The Press Box - Trump’s Campaign of Self-Sabotage. Plus, The Washington Post’s Robert Costa.

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker break down the Trump campaign after Trump declined to participate in a virtual presidential debate. They then weigh in on the re-reporting of The New York Times' narrative podcast, ‘Caliphate.’ Plus, The Washington Post’s Robert Costa joins to discuss covering politics, interviewing Trump, and booking John Mayer for his senior prom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, this week the print edition of the New Yorker magazine made a reference to the press box. Just one catch. They didn't use the name the press box. They called us a ringer podcast. What I want to know is, should we be flattered or offended? First of all, we should always be flattered. The closer we can be associated with the mothership, the better, despite our, you know, weekly efforts to be disassociated.

I found it humorous, that one, there was the implication that everybody reading the magazine would be familiar enough with the ringer to get the point, but also that they would be unaware enough about the ringer to think that everything that we put out is the Bill Simmons podcast. So, yeah, I guess on another show, it might be stunning that we would stop talking about sports long enough to discuss the Lincoln Project. Unfortunately, on the press box, we probably spend a lot more, a lot too much time talking about the Lincoln Project and such topics and not enough time talking about the various tiers of basketball's Hall of Fame. I did, yes, I did love that, that we'd been having like some sprawling basketball conversation. I was like, hey, David, by the way, did you see this Lincoln Project thing? I do feel recognition with the outside media is kind of a three-step process.

first they listen to you then they start calling you by your proper name and then step three if we're ever lucky enough they learn to tell the difference between my voice and your voice so they can actually identify

which one of us made the quip in question there is no greater compliment as far as I'm concerned from where I said there's no greater compliment for a podcast if hosted by two people of the same gender

then the moment where I Google the pictures to try to put voices to faces. Like once, when I do that, then I am fully in on the podcast for the rest of time. The podcasters are my friends. I consider them close confidence. And, yeah, hopefully we will get there

with some people someday. Please Google us, folks. Please Google us. Today on the press box, Donald Trump's campaign of self-sabotage, the New York Times re-reports its Caliphate podcast, and the Washington Post, Robert Costa, stops by. All that more,

these messages. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. David, let us begin with a little Donald Trump audio. The president, who is apparently not contagious, was in Sanford, Florida yesterday, and wanted to tell you about his experience watching TV. I told the story. I told my wife, oh, we're going to have a great time. We're going to watch television.

I just got nominated for the Nobel Prize. And then I turned on the fake news. Story after story. They talk about your weather in the panhandle run. They talk about this. They talk story after story, no mention. Two things there. The weather in the panhandle of Florida that Donald Trump is talking about, was in fact a hurricane?

Which naturally got top billing. Number two, obviously this story is made up. But I love Donald Trump's made up stories or I've come to love them. I was sitting down with Melania to watch the news in hopes that my bogus Nobel Prize nomination would lead the newscast. Do you think he was watching David Muir, David? Do you think he flipped out? What newscast was Trump checking out? This is going to be the day.

This is the biggest news of the Trump administration. And this is going to be the day where they just lay down their arms and discuss what a great. accomplishment my presidency has been no it is a fantastic framing of uh of of of well events in general i felt for the last few weeks david that political reporters really want to come out and say that donald trump's campaign is toast they really want to say it because it really looks like it is nate silver said the other day that if the election were held right now joe biden would have a 90 plus percent chance to win, right? But politics reporters can't say that because, you know, there's still a chance Trump can win, a very legitimate chance. You don't want to look stupid, right? You don't want to be on

that list when Trump wins a second upset and you look at all the political reporters that called it wrong. But I felt this was the week that people let their guards down a little bit because Trump just began self-sabotaging his campaign so much that even if you imagined he had a chance, it's sort of of closed off that possibility a little bit. His first plan was to ditch the second presidential debate. There was supposed to be a debate this Thursday. And Trump, as you may have heard, has had the coronavirus. So the debate commission said, hey, we need to do this remotely. Joe Biden said, that's cool. Donald Trump said, go to hell. Listen to this. The CPD, the Commission on Presidential Debates announcing this morning that the second presidential debate will be virtual.

Are you saying you're not going to participate? No, I'm not going to waste my time on a virtual debate. That's not what debating is all about. You sit behind a computer and do a debate. It's ridiculous. You sit behind a computer and do a debate. I love how he's doing this interview sitting at a chair virtually. I mean, over the phone.

He could be there in person. you know, coronavirus notwithstanding with Maria, but no, he I mean, he's doing it over the phone, but, but, you know, it's a totally different thing to debate via Zoom. And as soon as he took a stand in favor of live debate, he not only did Maria,

he did Rush Limbaugh. He did all these shows. By phone. He was happy to do that. And apparently his advisors, if you read the articles, were saying, you know, we're going to get tens of millions of viewers. The last debate got 74 million people for a chance for you to debate Joe Biden and have everybody's attention and maybe turn this thing around. And Donald Trump says, no thanks. No thanks.

Yeah. Do you have any idea why he would possibly not want to do this in some form or another? No. I mean, it seems like all the sort of passing theories, conspiracy or non, seem plausible kind of as they're kind of as they're coming. out of someone's mouth or someone's tweet, but I don't feel like I really have a firm theory myself on why it happened. I think that he was, I mean, I think that honestly,

he didn't want to play by anybody else's rules, you know? I mean, he might just not have wanted to do the debate. You know, I thought at the time, I got to tell you, I thought that he was maybe, you know, interested in staying home and healing up, but keeping that a secret. But that clearly isn't the case. He's been out, you know, out in public since then. So I don't know.

I don't know. I mean, it doesn't make a lot of sense. What do you think? Well, first of all, I flush all the conspiracy theories that Donald Trump wants to lose the election. They all go down the toilet for me. Donald Trump does not want to lose the election. Donald Trump does not want to lose to Joe Biden. No.

He really doesn't want to lose. That's like that whole thing of Donald Trump really doesn't have the coronavirus. Yeah, you think Donald Trump wanted to go to the hospital? he wanted everybody to see him. But I think you hit on it, which is it's sort of a come down, right? It's sort of being like, you're making me do something. You're making me look weak in the Trumpian mind. Yeah.

That you had the coronavirus, so you have to stay away. That's the best theory I got, man. I think that's, I think there's a lot of truth of that, right? I mean, that he will, that he, being there virtually is just a reminder of the fact that he got sick. And despite all of his protest. all his claims of invincibility and of whatever else. I mean, I think that has to be what's on his mind. And I would just say for a campaign that's, that's, you know,

half-heartedly trying to make hay of the fact that he did get sick. You know, we talked with that last week. Like, Joe Biden hasn't had COVID, so he doesn't, he can't sympathize with all the people who've had it. You know, one thing that Trump could get a lot of sympathy for is having to conduct his job over Zoom. I mean, I think that's something that every America, I mean, just so many Americans have had to learn how to do over the past six months and in debating over Zoom, I don't think is a negative. But yeah, it reminds people that he was sick. And that is a bigger deal to Trump than it probably is to anybody watching. Jonathan Lemire of the AP tweets this. There are moments when it feels like so many of Trump's recent decisions are less about him trying to win and more about setting up excuses as to why he lost. There will definitely be tons of excuse making if Donald Trump loses the election. but I don't feel he is laying this elaborate sort of web to set up why he lost.

