The Press Box - Zohran’s New York Shocker, NBA Draft Audio, and What Is a "Hit Piece" in 2025? Plus, 25 for 25: Heather Cox Richardson on Trump and Iran.

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and Joel discuss some awkward NBA draft coverage, the NYC Democratic mayoral primary, and what constitutes a hit piece (10:57). Then, in another edition of 25 for 25, Bryan is joined by historian Heather Cox Richardson to talk about Donald Trump's fervent attempts at creating a narrative around the USA's air strikes on Iran; best practices to stay informed in today's media climate; Barack Obama's humble approach to his post-presidency era; the origins of her newsletter, 'Letters From an American'; and more (44:29). Finally, Joel and Bryan reconvene for a quick interview postgame and to share some weekend recommendations (1:18:07). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel AndersonGuest: Heather Cox RichardsonProducer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're a fan of the inner workings of Hollywood, then check out my podcast, The Town, on the Ringer Podcast Network. My name's Matt Bellany. I'm founding partner at Puck and the writer of the What I'm Hearing newsletter. And with my show, The Town, I bring you the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. Every week, we've got three short episodes featuring real Hollywood insiders to tell you what people in town are actually talking about. We'll cover everything from why your favorite show was canceled overnight. Which streamer is on the brink of collapse? And which executive is on the hot seat? Disney, Netflix, who's up, down, and who'll never eat lunch in this town again?

Follow the town on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Media consumers, welcome to Press Box. You got Brian Curtis. You've got Joel Anderson. You've got producer Kyle Crichton. Coming up on a very big podcast, Zoran Mom Donnie won the Democratic mayoral primary in New York City. We talk about why vibes beat out the polls, the upside of doing every podcast, and how the New York Post blew it. Plus, what does hit piece mean these days? And a special treat. In the latest installment

of our 25 or 25 series, historian Heather Cox Richardson joins me to talk about Donald Trump and Iran, the very quiet post-presidency of Barack Obama, and what it's like to write for and someday retire from, substack. But first, let us go to a place where there are no Cuomo's. Here's Joel with J-School. That's right. Jay School is a no Cuomo zone, no Mario, no Andrew, no Chris. And we've got female colleagues here at J school. What would I look like bringing in someone with that kind of a rap sheet, you know? Mario's not much of a threat these days, but.

Yeah, yeah, Mario's probably not anybody we got to worry about. But everybody else, hey, you never know. It's their live wires. Brian, I know I've told my story here before about Jason Tatum for the people don't remember. I was reporting in and around Ferguson in the summer of 2014, looking for a reason to just break away from all the misery and anger on West Florissant Avenue. So I started going to Tatum's games at Shamanad Prep and followed him and his team around the country. And I really hadn't seen Jason Tatum play until I went to this gym in Webster Groves and he was playing in

the scrimmage. And it was like, that night was really a revelation. And so actually, I want to ask you about this. Have you ever gone to a game just to see like a high school phenom and just come away like breathtaking? It'll be like, oh, I can't believe I got to see this kid who's clearly going to be something. You know, I don't think I have. One time I had a trip to Texas plan. I was going to go to Texas OU. And the night before I was going to go see Adrian Peterson and Palestine when he was a high school senior for some reason it fell apart. But that was my idea of high school phenoms seeing them before they become themselves. Okay.

One day I'm going to tell the story about how I discovered Adrian Peterson. Okay. We'll put a bookmark in that. But anyway, watching Jason Taylor was sort of a revelation. And I hadn't gotten to the habit yet to go on to YouTube, but like even Twitter and looking for highlights. And he was just like, oh, man, there's a 6'8 swing man with range and handle and this really advanced offensive game.

And I remember telling my friends that night, oh, man, this is the best high school basketball I've ever seen. And if I think about my history and covering other prep phenoms, it was pretty much the same way. Like I saw Chris Bosch. She's playing at Lincoln High School there in Dallas. Kendra Perkins down there in Beaumont, Lamarcus Aldridge, who I happened to see totally by happenstance, was not even trying to go see him. And all of a sudden, there's a six-foot-10 sophomore who's just giving Chris Bosch buckets, you know.

T.J. Ford, Ike Diogu, for some of you old heads, and Xavier Henry, for some of you even older heads. But I didn't, it ain't like I, I didn't get to see them play until I walked into this gym. And when it was over, it was just like, oh, man, I've really seen something special. This is, it's like seeing Vince Young or Joe McKnight or whatever. Like, just this real thing that, like, I'm on the cusp of something here. And so all these kids were covered by their local media before anyone else thought to show up. Like for Kendrick, I was looking up old Beaumont Enterprise pieces. You know, there was some morning news pieces on Chris Bosch.

And, you know, Tatum even had some stuff about him. the post dispatch, right? And so I was thinking about those paths to the NBA in comparison to last night's number one pick, Cooper Flag, who I've been reading about and watching on the internet for a couple years now. And we're going to, I know we're going to talk about the draft later, but someone asked him last night, and he came and sat down with the ESPN panel, how it'd feel for him to guard LeBron or whoever in his first NBA game. And I immediately thought, I've already seen him do that. Like, that's the question that's not really interesting, because I've literally seen him play those guys because for people that have followed Cooper Flax's career, he played against

Team USA in a scrimmage a couple years ago. And it was, he was described as looking like a man amongst men. Like, there's like real video footage of him getting buckets on Anthony Davis and Drew Holiday, okay? And so after the performance, one NBA coach said that nobody, nobody on the team was better than flag. And I mean, they're guys like Brandon Pesemski, Amman Thompson, Brandon, Miller, Jayland, there were real serious NBA dudes on that team. Cooper Flag is there. And so he, all that to say is that Cooper Flagg's been coming for a while now. And now that he's the first pick in the draft, like, you know, like, I, you know, I didn't, he was like one of the real first, like, national guys. And I know that that's been the trend,

like, where these, the top high school basketball players don't really play at their local school. They kind of hop to factories or whatever. And so they kind of skip that, like, local media portion of their career, right? And I thought it was strange that the NBA is having conversations. about who's the next face of the league as we're hearing about these dudes who are increasingly national stars before they even get to college. So like we talked about Jay Caspian King's piece. And he talks about the professionalization of youth sports and how even the kids or former pro athletes are like having to play that game. Maybe they go to Montverdi Academy or whatever else, prep school, whatever. So there's just not going to be as many Scotty Pippins or Dennis Rodman's

or Mark Eaton's guys that have like really ridiculous stories. And they just like, hey, that guy was working as a janitor at the airport, and all of a sudden he's averaging 25 points a game and an AI, a game, not the NBA, right? That's literally the Dennis Robin story, by the way. So these kids are being optimized much earlier. And Jay, and Jay Caspin King wrote this. Once, a serious basketball prospect might simply play on his local high school team and then head off to college. Nowadays, he will likely attend multiple schools seeking exposure, playing time, and competition. So, given all that, Brian. I was really excited about digging into this local story that I really want to sink my teeth into it.

And you tell me if this is interesting, okay? Okay. I'm locking in on the presumptive number one pick in the 2028 NBA draft. His name is Baba Olatatun. He's 6 foot 9, 175 pounds. He goes to a high school 10 minutes away from where I live. There you go. Yeah, yeah.

Blake High School. Some folks around here call him Baby KD. And not so coincidentally, he's playing for Team Durant in the Summer Ball Travel League series. And so I spent some of this morning getting familiar with him. Like there was a story written about him in the Washington Post in December 2020, that covered his decision to stay close to home and play for a local high school. He started his freshman year at D'Amath Catholic. For people that don't know about D'Matholic, it's one of the great high school basketball programs in the country.

Here's a few other former greats. Adrian Dantley, Danny Ferry, Victor Oladipo, Mark Hill Fultz. All NBA players, all of them had varying degrees of success in the league. So the thing that was kind of funny about it and that like you really get that when you're talking about local kids is in the story. They say, man, he was going over to Hyattesville to play at DeMatha. And his dad got tired of waiting in the commute. Like the traffic forced him to go to school closer to home. So Blake is like 10 minutes from their house.

