A Super Bowl Review, the Will Lewis Era Ends With a Thud, and the Long, Strange Journey of Tucker Carlson.

David yes what was your favorite part of the Will Lewis era um I loved it when he fired all those frauds though sorry I was doing my right wing podcast before I walked in here um I don't do I have to have a favorite part um that that's a that's That's really a tough question. What was the best thing Will Lewis did at the Washington Post? It was that quote he gave us that we cited 900 times about how nobody's reading your stuff. Yeah, yeah. That was big. That was a good one. Got anything else? Third Newsroom? No. Oh, Third Newsroom was pretty great. as a bit or comedy or as a newsroom well the third newsroom was was incredible because not only was it like super offensive to the sensibilities of a place to watch the Washington Post but it was also like not interesting at all like it was a real like web 1.0 sort of idea of the way we're going to modernize you know um uh and just to frame it in such a way I mean, it's an ego-driven move, right? I'm going to frame it in such a way that it makes it seem like it's this great innovation. But the framing only served to make your staff super angry. You know? It was so bad. It was sort of symptomatic of the whole thing. I don't know. He's gone now, though, right? I mean, is him attending the Super Bowl on the list of favorite parts of the Willow is there? Oh, that might be number one. Because it was just so perfect. yeah just so perfect if you have not been following the Will Lewis saga he was the publisher of the Washington Post until 5.33 on Saturday afternoon when he sent the following email no subject David it begins like this all after two years of transformation at the Washington Post now is the right time for me to step aside two years of transformation now my first thought was does everybody get their jobs back now that Will Lewis is stepping aside sorry I shouldn't laugh but yeah yeah it's that kind of grim gallows humor laugh because 300 journalists went out the door on Wednesday and on Saturday Will Lewis is stepping aside Well, it's a ridiculous, I mean, it's obviously it's a joke question, right? But it would have some grounding in reality if you assume that the layoffs were all Will Lewis's idea and they were kind of capricious, right? But I think that most people sort of assume that this came from an even higher level than him. And he was sort of not the fall guy, but the executioner involved. although the fall guy conspiracy theory i guess it would have some currency now right that we're that he's just he was there to do to do all the layoffs and then get fired you know and then walk away so that then they could put somebody else in his place that doesn't have the baggage or something um uh i i'm not saying that's true but i'm certainly i'm saying that's certainly not that certainly not beyond the pale for someone even of will lewis's stature to accept a job under those criteria, right? And if we're adding roles, the guy who failed to turn around the Washington Post to improve its financial position over a period of two years and save those jobs or some of those jobs. Yeah, I think the conspiracy theory line would say that it was never the goal anyway, but yes, you're absolutely right. But that's what's so funny, right? Like if you go in fully for the idea that Jeff Bezos wants to harm the Washington Post. Sure. If he wants to make the Washington Post less relevant because he has a financial interest in doing it. If you go for that theory, surely he wants an engaged publisher to carry out that theory. Like, publisher goes to the Super Bowl, it's not part of the plan. I mean, that to me is like one step too many. if you're if you're if you're bezos you're like oh this guy's at nfl honors a day after the sports section went kablooey oh yeah i mean that that just doesn't add up and it to me it's much it's a much easier line to go bezos looks and goes this is not the person i want running the washington post anymore yes this is whatever my plan is for this paper whatever if if there is a plan and we may be assuming too much that there is much of a plan but if whatever my plan is, this is not the person who's going to execute it. Right. I mean, all those salaries, it's been pointed out many times, all the people that got laid off, all the losses that the Washington Post, either theoretically or concretely, has suffered over the past couple of years is just a vanishingly small, like just deductible on Jeff Bezos' tax return, right? Like it's meaningless money to him. So, yeah, I mean, it's But, you know, far be it from a billionaire to look at anything they buy and say, like, oh, I guess those losses are cutting into my caviar budget or whatever. I mean, like it's you could imagine if you wanted to if he wanted to buy like the Kentucky Derby winner and he came with a training staff and grooming staff of 100 people. He'd be like, no, I really just want the horse. Yeah, I don't really need all these people. I want to be able to tell people I own the horse. You're not talking about journalism, are you? yes yeah in this case journalism in this case journalism is journalism that's the sort of the making here uh how this went down is fascinating so will lewis was not on the zoom call on wednesday february 4th when posties learned that the sports section was shutting down that the book review was gone that there were going to be deep cuts to metro and ford that was february 4th on february 5th will lewis was at the super bowl sure more specifically he was at nfl honors which is the league's attempt to have its own oscar style ceremony where they give out the mvp and stuff yeah i mean this is a terrible look i mean just absolutely ridiculous certainly there was more of a I'm not saying it was justified him being there, but when you asked the obvious follow-up question, which is why the hell did he do that, there's more of a reason. I mean, going to the Super Bowl is obviously cool, like whatever, but to go to these Super Bowl events when they're in the San Francisco area and it's probably going to be a melting pot for a certain sort of rich people, it has a little bit more allure for someone like him? Would that be safe to say? Well, he goes every year, though. because as I wrote my piece last week, he was in New Orleans. Yeah. And the year before that, he was in Las Vegas because he met with the Washington Post sports writers there too. So, yes, there is a, you know, I'm among the moguls. I'm among people that might do business with the Washington Post. But there's also... Of course, I might give you my next job. Yeah, but go on. Well, now, yeah. But there's also this idea that Will Lewis likes ball. Yeah. Which is the irony that I was trying to point out in the piece last week. It's like the guy who presided over the closure of the sports section loves sports. That's crazy. And had this Iron Man streak of Super Bowls that he was apparently intent on not breaking this year, despite the fact that the sports section had closed the day before. Yeah. It's just unbelievable. and you know when i when i was what i was trying to recreate that scene you know in new orleans from last year he invited the washington post sports writers to have drink with him and all these sports writers are so anxious because the kamala harris endorsement has been pulled by bezos himself people are starting to walk out the door the paper seems like it's on the ropes and all will lewis wanted to talk about was sports yeah and they're going this is this is cool to have FaceTime with the boss, but it's also miserable because we're not getting any answers about the paper. So now we one-upped that by closing the section and then going to the Super Bowl. There was