The Press Box - Trump’s Daily Briefings, How Bernie Blew It, and Rand Paul Tests Positive | The Press Box

Episode Date: March 23, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss Trump’s daily coronavirus briefings (01:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (21:30), how Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic presidential nomination (24:45), Rand Paul testing positive for COVID-19 (36:00), Richard Burr dumping stocks (38:15), and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. We hope The Ringer can provide you entertainment and companionship during this time. So as always, feel free to check out The Ringer.com, where we're still covering the latest in sports, pop culture, tech, and media. And the Ringer's YouTube channel can provide endless amounts of entertainment. You can find that at YouTube.com slash The Ringer. Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis and David Shoeemaker of The Ringer here. Lots and lots to get to today.

We'll talk about how Bernie Sanders. let the Democratic nomination slip through his grasp. We'll talk about a couple of U.S. Senate coronavirus stories. Richard Burr of North Carolina dumped some stocks and Rand Paul of Kentucky has the virus. Plus, we'll get you that overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, we need to begin with the daily coronavirus briefings that Donald Trump and his staff are giving.

These briefings are simultaneously one of the most vital sources of information about the government's response to the pandemic and stylistically, the most bug nuts thing you could possibly imagine. James Fallows made this point on Twitter. Trump can't have any rallies right now. So the daily coronavirus briefing

has become his rally. He commandeers the mic. He praises himself. He takes shots at enemies. Listen to him, Tangle with NBC's Pete Alexander on Friday. I'll just follow up. What do you say the Americans who are scared, though, I guess?

Nearly 200 dead, 14,000 who are sick. Millions, as you witnessed, who are scared right now. What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared? I say that you're a terrible reporter. That's what I say. I think it's a very nasty question, and I think it's a very bad signal that you're putting out to the American people. The American people are looking for answers and they're looking for hope.

and you're doing sensationalism and the same with NBC and Concast. I don't go it I don't go it Comcast, I call it Concast let me just ask for whom you work. Let me just say something. That's really bad reporting. And you ought to get back to reporting

instead of sensationalism. Let's see if it works. It might and it might not. I happen to feel good about it, but who knows? I've been right a lot. Let's see what happens, John. I'm going to come back to the science

and the logistics area. You're going to be ashamed of you. What do you say to the Americans who are? What do you say to your mom when she sees what you've become in life? What do you say to the mirror when it has to look you in the face every day, huh? Huh? I mean, I'm not quite sure. I'm not quite sure what the, I mean, listen, I understand President Trump's frustration here.

I mean, he's in, but this is, well, no, I mean, I don't, I can't associate with it, but I like, I mean, I think this is a pretty simple, pretty simple A-B here. I can't get past what I said last week I mean this thing is a layup man I mean this could not be a more this could not be more of a gimmy for like like you know just adding to your or establishing your

presidential bona fides you know I mean it's like this is it's so simple but I mean even if you were if he were I mean he's out there in the hat and the windbreaker half the time anyway I mean I like this is really making mission accomplished on the aircraft carrier

look like a master stroke, right? I mean, it's just like he, it's like he's got the, it's like he's got the jumpsuit on, but then he just goes out there and moons everybody. Like I don't understand, I don't understand what's happening here. Yeah. And beyond, like the Bush mission accomplished thing was just, oh, wow, that turned out to be wrong.

You know, how embarrassing to look back and see that banner. Trump is almost trying something that like, is even more cultural here. like we're trying to reboot Dr. Strangelove here. Like this is, this is beyond an administration lying or or giving a rosy scenario. I mean, I mean,

when you watch these things, that whole cast of characters that's up there with Trump. Yeah. Mike Pence, Anthony Fauci, we had seen FEMA administrator Pete Gaynor. They should be the stars of the briefing. Right.

But there's no chance of that with Trump. he's a star. And so they're left to try to get in their bit when they can and then sort of gently correct everything that Trump is saying between the times that they're talking. Right. I mean, and sometimes contradict them. I mean, that's if that's what you mean by correct them. I mean, they're not even on the same script.

