The Press Box - Trump’s Crazy Week, LeBron on China, and Shep Smith's Departure From Fox News | The Press Box

Episode Date: October 18, 2019

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker look at an eventful week for the president (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (25:30), LeBron James weighing in on the NBA and China (28:00), Shep Smith leaving Fox News (46:15), and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, it's Liz Kelly, and welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. Once you finish the season finale of HBO Succession, make sure to tune in to the last episode of The Ringer's After Show called Number One Boys with Chris Ryan and Jason Inception. You can check that out as well as recaps from the episodes from this season on our Twitter at Ringer and our YouTube page. We also have a lot of great written content about the show from writers like Alison Herman, Katie Baker, and Miles Surrey. You can find that on The Ringer.com. David, while preparing his new book, Catch and Kill, the author Ronan Farrow inserted a marriage proposal into the draft where it was read by his partner, John Lovett. So he proposed to him in the form of a book draft.

We should remind everybody that this book is about sexual assault. So what I want to know is what would be the least appropriate book? That in draft form you can use to propose to your partner. Are we in trouble here already? No. I mean, yes, certainly. I'm going to start us off with flowers in the attic. Does anyone remember that?

Oh, no. I do. Jim just texted me, where's Waldo? I assume that's an answer to this question. Yeah, Silent Spring. Yes, you know, I was actually just thinking, about that. Like what natural disaster books could be, could we, oh my

gosh. Yeah, any book about global warming, I think, or environmental catastrophe feels very, very wrong. Or just like post-apocalyptic, like the road by Corment McCarthy. That should be kind of funny, though. That feels to me like how Cormant McCarthy

would actually propose. Yeah, maybe so. Maybe so. What else? I mean, just anything that's, like, serious, like, if you're, I mean, if you proposed via a, you know, like a in-depth biography of Hitler or something? I mean, I figured like that would just necessarily be a bad idea. Yeah, any book written by Lawrence Wright, I think is probably not, you know,

proposal material. I say that out of respect. If you said American Psycho, if you, like, drew a heart on, like, the title page of American Psycho, and you're like, you inspired this. Will you marry me? I mean, I guess that would be pretty rough. Oh, my God. Chris suggested, I think, the best one before we came on the air.

It's the art of the deal. Oh, that's certainly the most improved. It works on a lot of levels there. We're the less than zero of media podcasts. This is the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. We've got lots and lots of stuff to get to today. We've got LeBron James wandering into the NBA China dispute.

We got the fallout from Tuesday night's Democratic debate. Shep Smith bids farewell to the House of Tucker Carlson, plus listener mail in the overworked Twitter joke of the week. but David, I think we've got to start with all the stuff Donald Trump did on Wednesday. I've seen a couple tweets that say, folks, this isn't funny. People's lives are at stake. And I grant that, but it does seem that this is also funny or at least absurd. What's the proper amount of humor we're allowed to find in all this?

Are we We're honing in on like the one Like the one or two days That we're currently in the midst of right now Mm-hmm I think that I don't know It's I mean I

I tend towards You know It's not funny people's lives are at stake But with the I feel like most of what we're seeing On in the news media Is so far to the other I mean to that end of the spectrum

Beyond the you know Beyond where I am, that it feels like finding some level of humor and it is sort of the only sane recourse. It's a very serious situation. Let's stipulate that. But it is incredibly weird and wacky. This all began October 13th when Trump announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops from northeastern Syria.

That was a virtual invitation for Turkey to attack the Kurds who live there, the same Kurds who have been our allies in the fight against ISIS and beyond. And here in the U.S., the House condemned Trump's withdrawal by a vote of 354 to 60, and even Uber-loyal Trumpists like Senator Lindsey Graham have lost their ever-loving minds about Trump's decision. Well, yesterday, David, Trump summoned congressional leaders to the White House for a briefing. And I'm cribbing from the New York Times as Peter Baker, Katie Edmondson, and Katie Rogers. And I'm going to do a little play-by-play at that meeting. David, jump in and help me annotate this at any point you want.

At the meeting center, Chuck Schumer brought up criticism of Trump's decision to withdraw from Syria by former defense secretary Jim Mattis. And Trump called Mattis, quote, the world's most overrated general. Dot, dot, dot, dot. You know why? He wasn't tough enough. I captured ISIS. Mathis said it would take two years. I captured them in one month.

Trump was not done with his ISIS-related bragging. He told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, I hate ISIS more than you do. to which Pelosi replied, You don't know that. So, yeah. So do you think that Donald Trump hates ISIS more than Nancy Pelosi? Do you think that...

You think there are varying levels of ISIS hate within the American political establishment? I think it's a really interesting thing to brag about. I mean, it's a... I mean... You know, it shows when you're in political discourse, at least in the Oval Office has disintegrated into like, you know, various wagging contests, it does seem a little bit like we sort of lost the, we've lost the script a little bit. There's so much here. The fact that, I mean, just going back to the very beginning of this, when Trump decided to withdraw from Syria.

Yes. It fits into, you know, a really neat stereotype of President Trump that he was just as he's like, whoever he was on the phone with last gets the final, you know, it gets the final say. Or who he was in the phone with last before he makes a decision gets the final say. He seemed to have, you know, been discussing, I mean, he was basically like wooed to this position by the president of Turkey. Or at least that was what the initial reports were. and he just sort of made the decision unilaterally. Now, I don't know if there's this sort of competing, overly broad assumption we can make

that, you know, a lot of times when presidents make these sort of international affairs decisions, especially war-related, combat-related decisions, military decisions, that it's often a reaction to something that's going on at home. There's a political calculus involved. Regardless, the political calculus here was ridiculous. It was terrible. But it's safe, I think, to one. It's fair to wonder whether or not this was a deliberate means of distraction or, you know, I mean, we've been through this in any number of presidents, any number of times before.

