The Press Box - Woj-gate and Fauci vs. Trump. Plus: Christopher Buckley on Satire in 2020.

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

After U.S. Senator Josh Hawley issued a press release about the NBA’s relationship with China, ESPN NBA reporter Adrian Wojnarowski had a few words to say in reply. Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker break down Woj-gate (1:30). They then talk about the disappearance of Dr. Anthony Fauci from the media, and how the Trump administration appears to be campaigning against the expert (23:30). Then, writer Christopher Buckley joins to discuss his new novel, ‘Make Russia Great Again’ (32:00). Plus: the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly, and welcome to the Ringer podcast network. The Ringer's got a brand new show out now about NFL player Cam Newton called The Cam Chronicles. We'll be releasing at new episodes every Monday for the next six weeks, but you can binge all six episodes right now for free on Spotify. Here's a quick trailer. From the Ringer, I'm Tala Rottines, host of a new podcast series to Cam Chronicles. NFL star Cam Newton has always been a complex figure. Over the past year, I've traveled to Kahnardtons.

country speaking to coaches and teammates, friends and family, and even briefly to the man himself, trying to unravel the enigma that is Cam Newton. The Ringer NFL show presents Cam Chronicles. Listen to the full series now on Spotify. Hello, media consumers. You've got the press box here, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer with a bunch of good stuff for you today. We'll talk about the disappearance of Dr. Anthony Fauci, how the Trump administration came to hide and then almost campaign against a coronavirus truth teller. We'll have a jolly conversation with one of our favorite funny writers, Christopher Buckley, author of the new novel, Make Russia Great Again.

Is Trump the best thing or the worst thing to happen to political satire? All that plus, David guesses a strain pun headline and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, we got to begin with Wojgate. If you're not a sports Twitter person, on Friday, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, Republican from Missouri, sent out a press release about the NBA's relationship with China. Adrian Woznarowski, ESPN's all powerful NBA reporter, responded to the press release by writing, fuck you.

David, I've been, I've been like Stephen A. Smith in the green room all weekend. I've just been pacing around waiting to talk about this. I just, like I have about a thousand thoughts coursing through my mind. But before we fast forward to like free woge and liberal ESPN and Clay Travis and all those other things we could go to, can we just sort of plan our pivot foot here and say that I can't believe this happened. When this happened Friday afternoon, I'm like, that can't be real. And this is we should say, was shared by Josh Hawley on Twitter who screenshotsed the woege email. eagerly shared yeah eagerly shared but this was this was a press release that came to a bunch of

our inboxes including mine i scanned it for about 3.5 seconds before deleting it and then all of a sudden on twitter there is a response from woge to press at holly dot senate dot gov like he responded to the press alias within the senator's office right i i still don't get it again and again this is separate from should he have done it? Is it okay? Should he be suspended? All that kind of stuff. I just still am flummoxed by the fact that it happened at all. The mechanics of it is what you're talking about. Okay. I don't think I have an answer for you. But I guess I was less flummoxed. I think maybe the tension is in that responding to the sort of spam mass email account that sent this thing out is sort of like an our parent's generation thing to do, but responding with a two-word

fuck you email is like the least our parents generation thing you could possibly do, right? I mean, I got this, I got the press release and I should say up front, I don't get a lot of press releases, you know, I mean, it's, it's what I'm on one list serve somewhere that people are paying for to send these things out. I got to say, I didn't even spend that much time with it. And the, I mean, I think if I had any thought about it at all, it probably didn't go much deeper than fuck you. But yeah, I'm not exactly sure what the, I think probably trying to read any sort of deliberate, you know, deliberate action to this is probably too much. I think it was just a instinctive reaction, whether Wode thought he was responding directly to Senator Holly or

thought he was responding to some list serve functionary who would just feel bad about having put his name on the list. I don't know, but it was, it, weirdly, it sort of made the point better than he could have possibly dreamed of if he had planned it out. Yeah, and, and I don't, I don't even, I don't even think we have to speculate. I just want to make it clear that we can sort of label this as the black hole of this story. Oh, sure. We don't know why he did this.

We don't know why he did it in this manner. we may not know until Woge writes his memoir, suggested title, how I learned to stop worrying and love the F bomb. Just throwing that out there, just in case he needs something. We don't know why he didn't, if he wanted to just pull the pin on the grenade

and say, hey, this is stupid. I'm sick of this. I want to make a statement. Why he didn't just do it on Twitter to millions of followers, right? And I saw some kind of tweets that we all, Woj had this whole thing planned out. I really don't think that's the case.