I just don't think he thinks that way. Well, I think he does think that way. I think he's already making excuses, but I don't think he's, I don't think he's making plans. I don't think he's proactively trying to achieve those excuses in the way that Jonathan lawyer is kind of suggesting. Yeah, I mean, voter fraud, quote unquote, that's an excuse. Yeah. But missing, missing the debate and then I'm going to blame it because I wasn't allowed to debate in person.

I mean, one real practical answer to this question, I guess, has to be the mute button that everybody was talking about after the first debate, right? That conversation sort of went by the wayside when the virtual debate was suggested, right? Because I think the one thing that would be absolutely inherent to a virtual debate is a mute button, right? You can't just go. I mean, otherwise, I mean, there's no, there's no, you know, honor system of people in the same room sort of imploring one another to stop talking. And so, you know, you know, people in the same room sort of imploring one another to stop talking. And so. I mean, if you're on a Zoom call and you can never be muted, you're just going to talk over your opponent the entire time, right? Especially if you're Trump. There would be a mute button. And Trump, and that would probably, you know, ruin whatever technique Trump was trying to employ. Did you ever think that Tony Riali on Around the Horn would be the forefather of the modern debate with the mute button? Is he on the CBD?

We should do it. They should give him a job. We didn't suggest him as one of the possible moderators. also, by the way, I don't know if you notice, there was this question of, does Trump have the stamina to get through an hour and a half debate? And then on every one of these interviews he did remotely this week, they would be playing the closing credits music. And the host would be gamely trying to end the interview. And Donald Trump would just not be getting the hint. And every one of these hosts says the same thing.

They said, Mr. President, we know you're busy. That's the way. Yeah. My show is now over. Like, you cannot keep talking, but he just keeps going through the credits. So clearly he has the stamina to do this, just didn't want to do it. Self-sabotage moment number two, David, the stimulus bill. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Nancy Pelosi have been going back and forth and back and forth on the stimulus bill.

The economy clearly needs it. Donald Trump needs it. He needs any kind of policy win. Well, last Tuesday, Donald Trump, recently out of the hospital, tweets this, I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election. When immediately after I win, we will pass a major stimulus bill, et cetera, et cetera. The Dow plunged as soon as he tweeted that because that's a really bad idea politically and otherwise.

And then five hours later, Trump started walking it back. It's like, no, no, no, no, I actually do want a deal. Now, do we have any possible theory why he canceled the stimulus bill right before the election? I mean, it seems to me that that that he saw at that moment a value in looking strong, right, as opposed to looking like a deal maker. And maybe it was part of the plan. Maybe this is one of those, you know, the art of the deal techniques where you just walk away from the table so that, you know, you get a better deal when you walk back. But, you know, he couldn't have, it was a terrible idea if that was the case because clearly it hasn't worked out that way. at all. I just don't know. I think that I think that the idea of of saying F you to the Democrats,

you know, looking strong, winning the election and coming back and having, you know, the American people rejoicing around him as he passed a new major stimulus bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and small businesses, you know, that vision probably was playing in his, you know, steroid enhanced brain at that moment in time. And he probably didn't think about it too much beyond that. I think you're totally right. I think he got his real estate playbook thing. You always say no to the first deal.

But what he doesn't realize, right, is that his objectives and the objectives of Senate Republicans who are in big trouble and are trying to get reelected themselves and preserve their Senate majority, they have diverged, right? So they're not, they are now have less incentive to help Donald Trump. Listen to this. This was an amazing quote for me. Mitch McConnell, not exactly Jeff Flake, Mitch McConnell, explains why he has been avoiding physically going to the White House for the last couple months.

I haven't actually been to the White House since August 6th, because my impression was their approach to how to handle this different from mine and what I insisted that we do in Senate, which is the wear mask and practice social business. That is absolutely incredible. A Senate Republican who is of the same party as the president saying, I don't want to go to the White House because they're not taking the coronavirus serious. Yeah. And I don't want to get sick.

Think about that. I mean, and you wonder if it was Trump actually contracting the coronavirus that sort of gave McConnell the freedom to make a comment like that? Or if this is just symptomatic of... you know, as a lot of people have suggested, this is the sort of Republican Party, you know, moving on preemptively from the Trump era. I think it's mostly door number two. Because what is Mitch McConnell's North Star,

getting reelected to the Senate? Polls. And they look at Donald Trump's polls. It goes back to what I was saying. It's this idea that, oh, my gosh, Trump is probably going to lose the election. So now what can we do to just put any kind of distance between themselves? Well, see, I'm in the same party as him.

I have tacitly or actually endorsed everything he's done. But, you know, I really don't agree with this whole coronavirus thing. Now you tell us. Yeah, I mean, he obviously McConnell's fighting for his seat right now as well. I mean, you mentioned re-election. There's a, I think, a report that he had talking about his obsession or his insight into the polling. that he had had a couple of come to Jesus meetings with Lindsey Graham throughout this campaign because apparently McConnell is seeing some numbers that Lindsey Graham doesn't seem to be entirely

privy to or willfully blind to, whichever. You know, a lot of people say, and I've, listen, as someone with some sort of vague history with Mitch McConnell, I mean, I was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. I was like, please explain. Born and raised Louisville, Kentucky. I think I've explained this before. Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, and my dad was Mitch McConnell's pastor of record for a long time. I've often wondered what the goal is for Mitch McConnell.

Like, what's the endgame? And I think that it's, I think that it's, I have been persuaded that permanently turning the Supreme Court, having kind of metaphorically his last name on the Supreme Court building, right? I mean, after he dies, because he will have changed history, that is it, right? And whether or not he need, I mean, clearly, re-election is, is, you know, part and parcel of this, with this plan. But, but you start to see the realization that Trump himself, President Trump is not necessarily a significant part of this plan as, you know, maybe some of the other elements surrounding him. Yeah, I think Trump's the vessel, right?