But regardless, he, I mean, it seems like Trump's real base in Washington, and I'm not talking about in the Republican Party, but in, you know, in Congress, comes from, you know, there are some diehard Trumpists and there's some people who were like kind of cowed by the fear of how he might hurt them in a re-election contest, but it's largely people that have other, have very specific interests that Trump is allowing them, you know, that Trump is fulfilling enough to earn their support, right? It's, you know, far-right conservatives with, with court nominations, and for people like Lindsey Graham, it's this international, I mean, it's the, it's, you know, military interventionism and kind of keeping the status quo in the international state. he could not have miscalculated worse if he didn't, if he really thought that they would, people just follow him blindly down this path. I mean, this is the one thing. And we've seen that the

economy, you know, maybe he was overconfident because, you know, he's gone there, he's gone, he's gone his own path on some economic matters and, you know, some other things. But it's certainly moral matters. And he still had a good bit of support. But, you know, this is the one thing that this is a bridge too far for Republicans, I guess. it's funny a couple of things to pull out there one is what you said about the reaction i think i'm i think i'm getting this from from carl holz who writes in new york times and he was talking about this revolt among congress republican congress members have said very very little in the way of criticism of donald trump at all about anything including ukraine by the way uh this is one

of the few times where he's faced that kind of rebuke and i think holst was explaining that this is one of those issues where they don't feel there's any political blowback to them. If they go out in front of a camera and say Donald Trump has betrayed the Kurds, it doesn't matter, you know, that isn't going to play in South Carolina in any way that's going to hurt the Republican official. So if Lindsey Graham were to go out there and say Donald Trump's a racist or Donald Trump's wacky or Donald Trump's this and that, that could hurt him with his base. But these are, this is kind of the safe space. for a Republican to get mad at Donald Trump?

Because it's just, it just, again, it's presumably what they really feel, but it's also, there's no political blowback for you. So I think that's some of what the political dynamic is here. To the point about why Trump is doing this, I think you're totally right. It is some combination of being influenced by countries like Turkey and Russia, which is a point Nancy Pelosi made. I think she said all roads lead to Russia in that congressional meeting. I also wonder he does have this very broad kind of get out of all wars strategy that he's repeated since 2016 since the campaign.

But if we drill down on that, it's always fascinating to me is to what extent is anti-war being anti-war being actually anti-war? And to what extent is it just like, I can't be bothered to be interested in the details in any of these fights. So therefore, let's just get out of there. Let's just get out. I just can't. I don't have that level of interest in why we want to keep a few hundred troops in northeastern Syria. So let's just get them all out. And whatever happens, then we'll deal with it.

Something like that. Yeah, I mean, sir, yes, it's silly to overlook that sort of basic notion that he is fulfilling a campaign promise. But that it comes sort of this late in the game, that it comes after years. literally of just a sort of ignoring of that issue or, you know, hand waving it away at best, lip service, I guess, at best. It seems, you know, I feel like it's fair to look at other solutions. But yeah, I mean, listen, when it's also fair to assume that this is a thing that just landed on his desk, you know, one way or the other.

And if it was, you know, talking to someone in Russia or Erdogan or whoever, but like, or if it was an actual just like, you know, if it was a matter of the State Department, I mean, you know, it could be a lot of things. And if it just landed on his desk and he said, yes, my opinion is get the troops out of there. You know, I guess that's, I guess that's fair game. But it does seem like even the people in the State Department and the military were caught flat-footed by his decision. Pelosi in this meeting we mentioned with Donald Trump at the White House says that Donald Trump told her you're a third-grade politician. Now, Chuck Schumer, who was also in the meeting, had Trump saying, you're a third-rate politician, which actually, I think, sounds more like Donald Trump, third-rate. Third-grade politician sounds really strange.

But just to pause, we are arguing about which schoolyard taunt Trump used against the Speaker of the House, a point that Katie Rogers makes in her time speech today. That was the point in the meeting. when Congressman Steny Hoyer said to the Democrats, you know what, let's get out of here because this is not helpful, at which point Trump said, quote, goodbye, we'll see you at the polls. Now, none of this is typically what happens when the president briefs Congress on foreign policy. And here was Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters after that meeting. I'm sad about it is I pray for the president all the time,

and I tell them that. I pray for his safety and that of his family. I think now we have to pray for his health, because this was. a very serious meltdown on the part of the president. That was one of the first times I've heard a major elected Democrat talk about the president's health, quote unquote, meaning the president's faculties. Trump then got on Twitter and basically just did the, oh yeah, well, I worry about your help.

He says, Nancy Pelosi had a total meltdown in the White House today. It was very sad to watch. Pray for her. She is a very sick person. so there's that okay so so another popular caricature

of President Trump is that he will take whatever is thrown at him and just redirect it I mean just rubber and glue it right back onto someone else regardless of whether or not there's any sort of coherence there but there was you know you can see some of that

in like searching for a Ukrainian corruption charge against his political opponent after he went through years of being accused of corruption with Russia. And you can see it in a lot of other much more, much less significant instances too. This is just like, like exactly that. I mean, there is not like, there's no other way to describe it except for like someone said a thing about him and then he tweeted the exact same words about them either to try to change the narrative of what had happened,

or I don't know if it's like gaslighting? Like, I don't know, like, it's very strange to try to, like, put logic to it, and maybe I shouldn't waste my time, but it feels like, you know, it just seems like it's, it's hard, I guess it's hard to figure out the way that this is 3D chess, right?