nobody left to talk ball with except Adam Kilgore, who got sent to the big game and got to file to a section, as he pointed out on Twitter, doesn't even exist anymore. Listen, maybe Will Lewis likes ball but he just likes ball when it's conveyed through like a culture section piece about the broader meaning of ball to society well he does now because the sports department such as it is has three people yeah and i guess they're filing to style other funny part of this i'm not sure how many people at nfl honors would recognize will lewis on site yes i'm not sorry can i go back for one second please have you ever how many times have you had like your editor switch midstream at your various jobs like it's a it's a just a really uncomfortable situation to be in because you have this shorthand you have a level of comfort with them but i mean i can speak to this probably better than you even can having gone from editors who are wrestling fans to editors who are not wrestling fans who are just the very good editors who are happy to help me out you know it's a very odd situation and that's now the situation that the entire three-person staff of the washington post sports team is under we're just filing to culture editors you know i think whatever like something like hopefully we can find somebody that has watched a football game oh my god and i guess the job now is write something that someone who is reading style or just somebody who's like interested in trump news wants to read and by the way that would have been a totally fine way to reinvent the Washington Post sports section before you killed it. You could have gone to the Post sports writers and said, look, this paper is more and more about people subscribing because they want their Trump fix. So the sports stories you need to write aren't Wizards gamers. They are sports stories that somebody like that would be interested in. In fact, the sports section was already producing stories like that. Yeah. Lots of stories like that. They could have produced more. They could have produced just that. let's just close the section let's not do that anyway back to NFL honors the athletics Nikki Javala was at this event Nikki Javala had covered the commanders for the post in the Will Lewis era so she snaps a photo she tweets it and my question for you is without that photo does Will Lewis still have a job is he still editor of the watch i'll leave the conspiracy theorizing aside um i think it's it's an interesting question if i had to bet on it i would say he probably still has a job for him to lose if he were if he were if he was employed in earnest by jeff bezos i love that phrase and if it were close enough that that picture could have lost him could have cost him his job then i think it's fair to assume that jeff bezos was shocked at the response to the layoffs to some extent or you know to the to the reaction that it got um but knowing that he signed off on it he probably wasn't super eager to do anything about it or maybe he didn't have time to fully process it but that but but yeah if that's the case then yes that photo costs you your job like that's all that that is that's it's it's such an easy move for someone like bezos to make as soon as there's a reason to do it well there were two critiques of will lewis going around the post newsroom one was will lewis has bad ideas uh-huh the other critique was we're not sure what will lewis is doing so then when you take that critique and you put it in the form of a picture taken at the super bowl geez yeah it's powerful that's what newspaper photographers do you take a big complicated thing and you take a picture that communicates an idea that's what the post used to do before they laid off their staff photographers, I should say. God. But there we are. I saw a couple people make the comparison between Will Lewis and Nico Harrison. So laying off it's actually more than 300, right, is how it came down. Like it was 300 union members, but there is many more people that were laid off than that. That's right. Paul Farhi has pointed that out on Twitter, that it may be closer the half of Washington Post reporters because some of them were not in the guild because they were reporting from abroad, etc. So yeah, the corollary is that firing 300 plus people is the Luka Doncic trade. That it was like his just absolutely inane brainchild to turn things around or to reshape the institution, his image. and then he actually had to and even though the owner was behind him at the time the owner was like okay now someone's I got it there's no way this goes forward unless I fire you. I think the expendability part is crucial here I also think and I said this when Bill and I were talking about Luca which happened about one year ago now I just I swear to God I said this on Bill's pod I was like the Nico thing reminds me of media executives who screw up people's lives and then they leave and then they're just like oh well that didn't work out and meanwhile everybody's job and career and family and insurance is just messed up yeah he that that to me is what this reminds me of why he reminds me of nico harrison um apart yeah it's true it's true it's like there's and they're the giant things he did and there's a more like you said like you implied with the health insurance and everything else there's the smaller things that happen along the way that don't get the attention that just mess with regular people's lives yeah i mean it's it's absolutely like wrestling i mean wrestling like like mavs fans complain that that that that he switched the trainer team the training team because he was worried that the old trainer was like more popular than him in the office or whatever uh or was more connected to dirk and you know had more of an institutional history than him but fans complain about that as like a like you traded a player it's like a gamesmanship sort of argument think of all the people that lost their jobs the head trainer is fine, think of all the other people that are now unemployed that have to figure out their futures, that have to move their families across the country because you just were insecure around this dude and you just walk away it's never going to matter to you as much as it matters to them No, I mean, I think people, again, going back to basketball was really hoped. I mean, in an evil way, I hope that Nico never lives this down, that everywhere he goes, people are just like shouting fire Nico at him. But dude was well compensated for those shouts. You know, I'm sure the same is true of Will Lewis. I will be employed again. Nico Harris may never be employed in that same capacity again. But I'm sure Will Lewis will. Two interesting questions going forward. One, I think I asked you this last week, I'll ask you again. What does Jeff Bezos still want with The Washington Post? Well, somebody's got to write reviews of the Melania documentary and whatever else he does. I mean, it's he's going to write that personally. You're saying, yeah, we're missing some people. I, you know, I can I can write a I can write a lead and a kicker. I mean, listen, the the power billion to billionaires like the world's richest men, whoever else you put in his genre i guess that whole lineup of folks at the inauguration last year is sort of the top line right sam and zuckerberg and uh who else was there elon was elon standing with them i don't remember if elon had been there he was there in spirit or in body or both um but obviously they have an incredible outsized amount of power uh in the political sphere or just in general and and maybe more than ever in terms of their wealth right i mean i mean in proportion to their wealth they're richer than anybody's ever been but um their drive to sort of reshape policy for like marginal