And it's, I would, I, you're right, it's a Supreme Court, but it's also a lot of just conservative policy, lower court judges, right? That's his whole, there's a whole portfolio. And Trump is useful to the point until he's not useful to Mitch McConnell anymore. There's clearly no attachment that Mitch McConnell has to Donald Trump other than this is the guy who gets me, who can get me Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court and got me to other judges. This is the person who can help me with that goal. I'll leave you at this, David, tweet for Monday from Donald Trump. You know how people like to joke? I think I see Jonathan Martin, the New York Times joke on Twitter about what a politician's closing argument in an election, which is clearly not.

their closing argument. Here is Donald Trump's fake closing argument. California is going to hell vote Trump. That'll bring him to the polls. California's approval ratings, David, are getting dangerously low. And I'm not sure California will manage to capture the presidency if Donald Trump keeps up this barrage. It's interesting because it wasn't that long ago that Trump was saying that, you know, how unfair it was that Republicans never have a shot in California. But I guess it's the same thing for him, even though those are really two very different things. I don't know, to bring this full circle, the numbers are looking bad, right? I mean, for Trump. And you say, and the media is, and the Republican Party seem to be sort of edging towards a place where they can say that with confidence.

But I think what, you know, we're talking about media trust, trust in media all the time. it's this almost feels like one of those cases where anybody that that ever from 538 on down predicts an election should just sort of have the preamble of like this is how we got it wrong last time and this is how we're not going to get it wrong even though 538 to their credit didn't entirely get it wrong no they were they were good but but the perception is that i think the widespread perception is that everybody got it wrong and i think that you know we shouldn't get too comfortable nobody should be too comfortable but but we are edging towards a place where

people should be willing to say they're confident. Who knows if we'll ever be able to be confident again in the modern world. Well, it's weird, right? Because people, the one question everybody wants to know is who's going to win the election. Nobody really knows the answer to that question,

but they want to answer it as much as they can, right? If you read political Twitter, even over the last month, you can see that, you know, those kind of big winks, right? Donald Trump is is really, really in big trouble now. It's not over. He still has a chance to win, but he's in big trouble.

All right, David, let's do the Overwork Twitter joke of the week, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. David, some bad news. Another business has fallen victim to the coronavirus. The restaurant chain Ruby Tuesday has filed for bankruptcy. Oh, my God. It was an overboard Twitter joke to write.

Goodbye Ruby Tuesday I can't immediately think of anything to distinguish you from TGI Fridays I just added that last part You and I are huge fans of the genre of restaurant

I'm sorry Ruby Tuesday kind of a black hole for me Yeah Can you name something on the Ruby Tuesday's menu Ruby Tuesday excuse me No I'm on the website right now It seems to be a lot of sort of like cast iron skillet pasta dishes which is not at all what i would have guessed i'm more interested

okay so there there's some ribs some fried things all these things like i'm so hungry right now there is a butter covered steak but the side dish is like is like uh rice it's not exactly where i right where i would go not a big old stack of cheese covered onion rings or something like this looks like this looks like yeah a cafeteria fair i'm i'm i'm i'm i'm i'm I need to know what is their signature drink. That's what's more, that I need to understand. Do they have a ruby rita of some sort? Is there something they can hang their hat on?

I would say signature drink or signature app. If you have any information, please contact us immediately at the press box pod. Thanks to Danesor James Denison and Andrew Joe Potter for that one. David on Sunday, LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA championship. After several months sequestered in the bubble in Orlando. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, LeBron, you're an NBA champion. What are you going to do next?

I'm going to get the fuck out of Disney World. Thanks to Benjamin Scott, Travelle, McManus, Sean Gellman and Al American. And finally, I had to do this one. Way back on October 1st, Trump lawyer and former New York City Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, tweeted, The Debat. Just that, the debate. He was writing debate, but he left off the E and just push send anyway. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write Borat voice than the bat.

If you ensured the press box will do a Borat segment in a few weeks. Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. We're going to do the notebook dump, David. But first, let's take a quick break. All right, David, do the notebook. I want to talk to you about the New York Times narrative podcast, Caliphate. I just, I guess I'm just asking you,

if you made this up, if this whole thing was an invention, I guess just tell me, you know? I've been hoping that I can say that this whole thing is bullshit just so I can say that once they come around to a prosecution that you cannot prove anything because they cannot prove anything. That's Rukmini Kalamaki, a terrorism reporter for the New York Times, talking to her subject, a Canadian man in his 20s who was identified by the name Abu Huzaifa to protect his identity.

Husefa said that he had left Canada to join the terrorist group ISIS, and then he went to Syria and participated in executions before fleeing and eventually arriving back in Canada. Well, in late September, Husefah, whose real name is Sharoz Chaudry, was charged in Canada for allegedly fabricating tales about his experiences as an Islamic State fighter by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The New York Times now has to backtrack and re-report the Caliphate podcast, which won a Peabody Award.

According to the Daily Beast, Times editor Dean Bekaye wrote in a memo, We are going to put together a group of reporters and take a new look at the story, his story, and inevitably how we presented his story. David, my brain is going in like nine directions here, so I'm going to pawn on first down and just hand the ball to you. First things first, it's a lot harder to memory hole a podcast, and I don't mean this in a particularly, like, antagonistic way. but it's a lot harder to just sort of hand wave highly successful narrative podcast away for an institution like The New York Times,

than it would be, you know, the collected works of Jason Blair or like whoever, you know, whatever. I mean, those things might never come up in conversation again, you know, naturally. So it's a very interesting situation they have it. They find themselves in because the whole purpose of Caliphate was to sort of put a foot into the modern media, world, right? To engage in narrative podcasting. And one of the benefits, one of the goals of narrative podcasting is you have this sort of like testament. You have this statue that will live on, right? That you can always go back and listen to Caliphate. You can wreck, people can recommend it to friends. It's just like, hey, look this up on your podcast app. This is an incredibly compelling

thing from an editorial standpoint. But when you actually look at the narrative podcast, and I'm not going name names, but the narrative podcasts that have been hugely successful. I used to always joke that these great, like the great narrative podcasts were like feature stories that sounded great on pitch, but never got published because it's like even the best of them are like three quarters, two thirds, but I'll say three quarters to give them the benefit of the doubt, two thirds of three quarters of a really compelling story and then a sort of beautiful shoulder shrug that go, that follows, instead of actually having to like finish the story, it's always just like, and that's where I find myself sitting on this back porch,

wondering whatever happened to Brian Curtis. It's like the Shawshank Redemption ending, you know? And these are the kind of things that are absent from almost all great narrative podcasts are things that your editor will make you pin down before you can push publish, right? I mean, these are really important things. And I'm not saying that's what happened here, but there is a difference between the way that we tell stories on the podcast audio format

and the way that you write big feature stories for a place like the New York Times. And to think that the same editorial staff, the same writing staff, everything, that it's going to be a smooth transition, it invites, to assume it's going to go, okay, that's what invites the problem, you know, almost. I mean, it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Let me agree with you and raise you one more because there's a big difference between that voicing, narrative podcast and the by necessity fairly flat by the numbers New York Times news story, right? That's in the news pages, not the magazine. And

that's a big transition. Ben Smith wrote a column about that and got that there's a little bit of a disconnect between those two things, right? It's a media company that does one, better than anyone else in the country and is now trying to move into this other format, which is really interesting.