I really I you know that this would then blow up into this huge story I I don't think that's what he was after here again that's just not the way you go about these things um after the act it followed it's probably fairly predictable course woge apologized on Twitter he got a two week suspension from ESPN he'll be back for the start of NBA season um and thus started the hashtag free woge campaign on Twitter what did you make of that david um What did I make of the campaign? I mean, listen, I mean, I thought of all the parts of this that were just sort of out of left field,

that part was fairly predictable. I mean, to take somebody a sort of, a sort of unlikely hero, a hero is unlikely as woe, and to put him in the center of such a media firestorm, especially at the time

when we're like suddenly paying attention to basketball news again, and we talked last week about how there's sort of a constitutional limit to like how many, you know, Gary Harris has coronavirus tweets you're interested in reading as a basketball fan

and then suddenly Woj is just in the middle of this like intersecting our ongoing passion with our basketball with our prevailing obsession with politics and listen regardless of what you think about what Woj did and yeah I mean I have a hazard to say even if you're on the other side politically

from you know some of the the political statements of the NBA is trying to make right now. I mean, that press release from Senator Holly was just plain, I mean, clear as day, fuck you material. I mean, now it was, he was a trolling press release

on a subject that deserved nothing but earnest consideration right now. It's like he was, he was trying so fucking hard to find a way to make a sort of moral point against Black Lives Matter

and he came up with this China thing. And it was just, I mean, it was despicable. And more than anything else, he was looking for attention, I'm sure, at a point in time where a lot of Republican politicians are having a hard time figuring out how to get their face in public without, you know, looking like idiots. I mean, I guess he managed to do that. But he, but he laughed his way through, he tweeted through it, I guess. Yeah, I did read one column that said, you know, Woj speaking out against this was a distraction from the very valid point that Josh Holly was trying to make. I said, no, no, no. We got this all backwards, right? The press release

was the distraction. Oh, yeah. Was the attempt to draw the NBA and make the NBA a part of the culture war at this moment in a, in a handy way. I mean, the statement that jumped out to me, and I think this is the moment I hit the lead, Holly was talking about the statements that the NBA has allowed the political messages on the back of the jerseys. Yeah. And he says, the truth, he's writing to Adam Silver. The truth is that your decision. about which messages to allow and which to censor, much like the censorship decisions of the Chinese Communist Party are themselves statements about your association's value.

Okay. So we're not making a point about the NBA in China. Just making the NBA in China here, something you and I have talked about on this pod many times. We are comparing the NBA to the Chinese Communist Party. Right. That's when the troll alarm goes off, right? Well, and the implication here, just in case anyone hasn't read the press release, which I'm guessing many people haven't.

But the implication is that if given the opportunity, if the NBA didn't limit the things that could be on the back of the jerseys, if the whole world was like XFL version 1.0 of the entire NBA and you could put whatever you want to in the back of your jersey, the implication being that there would be NBA players who were eagerly setting aside Black Lives Matter and anything else that was of urgent and contemporary concern to say. to call and to question the NBA's relationship with China on the back of their jersey, and that the NBA was actively prohibiting that outcome by limiting the options, which is maybe the laughable is the wrong word, but just so misguided and tone deaf, I don't even know what to say. Yeah. And I think another of the accompanying pieces, and this is a no link, but this idea that somehow the national media has not been covering,

the NBA and China relationship. Do we not remember what happened after the Darryl Morey tweet? Yeah. In October, the NBA got crushed. Yep. LeBron James got crushed, right? Various writers who did not immediately speak up got crushed. I'm pretty sure that I crushed ESPN on here for not devoting the full resources that

said it would devote to sports politics stories to that story. Mm-hmm. clear which clearly happened. So this idea that somehow everyone has been silent except for Josh Hawley and certain websites that he might tag in the in the tweet he sends out, it's just absolutely ridiculous. And that that somehow gets drawn in here. Like there's been this this silence around that. That's not the case at all. No, absolutely not.

That's not the case at all. And I guess, you know, when I say not understanding why woe, went there with this press release. What I'm just so interested, part of the way is what makes him to me always so interesting to me is he chose a decade ago to essentially stop going down the path of I want to be the great sports columnist in the mold of a Mike Lupica and people of your like that and deciding I want to be the pure information guy.

Right. That has always struck me as so interesting because not only because he became so famous, that that is like one of the most consequential decisions in sports writing to me in the last 20 years. It changed, it helped change, at least I should say, the direction of sports writing, right? It made certain things seem valuable in our world and it made other things seem less valuable. It also anticipated the way Twitter and other things would change the nature of the thing. But essentially when Woge made that decision, he was sort of saying like, I'm not going to be the guy writing fuck you. you, right? If he were a columnist, he could jump on this, right? And he could be like, let me tell you,

let me help you understand why X does not equal Y. Let me help you sort out the sort of morality of this. But he went the other direction. Now, he doesn't rule himself out from ever having a moral stance on anything. But again, that's just, that just to me is part of the background of this whole thing. We don't think of Woge like that, at least in his most current iteration. No, and certainly that's why this had the sort of currency and the, you know, excitement intended to it that it did. I think that it's, you know, you don't, one wasn't, doesn't want to read into the motives too much, although I guess it's the entire purpose of what we've been talking about. But, you know, if by making the choice, the career decision, you know, by charting the career path that he did, Woage, like you said,

didn't disqualify himself from having political opinions or any sort of like, you know, non-robotic opinions moving forward. It's certainly not that in his job description. But it's hard to imagine the NBA right now without Woage. And while you don't look at Woage and necessarily correlate him to, you know, a political movement and certainly not, you know, Black Lives Matter or anything specific, the NBA is, especially at this moment in time, is sort of inextricably linked from those movements. And as in so much as they're inexplicably linked from Woge, it's not shocking to think that, he would be interested in evolving in a more political direction, whether or not it's career-based, maybe it's a personal journey. And at this point in our country, you know, at this point in current year, it's not just him. Everybody's becoming more political than they were before. So, you know,