And they're not even because of the tenor, because of the, because of the, whatever, the, the, the, the, the, the, the adulation that's like a, part and parcel of every one of these things towards the president. They can't even say like, oh, well, actually we are, you know, actually what he said wasn't quite right. We're doing, you know, we actually are instituting the travel ban, whatever. They have to pretend like they're saying something different. Like, it has no connection to the thing that was said before. And I know that's how this administration is largely run with, you know, people pretending that just ignoring the things the president does and hoping for the best. But, but you're right.

I mean, this is a, this is a show. this is a, this is a rally, you know? I mean, and I think, I think that is, that's why you see the sort of blowups of the press. That's why you see like the real, just a real angst with the president, because when he's in rally mode, he's not used to having any pushback from the crowd. Yeah. And he has this same, you know, hit list that applies both at a rally and at a coronavirus briefing. Like, I'm going to go after Concast and the media people I'm mad at. to take some jabs at my political opponents. But I'm also going to seek to be like, I'm making this work.

I'm in charge. As you said, this is a layup. Like he could either come out at the beginning of these things and just give two minutes of tabulum about how America is going to pull together and he's going to solve everybody's problems and then turn it over to the other guys. Or he could just not appear at all. And as you point out, the press is such a cheap date about this. Remember when he had that just like,

sort of marginally presidential version of this the other day. And everybody was like, oh, wow, this is the day Trump became president. And then it was back to yelling at Pete Alexander, you know, it's not hard. But somehow, again, we've created this strange tableau. A couple of things about it that are interesting for me, David. One is that the people on stage are all standing next to each other, which is exactly what Fauci and other people and including the president have told us not to do. In fact, Fauci has talked about this.

I would like everybody to be apart, but we just can't even get this together because we have to have the traditional sort of look of a presidential briefing. I think these briefings are incredibly long. Sundays went on for an hour and a half by the time Trump had made his statement, repeated himself several times, brought other people to the mic and finally taking questions from the press. So like his rallies, they're endless. They do not, they do not end.

Fauci also said in an interview recently that the group that's on stage there meets as a task force before the briefings to kind of talk about what's happening, get their messaging in order and that's kind of stuff. But then when you come out and a lot of people have made this analogy, it is like the old five o'clock follies during the Vietnam War, where everybody would gather at a hotel in Saigon. and the press would make fun of how rosy the projections coming from the generals were. But the difference here is imagine if the five o'clock follies had had Nixon at the briefing.

Right. So that we have to, not only do we have to project the administration's rosy scenario about how the war is going, we have to genuflect to Nixon at the same time. That's what's happening here, is it not? Yeah, it is. I mean, I think that what's most sort of stunning, or one of the things it's most stunning to me, because there's a lot here,

is even if this were the most sort of under-prepared president, I don't want to say incompetent, but okay, incompetent presidency in any other, you know, parallel universe, if this were like being there, you know, I mean, there would have been, like, the most basic thing you would do is train the president to say things, that are comforting. Or when asked a give me question by the press, like, what do you say to people

who are scared? You'll have like, you have a comforting, prepared answer, right? But the fact that our president is either incapable of doing that, incapable of learning that lesson, which is certainly being given to him before these meetings, or

he's running a White House where people are just scared to give him those sorts of, you know, those sorts of tips. That is just just mind-blowing. Well, I think it's probably a combination. And I think there's a bigger thing here, whereas, you know, on the one hand, Trump wants to be the star. He wants to be the star of any briefing, even if it's a pandemic that his administration has not handled particularly well or even well at all.

But there's also a bigger thing that Trump, I think, just wants to make himself inextricable from everything, right? Like the the the the the US and Trump are one thing the Republican Party and Trump are one thing the coronavirus and Trump are one thing. There's no there's no difference between those things. And if he just talks and talks and talks and bullshits, then maybe he thinks in his mind he can sort of find a way through that because Maggie Haberman, Peter Baker wrote a really good article in the Times over the weekend, essentially saying that Trump has just blustered his way through every crisis. ever had. Yes. So there's no downside. There's no downside to being present through all the the bad stuff. It's just like he just wants to be inextricable from whatever the upside is. Yeah. And people are, I mean, people in this country to a point that has not happened yet during his presidency are hanging on his every word, right? Even more so than when you're just

the president of the United States, everybody is, you know, quarantined or should be quarantined or in their homes right now going, I'm scared. You know, what are you? you doing to help me? What are you doing to contain this? And at some point, at somewhere, he's thinking, I've got everybody's attention right now. Like I, like I've never had it before and I'm never going to have it again. And that creates such a fantastically interesting, um, or terrifying psychological profile. A couple of things about these briefings. One is these underlings pledging their fealty to Trump. Uh, the president has taken, unprecedented action.

