What A Day - Morrison Talks and Deadspin Walks

Episode Date: October 31, 2019

Big impeachment updates: Alexander Vindman tells Congress that the White House hid details of Trump’s perfect call, and we tell you what’s to come in must-see T (T is testimonies).  Deadspin writers resign en masse following a letter from their corporate owners telling them to “stick to sports."  And in headlines: Epstein plot thickens, Kamala downsizes, and Obama doesn’t want you fighting in his menchies.

It's Thursday, October 31st. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And this is What A Day. Akilah, what's your Halloween costume this year? It's an homage to Beyonce's Coachella performance, The Homecoming Show, both weekends, pink and yellow. It's a lot. I can't really describe it. This is a 15-minute show. Yeah. On today's show, the day ahead in impeachment news,

why a group of writers for the sports news site Deadspin are resigning, and then the headlines. Later today, the House will vote to formalize the rules around the impeachment inquiry. It's the first official vote on the matter. We're also expecting testimony from Tim Morrison, a national security aide, who's the second White House official to answer questions from Congress on the Trump-Ukraine scandal. In short, it's going to be a big day in what's already been a big week for the ongoing impeachment inquiry. So, Gideon, before we get to what's going down today, let's catch up a little bit on the state of play here.

Yeah. So first off, Alexander Vindman, the top Ukrainian expert on the National Security Council, testified on Tuesday. The testimony was important for two different reasons. One, Vindman is the first White House official who listened to that July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky to actually testify to what he heard. And secondly, he reportedly told House investigators that the White House's transcript of that call left out some major details. And that was noted in the ellipses when they released that transcript that people were calling a call summary a while ago. Got it. Those missing details include references to Joe Biden and Burisma, the company that Hunter Biden was on the board of. Now, the important thing here is that Vindman didn't say that he knew of any motive as to why the details were removed, didn't go that far,

but he did say that he tried unsuccessfully to make sure that those words were added back in, like finishing somebody's homework. This is important because it suggests that the White House may have tried to shield or cover up some of the details of this call after it had happened. Yeah, it sounds pretty shady.

Yeah. The whistleblower complaint that started this whole saga also said that the White House moved that transcript into a secure server in order to make it accessible to fewer people. Again, just more and more little pieces of evidence that they knew something may have been amiss after the phone call happened. And Wednesday night, reporting from The Washington Post indicated that a White House lawyer was the one who had moved it after Vindman raised concerns about the contents of the call. So the testimony from Vindman, on top of all of the other explosive testimonies from other officials, has House Democrats feeling pretty strong about the inquiry. And so today, they're getting ready to vote on it for the first time. What's this vote mean?

It's the first time that the House as a whole is going to really assess, are they for or against the impeachment inquiry? That means we're anticipating that almost all Democrats are going to vote yes. I think there are some on the margins who are in more moderate districts that, you know, might try to save themselves a little bit going into reelection next year, and they might not. But most importantly, too, after the vote happens, the resolution is going to lay out two separate phases of where we can anticipate that this goes from here. The first would be that the Intelligence Committee is going to start taking some public testimony with public hearings beginning as early as the week of November 11th. Oh, that sounds really interesting. I'm excited. Yeah, it's going to it's going to kind of connect the dots for people. Yeah. Like, you know, you're going to get to turn on the TV potentially,

and you can see these people that are referenced in all these articles potentially sitting in front of a committee and answering questions. Yeah, it should make our job easier. Yeah, I will no longer have to read. I learn visually. Thank you. Thank you, Adam Schiff. Then that committee is going to take all of its findings, all of its transcripts, all the other evidence that they can get, and give it over to the Judiciary Committee, which leads us into phase two of what they're laying out. The Judiciary Committee is then

going to consider at some point whether they would recommend articles of impeachment and what specifically those articles would be. Now, throughout this process, as we have begun to understand, Trump's legal team is going to be able to participate. They're giving them that opportunity. So that means cross-examination of witnesses and the ability to mount a defense of the president. However, Trump's lawyers are going to be blocked, according to the committee chairs, if Trump himself keeps trying to put roadblocks in front of this, if he keeps saying, hey, don't comply with the subpoena, hey, don't go testify to this committee. Yeah, I mean, that sounds like it's going to get pretty spicy. But even before then,

