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I know. I know that the New York Times, you know, would not have, they'd have, they'd have, they did their due diligence on this or the the two or three people who actually know who it is presumably are you know are correct or properly looped in and are not being taken for a ride as you said before but my initial total conspiracy theory guess was there have been all this you know all this conversation about about dueling or about competing centers of power in the trump white house wouldn't this

be the best move if you're stephen miller just to put to put this out there to totally consolidate power with donald trump yeah i mean that would that would be amazing right now he doesn't he doesn't trust anybody who's even a little bit to the you know just just a tiny degree off from him just you just you you get then you're you're the only you're the last person standing when trump's looking for his shoulder to cry out i think that's an amazing theory i think and i think you should rush to print with that one hopefully using preferably using the word lodestar in the lead all right david let's finish up with less moon vests of CNN here is nora o'donnell anchor of the CBS this morning with the duty of commenting on yet another colleague of hers was ousted after numerous accusations of sexual harassment and assault. Last year, it was Charlie Rose. This week, it's Les Moonvest, chairman and CEO of the CBS Corporation. Let's listen.

I think the most powerful media executive in America has now resigned in the wake of this need to movement. And he's my boss, or he was my boss. And so that makes it really hard to comment on it. Les has always treated me fairly and with respect. Still, it's been, for me, it was been another sleepless night thinking about this, the pain that women feel,

the courage that it takes for women to come forward and talk about this. And I really didn't know what I was going to say this morning. I know I needed to say something. So Gail and I have talked and texted. And I said, you know, Gail, I'm kind of looking back to November when we dealt with accusations against our former co-host. And Gail sort of said, yeah, but, you know, I didn't think we'd still be the story in September.

And 10 months later, we're still talking about this. So why don't we just, why don't we focus on the reporting here, which I think is fascinating. The New Yorkers, Ronan Farrow, published his first piece back in July, which six women, including the actress Ileana Douglas, accused Moonvest of sexual harassment. Then he came out with another piece on Sunday with accusations from six more women. Three hours later, Brian Stelter of CNN reports that Moondvess is stepping down, something that's been in the air for a couple of days around there. What did you make of the Farrow pieces, these two big slabs of investigative? of journalism. They are slabs

and not I mean in this sort of reporting I feel like it does it does a service to the to the subject to just be sort of as meticulous and straight as you can be.

It's almost like an indictment right? It just goes character to character. Here is this person and here's what happened. Here is this person and here's the obligatory C. CBS denial. Here's this person and what happened. Go ahead. It reminds me, it echoed a little bit of the sort of best version of online investigative journalism, and that, but so many of those online pieces don't have the same gravity or the same significance

or don't even necessarily reach the same level of conclusion or definitiveness that Pharaoh's pieces do, but just in the fact that you have all the space in the world to break this down step by step. and there's almost, there's almost an implicit, um, a plea for, uh, plea for, uh,

for, uh, for, uh, for the reader to take the piece seriously, you know, I mean, that it's, it's not, this isn't overly, this isn't overwrought,

you know, this isn't, there's nothing purple about this. This is just like, I am going to say this as, as clearly as I can, and I'm not going to leave a single word out. And by the end,

you will be convinced. And the pieces, both pieces are incredibly compelling, because of that. I think what struck me as most interesting was the power... I mean, and this again goes to the length and goes to the...

goes to the, you know, encyclopedic nature of the way of the reportage was that the second piece was, again, in a very bloggy sort of way, just a straight follow-up to what he had written before. And it made me, think about the original, you know, his

original piece, but Harvey Weinstein, and the stories of it getting shot down in NBC. And that was also relitigated recently, too. NBC, you know, he said that they refused to publish it because they wanted him to get a certain source on the record and they didn't, there's some quibble about what they insisted, what they asked of him

and that he wanted to, you know, publish as quickly as possible. And he found a home with the New Yorker to do that. But, but it made me think of that because there is, because this, the less moon of us thing above all else, shows the validity of sort of publishing in chapters, the sort of serial, the serial expose.