I'm not sure. But, but if it's not, if this is just a straight up like you said, so I'm going to say the same thing. Just like, n'n, you're dumb. Like, it's really hard to wrap one's mind around. This feels like that card game war, you know,

you used to play with your friend when you had a deck of cards. It would just be like, who turns up the higher numbered card wins, the hand? Like you have nothing else. You don't know how to play a card game. This is like the simplest. I don't have anything beyond that.

It may be gas lighting and rubber and glue and everything. I just don't, yeah, it seems. utterly basic. Speaking of which, Trish Regan of Fox News got a hold of a letter that Trump had sent to the Turkish president Rejep Tayyip Erdogan,

and I'm going to read you a little of this diplomatic overture. Trump writes, History will look upon you favorably if you get this done the right and humane way. It will look upon you forever as the devil if good things don't happen. Don't be a tough guy. Don't be a fool! exclamation point.

I will call you later. Sincerely Donald Trump. That is the actual letter that was sent to another head of state. Our friend Stephen Roderick on Twitter says, before journalism, I worked as a low-level press aid for politicians. The soul-crushing part of the job was crafting letters in Senator E's. Job would have been so much better if you could write like you're in a Mickey Spillane novel.

This is the part that's just so funny that it should almost stand on its own But like I mean maybe we should just have a separate episode Of the podcast or we just do interpretive readings of this for half an hour But it's First of all it was

I mean it was I think it was reported by some of the Some of the senators Who were in that meeting with Trump That he handed them copies of the letter So this wasn't like some like deep state leak Like he was he was either proud of it trying to prove that he was tough on this matter.

And also that he was obviously not trying to keep this. This wasn't some deep dark, you know, deepest secret, deep state secret, whatever. He was trying to prove that he was aware of what Turkey was going to do and was trying to discourage them from doing it, rather than just pulling out. And then the subsequent report, or the kind of parallel report is that President Erdogan threw it away, like received the letter. and physically threw it into the trash can. And this also comes in conjunction. Presumably this was before, but it comes in conjunction with a separate report

that Erdogan had said, like, we're done trying to figure out America's foreign policy by watching Trump's Twitter account. We'll talk, I guess we'll talk more in a second about Mike Pence's journey and discussions and everything that's happened since. But this letter, I mean, sometimes you see

that these letters, exists, something like this exists, the primary source. You read the headline, you read the first paragraph in the New York Times, and you just sort of let it, you know, you kind of think you've absorbed it all. I recommend our readers, even the ones that just heard you read it out loud, just go and look at this piece of paper, find it online, and read it for yourself, because it is amazing. I mean, it's just amazing. I cannot believe it's real. You know what the best part about it is? It's that it says all of those things you just said. It says, you know, don't be a tough guy, history will see you as a devil. And you know, anytime there's this devil talk, you get the

impression that, like, someone fed you that line, that you're kind of, like, being made aware of what, like, the sociopolitical implications of that usage is. You know, there's, there's been a lot of that kind of stuff in the past. And it's so hard. It's so ridiculous. It's so over the top. And then at the end, he's like, I'll call you later. I mean, it's literally the last line is like, I'll give you a call. It's good. Like, it's just so weird. It's like, it's like, it's like, It would be like texting your wife, like, I hate you, I'm leaving you, and then just end with like, I'll call you later. You know, whatever?

I mean, it's just wild. Oh, yeah. Again, I know we're talking. I'm going to argue that we can both be highly alarmed in a geopolitical way and in a human rights way and then also find this funny. I think we can do both at the same time because that is just, that is absolutely wild. Meanwhile, David, and how in the world do we reduce this to a meanwhile? The impeachment inquiry is crawling along. The possible impeachment of a president is also happening. And I was struck when

Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney at the White House today seemingly casually admitted that Trump had indeed withheld aid from Ukraine as quid pro quo for investigating that fake. server nonsense. Here's Mulvaney. Did he also mention to me in the past that the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely. No question about that. But that's it. And that's why we held up the money. Now there was a report. So the demand for an investigation into the Democrats was part of the reason that he ordered to withhold funding to Ukraine. The look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried

about in corruption with that nation. And that is absolutely appropriate. in the fond of yeah yeah we we we were disputing this a couple of a couple of minutes ago and just there's going to be a whole when this is all done whenever it is done if it is ever done there's going to be a whole just subgenre on the casual confessions of the trump administration from was it eric trump who put the letter who put the email up on twitter yeah when he was going to have to release it to Mueller to to this kind of stuff to Trump sort of confessing to the I just the casual confessions are amazing that's beyond Mickey Spillane in a Mickey Spillane novel nobody comes up to Mickey Spillane nobody comes up to the character and says you

know what I I did everything I it is what you say they don't say that until the very end until they're about to die yeah I think that this is I think it's not just a you know sociological post-mortem I look forward to. I mean, I think this is a real new way of doing politics, and I think, you know, we'll probably be have, you know, have smart people calling it the Trump two-step in 10 years or something like that, too. But, like, but, you know, I mean, this is a very, this is a very common, I mean, this is recurred over and over again in the Trump administration where you deny or kind of obfuscate a little bit, oh, I'm not sure, I'm not sure he'll, you know, we'll get back to you on that. And then you just send somebody out, like, two weeks

later to be like, now, what we were originally accused of happened, but like, clearly that's not what, you know, like, that's not a big deal. And it's, and they won't actually admit that it's what they were being accused of. They just admit a thing happened, but still are like vaguely in denial mode. And so they sort of come out, they sort of just kind of skip by it. It's, it's, if it, I mean, in so much as it's deliberate, it's pretty ingenious, you got to say just because it continues to sort of be effective. We'll see how much how effective it is this time. It seems like the initial reportage, or at least, you know, on Mulvaney's statement is that he threw Trump under the bus or that he, you know, he admitted to what they had been denying. So maybe it won't work.