Now, part of the clip you heard there is that while they were putting together caliphate, they began to worry that their subject might be either making up or embellishing his experiences in Syria, which was a hell of a thing to worry about what in the middle of doing this feature podcast. You talk about pinning down stuff. Pining down the credibility of your main character is a pretty important thing. And they wound up devoting, this was kind of their way around it, they wound up devoting

a whole episode of the podcast. to their ability, their efforts, I should say, to try to confirm what he was saying. And I guess one thing I'd like to say about this is the story that's trying to tell here is really, really hard. Oh, yeah. You're trying to talk about the horrors committed by ISIS in Syria from the perspective of someone who allegedly committed some of those horrors. That is incredibly hard, right? but if you're able to deliver that story in newspaper world, man, that makes you even more of a star.

Right? So the story's hard, but the stakes are really, really high. And the rewards are really high if you can pull it off. No, I mean, it's true. What we all as writers strive for, I mean, obviously there's the basic things, tell the truth, to convey information, but it's to make your audience think, right?

And a really great, I mean, a really great podcast, narrative podcast, has the ability, to do that in a kind of much more active way. So, yeah, I mean, it's a very tough situation that they find themselves. And I mean, it's, to find, and in this case, to find that first person source, it's a beautifully constructed podcast.

We're talking about a wonderful institution, an incredible writer, but to find that first person source is the real get. That's the real victory. And if that source becomes, it starts falling through, then everything goes into question.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it was, I don't know, I listened to the sixth episode of Caliphate again today, which is the one where they're sort of questioning and wondering whether their guy is for real or not. I don't know if you found this. I found it very jarring that you took a very elemental journalistic question and kind of rendered it in first person podcast voice. Yeah. Like we're beginning to have some doubts about the central subject of this story. Here, let's get him on the. phone and ask him about it. I understand that as like the the actual mandatory narrative podcast voice at this point in history. I just found that really weird because it's almost like that should not be rendered as part of this adventure story. That should just actually be something that we have determined to, you know, and maybe you need a reference at points because a lot of this stuff will probably be necessarily unprovable, at least completely unprovable, you know, not completely provable. but it just was weird to me

and it felt like it was almost using the language of a medium to try to take a central problem and make it into drama rather than what it is a problem. Yeah. Yeah, it's a reporting problem. It's an editorial problem and it's a problem that if that's going to be,

if this is a story about an unreliable narrator, then that's the story, right? That's not episode six. and yeah, I mean, you're right. It's the language of the media, and that's a really smart way to put it because we've seen this time and time again, you know, I mean, there's a lot of the great podcasts,

a lot of the podcasts that people recommend to you and you recommend other people, have these unreliable narrators, and part of the joy, part of the electricity, is I don't know who's lying to me, right? I don't know if what I'm being told is true. But the New York Times is operating from a different platform. And certainly, when the main,

when the main thrust of the story is not the reliability of the narrator, but ISIS, you know, I mean, just, terrorism. You know, I mean, the stakes,

they're different stakes. And, and, and, you can't just sort of, you can't make it disappear into, you know,

the ether podcasting. That's an important point because we're so used to, now the murder mystery podcast. Mm-hmm. Is he telling me the truth? Is she telling me the truth? I'm going to go back,

to him and confront him, is he telling me the truth? That's, that's not what this is, right? This is, this is one person relating these amazing and lurid experiences. So you are basically vouching for them, and I think I'm stealing a line here from Ben Smith's column, but you are basically vouching for them when you make this podcast around. This is not about an unreliable narrator. Yeah. When you make the podcast, you're essentially saying, you can believe what this person says or we have we have confirmed it to our satisfaction. And I think the times, you know, their first statements on this before they decided to re-report it was, oh, no, we dealt with this in the podcast. You did? You did? I'm not sure you did. A couple other notes for you, David.

Do you remember those Nick Broomfield documentaries like Heidi Fleiss, Hollywood Madam? Oh, yeah. And Biggie and Tupac. That has become the voice now of every narrative podcast. Remember when he used to go around, his hair was going? He had the boom mic. I'm going into this house to interview Biggie Smalls' manager here. And let's see what they're going to tell me. I'm going to knock on the door and you're going to see it. I've watched it. I've listed a podcast.

I'm like, that is that movie rendered in audio form. Nick Groomfield is the father of all podcast. I just want to go ahead and declare that right now. That's a great guy. Sean, Finansey's going to make you write that in about 30 minutes. Sean, just tune out five minutes ago. Don't worry about that. I may have already bored him with that theory, in fact.

Number two, the editing on Caliphate is. It's so strange because it would let you listen to a primary piece of audio and then just tell you what the person just said. It'd be like, hey, Brian Curtis here calling with news from Syria. And then the narrator on Caliphate would go, Brian Curtis called us with some news on Syria. You just said that. But they would do that like dozens of times in the episode. It was very frenetic and almost just like, you know, that episode that was about the veracity. I was almost like, oh my gosh, I feel I'm in like the brain of a nerve.

journalist right now. And maybe that was the point. And if you were trying to communicate that feeling of nervousness and, oh, crap, this might not be exactly what it purports to be, I guess mission accomplished on that front. You mentioned vocabulary earlier, and this is more the same thing. You definitely do sometimes get the feeling, listening to even the highest rated, the most popular podcast, that we're in a very specific era of podcast sound, the podcast style. There's still a relatively small number of people who are producing these podcasts and, and, and, and certainly the big ones are all influencing each other. But yeah, this might just be like, you know, the folk era of narrative podcasting, and we haven't even discovered rock and roll yet. You know, I mean, it's, there's, there's a lot more to come. I do think that there's a more, if, if you, you know, will grant me a pivot. I do think there's a really interesting story or discussion. in the in what the piece

Ben Smith wrote because it was more than a regular ombudsman's review of a piece that was called in the question. The piece itself

was more narrative, I think, than a lot of these you know, kind of postmortems that were used to sing in related stories. Certainly Ben Smith himself,

I mean, a lot of this story is about Kalamachi's star power and whether or not that affected the way that she was edited you know, throughout her,

time at the Times. And Ben Smith himself is a star, right? I mean, he is a big name who the Times recently brought on. So there's this sort of star power thing. And there's also the story about whether or not you need a public editor or an ombudsman in 2020 when, you know, in an international, you know, web-based journalistic marketplace, the Washington Post are the people who are covering the New York Times and keeping an eye on them, you know, and other websites as well. And Twitter itself. and, you know, the world can find out that the Wall Street Journal turn down this story, you know, on Twitter or on social, you know, wherever else that the information can pop up. Right. A different, a different ISIS story, we should say, yes. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, but I mean, but it's, but it's, but I do think it's interesting. I wonder to what degree the New York Times thought their hand was forced by the fact that this story is out there and being discussed all over the internet. And also, you know, this is clearly Ben Smith's beat, you know, this is what he, a lot of part of what he was hiring. to do at the times to cover this sort of story. But the sort of inward looking piece like this,

it's almost like they're grappling with the modern media landscape as much as they're grappling with this story, you know, this specific instance of a problematic source. Absolutely. And I think that's a credit to Ben on the ladder of him getting to that second level, right? This is not just a narrow, you know, is it real? Is it fake? Is it kind of real? Is it mostly real story? But it's about a news organization trying to pivot, right? Trying to change gears and do something different. And the old star power of newspapers getting sort of caught up in that. On the Times covering itself,

I think if we went back to like the Howard Kurtz era of the Washington Post, I'm guessing he would have done some fairly similar stories about the Post when there was a big controversy. I think, you know, Ben Smith probably has a lot of power to do that within the Times. Like people aren't going to tell him no when he wants to do something like that. And it's naturally a juicy story. And he's going to want to do a story like that, right?