He's like, man, I'm not driving in the Hidesville every day. That's something that, like, I think anybody that lives in the D.C. area can really, like, anybody that drives a kid a long way. But particularly here, you're just like, oh, yeah, D.C. traffic would make me adjust my life and education plans for my kids. So it was just really, like, I mean, so he's leaving this less competitive Catholic school league to play at a Montgomery County program that's never won a state title, not even made the semifinals in more than a decade. And his dad said this thing, it was like charmingly old school. He said, it's nothing better, bigger than being able to play in front of aunties, uncles, and friends that know you and see you growing up. So he played, he played Blake High School for the past two years, okay? They did really good last year.

They went 23 and 2, lost in the 3A regional final to the only team to beat them all season, finished top 25 locally. Boba Olatatoum became the first basketball student athlete to be selected to Washington Post first team All-Met team in school history. He's the first got to ever do that. And Brian, I was so excited to watch him play at play this fall. Like I was thinking about taking my son. I was like, oh, man, I might be able to get him into this this way. And so I kept digging into our local papers until I found something that really disturbed me.

Uh-oh. This is from actually the Lincoln Parish Journal in Louisiana. The head coach at Blake High School, Desmond Wade, recently announced that he was going to become the general manager and assistant coach at Grambling State in Louisiana. So presumably, head coach leaves. The player is probably going to leave. And his dad had even said something like this. And that quote to the Washington Post, he said, it makes sense to play at Blake for the first two years. It may be longer.

Who knows? That didn't really sound like the kind of commitment that I was looking for as a potential fan of Blake High School basketball. basketball, Brian. Man, what a disappointment, because that felt like a long-form podcast waiting to happen. Yeah, man, I was just like, that is really cool. I was like, I'm going to go over to this school. He's got two years at the local school. You know, he's the next KD, allegedly. I thought maybe I might be able to dig in and, you know, maybe he will stay at Blake. Baba, if you hear me, I can make a case for you to stay at Blake, which includes me showing up to many more of your home games. But I think I'll keep the listeners posted. But, but, I'll keep the, the listeners posted.

But I get the feeling that he probably won't be there for very long. Can I shoehorn a few NBA draft notes in right now? Of course. All right. So impression number one from last night. When did we start booing Adam Silver? Man. So he's basically, he's the NFL commissioner then, right?

I mean, that's what, I mean, that's where that started. Is that where that all started? Yeah. And Roger Goodell seemed like a uniquely despised figure. He had done some things to really antagonize some family. basis. Some things. He's done a lot of things. A lot of things. A lot of things. But I'm like, what did Adam Silver do? Did he pick small markets to play in the NBA finals? Did he make sure the Mavericks got the number one draft pick after they got rid of Luca? What exactly is the

gripe with Adam Silver? It's just fun to boo people. That's probably what it is. And I support that. Like, I think all commissioners should be booed. Commissioners are not our friends. Look, even the friendliest of them. They don't face the public. public very often. So, you know, if they get booed every night again, maybe it'll keep them humble, you know. Observation number two, Shams laid back on tipping off picks. Yeah. That was kind of interesting. Kind of cool to have a little air of mystery to the draft. I mean, it still was mystery because it was just a few seconds before the pick, but still, you know, they're not spoiling the TV product anymore. I guess that's a pretty good thing. Tipping of picks has never done anything for me. It's just somebody

sitting down to watch a draft, especially the NFL draft where I care a little bit more. I'm just like, I don't need to know this a minute before and then see weird time-lapse television where they pretend to be surprised. I'll just watch the TV show. I'm good. Do you think that's the ether that that what was talking about, that kind of stuff being first on that? Yeah. That is some genuine Columbia great ether right there. Observation number three. Does Barry White's estate have compromise on ESPN executives?

I saw you complain about this. Folks, we've played the same Barry White song during every single NBA finals game. I'm talking about you're the first, the last, my everything. Last night, they used that same song to announce Cooper Flag going to the Dallas Mavericks number one overall. And when I think of Cooper Flag, I think of Barry White first and foremost. Maine. Maine's finest. I'm going to, what?

Why? What do we do? Are we, do we make a deal with the serious XM 60s channel or something? We have to play these songs, 70s Channel, 70s on 7? Why do we have to keep doing this over and over again? One of the funnier things that I've learned about Brian since working with him is how much, like, a poor music choice can really agitate him. Like if you know, if you're at the Rose Bowl and they just start playing old 50s and 60s.

Tudy-fruity. It's, too-y-fruity. He's like, what the hell are you guys doing? So I love that. I think it's hilarious. That Barry White's song dates to 1974. So my apologies to the 60s on 6, if anyone was offended. Last observation for you, Joel.

We got some weird questions during the NBA draft last night. Weird is charitable. So there were the on-site questions. Yep. And I know those are kind of no win. How do you feel about being drafted just now? Right. And we ask every single player the same question. You know, a lot of family action there last night. So it was a lot of how does mom and dad feel about this whole draft process? Yeah. But there were also some weird questions at the press conferences after the television part of the draft.

Oh, okay. You really got deep. You were really, I mean, you, you, you, what footage? I mean, that was broadcast on an NBA TV, wasn't it? Well, it was just a little behind the curtain here. My wife and I were awoken by our carbon monoxide detector, having a low battery sound last night. Oh, no. And this happened multiple times before he figured out that that was actually the source of the sound. So I might have been lying in bed just watching Con Canipals press conference while I was trying to get to bed. That's, sorry, again, maybe too much information for everybody, but that's what happened. So, Joel, here are the fruits of my labors.

All right. Let's go. Cooper Flagg. goes to the mavericks number one he's got his cool hat on with the script mavericks on it this is the very first question he was asked cooper on behalf of all the internet conspiracy theorists who couldn't be here tonight i have to ask there are tons of rumors floating around that the NBA gave dallas the pick to get you in exchange for luca donchis do you have any reaction to that no um i don't know what to say about that um Okay. I'm going to, that it, you're going to be surprised. That is a fantastic question. Just get it out of the way right off the top. Get out of the way. I know it took him, I know it took him by surprise. Maybe that's not the question that should have been first. But I would have loved to, you know, he didn't give him a lot because I mean, he's 18 years old. But that was, I thought that was a fantastic question. Certainly better than how does it feel. Yes. to be drafted by the Mavericks, which would actually be a complicated answer if you answered,

honestly. Absolutely. I just wanted to conspiracy bill dispatch a correspondent to the NBA draft when I heard that. That really caught me off guard. And speaking of Connipple, as one does in the middle of the night, he is, of course, Cooper Flagg's Duke teammate. He went forth overall to Charlotte, and here's how his press conference began. Hi, Con, by great alliteration, love the name.

Now you're at Duke, you completed with your first year there, and was a one year? You're a good student at Duke, so I'm just curious what you're studying at Duke and being in Charlotte. That's actually North Carolina, so that could make, is that going to make it easier to do correspondence classes or to be able to continue your education? Yeah, we'll see. That's not something I was really thinking about. Well, your parents are, so that's for them. Yeah, it wasn't something I was really thinking about, but, you know, obviously they're being close. that's opened up a realm of possibility for me.

Oh, man. That was unfortunately awkward. Yeah. I mean, the sports reporter, if that is indeed a sports reporter, seemed to be discovering mid-question that Concanepel came out after his freshman year. Right.

Well, he's like, you went to Duke, right? It was kind of like he was looking through his notes. Yeah, he also discovered that Duke is in North Carolina. It's like, oh, did you have to happen? happen to know. Are you familiar with Durham? Yeah. Did you think we'd hear the term correspondence courses? During a press conference last night? Do you think that he got nervous, like, or that he was nervous or something? Which would beg the question, like, you don't have to ask a question, bro. Like, you could have just been quiet. But it felt to me like that's what happens when you get nervous up there, when you kind of choke. There's nothing better than hearing a reporter or podcast hosts, and you and I are occasionally in this category, start to ask a question.

and then you realize after about five seconds, they have no idea what they want to ask. And they just start fish tailing and just hoping that if they just keep talking, the question will eventually pop out of their mouths. Have you ever asked a question like that and been like, oh, this isn't a good question? Like I was like, you know,

it's like you can see the person's face and they're kind of like, you know, you can tell like, oh, they don't think this is a good question and I'm slowly realizing to myself that if I had this back, I don't think I would have raised my hand. Yeah, if I had one question to ask Con Cinnipple, it might not have been about correspondence courses.