He has taken decisive action, which we know is this is how you get Trump to do things, right? You praise him and then you kind of lead him to whatever you want him to do. Trump is also pledging fieldy to himself. Last Tuesday, he said, we've done a fantastic job from just about every standpoint. Wednesday,

we've done a great job. Thursday, we've done a phenomenal job on this. So he is complimenting himself. These briefings have been filled with errors. Last Wednesday, he had a Navy hospital ship launching before it was actually going to launch.

He said Friday he had invoked the Defense Production Act, which is one of these things that allows the government essentially to commandeer manufacturing. He has not done that exactly in the way that he said. He praised the potential of two malaria drugs to treat coronavirus. That, in fact, is what started that whole Pete Alexander back and forth.

Fauci had to go up and gently undercut him. He said at one point that every American, could get a coronavirus test, which was false. Here's what he said when PBS's Yamish Alcindor tried to follow up with that on Friday. Thank you, Mr. President. I have a question about testing. When will every American who needs a test get a test and be able to get a test? And why not have medical equipment being shipped right now to hospitals who need to?

You're hearing very positive things about testing. And just so you understand, we don't want every American to go out and get a test. $350 million people. We don't want that. We want people that have a problem, that have a problem with, they're sneezing, they're sniffling, they don't feel good, they have a temperature, there are a lot of different things. You know them better than I do. So ready? We don't need that. But what we are having is we're having, these private labs have come, and they've been really fantastic. And we also have a great system for the future. Because as I said, we inherited we, meaning this administration, an obsolete broken system that wasn't meant for anything like this. Now we have a system that you can see because look, we're well into this and nobody's even talking about it, except for you, which doesn't surprise. There are Americans, though, which doesn't surprise. I just don't understand the combativeness of it.

Even the pieces of that that were true, this were completely obscured by the parts of it that weren't. I mean, there's been so much, like you said, so much falsehood coming out of there, coming out of his mouth and coming out of the White House in general. It seems, I mean, I feel like a week ago, I was ready to sort of lay down arms and not make every conversation about this, about coronavirus be about Trump. But it just, he makes it so hard. And I guess I wonder how much damage in real time he's doing.

And certainly history will bear that out. I hope history at some point, I mean, this is sort of a gruesome quandary, but I hope history at some point will answer the question as to how effective his disinformation campaign has been, right? I mean, I don't know, there's kind of been this longstanding question during Trump's presidency and during his campaign as to whether or not his ardent supporters really believe everything that he says or they just kind of like the fact that he's fighting, right? They know that he's full of that on some counts, but like the fact that he's fighting back. I don't know. I mean, this is clearly not the time or the place for that question. Certainly not the time of the place for him to be pulling that shit. But you do wonder if we're, I mean, you know, there's people always say now that like truth is partisan or whatever.

But like, I wonder how much how partisan like these lies are too. It's going to be interesting to see if we can ever quantify that. I think it's in it, you know, and I don't, I almost resist just saying like, oh, these are the Trump supporters. or the people watching Fox News that were affected by this during that period when he was playing down coronavirus. Because I think there's just like a much larger category of American media consumer who's just like, how much should I worry about this? You know, how much is this going to, how much should I be prepared for this? How much is this going to change my life? And when the president is saying it's going to magically go away, it's going to be okay.