gains on their wealth is i don't think we've ever seen you see anything exactly like it in in u.s history um and you know if you're going to spend whatever percentage of your fortune to lobby for a tax break or to lobby for like whatever like like that you that you think will help you in your business world there's no reason why you wouldn't think that like the ongoing power to to thumbs up or thumbs down the editorial pages candidate endorsement for presidency is like i think that's something you would want to hold on to right i mean that's more meaningful than like a lot of cash in a lot of ways it would steer like if he just can't. I mean, if whatever, like the Democrat establishment assumes that he is going to have the power, he's going to continue to wield the power to approve endorsements at the Washington Post moving forward. Will that affect who the party nominates? Will that affect who they run for higher office? I mean, that's an incredible amount of power to throw around. It is. I think it's probably it was more powerful before because allegedly we're not going to have endorsements at all. and we have this sort of tame opinion section that's you know just pooping out right-wing editorials and i'm not sure that that's i don't know how i don't know how influential that is to be honest i mean it's something it's the washington post opinion section but it's like is it just i mean if you're him if the washington post does anything to piss off trump which it will do because it still has a ton of reporters who are good at breaking news as soon as it pisses off Trump, Donald Trump's not going to be like, hey, thank you so much for doing what you did with the endorsement, the opinion section. I'm not mad at you for this. He's just going to be mad again. He's already mad at CBS News. Yeah. I mean, so I don't I don't I just think if you're if you're Bezos, he got mad at CBS News like 15 minutes after they brought in Barry Weiss. He's still mad. I mean, you're just like you. I think you'd just be like, you know what? Sell the paper. I can do all the other things. I can buy 19 Melania docs, all of which are directed by Brett Ratner. I can continue to manage my relationship with Donald Trump and not need the headache. This is just wishful thinking because then the paper would have some direction. Question number two, by the way, is this. There are still people running the paper, namely executive editor Matt Murray. Boy, what a job he's got now. One, You've got to do whatever you possibly can to win back the newsroom. I'm sure that's even on the board at this point. You've got to keep people at the Washington Post who have just been told 19 different ways, this ain't the place to be anymore if you've got options. Yeah. And if you accept Will Lewis's and Matt Murray's statement about the place the Washington Post was in, financially, editorially, and otherwise, you have to be a wartime consigliere. Yeah. You have to have ideas. And I listened to his whole conversation with Dylan Byers over on the Grill Room podcast, which I encourage people to go listen to this. Man, I know that was kind of about what happened and revisiting it. That guy better have a bunch of ideas about fixing the newspaper. Yeah. And steering it fully into the 21st century. Sure. And I love to hear what those are because there sure weren a lot when it came to the sports department at least that filtered down to the people i talked to yeah so what do you got oh it going to be video now it's going to be audio now it's going to be multimedia we're doing this we're doing politics brian hear me out a fourth newsroom oh man uh we did get a little bonus media piss test over on the grill room here's matt murray talking about jeff bezos i lived through multiple eras at the wall street journal of the end of the wall street journal right uh it was 20 years ago and i remember it but many fewer and fewer people do it was 20 years ago that the wall street journal was done as a publication because it was soldier rupert burdock who was for the image of 20 years ago whatever people think of jeff bezos rupert was like jeff on steroids there you go jeff bezos on steroids is jeff bezos not on steroids i don't know okay i don't know jeff bezos i'm joking i'm not i don't need a lawsuit although that'd be a pretty funny one um yeah wow thanks to uh jim baumbach and vince tuss for pointing that one out all right david coming up on the press box what were our highlights from a super bowl blowout the halftime show or should i say shows the announcers the green day concert we'll talk a little olympics we'll talk about what has happened to savannah Guthrie's mother. Plus, Jason Zengerle of The New Yorker is here to talk about his new book about the long and strange journey of one Tucker Carlson. All that and much more on the Press Box at Port of the Rigger Podcast Network. Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, producers Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin here. David, our friend Danny Heifetz was at Ringer headquarters yesterday. And I went up to Young Heifetz and I said this. I said, I'm not sure there is going to be a single play or image that I will remember from this year's Super Bowl. I don't know if there's one. Do you have anything? Yeah, will you remember anything from that game? Dude, I don't even know. Like, what would even be in the running? So I feel like the highlight we were all waiting for was Kenneth Walker running free to the end zone in the fourth quarter. and then it got called back for a whole day. Absolutely true. By a crew that hadn't thrown many flags all night. That would have been the highlight. He was the MVP. It was just a perfect capstone, but we didn't get it. I mean, the Seahawks, you know. And also, I mean, no offense to Kenneth Walker, but he's just not like the most famous guy, right? I mean, part of that, part of it, for something to live in memory is you kind of have to attach it often. to, you know, a sort of well-known player. Who was the most famous person playing in the Super Bowl? I mean, judging by the coverage? Drake May or Sam Darnold, I guess. I mean, whatever. But, like, it's, I mean, Drake May because of, you know, just the power of Patriots fandom. and sam donald because the narrative that had been being written about him for so long i was gonna say even donald like there's a version of the story where like donald's you know trophy celebration or his post one of his post game interviews like his post game interview on on espn or whatever was was or uh on peacock was like so memorable that that's the thing you remember but even he was just so placid through the whole thing that it was just like there There's nothing there. He was very placid. And if Sam Darnold walked up to your doorstep tomorrow, would you absolutely know that was Sam Darnold? Oh, I would know Sam Darnold. I mean, he's... So if somebody rang the doorbell and it was Sam Darnold, you would say, I know who you are. You are the quarterback of the Seahawks. I mean, I might say you look like Sam Darnold. Do you know you look... Speaking of the player, like, dude, they had a whole big thing on the pregame show, a long interview with Malcolm Butler because he was obviously a huge player the last time the Pats and the Seahawks played. Malcolm Butler was more talked about than any defensive player for about four months. Even going into the next season, he was getting benched and that was the story and all this kind of stuff. I was watching him interview. He's a little bit older, obviously, but I was like, I definitely could not pick Malcolm Butler out of a lineup ever as, as like as big of a name as he was at that moment in time. The whole strangeness, strange quality of the Superbowl was illustrated