The Press Box - Who Really Won Iowa? Plus: Rush Limbaugh and Spotify | The Press Box

Episode Date: February 7, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss the never-ending Iowa caucuses (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (26:45), Rush Limbaugh’s announcement and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (29:45), Nancy Pelosi ripping up a copy of Trump’s speech (40:30), impeachment hero Mitt Romney (43:45), Spotify’s purchase of The Ringer (48:45), and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs are Super Bowl champions. So for coverage of the game and everything that happened in Miami, check out the Ringer NFL show for their game recap. And on the site, you can read Danny Hyfitz on Andy Reid, Roger Sherman on Patrick Mahomes, and Robert Mays on Kyle Shanahan's Super Bowl deja vu. On the Ringer's YouTube channel,

make sure to check out Slow Newsday with Kevin Clark live from Miami with a bunch of special guests like Miles Teller and Glenn Powell. You can watch and subscribe at YouTube.com slash the ringer. David, Donald Trump congratulated the Super Bowl winning Kansas City Chiefs by implying that they play in the state of Kansas rather than Missouri. What I want to know is, isn't this one of those things we should forgive Trump for? Do we really think that everyone knows? that the chiefs play in Missouri

rather than Kansas? I went to college with a bunch of folks from Kansas City, Missouri, and I believe I was surprised to learn from all of them that they weren't from the state of Kansas. I also grew up for most of my life

thinking that every time, that every professional sports team with Washington and the title was in Washington state. So I do feel like if anybody, if we are ever inclined to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, might be that moment. What do you think?

Absolutely. This reminds me of Ukraine versus the Ukraine where everybody pretended to know after we'd had the, you know, nationwide explainer. I was at the Super Bowl press box. I'm guessing if I went around and just pulled sports writers, and these are

football writers by and large, he said, what state do the chiefs play in? I bet 70% of people would have gotten that right. Maybe 75. I mean, a lot of them have been, there so maybe maybe that helps but yeah i just i think that's one of those things where everybody has a has a nice laugh and then quickly goes to the wikipedia page to check themselves so that they

can pretend they knew all along and again we don't forgive trump for many things but i think you have to pick your spots and and this is one of them we are the panama city florida of media podcasts this is the press box a part of the spah ringer podcast network Media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. Lots and lots to get to today. We'll talk about Rush Limbaugh, his health and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. We'll talk about Nancy Pelosi tearing up a copy of the State of the Union. By the way, if you just woke up from a 10-year coma, yes, all of this is real.

It all happened this week. We'll also size up Mitt Romney impeachment hero, say a word about Spotify, and do the overworked Twitter joke of the week. but David, we got to start with Iowa because Iowa has not ended if you were just paying attention to this story, the Iowa State Democratic Party had an app it chose as the tool with which its precinct people

were going to report the results of Monday's caucuses. The app was untested, but the party just said, let's just do it and be legends. And it has taken all week to figure out who really, won Iowa. As of Thursday night, the AP said it could not declare a winner of the caucuses because there was, quote, evidence the Iowa Democratic Party has not accurately tabulated some of its

results. D&C Chair Tom Perez called for recanvassing the entire state and then sort of backed off that a little bit. David, we're left with two candidates that sort of won Iowa based on the latest results. If you count the vote the way the media normally does, which is by state Delegate equivalence or SDEs, then former mayor Pete Buttigieg has seemingly won a narrow victory, at least for now. If you count who showed up and said they wanted to vote for, which is how we count almost every other statewide election in the United States, then Bernie Sanders won Iowa. And that may be all the clarity we get before New Hampshire votes on Tuesday. Am I wrong in thinking that at least in media terms,

the way this is kind of being filtered and projected out through cable news and other places, that this is playing as slightly more of a quote unquote win for Mayor Pete than it is for Bernie? I think, I think yes. Despite, you know, Mayor Pete's strong polling numbers in Iowa leading up to the caucus there, I think that there was like a fairly reasonable or a fairly widely accepted narrative in which this was, you know, that he, if he, that he would come in third or fourth and that would sort of signal the beginning of the end for his campaign. Certainly, you know, his numbers were not as good as Bernie Sanders. poll numbers leading up to the caucus. So the fact that he won by conventional metrics,

certainly is a win for him. It's a good look for him. And in media terms, to be really specific about it, I mean, I feel like the media is, if not, you know, not necessarily like the real mainstream media. Like I'm not talking about just the hard reporters at the New York Times and the Washington Post and wherever else. But there is, you know, TV media especially, as, you know,

still is trying to wrestle with a pretty inherent anti-Bernie Sanders bias. And I think that Buttigieg is sort of, you know, emerging as the victor certainly helps him in those corners. Yeah, we said on Monday night when we were trying to do a post-Iowa podcast that was not actually post-Iowa. that whatever happened it was going to reopen the Pandora's box,

if that box ever closed, by the way, of the deck is stacked against burning. The DNC is stacked against party. The Democratic Party regulars are stacked against Bernie. Right. And that's exactly what happened. Let's talk about Mayor Pete first, because as you say,

it was a pretty remarkable victory. I think the thinking was a little bit that he had sort of topped out near the end of the year or maybe a little bit into January and that Bernie had more momentum going into the actual caucuses. One interesting thing that happened was Jonathan Martin, the New York Times pointed this out. The weekend before, which is last weekend, Pete Buttigieg was all over television.