We've got it. I think there's just a just a category of person that's like, okay, yeah, maybe they're. This isn't such a big deal. Yeah. I mean, that's the question, right? If that is a category of person, I can only speak anecdotally. And, and, you know, as sequestered as we all are during this point in history, and this moment in time, almost everything feels very anecdotal and just very, very blindered right now. But I mean, it just feels to me like truth, like, like actual discernible facts or experienced, you know, like educated.

guesses are much more comforting now than just a sort of it's got everything's going to be fine especially from someone in power i mean that the the i've had i've had um this art this there's this wired article where they where they where uh by what stepan levy who interviews larry brilliant who was the um sort of the epidemiologist who like helped beat smallpox and um and it just he just sort of breaks down everything that's going to happen like he's like the way this is going to go and of course it's all educated guesses and everything like that. But like his just like like that has been more comforting to me and everyone that sent it to me and everyone that that that I've sent it to to than anything that you know, we've read in the newspaper or you know, certainly heard the

president say. I just I guess that's all to say I'm not sure that just like putting on a happy face is doing anybody any favors right now, especially when you just keep proven to be wrong over and over again. Yeah, there's there's there's not, I don't think it's nothing, right? I mean, there's some sense that some part of American society or American government is functioning. Even if we don't believe that, that at least like you get the two minutes of Mike Pence, you know, you get Fachi, right? You get somebody up there just being like, we are working on this. However, we are working. Because there is, I think the despair is a non-negligible problem in times like this.

And by the way, get back to everybody when they've been in their houses for two weeks, three weeks. you know, and are sort of erupting on Twitter and we've all, you know, turned into, you know, Mike Francesette, like tweeting through the, through the coronavirus. And I just, but at that point, you know, just just having something. And again, you're right, the, the crazily rosy scenario doesn't do anybody any good, but just having some kind of, I mean, this, there is a symbolic portion of the, of the president's job. And again, if Trump is going to go up there for an hour and a half and spar with journalists,

he did this kind of very snarky thing about Mitt Romney being in isolation. You know, oh, that's too bad, you know, hearing that Romney had gone in isolation because of, you know, coronavirus spreading through the Senate.

But I don't, I don't know how much that's being communicated. I didn't want to talk to you a second about Anthony Fauci. Yeah, please. A big moment of levity last week was when Fachi appeared to violate his own recommendations about touching your face when Trump made a, a deep state joke and he did this kind of half a face palm standing behind him at the briefing.

When he no showed a briefing the other day, there was a where's Fachi hashtag on Twitter. Like everybody's like, oh, no, this is the one guy we can't we can't lose. He had a really interesting interview in science magazine with the science writer John Cohen. Cohen was referring to Trump's remarks about China. So he asked Fachi this. Most everyone thinks you're doing a remarkable job. but you're standing there as a representative of truth and facts, and things are being said that aren't true and aren't factual.

Fatshi replied this way. The way it happened is that after he, Trump, made that statement about China, I told the appropriate people it doesn't comport, but I can't jump in front of the microphone and push him down. Okay, he said it. Let's try and get it corrected for the next time. So when you watch him at these briefings, just think about that. Like in his mind is not just a virtual face palm. Oh my gosh, I can't believe the president said that.

It is this whole calculation of this is what it is. Right. These are, this is what these briefings are going to be. Trump just soloing and freelancing and giving out fake info. What's the best I can do under these circumstances? What is the best from my position without, you know, because he doesn't want to get fired either, right? he doesn't want to get fired and he doesn't want to lose whatever influence he has in that. So what's the best I can do without going up there and being like the president is absolutely freaking wrong here? And please disregard anything he says about coronavirus. Yeah. I mean, it's the adults in the room conversation that we had a year ago or more just but actually in a more actually in a more legitimately urgent moment.

it's hard to fault him for conducting himself the way that he is it does feel like that him staying in his position in power is probably the most important thing he could do and you know briefings are almost secondary to that despite you're right

the sort of necessary aspect of conveying that information is there any way anyone else wins Time Magazine's person of the year for 2020 20. We just call off the contest at this point. If there is a Time magazine, let me just go ahead and throw that out there, given the economic turmoil that's about to hit American journalism again. There's literally no other choice, right? And does that mean he gets fired like the very next day? It's like Bannon. You're on the cover of Time magazine. You're out of here. Yeah, that's an unfortunate side of fact. But note to Time magazine, just pick anybody else. Pick Trump. It's fine. we'll deal with it. All right, David, time for the overwork,

Twitter joke of the week. All right. 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. One bit of business to get to before we start.