Ah, yeah, I don't think so. Duke. Speaking of which, I've got some B-school I can wedge in here. Oh, if we've got some extra time. Let's do some B-school. I'd like to assign a trend story, Joel. Okay. To me?

Well, to anybody. But you'd be a fantastic person to write it if you have time. All right, I'm already on deadline today, so maybe not. But let's see. Our journalists out there know that a trend. story requires three examples. I've got two here. And the trend, Joel, is this, that any

prominent American under the age of 50 had at one point in their lives an unfortunate attempt at a rap career. Wow. Okay. Let me explain. Example number one, Zorn Mamdani, who just won the New York City Democratic mayoral primary.

Okay. Was a rapper going by the names Mr. Cardam and Young Cardamum. Example number two, Sam Presti. I've been made aware of the Sam Presti hip-hop career, yeah. Yes. We heard from Pablo Torres podcast over the last week. More about Sam Presti's 1998 album, Milk Money. Now, what was your favorite track from Milk Money, Joel?

see two of us can play this game. Oh man. You know, oh, yeah. Well, I really, I really like more of his mixtape stuff. And that doesn't have as many titles. So one more example. Uh-huh. Got ourselves a trend story.

Okay, I like it. I'd read the hell out of that. B-school item number two here. You and I last week were talking about J.D. Vance and his comments on Meet the Press about the U.S. bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran. And he was talking about. about previous presidents having entanglements, American entanglements in the Middle East.

And Vance said this, I understand the concern, but the difference is back then we had dome presidents. And now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America's national security objectives. TBD on the last part of that. We'll see, yeah. But you and I think kind of, you know, rolled our eyes and dismissed what J.D. Vance said as trolling.

And we may have even said a word in favor of statesmanship, statesman-like rhetoric, especially after U.S. military action. Yeah, we're from a different era. You know what I'm saying? We're decidedly old-schooling that way. I like the people that represent us to trade a little carefully and be very thoughtful in public. So here's something I was thinking when I wasn't watching Concanepel's press conference. What good is statesmanship anyway? Because I'm thinking,

Wow. On the one hand, yes, I guess I want our elected leaders to talk in a certain way, to not be trolls on Twitter or otherwise, to not talk specifically or totally in the form of a dunk tweet. On the other hand, I'm like, isn't statesmanship, isn't that kind of rhetoric the enemy of truth? are we as journalists gaining anything from that, even if we as Americans or people who like, you know,

the nation to be a semi-civilized place, at least on the rhetorical level, getting something from it? Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, I think statesmanship is good in terms of setting norms for decency and respect, right, of your opponent, that, like, you know, that everybody,

feels like we're working towards the same thing in this country, like just at a better American project, right? But if you mean as a means of strategy or like even in terms of talking to media, right, like the messages you send out, then yeah, I mean, you kind of need to play the game that everybody, like, it can't be that one team gets to call you dumb and the other team doesn't really get to respond, right? Like either we're both going to do it and neither one of us is going to do it, right? Sure. And when you talk about it, talk about, you know, the decency. J.D. Vans going out and calling U.S. Senator Alex Padilla Jose Padilla. Yeah. Or calling anybody by the wrong name, especially in that way.

Right. We can say that that's gross and ugly. But J.D. Vans going on a television show and calling previous administrations in their Middle East policy dumb. Yeah. Like if he thinks that, or at least that's the position of his administration, let's say, because it's kind of hard to know what J.D. Vance actually thinks. do we want him to sort of lay up and stay that in a statesman-like way? Is there anything we gain from that? I mean, a better republic, but in terms of honesty and a better media environment, not really.

I mean, if he really thinks that these people are dumb, that's good to know, and I'm glad he said it, right? He's not being dishonest with the people that voted for him or to, you know, his opponents. and so people can respond accordingly. So, yeah, like that sort of truth is good. It is kind of weird, though, because I just, especially given that it's him, because remember during the election, like not long after Tim Walls joined the Harris campaign, there was all this concern trolling about calling people weird? What happened?

We got a weird administration. Yep, we got a weird administration. Yeah, so I don't know. I mean, but yeah, I don't think it's the right thing. It's not how I would prefer our politicians and public servants to respond, but as a reporter and a journalist, like, give me more of that shit, right? Yeah, I mean, it's funny because in a way, Vance and Trump are terrible examples to use because they clearly cross a line that we would all agree should be a line at different times,

the aforementioned Pitya example. But I saw like Utah Governor Spencer Cox this week, He was talking about this big controversy about flags, and you can go read up on that if you want. But he's using the word dumb over and over again, as if now dumb has entered the political lexicon. Man. Are you ever really cynical about this sort of stuff?

Because I just remember, there's other words that have reentered the mainstream in the last few months. And I'm like, is there some sort of memo going around that people just want to say this, whether to desensitize people or just to like, it's a clarion call to other people to take up arms? and start saying it too, you know. Yeah.

And you say a good word, they're desensitized, because there is something about this kind of rhetoric that maybe you could argue desensitizes you to certain things, right? Like if you just keep calling everybody dumb, if you keep talking about your opponents in that way, whatever you're gaining from truth or so-called truth does have another big, big impact on society. Like, I'm open to that question.

I just sort of want to raise it here. Absolutely. Well, 20 years ago, I think media and other people would have said that was a huge gaffe. It was breaking the norm. There might have been a story about it, right? It still might be if certain politicians did that. Like, I'm trying to think of like, you know, yeah, I'm trying to think if other people are held to sort of a different standard on this. Because I don't think we expect everybody to talk like this.

But, you know, we just. But the Trump administration. And if you're affiliated with them, this is sort of their ethos, right? This is the Lingua Franca of the Trump administration. Absolutely. Let's talk about New York City because Zoran Mondani won the Democratic primary there. Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, beat Andrew Cuomo, a member of the disgraced wing of the Democratic Party. And the first thing I thought on Tuesday night was, wow, were the polls wrong?

And I mean wrong. All you have to do is look at the New York Times as colloquy. election of the recent polls. Here's some results. Cuomo plus 10, Cuomo plus 19. Man. Cuomo plus three, quom plus eight plus 12, plus 17, plus 12 again. Polling for local elections, man. It's notoriously unreliable, but this is, you think this is sort of a high profile enough case with enough voter base that it wouldn't be that wrong, right? No. And there was a public policy polling survey.

that was taken in early June that had Mondani up five. He actually wound up winning by seven, or at least in the most recent counties, up by seven. And when Politico reported on that, man, there was massive pushback

from the Cuomo campaign. I remember thinking that like, oh, you know, it felt like an outlier. Like, what was that, that pollster in Iowa

who, for the Des Moines Register who said, oh, you know, Kamala's, you know, has a shot at winning Iowa

and is leading. It's that wrong, right? Like, I mean, that's the... An outlier, I believe we've been trained to call it. An outlier, right. Like, I mean, this Cuomo thing is pretty... I mean, it was just... That was the consensus.

Yes. So, I just... I mean, I guess it begs the question. And I know I've written or read about this before, like local polling. Like, just, what do you? You know what I mean? Like, even in New York, it's going to be like this. And what's interesting with this is there was the polls.

And then if you read Twitter, at least the corner of Twitter that you and I inhabit, there were serious Mom Doni vibes. Yes. And there were people talking very self-consciously about the vibes. Like, hey, do you feel this in the city? You know, do you feel friends of mine getting excited about a candidate in a way they haven't gotten excited about a candidate or at least weren't excited about Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.

Do you see his presence on social media? You see him out there doing every podcast. And that was very present in almost working in opposition to the actual numbers that were coming out all the way to election day. Absolutely. Do you know what it reminded me of that is sort of different, but not really? Beto O'Rourke. You know, Beto O'Rourke was like a real phenomenon. you know, progressive phenomenon.