by Drake may throwing the game ending interception and NBC's Chris Collins worth giving us this. I've got nothing for you here. That was such a bad pass, I have no analysis. Yeah. It wasn't even a memorable Larry Brown-style Super Bowl interception. No, it was like a, I don't want to say why did he do that out loud, but it doesn't make any sense. It was great, and you could tell Collinsworth had looked at the replay several times, just kind of laying out, let the moment settle in, and it's just like, yeah, I got nothing. It was interesting to watch Collinsworth do that game because he was really good in the first quarter. He realized very quickly, this is going to be a defensive game. Yeah. Neither of these offenses can do anything, especially the Patriots, who just leapt all over that. Yeah. And then there was kind of nothing really to add to that for two and a half hours. You know, if you're trying to tell the story of a game, if that's the goal of any broadcast, he correctly told the story of the game. The problem is the story didn't change. Yeah, it's a short story. Yeah, I mean, you could talk about Darnold's escapability. You could talk about Will Campbell, the poor left tackle for the Patriots, and how he just could not block. But other than that, you were doing the same things over and over again. You could highlight who's playing defensive end for the Seahawks. You could tell the Demarcus Lawrence story, talk about the Seahawks' DBs. But it was just the kind of same story. Very, very tough for announcers to deliver an A-plus performance during a game like that. At least to us normies who think of a game like that as being less interesting than a 45-42 shootout. Yeah. But I thought Collinsworth and Tirico, too, almost, it's almost, you know, we almost don't even need to compliment Tirico anymore. I thought they were really good. I thought they made the best out of the game they had. Yep. It just wasn't terribly interesting. what was interesting was what went on around the game NBC started with a feature that I kind of liked where they just had people talking about what the Super Bowl means to them some kind of corny about that but this is this just occasion of civic life that we all watch and people just talking oh yeah I remember when that happened I remember when that happened I kind of liked it then we got some famous players of your like tom brady and the mannings steve young coming out of what looked like a food truck yep then a green day concert started what'd you make of that love green day i don't know it was just it was on the field before the game yeah yeah i mean listen they gotta they gotta do something to fill the air right um but it was like we were in we were in sports mode by that point this was not the you know five and a half hour pregame green day concert it was like all right it's time for football but first green day yeah if i can point a phrase no i thought i thought it was good i thought it was good i mean it is really it's true i mean it's sort of a dumb thing to say that like the super bowl has become somehow more monocultural as everything else has been stripped away from our monoculture right i mean like it wasn't it was all the debate and i'm sure you'll you'll talk about it but the halftime show got um and now i mean like that's obviously just a separate i mean a symptom of our times in a separate way like 10 years ago it wouldn't have been weird to like skip the halftime show probably weirder to skip the commercials but like you know like but it wouldn't have been that weird if you just had like something else to do now it's like dude if you can't tweet or talk at work tomorrow about the halftime show then what was the point of watching the super bowl you know and it's it's it's just the elements of it talking about what the super bowl means to people it's like not only is it more true now than ever but it's true look back and you think back to your super bowl memories it's those things really weirdly stay with you you don't remember everything but you know the commercials that hit the the those big moments they they're more meaningful than so many others of the other sports things that you grew up watching i agree and i think bad money is probably the thing i will remember from the super bowl yeah for sure part of this too and i mentioned this tim miller yesterday on the podcast we did is like we just all feel obligated to have an opinion about everything now like and you know the bad money thing was got sucked into the vortex of politics. There was a time when it was okay just not to have an opinion about the Super Bowl halftime show. Even to be just like, that was awesome. Don't tell anybody else. Yeah, that's great. And I just didn't tweet yet. I didn't tweet on Sunday because I'm just like, you know, it's okay. Nobody's waiting for this. What did Brian think? Brian, what's your favorite Bad Bunny song? Nobody was waiting to hear the answer to that question. I also told Miller this. What is your favorite Bad Bunny song? Now that you have the opportunity. Well, one of those ones he sang on the halftime show that I really liked. Yeah, that first one was great. Did you see the Bad Bunny allies? So this is not the Kid Rock consortium, but the people that were all in, they were watching the halftime show and they tweeted things like, I wish I spoke Spanish so I could understand this. Was that a probe out Bad Bunny comment? It was. Okay. There was Megyn Kelly doing her thing, but there were also pro Bad Bunny forces just being like, I genuinely wish I spoke Spanish right now. There's software to help you if that is something you desire. I know. That's the funniest thing. I mean, listen, I don't want to spend any undue amount of time on the complaint that the halftime show should be in English. like a million people have pointed out that the people that are making that it is a first of all it's a generational it's a it's a rite of passage that every generation pretends they can't understand the words that they're of the songs their kids are listening to right um the fact that it's in spanish is a little bit beside the point then don't tell me that you understood all the words that that anybody that kendrick lamar or aerosmith or fucking you know bruno mars performed during the halftime show uh my guess is that your your you know your perception rate was somewhere around like two percent during any of those things um but yeah i saw somebody that was a couple people doing it for the for the kid for the children angle and um and it's like no no your kids know first of all probably nobody's singing already and if they don't like they don't they know how to find out they don't they don't need any adult's help to figure this out no they don't need rosetta stone They can just look it up on the computer. Yeah, I'm pretty sure Genius.com does the job for you. Did you check out the Turning Point USA alternate halftime at all? I sure did. So the funniest thing was that it started with the national anthem. I know that their whole thing is like, we're, you know, they were doing this for real Americans. Not those people who love Bad Bunny. And I'm like, hey, man, I'm from Texas. I'm a football fan. There is not one real American that hears the anthem at the beginning of the game. And then goes, can we hear the anthem again? Yeah. No matter how jingoistic you are, you don't want to hear that twice. Yeah, no. You don't want to hear that at halftime. No, I mean, they're calling it the All-American Halftime Show. I mean, it's inseparable from the Super Bowl, which already performed multiple national anthems. Then there was the Kid Rock lip sync controversy. I thought my thing was just buffering badly or something. I was like, oh, wait, everybody's. Well, yeah, can