I can imagine what got him to the point of having the opinion of fuck you. There is the standing question of what led to the email that said, fuck you. And, you know, I think that we can, we might, well pivot now. I think that there's sort of a, you know, we can have the conversation we've had a million times, but the, but the, the politics of ESPN are almost the more interesting political piece of this puzzle, right? Yeah. Though, do we learn anything new about the politics of ESPN? Or does, oh, what's his name? Just, just think we learned something new about the politics of ESPN. Oh, that's a good question. So, you know, cut in here, if you see fit, I mean, ESPN is for a long time.

It believes in nothing seemingly more strongly than that no one should believe in anything strongly if they're connected to ESPN and is very free to, you know, very willing to punish, if nothing else in the world, willing to punish the perception of partiality and political partiality in particular, right? at times it seemed like they you know we're choosing their targets based on something more than just the words that were said but I think that they've sort of evolved into a very rather even-handed if ridiculous punishment system for people expressing politics their employees expressing politics publicly now that said I don't know I mean I it's it I guess I guess this is more of a matter of decorum than of politics although it certainly is going to seem to a lot

of people like like a political issue. I, I guess if I was in his, in Woj's position, I would not be surprised to be suspended. And Woj was suspended for two weeks, as you said. I would not be surprised to be suspended for this. Although if I were feeling litigious or full of myself, I might be interested in seeing what, and having them like lay out the case. What part of the employee handbook prohibits me from sending an email that says, fuck you. Yeah. And I think decorum is in this case probably much more important. Right. I think if he tweets,

this is a bunch of crap, you know, I, that's like, you know, this opinion is a bunch of crap that this senator has. I think that,

I think that certainly gets a phone call, but I sort of doubt that gets a suspension. I really don't think so. I think it gets a, hey, what are you doing? Because clearly the Jimmy Petaro era is about stamping that out.

Yeah. For the most part. I mean, that's part of, part of this is just like, I, and I, I just think this every time the, you know, the liberal ESPN quote unquote piece is written is that just it's at some point it's just a bit, right?

You know, it's just like there's just nothing they could do. Jimmy Petaro comes in and says, I want to limit, you know, any, any sort of politics on this network to this and this and this. liberal ESPN. Well, wait, what? What happened, you know? Yeah. Woj sends us email to a senator two weeks. He is suspended for two weeks.

one of ESPN's most prominent personalities is suspended for two weeks. Oh, liberal ESPN. Can I take what one thing this kind of whole story reminds me of David in a weird way? Go. Remember when ESPN came out with the story about Bob Costas leaving NBC

after he'd been critical of brain injuries in the NFL? Uh-huh. And Twitter, it suddenly had this new and unusual feeling about Bob Costas like 24 hours later. There's a little bit of that in this story.

right like woge is woge has never been more popular among sports writerdom than he has been over the last 72 to 48 hours LeBron James a player whom he harshly criticized

a decade ago around the time of the decision when he was at Yahoo tweeted free Woj right it's I mean it's like you know the bridges have been rebuilt

right because in this unusual time. And to me, that might be one of the most remarkable aspects of the story. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not what we would have expected. Although, you know, I'm not, I mean, I feel like everybody sort of, I mean, I feel like this is a win for Woj. I mean, if you want to just get down to the nuts and bolts of it.

And I'm sure that for a lot of. of NBA players, even people like LeBron James, they understand that there's a significance in someone like Woj just having this sort of reaction. Oh, absolutely. Isn't this sort of where our country feels like it's going right now? I mean, obviously not top to bottom. That doesn't describe everybody. But the kind of politicization of the wojages in our country is sort of the story of what's been, I mean, not the story, but that's a little bit of the background noise of what's been going on in our country for the past.

several months. Yes. And I think it's just increasingly impossible not to be politicized, right? You know? Yeah. And I, and by the way, you know, you're talking to two guys here who are totally politicized. And happy and happy to admit it. I don't want to, I don't want to sound like I'm, you know, sort of rubbing my hands and saying, oh, boy, if only could have the, if only we could get back to the days when the, when the NBA insiders didn't have political opinions.

No, no, no. But, I mean, but you're touching on what I think is a really interesting point, which is it, like, it's not. Well, I mean, just is drawing several parts of the conversation together, but in some ways, it's the bit that we were talking about. The ESPN is a liberal bit, though it's those sorts of, it's that sort of commentary and that sort of more broadly defined political force in our country that in a lot of ways has made it impossible to be apolitical, right? It's a sort of inverse self-fulfilling prophecy that that you react to people, you react to those opinions and it ends up politicizing the woges of the world. Yeah. And I also think that this moment in our country where people who might have resisted politics, right, or who might have been okay with the restrictions their employer placed on them to resist politics are saying, sorry, I can't do it. And I don't want to do it because there's door number one and there's door number two and I feel okay walking through door number one right now. Yeah. I don't, the situation is too urgent. We've just been through protest.

after the killing of George Floyd. We've just been through all these things. As a society, I've seen my fellow ESPN employees, like Maria Taylor, like Michael Eves, come out and say things about this moment, about how they feel at this moment American life. And I'm okay with choosing, right? Before I might have said, I don't want to get,

I'm a sports writer. I don't want to get shoved into, I don't want to get shoved into a choice, right? I don't publicly want to make that choice. I'm okay with it, right? I'm more comfortable. The world has changed to that point. and I feel I sort of have to do it at that point, at this point in time.