It was like, people were like, man, this guy might actually do it. You know, he might actually, he has a chance here, you know, in spite of long gods. And it felt like that at least to me a little bit. And it's interesting because the things that are put under the 10 of vibes are real things. Mom, Donnie really capturing people's affections. People really getting involved with his campaign really liking him just in a 300, or 180 degree way that they liked if anybody actually likes Andrew Cuomo anymore, right?

Like, you're talking about a real thing, but you and I sitting here after 2024, when there were pro-comala vibes all the way up to Election Day, now it's forgotten. Now it seems like the Titanic and she was never going to win, but man, I remember a lot of those sub-stackers like right up until Monday night, Tuesday morning were like, look, it's going to happen.

We saw that Ann Seltzer, Paul, in Iowa. It's going to happen. This is something that's, out there is not being measured by your conventional things. And of course, it was totally wrong. And I accidentally fell for it because I remember thinking, oh, man, Trump's going to kick Biden's ass. And then I allowed myself to be seduced by vibes, right? Yeah. And like, I said, I was like, oh, yeah, I think she's going to win. And I don't know why I thought that given in retrospect. But yeah, like, they're really rewriting history right now about what was going on going into November.

I mentioned Mom Donnie doing just about every podcast. He did our colleague Derek Thompson's pot, Monday. He went on the bulwark pod with Tim Miller and got into this whole discussion about the appropriateness of the phrase, quote, globalized the intifada. No matter where you come down, there is not a political consultant in the United States that would want that question to be something their candidate was considering at length on a podcast that came out a week before the election. Right. If you're charismatic, young, and smart, you're going to thrive in an area like this. And even, it never occurred to me as you said it. And I haven't seen the Tim Miller interview yet. I can sort of conjure up an idea of how he could swat that away and make people be like, well, you know, this is not actually the issue.

Like the issue was affordability New York. Like dismissing it or whatever, engaging. engaging with the issue and then pivoting, right? So I can kind of see that. And if you're not charismatic, if you're not smart, if you need like a friendly mic, then you might not be as willing to go to everybody's podcast, right? Yeah. And I always say to like when we lean into giving advice to politicians

because I don't want to and I don't care. But if we can make a pro-media case for doing lots and lots of interviews, it is that if you are complaining about soundbite culture, that would take one statement and have it stand in for all the candidate's beliefs and who the candidate is, including the statement I just mentioned, then the antidote to that is is to do lots and lots of interviews with lots of different people. Isn't that kind of Trump strategy? You bury it. No sound bite can ever really take hold for the most part because I've said, I'm on to the next thing. You have to cover the next thing that I said. And that's a cynical way to look at it, but there's another way to look at it, which is just like, I've had a chance to explain myself and I've given people a chance to hear me.

Yep. So that they feel like they know me and have a sense of my values. And again, I feel like I'm giving political advice. But people should just do more interviews. And if we're all into transparency now, post-Biden, giving interviews has become a form of transparency. Wait, hold on. You should do more interviews, yes, because I'm a journalist. I want you to do more interviews.

If you're bad at doing interviews, though, that's bad advice. But that's what I mean by transparency. If you're bad in doing interviews, then what are you running for again? What's the can't think on your feet office that we would like to elect you to? I mean, man, but there's all sorts of reasons people get elected now and being good at thinking, not necessarily always at the top of the list there. Explaining your values, explaining what you stay. I totally agree.

Yeah. A little media subplot here was the New York Post, Joel. Oh, man. It comes out Wednesday morning. And dude, this is what a moment for the New York Post. A Democratic socialist just won the Democratic primary. Yeah. Right.

These are the guys who brought you the quote unquote Ground Zero Mosque. What would they come up with to scare the shit out of New Yorkers on Wednesday morning? A Muslim immigrant from Africa. I mean, so yeah. And here we go. The headline was, NYC SOS. Oh.

What a terrible New York Post headline. That's, yeah. That's a little. That's rough. I mean, you know, look, but they try good old red scare. You know what I mean? I guess that.

Or just go after Cuomo. Yeah. I mean, there's a way, right, to talk about the sadness and, you know, just horror of the Cuomo from error campaign. Is Cuomo blows it a good headline? Um. No, not really.

I don't like where you go where you going there yeah you know that's the extra fair point post in fairness use say it ain't zo on tuesday which was probably their Wednesday headline they just blew it a day early no yeah just FYI all right here's one more story before we get to Heather Cox Richardson here okay I heard a media dirty word this week Joel okay actually dirty words plural oh okay two of them two of them the word were hit piece. Oh, yeah. Because on page A1 of Tuesday's New York Times,

there was a piece by Caroline Kitchener about Sean Duffy, the Transportation Secretary of this country and a former real-world star. And the piece started there and then talked about Duffy's family, which includes his wife, the Fox News host Rachel Compost Duffy,

whom he met on Road Rules All-Stars, and their nine kids. This was a piece being denounced on many right-wing Twitter accounts, right-wing podcast. Really? Really. Because what Kitchener was writing about

was Duffy's ideas about family. And Duffy himself and Compost Duffy did not participate, as we like to say, KK, did not give an interview for this story. But, of course, they'd had a podcast. So Kitchinger had lots of material to work with.

Duffy said at one podcast in 2023, if you want to be happy, if you want to be successful, you want to have children. He added, if you want to save America, have a family. Oh, okay. And Kitchener noted this is not just something

that Duffy is doing on a podcast or on Instagram or on a Fox News cooking segment where he was making pancakes. She writes, Mr. Duffy signed a controversial memo pledging to prioritize transportation funding for regions with higher birth rates and marriage rates, an approach to Democratic senators have called deeply frightening and disturbingly dystopian. I mean, I don't even practically, like, I don't even know how you make that work, but

okay. I don't know. Yeah. But suffice it to say, it's not just the cultural case for having more children, if you think that's, you know, the way that happiness lies. It's the political case. being embedded in administration policy. What did you make of this piece and what did you make in the reaction?

Yeah, I mean, I think we talked about this a little bit before that I thought it was fairly, I thought it was fair, you know? Like, I mean, a lot of with their quoting are things that these folks have actually said. So I guess if I had to start out, I would imagine that anything that ran in the New York Times that he chose not to participate in, he was going to consider a hit piece. I'm sure he was inclined to come into it saying, look at this liberal organization writing about me and my kids. So the idea that someone would write about him anyway without his permission was probably a violation. But if I had to get inside Sean Duffy's head, and I'm trying to figure out like, hey, just Denver have enough marriage rates to get a new freeway.

But if I were Sean Duffy, then I would say that it was a hit. piece because there's a lot of suggestions of artifice that they're putting on a show for people, as opposed to being authentic. Like, it's them putting their kids on TV, putting their kids in campaign ads. They had Paul Ryan in there saying, being quoted as saying, they're just media people, right? So it could, if you were Sean Duffy, you could think, oh, the New York Times is trying to make me look inauthentic. And that would be the hit piece of it. But that's me thinking as him. I thought it was a very fair peace. What about you? No, and I think you, I think you really hit on it because what the piece gets at is this Instagram world that we live in and that politicians and celebrities live in. Yeah.

Where it's not that you're just saying these things, but you're sort of putting out, you're doing these very staged, you know, doing staged hits on Fox News or stage photos to try to create this idea in people's minds. And it's almost like we're so deep in this world now. there's such a, you know, kind of a weird sort of barrier between the authentic and the inauthentic, if those words even mean anything anymore, that you almost have to remind people that this is, because we all do this, by the way, journalists are doing the same, like all my journalist friends when I'm on Instagram, it's like, here's my photo of me today, having a great time, happy as a clam, and I'm just like, I almost feel that when you write an article like this, you actually just have to

step back and be like, this is a, media strategy that's happening. It may be an expression of his or the way he authentically feels and his wife and his family and this may be what they believe, but the way this is being fed to us is through the media. Absolutely. I mean, they chose to do it this way too. Like they're the ones that wanted the podcast. They're the ones that are going on TV, bringing all, you know, bringing their kids with them for that sort of stuff. Like that's not, I can't imagine that they live their day-to-day life and bring all nine kids everywhere every time they're going to go do something. Like, they're trying to make a show of it. The one thing that I think about, to your point, Brian,

is that, yeah, I mean, like, we all, you know, to an extent are cultivating our public images with the social media thing. And it's like, it's more, it's, it's, it's barely even noticeable when a politician does it anymore, because we all sort of do it. I mean, but of course, it makes sense, like, nobody is going to like, unless you're sort of, you know, you've got a different approach to social media, talk about, you know, I hate my wife today and my life. You know what I mean? Like, people just don't talk like that. So I think the thing that would Duffy as them is that like, they're like, not only is my life great, but it's so great that I demand you do it. Like, you need to do it just like me. Yes. These are my recommendations. Yeah. We should also say

that hit piece has become another way to say, I don't like this story. I'm always like, it always makes you smile when words that we understand inside the industry leave the industry. Oh, yeah. I didn't know that an article was called a piece until day one of my journalism career. I'd never heard that in my whole life. And I feel like everybody knows that now. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, that's right.