And seemingly no other candidate was on television. He said yes to every interview. All those political shows, cable news was hungry to get any candidate on ahead of the caucuses. He said yes to everything and seemingly had all of television to himself. The same thing has happened this week. He's been on the view. He did a TMZ interview and not, I don't think it was one of those, you know, we caught Mayor Pete walking out of a diner in New Hampshire interviews. And I'm not sure how he figured this out by himself. Kamala Harris's press secretary, Ian Sam, says, why are none of the other candidates flooding the media zone like Pete Buttigieg? It's baffling.

And I guess that's part of one. He obviously likes to do interviews because he said yes to just about everything in this campaign, partly because he's got a better story to tell coming out of Iowa than some of these other candidates. But I have no doubt that that helped him, at least on the margins. That's definitely true. You know, I think that there's whether or not it's a campaign strategy or just sort of a, you know, whether there's other factors in play, you can certainly start at the top and see that like, and understand why. it's a little bit easier for a young insurgent candidate to say yes to everything to appear on even the kind of smallest television show, whereas that'd be more of a, you know, an optics issue for Vice President Joe Biden to show up on, you know, just like a regional politics program.

But yeah, I mean, he's, he did everything. And it's, and, you know, once you, setting aside Biden, it's, it is sort of, um, amazing. that he outmaneuvered or out-yced Elizabeth Warren and Sanders. It's pretty, it's a great question, why no one else did it. And I think that, you know, there's probably a lot of, there's probably a lot of very boring answers, starting with their obligations in our nation's capital. But, but yeah, I think we'll see, I think we'll, we'll see a lot of candidates react to that going forward. There's new Suffolk poll of New Hampshire out that shows Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg in basically a dead heat, 24% to 23% followed by Warren at 13 and Biden at 11. The CBS write-up of that poll that I saw began with a sentence,

Hoosier Daddy Now, like Indiana Hoosiers. Whatever you think about the candidates, we can all agree that that's terrible and should never happen. it's a good argument that the Buttigieg candidacy should end right now so we never have to hear that punning. I kiss. Sort of. I think one thing about Buttigieg is that there's almost no margin for error. He has to win New Hampshire because this guy does not have yet a broad coalition. He doesn't have a broad base of support in national polls. So he has to keep winning.

Bernie Sanders is in kind of an interesting spot. He also came out of Iowa and I think somewhat rightfully. declared victory. Let's listen to a little bit of his attempt to turn half an Iowa victory into a whole one. Why should people believe your victory speech over his? Because I got 6,000 more votes. And from where I come, when you get 6,000 more votes,

that's generally regarded to be the way. We won a very significant victory in the popular vote. We won a very significant victory in the realignment vote. And if you go out on the streets, to New Hampshire, you go to Vermont, and you ask people, how do you determine who wins an election? Well, from where I come and from and where everybody else comes from, the person who gets the most votes win. We got the most votes.

It's a compelling argument. It's also the argument that Democrats use when they win the popular vote and lose the presidency. Because whatever one you win, you insist that that is the true measure of the people. And I have a feeling of Bernie Sanders had won the SDEs. He'd be trumpeting that too. Bernie Sanders is not, to be clear, driving around the country on a bus with Straight Talk Express painted on the side. But he is a candidate that is, I think, very well known and justifiably well regarded for being a straight shooter, right? Being honest, even in the face of that honesty becoming problematic for him.

This is a really, this is a really dumb move for him to be disassembling over votes like this. not just because any you're right this is the same argument that everybody makes when they lose an election but he's just like utterly incorrect about this if this were where he comes from it's if there's is a regular primary voting process there'd be a whole different electorate it'd be like there'd be millions more people voting you know i mean it's not you can't just say we're doing we're going to count votes one way and then like pick a different way to count them afterwards especially when it's like when you're working in such a bizarre world is the caucus process. Now, maybe the Iowa caucus shouldn't be the first time we, we rank, we formally rank our primary

contestants, sure. But to say that like the 6,000 vote margin, I mean, he has a actually, he actually has a stronger case. If you want to disassemble, the stronger case was more people came in picking him on the first ballot, right, than boot a judge. I mean, that at least is like within the, and the second ballot. Yeah, but within the confines of the primary. structure, that's meaningful. But just to like wait to like tally up the vote to the end, I don't think is particularly meaningful. And I think that Bernie Sanders in particular is the sort of candidate that I think will suffer more from, if anybody notices this, he's this sort of candidate that'll suffer from just sort of marginal dishonesty because he's so contrary to that so much of the time. Nate Silver points out that Sanders is polling is pretty flat in New Hampshire since Iowa, which Silver writes is more consistent with what you'd expect. from what is perceived as a second place finish in Iowa rather than a tie or win. But Bernie Sanders is in great shape right now. According to Silver's Magic Machine, he has now the best odds to win the nomination,

or I guess win the majority of pledged majority of delegates, 45%. 45%, right? That's pretty good in a crowded field. The second most, the second biggest chance is no one winning more than half a pledge delegates. at 25%. And then Biden back at 20 and on down. So, you know, Bernie is going into New Hampshire from his part of the country, a state he won last time. And I'd feel great about his chances. I just think it's, you know, if he'd won an outright victory in Iowa.