But yeah, it is, it is funny. I mean, the whole ombudsman thing is funny to me because there was a big hue and cry when the Times got rid of their public editor. And I was like, I do see the value of it. And I see the accountability aspect of it. And sometimes they're able to get answers from within the paper that outsiders aren't. But I'd never felt that I was not reading enough about. the New York Times from anywhere else.

And The Washington Post and Eric Wemple have had a bite out of this story. The Daily Beast has had a bite out of the Caliphate story. Ben Smith has had a big bite out of it. So this isn't one of those where I'm really missing the Ombudsman, having the kind of dutiful, boring ombudsman column about it. No, I totally agree. And it is sort of telling about the kind of, you know, I hate to keep using this phrase,

but the modern media world that we're in, that these stories, are deemed to be, you know, click, you know, they're going to get a lot of clicks for all of these different outlets, right? I mean, this is big news reporting on other, on other, you know, newspapers or whatever. And it's interesting. And this is, this is, this is, you know, for whatever it's worth, this is enough to,

this is the sort of thing that obsesses Twitter or a certain, you know, a segment of it. It's, it's a compelling story. It's interesting that this is, that it would be, it would have been a compelling story when Harry Kurtz was writing about it. But now it's sort of all everybody can talk about for a very brief period of time. Yeah. Yeah. And look, it has a podcast, right, that reaches way beyond what most newspaper stories ever reach.

You know, the hits a different audience. So that's a naturally writing about the hit podcast is going to be much different than writing about the blockbuster front page, you know, news article. Yep. There's that too. I always, there are some, by the way, whenever there's like a newspaper controversy or controversy within a newspaper, there are always certain rights we must observe, which is another writer having been revealed as warning the staff about the writer in question, which is can be revealing in a certain factual way. It is also extremely revealing about rivalries at newspapers and rivalries between writers, right, and that kind of thing. It is absolutely fascinating to have that layer peeled back to.

David, you know who's always double-checking his stories? This is an extremely strange segue. The Washington Post, Robert Costa. Here's our talk on the election, Bob Woodward, and a whole lot more. All right, you know Robert Costa. He is national political reporter at the Washington Post. He is the moderator and managing editor of the PBS show Washington Week. And most importantly, he's the pride of Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Now, first question, Robert, are you one of these Eagles fans who seems to be everywhere in political media at all times? I am. I hope that doesn't set any of these good listeners off. I actually went to high school with Hallie Jackson from NBC News. We are on the debate team together. We're both Big Eagles fans. She probably promotes the Eagles a little bit more in social media along with Jake Tapper. But I actually covered Eagles games when I was a high school student. I was a student team. I don't know why the Eagles allowed us to do this, but the Eagles allowed high school students back around 2003, 2004 to cover games. It was great. Did you ever think about being a sports writer?

I did. I mean, I had some of my most dramatic moments covering the Eagles. You think politicians are tough. I remember Hugh Douglas, who was a terrific player for the Eagles, he started kind of yelling at me in the locker room one time, asking why I was asking him all these tough questions

and he was trying to go to the shower. He was like, leave me alone. And it was a fascinating period to really cover sports. I think when you cover sports, learn how to cover big egos and politics is covering big egos. So it's, it was a helpful beginning to covering politics. A little over a week ago, early on a Friday morning, Donald Trump tweets that he has the coronavirus. Where were you when that happened and what did you do for the next 24

hours? Well, so my, I balanced three jobs at once. So I'm doing Washington Post full time, along with MSNBC and NBC and then Washington Week on Friday. So I knew, was going to change my whole Friday Washington Week show on PBS. And you just try to think through how can I contribute to the Post and how can I contribute to PBS at the same time. And luckily, for three and a half years now, I've been able to do all these jobs at the same time. So what I started to do immediately is what I would do in any kind of White House crisis, which is call my five to seven key sources inside the West Wing or around President Trump figure out what's going on. But I had to also prepare for the show on PBS. So I had to keep in touch with my staff.

But there is a wall between Washington Week and Washington Post. What I'm doing at Washington Post is oftentimes very sensitive political reporting that won't necessarily play into whatever I'm doing on PBS. They do overlap. It's both political reporting in some way. Long story short, I ended up being on the byline for a really in-depth story with my colleagues at the Post about how coronavirus spread throughout the West Wing, how President Trump ended up with it, did a lot of reporting on the Amy Coney-Barrant announcement the previous week.

while all that time preparing for the show. And it worked out well. It actually, I think, was one of the highest rated Washington weeks we've had in years because people crave good information, whether it's in print or on TV during these kind of moments. Those five to seven key sources within the Trump sphere, did you find them more or less talkative than normal with a story like this? They were actually more talkative than I expected,

mostly because it was personal for them. If you're inside this West Wing, if you're in the president's inner circle, you are now at risk of contracting coronavirus. As an outsider, I'm always amazed how many people cover politics at the Post and at the New York Times. How do you describe what you do, which makes your job unique there? Well, I've had an interesting job at the Post for seven years because I've floated among beats, which isn't a traditional way of working at either the Post or the Times. usually stick to something like the campaign or Congress or the White House.

The post, lucky for me, has given me the opportunity to report a national politics in a really broad way, which sometimes has its challenges because you're not going as deep as possible in one sourcing realm, but you are able to use your sourcing across the board to really contribute to stories during fast-moving stories like we saw with the president getting coronavirus, that you need to have sourcing in the bureaucratic side of things, the medical expert side of things, the White House, the campaign, inside of Congress. And I've always found that Congress is actually a really good sourcing pool for political reporters, and especially myself going back a decade now, because lawmakers have entry, invisibility into discussions and meetings and phone calls that a lot of their own advisors,

their press secretaries do not. So if you can find a way to build up, let's say, between 20, 20 and 40 House members, some senators who have visibility into the inner world of politics, then you can really almost always on any story develop reporting and sourcing pretty quickly because these lawmakers, you learn pretty fast who's reliable and who's not. I noticed lately you've had bylines on a couple of pieces about the angst Republicans are feeling three weeks from the election. There's always angst when your candidate is behind, as Donald Trump is, and when the Senate is in the balance. What makes 2020,