All right, David, time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag. It 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. Did you see the remark from Florida governor Ron DeSantis, David, about the opening of schools in his state? Big issue at the end of last week and this weekend. DeSantis said if you can do Home Depot, if you can do Home Depot, if you can do, do Walmart, you can definitely do the schools. Oh my God. I did not see. I don't know how I missed that, but that's ridiculous.

It was an overwork Twitter joke to cite the famous movie line. If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. And also pointed out that that was not intended as public health advice. There was a video, David, excuse me, of the implosion of the palace at Auburn Hills. You know the palace at Auburn Hills, old home of the Detroit Pistons. plenty of great basketball there played by the bad boys back in the day. It was an overword Twitter joke to write and this is for the woe GMBA fans of the world.

The Pistons blew it up. Thanks to Jose Bouquet. That's just chef's kiss. That's a short but sweet. It's for us really. An overwork Twitter joke just for the ringer. And I got another sports one here for you. The Big Ten football conference became the first conference last week,

David, to cancel out of conference games this fall due to the coronavirus. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. No surprise, Big Ten coaches have always been wary of the spread. I like that. Thanks to Ben Adams. If you didn't let the coronavirus rule you out from making fun of Big Ten defenses, congrats.

You made the Overward Twitter joke of the week. All right, Dave, before we get to the notebook dump, let us hear a word from Roman. Have you been dealing with acne, redness, dark spots, or wrinkles, finding treatment that works can be complicated. You need skin care that actually performs, but getting started could be overwhelming. Thankfully, there's a solution. Roman makes it convenient to get customized prescription skincare that really performs. Just grab your phone or computer, complete a free online consultation. You'll hear back from a U.S. licensed physician within 24 hours.

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Consider us to be pretty big news consumers. So I asked this in that spirit When was the last time you saw Dr. Anthony Fachi Like on TV with your own eyes? I feel like I've seen him But I'm probably having You know, some adult memory of B-roll footage

Or something like that. I don't know when the last time I saw him was. I saw Nate Silver promoting His appearance on the 538 podcast last week, audio only. But I haven't seen him. him forever. And there's a new Washington Post piece out by Yasmin, Abudeleb, Josh Dossi, and Lori McGinley that talks about how the Trump administration is, where's Waldoin Fauci, and also conducting

a not-so-quiet campaign against him. Some facts from the Washington Post piece. Fouchy last spoke to President Trump the first week of June. If you haven't noticed, it's been kind of a big month for coronavirus. It has not spoken to Trump in over a month. He's been pulled off TV interviews. There's a Trump ally in the Health and Human Services Department that has control over Fauci's TV appearances, not just TV, not printer audio, apparently. And after Fauci challenged Trump's line

about the comparatively low coronavirus death rate we've seen lately, Fauci's saying, no, no, don't get snookered by that fact. He was taken off several planned TV appearances this week, including Meet the Press. Instead, he's doing the 538 podcast and sports radio. And then this week, David, the White House took it up enough.

They gave news organizations a list of things Fauci had said in the past months that turned out to be wrong. NBC News said this list was similar to an APO research document that the Trump campaign would be using against Joe Biden. So there's that. And then, yeah, and even on television, where Fauci is not allowed to be, apparently. Admiral Brett Sherwa, member of Trump's coronavirus task force, said this on Meet the Press on Sunday. I respect Dr. Fauci a lot, but Dr. Fauci is not 100% right, and he also doesn't necessarily, and he admits that, have the whole national interest in mind. He looks at it from a very narrow public health point of view. But let me just say there is absolutely open discourse. I feel

absolutely free saying anything to the vice president within those rooms. The vice president, I know briefs the president on a daily basis. So nobody feels like anything is held back. We all take this as a serious crisis. It's got to be science, driving the policy, and that's the way it is. Now, that is a fellow member of the coronavirus task force, by the way. Certainly it's possible to say true and undrue things in the same sentence, but I just don't know how you can talk, how he can say, we all take this very seriously with a straight face

and expect anything else he says to be held with any sort of legitimacy. Yeah. And don't you love the conflation of Anthony Fauci said something wrong that turned out to be wrong about the coronavirus. back in like January, February, March, and we were still getting our arms around this, right? He was, you know, not especially pro-mask early on, some other things like that that have changed,

versus Donald Trump saying the coronavirus will magically go away. But somehow those two wrongs are equal. This is what the Trump administration essentially is arguing. I mean, even if Fauci had been entirely wrong. I mean, what if, even if he had said, you know, things that proved to be just utterly incurs, correct and he'd since retracted and, you know, change his point of view. Even if he was still wrong.