I mean, I think in a way, you could argue that Bernie had a very good possible result because none of the centrist dropped out. the results were so muddled that, you know, you still have everybody in the race. Amy Klobuchar is still in the race. It's by finishing fifth. And, you know, maybe if Iowa had been a little cleaner,

you'd have people drop out and Bernie, you know, centrist support could consolidate behind somebody. It's not right now. And as much momentum or whatever we're calling what Buttigieg has, everybody's still in the race. Also in the race, is Joe Biden. We got to talk about him because he had the worst night in Iowa. If you're a frontrunner and you lose, the glow of frontrunnerdom fades really, really quickly.

Here's Biden acknowledging the walloping he got in Iowa. I am not going to sugarcoat it. We took a gut punch in Iowa. The whole process took a gut punch. But look, this isn't the first time of my life. I've been knocked down. Whenever any presidential candidate loses, and this is not to demean Biden's personal tragedies. But whenever any presidential candidate loses, they say it's not the first time in their life, they've gotten knocked down. That is just,

there's a manual they hand out at the beginning of the race that says you must say that when you lose. More alarming for Biden. On Thursday, he was off the trail in New Hampshire, huddling with advisors. Huddling with advisors is a really bad sign. Yeah. I was also intrigued.

there was a piece of New York Times that laid out all the mistakes he made in Iowa. The biggest of which was the mistake you and I noted and everybody else noted at the time was he just seemed to be running this campaign where he wasn't really campaigning all that much. His bus tour, that no malarkey tour, and I think it got rebranded as something else at some point, happened way late in the process. And he just, whether because of, you know, some kind of perceived frontrunnerdom or because of, you know, very real fears about what kind of campaigner he was, he was not out among the people. And he got outworked by both Sanders and Buttigieg.

And again, and Warren, too, for that matter. And if Biden, if he had that kind of poor showing, again, for a former vice president, it's not his best state. It didn't line up to be his best state. But still, that bad is showing. that's got to be part of what got him there. Yeah, and Buttigieg, I mean, as discussed, was, you know, something of a surprise, Victor, but not like this, it wasn't stunning,

and it wasn't a huge shock. It's not like, you know, some of the, the out-of-nowhere victors of years past. This isn't Jimmy Carter, you know, like starting his run to the presidency. Rick Santorum. Rick Santorum, yeah, exactly. It doesn't, I guess what I'm trying to say is, you know, the results were not shocking for anyone except for Joe Biden. You know, I mean, this wasn't just some giant upheaval of the status quo.

This was Joe Biden failed. And you could hear from the way he talked about it. I mean, it's really hard to, as much as, you know, candidates always try to spin what happened in their, you know, in a positive way. he was, you know, in his post Iowa comments were pretty straightforward. He was pretty straightforward. He was like, I kind of expected more of my campaign there. You know, I expected more of like the people on the ground. I expected more, expected we'd just do better.

And, you know, I don't know if this is a larger structural, you know, kind of campaign issue for him. If these, if the people that he has running the show really thought that things were going to go in a different way, this could be, you know, the first sign of a, just, complete campaign catastrophe for him. But I guess we'll know a lot more the next time we talk. I think it probably is because one, he doesn't have very much money. It was noted before Iowa that after first kind of insisting that he really didn't need to win Iowa because it wasn't, it wasn't his state, you know, his support was more, you know, clustered in a place like South Carolina. He his campaign started pouring money into Iowa with a combination of, I think, of thinking, one, maybe we can win this.

And two, we can't afford to lose it. And then he lost it. And he not only lost it, he finished fourth. So that's a mess. I got to say those results do kind of validate what everybody was thinking about the Biden campaign. That his support wasn't very enthusiastic. That the candidate has not been very good.

His debates have been somewhere between middling and awful. and there's been no sign, you know, in reporting or again, just with your own eyes, that he has any kind of organizational advantage or even organizational, you know, equality with the other campaigns. Just none. And I think I even I talked myself a little bit into, wow, he's just kind of coming over the top in this way that I don't quite understand through just a, through just some memory of him or his old magic or whatever it is. but nope, he's fourth place. Everything we thought about Joe Biden's campaign turned out to be true. Yeah, and that's so much worse for him than it is for anyone else. You know, and we've seen campaigns, you know, tear down their infrastructure,

you know, fire the campaign managers, hire somebody else. I mean, Trump did it, right, a couple of times. But it's a, it just feels particularly ominous for Joe Biden. even for like, you know, a relatively well-informed voter who's like trying to decide who they're going to pick. I mean, if you, if you, I'm sure I've said this before, but if you, you have such an advantage from the starting position, right? I mean, you are the former vice president. Your name recognitions are, you know, out of this world. Presumably you have your pick of the litter of most campaign consultants and operatives, right? I mean, you have personal relationships with, presumably with everybody that won, you know, that won Obama.