We talked on the last show about how Bono, as in U2's Bono, may be writing a coronavirus ballad. And David pointed out that Bono has spent his life wandering between disasters and trying to be the troubadour. of all of them. Well, a couple of people pointed out that conversation and said what we should have said was that Bono still hasn't found what he's looking for. Oh, man. I'll take that

opportunity to also say that if I, if anything that I said that belittled the good intentions of live aid or more broadly, Bono's crusade to stop AIDS in Africa, I apologize. David, one news item from last week. Disgratio. movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was placed in isolation in a New York prison after testing positive for coronavirus. Of all things to happen at a time like this. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. Harvey Weinstein once discovered Quentin Tarantino, but now Harvey Weinstein is in a tent in quarantino. Wow. Thanks to Scott Tobias for that one. This was Cousin Sal's reaction. I have to be honest, I was not expecting this sudden baby face turn from COVID-19.

That's what I was waiting for. That's good. We also would have accepted that. David, perhaps not surprising news given the state of the world right now, but still gut-wrenching. This year's Scripps National Spelling Bee has been postponed indefinitely due to the coronavirus. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write P-O-S-T-P-O-N-E-D. Wow.

Kind of a layup. And finally, David, we lost Kenny Rogers this week. The country pop crossover superstar who had 21 number one country hits and an almost indescribable place in our mother's hearts has died at age 81. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write Kenny Rogers' new wind of fold them. Thanks to Chris Sullen Tropp and Grover Anderson. The deeper Kenny Rogers cut was,

you picked a fine time to leave me, as in... That's it. You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucy. Hungry children and bad times. Live through some sad time. This time you're hurting home. Can we get Kenny Rogers back to write the coronavirus ballad?

Please. Isn't that a much better scenario than Bono? I want to start the notebook dump, David, with this topic, how Bernie blew it. And I use that headline respectfully because it's easy to forget that a month ago today, that is the day after the Nevada caucuses, Bernie was on a trajectory to win the Democratic nomination. A lot of us, and by that I mean actually us, like you and me, thought he was going to win. Then he got stomped by Biden, South Carolina and on Super Tuesday, and here we are. This weekend in New York Times, Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin published a big

piece about what happened to the Sanders campaign. I want to hit a few of these things with you because I think how we got from point A to point B with Bernie is sort of fascinating. Number one is something that we have talked about a little bit on here. Bernie started the Democratic nomination process by co-winning Iowa, winning New Hampshire, and then winning a blowout in Nevada. The first thing that he got wrong was he didn't have a speech or a moment where he said to all Democrats, I can be your nominee.

I may not change any of my issue positions. I don't feel like compromising anything, but I can be a plausible nominee for this party. Burns and Martin fill in some details on this. Vermont representative Peter Welch, who had actually endorsed Sanders, reached out to the campaign and said, hey,

there are a bunch of regular Democrats out there who just happened to have fallen in love with Warren or Buttigieg or whomever, and you're making it feel like you're excluding them. you should be including them. You should be trying to win them over. Even John Cusack, known Bernie supporter,

was urging Bernie to sort of tweak his message up a little bit. But that's not how they were going to take on the establishment. The thinking was, basically we need to crush the establishment and then seek peace. Once Sanders advisor, according to Burns and Martin, even used the civil war analogy of the Battle of Antietam to describe how they were going to win.

And beyond John Kusack, this was my favorite small example of this. Bernie was going to have a problem in Florida because there are a lot of Latino leaders, especially older Latino leaders in Florida who hear the word socialism and think, we don't like that, right? That connotates something else, right? Like in Cuba. We don't want that here. Bernie was going to have to attempt some kind of outreach to a lot of those people.

Well, he never quite got around doing it in a person. then the sort of disastrous Fidel Castro comments on 60 Minutes happened. And for some reason, Bernie's campaign wound up sending actress Cynthia Nixon to Florida to have those conversations. Now, I don't want to insult Cynthia Nixon at all, but just think about that for a second. You're having this big problem in Florida. You're not going to be able to make, you're not going to be able to get crushed in Florida and still have a great chance to win the nomination. But somehow that conversation between Bernie. and those leaders down there never happens.