What the hell is the White House doing sending out Oppo research on this guy? I mean, what is the, this is just the part, the character of the Trump White House that I cannot comprehend that instead of the complete inability to deal with anything in House. I don't know if this is another situation where Trump has told his people to, like, shut him up five million times and no one's willing to actually do it. And they just keep telling Trump he's done. They've done it. The inability to fix anything, even though I'm glad he's not fixing it. And just sending out, like, wasting time, which you clearly don't have enough of to do anything good on accumulating and sending out APO research on another government official.

It's just so weird. Like it's just so bizarre. It's so bizarre. And, and, you know, I think we can describe basically probably the most base motives to this. Peter Navarro, who's a Trump advisor, is apparently mad that Fauci was against hydroxychloroquine, which Navarro is for. There was a New York Times poll that shows 67% of voters trust Fauci to talk about COVID-19. Trump only gets 26% in the same poll. So there's definitely some Trump saying.

Well, wait a second. Why are they believing him and they're not believing me? Not to mention, obviously, the background of a political campaign where the big, the single biggest issue right now is Trump's mishandling of the coronavirus, which Fauci is, and again, in his very kind of diligent way sort of and very quiet sort of elliptical way, has been pointing out over the last couple of weeks. Are they still mad about hydroxychloroquine? I mean, hasn't that been wide?

It was in one of the pieces. It hasn't it been widely established. so that it's like hurting people, if anything? Yeah, it's not a good idea. It did not turn out to be the miracle cure that the president advertised it as. It's just so perplexing. There was another, I mean, again,

this is a spin, I mean, this is a tangent, but there was another poll that I saw NPR citing about just a shocking number of people that have heard the conspiracy theory that the quote unquote people in power of like created coronavirus as some sort of population control tool and that something like 70% of adults

had heard of it and 30% of those 70 believed it could or possibly be true. It's just we're sidelining people that actually know what they're talking about. Meanwhile, some like quarter of the public apparently believes that this is a, that there are people out to, I mean, that the people in power

are trying to kill us with this thing. Like it's just, and Trump thinking he can just say nonsense and it doesn't matter if it turns out to not be true it just seems I mean like oh man I hope that he doesn't believe that but I'm sure that he does at the risk of pivoting to a media

conversation here let's say that TV is taken off the table for Anthony Fauci how much of his message could he get out this is like the the sort of hole in your media organization's policy right I can do outside interviews of this kind but not this kind.

Let's just say Fauci can just do radio, podcast, and apparently like, you know, a handful of print interviews or something like that. How much of his message could he get out,

do you think? Or what kind of audience could he reach that he wants to reach if he did not have TV on the table? Well, is the assumption that he could say whatever he wanted

that he'd go on the radio and just make fun of Trump and continue to do it? Well, he's probably not going to. Let's just say he's going to say Anthony Fauci type things. I will say that,

He could probably get, I mean, I don't know. It seems as sad as it is. I mean, certainly all the big news shows, TV shows, are eager to have him on. There is no one above him in the pecking order. But when he's out doing radio and podcasts and everything else, it seems like he's only getting press attention when he does a, when he appears in a surprising show, or when he says something that directly contradicts the president.

So maybe this is like, you know, grassroots advertising or he's actually doing a much better job than you and I, you or I are entirely cognizant of. But, you know, I think that his best path forward might be sort of like a shot comedy with scientific data spilled in, you know? I mean, they were sprinkled in. He needs it. He needs to stay in the news and it's hard when you're not on TV. David, have you ever wondered whether the Trump administration is good for political satirous or bad for political satirists? I have wondered, yes. Ah, glad you have. I've got just the man who can answer that question.

Christopher Buckley is one of my favorite writers. He has written 19 books, but I think this is the first one he has been moved to dedicate to the deep state. It's a comic novel called Make Russia Great Again. It involves not just one potentially impeachable Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin election plot, but many such plots. And it marks Buckley's return to political satire after a brief hiatus. Thanks for being here, Christopher. Good to be here with you. You left the realm of political satire there for a few years. Well, like, you know, about four or five years ago, I kind of, you know, American politics was looking pretty self-saturizing, and I didn't really think it needed much help from me.

So I wrote a couple of historical novels, and they were fun. And they, you know, they did okay. They didn't knock Hillary Mantle off the Mantle piece. So, and people kept saying, why aren't you writing about this? You know, this is, and the answer was that, I don't know, it's satire in the Trump era is, I think a, it's a tricky proposition. You know, on the one hand, he's a low-hanging fruit. He's very easy to make fun of. But in another sense, I think that makes it more challenging.