I do my can I do in defense of Kid Rock, please? It came out later that this was all pre-recorded, right? This was recorded on a soundstage like hours, like earlier in the day or maybe the day before. I don't know. But but it was pre-recorded. And so my first reaction, I heard that was then why couldn't they fix the lip syncing issue? And then I thought, well, isn't it much more likely that this is not a lip syncing issue, but an editing issue that he actually probably was performing? it appropriately and they just put the wrong piece of video in over the audio maybe i don't know he was there were several times where it was just like a long continuous shot and kid rock was rapping but the mic was at his waist right i'm just saying they played the wrong piece of video they had mold you know they were just like they were their time signature was off or whatever the the um not time signature that is a musical term regardless i'm not sure that it really matters because he definitely lip synced. I mean, it's whether or not he lip synced well, as many professional artists do in such a situation, or whether he was just like so, just performing with such disregard for reality that he just dropped the mic halfway through various sentences or whatever. Yeah, just a weird vibe overall. Also the shorts. Like I'm, you know, I'm a big dress for comfort guy, more so than dressed for the job you want but like i don't know you would just think kid rock would be out there in something special for the all-american super bowl halftime show the set also looks like one of those rob low game shows that fox has that i've never actually watched but i just see the promos for over and over during football yeah it just looked ridiculous it just looks so silly i mean it was like there are all these people also online i think it's more like the detractors of that liberal i mean of that all american halftime show that were like dude it looked like like it turns out there were only like 200 people there i was like yeah it looked like there were about 50 people there like it didn't look impressive at all um no i mean the whole thing was just it's just so so silly and even you know i mean it just affected donald trump couldn't bother to change the channel during his event or whatever it's just kind of tells you all you need to know everybody all the people i mean it's unnecessary that so many people tweeted they weren't going to watch it or support this super bowl and then got called out for comment commenting on it it's just like none of it matters it's all farce it's all performance and that's just sort of where we are and donald trump was watching bad money or at least he yeah he was sitting next to it so yeah when i was watching the commercial wait can i ask a semi-related question please When he's tweeting about Bad Bunny or tweeting about the things that he doesn't like, does anybody ever get him on camera tweeting? Well, that would have been an interesting question last week when he tweeted, you know. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's fair to believe. I mean, whatever. I don't think it makes a ton of difference if he tweeted it or not. I mean, that's a structural flaw that you can lose your job over, whatever. But, yeah, I mean, I think that's believable. I just think it's. that occurred to me during the sewer bowl where it's like they had all these cameras trained on him as he was just sort of like low energy talking to the people at his table and then these like all caps tweets were appearing i was like that would at least be interesting for someone to get a shot of right of him like like like typing it in does he use his thumbs as he uses pointer fingers like i like these interesting stuff i think they dictated and somebody's doing it by the way the night that he tweeted you know what he also tweeted this or he posted on true social this video of a dog coming when it hears the sound of whipped cream coming out of a canister. Did you see that? No. Dan Diamond tweeted that out. It was like, turned out not to be the most alarming thing the president tweeted that night, but it was just like, here's a funny dog video for all of you to enjoy. Courtesy of the president. Oh, my God. I thought of you during the Super Bowl, particularly during the commercial that had Grogu driving a team of Tauntauns. Yes. like the old Budweiser Clydesdales commercial. Yeah. Because you said several Brian and David Super Bowl reviews ago, we're kind of going to have our own Will Lewis Ironman streak going of talking about the Super Bowl. You said that every Super Bowl commercial is now about Super Bowl commercials. Yes. It is about itself. That was a great illustration of that. Absolutely. We're like young and old or admiring it. What else do I have? The famous fan announcing the team as it runs out of the tunnel. We had Chris Pratt do the Seahawks. And for the Patriots, we had Jon Bon Jovi. Our old friend Steve Hyden. He's a Patriots fan? How did I never know? I must have known that. Steve Hyden tweeted, Jon Bon Jovi, a Jersey guy, being a Patriots fan is extremely fraudulent, even by Jon Bon Jovi standards. Yes. also NBC very into hometowns over the course of the night not even just the players announcing their alma maters like they do on Sunday Night Football but every time you saw a graphic of Sam Darnold it said San Clemente, California which is where Nixon lived I was like, listener Doug Galese said that we even got the referee's hometown at one point you're really really leaning into personalizing the uh people on the are you allowed are you allowed to submit your own or do they ask you for your hometown i think it's a matter of record probably maybe not for the refs well i just mean like you know they do the player introductions during games sometimes the players they usually say they're university but sometimes a player will say they're high school or something funny or like whatever like for monday night football or whatever i wonder if they ask you for your like are you allowed to do like to you know maybe you were born in one place but you grew up another place mostly or like can you do the pro wrestling thing for you're like i'm from bad street usa you know parts unknown yeah yeah we could for fort worth we could have done the fort funky town all the cute nicknames cow town cow town uh have you been watching any olympics no okay i mean i feel terrible about it, but when I saw the first when I started seeing headlines, I was just like, we're talking about the qualifiers still, right? I'm so behind. Here's what you need to do. You need to watch the Mixed Doubles Curling Final today. All right. Because the US is in it. It has been unbelievable television. I watched this. My son was like, this is not a real sport. I was like, no, it is. And it's awesome. I watched the semis I believe, and I believe the round before that, it's the US team is Corey Dropkin and Corey TC. I think I saying her name correctly Corey TC The new Corys that great The new Corey They spelled differently The second Corey is from what the AP calls the Curling Haven of Duluth Minnesota More hometowns. That's great. Doesn't curling just like pop off every four years, though? Like, are we crazy for not doing a curling podcast starting like three months ago? We really should have. We need a Duluth correspondent to do it. but that would be fun i'd be into that i was just one more this is one of the this is what i love about the winter olympics like i have no knowledge about the sport i will not think about this for another four years but i am just 100 in let's go yeah wildly entertaining breezy johnson winning the women's downhill what a great name breezy johnson is yeah one thousand percent that was exciting. Here we go. Winter