Instead, Cynthia Nixon doesn't. There was backbiting in the Sanders camp, which will not shock you. Almost every losing campaign has a backbiting story. And I assume the winning ones do too. We just don't hear them. It's called an ungainly operation in Burns and Martin's story. Sanders and his wife, Jane, were the only people who could really make decisions. There were some interesting operational mistakes too.

Partly, there was a debate within the campaign. Do we go after Elizabeth Warren, who was clearly camped out on our turf to some extent? Or do we attempt reprochement with Elizabeth Warren as AOC was advising the campaign? In South Carolina, which is a fascinating part of the story, the Sanders campaign sent Nina Turner. You know, politician, very high profile Sanders surrogate, they sent her to run the South Carolina campaign rather than a political strategist, who might have been a little more in tune with, these are the church leaders we need to reach out to, these are the organizers,

these are the political people like that. Even then, a pre-South Carolina poll that the Bernie Sanders campaign had, had them only down four points in that state. He wound up losing that state by 30 points. And the way he loses it, of course, gets Klobuchar and Buttigieg out of the race very quickly and leads to what happened on Super Tuesday.

one of the most interesting things though I think about this and and I want you to weigh in here is that a lot of people within the Sanders campaign really wanted him to go after Joe Biden right they wanted him they said this this is this is your problem here you need to really contrast your record with Joe Biden you need to have gone into South Carolina and made the case of here was Joe Biden's vote on the crime bill here is here is why you should prefer my policies to Joe Biden's Biden's. Bernie resisted that. He was happy to go after the unnamed, quote, establishment Democrats. But as Burns and Martin Wright, he declined to pursue Mr. Biden directly. Mr. Sanders, they write, could not be persuaded to do so. He and Jane liked the Bidens personally and their word was final. He even put his advisor, David Serota in a timeout, reportedly, for distributing a piece to his email list served that said Biden had a corruption problem. So is it funny to you, is it strange to you in retrospect that one of the things, and again, there's a whole

constellation of things, but one of the things holding Bernie back was his refusal to tangle with Biden and go after him in maybe, let's say, sort of more brutal terms that could have illustrated the differences between them? I mean, listen, that makes a lot of sense. I don't, I think oddly, that part of him, to me sounds like, I mean, if he wasn't going to go out entangle with him, I would have almost preferred him to be more up front about his, about his friendship or the fact that he, that he liked him. Because the one thing that the Bernie Sanders campaign was missing, I think, to a lot of kind of more moderate voters. I'm talking about politically moderate, but just sort of like, you know, the less revolutionary set out there was the notion that like

Bernie Sanders didn't have any, wouldn't have any like friends and compatriots when he got into if he ever got elected. And that's what you saw with like, you know, the refusal to, reach out to the Warren campaign. I mean, as much as I've said before, that Warren's presence helped him on stage to look, to make him feel more mainstream. And certainly Bernie's campaign four years ago did a lot of that too. There was this persistent feeling that he was just sort of on an island. And that when, and that no matter what he said, that like, that this, this wave election that he was guaranteeing that would ensure that all of his policies got passed immediately just seemed more and more implausible because it seemed like there was nobody, nobody was going to

back him up despite how many voters might like those policies. Right. And there was also a good piece in the Times Magazine this week. Big profile of Bernie by Robert Draper that was probably conceived under slightly different circumstances, but wind up running after Bernie is effectively eliminated from the Democratic race. But what was fascinating about it is he talked about how Bernie basically governed as a center-left politician for a lot of his career, both as mayor of Burlington, Vermont.

of the Senate. And it's not that he changed any of his policies. He just sort of understood, okay, here's the best I can get. I'm going to try to push this bill or these ideas in a certain direction. I'm going to go as far as I can. And then I'm going to vote for the thing that's going to get passed most of the time, right? I'm going to, I'm going to have this very sort of cold-eyed kind of smart way of saying, I want X, but I'll take Y if Y is as far as I can get. The problem is, is that Bernie didn't express that a ton on the stump. And it was almost like he was incapable of expressing it. And I think when you look, when we look back at the Bernie Sanders campaign,

Bernie being Bernie is the thing that took it as far as it went and ultimately held it back, probably. Like his, the sort of moral clarity of his pitch, uh, the way he was so uncompromising, his talent on the stump, uh, and in debates, got him to a certain place, but it also essentially was very, very one note, at least rhetorically.