Republican angst unique, do you think? Well, there's been angst, right, going back five years since Donald Trump ambled onto the scene. But what I'm covering now is a Republican Party that I've been covering for over a decade. And I've been really branching out over the past five years. I've covered a lot of Bernie Sanders, the Democratic presidential race, the primary. I really take pride in trying to cover both parties equally and with the same kind of depth. But I do have a long history of covering Republicans. and what I, I am able to get people who are really at the upper ranks of the party now to be frank with me and how they're feeling, what they're seeing in internal polling. And what they're seeing is this is a party that doesn't think it can hold on to its Senate majority unless the winds start

to turn. They see voters turning against them in the suburbs. They think President Trump as kind of this political athlete who's escaped so many controversies in the past. He may be able to escape, but they're not sure how they can necessarily escape, but they all feel cornered. And that's what I'm capturing a lot of my recent stories, how they feel like they can't really be with Trump anymore, but they can't be without him. And so they're trying to figure out that middle space. But being in the middle space doesn't really help you because the independents, the moderates, think you're too Trumpist, and the Trumpers think you're too moderate.

And it's really led to a lot of political discomfort. Yeah, I've seen it, you know, whether it's a John Cornyn who's up for reelection or, you know, know, Martha McSally, maybe somebody will kind of sort of come out and make some fairly milk-toast comment in a debate or in an interview that sort of puts one inch of daylight between them and Trump. But that does not seem like a very significant political act, again, this close to the election. But it's like cracks on ice. It's not significant when you just see a little line, a vein through the ice. It seems like everything's fine. But if that crack keeps going and goes deep, the whole thing could fall apart. And so the cracks in the

GOP right now. It reminds me a bit of Access Hollywood in 2016, but what you're really seeing now is fear that the House ranks for Republicans could dwindle. They could lose between 10 and 15 seats if this doesn't pick up. And that the Amy Coney Barrett nomination is big for some, like Lindsey Graham, who needs a bit of a jolt in his South Carolina Senate race, but the idea that it's going to somehow save Cory Gardner in Colorado or save Susan Collins just doesn't, that's not coming across in my source. when I talked to top strategists. Harry Nton of CNN says Joe Biden is in the best polling position of any presidential challenger since 1936. What worries Democrats at this point?

What worries them is getting tied into anything that's not about President Trump and his handling of the coronavirus and the economy. And that's why you see the Biden campaign avoiding talking about expanding the Supreme Court because they just don't want to be distracted. Now, these are issues that are going to crop up if he wins the presidency. So he's not going to be able to avoid this forever. But their whole belief is get into this mindset of just barreling through between now and election day, focusing on getting out the vote and mail-in voting and focusing on health care. That's why even when it comes to the court, you don't see Biden talking about the court fight in any significant way other than saying that she's against the Affordable Care Act.

Healthcare, healthcare, healthcare, healthcare, democratic strategists tell me that won them back power in 2018. it's the path again to get people caring about their coverage, their pre-existing conditions coverage. And you also just have to bring it back to the pandemic and President Trump's handling and his response. Four years ago, you went back to your home state of Pennsylvania and interviewed a bunch of voters for a piece that ran right before the election. You're going to do the same with the same voters,

and that piece is going to run on Washington Week on October 30th. What have you found as you've started to re-interview those people? It's been a great experience because I've really missed talking to voters in 2020. I mean, it's hard to overstate this, but in a presidential election year, as a political reporter, going out into the country is the fun of the job, and it's also the necessity of the job. And you really understand the race in new ways when you're talking to voters. I'll give you a quick example. In 2016, I took a trip first to Wisconsin, about two weeks before the campaign was ending. This is in mid-October. And I go to the Milwaukee suburbs, and I

encountered this phenomenon, at least it was a phenomenon to me, where I would go to these Starbucks in mostly white suburban areas, literally white areas of the Milwaukee suburbs. And I'd sit down with voters. I always find Starbucks a good place to interview voters in the suburbs because they're more comfortable being approached. So it's one of the rare places in a suburb that seems to be somewhat social. So you sit them down outside of Starbucks, you talk to them. And I would ask them first, who they supported? And almost all of them, to a T, would say, oh, I hate them both. I hate them both. And these are kind of white, 40, 50, 60-year-olds. And four, or five questions in. I said, wait a minute. Who are you supporting? I hate them both. I said,

who are you supporting? Trump, Trump, Trump. I said, oh my, they're not telling me the truth. I said, they may not be telling the pollsters the truth. So I wrote a whole story about how there's this kind of weird, quiet support for Trump in Wisconsin, a state that hadn't gone Republican for decades. Then the next week, I decided to go back to my home state in Pennsylvania. And I started out in way western Pennsylvania, the steel towns near Pittsburgh, a place called Alecquip, a lot of famous football stars come from that town. And you go to this town. It's got all these old hulking mills.

I mean, it's classic right out of deer hunter kind of town. And I did the thing that now is everyone says, oh, don't do it. I went to diners, but I went across the state, 350 miles in my own car. And I talked to voters. I took their picture, interviewed everybody. And the one thing I just was astounded by as a Pennsylvania. Because I've been to Western Pennsylvania hundreds of times is the amount of signs. And I know signs anecdotal.

It's not data. I agree. But I was stunned to see the amount of signs in Western Pennsylvania. This is an area growing up. You didn't really see political signs at all. And Trump was everywhere. And then I went into the suburbs of Philadelphia where I grew up with Ali Jackson and Zach Woods from Silicon Valley went to our high school as well.

It's a long story. But I saw the same phenomenon I saw in Milwaukee suburbs of the Philadelphia suburbs. Everyone said they, quote, hated Hillary, hated Donald Trump. But they ended up saying they kind of like Trump if they're more business-minded, independent voter. And lo and behold, Trump wins Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. And that's why I think talking to voters matters. It gives you a glimpse of where people are leaning. And that's why I wanted to go back. If you're doing a piece like this, six million people voted for president in Pennsylvania in 2016, a number I'm assuming will be higher, even higher this year. How do you get enough of those people

so you don't feel like you've just found here's an interesting voter in a diner or here's an interesting voter at Starbucks and somebody that actually tells you something larger about the election. Well, you have to get beyond the diner. So my piece got attention because I did get this kind of anecdotal support for Trump in the diners in the western side of the state. But you have to talk to voters of color. You have to talk to people who are maybe low propensity voters, people who aren't part of the political discussion, highly engaged. A lot of times you have to be attuned as a reporter, at least I try to be to voters who are almost too eager to talk. And these are people who are highly engaged voters and they always want to be part of stories. They want to sit down with reporters.

You want to talk to people and break through with people who don't usually talk to reporters, see if they're actually going to vote. And so you've got to balance it out. And it's not like a fake balance. You actually have to make sure you're not just talking to grumbling 60-year-old white men in a diner. You have to talk to, like I did this past week, to a young black woman in Philadelphia teaching out of charter school to someone who's transgender and talk to her in Western Pennsylvania to understand how she sees the race. and to really build up the sourcing in a way that's beyond kind of your traditional suburban woman, the so-called soccer mom or the Trump voter in the diner or the urban Democratic voter, the union guy, or the whatever you're looking at, the kind of the typical profile types.