You know, maybe, but it's, you know, it's happened. It's worked before. President Dispatch Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to go to Turkey to try to settle this dispute. And I want to leave you, David, with this sepia-toned analogy that Mitt Romney used to react to that news. Quoting Romney here, it's very hard to understand. It's very hard to understand why as the vice president and secretary of state and others are going to talk with Erdogan and turkey, it's like the farmer who lost all his horses and goes to now shut the barn door. Now, remember when Mitt Romney was this impossibly, you know, ridiculous Bain figure in 2012? And now we've got rural analogies that we're just thrown out there.

the farmer who lost all his horses and goes to now shut the barn door what's happened to Mitt Romney I don't know man it's like he spent so much time in like you know the upper crust that he's trying to like learn colloquial English as a second language or something and he's just all being conveyed to him by like a game of telephone we should point out that it seems like Mike Pence their journey has been successful.

The news literally broke, I think, as we were recording this, that Turkey has agreed to, or Pence says that Turkey has agreed to suspend its incursion into Syria and allow Kurdish forces to withdraw. So Turkey went from saying they, you know, from throwing Trump's letter away

to then, I think they initially refused to see Pence when he went out there. but then changed their, you know, didn't about face under some pressure, I guess, from America, although I don't know how the initial announcement did not represent pressure from America. And then now they're suspending their, you know, combat or whatever for the time being. So, you know. We're defining chaos. Oh, excuse me.

We're defining success down here. Because success in this case equals we created chaos and death. And then a couple days later, now we succeeded in at least. temporarily stopping chaos and death, right? Correct. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's what's success. So anyway, congratulations to the Trump administration for that diplomatic overture. All right, David. Now we go to the Overword 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. Yeah. Jalen Ramsey, a defensive back, was traded from the Jacksonville Jaguars to the L.A. Rams this week. It was an overword Twitter joke to call him Jalen Ramsie. Jalen Ramsey. Sometimes the basic stuff is right where you go. Thanks to Stephen Kahn and Paolo O'Getti for that one.

Thanks, Paula. David, are you following Sean Spicer on Dancing with the Stars at all? I can't say that I am. You're watching Succession? Yeah, I understand. Anyway. Not that either, huh? Dancing with the Stars had a Disney night this week, I guess.

I'm not watching. And former White House Secretary Spicer came dressed as Woody from Toy Story. Everyone was dressing as a Disney character dancing to a Disney song. It was an overwork Twitter joke to post the picture and say, boy, Toy Story 5 looks dark. That was one. Trump, by the way, has been encouraging people to vote for Spicer on Twitter. and if you want a very subtle geopolitical gag, it was an overwork Twitter joke to write,

ballroom dancers have been facing off against each other for decades, no need for America to get involved. Thanks to David Uberti and Derek Burke for that. I like that. Back when he was National Security Advisor, John Bolton was apparently trying to distance himself from the Ukraine caper. He had this great line.

I am not part of whatever drug deal, Gordon Sondland and M. Mick Mulvaney are cooking up. All that is now evidence in Donald Trump's impeachment inquiry. So it was an overwork Twitter joke to write. I knew Bolton believed in regime change, but I thought he meant overseas. Thanks to Johnny B. in AK for that one. And finally, David, this headline from Reuters on Monday, quote, London police arrest protester dressed as broccoli.

London police arrest protester dressed as broccoli. There is a photo. It was an overworked Twitter joke. I'm not even sure this is an overwork. It was just funny to say the perpetrator tried to escape by getting into a cab and telling the driver to floor it. As in broccoli. Oh, that's fantastic. That's just fantastic.

Thanks to Scott Tobias and Tyler Toraville. If you did some excellent work with vegetable puns, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, time for the notebook dump. And on the matter of Darrell Morrie's tweet, the NBA and check. China. One person we hadn't heard from yet was LeBron James. He was in China with the Lakers. The players were prevented from talking to the media while they were there. Well, on Monday, James returned stateside, and he weighed in on the tweet heard around the world. He called Mori's tweet misinformed, and he also said this. We all talk about this freedom of speech. Yes, we all do have freedom of speech, but at times there are ramifications for the negative that can happen when you're not thinking about. others and only on you only think about yourself so I don't believe I don't want to get into a word

word or sentence feud with Darrell but Darry but I believe he wasn't educated on on the situation at hand and and he spoke and so many people could have been harmed not only financially but physically emotionally spiritually so just be careful what we what we tweet and we say and what we do even though yes we do have freedom of speech but there can be a lot of negative that comes with that too. How shocked were you when you heard that from LeBron? Well, shocked and not shocked. I mean, this is an issue with, I think what makes the issue so interesting.

I mean, it's so compelling is that it's like, you know, good intentioned people can argue in different directions about this at the same time, right? So there's a part of this that it makes total sense. I mean, I guess the first answer, I mean, the primary answer is it was shocking to hear. I mean, it was surprising that it happened when it happened. It was surprising that it was LeBron making this case. But I guess that, I mean, listen, if you look at it from the point of view that players, and LeBron represents the players more so than any other, you know,

about anybody else in the NBA, the players felt like they were. kind of being hung out to dry by the NBA office and by their teams in this situation, that a lot of them had enormous financial stakes. And we're not talking about – I mean, there's a – I mean, LeBron James has lots of money, but there's a difference between, you know, a billionaire owner of a multi-billion dollar of, you know, basketball franchise losing out on, like, prospective percentage income of a, you know, a telecom deal or whatever that's down the road. And like, you know, a player that's still working under a low, I mean, a relatively low