You have to, you know, you really have to, you have to up your game. But, you know, it is being done. by, you know, everyone from Stephen Colbert to this amazing new talent, Sarah Cooper, who seems to have invented, you know, an entire new genre of satire by simply lip syncing. Well, although I know it's more complicated than simply lip syncing. And I think that good is not simple, generally. Anyway, it's certainly being done. it is on the one hand funny, and on the other hand, not in the least funny, you know,

depending on your orientation. Yeah, and I would think, you know, for a satirist, on the one hand, Kelly Ann and George Conway fighting in public. I mean, how can that possibly be bad for a political satirist? On the other hand, the news just moves so quickly. And I sort of wonder, when you sit down to write a book about Trump and Russia, is it somewhere in the back? of your mind that uh-oh what if he's entangled in a plot with samoa or something by the time this book actually comes out you know i dotted the last eye and crossed the last tea in a bar in ashville north carolina on i think it was march 8th i treated i finished the book and i treated

myself to a to a fishing to two days of fishing. And so I was going over the final galleys, as we call them. And there was a, there was a sentence where it said the meme of, there was a something Trump had done became a meme. And it says it went more viral than the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1913. And on March 8th, you know, COVID was a word that was sort of hovering in the ether. But, you know, no one had really quite, including President of the United States, really focused on it yet. And the copy editor wrote in the margin, are you sure? So we took that out.

There were a couple of accidentally pressing things in it. I started writing this draft, I guess, last October. And in order for the premise is that a computer somewhere in the basement of U.S. Cyber Command, U.S. Cyber Command, autonomously retaliates against Russia for interfering in the 2016 election. For that, and it elects the head of the Communist Party as president of Russia, ousting. Putin, which of course Putin is going to, you know, just take lying down. But in order for that to happen, I had to confect an election for Putin, even though we're sort of between the six-year elections. So in the book, there's a special election to make him president for life. And just

last week. You know, there was, they, the Duma had a, or they held a referendum in, uh, in Russia. And guess what? He gets to be president until 2036. It's one of the ironies of being a dictator. You know, you, uh, the, the danger, uh, is, happens when you leave office, which is why dictators tend not to leave office, at least, you know, uh, uh, head first. hers. And anyway, so we have Mr. Putin for, I'm sure everyone's, everyone's delighted to have Mr. Putin around for another, what, 13, 14 years. Speaking of Prussian, so when you wrote, thank you for smoking back in the 90s, tobacco executives are hauled into Congress, you know, days before the publication of that book. And you're talking

now about Russia. We also, there's also an incident in this book where Trump did not read his briefing paper. Right. about it's in Russia, something we might have seen in the last couple of weeks. What goes to your mind when you get sort of that close to reality? Well, generally, you know, it's a feeling of futility on my part, you know, that anything that I come up with is not going to be as good or as satisfying as real life. If in 2016 I had written a novel in which that just recapitulated everything that has happened in the last three and a half years. And it were published, you know, even before Trump became president, I think your reaction would probably be, oh, come on. You can't expect us to believe something like this is going to happen. You know, that the Washington Post would by July of 2020 publish a story saying,

Headlined, The President has now told over 20,000 false books. I couldn't come up with anything as good as that. Yes, and I feel that's funny when I'm reading the book, I can feel you, as you say, after this hiatus. I can feel you're coming back. You've got a group in Congress here called the House Aryan Caucus, which I'm particularly. Corcoran. A group called Ever-Trumpers. The Ever-Trumpers.

I was very pleased with the Ever-Trumpers. The Ever-Trumpers, well, we mustn't get too much, right? But the Ever-Trumpers are the true Trumpians, and they parade up and down Fifth Avenue in front of the Trump Tower on what's now that segment of Fifth Avenue called Black Lives. matter way. And with shirts, with targets on them that say, shoot me, Mr. Trump. They're so dedicated that they are offering themselves up. And yeah, who's to, the passion of the pro-Trump group is, to be sure, passionate. A lot of characters from Trump World are here in slightly

different form. There is one Katie Borja O'Reilly who bears a certain resemblance to Kelly Ann Conway. She has a voice. It's called Meth Lab Lauren Bacall as one of the words of one. A senator. Did I write that? You might have written that. I guess you're not supposed to laugh. Oh, I laugh. But I was I was a bit pleased by her and her husband, Romeo, Riley. I wanted to recapitulate what a phone call between these two must sound like. So, if it's a first person novel and one of the drawbacks of the first person point of view is that you can't just you know you have to explain how the how you come to know about this phone conversation so he stops by Katie's office one day and when she gets

a call from her from her husband whom she's enraged at because he has just tweeted that the president is a head case. And she said, you can't say things like that about the president. He said, yes, I can. It's very important that I do. She said, you can't call him a head case. He said, darling, any minute now, he's going to start complaining that someone has eaten his strawberries. And the alert reader will catch the reference to Captain Quake in the cane mutiny. Remember who goes totally bonkers? He's a person. He's convinced that someone has eaten his strawberry. Did you find...

I guess in Mr. Trump's case, it would be that someone has eaten his double-bacon whopper with fries. That nightly feed of executive time. Nightly in inhalation. There you go. Did you find certain characters from Trump World easier or harder to render in this book? Well, the hardest of all, I suppose, is Trump. In the first draft, which wasn't very good, I had him sort of everything he, everything he says comes out as a scream.

In the first draft, all his dialogue could have been rendered in block caps, you know, with boldface. And I, you know, I took that down many notches in the last draft because it's not that interesting just to hear someone bellowing. Although I think he does a fair amount of bellowing from what we, from what we, from what we gather. There's a Russian oligarch named Oleg Pishinsky, and I had, I had fun with Oleg. He becomes a great friend of President Trump at the, at the 2013 Miss Universe contest. Oleg is very close to Putin, and he has the contract from the Russian, government to make, you know, the stuff Novi Chalk that the Russian security services are forever smearing on former KGB agents in England, say. And because you die very, very unpleasantly.