And that like we don't actually need every single, every single abused woman to come forward. Everyone that he is, everyone that he is just, you know, wrought his evil upon over the years, doesn't have to come forward all at once. in some ways it's more compelling that it is a series of articles

each one motivating another group of people to come forward and yeah I mean I think it really it's very subtle it's not like this has never been done before but it feels like it feels like a really interesting shift in the way that these things are reported

yeah I think that's right and that stretches back to the very first New York Times article about Harvey Weinstein where the act of publication makes it, and it must be incredibly difficult to come forward and talk to a journalist about something like this. But the act of publication may make it somewhat easier for certain people to then talk because there's stuff on the record and you're coming into sort of like an established fact pattern. No, I think that's absolutely right. Some of the people that were in the second

and the most recent Ronan Farrow thing were, I mean, just, I think, said pretty straightforwardly that who, like, they felt like who were they to come forward? And that's the, you hear that a lot about victims of sexual assault. But, you know, this was a very clear, very, very easily kind of digestible version of that. And, and like, and those words were there in print. And you could understand why one person complaining about Les Moonvis and the wilds of Los Angeles would not feel like they had a voice. Oh, no.

Not 10 years ago. Not 20 years ago. Yeah. Not five years ago. I mean, and not even six months ago without, you know, the feeling that there was. was actually an audience without there was someone there to listen that there were other people making similar claims you know and to understand the gravity of the accusations right this isn't you know to read a story and say oh this isn't just some dispute you know that can be settled or exactly right this is this is something that if true this person should be out there should be

out immediately there was this tweet from the crazy ex-girlfriend actress rachel bloom as soon as the second pharaoh story came out this weekend she says an employee of cbs i would just like to say that less moon vests should be fired without getting a fucking dollar. The actions described in this article are those of sexual assault and shame on anyone else in the corporation who knew about his crimes. I was pretty amazed. And I think a lot of people were that after the first Farrow piece came out, that it was kind of like, hmm, we'll investigate. We'll get back to you. Because that was at the end of July, if I'm remembering my dates correctly.

So we've had now a month and change go by. and that was just like, I mean, we've been under this, I mean, and it just reminds you, I think, that MoonVess is, this is me to reaching a level of the executive suite that it really had not yet, you know, or certainly in media world, right? I mean, Harvey Weinstein was obviously an enormous figure, but by the time he was ousted, he was considerably, he was probably at the least of his powers, right? Les Moonace is still huge, was still huge. which was also sort of symbolized by this exit package

that he was negotiating was going to be up to $120 million. Well, that was contractual. A couple of things before I jump in on the exit package.

Sure. I mean, one, the story, and I encourage everyone to read these Ronan Faro pieces if you haven't, and not just the,

the blog breakdowns, although those are worthwhile in their own way, but the sheer, like, feeling of impunity that he was operating with is different

than all the stories we've heard before, right? I mean, I'm not, there's nothing forgivable about Harvey Weinstein, but this is, this is, the, the level of, of just the, he, he felt himself so bulletproof that he was clearly had been driven, I mean, driven mad by power, sounds like I'm giving him too much credit. This was, it, it was heartbreaking and mind boggling at the same time. but so I mean so I think that when you talk about reaching a place that it's never reached before I mean it's I mean clearly he felt like he was in some removed space

no human being could ever feel like any of that stuff was okay oh my name absolutely right and and you know just to get to the compensation I mean there was there have been reports about his contract and I think Roman Roman Pharaoh himself had had the contract in hand or somebody did but the but the and before we get before before before I forget there was also a vanity fair piece that that connected that connected into a doctor that that had come out previously but not but not named less moonvis by name but that the vanity fair confirmed that it was that that it was less moonvis who like showed up for a doctor's appointment early one morning at a hospital you know cedar