dollar rookie contract, Kyle Kuzma, I think is the one, is the name that's been floated around who lost like literally like a multi-million dollar deal because of this. Just straight up, just straight up had it torn up. And I think there's probably a lot of that. And LeBron was, my guess is that he was speaking for players who felt like not enough was being done by the NBA to protect them from these sorts of great losses, right? So that being said, I understand why I said it. Now, if you want to break down what he said, I mean, maybe I'm being too conspiratorial, but like I firmly believe that he said that he did not misspeak in his first statement as many people have assumed or have implied. I think he said exactly what he meant to say. I think he meant to say what he said as vaguely and sort of foot and mouthily as possible, or at least in a way that could be read as foot and mouthy from the American audience, but could be read very literally by the Chinese. his audience. And, you know, I think the walkback was part of the initial, I mean, the walkback

was part of his initial plan, that he would say it one way and then take it back and hope that, you know, various audiences could see exactly what could read their own hopes and dreams into what he said. All of this is to say that for everybody, for, for, is it LeBron, who's a really incredibly smart businessman besides being the best, you know, basketball player in the world, and an incredible voice for social justice when he chooses to speak,

this is a really bad look for him, right? I mean, this is just a really bad, and I guess bad look, we throw around and we kind of make fun of other people saying it. This was a bad decision on those grounds. He's, he's, obviously there's like this, like the straight political situation here, where the right thing to do is to speak out in favor of Hong Kong.

And to say, oh, you don't understand the political, you don't understand what's going on, you don't understand the ramifications, whatever, is you could never imagine someone saying that about a political issue that he cared about. He would never say the same thing. No. No, I'm saying someone saying you're misinformed or you didn't think it through, you know.

That would, that would, that would sound a little like what Laura Ingram said to LeBron, I think. Well, and that's exactly, and that's the point, and we're not going to be the first to make it, but that's the point that needs to be made that, like, you know, he made shut up and dribble into a thing, right? He made that, you know, the rejection of that idea. And, uh, and that's based, that's what he's asking, you know, Darryor Morey basically to do. Shut up and tell your, you know, and sign three point shooters. I mean, be dork Elvis. Yeah.

Yeah. No, so I think there's a couple, there's a whole bunch of things to pull out of there that, and I think I broadly agree with you on a lot of that. If we're making the sympathetic case to LeBron, which I think is worth making, at least as a thought experiment, it is that Daryl Morey drew me into, by extension, drew me into this fight with the Chinese regime right before I was about to go to China. Yeah. We found out from reporting from Dave McManneman and Shams, Sharania, that there was this meeting between silver. and the players in China and Silver saying you guys should just go out and talk to the media and face it, this is what we love about

this league, democracy, to which LeBron stands up and says, wait a second, why does this all fall on us? Daryl Morey started this. You're not speaking in China, talking about Adam Silver. Why do the players suddenly have to go in and be on the front lines of the media reaction to this?

This is a company, this is, there's just, I don't say it's complicated, but there's a lot of stuff here and these guys haven't thought about this. why are we doing this? Okay. Then there's the part that you say, which I also think is an interesting point, which is we are workers in this league,

and we've got X numbers of years to make as much money as we can. So when Darryl Morey says this, when we saw this this last week, you are literally taking money out of our pocket. I also think it's an interesting point, and I guess people have said this this week, that I just don't think LeBron and those guys

look at Darry and go, that guy's one of us. You know, imagine if Dame Lillard had made the exact same comment about the Hong Kong protesters. Surely the response from LeBron would have been different than that. But I just don't think, I think Daryl Morey's not a player. And I think, I think there's just less interest in, you know, having his back about a political statement.

So that, that to me is, that to me is how I would, I would make the sympathetic case to LeBron. That said, I didn't, there's almost nothing in his statement. that makes any sense to me. And reducing somebody's freedom of speech to an, oh, by the way, of course you have the freedom of speech at the end, I just don't, I don't buy it all. I just don't buy it.

And lighting him up. Or you just dissent from it? I dissent from it because I just think that, you know, first of all, you're lighting him up for being misinformed, sort of implying that he doesn't know what he's talking about. How do you know that? that he was you know somehow speaking out of his ass

and then at the end you list all the reasons he shouldn't do have done it and then you know at the very end go oh well you know he also has the freedom of speech that's not the end also that's the whole thing right that that's that's where this should start and if you want to tell me boy it was wild to dump this on us right before he went to China

whatever it created a strange situation okay but I just I thought I was I was extremely disappointed And I just, and I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't, I kind of couldn't believe he was saying that. I really couldn't. And I totally agree with you. I don't think he misspoke at all.

I think that's exactly how he felt. And if you actually read the tweet, the clarification, it's really the same point. He's just saying, you know, he's not, he's not really walking it back in any way. He's just, I don't, I don't think he actually cleaned up anything he actually said. And I'm with you. I think he delivered, that was exactly the message he wanted to deliver. liver. And that's what he thinks about the issue with, is what we're left with. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. And also, I mean, he didn't have to go out and say it. This wasn't a thing where,

you know, James Hardin was put on the spot in a press conference. I mean, this was, I think, after a practice. There wasn't necessarily media veil time, like, whatever. I mean, he could have clearly, he had a lot of options here. But, you know, but people are going to look to him to have an opinion on this to speak to speak out one way or the other and he made his he made the decision to do it and this is what he chose to say um i mean listen i'm sympathetic to the to the to the you know money that's at stake for players and um and even for the owners and stuff but it's you know it's that that's an issue that i mean you know that that's the foremost thing in their minds but it's but you know there's got to be a way to to to have to

this conversation and not just like hang your own morals out to dry sort of. Yeah, or just I just don't again reducing somebody's free speech right to fourth or fifth on the list

of the values that are at stake here or in play here. I just don't get that. It doesn't make any sense to me. Because surely that's number one. And those of us who have always said this isn't complicated. that has been the number one thing that we've said. This is important, right?