Well, Oleg has the contract to make that stuff, which the CIA calls, refers to as oil of Oleg. Anyway, you were a noted prankster when it comes to Russia. November 1991, I found this clip. Peter Jennings of ABC News. Oh, good for you. You're the first one to refer to that. Yeah, I'll let you tell the story, but just to set it up, Peter Jennings of ABC News goes on television when the nightly news was still big

and reports that the then-Soviet Union was auctioning off the embalmed body of Vladimir Lenin. One problem, the Soviets were not actually doing it. that. Will you tell our listeners how that came to be? I was the editor of a Forbes magazine at the time, and it was 1991, and this was back in the, in the, just post-Soviet era when Boris Yeltsin was having to climb up on tanks and prevent them from shooting at the Russian parliament. And I became sort of obsessed by the fact that though they had gotten rid of of Leninism and Marxism. They hadn't gotten rid of Lenin.

He was still the, you know, as it were, dead mouse in the living room floor of Russia, his embalmed corpse being there in Red Square. So I confected a, it was an out-and-out hoax saying that, you know, we'd just come on, got in this extraordinary news that they were, the government was so, strapped for cash that they were going to auction off the Embomborps of Lenin. But, you know, they were concerned that it'd be done in a tasteful way. So it was going to be a sealed bid. And I had to come up with a floor price.

This was in the, you know, pre-Google days when, or in pre-Ebay days when, you know, I mean, today, if you were auctioning off Lenin, you'd know. exactly what he was worth within five minutes on eBay. The market would tell you what it was worth. So 15 million sort of struck me as a likely price. So we faxed this out to all the news outlets. And Peter Jennings bit. Dear Peter Jennings, ret me rest and peace.

And it became a huge story. and the Russians were not amused. My phone rang early the next morning. It was my boss, Steve Forbes. It was seven in the morning. So the Russians had gone ballistic. And it was a bit like, you know, the line in Dr. Strangelove. Remember, they tell him, Mr. President, it's Premier Kissoff on the hotline, and he's hopping mad.

Well, they were hopping mad. But anyway, so it, it. It was exposed as a hoax, and everyone eventually recovered their sense of humor. Six months later, I was on the old Metroliner going up to New York, and I opened my Washington Post, and there's a six-column headline saying, Kremlin deluge with offers for Lenin. And apparently the fact that this was a hoax had escaped the notice of the 900,000 readers of four. who were, I guess, too busy making money to read the newspapers. And the top bid came in for 25 mil. Wow.

From a gentleman in Dallas, Texas. And it was accompanied, the bid was accompanied by a wonderful, sweet, almost sweet note because it was so innocent. He said, you know, we've just completed our new corporate headquarters down here in balance. I've discussed this with our interior decorator, and he thinks Mr.

Lennon would make a fine addition to our new lobby. Anyway, Lenin's still there. And it's made me a little bit nervous about going to Russia. I, you know, so I think maybe I'll just,

well, yeah, no one's going anywhere right now. So I don't have to worry about that. Yeah, you don't have to worry about the book tour swinging through right now. No, no. It's funny because reading your book, you know, Russia was a gigantic comic subject in America

through the end of the Cold War and a little bit beyond. And I feel it declined some in the last couple of decades. Was it fun to bring that back, as it were? Yeah, I had, Oleg is a big part of the book, as you know, without giving it away. And I've always had a, call it a fond comic sense about Russia, which may stem largely from what I still think is the greatest movie ever made, Dr. Strangeloak, which came out in 1964. I worked to the White House for a couple of years. as Mr. Bush's speechwriter when he was vice president.

And, you know, there was a, it was the Cold War was pretty hot then in the early 80s. And so Russia was, you know, always, always on the radar screen. Yeah, the, I think you're playing with here is the idea of the White House memoir, which I believe you played with before, a particular literary form that we are now enjoying in the John Bolton iteration. I, you know, my publisher, Simon & Schuster, has got me sandwiched between two monster Trump-related books. One is John Bolton's, which came out a couple of weeks ago. And in just a few weeks, Mary Trump's book will be published by Simon and Schuster. I feel like if it were a Disney cartoon, I would be the mouse who is trying desperately to avoid being stomped on by two elephants.