I mean, that helped Obama win. And your, but, and your managerial prowess, which is, you know, part of what you're running on, has gotten you this. There's gotten you like, I mean, with all, with all those opportunities, like, this is what you end up with. it just feels like this level of miscalculation is like the is it just is just terrible for someone like Joe Biden. Yeah. You have your pick of the best operatives unless you take your time and dither and dither about getting into the race and those operatives go work for someone else.

By the way, is exactly what happened. And the managerial thing about Joe Biden, you're right. That is part of the kind of public perception of him. Is there ever any evidence that that's been the case? No, absolutely not. The Obama White House was super organized. I never got a sense that Joe Biden was a driving force in that. No, but I think that you're completely right.

I mean, that's sort of the point that I'm making. I mean, listen, there's no, the fact that he was caught flat-footed by the Hunter Biden stuff coming from Trump is another, you know, X in that column. But the fact that he, I mean, when you're running on, when your platform is basically, this is just like the third. term of the Obama administration, except that there's been an incredible amount of brain drain from the Obama administration and most of the smart people are working for other campaigns or on television right now. I mean, that's a really, that is, it just defeats the entire argument. My old friend Dana Stevens, movie critic over at Slate, tweeted this out. She was reacting to a Nate Silver tweet. I thought this was fascinating. She writes, once you start noticing this,

you see it everywhere, speculative punditry about the election that simply leaves out any mention of Elizabeth Warren being a candidate at all. I think she's right, generally speaking. Whenever something like that happens, number one on my list is just general misogyny in America, because it's true. Number two, I think in this case is that she's in this sort of weird twilight zone where she finished third. I think it was 100% counts as a disappointing result for her, especially since she worked so hard. Iowa. Iowa again lined up demographically very well for Elizabeth Warren. You could have imagined her winning it back in October when she was ahead in the polls. And now she's sort of seemingly

kind of stuck in the twilight zone in New Hampshire. Again, a state that lines up well for her being from Massachusetts. Same thing with the Nevada caucuses, beyond the twilight zone in South Carolina, where she's not expected to do particularly well. And her campaign, and again, as Dana points out, just in media terms just seems to be fading in a weird way. What do you chalk that up to? Misogyny for sure. You know, in media terms, we're always pressing for the narrative and trying to sort of like simplify the field so the narrative is a little bit clearer, right?

I mean, this is the point where journalists are trying to disqualify people or trying to trying to chart a path forward that's simpler than it was yesterday. Warren's campaign is a little bit hard to grapple with, I think for a lot of different reasons. I think that the perceived overlap with Sanders voters works against her because if Sanders is way out in front, then I think the assumption is that it's just a matter of time before she drops out and all her voters go to him.

But in reality, I'm not sure it's that simple. And I think it's a bad idea to, count her out. I think it's not just, you know, reckless in terms of polling and and vote count and money raised and everything else, but I think it's just impractical. You know, Iowa caucus system was on full display this week, obviously, mostly for its negatives. But I think that if, you know, before the vote tallying actually, you know, everything went to shit, we were exposed to a kind of a very interesting process. I mean, it's been going on forever.

It's not new, but as we talked about earlier this week, it was on, it was plastered all over the news. And what you saw a lot was just the sort of irrationality or unpredictability of voters, right? That when there were a lot of people who walked in and they said, I'm a, I'm voting for Bernie, but if Bernie, you know, if Bernie doesn't go past the first round, I'm switching to Mayor Pete.

Now those candidates have nothing in common, right? I mean, by the metrics that we would normally use. Yes. And I think that to put Sanders, and that's not just Iowa. That's how the world, that's how the country, that's how the world operates. That's how people make their decisions, which is to say, we don't know how they make their decisions. But I definitely think that you can make the case that, like, if Pete Boudoo judge had just disappeared from the face of the earth two days before the Iowa caucus, Warren would have picked up a lot of those votes because they kind of are both new-ish faces on the presidential race scene, right?

and there's a lot of different ways you can like spin this and a lot of ways you can look at it but you know this might be an endurance race I mean if if Sanders or Buttigieg has just like a shockingly dominant win in New Hampshire that will probably change the tenor of everything but I do but it does feel like this is going to be a little bit of an endurance race because as soon as one of the top four drop out

and I'm not even thinking about Mike Bloomberg right now but as soon as one of those top four drop out somebody's going to do it eventually. That's going to be a huge boost to presumably all three of them, but that could be a huge boost to whoever's right there at the bottom with them. So, you know, maybe Elizabeth Warren's the first one to drop out and maybe

all these assumptions are right, but her invisibility is pretty galling up till now. There's a debate tonight, 8 p.m. Eastern, for those interested, and we'll be back press box-wise, Tuesday night after New Hampshire. We hope there will be votes to count.