One is that he should have the right to say what he thinks. And that, two, the issue he's talking about really isn't that complicated. It's pretty easy to come down on that side of it. So, again, I just don't, I don't get it. I really, really don't get it. I am fascinated by LeBron's media arc. I think a lot of us forget after what happened last year with the Lakers that LeBron started last season with as much media goodwill as I can remember any team sport athletes starting with in my lifetime that season.

Between dragging that terrible Cavs team to the NBA finals and then also opening the school in Akron, he was at, I mean, he was at, I think, is just as high as you can go now, especially for somebody who talks about politics and involves himself in that. And then you saw what happened to the Lakers last year. You saw his effect, you know, on the front office there. And now this. And it's just interesting to me that he's in a very, very different place media-wise than he was a year ago. Now, again, he may go out and win an NBA title or at least have a good run and, you know, finish third in the West and make the Western Conference finals and everybody will forget, which they probably will, you know, frankly. but he got a lot of deference

and earned a lot of deference and I think a lot of that dribbled away on Monday night. No pun intended. Oh right, God. I sound like Laura Engram. There was a report by John Leicester of the AP that at least one protester in Hong Kong

was burning LeBron's jersey. We were talking about this in the office out here in New York. Is LeBron the clear frontrunner for a person who's had the most jerseys burnt in his career. Under wildly different circumstances? Yes. Under, I left Cleveland as a free agent and under, I was not sufficiently supportive of someone who was supporting the freedom protesters in Hong Kong.

Yeah. That's a pretty big swing. All right, David, some cleanup from Tuesday's debate. If the field of Democrats thinks Elizabeth Warren is a frontrunner, and it's pretty clear the line of attack will be a version of what we saw from Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar at the debate, which is that the argument that Elizabeth Warren isn't leveling with you, that she won't tell you that she's going to raise your taxes as a way to pay for Medicare for all. Joe Biden, who needs some help in the polls, is also in on this.

This is Biden speaking yesterday from Columbus, Ohio. It's fascinating that the person who has a plan for everything has no plan for the single most consequent. issue in this election in the minds of the American people across the board. And you know what? Credibility matters. It matters. And the question that I think that Senator Warren is going to have to face, she's going to have to tell the truth or the question will be raised about whether or not she's going to be candid and honest with the American people. We talked a little about this in the wake of the debate. How much do you think that's going to work and how much do you think that sort of chips away at her mojo.

I mean, listen, anytime you have 10 competing politicians who are all kind of working in concert to make something like that stick, it's going to have some effect. I think what we've seen over the past, however, I mean, how long has Elizabeth Warren

not only been running for this for a year now? I think what we've seen time and time again, again is that she's not a perfect politician and that often she's about 95% of the time she's spot on. 5% of the time she's like wildly tone deaf, but that she seems to be able to identify her own errors and recover pretty adeptly. Do you think that's fair to say? I think that's right.

And so I think that her path to solving this is pretty straightforward. I mean, I don't, and I think it would behoove it. her to do that before something like this would start to stick. And I think that, you know, and my guess is that she will. But, but yeah, I mean, to answer the basic question, like, could this hurt her? Could this stick? Yeah, of course. I mean, these are not, this isn't people saying, this isn't people saying, like, flesh out your plan. This is like, these are multiple people saying, like saying dishonest over and over again, you know? And that's, that's, that's, in politics, in real life, that's significant.

They shifted the terms of the debate, didn't they? Because we've talked about how Elizabeth Warren had kind of climbed up on this hill and said, look, I've got the best policy. I've got the one that's, you know, I'm not settling for some, you know, middle of the road, incrementalist kind of thinking. I want to go all the way with this. So, and she was using that and she said that line a couple of times at the debate and saying, why do this if you're not going for it? Why do this if you're not doing it? So a couple of candidates like Buttigieg and Biden have realized maybe we can't win going policy versus policy. So let's shift this away from policy to trustworthiness to why won't she, if she believes in this policy so much,

why won't she tell you how she's funding it? Why won't she just answer the simple question? And I was fascinated by as soon as the debate was over very shortly after, CNN got a statement from Team War. Warren, indicating a shift in her thinking, Team Warren says she's reviewing the revenue options suggested by the 2016 Bernie campaign. Now, time out here that Bernie has been very explicit saying, I'm going to raise taxes to pay for Medicare for all, but you will, the saving, you will, get more money in the deal. She's reviewing the revenue options suggested by the 2016 burning campaign along with other revenue options. So she may be,

moving to actually say how she's going to pay for it, and it might involve something other than tax money. It was how I'd read that, which is also a way to read it that she thinks this is a problem and something that she needs to address. Yeah, I guess we'll have to see where that goes. Like I said, my guess is that something this straightforward will not, but certainly should not be that much of a roadblock for this campaign.

But we'll see. We'll see. I mean, listen, when the whole, I mean, it depends on when people start dropping out. And we're, you know, we're coming in now, moving in now towards a November debate where it doesn't seem like the field is going to narrow that much. But at some point, as the field narrows, whenever it does, it'll be interesting to see which, you know, from what sort of political sphere, what part of the Democratic spectrum, the first casualties are. because I think that'll mean a lot for sort of the tenor of the debate and the tune. But if it's just a – I mean, if it becomes more and more lopsided where it's just her or her and Bernie Sanders and everybody else is saying, you know, we basically have the same health care idea and it's not theirs because they're lying, then that could – you know,

this could be a real dog fight even before we get anywhere near President Trump. David, we missed this cable news farewell when we were listening to the debates. But last Friday, Shep, I'm kind of trying to be a real newsman here, Smith, signed off of Fox News. Let's listen to a little bit of that. So recently, I asked the company to allow me to leave Fox News after requesting that I stay. They obliged. Under our agreement, I won't be reporting elsewhere, at least in the near future. But I will be able to see more of Gio and Lucia and our friends and family.