At best, I'm the stick of chewing gum between main horses, you know, the palate pencil. But, you know, Bolton's book is number one. And I think it sold, you know, 800,000 copies. in its first week, and I'm sure Mrs. Trump's book is going to do very, very well. The best, really, I can hope for, my little book being fiction, is that maybe it will still be being read in 10 years, but we'll have to say. Yeah, because the White House memoir is an extremely disposable genre, is it not? One of those things that burns quite brightly for a couple of weeks and a couple of months.

and then fades a bit. Generally, yeah. I became sort of fascinated with them while I was working in the White House, you know, logically, I suppose. And they all seem to, they all seem to have two things. One, it wasn't my fault. And two, it would have been much worse if I hadn't been there. But it's a rich little,

little subgenre. And some of them, I'm actually doing the Wall Street Journal asked me to do one of those five best books of a certain category. So I'm rereading some of my favorite White House memoirs. And it's funny how some hold up. For sheer delicious bitchiness,

I commend John Ehrlichman's memoir called Witness to Power. And it's got some, you know, some extraordinary stuff in it. Hoover, remember the Pentagon papers come out in it. Now everyone in the Nixon White House was completely paranoid about it. And who they kept urging J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI to investigate Daniel Ellsberg. Well, here's a detail that I had completely forgotten.

in the Ehrlichman book. Ellsberg's father-in-law was a toy manufacturer who used to give toys free to children of FBI ages at Christmas. So Hoover was fond of it. For that reason, he dithered. He dragged his heels. So finally, Holderman gave it to Eagle Crow, a young go-getter on his staff,

and told him to fix it. And Eagle Crow, that's why Eagle Crow hired E. Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy. Oh, wow. And, you know, we all know how well that turned out. And there's this amazing little factoid. Still there, you know, my yellow, my paperback, you know, with its yellowed pages. But anyway, it is a, it does, so books like that do reward. rereading.

One more question for you, Christopher, since this is a media podcast, I wanted to see if I could ask you to retell one story you've told a couple times. You are 17 years old. You had dropped acid, I believe, with a pal. And you walk into your home. And this is going to become a media store here in a second. And you find what? 1970. And yes.

And I'm just out of high school. A friend and I are, we decide we're going to celebrate by doing something that I don't necessarily recommend, but it sure worked for me. So we draw past it. And we're just, things are just starting to get interesting. And I, it's, but it's getting a bit chilly. So I said, well, let me just stop by the apartment, my parents place. And I'll get a sweater. So I opened the door and there are teeth.

heavy TV cables everywhere. I mean, you know, I practically trip over them. Get it tripping. And I look up and there's Mike Walsh. And they're doing a segment on my dad. And he says, oh, great, you're here. We'll put you on next. And I went, ah.

My dear Mike Wallace, I was very fond of him. His face was interesting. interesting enough as it was, but it, you know, through the prism of LSD, it was really an interesting face. And so, yeah, that was my one shot at 60 minutes. And it's funny, you know, it's funny you mentioned this today, because I just got asked 10 minutes ago to do, I guess, a podcast with Dan Rather. Hmm. So it's CBS.

I'm having a CBS day. It's all coming around. I haven't thought of the LSD story and not a thousand years. That was 50 years ago. And you did the interview with Michael? Well, I didn't have much choice. I, you know, I tried to get out of it, but I went upstairs. Yeah.

And I was wearing a grungy t-shirt. My mom looks at me. She says, oh, you've got to go upstairs and change. I'm having a hard. no time. I wasn't sure I'd be able to button a shirt. I said, Mom, I said, I really, I don't think this is a good idea. She says, no, you have to do it for your moment. So, you know, well, my dad used to have a saying, which first couple of times I heard it, I had to think about it hard, but it's a lovely liberating philosophical insight that where there are no alternatives, there are no

problems. I had no alternative, but there was still a problem. Anyway, I managed to get through it without, you know, drooling or, you know, completely tanking. Anyway, thanks for thinking of that. I actually totally forgot. The new book is Make Russia Great Again by Christopher Buckley, available at all bookstores in various contactless delivery options, which you may be taking advantage of at this moment in time. Christopher, thank you. And I believe bulk orders are being accepted. Oh, there we go. Bulk orders as well. But I think we're, I think they're limiting them to 10 per customer. Okay. So, but that doesn't mean you can't, you know, return to make a separate purchase of 10 more. I believe one of the Trump Children's memoir was ordered in that, in that fashion.

Thank you, Christopher, for doing this. Okay, jones. Good talking to you. Thanks. All right, time for David Shoemaker. Guess is a strain pun headline. Wampwant. Monday's headline about a coronavirus quarantine escapee who went to the supermarket in New Zealand was I'll be damned. Today's headline comes from Kirk A. Beto and Cade Stone. It's from Axios, David. Oh, those clever, clever headline writers at Axios.

It's about Donald Trump on Friday commuting the sentence of his political advisor, former political advisor, Roger Stone. It's never quite clear whether Roger is in the current or former political advisor camp with Trump. Trump led him off the hook. Your pun word is Roger, David. Roger. What was Axios' strained pun headline? Roger Will Go? Roger. Jolly Roger. Oh, pretty good. Roger Roger will go.

It's very funny. Roger. What is a term for letting someone off? The draft Dodger? Yes, I'm granting them. waiver? Am I trying to rhyme with Roger here?

Well, it's a pun. You know, that's kind of a. Okay. I'm granting them a stay a Clemency. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. There we go. Oh, Roger Clemency. Oh, God, that's great.

Roger Clemency. Oh, I like that. Special for 80s Red Sox fans. Yeah, good stuff. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida production magic by Erica Zervantes. We're back Thursday. Listener mails do. So go ahead and send that in. I'm also interested in the Trump reopening the schools thing. Betsy DeVos had quite an appearance this weekend on CNN.

Plus more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.