But you know what? If this campaign has taught us anything, we may just bring some other material and talk about Tony Romo or something. All right, David, time to talk about the overworked 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. Let us begin with those Iowa non-results, specifically the bits that came out of them. Here are a few of my favorites.

maybe the real winner of the Iowa caucus is the friends we made along the way. Congrats to the 62% winners. That was the number of votes that came out a day later. The Iowa caucus should have used a Google Doc. Actually, the film Moonlight won the Iowa caucus and a personal favorite

calling it Schrodinger's Caucus. Schrodinger's caucus. That's highbrow. Thanks to JW, Justin Franz, James Ash, and Andrew Redston. David, remember that New York Times needle that drove everybody nuts

on election night in 2016? It points to whom the Times thinks will win the election. Well, as the Iowa results sort of trickled in this week, it was pointing to an almost certain Buttigieg win

in the aforementioned SDEs. Then it wasn't. And everybody started cursing it again. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, I've seen the needle and the damage done. take away Neil Young

I've seen the age die A little part Did we get that joke in 2016? I don't know, did we? It seems like we must have But I don't remember that It seems like it was out there

For the taking Thanks you to Matthew Zitland In football news, David Donald Trump congratulated the Kansas City Chiefs On winning the Super Bowl By writing You represented the great state

of Kansas. And in fact, the entire USA so very well. In fact, of course, the Chiefs play in Missouri. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write. Toto, we're not in Missouri anymore. Pretty good. Also, uh, acceptable drawing one of those fake Trump hurricane maps that gerrymandered Kansas City, Missouri into Kansas.

Thanks to our pales, Zach Brooks and Jacob Bixorn for that one. And finally, David, this comes from our friends got to buy. bias. The Hill and any tweet from the Hill is just fodder for jokes, right? Because who knows whether that's true or not? The Hill tweets, US drops to eighth place

on the best countries list. Okay. A place on the best countries list. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, oh great, on top of everything else, we got to play the bucks in the first round of the playoffs. If you conveniently help the

press box blend politics and NBA news, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. David in the notebook dump, let us talk about Rush Limbaugh. This was the longtime conservative radio host speaking to listeners on Monday. So I have to tell you something today that I wish I didn't have to tell you. And it's a struggle for me because I had to inform my staff earlier today. I can't escape even though people are telling me it's not the way to look at it. I can't help but feel that I'm letting everybody down with this.

But the upshot is that I have been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. Diagnosis confirmed by two medical institutions back on January 20th. First realized something was wrong on my birthday weekend, January 12th. And I wish I didn't have to tell you this. And I thought about not telling anybody. I thought about trying to do this without anybody knowing because I don't like making things about me. But there are going to be days that I'm not going to be able to be here because I'm undergoing treatment or I'm reacting to treatment. Rush Limbaugh to me, David,

created or anticipated so much of our modern media. Let me read just some bullet points. One, the talk radio boom that started in the late 80s and has really never stopped. You know, even in the age of podcast and the age of everything else.

Number two, he created the archetype not only for the news radio host, but I think the sports radio host, in a lot of ways. Colin Coward is the Rush Limbaugh of sports radio. And I say that not as an insult to either man. Mike Francesa has Limbaugh-esque qualities. They're inhabiting a character who, if you find him charming,

what you find charming is the self-confidence and self-absorption, right? Talent on loan from God is what Rush used to say, maybe still says. One of his books was called, See, I Told You So, right? And that just sense of self and irrational confidence, whatever you want to call it, is channeled into this radio show where a guy has the ability to carry a radio program by himself for hour after hour. By yourself, we can barely get through 45 minutes of this with two of us. and this dude's been doing that for 30 plus years. Again, whenever you think of, whatever you said, all that stuff, we'll get to that in just a minute.

That is just an incredible to be able to make that compelling. Yeah. And again, when he comes onto the scene and gets famous, I think that lays out a template for a whole bunch of people, both in the politics world and out of the politics world. Yeah, I mean, listen, his, I can't disagree with it. with any of that.

I mean, there's a lot of what you were talking. You mentioned Colin Coward. You mentioned Mike Francesa. We've had this exact same conversation about Coward, about Stephen A. Smith, just the volume production being an amazing skill in and of itself, right? Yes.

But to, and also in terms of Coward and Stephen A. Smith, I mean, you can certainly see how, you know, the world, we've talked about this with Stephen A recently. The world's kind of come around on them because, in large part, because they did anticipate so much of what was to follow. Now, maybe they set the mold, and you can make that case for Limbaugh, too. You'd have to say that a huge number of the people doing conservative talk radio or definitely

liberal talk radio were directly influenced by him, directly trying to do what he was doing. But, you know, so whether. or not they, you know, cause the boom or or just just solely anticipated it. It's sort of beside the point. He's, he's a, he was definitely a trailblazer in his way. Um, you know, you never, this is a, this is a sad story. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's, um, I don't think we would have ever found cause to have like a purely positive segment on Rush Limbaugh on this show. Um, but, you know, it's, it's, that, that clip you played is, it's hard to listen to. the fourth thing on my list here is the political rhetoric of 2020 that is the right-wing political rhetoric of 2020

either comes from or was anticipated by Rush Limbaugh too right oh yeah a lot of people like to point to newt gingrich's ascendancy as the moment when that sort of whatever whatever real or fake gentility melted away no no no no no that it's it's it's rush and talk radio. Absolutely. The racism, the misogyny, feminazis, remember that one being a big thing back in the day