People on Twitter are like, hey, great peace. And I'm like, do you know what a piece is? Is this become so universal? That's really. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I didn't even think about it in that way. Man. I mean, I, I, I, I, why, why would people know that it was a piece? Yeah. Okay. That's a, that's a really, uh, unique. I've, now, I've got to mold that over.

I got to ask my mom if she knows what a piece is. Were you a big real world fan back in the day? Well, so did I ever tell you? And I wrote about this in college, so I'm not hiding it. Did I went to a real world audition in Dallas in 1999? You did not. I went outside the planet Hollywood in the West End. You remember that. place, right? Sure. Yeah, I got there like five o'clock. So I drove from Fort Worth to get to downtown Dallas at 5 a.m. And I waited in line and I still was like number, you know, 300, whatever. And I waited long enough. I got in. They brought me to a table, you know, like maybe 12 other people. And I remember the question they asked was, how did you lose your virginity? And some guy went on

talking about how he had lost his virginia. It's like a 25-year-old woman when he was like 13. He ran out the clock. And then they just dismissed us all when they called him in to another session. He didn't get picked for the show, though. Whoa. Yeah, good times. That would have changed your life if you've been on the real world. Yeah, I don't think I really, well, I probably did want to do it. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, obviously it doesn't slow you up from doing anything now. Like, I mean, it would have been a good launch point of a career in anything, right? You could be in the cabinet someday. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. All right, Joel, this is part eight of our 25 or 25 series. I sat down yesterday with historian Heather Cox Richardson. Heather Cox Richardson is a lot of things.

She is a professor at BC. She's written a number of books. I like to describe her stature in the media world this way. I don't believe my mother-in-law knows what Substack is, but she reads Heather Cox-Ritchardson Stub-Sack. Oh, wow. That is a true fact. I'll probably hear on that.

But this is the way she is. She has a substack called Letters from an American. And what she does is this interesting thing. She reads everything. And then writes what is, I would call an annotated essay that has an angle to it, I guess you would say, but it's more explaining how things work. And we got into so many things here. We talked about Donald Trump, the way he is posted through the U.S. bombing of Iran. we got into a topic you and I have talked about off the air,

Barack Obama's ex-presidency, his post-presidency. We also talked about what it's like to write for Substack. Here's 25 for 25 with Heather Cox Richardson. All right, Heather, I wanted to start with one aspect of the Iran story that you wrote about on Wednesday. Donald Trump told the nation on Saturday night that the three Iranian nuclear sites the U.S. had bombed were, quote, completely and totally obliterated.

Then we see a report on Tuesday, first from CNN and then from the New York Times, that the Defense Intelligence Agency's preliminary report says that the United States has only set Iran's nuclear ambitions back a few months. What's your first read on that turnaround? You know, I'm an Americanist. I am not a scholar of Iran or of nuclear capabilities. So what I look at is how things are playing in the United States. And one of the things that really jumps out to me about President Donald Trump strikes on Iran is the degree to which they were almost made for TV. I mean, he even put a name on it, the 12-day war. And he steps up as the man who is willing to bomb Iran finally after all these years in which people would not bomb it and

instead insisted on negotiations. He tore up those negotiations. And here he was, he was going to solve everything with this sort of come out of nowhere cowboy mentality. And it's really important for that storyline that it worked, that in fact he did manage to get rid of Iran's nuclear capabilities, which he has continued to insist, although there is no current evidence of that. And it's important to him to walk away the hero. And as you and I are talking, he is now at the NATO summit, in which once again, he is telling reporters that anybody who dares to question that he took out Iran's nuclear capabilities

is wrong, is lying. I mean, you simply can't let it go. So when I look at the Iran strikes, which are, of course, part of this huge geopolitical issue that's been going on now for more than 60 years, what I'm really focusing on is the degree to which this particular president is utterly psychologically committed to the idea that he is the hero of a certain storyline that he feels obliged to emphasize and to make the press believe. So that worries me a lot. I mean, I think if you read through his truth social feed for the last several days, it's it's out there. It's out there. Let's talk about another chapter in the Trump as hero story. So on Monday, he posts that Iran and Israel had agreed to a all caps ceasefire. The post

began congratulations to everyone, even though it was not especially clear that both or either party had agreed to a ceasefire at that moment. I've read historians right about a president manifesting a pretext for war or military action. What do you make of a president manifesting a ceasefire? Yes, and we know that a number of his senior advisors were surprised by that announcement. You know, it's an interesting approach in that negotiation is not easy. There are a number of different things that people can do to help negotiations, simply announcing that the negotiations are over, weirdly could enable people who were entrenched but want a way out to say, oh, yeah, we're on board with this. That doesn't really seem like what this was. It seemed more like it was

part of this storyline. And we know that first Israel and then Iran broke the terms of that. Well, we don't actually know what the terms are. Broke the ceasefire if there was such a thing pretty quickly. And again, the thing that really, the story for me about that ceasefire is not really about Trump and what he said or certainly what it will do on the geopolitical level. But it was the fact that the media all seemed to say, oh, yeah, great, we've got a ceasefire. When in fact, the only evidence we had for a ceasefire was that Trump had put it on his social media platform. And, you know, you and I could right here declare all kinds of things that have no evidence behind them at all, and one would hope that the media would not say, oh, look, the world has

changed because they said it had changed. And that worried me, again, a lot because normally when one reports something as fact, it's got at least two and preferably three very solid independent sources. And this did not, and people are still talking about this great ceasefire. Well, we don't have any evidence that there actually is a great ceasefire. So we'll see how that plays out because I think it's really all very murky right now. Is it interesting to you that we've read just about every major announcement about Iran from the initial bombing to the alleged ceasefire on a platform, a social media platform that Donald Trump himself owns?

Yeah, it's funny you say that because in his first term, I used to complain bitterly that I was tired of reading major statements on a social media platform. I've gotten used to it like everybody else has, I suspect, and there is. a level at which immediacy can be a very good thing, it is never a good thing, or almost never a good thing, at least, in negotiations, which by definition are slow. And, you know, I was actually thinking about writing a piece on great American negotiators. And a lot of people don't know that one of our best negotiators ever was a man named Red Cloud, who was Lakota in the late 19th century in the American West. And he's a great example of what it takes to be a negotiator, because

sort of by definition, everybody ends up mad at you because what you really do to be a good negotiator is you slow everything down so that people who are hot-headed essentially get frustrated and bored and are willing to accept conditions that they might not otherwise have accepted. And the enemy is always the person who has done that slowing down and that, you know, isn't this deal a good enough deal right here? And that idea of negotiations is being sort of slow wearing down the different parties so that they are willing to accept things they weren't in the original clash is really how you look at negotiations. And in this case, the idea of simply putting on social media, well, it's done. It may be great if the world worked that way.

I could solve a lot of problems. But I actually don't think that that's a good way. to do an awful lot of the business that we do. Speaking of Donald Trump trying to control information, what has struck you so far in Trump's second term about his attitude toward reporters? Well, his attitude in the second term was not all that different from the attitude he had in the first term,

which is that he refers to the press as the fake news, which is reminiscent of authoritarian, including people like Hitler, who referred to the lying press, a Lugin Press. but he also needs the press because that's how he gets his messages out. And the attacks on the press have gotten bigger and more violent and have been a real attempt not simply to attack them, but also to make them bow to his well.