So it's a wider swath of people and getting past the people who are, hey, Mr. Reporter, interview me. I want to talk to you about who I'm going to vote for in the election. Yeah, sometimes the best people, you meet are the people who you randomly encounter, not the people you meet at political events. Let me ask you about your career a little bit. When people I find want to be journalists from a young age, they often have a person they point to and say, I want to be like that guy or that gal. Who was your person when you were growing up? Well, Bob Woodward has always been an inspiration to me because of all the president's men and Carl Bernstein as well. And for him to become a friend and

mentor to me at the Washington Post has been a surreal experience. He's a great guy. And I think Woodward really taught me at the Post in the last few years. We've done some interviews together, worked on some stories together, is to always get the documents, focus on what matters, and just kind of stay cool. And he stays so cool when he reports and doesn't let the source or the story get the better of him. And he's always trying to get documents. And he's always proud, he always sends me a note whenever we get documents in a story because he knows that matters, because it's not just some background. person saying something, you're nailing it down. And he's a big nailer. Someone who also has inspired me is Michael Bamberger, longtime writer for Sports Illustrated. He actually wrote a book about

my high school in the Philly Suburbs. And he really taught me about narrative, nonfiction, journalism. And he and I stay close to this day. He writes a lot about golf, but he really has a wonderful touch as a writer. And he taught me about writing. And the other person I would say is Bob Schmuel at Notre Dame, who's a professor who just really cares about journalism as a and it seems like we could use a lot more of that these days. I do want to ask you about Bamberger for sure, because you were a junior at Pensbury High in Bucks County. Bamberger comes to your school to write a book about life at an American high school.

And we know in Washington, D.C., right, when a book comes out, all the journalists flip to the index to see if they're mentioned in the book, you got to do this in high school because you were a huge character in this book. What was it like to read that for you at that age? It was a jolting reminder to me that journalism matters, that what, you know, what writers do is very real. You're capturing towns, you're capturing communities, you're telling stories, and that there was power in watching Bamberger, for me, watching Bamberger at work, trying to chronicle a high school and to really get into a story. And so I really learned just watching him. I was a character in this book called Wonderland that Bamberger wrote, along with a lot of my friends at Pensbury High School.

and we chased John Mayer to finally get to play our prom in 2004. We got Maroon 5 to come play. We had an epic high school experience at this big public high school. But what I really learned from high school is I worked for the local paper, wrote for the school paper, but I learned about journalism from watching Michael Bamberg, this professional writer, who just randomly decided to write a book about my high school. But it led to a real sense that journalism to me was something that was real. And when I was growing up, my family's doesn't come from a journalism.

background at all. We followed politics and history, but there was, to me, seeing Bamberger up close, it seemed very real, the idea of even being a writer or being a reporter in a way it never had previously. So you're studying the questions he's asking you and then seeing how he renders your high school experience and that sort of becomes a template for you? Yeah, and actually something he did really sticks with me to this day as a reporter is that Bamberger never uses a recorder. Now, I have to use a recorder because politicians will contest quotes. But he had this way, and he still does. He never uses a recorder because he wants to only jot down quotes that really stick out, and that if a quote's worth using, it's memorable enough to remember verbatim and to write it down. Instead of having

these long kind of recordings and audio to be the spine of a story, Bamberger would use color, smell, scene, and he still does in all of his stories to really tell a story rather than quotes. And that's so different than most political journalism, which these days it's very much quote-driven. And I always think about Bamberger when I'm writing to not over-rely on quotes to drive a story. I was reading, rereading the passages that are about you in this book. First of all, it's an incredible preview of somebody who's going to become a very wired-in political reporter. You had a business card printed up that said Bob Costa, Pensbury High School. You read The Economist.

You had access somehow to everyone at the school's schedule, a preview. of your investigative reporting abilities. And I do want to ask about the John Mayer thing, because this was almost a journalistic act the way you pulled this off. Can you, can you set, I'll set you up. You were writing a review of a John Mayer show locally for the Bucks County Courier Times. You were a junior. The senior class is desperate to pull off the coup of getting mayor to perform at senior prom.

And then you do what? The crazy thing is mayor hadn't even gone to his own prom in Connecticut because he was kind of an outsider. in high school. But I decide why not just pursue this as John Mayer was the kind of Grammy Award winning acoustic songwriter, popular guy at the time. So I go up to New York City and I request a meeting with his manager, Michael McDonald, who to this day, I appreciate him taking the meeting. And he was like, this isn't going to happen, but I had a whole pitch of why it made sense. And I had not one cent to offer Mayor or his team. I had nothing in terms of connections, but I had enthusiasm and spirit and audacity. And it didn't work when I first tried in 2002, 2003, but then I tried again in 2004.

And mayor decided to come. And I don't know John Mayer. I've only met him a couple times my whole life. But I have appreciation for him to this day for not being kind of the guy who just says no. There was no reason to come play at Pensbury High School other than he knew people there, loved his music, and would give him an authentic experience. It's a big public. high school. It's nothing special. It's special place, but it's nothing special in the, it's not known for anything beyond its prom. It's got a great in-school prom. And so I give mayor credit for just coming and doing it. Same with Maroon 5, same with Eve 6. And when I really look back, it's, it's, it's, you don't hear about this stuff really that much that high schools

kind of have a downbeat reputation these days. But back when I was at Pensabreau high school, we just had fun all the time. And people, I guess, just kind of joined in. I think one other story that sticks out, its Maroon 5 came. And I don't know what they were doing on their bus. I didn't report it out. But they came off their bus to come into our high school.

And they went right into the home economics room and ate all of the freshly baked cookies. I think we can make some guesses about what was happening on the Maroon 5 bus. You came to the post, Robert, via the conservative magazine National Review. What did you learn working? at National Review that you might not have learned somewhere else. I was at University of Cambridge getting my master's degree in 2009. And no one would take an interview with me because I was over in England. And I was trying to get a job at all these newspapers and TV networks.

And they said, well, you've got to come to New York for an interview. And I said, well, you're going to have to fly me there. I'm in England. They said, we're not going to fly someone for an entry-level job from London to New York for a job that's paying $40,000 a year. That's like the price of the plane ticket. But so I had no real job offers, and I had kind of fizzled out in my banking internship the previous summer at J.P. Morgan. So I was just trying to have some fun, do some journalism.

And I saw this opportunity for $50,000 a year to be a fellow at National Review in New York. I said to myself, I don't want to be a conservative reporter. That seems like it would kind of tag you. But, man, it would be fun to cover national politics instead of covering school boards. So what the heck? I didn't think journalism, because I didn't have connections. I just had low expectations that it could be a career. So I thought, why not just go to this, do this fellowship, have a lot of fun covering national politics.