for any, which I guess was a feminist. I was shocking back in the day. No, it's just like a stump speech. There are, if you want to, if you want to dial up any media matters clip of his low lights, which I just accidentally did as we were coming

onto this podcast, you can hear tons more. Like, there's a direct line from Rush to Trump. And not just in what he's saying but right in the tone, the sarcasm, you know, the gleeful way, the insult to a person group, whomever is delivered. Yeah. And I think I think the tone is the most important thing of everything you said. The other thing that I think is really important is the kind of just willful denial of reality. I mean, the sort of like... Reading your own reality. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If I can argue,

it's true sort of line of thought. And it's, um, I think the first time, I think, I think, I think Rush Limbaugh, I mean, in his, in his early prime was the first time that we largely dealt with that, right? We wrestled with that as a, as a culture, as a, as a, you know, in the sort of political sphere and that like, if he's knowingly twisting the truth to make his point, if he can make a, if you make an argument that sounds good on the radio, as long as no, nobody fact checks it. What do you do with that?

How do you combat that? How do you argue against that? Are you obligated to do the same thing on the other side? If you want any chance at winning the war of ideas. It's no one knew what to do then. You could see a lot of the echoes of that in Trump's candidacy four years ago when no one quite knew how to fact check him on television when he was giving these speeches. Yeah, I just definitely.

on that scale, right, that when you talk about that sort of self-contained media world, because when he comes to the fore, the world is still a world of newspapers and network television shows. And, you know, Rush is this guy who's building this gigantic audience on talk radio. He writes bestselling books, right? And this is a time when, I don't know what, a couple hundred thousand people at most are subscribing to National Review or something like that, he's got this giant audience way, way, way bigger. And, you know, somebody who, again, I remember in the 1992 presidential campaign, you know, he was, you know, supporting George H.W. Bush, of course, but torn about George H.W. Bush.

Like, he was just a big player in that in the way that Sean Hannity or somebody is now. Yeah, to piggyback on that, too, it's the fear of running contract. somebody with that level of influence in power, right? I mean, that was a going concern 10 years ago, that someone at the National Review would be, like, concerned about what Rush Limbaugh, about going after Rush Limbaugh for fear that he would turn the entire potential audience against them, right?

And now, obviously, we see that on a much more prominent scale with the president. The other thing about him is creating this whole, weird language that you had to listen to the show repeatedly to understand. Some of this also veered into the offensive zone, but like mega-dittos, you know, that was what I'm right. I mentioned talent on loan from God. I'm looking at the Wikipedia list here. Lindsay Gramnesty. That was a thing. Again, I can't actually read many of these, but there was this whole this whole sort of language that he said that so listeners are waiting for the catchphrase.

And again, he didn't invent that, but that's probably like, you know, back before Wolfman Jack and, you know, some guy on the, you know, NBC Blue Network back in the day. But he, he sort of milked that, right? You have to listen to the show. I'm going to, I'm going to throw this stuff out there. And if you are a loyal ditto head to, to you. use another one of his listeners, you will, you will, you will, you will know what I'm talking about. And this will be our own private language. We bring up Rush, David, because he became a part of the state of the union. By the way, low key overworked Twitter joke saying that Mark Burnett was the showrunner of this year state of the union, which including all these set pieces. Here's Donald Trump giving an award to Limbaugh, one of his biggest allies. Here tonight is a special man, beloved by millions of Americans who just received a stage four advanced cancer diagnosis.

This is not good news, but what is good news is that he is the greatest fighter and winner that you will ever meet. Rush Limbaugh, thank you for your decades of tireless devotion to our country. Nancy Pelosi said later that when she heard the press. president talk about cancer, she thought he was going to talk about John Lewis, congressman and civil rights hero. And instead, he went to Rush Limbaugh, who stood up in the balcony there. Speaking to Nancy Pelosi, David, she was the other biggest story of the state of the union. Started out with a kind of different introduction of the president. There was a moment where she offered him a handshake. Trump did not accept the handshake.

But her big set piece was ripping up a copy of the speech after it was over. Is there anything we need to add to this other than this is Democrats asking how do we do our own version of Trump? Right. We're not going to do the misogynistic racist thing. We're not going to get your attention that way. But we're going to do something shocking that's going to win our corner of Twitter. Yeah. It's it's Trumpian stagecraft, right?

I don't want to I don't know this is this is not a both sides do it kind of thing you go elsewhere for that what I'm just saying is Trumpian stagecraft that's going to cut through the noise after a speech like this and get everybody's attention. Yeah I think cutting through the noise maybe the key thing it's like it doesn't really matter if the if the reaction is positive or negative it just matters that there's a reaction and you certainly heard I felt like I heard a whole lot of people reacting kind of having the sort of meta conversation about it. it on television, you know, just like, how, like having the same conversation we're having now,

how should one feel about this? What was she going for? And I think that probably in, in Trump terms, that's a win in and of itself, right, to be having, to be having the conversation. I mean, I'm, but, you know, you take it that way. I mean, if you take that a step further and you could certainly ask, like, would it have been more effective to, like, turn it into paper airplanes and toss them, you know, would have been, like, is there, are there, does it really not matter what you did? I mean, I guess the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, metaphor there was was was clear enough that um no one has to talk about that too too much but yeah yeah i mean it's hard to i feel like we spend a lot of time talking about whether or not

we should be outraged or whether or how exactly we should be reacting to certain things um if having the conversation does bounce out to a win then i guess she won you know i'm not it seems sort of inevitably tied to Trump when she does that thing and then people are on TV on all the channels comparing it to things that Trump did or Trump Jr. tweets or whatever. But I don't know what else there is to really say about it. She tore up the pages.