Olympics. What else I have for you, man? I just want to mention the Savannah Guthrie story. I don't know what the hell to say about it, but it is certainly a story. I'll just read you the top of this New York Times story from today. Today show anchor Savannah Guthrie on Monday implored the public to help find her mother, who has been missing for more than a week, saying in a video that she believes she, quote, is still out there. We are at an hour of desperation, Savannah Guthrie said in her plea, which she posted on Instagram. Her 84-year-old mother Nancy Guthrie was abducted from her hometown outside Tucson, Arizona early on February 1st, the authorities have said. Her family last saw her a few hours before Ms. Guthrie had dinner with her older daughter, Annie, and her son-in-law, who dropped her off at the house around 9.50 p.m. Investigators later found a splatter of her blood on the front stoop and said her doorbell camera had been disconnected and removed. shortly before she was apparently taken from her house. And there's been so much reporting around this, around Guthrie's colleagues on the Today Show. Brian Stelter's written a lot about that, about this sheriff in Pima County. There was a good Night New York Times story about him the other day because he has now found himself in the middle of this media vortex. All these reporters and him having to handle a press conference with people asking questions and reporters from all over the world. Anyway, we'll talk more about it later, but I just want to make sure we mention that at least once. A couple more things, Dave, before we get out of here. Media Piss Test. Okay. Media Piss Test 2. We already did one today. Yeah, okay. We got another via Paul Feinberg. This was a headline in Rolling Stone. We are witnessing the imperial presidency on steroids. Thank you, Paul. and in the department of the comics, or the funnies, as we used to call them. The funny papers? Yeah, go on. After the death of Dilbert creator Scott Adams, we asked how many comic strips took place in an office. And alert listener Janice Fiendaka wrote, though the comic is blondie, Dagwood Bumstead is often shown at the office. What is he, an architect? It's like he was always carrying around big tubes. Am I imagining that? How did we forget Dagwood Bumstead? Yeah, he'll go to the office. Yeah, there were bosses, but it's not an office-centric comic strip. Yeah, or a medium, really. I think that's what made Dilbert stand out a little bit. Was Beatle Bailey at the office when that corporal or whatever was yelling at him? He's on duty. I don't know if that counts as the office, but he's clearly at work. Was Hagar the Horrible at the office when he was in the castle? It's more of a sociological question. I don't know quite how to brand that. Yeah. All right. Coming up in 30 seconds, was Tucker Carlson really a great magazine writer? But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the Press Box pod where they are always, always gratefully received. This week's runner-up, David, comes to us from alert listener Hampton. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, a Drake has gotten destroyed in back-to-back Super Bowls. That's pretty good. That's a good one. But this week's winner comes to us from a number of people, including Eric Martin and TK Gore. Halftime began, you will remember, with Bad Bunny holding a football. It's an overworked Twitter joke to write, Bad Bunny has carried for more yards than the Patriots. True. Okay. If you would have also accepted the guy who ran onto the field in the second half has carried for more yards than the Patriots. Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David. After reading some Truman Capote books with you, I turn to a new book about Tucker Carlson. It's still kind of true crime. Go ahead. One that traces his journey, if you will, from magazines to television to X, podcasts, wherever it is that Tucker Carlson is coming to us from. Jason Zengerle is the author of that book. We talked about Tucker and a little bit about our history together. Here's Jason. All right, let me bring in Jason Zengerle. You can read Jason's terrific political stories in The New Yorker. And before that, you could read them in the New York Times magazine. He has got an awesome new book out about Tucker Carlson called Hated by All the Right People. As Jason tells it, Carlson's story is a Russian nesting doll, a media story inside a political story inside a media story again. Jason, welcome to the Press Box. Thanks for having me, Ron. All right. Let's start here. When someone like us talks about what happened to Tucker Carlson, the first thing they always say is, you know, once upon a time, Tucker Carlson was a great magazine writer. Was he really a great magazine writer? Yeah, you know, he really was pretty good. I mean, at the time, we all thought he was great. And I think you're a few years younger than I am. But, you know, back in sort of the late 90s, Washington, D.C., he was writing for a magazine called The Weekly Standard, which was a conservative political magazine. It was kind of the preeminent magazine of American conservatism. And he had an amazing staff. It was founded by Bill Kristol. You know, David Brooks was there. Charles Krauthammer was there. It was all these sort of heavyweights. Tucker was like a junior writer there. And he was not like an ideologue. He was just kind of like a really good craftsman, very good reporter. And a really like gutsy one. He would, you know, take on sort of sacred cows on the right. He wrote this like fantastic takedown of Grover Norquist, who is this very prominent conservative movement leader at the time. He was eventually hired by Tina Brown at Talk Magazine. You know, she has pretty good taste. And when he was writing for her, he did this really like kind of subtly devastating profile of George W. Bush when he was still governor of Texas. He was the front runner to be the Republican nominee. And Tucker kind of portrayed him as this sort of callous, stubborn, ignorant guy. And it's funny. And we were all like, wow, he's great. And in the course of doing this book, I went back, obviously, and reread all those pieces and others, too. I mean, he did a piece for Esquire where he went to Africa with Al Sharpton and Cornel West and members of the Nation of Islam to try to broker a peace treaty in Liberia. So those pieces hold up. They're really, really good. I mean, he was a really excellent magazine writer. It's funny. I went back and read that talk magazine profile of George W. a few years ago. And not only is it really good, it was really brave of somebody like Tucker Carlson, you know, who was, as you say, not an ideologue, but certainly a conservative to write that in 1999. Yeah. Right. When Bush was, you know, very likely going to become the next president of the United States. I mean, that's sort of what stands out about him is he was, you know, he really was in a, and especially I think in conservative media in particular, like there was a real tendency to toe the line and kind of do the establishment's bidding. And Tucker just, you know, didn't do that, which like made him stand out in a way that was impressive. That point in his career, he wanted to be Hunter S. Thompson? I think so. I mean, I, you know, I like kind of joke that if he had been born 20 years earlier, he probably never would have left print journalism. And he would have, you know, because it would have been able to give him the kind of career he wanted. He recognized before, you know, certainly before I did, before a lot of people that print was not was not going to be all that great, a great a career to have. And he, you know, he left it to go to television. But, yeah, he would have been like a Hunter S. Thompson