And I said to National Review's editor, Rich Lowry, on day one, I said, Rich, I don't want to write anything conservative. I just want to report. And he thought that was strange. Why would someone come to National Review and not want to write a conservative article ever? But I said, Rich, just like, I want to be a reporter. And to Rich's credit, he let a 23-year-old become a, quote, only reporting guy at National Review. But it became really the turn of a career because I had all this time to spend building, reporting, and sourcing on the fringe of the Republican Party.

And I got to know people like Steve Vannan, got to know Donald Trump, got to know all these people, Sarah Palin, who weren't getting day-to-day coverage for all their kind of minor maneuverings and hires and different events. But I got to know everybody on that scene because I was kind of like the beat reporter of the fringe of the right. I used to see Stephen Miller hanging out with Jeff Sessions and like no one paid attention to these guys. And now they run the country. And so when you think about I just kind of randomly took a job. And it also worked out well because the Washington Post recruited me in 2013 to join them.

And they looked through every one of my articles, as they should. I never wrote a conservative thing when I was on National Review. I remember reading you there. And it was striking that you were a straight reporter because that was not something I associated with that magazine at all. it was mostly opinion. It's like, I think it's like if you worked at Sports Illustrated, you're not rooting for the teams. You're covering the game. Yeah.

And it's just funny because for years in Washington, right, any sentient being who worked for magazines like the New Republic and the Washington Monthly on the left got hired. And now you're at the post, Jonathan Martin, another National Review alum is at the Times.

Did something change, do you think, to open paper's eyes to people from those magazines at all? Well, I think you just got to judge an individual by their, content by their work. I mean, if someone's writing conservative commentary, they're a conservative commentator, but if someone is legitimately pursuing reporting and doing it with integrity and ethics

and with no slant, I appreciate it being evaluated objectively. I understand, you know, it was, but it's like a lot of things, I've been at the Washington Post far longer than I was ever at National Review. But it gets brought up from time to time. But I just say to anyone who has a question about it, go read everything I wrote it in National Review, if you have any questions about me. I mean, I was tough on Republicans when I was there, and I'm tough on them still, and hopefully as tough on Republicans and Democrats every day at the Post that I should be. I mean, I've always been a believer in vigorous journalism. My heroes growing up were Gwen Eiffle, Jim Russer, Bob Woodward, and Robert Carrow. So that's kind of the tradition I try to follow.

And like any career, you're not going to – people have this. believe that you're going to somehow start a career. Some maybe do, and they do at the New York Times or the Washington Post and have this perfect Ivy League education, going into a New York Times or Washington Post internship, going into the high ranks there. But I just would just encourage anyone to getting into journalism. Don't think there's one path. I mean, people used to tell me my career was essentially stalled because of National Review. And I just kept working hard and stayed in my lane. You mentioned Woodward. You did a joint interview of Donald Trump with him in April 2016. So here's a guy. You mentioned he's one of your heroes. What did you notice about the way he asked questions and the way he kind of comported himself in an interview setting like that? Oh, I'll always remember this. March 2016, we're sitting in the unfinished Trump hotel and Woodward's there. And he had been trying to land an interview with Trump. Finally, he gets one. I'm joining him for the interview. But to watch Trump, watch Woodward. And to watch Woodward watch Trump. These guys,

both of the same generation. I'll always remember it. And they were almost like two boxers in a ring. Woodward has a very understated style. But he comes back to questions again and again. And Woodward loved the interview so much as a journalistic experience. He's actually taught a class at Yale based on the transcript of that interview because it's a very long interview. But he keeps coming back to understand the motives of Trump.

Why is Trump doing this? Why is he running? What is driving it? What was he thinking when he came down the escalator? Woodward really tries to get back to that. And Trump's the ultimate example of someone always trying to go on a tangent. And Woodward kind of rears and backs is get back to the question. And eventually, Woodward gets some lines out of him that to this day have remained some of the biggest lines, I think, of the Trump presidency.

The one that sticks out is real power. I don't even want to say the word. Real power is fear. And that became the title of his first book on Trump. And another quote from that book is, rage, I bring it out. I always have. I bring out the rage.

And that became the title of the second book. So to think two Woodward books come from quotes from the same 2016 interview. One more for you, Robert. We talk all the time about the amount of news that Trump produces. Let's say he loses in November. Joe Biden becomes president. We don't know what would happen then, but probably safe to say that Joe Biden would not be making news on Twitter every 15 minutes.

or so. How would your journalistic life change, do you think, in such a scenario? I think it's going to be very important for the press to remain as aggressive as ever. Because if Biden wins, there's going to be a tendency naturally as human beings to go. We've been off this five-year roller coaster, and it's time to kind of take a step back, take a step down. And maybe politics, generally speaking, does kind of take a step down from this frenetic pace, which I would welcome personally in a sense, because it is exhaust. to be covering chaos every day politically. That said, I believe our audiences, left-right center,

will be highly attuned to making sure we keep up our level of vigor. And I think watching the Washington Post cover President Trump has been a special thing to be part of because it's tough, every day, tough, making sure the truth is being told, calling people out for lies, for racism. And I feel proud to have been part of that project, to be part of that coverage, really five years now of candidate Trump and President Trump. And covering Biden, I would hope to be part of the same kind of vigorous enterprise because

there's a lot to cover in the Democratic Party and in Congress, and it will deserve the same spotlight. You could read Robert Costa in the Washington Post and see him on PBS's Washington Week, where his report about Pennsylvania will air, excuse me, on October 30th. Robert, thanks so much for coming on the press box. Thank you. All right. It's time for David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah.

Last Monday's headline from a story about technology and intimacy was when Harry met Siri. This week's headline, David, comes from Shane Nyman. It's from Rolling Stone. It's a religion story. I always like to hit the son of a Baptist preacher. In fact, the son of a Baptist preacher who was Mitch McConnell's preacher of record with religion stories. Quoting Rolling Stone, David, Sean Fugt, I hope I'm saying his name correctly. A Christian musician, online personality, and failed politician claim that 10,000 people joined him on the steps of Nashville's courthouse for his Let Us Worship concert.

The worshippers that did show up packed in elbow to elbow, singing along and shouting, and in some cases being submerged in on-site baptisms. Few masks, face coverings, or even shrouds of Turin were seen to help minimize the spread of the virus. okay the keyword here and the headline is super spreader super spreader what was Rolling Stones

screen pun headline is it Jesus Christ super spreader oh I gave it away you said it twice if it had been once I don't know if I would have gotten it but I can still get credit for that

I was gonna say it's Jesus Christ but anyway great work David Shoemaker we will update the win loss rankings accordingly. He is David Schumacher. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeda. Production Magic by Erica Servantes with a big assist from Kaia MacMullen. No debate. So we're back Thursday with listener mail and a surprise guest. Until then. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.