It was what it was. You know how some people are really good at making paper airplanes and some people are really bad at it? Do we think Nancy Pelosi would be in the first group or the second group? I had a really specific paper airplane I love to make back in the day and it was terrible, but it looked cool. I think it was just a lot of folding. It just looked like a, like a, you know, like a go bot or whatever.

It was like a really cool flying contraption that didn't actually fly. Yeah, I don't think she would be an overfolder. And I know exactly what you're talking about. I think she would kind of find a happy media. I'm not sure whether it would sail. Maybe we can ask her to do that for slow newsday or some other feature on the ringer at some point. David, let's talk about Mitt Romney, because we said this for weeks, without questioning why a Republican senator might vote to remove Trump from office,

there were incredible media rewards to be gained from voting to remove Trump from office. Into the breach, step Mitt Romney, Senator from Utah. Take it away, Mitt. You see, I support a great deal of what the president has done. I voted with him 80% of the time. But my promise before God to apply impartial. justice required that I put my personal feelings and political biases aside were I to ignore the evidence that has been presented and disregard what I believe my oath and the Constitution

demands of me for the sake of a partisan end it would I fear expose my character to history's rebuke and the censure of my own conscience would you make of that David well I mean thank God, he hasn't exposed his character to history's rebuke. I mean, that's the top line, certainly, above the fold in a newspaper. What is history's rebuk? I, I mean, congratulations, to Mitt Romney. He did the right thing. He's the only Republican who had, I mean, I don't want to, I feel ridiculous sitting here

and trying to, like, tabulate the number of Republican senators who are too dumb to really know what happened between the president and the, and Ukraine. I can only give them the benefit of the doubt that they're intelligent enough to have to be, have been completely duplicitous and, and partisan in this whole thing. So congratulations to Mitt Romney for being the only person who had the guts or brains

or whatever else to, to actually vote the right way. It's, the idea that he's, you know, the second kind of, The conversation that keeps having is everybody's having is, you know, if he knew what he was in for, kind of now being the sole target of Trump's ire and the Trump family's ire and everything else.

And I'm sure he did. I mean, he said he did. And I think Mitt Romney's going to be okay, you know, I think Mitt Romney's, I think Mitt Romney can take some insults from like, you know, a president on the level of Donald Trump and still find ways to, you know, turn his hundreds of millions of dollars into hundreds of billions of dollars in his free time. You know, like I'm pretty sure Mitt Romney is going to be fine. I think you can grant Mitt Romney, you know, the idea that he is, he means everything he said. And that also that he is the guy who was, you know, you're right, faced with less electoral peril.

I mean, I just still remember John McCain, whenever something, you know, John McCain plainly detested Donald Trump. but when push came to shove, John McCain had to get reelected in Arizona, which was slightly trickier. And so he needed to make a show of supporting Donald Trump, at least on a few things when it counted. And Mitt doesn't have that.

I will say, I kept seeing people on Twitter say, this is going to be in the first sentence of Mitt Romney's obituary. Did you see, I feel like the three or four people tweeted that? Kind of a weird thing to be talking about Mitt Romney, who seems like a, you know, hearty man and going to be around for a while,

kind of a weird thing to be writing his obit already. Yeah. But are we sure it's going to be in the first sentence? I mean, he's a pretty significant. This is not like, you know, the guy from Idaho voted to convict Trump, you know, and then we never really heard from him again. Mitt Romney's a pretty significant political figure. So, you know, I don't know if that's it.

But yeah, I mean, I was, I was pretty taken by that whole, by that whole thing. And, you know, again, maybe I'm falling prey to exactly the terms we outlined about, you know, the guy who does this or gal who does this is going to be a big hero. But, but it was a compelling. It was a very compelling speech. A lot's been made in the aftermath about how it really rattled Trump and rattled the White House. And they were very, they were determined to have this be a, that no Republicans would vote. to remove them from office because that would be a more compelling argument. I'm not even sure that makes any difference at all.

I don't know that there's many people who would be inclined to vote for Trump that are going to be compelled by what Mitt Romney did. But yeah, I mean, it was, you know, Romney's speech was really compelling. And, you know, but I agree with you about the obituary thing. I hope Mitt Romney lives long enough for this not to be the first line of his obit.

I don't think there's somebody in the basement of the New York Times that was rewriting last night. You know, it was just like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, we got to do an edit here. Finally, David, I don't know if you saw this news. I don't know if you read much media news. But on Wednesday morning, the ringer was sold to Spotify, the audio streaming company. Terms not disclosed the sale will become final this spring. Daniel Eck told Recode Wednesday with the ringer we're basically getting the new ESPN. What Bill Simmons has accomplished in just a few short years is nothing short of extraordinary dot dot dot.