And we see that in things like Voice of America, for example, but also in an attempt to press the Washington Post, for example, or the LA Times. But that attempt to bring the press to heal is the same attitude, perhaps, but a different outcome of the idea that he needs to control the message. And, you know, so far it hasn't worked. What it has done is it's created a really strong independent press that is saying what it wants still.

We'll see how that plays out over time as well. Was it interesting to you that Donald Trump was either making or receiving? It wasn't completely clear since he apparently has a cell phone, but making or receiving calls from reporters on Saturday night after the bombing and giving short quotes about what a tremendous success it was? No, it doesn't surprise me. And one of the things to always remember about Trump is that he is a salesman and he is a salesman who presents a certain aspect of himself on media, especially on a visual media. He's always been that way. And, of course, he rose to political power on his performance.

It was a performance on The Apprentice. So that really close tie between himself and reporters is part of who he is. He's always concerned about how things play. And we know from reporting, especially in the New York Times, that his decision to strike Iran came because he watched how it was being portrayed on the Fox News Channel and how good he thought that Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, looked in the clips that he was seeing. and he wanted in on it. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo referred to it as a branding moment.

There was this made-for-TV moment, and he could throw the Trump name on it. So the fact he is communicating with reporters on the one hand, and then turning around and talking about the fake news, it's all a performance. And that's actually, to me, one of the most interesting things about the moment we're in is that the radical version of the Republican Party, because I always like to emphasize this is not your mother's Republican Party, really is performing a certain kind of individualism, sort of cowboy individualism, and insisting that this is the way the world works. But the reality is, that's not the way the world works. And as you're watching it come,

that image come into conflict with reality over things like the Iran strikes, you can see how frustrated Trump has becoming. As I say, his social media feed is really angry, and we know he dropped the F-bomb in front of reporters on Monday, or maybe it was Tuesday. You see how frustrated he is getting, but at what point do all but his most devoted supporters

look at him and say, you know, that's actually not my reality. If you, for example, raise tariffs, my stuff is getting more expensive, and all the yelling you do about how things are going to get cheaper is not borne out. from the prices I'm seeing on toys at Walmart. A couple weeks ago when I was looking forward to this conversation, I thought I'm just going to write down every major news story in America

or as many as I could think of at the moment. Here's what I wrote down. Ice raids in California, the protests of those raids, Donald Trump's reaction to those protests, the alleged Trump change in his deportation policy, which was apparently rescinded sometime after that. You had his military parade. You had the fate of the big, beautiful bill.

you had the New York mayoral primary, and oh yeah, the beginning of the Israel-Iran conflict. So as a historian, the idea that Americans would find themselves in this kind of news whirlwind on a daily basis. Is that unique to this time? In the United States, yes, although we have had some comparable periods as well, the 1890s, for example, or the 1850s. But it's important to remember that this whirlwind, as you call it, this fact we're constantly being hammered with all of these different stories is part of an authoritarian technique. And it is the idea of creating a world in which people become so overwhelmed with information that they stop being able to process it and they sort of throw up their hands and they

say, well, they're all crooks. And I'm just not going to participate any longer. And it came out, this idea of just throwing stuff at the wall, tons of stuff at the wall. And you know, Steve Bannon has talked about that. He's a media guy. He has a different word for it. But that concept comes out of the former communist countries where news was very tightly controlled. And the people who were trying to create oligarchies in the wake of the Soviet republics recognized that if they tightly controlled news, that people would recognize what they were doing and would get really very angry about it and would fight back against it. But the alternative to that is to flood the zone with so much stuff that people turn out. And this is what we have seen. And you can see it and how it works

in things like scandals that don't actually really exist, but that people have come to believe exist because they've heard it so many times. There's so much confusion around it. Or the fact, for example, that so many people adhere to the idea that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Like, there is literally no evidence of that, that every time that it's gone into a courtroom, the cases have been dismissed. And every time somebody had to defend themselves for lying about that, they have lost in court or their lawyers have said, oh, they knew they, you know, they were just saying what they thought. The fact that it wasn't real, shouldn't matter to the way the jury decides this case. But it has been out there so much that there are certain people who really, really believe it's true. that world of your whirlwind in which it's impossible to tell for many people what is real

and what is not is a really major threat to our democracy because we don't have to agree at all. We shouldn't agree on policies or on the world we want to see, but we should be able to agree on facts. And if you create a world in which facts are fungible or mass, valuable, people can't agree on solutions because they can't agree on facts. And that's where we are right now. Let's suppose someone is determined to be a good citizen and an informed citizen. They want to read up everything, not just have a kind of social media diet of seeing headlines, but they want to read about things. Short of quitting their job and devoting themselves to studying every news story that comes across the wire, what should they do? Yeah, it's funny you say short of reading every

news story that comes across the wire. You don't actually have to do that. That's kind of what I do every day, and what you would discover in a hurry is that there's a lot of very similar material spread across the country that really doesn't give you very much new information. So one of the things that I think is really important in this moment and that is really interesting to see is the rise of independent media. Because we've seen this before. We saw it in the 1850s, and overwhelmingly we saw it in the 1890s and the 19 aughts. And And when that happens, what you see is a period in which the existing media is not actually providing the information that Americans want to see and to understand. So in the late 19th century, we can use that as an example.

You have in the United States hundreds of black newspapers. I mean, people forget that, but it was a huge flowering of black newspapers. But you also get urban newspapers and different kinds of different language newspapers and people who are really digging into, the way that urban governments work, for example, or the way that standard oil works, or why people are losing their fingers in machines. And they're putting this material in front of people who really care about the conditions of their lives.

And those smaller papers begin to feed into much larger papers that are run by people like Ida B. Wells, for example, or that become McClure's Magazine, which became known as a muckraking, Raking Magazine, but what it did is it personalized for people the conditions in which they were living. Rather than saying, oh, this guy has tons of money and that's bad for you, they literally said, well, look, J.D. Rockefeller bought out all these small operators, and then Little Towns in Pennsylvania lost all their jobs, and they had to work for him. And they made it very clear to people what was

happening. And from that, we got the progressive movement in the early 20th century because people understood their world. Things were fact-based. They produced evidence. And the papers tended to be specialized. Ida B. Wells was really not focusing nearly as much on the corruption of business as McClure's magazine was. She was focusing on black rights and lynching, for example. So in this moment, one of the things that really jumps out are the really wonderful independent people, writing about the law, for example. I don't know about you, but like the Supreme Court hands something down, and I read the decisions. and you can tell what they're saying, but like, I don't know how out there it is. You know, that's not what I'm trained to do.

Or the tech people, you look at Wired or 404 Media, or the number of people who are now working in the public land space, West Seiler, for example, but there are a lot of them. You can figure out the voices that are giving you true information. And you can tell that because they will cite their sources or they will quote from a document and say, this is what the document says. And if you develop enough of a roster of those people to say, okay, I'm covered by these five people on the law, but there's really only one that speaks to me and I really understand, which is the case. There are five different people I read in the legal space, but really only one of them makes it dumb enough for me to read, you know? And if you do that, you can follow the stories that matter to you.

And for me, it's a question of feeling like your feet are under you. Like there's so much coming at you all the time. You're like, well, what really happened? Like you said, about the deportations that were on and then they were off and now they're back on again. And there was a legal case involved in that. And then Trump backed off. And then there was a fight with the Agriculture Secretary. And there's just so much.

If you know what happened in the areas that you care about, to me it just feels like the ground is under your feet and you can make good decisions about what you want from your government. going forward. So rather than sort of saying, I got to read everything, I got to listen to everything, finding the voices that you trust to produce evidence and create a reality-based news, not necessarily one that adheres to your opinions, but one that is based in reality. To me, is enough to make me feel like I can go on. A week ago, you were sitting on stage with Barack Obama in Connecticut. Yeah, that was crazy. He made some interesting. He said, sometimes I feel as if during my presidency, I think a lot of people felt comfortable in their righteousness because they didn't have to test it.