Then we'll see what comes along. This is my last newscast here. Thank you for watching today and over the decades as I traveled to many of your communities and anchored this program, Studio B and Fox Report, plus endless marathon hours of breaking news. It's been an honor and my pleasure. Even in our currently polarized nation,

it's my hope that the facts will win the day, that the truth will always matter, that journalism and journalists will thrive. I'm Shepard Smith. Fox News, New York. It's interesting because I think the question here is how much credit do you give Shep Smith? And in a way, that's sort of always been the question, right? But on the one hand, it's a little absurd to suggest that this was the breaking point with Fox News.

This, what's happening during impeachment, whatever's happening on Tucker Carlson Show now, not the million other things that preceded it. Right. On the other hand, you watch his performance on Fox News and it was often pretty good. So where do you fall on that? How much credit should we give him for his run there?

I mean, I think that, wow, this is a tough question. You give... It is tough. I think he deserves a lot of credit, frankly. You know, there were some reports coming out, I think, just today that he was, he stayed on as long as he did because he was actually concerned about who would take over that spot and how much of a kind of a net shift that would mean in the coverage that people saw. And I think that that's meaningful. I think that, I think that it's easy to see that, you know, he's probably, he was probably right in that fear. But that's, that, that could be a meaningful difference and it's a meaningful decision. You know, it's, I think there's a sort of popular opinion that the various adults in the room who have populated the Trump administration and, you know, kept his hand away from the nuclear codes or, you know, whatever they were, whatever they were there to ensure didn't happen. You know, I think the popular opinion in the Trump administration has tended towards, well, that's not enough, right?

I mean, your obligation to America is to come out and scream from the mountain top. opposite, this president is unfit or something, you know? I mean, that there's, that there's some, that there's more that you can do than just sort of being a conscientious bulwark, you know, between reality and catastrophe or whatever. But regardless, I think that that, that it's, being that, playing that role of bulwark is more, is certainly meaningful in the way that, that Jeff Smith occupied it at Fox News. And, I mean, I guess, I will tell how significant that role was. But, you know, I think he's done, I think that he's, I think that he can be proud of what he

accomplished there or what he, or would he, what he prohibited others from accomplishing. I'm not quite true with the right. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of, so the thinking essentially, first of all, worth noting, he was at Fox News for 23 years. That's a run. One, that's just a long time to be anywhere in this world. two, that's a lot of bad that happened in 23 years, just to bake that all into your thinking. But his thinking, and you're right, he did say this explicitly, is all kinds of bad things happen on this network,

particularly with the opinion people that appear in prime time. Or I guess you could also say the morning. So I'm going to be on here because if I leave, something bad will also happen in my time slot. So in this kind of sea of bad, I'm going to be less bad and I'm going to try and be more or less down the middle and at least be willing to criticize the president and Republican. That's the thinking essentially that I'm keeping out if people this is going to be, and he said this also too, this is the number one news network. People are going to watch this whether I'm here or not. So I might as well stay and make my little corner pretty good. and that will be a greater good for media watchers for America, whatever it is.

That's essentially the case he's making. Yeah, that's the case he's making. And I think that there's a lot of legitimacy there. Yeah, I mean, I guess the, if we take him at his word, and I think we probably should that this is the way he really feels, I guess the alternate case was, you know, by the, what, early 2000s, you had a pretty good sense of what this was. and you had a pretty good sense of who the people on the network were going to be.

And you could have left and gotten a job at CNN or somewhere else and done the same thing over there and not been in that world for that long. I guess that's the alternate case here. You could have quit a lot earlier. I'm fascinating why this was the breaking point. I guess. I'm not sure. I mean, do we know specifically what the breaking?

breaking point was? I mean, do we really know for sure? We don't, we don't. But he said he went to Fox management and said, I want to leave now. Right. And he's in the middle of a contract. They did not want him to leave, and he said, I wanted, I wanted to leave.

I mean, certainly, I mean, yeah, so this in a very general sense, we know what it is. But, you know, what, if there was any actual precipitating incident, you know, there are a lot of people had suspicions, but, you know, that were kind of dispelled at some point.

But, I mean, who know, whether there was a breaking point or this is a, you know, a broken spirit, I'm not sure that it matters that much. I mean, I guess it does. I mean, it certainly does matter if the chief of staff went and insisted that he be fired, right? I mean, if the president's chief of staff insisted that he be fired, that apparently did not happen. And we can kind of throw, toss that aside for now. There are, you know, there are versions of the story that are much more significant than, than others. but I think for

I mean, listen, if he's a journalist, and I guess someone might take exception to that categorization, but if you're a journalist, then your job is, then your job is to report the truth, right? And you're not obligated to do that at a certain place. Once you turn your job as a journalist into, and not everybody, certainly there is a lot,

of moral decision-making that goes into everybody's career in everybody's life. But if he felt he was doing the most good there, and if he felt he was that he was actively reporting the truth from his seat there at Fox News, I'm not sure why it's his moral imperative to go do it for someone else, just to prove that Fox, I mean, that wouldn't change anything at Fox, and it would, and all it would do is, I mean, it wouldn't change anything for the better, and if he's, if he's out there on a book tour talking about how corrupt Fox is or how decisions were made behind the scenes, then he's certainly not being, I mean, he's certainly kind of relinquishing his straight newsman chair, right? I mean, that's, then he becomes the sort of

talking head that he's sort of actively working against, and just from the other side. But shouldn't we know what those decisions are being made? I guess that's my devil's advocate thing here. So, oh, right. So, I mean, as a journalist, is the question, as a journalist, are you obligated to be reporting on your own employer and, and just sort of the way, yeah, I mean. Well, just beyond that, that there's some good to the world if we knew what was, if we had, had more information about what was going on there from him, from somebody like him that you would probably believe. Yeah, I think that that's, I think that's a reasonable question, but I, but I guess I would, I would assume, and maybe my assumption is incorrect, that the, the task of kind of

keeping some semblance of truth being told that that, you know, on Fox News is, to him at least, has outweighed whatever whistleblower role he could have had. And I guess it remains to be seen how much the whistle needed to be blown. He's got to be writing a memoir, by the way. And a 100% chance he's going to write a memoir. Call me Shep.