It's not just his own podcast, but his whole network that's doing really well. The ringer union of which I am a member says in a statement, we anticipate a productive relationship with new management for all ringer staff members, podcasters, writers, editors, illustrators, fact checkers, copy editors, social media editors, and video and audio producers. This is probably, frankly, going to be one of those conversations that people find both inoffensive and unsatisfying. But we should talk about it here. What was your takeaway?

We're part of this, right? We are members of this. We are going to become, in short order, Spotify employees. What was your takeaway from this? Am I supposed to take the zoomed out view here? Or is this time for a personal essay? Zoom wherever you want. In a period of, I mean, the lifespan of this podcast has seen a just stunning number of media acquisitions.

This is an interesting one, right? I mean, I think that there's a lot of reason to be really positive about the future. And, you know, there's a lot of questions, too. if we if this were another company I think that you know we'd probably justifiably be wondering what interest Spotify had in a you know in the

the written division of the ringer.com and the answer might be it might very well be that you know there's nothing to worry about at all so I mean it's a you know I think that that regardless I mean that this is

if we were talking about another company, the fact that, the way that we've talked about other companies, we're not talking about anything being stripped for parts, and we're not talking about licensing the ringer name to CBD products, and we're not even talking about opening ringer casinos anywhere. So I'd say so far so good, but we've got a lot, a lot, a long ways ago and a lot more to figure out. I think that's right to quote David Schumannes I also think, we said this with Barstool under very different circumstances last week. I said, I'm glad after the, you know, carnage we've seen in the media space over however long we've been doing this podcast or basically however long we've been working at the ringer, that a media company has value at all. Because, you know, it was easy to think that looking around that media companies had no value at all.

I am happy and eager and hopeful that writing has value to all parts of the company too. I don't want to just, I don't want to just say writing because, but I think that's what you and I are. No matter what we do here twice a week, that's what we are at heart. That's what we default to. That's what we would probably think of ourselves as. And again, to look around the media world, it's easy to be convinced that nobody cares anymore about that, you know, or that's just not valuable anymore. So that writing has value makes me happy.

And I hope it always has value. And, you know, to me, as we look over this whole deal and figure it out, and as you say, there's many things to figure out, many, many, many bridges to cross before this all gets, this all shakes out, supposed to again become official in the spring. That's one of the things I'm that's on my mind or at the top of my mind. I know, I just want to co-sign that and just say that like for all this, you know, I mean, for all the justifiable skepticism, um, uh, you know, about what this stale could possibly mean for the value of writing. Um, I think much even more so than previous moment. I mean, the previous moments in recent history when, you know, various places pivoted to

video and whatever else. I mean, at the ringer.com, the value of writing is, is just undeniable. I mean, there's nothing else that we do on the video. video side, on the audio side, anything else that doesn't like emerge almost directly from the crew of writers and editors that we work with on a daily basis. And, you know, whether or not I mean, you're right. This is great for the perception of writing to have value. At the ringer, you know, writing is maybe the most valuable thing that we have. So I'll be, you know, excited and interested to see where this all goes. They're not as valuable as David Schuemaker guessing a strain pun headline.

This is the Brinks truck backs up to the studio. Thank you. That was truly number one on the list. Last Friday's headline about Fox's obsession with Hillary Clinton was the hill they're willing to die on. Yeah. This week's headline comes from Steve Green over at Indy Wire. It's from the Washington Post. The piece is by Lenny Bernstein, not the composer, presumably of West Side Story and other things.

Lenny is arguing something about public health and fear. He says, look, you've heard. about all the scaremongering about the coronavirus from China, but the flu, the good old-fashioned flu, is much more dangerous, killed up to 25,000 people in the last four months. This headline involves David a very old-fashioned word for flu, a word you might only have come across in something like Little House on the Prairie or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. What was the Washington Post's strained pun headline. Not so it's about, wait,

the piece is actually about how the flu is more dangerous than coronavirus. Coronavirus. Well, probably, you know, to us anyway, to, you know, if you're sitting at home in America and our privileged precincts of America, that's probably going to pose a more immediate danger to you. So it's not influenza, if it's something that's so outmoded. What is the, what are they used to,

um, uh, It starts with a G word we're looking for here. G, gastro, no. You will absolutely recognize this word when you see it. I know I will. Maybe I'll give you the word and then you can run from there.

Why can't I think of this? I watch a lot of little house in the prairie. I feel terrible about myself. An old-fashioned word for flu was grip. Oh, it's a grip. G-I-P-P-E And the headline is what In the grip of something or

Getting there In the grip You're telling America to Get a grip? Get a grip America Oh my gosh That's that's pretty out there, huh? I like it

I like it I would read that How many, I know newspaper Like print readers Probably scale a little older Than website readers But how many people pick up the Washington Post know what the grip is.

He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis, researched by Erica Servantes, and Chris Almeida. Production Magic by Jim Cunningham. For the next month, we're basically in emergency mode, thanks to the primaries. So we're back Tuesday night after New Hampshire. We hope. With more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.