And now they have to test it a little bit more. What did you make of those remarks? I thought that was really interesting. I thought the whole interview was interesting because it seemed to me, listening to it, to his answers and to the things he wanted to talk about. Because, of course, that's what you do with an interview. as you try and turn your person loose and see where they go. And he has not been as visible in the public sphere since the 2024 election as a lot of people would have liked

for him to have been, which is itself something worth exploring. But it felt to me in his answers that he is trying to hold open a space in the liberal center. And what I mean by that is not partisan, it's not democratic. A lot of people,

really since the 1990s have come to think that liberal means democratic, but it really doesn't. A liberal is somebody who believes that the government has a role to play in regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, promoting infrastructure, and protecting civil rights. And people who believe in that are run across the political spectrum. But those people rarely have a champion because coming out of World War II, it was assumed that everybody thought that. In fact, that was true. You had FDR and Dwight Eisenhower doing different aspects of that, but people forget that Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican, is really the one who manages to push civil rights because the Democrats were hampered by their Dixie Kratwing.

So there were a lot of people in that space immediately after World War II, and it was so common and so commonly expected that all Americans would believe that. But by 1960, political scientists were starting to say, hey, stop talking about liberalism. stop talking about the center, stop talking about the middle way like Eisenhower did, or the New Deal, because everybody agrees on that. Instead, you have to really focus on creating coalitions that will enable you to win elections. And so the intellectual space for those people who believe that really ceased to have champions. And they don't really, there's a lot of people dancing around that area now and starting to speak up about it. But there are not, that many leading figures sort of saying, I'm going to carve out verbally this space for

Republicans, independents, and Democrats to reinforce the meaning of liberal democracy. And he, in fact, in what you quoted, was pushing back against sort of the, that I think what he would, I shouldn't say that, that is often interpreted as being smug, wealthier liberals. because he went on to talk about, you know, I can't redo my kitchen in the Hamptons issue or something like that. And I thought that that was less a signal to those people than it was a signal to people who might resent those people, that there is a place in an ongoing American democracy not only for your vote, but also for your voice. His decision not to participate more to make his voice heard more during the second administration, It seems like it's a pretty normal ex-presidency to me,

but do you think there's anything more to it than that, that he's determined to follow the road that his predecessors have done once they're out of office? You know, I actually think it's a really interesting question. If you think about Trump, the way he maintained a position in the public eye was he did not follow tradition. You know, American presidents have this tradition of saying, we're not going to have two presidents at one time.

So the minute I'm out of office, I'm going to disappear like a rock thrown into a pond. And, you know, God help you, if you're Theodore Roosevelt, you have to go to Africa and hunt big game. And in fact, it's a wonderful image of him coming back to America in which he smashes through a newspaper page, his head smashes through. And the page had something that his successor, William Howard Taft, was doing. And there was Roosevelt. But Trump broke that. And one of the things that I actually am interested in is I would love to ask all the former presidents, why aren't you doing the same thing?

You know, the attacks that hit somebody like former secretary of state Hillary Clinton for, you know, if she so much has walked down a street, people were screaming, get out of the public eye. And there was Trump every single day fighting Joe Biden, grabbing headlines, lying, you know, really commanding the media, and then to have us go back to the idea that Democratic presidents or even Republican presidents like George W. Bush are simply going to disappear in that pond. It's a lovely thought that you can reinstate our norms, but when, in fact, the person against whom you would be standing is the one who broke those norms, I'm not entirely sure we should be standing on those norms myself.

Let's talk a little bit about substack before we go. You start letters from an American in 2019 there. What led you to substack? No, I didn't start it there. I started it on Facebook. Well, that actually matters because I never intended to start letters from an American. I am a historian. And what historians do is we study how and why societies change.

And my specialty is ideology, especially political ideology, but my master's is in literature. people started asking me questions about literally what was happening. Like, because when I started to write, we had just gotten the letter from then chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, being written to then acting Director of National Intelligence saying, we know there's been a whistleblower about something. By law, you have to give us that complaint. You have not done so. So we're assuming it's a principle.

You know, and I paraphrase here. give us that sucker fast. And so I had mentioned that. I used to write about once a week and I hadn't written for a long time on that Facebook page. And I mentioned that and people just flooded me with questions about it.

And I know the answer to that. I know how that system works. So I sort of said, oh, well, this is what's happening and this is how the next step and all that. And then more and more and more questions came in. So Substact reached out to me within a couple of months, I think,

maybe within a month. They were just starting because, and it was great timing because my people who were following me on Facebook kept asking me for a newsletter. And, you know, I'm 62. A newsletter to me quite literally was the thing your first grade teacher mimeographed and sent home with you to take to your parents. And I remember saying to my graduate students, what the expletive is a newsletter. And by the time that we figured that out, I had, I think it was like a million followers. And there was not at the time any service that could provide that capacity. So Substat came to me and said, come to us. And I was like,

well, what's in it for you? Because I refuse to charge. I will not charge money for this information. I have a job. This is not, I'm not a journalist. And they said, you know, what's in it for us is we'll hope you change your mind. And when you do, we'll take, you know, it's 10 percent. I think it is. And I was with Substack for well over a year before I started to charge. And I started to charge first because people wanted to comment. And I couldn't police that. I have a moderator at Facebook, but I'm not going to have ad hominem attacks. It's like my classroom. You know, I'm not going to, and you can say anything you want, but bring the receipts. Don't just say you're an idiot and you suck. Because that's not welcome in my classroom. I call it the don't pee on my rug principle. You are

welcome in my house, but if you pee on the rug, I'm going to ask you to leave. And then, of course, by then I didn't have anybody to answer all of my email, and I needed an assistant. So then I went to substack. And to me, it is still, I know they want to be a cultural force and all that, but to me, it is still a tool because I'm not trying to build a media platform. I'm not, you know, I am not planning to be, do this my whole life or anything. At this moment, I am thrilled, not just willing, but thrilled to be able to help people navigate our very confusing political system after being extraordinarily well-trained by people who put a lot of effort into me. To me, it feels like a public service.

But, you know, I'm maybe the wrong person to ask about Substack in the sense that I'm not, I'm not, Medell-A-San, I'm not somebody who's building a life there. I'm somebody who actually has a life in history that right now is very useful to a lot of people. But, you know, I kind of hope that when people remember me, they remember me as a historian. When do you start researching one of these posts? It's awful. Actually, the minute I wake up, my husband is a commercial fisherman, so he's up and gone by 3.30. And I wake up and I say to myself, there's no expletive way I'm going to wake up right now.

I'm going to sleep. I'm going to sleep for another two hours. And that works exactly zero percent of the time. And when I finally admit that I'm going to wake up, I roll over and I reach for my phone. And I read in my bed for about an hour and a half, the social media and people I trust, to see what the stories are. And then I get up and I go about my day and I watch the news all day. One thing I'm fascinated with

with Substack and podcast too is the relationship a writer can have with their readers. What's your relationship like with your readers, do you think? Oh, you know, it's wonderful. I always say that the letters from an American

are not mine. I mean, I have become, I think, a good writer doing them and I love what I do and I enjoy it. But it's really I'm keeping a record for the future. for a graduate student in 150 years. So I try and pull out the stories I think are important.

But I have become sort of the coffee pot around which a number of people who care desperately about recreating the idea of a reality-based community gather. And they're wonderful, wonderful, wonderful people. And they've built this community, but it's not my community. It's a community that I get to participate in. And yes, I think the immediacy really matters. And I also love the reality that because it's such an immediate relationship, that people, and I think this actually comes out of the pandemic when people had to Zoom everything, you lost that veneer of, I'm different than you. I've got a makeup studio. I, you know, my home is perfect and all that. I think we all get the idea that we're all just people trying to do the best we can.

And because of the way I live in rural Maine, borrowing a place to work because I don't have a good enough cell connection at my house or a internet connection to do things like this, I think people can look at me and recognize that I'm just a normal human being and feel like if I can do it, they can do it too. And that's a really cool moment in America too. Two quick ones for you. Since you have a historian's eye and you're doing, you know, you have a second job, as you say, when you're looking through a news article in the United States, paper today or social media post. Are there certain things, certain quotes, certain facts that catch your eye in a way that might not catch someone else's eye? Yeah, I'm always, the stories that I am looking for are things that are creating change or that signify the creation of change. So you don't see from me static stories. You see stories where something appears to have shifted.