A newsman. A newsman's life of a newsman. I mean, there's just 100% chance. And I would like to read it. I would be interested. Let's say this. I would be interested at least reading the summary of what what's in it, which is something of a compliment in this day and age. Little listener mail, David, before we get out of here, Andrew Hertz, notes that this episode we're recording right now is, at least on the Apple podcast interface, episode number 666 of the press box.

Now, we have not actually recorded. That counts a bunch of Channel 33 stuff. But he writes, wonder what evil Brian and David will root out on episode 666. Maybe this political horror movie, we are living three. has a jump scare this week. I think that's right. That was the tweet. Anyway, thank you to Andrew for pointing out.

Episode 6666. Listener adds Theo says, can David and Brian please talk about how incorrectly the term burying the lead is used? I have zero references to cite, but I know this is something that should annoy you.

Have you noticed bearing the lead being used in a bad way? Well, so what would be the wrong way to use it? I don't know I'm staring at this and I think he's probably right I feel like I've had the exact same feeling as him and I cannot put words to it

burying the lead because it's you know I feel of all the journalistic terms that's probably used mostly correctly but anyway we will absolutely take the charge to keep an eye out and please send at the press box spot

any incorrect uses of burying the lead This is from listener DK Jungle Madness You should give a shout out During the next episode To whoever edits the ridiculous banter At the end of the pod Some people may not know this exists

But at the very very end of every episode There is a Marvel-style stinger Is that the word for it Of David and I talking In disembodied sound bites from the show And they are amazing This is my wife's favorite part of the show Oh really?

I asked Jim to come up with an example. Jim, do we have like 10 seconds of one of these? We can roll so in case anybody has not made it all the way to the end of the press box. David, why are you doing this? I have no idea to answer this question. Because there's too many acorns? Yeah, and how are you wrapped up in all this? And how are you co-signing all this stuff?

I don't want to get to conspiracy theory. And here we go. I think there's a lot of reasons to be scared. Sure. Jim Cunningham. I hope every rigor employee knows that if you've ever appeared on a podcast, Jim is sitting on like a really damning soundboard of you, too. It's true. It's what he does in this free time.

It's all Jim Cunningham. It's absolutely brilliant. A couple of points. One, what you just heard was better than most discussions we have on the actual press box. That was that disembodied soundboard thing. That was better than me on LeBron a few minutes ago, frankly. So we'll try to, we usually try to do better. But anyway, Jim, Jim,

Jim kind of him's an absolute genius. And if we sound halfway go on here on here, it is because of him. Thank you, Jim. And always stay tuned for the last post-credit sequence of the press box. We also did a segment, David, with Justin Charity a while back. And we asked listeners to help us name it. I was thinking of Charity Stripe, sweet charity.

But the winner from Hugh Hopkins is Justin Time. Just in Time, I think. I mean, I'm ready to close the contest is closed. Hugh has won, okay? So that's it. Thank you very much. And speaking of great puns, time for David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline. And here is David sighing and he's going to sigh.

There we go. Last Friday's headline was Blow Fishing. And David, I'm going to have to lead you right up to today's headline. but I think you're going to enjoy the trip. This comes from Jake, who points us to a piece by Ethan Sherwood Strauss in The Athletic on LeBron and China. It's a really interesting piece.

I encourage everybody to read it, but there is a very funny subhead within the piece. And it, I don't know how I can set this up other than to say it involves a theater term that you and I both heard for the first time in John Templin's drama class. in ninth grade. What? Okay. Oh, yes.

Do you remember any of those terms? Anything about theater? Something we would have learned, possibly in Latin. I was going to say is like, Comedia del Art is immediately

where my head went. Yeah, Latin, Latin. Something that arrives, perhaps, at the end of a idea. Deos X Machina? Oh, huh. It's okay.

I've used that in like numerous ringer and Grantland headlines. So I'm right there. This is, I'm part of the problem. Okay, so we're doing the NBA in China. Here we go. Be as basic as you can possibly be. This is about LeBron, NBA in China. Yeah, but you may not even need to change.

You may not even change anything. Deus X. Deus X. Machina? That's it. Is that it? Deus X. Ma China. That sounds lewd. I love it. Deus X. Ma China.

Thank you to Jake for that one. Fantastic stuff. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Researched by Chris on Meda. Production Magic. As explained by Jim Cunningham. We're back Tuesday, bright and early. but Luke Warm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you, Brian. History will look upon you favorably

if you get this done the right and humane way. I hate you, I'm leaving you. Oh, yeah, well, I worry about your help. That sounds lewd. Don't be a tough guy. Don't be a fool. Wow. Exclamation point.

Shut up and sign three point shooters. Yeah. Again, it will look upon you forever as the devil. Yeah. If good things don't happen. Wow. So, so there's that. Yeah.

I wanted to leave. Dot, dot, dot, dot, you know why? I will call you later, sincerely Donald Trump. Yeah.