And it couldn't pivot and get him to another place. So at the end of the day, I read all these sort of pieces after the fact about what happened, these after action reports. And to me, it's all,

at the end of day, it's Bernie lost to some extent because he's burning. You know, and he got as far as he did, which is farther than anybody could have imagined. also because he was burning.

Yeah. And I think that a lot of that is, you know, the campaign from four years ago sort of institutionalized him in a way that I don't think he was given credit for or anyone really discussed enough during this campaign. That despite the, you know, just the really impressive nature, which he won or, you know, did really well in those first few primaries, that maybe some of that was was kind of baked in you know i mean it it seemed like it seemed like at the time like a bunch of bold victory a string of bold victories but um you know maybe maybe some of

that was you know we were looking at biden as the sort of baked in candidate or some of the others too maybe maybe that was bernies and he rested too much on that there was another there was a there was a tweet from right when bernie dropped out um uh from astad hernden who we quote all the time on this show. But he said, there's many reasons the title have shifted for Bernie Sanders. This might have been actually before the dropout.

But he said, I just don't have much time for the analysis that doesn't start with the obvious truth. The core theory of changing the electorate did not pan out. Everything else stems from that vulnerability. And no matter what you want to say, I mean, you know,

winning elections is the salve for all this, right? I mean, no matter what he did right what he did wrong along the way, if he had turned out, you know, under 30 voters in the way that his own campaign predicted, the way that Bernie, that Bernie himself predicted in front of microphones, then I think we'd be having a much different conversation right now. But whether that's a, you know, just an unmotivatable portion of the electorate, at least in the primary season, or whether he just didn't have the same kind of clarion calls he had in the past, who knows. but I think, you know, that's a reality.

Yeah, I think that's right. And I think the, to quote David Schumacher, and I think there's a certain sense that you could have maybe have seen that from the first couple of primaries where turnout was what it was, even as he was doing well, and said, oh, well, maybe we need to find new voters. But again, these are all part of the lookbacks at this point because it doesn't look like Bernie Sanders is going to be the Democratic nominee. David, I want to talk to you about a couple of U.S.

internet coronavirus stories. First up, Rand Paul. On Sunday, it was reported that the Kentucky senator tested positive for COVID-19.

Amazingly, Paul was particularly vulnerable to this because he had part of his lung removed in 2017 after being tackled by a neighbor after a dispute over a brush pile. God, talk about stories that feel like

from another time. Paul staff says that he was asymptomatic. His health is not at risk. but other members of Congress may be at risk. Because according to the New York Times, Paul was told over a week ago that he attended a fundraiser in Kentucky with two individuals who later tested positive for COVID-19.

Paul did not isolate himself afterwards. He was voting on the Senate floor last Wednesday. Apparently he'd been using the Senate Jim and Pool, which were closed but could still be accessed by key card. Two senators, Mitt Romney and Mike Lee, of Utah and Utah, respectively have already announced they would be isolating themselves for 14 days after having contact with Rand Paul and would be unable to vote for a period of time because they were not

this this feels a little bit the gym still feels like Rudy Gober with the microphones by the way it's like the political edition where you know you do have a symbolic role in this which is not to act like this is no big deal you had taken taken a coronavirus test. You've been told you were potentially exposed. Can we skip the workout? Also, I'm reminded of de Blasio. It turns like the hard, for a certain segment of the population, the hardest thing about their life was skipping one workout. We can just, let me say this for out of shape people everywhere. It's going to be okay. You know, you're going to be fine. Just go take a jog, right? Go take a jog by yourself. It's, it's going to be okay. That one,

that one session. In slightly more serious news, or I guess equally serious news, on Thursday night, it was reported that Senators Richard Burr and Kelly Leffler had dumped millions of dollars worth of stock earlier this year after receiving briefings about the spread of coronavirus. Burr is the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He sold between $600,000 and $1.7 million in stock on February 13th and 33 transactions. During that time, the Intel Committee, he was receiving daily briefings about all this stuff.