sinai or whatever and sexually assaulted the doctor or attempted to uh I mean the stories are just you know one after the other I think that was interesting about the first piece and maybe I'm over I mean maybe this isn't true but I do but Harvey Weinstein for whatever station of his career he was at when he when he was when he was you know exposed he was certainly more of a public figure than Les Moonvis ever was you know I mean I don't think the average CBS viewer has any idea who Les Moonvis is maybe by name but certainly not he wasn't a he wasn't a character a national character international character in the way that Weinstein and certainly not the you know all of the

the male celebrities that have been, that, you know, that have had their moments in this movement as well. And I think to, to some degree, it made it more of a sort of insidery story, even though the actual story was just so much greater. And, I mean, so much, so much more unbelievable, so much more, you know, just mind-bogglingly evil. But, you know, I think that that, that, that, that, that, that, that, it sort of hit, it felt different when it, when it landed. I mean, it wasn't a thud, but it was, it was, it was more of a, more of a, you know,

a business side story. And I, and, and that's, you know, disappointing, but I think that that's, I think that that was real. I think the second story, you know, really, really brought it home. And all of this goes, comes, circles back around to the compensation because I, I, you got the feeling from the moon Viscan, not that they were out there defending themselves, that they thought they could sort of fight through it, or that they, at least that they had, a window to negotiate the exit and for the, and the amount of money that he would get on the way out the door.

And, you know, hundreds of... And they did, right? I mean, it was a month and a half. I mean, you know, that's a long time to hang on, right? And by the way, I think they would... Stelter wrote a couple of things the other day in his newsletter that made me think that they were definitely, you know, defending themselves to the press. And circulating conspiracies that this was tied up in the Sherry Redstone thing he's going, you know, that CBS was... going through with ICOM and all that stuff and that it was somehow motivated by that or that she was some one of the conspiracy theories that Seltor said that he himself did not believe but said this is something people are saying is that she was somehow tied up in the reporting of these stories or encouraging the stories whatever it is but um i think they were working working trying to work the refs and i think they were taking their sweet time to get this compensation package i mean it's just and again it's like there was so as you said there was so much damning material in that first piece um

that it's pretty amazing. I also really enjoyed reading the Bill Carter piece, Bill Carter Chronicle of television, especially late-night TV, noted that MoonVest was an actor before he became an executive. Oh, yeah. He said he gave it up because he wasn't a really good actor, and he was a science. It's possible that we were all watching the most effective performance of Leslie Moonbess's life. You know, just, as you said, you know, acting with absolute impunity and disgusting impunity in private. and then just carrying on as, you know, Mr. Executive, you know, the most effective guy in television,

the guy who survived all these executive purges where so many of his counterparts have been laid low for bad ratings, you know. Yeah. And I should, I mean, I should say, I mean, to, you know, go off of what I said before, this isn't a matter. This isn't just a matter of power corrupting. I mean, the stories that that Pharaoh recounts go back to some of his earliest days sort of in the suites, you know, I mean, where he would, he was sexually. assaulting his peers. You know, I mean, there was, this wasn't, this, this isn't exclusive to, you know, young actresses and massage therapists, although there were those too. You know, I mean, it was, it was just pretty, pretty insane. It's pretty much everything.

That's the press box for this week. Our producer is Jim Cunningham. Chris Almeida helped us with research. David, back with more hot takes about the media next week. See then, buddy. See you later, man. I've really just got a general question here. Okay, go.

Would you rather visit Crazy Town or Flavor Town? Oh, man. You have a preference. Crazy Town or Flavor Town. First of all, how do you set the baseline in these? People want to know. Wow. Crazy Town or Flavortown.

All caps, question mark. Crazy Town. This is a fucking disaster. Or Flavor Town. Do you have a preference? I'm a big Flavortown proponent, so that one's easy for me. But, you know, Crazy Town is, I think we've all been to Crazy Town every now and then. Not 10 years ago.

not 20 years ago, not five years ago. Okay. We're here to stay.