or George Plimpton or Tom Wolfe. I mean, those those were his idols. And I think, you know, given the level that he was performing at when he was very young, I think it's very easy to, you know, imagine him growing into that sort of role. And is it him seeing the media changing? Is it money? What pushes him to cable? Yeah, it's I think it's him seeing the media changing. And I think part of it is definitely money. I mean, he he he has this sort of reputation of coming from money because his his mother, who left his family at an early age, was an heiress of the Miller fortune. And Henry Miller was like the largest landowner over in the United States in the 19th century. He kind of owned all of California. That's Tucker's great, great, great, great, great grandfather, I think. And then his father's second wife was an heiress to the Swanson frozen food fortune. But as I understand it, he actually, both of those fortunes were like fairly depleted by the time he would have come into inheriting it. So I think money was a bit of a driving factor. He started having kids early, and he was always worried about private school tuition and college tuition. But as much as money, I think it was fame and power. He saw that the status that guys like Thompson and Plimpton and Wolfe had achieved through print just wasn't going to be possible anymore. And television was how you got that kind of status. So, yeah, he moved over into cable news. You write in the book, too, that he realizes that he can go on television and toss off a thought and it will have more impact or at least generate a bigger reaction than a piece he would labor over for days and days, which sounds in a way like a preview of the podcast here. yeah i think that definitely was part of it too i think he saw the um the the labor reward kind of ratio um being a lot you know smaller in tv and you know he was he would sweat these pieces obviously and i think you know i think like all writers it was it was it was tough for him um and that's not to say that television is easy i mean i you know people i think like and he himself would always kind of like talk shit about television and you know talk about how stupid everybody was and how easy it was. I mean, I don't think it is like I couldn't do it, but he, but his particular talents, he's very glib. He's very fast on his feet. He has an opinion about anything. I mean, they were so well suited to television. Two things I really loved about the beginning of Carlson's television career. One is this bit of advice you have him getting from Larry King, the late Larry King, which, which is this, the trick is to care, but not too much. give a shit but not really. He viewed Larry King as like a Yoda. I mean, his reference for Larry King was kind of amazing, actually. You also have Carlson studying tape, like he's a draft guru to learn how to do TV. And he's watching Chris Matthews and John McLaughlin, which makes sense in a late 90s, early 2000s context. Would you like to share the other person he was studying in his attempt to learn how to ask questions on television? Ricky Lake, CNN executive, sort of put him up to that. And, you know, and I think he took it seriously. I mean, I think to his print colleagues and his friends at the time, he badmouthed television and talked about how easy it was and how stupid it was. But I do think, like, out of view, he worked really hard to master that medium. And I don't think he wanted people to know that he was doing that. But, you know, he was he spent as much time and effort kind of learning television as he did learning print journalism. He makes a tour of all three cable news networks. I think what most people remember about CNN is Jon Stewart parachuting into Crossfire on October 15, 2004. So right before Election Day, the pits George Bush against John Kerry and humiliating him. I'm here to confront you because we need help from the media and they're hurting us. I made a special effort to come on the show today because I have mentioned this show as being bad. It's not so much that it's bad as it's hurting America. So I wanted to come here today and say, here's just what I wanted to tell you guys. Stop. What did Carlson take away from that encounter? That was, I think, a pretty big inflection point in his life and in his career. I mean, it blew up his career. You know, he he would argue that he wasn't fired from CNN, but they let his contract lapse after that. They canceled Crossfire like a new president of CNN came in and basically said, I agree with Jon Stewart. We're canceling this show. This show actually is hurting America. and you know i think tucker took a couple things from it i think personally it was a source of you know i think real pain and and frustration he really came to resent i think a lot of the people who were his his friends and colleagues kind of in sort of elite media and political circles who he felt did not support him the way he would have liked them to when that happened who didn't sort of get his back. I don't, I mean, in reporting the book, like I do think a lot of people tried to support him and they didn't abandon him the way he kind of thinks they did, or he says they did now, but it planted a little bit of a seed of, you know, resentment towards these people that I think is now, you know, blossomed into something else entirely. But I think that that started there. And I think it also, you know, it, it, it changed the way he thought about doing television and just handling his career. And I mean, you can't separate the Jon Stewart smackdown from the war in Iraq because that that was kind of the public sentiment that Stewart was kind of channeling and voicing the backlash to the war. And Tucker, like, you know, a lot of conservative pundits, most conservative pundits had been a big cheerleader for the war publicly. Privately, he had really, you know, harbored some pretty serious doubts about the wisdom of going into Iraq. But he didn't voice those publicly for two reasons. One, and this I think gets overlooked a little bit, like his best friend and now the person who's now his business partner, this guy named Neil Patel, who was his college roommate. Neil Patel worked for Scooter Libby, who worked for Dick Cheney. And the case for the war, all the misinformation and all that, that came out of Dick Cheney's office. And I think Neil was someone who was telling Tucker, you know, they're our WMD, so he's going to trust his best friend. Number two, in his role on Crossfire, his job, you know, he was on the right, you know, Crossfire for people who are not old like us. It was this debate show and you had a host on the right, a host on the left. And it was the host's job to represent their ideological side and their partisan side. So Tucker was basically just like a Republican, you know, mouthpiece on that show. and he could not have been an opponent of the war and done his job on that show you know because on the left you'd have paul pagala or james carville those are the two left hosts you know saying we shouldn't be going to iraq bush is an idiot and then tucker can't just you know tucker can't agree with that he has to disagree with it so i think he felt you know very like hemmed in and and he felt like he had to support this thing i mean to his credit you know he got off he got off the iraq bandwagon earlier almost than any other conservative pundit. I think nine months in, he went to Iraq to report a story for Esquire, saw things for himself and came back and was like, this is a mistake. This is a disaster. I'm embarrassed. I supported this. I'll never do that again. And I think that was really rare among pundits. Conservative and liberal. I mean, so you and I have known each other for a long time because we worked at the