there's a big testimony on the docket today. Tim Morrison, the senior National Security Council official handling Russian affairs, will testify behind closed doors. What can we expect from him? Yeah, so Tim Morrison is seen as a key witness in all of this because he would be the second White House official to testify who is on that infamous Trump-Zelensky call. And on Wednesday, before he's even set to go in, Morrison reportedly decided to resign. So he'll basically just be able to say whatever he wants. Yeah, presumably, presumably, it's, you know, Morrison unchained, uncut. According to some testimony from another witness

last week as well, Morrison alerted lawyers at the White House's National Security Council about the alleged pressure from Trump on Ukraine. So now when Morrison shows up, Democrats are going to be asking him about that. They're going to try to corroborate the other stuff that they had heard from other witnesses to see if that was true, what Morrison's impression of it was, all that stuff. So getting his testimony is an important step for them because it adds that additional firsthand account of everything that's gone on here. Got it. Secondly, House investigators are going after an even bigger fish with an even bigger mustache,

John Bolton, the former National Security Advisor. So if in the coming weeks testimony is going public and House investigators are starting to stack up more and more people closer and closer to the president, the Democrats' case on all of this could be getting a lot stronger. That's what we're going to be keeping a lookout for in the coming days and weeks. And now to some ads. All right. So today's sponsor is Babbel.

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If you care about sports, good and interesting writing, and spend any time online at all, you're likely familiar with Deadspin. This week, a group of prominent writers there resigned en masse following a letter from their corporate owners that told staff to, quote, stick to sports. The edict came after staffers posted an article on the site lamenting a recent decision by management to allow for sound on autoplay ads that ruined user experience, according to staffers and readers and every person I've talked to that's alive. Staffers also invited readers to email management to voice their displeasure. Yeah, those ads are so annoying. Like, you can never find the tab, and it just makes me want to murder.

Yeah, it's just constant noise while you're digging around on the internet. Digging is what you do on the internet, yeah. Deadspin is part of the former Gawker family, along with sites like Jezebel and Gizmodo. It's gone through several different owners. The current owners are a private equity firm called Great Hill Partners, who bought Deadspin and those partner sites earlier this year and formed a management company called G.O. Media. And ever since, there's been a lot of tension. You want to explain the background of that, Akilah? Yeah. So there's tension over the new executive team promoting

their friends, over the writers on the site. And really, there's tension over the new executive team promoting their friends, over the writers on the site. And really, there's tension over management's vision of what the site should be in spite of what's made it successful thus far. So Deadspin is the now defunct Gawker's sister site, and they're both known for being no holds barred. The writers there write about sports. They write about culture. They write about politics. They write from a very strong point of view. And they're good. Yeah, but they also write about their own management. In this case, lambasting a choice by management to do autoplay ads in order to meet ad targets for

farmer's insurance. Is that the J.K. Simmons one? I don't even know. Management was not happy about the heat, so they sent a memo company-wide this week that said, quote, where such subjects touch on sports, they are fair game for Deadspin. Where they do not, they are not. We have plenty of other sites that write about politics, pop culture, the arts, and the rest, and they're the appropriate place for such work. It's crazy, too, because I was reading, I think the Times or somebody else reported it, that the concourse, which is the non-sports part of Deadspin, those posts on there averaged twice as many views as other Deadspin posts

and made up only about one of every 50 Deadspin posts. Yeah, so what are they so mad about? Yeah, if you're making a capitalistic argument about this, that falls flat on its face. Deadspin writers were obviously not happy about all this. They started lighting up the internet and the site with a bunch of non-sports-related content tagged Stick to sports. Afterwards, management fired Deadspin's top editor Barry Pacheski, who had been at the company for a decade. And now we have several other top writers,

including one who wrote a great investigative piece about management, all stepping down in protest. Want to go through some of the statements of the writers? Yeah. So the Gizmodo Media Group Union that represents writers at Deadspin and the network of related sites put out a statement saying, quote, stick to sports is and always has been a thinly veiled euphemism for don't speak truth to power. Twitter responses have been hell of a fire. David Roth, a writer at Deadspin, tweeted, if I owned a very popular website that I hated, I would simply sell it.

Kyle Wagner, a sports writer for the New York Daily News and former editor at Gizmodo and Deadspin tweeted, Of all the stupid ways Deadspin could meet its inevitably stupid end, sabotaged by the dumbest man alive because he sucked at selling cut rate insurance ads is a travesty. Deadspin deserved the chance to sabotage itself on its own terms. End quote. All fave. And in response, management apparently shut off comments on Deadspin deserved the chance to sabotage itself on its own terms, end quote. All fave. And in response, management apparently shut off comments on Deadspin. They put out this ridiculous statement where they said they were, quote, excited about Deadspin's future. Read the room.