A Republican begins to attack Trump. A Democrat gets elected in New York City, you know, where something seems to have changed. And that means that I'm really eclectic about what I look at. So, you know, I did not cover the Republican presidential debates in 2024 because I knew that Trump was going to win them. And yet I did cover ads that Joe Biden. cut with labor leaders because that suggested that the labor vote might be shifting from the Republicans back to the Democrats as they shifted the other way in the 1980s. So I'm always looking for stories that change the way things seem to be at the present. I'm also looking for original

voices. And then one of the things that I have developed as I have been writing these, which is a real problem for me in my books until the recent books is I always, I could never end anything. And if you look at some of my early books, they really just stop. Like I wrote a final paragraph and I hated it, so I cut it and then we just stopped. That's really dramatic, I think, in my Wounded Knee book,

which literally I just have a quote and then I'm just like, okay, I'm done. What I have learned to do is to recognize sort of a kicker of an ending. And now I always look for that kicker of an ending. And it often shapes the whole story, because if I feel like an ending sums up the day, I often will start with that so I can also end with it. Finally, you said you don't want to do this forever,

but the world may not slow down, and you said this in an interview earlier this year, I'm not going to let these people down, talking about your readers, I'm not going to not write. So when do you get to step off the merry-go-round? We will know. Right now I don't know.

As I say, I never started this. Like, I never, ever thought I would be doing this. My reader started this because they needed me there. But, you know, I'm a teacher and I'm a mother. And if you teach and you parent correctly, there will come a time when nobody needs you any longer. And that's kind of the goal you work toward. And I don't know when that'll be.

I really don't. I don't have any idea when it'll be. But we will all know it. And, you know, if I do it right, there will come a day. when people will say, remember that woman, what was her name? And they won't need to read me any longer. And when it happens, you know, I'll go back to kayaking and writing books. Heather Cox Richards and her substack is Letters from an American.

Heather, thanks for coming on the press box. Thanks for having me. All right, Joel, I thought her comments about Barack Obama were very interesting, especially somebody who'd been on stage with him last week. in this idea that he's following precedent by laying up as an ex-president. But is this the time to follow precedent? When the last ex-president did not act like an ex-president either.

It's just kind of crazy because, I mean, that's always sort of the issue. Like, when do you want to be the one to break president? Precedent? Do you have the stomach to break precedent? And, you know, also, I mean, I mean, I think Obama, and he mentioned it in that interview with Havocke's Richardson, I saw some clips of it, is that sometimes when he says things, it just makes people more mad. You know, it really, it really, I mean, it can move people in a way.

And so, yeah. But yeah, it's still an interesting question. I'm sure, like, his voice being added to our daily chat, you know, our daily, our daily menu of stuff, it probably wouldn't hurt, right? Yeah. I mean, there's a certain, like, Democratic theory that he's Superman and if he would just come back, in whatever way at rallies on Twitter, on podcasts, that he would save the nation. That's clearly not the case.

And he surely understands to your point that that isn't going to happen. In fact, the opposite could happen, right? Things could potentially get worse. But it is interesting that you think a norm is so important when the norm-shattering guy is in office. Yeah. It's, yeah, no, I mean, that's a real question, man, and that's a question for historians as well. It's just like, well, once the norms are broken, like, I mean, do you try to help restore them or do you just assume that they're gone forever?

I mean, you know, you can make a choice, but it doesn't mean that everything is going to work out just because you decide to break a norm because you're responding to somebody who's a norm breaker. Let's do weekend blurbs real quick before we get out of here. Okay. I proposed one, but I kind of knew the person, so I had to take back my recommendation. There was some blog rolling involved. We weren't really friends, but we're, you know, I know. Anyway, so what I ended up recommending is this actually really good investigation by Wired magazine. Drew Mirootra and Del Cameron wrote about the 911 calls that are being made out of ICE detention centers around the country.

And it's just because I think a lot of people probably don't have any idea like where these places are, what they look like, what the conditions are on the inside. And obviously, the investigation doesn't cover everything about how it's going, but it gives you a sense for how things go when things are at their most chaotic, when people are at the most vulnerable and desperate. And they said something along the lines of since January, these 10 facilities have collectively placed nearly 400 emergency calls. 50 have involved potential cardiac episodes, 26 seizures, 17 reported head injuries, seven calls describing suicide attempts or self-harm, and six others involving sexual abuse. And again, I think a lot of us, like, we've seen people, I mean, we've seen, you know, the videos of people being swept off the street. And often, that's probably the last time, I'm not the last time you think of them, but like it's really hard to get a sense for what is going on back here. And I just think it's really important reporting, man. Like it was really, really, really shocking to hear about it. And is anybody who's reported on like jails or prisons

before? It can make you really cynical because you're like, oh, there actually are no rules of the world. You know what I was like? Your God is the person that has complete control over you. And if that person chooses to be cruel to you, then you're going to be in for a world or hurt. And so I learned that covering prisons and jails, but I was reminded of that. that through this reporting about like what some people are having to go through right now. So very serious, not a lot of fun reading, but really important reading, I thought. So kudos to those folks at Wired. Yeah, I can't wait to read that story. I'm going to go a very different direction, Joel. Okay. And do some minor log rolling. I'm doing some norm shattering.

You get to make the decision when you're going to break president. Now, if you've done it, next time I might get to do something. So okay. It's a minor norm shattering. But I got a special magazine in the mail today, and it's one that you and I saw growing up. Oh, man. Don't even tell me. Did you have a checkout choice? Yeah, I already got mine. It's Dave Campbell's Texas football. Oh, I love it. And for those not lucky enough to grow up in Texas, this was the thing that when you went to the supermarket, you saw at Kroger, H.E.B. in the checkout stand. There was TV guide, which nobody wants to buy anymore. There was Tic Tacs, which I guess some people want to buy, But there was Dave Campbell's Texas football, this, you know, wedding magazine-sized Bible of Texas football.

Oh, man. And Dave Campbell's claim to fame is that there was a write-up about every single high school football team in the state of Texas. Six-man football teams, six-man private school football teams. There's a lot of analysis. But I want to direct you to one capsule, which is a school, I believe, is near and dear to your heart. Houston-Strake Jesuit. Oh, no. Well, what's the year's going to look like for us? Is that where you played football, Mr. Anderson?

It is. Yeah, Strait Jesuit college prep, man. The Crusaders. We're still the Crusader. We haven't had a reckoning about the Crusaders. No, no. I can't say that they have at that August Jesuit institution. I'll give you just a couple of lines here. Strait Jesuit is fresh off one of its best seasons since joining the UIL. And although a strong senior class has moved on, there are some quality pieces in the fold. Okay.

And this will appeal to you. The headliner is the return of running back Hebert. I hope I'm saying this man's name right. John Hebert. Yes. 3,532 yards, 40 touchdowns rushing. One of the best single season rushing performances in state history. He's back for an encore.

But expect a lot of loaded boxes to try to slow him down. The strike breaks in a new QB. Man, my homeboy came out here a few weeks. weeks ago, a couple weeks ago, we played football together, and straight. He ended up going on to play at Wake Forest a little bit. And, man, we were talking about Hebert. We were like, man, is this kid for real? You know what I'm saying? We were just being looking at his clips. I was like, I'm a bad motherfucker, man. So yeah, okay, John Hebert. I'm excited, you know? Do they have a number that you wore that he gets to wear, like 88 with the Cowboys?

No, nothing like that. You know, my number was number 12, and I picked it because when I went out that day, somebody had already taken number 30, which I'd wore the year before. I went tripping. Not a big deal, so I won number 12. So it hasn't been retired and nothing like that. I think, and I don't think it's one of those numbers remembered that fondly, to be honest. All right, he is Joel Anderson. I'm Brian Curtis. Prodaxia Magic by Kyle Crichton. On Monday, Shoemaker's Back.

We're going to announce a little feature here where we explore one of the best and most famous pieces of sports journalism of the 21st century. You're not going to want to miss that. Plus, of course, more lukewarm takes about the media. See you next Thursday, Joel. See you, man. Thank you.