A week after he dumped his stock, the market tanked, and the drop has now reached about 30%. The other funny part of this is that Burr, at least publicly, was in that this is no big deal camp. This is not going to be a problem. He writes this op-ed in Fox News. It says, the United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats like the coronavirus.

Meanwhile, his stock transactions indicate he thought, something else. In a recording obtained by NPR, he was also telling wealthy donors that he was, that it was, that the coronavirus was much more aggressive in his transmission than anything we have seen in recent history. It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic. So if you were a reader of foxnews.com, you got one story. If you were a wealthy person who was at a private fundraiser, you got another story and I guess if you're the stock advisor you got a third story.

That's just incredible to me. I mean, I don't know why it feels like that getting to the bottom of those stock sales is just going to be just an impenetrable web I guess because everything, because nothing is, nothing is problematic enough

to remove anyone from office in this day and age. But like I cannot imagine something more cut and dried for the, where, you know, just a more obvious reason just to like frog march somebody out of office like how just i mean just how evil must you be to to just to just try to make money off of this thing yeah there's not there's not gonna be we will admit that there's some room for investigation here and we'll see what happens but yes on

the surface it is hard to imagine you know again of something that richard burr would actually do it's hard to something that's just scummier than that. Yep. And especially, the op-ed to me just absolutely puts it over the top, right? You weren't just, you weren't just receiving briefings

that were only available to you and then making investment decisions based on that. You were, you were projecting the sunny face so that everybody could know that. Just incredible. Postponement of the week, David, we talked

last week on the show a little bit about how things are being postponed that you didn't know were happening. And then there's like a discreet news item. Well, I got one for you. This from the Hollywood reporter, this year's White House Correspondence dinner has been postponed due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus outbreak.

The White House Correspondents Association regrets to announce it is unable to go ahead with its 2020 dinner. We will get back to you soon with our alternative date. Thanks for your support. The White House Correspondents Association tweeted on Sunday. Send your postpone the week.

The more obscure, the better, by the way. Because like I said, we almost need just news items at this point. Just tell us if it hasn't been postponed. If something is happening in American life that involves like 100 people sitting in the same room, let us know because we need to get that to the proper authorities. All right, time for David Schumacher. Guess this is a train pun headline. Okay. Thursday's headline atop a piece about Bill de Blasio's two houses in Park Slope and tax policy was a tax on

both of your houses. Right. This week's headline comes from Gabe Hernandez. It's from the March 2nd Washington Post. Okay. So before the true threat of coronavirus was clear to a lot of us Americans, but after the threat of coronavirus was clear to people reading world news, it's about restaurants in China, David, that we're suffering the same fate that restaurants in America are now

suffering. I want you to think a little bit of traditional Chinese cuisine. I want you to start the headline this way with chefs idle and vegetables rotting. China's virus hit restaurants say dot dot dot, okay? This is obviously going to be a peep of of despair.

What was the Washington Post's strained pun headline? This is restaurants actually in China. In China. These are not Chinese restaurants in America. Essentially China. what was happening in America was happening in China then. I have no idea. China's virus hit restaurants say.

Say there. Give me some, give me some Chinese cuisine here. Give me, General So's chicken, wanton's, egg drop soup. Give me some foul,

some foul that might, might play. Sesame chicken. Not chicken. Duck. Keep going. Keep going. You're getting close.

sir. Orange duck. Goose. They have goose? I don't know. I have no idea. Roast, roast goose is a thing. Yes.

China's virus hit restaurants say their goose is cooked. Oh. That was good. That's back when there was like an ounce of levity in coronavirus headlines. Wow. Well, goodbye to all that, I guess. Goodbye to all that. he is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis.

Research by Erica Servantes and Chris Almeida, production magic by Jim Cunningham. We're back Thursday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you, Brian.