And apparently tried to bury this post from a former editor calling the GeoMedia CEO Jim Spanfeller a herb. You have Google. It's on to me. It's not just Deadspin where editorial staff are having to succumb to the whims of new ownership that seemingly just don't care about the sites that they're buying. Gio closed up Splinter, its only politics site earlier this year, literally before a presidential election. Sports Illustrated's new owners gutted their staff to try to create some weird content farm. Akilah, is there any sense of what the fix can be here? I mean, you really hit the nail on the head.

Digital media is at a reckoning point. Megan Greenwell, a former editor-in-chief at Deadspin who's now at Wired, wrote the now infamous essay titled The Adults in the Room as her last contribution to the site earlier this year. In it, she details the ways in which billionaire ambition and cost-cutting can destroy the media sites that everyone loves. I spoke to Megan about what's going on at Deadspin and in digital media overall. I asked her if she sees a better way forward. Here's a clip. I have to think there's going to be a turn back. And if Deadspin plays some role in this, like what greater compliment to the site

is there? You know, some sort of turn back toward we can't operate like this. We can't let, you know, the same five rich dudes suck up everything that used to be independent. We talked about whether an employee-owned model could work, but startup funding for something like that is still a big unanswered question. Right. In the meantime, Megan is focused on her former colleagues. I asked her about how they're doing. Here's what she had to say.

You know, they did a really brave thing, and it was really, really hard. And I think we're all kind of a wreck right now, honestly. And people have been just wildly supportive with tweets and emails and sending us money for our bar tab. If you're a fan of Deadspin, make yourself heard on social media. Throw the writers some drink money. If you're a hiring manager, maybe scoop these writers up and give them the space to do the kind of writing we all love them for. And unionize your damn newsroom. And now let's wrap up with some headlines.

Headlines. Former Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos, a young D.C. upstart whose claim to fame is lying Headlines. disclose contacts he had with Russian intermediaries during the presidential election, and he later spent 12 days in jail for it. It's sad, because the convict-to-congressman thing would be actually pretty inspiring if it was about anyone except my man Young Russiagate. Yeah. Well, the 44th president wants us to log off. At an Obama Foundation summit in Chicago on Tuesday, former President Barack Obama took issue with the online call-out culture of 2019. Here's what he said. There is this sense sometimes of the way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people. And that's enough. Like if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn't do something right

or used the word wrong verb or... Then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself because, man, you see how woke I was. I called you out. So, yeah, keep fighting in the replies for hours on end. But remember, Obama is watching and he might roast you. R.I.P. my menchies. Forensic pathologist hired byrey epstein's brother has reported that epstein's autopsy points to homicide and that his injuries are quote extremely unusual in suicidal hangings and could occur much more commonly in homicidal strangulation this goes against the official report from new york city's chief medical examiner who says the convicted sex offender

committed suicide but it will give more fuel to conspiracy theorists who have never accepted the autopsy results and if the conspiracy is, we definitely need to revisit other conspiracy theories, like the one that says Avril Lavigne was replaced by an actress named Melissa Vandala in 2003. Read the facts, see the images, find your truth, send me some emails, call me, tell me when you find Vandala. Honestly, I think that Avril just got a little older, you know? Why you gotta go and make things so complicated? The candidate who said, America doesn't want to witness a food fight, they want to put food on their table, is now having trouble putting food on her campaign's table. Senator Kamala Harris laid

off dozens of aides at her Baltimore HQ on Wednesday, so she has the resources she needs to stay competitive in Iowa. She will continue an aggressive national fundraising campaign to I will also be moving my staff to Des Moines. Surprise! The Washington Nationals won the World Series in their first ever appearance this Wednesday, beating the Houston Astros by 6-2. That's awesome, but it's no stretch to imagine that they got a big boost thanks to one fateful visit from President Donald Trump. Ah, just kidding. That was a whole stadium of people booing, and I was making a joke. And those are the headlines.

That's all for today. We are new, so if you like the show, make sure you subscribe, give us a rating, leave a review, poke us on Facebook, and tell your friends to listen. By the way, if you are into reading, and not just savage burns about Jim Spanfeller like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash newsletters.

I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And that's how you get the candy. What A Day is a product of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tun is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our senior producer is Katie Long. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.