New Republic. and the New Republic was a liberal magazine, but it was definitely a huge cheerleader for the war in Iraq. And the editor at the time was a guy named Peter Beinart, who was, you know, definitely banging the war drums. And he, of course, came to reconsider his view. But I think like the only two pundits I know of who really kind of wrestled with how wrong they were and use that as an occasion to kind of reexamine all of their all of their kind of views are Peter and Tucker. I think most people who supported the war just kind of like went on, you know, like I don't think Tom Friedman really rethought things significantly. I don't know if David Brooks did either. I mean, some people like some conservatives, you know, Bill Kristol and guys like that, like they never really recanted. I think Tucker, he, you know, he used that as an occasion to reexamine everything. When he was at the weekly standard, one of, one of the weekly standards, big projects was to basically like read Pat Buchanan out of the conservative movement. And, you know, And that was something that they were fairly successful at. And after Iraq and Buchanan, of course, had been a big opponent of the war in Iraq. You know, he's an isolationist, America first kind of foreign policy. After things went south in Iraq, after Tucker realized his mistake, I think he started reevaluating everything and kind of looking at the people who he had told he'd been told and who he himself said were wrong, started to sort of wonder, OK, like what else were they maybe right about? And you start to see him kind of shift there on other issues, whether it's free trade or immigration. And he starts kind of hewing or towing more to like a paleo conservative line, like a Buchanan line. And I think so I think Iraq was just kind of a really important moment for him. And I think it's tied up in the Jon Stewart thing. But that, you know, Iraq and Stewart together, I think, are kind of this pretty major inflection point for him. It's fascinating how many ideas that 15 minutes of television contains from Iraq specifically to authenticity on television generally. And as you know, in the book, the YouTube media empire, which is a decently sized media empire, was built in part because one of the founders wanted a site that could actually host that video. Yeah, because we were all watching it on our desktops. Yeah, people say it's like, you know, the first viral video. I think like maybe that and Lazy Sunday. You know, I think those are sort of the two diversity things that went viral. What a time to look at your computer at work it was. You mentioned Tucker bombs out at CNN. And then he goes to MSNBC. People might forget about this little adventure. He bombs out there. And you had this fascinating observation in your book that if things had gone slightly differently, Tucker Carlson could have been the conservative host of Morning Joe. Yeah, yeah. He went to MSNBC pre-Olberman when MSNBC was not sure what it was. It definitely was not the liberal analog to Fox. It was just kind of, it was nothing, basically. And he hosted this primetime show that no one remembers, basically. I mean, his one great contribution at MSNBC was he hired Rachel Maddow. He needed a liberal debate partner, and he found her audition tape. She had just been an Air America talk radio host and brought her onto the network sort of over the objections of the execs. But MSNBC was kind of limping along. They didn't really have an identity. Eventually, Olbermann gave it an identity as a liberal network. But one of the other hosts at that time was this guy, Joe Scarborough. And he also had a kind of pointless evening show that was called Scarborough Country. And he was kind of like an O'Reilly knockoff. But Scarborough, you know, had this sort of brilliant idea to move to mornings and, you know, kind of become this sort of excel a corridor kind of operator who knew all the political players. Scarborough had been a former Republican congressman who, you know, kind of hobnobbed with like the political and media elite and was sort of the ringmaster and the maitre d' in some ways. And Tucker I think actually would have been better suited to that role because he I mean like you know his time in Washington like he was friends with all these people He was you know an incredible sort of charming like you know dinner party guest I mean it would have been a perfect role for him but Scarborough beat him to the punch or Scarborough I think just had like a vision that Tucker didn't have at the time. He had an imagination of what was possible that Tucker lacked. And, you know, Scarborough managed to save himself at MSNBC Because when Olbermann became the symbol of the network as this liberal anti-Bush network, it became really hard for conservatives there. And so Tucker got bounced out. Scarborough managed to kind of reinvent himself as like a nonpartisan mayor of the Exceller Corridor and survived. And obviously he's gone on to even bigger things. But Tucker, I feel like if he just had a little bit more kind of vision himself, he could have easily done that. So Carlson flops at CNN, he flops at MSNBC, and then in 2009, Roger Ailes hires him at Fox News with the TV equivalent of an NBA free agent minimum contract. It's a 10-day contract. It was a 10-day contract. What did Roger Ailes see in Tucker Carlson? That's a really good question, and I think people wonder about that. I mean, some people say that Roger Ailes was he liked to take chess pieces off the board. And basically, Carlson, you know, was it was like really like it was he was an absolute like sort of personal and professional nadir. But and so Ailes could have him for very cheap. And people say, oh, well, he just wanted to like get him, you know, in the Fox sort of, you know, house. So just in case he develops into something, we'll have him. Other people say, and I think this I was sort of convinced more by this argument that Ailes you know he had a he was a blue collar guy he had a huge chip on his shoulder no matter how much success he had and he he just hated he hated elites he hated wasps he hated people like tucker um you know who at the time was kind of this like preppy frat boy he he wore a bow he he wore a bow tie for much of his early career after the john stewart thing he lost the bow tie um but he was you know, he was just like this like fraternity rush chair kind of shtick. And Ailes hated that. And so Ailes hired him in part so he could humiliate him, like a sort of counterintuitively, like it was an opportunity for Ailes to just like stick it to Tucker. So like when he first called Tucker to offer him the job, I mean, he started the call by saying, you know, you're a complete loser. You totally fucked up your life. But then he went on, but I like hiring losers like you because you'll work your ass off for me. And Tucker, when he got hired at Fox, his goal, his hope was to be on this show, Special Report, which was prestige television for Fox, I guess. It wasn't as stupid as everything else on the network. And it had a relatively intelligent conversation on this all-star panel and relatively intellectually interesting people like Charles Krauthammer. Tucker wanted to be on that show. He thought he was, you know, that was for the right role for him. Ailes would just not, was not going to go for that. And instead, Ailes had him do, he had him host the weekend version of Fox and Friends, which is like even dumber than weekday Fox and Friends. And I mean, it was bad for a couple of reasons. One, it was early. Tucker didn't like to wake up early. Two, it was done out of New York. Tucker lived in Washington. So he had to like leave his family on the weekends and go up to the city. And three, I mean, the stuff he had to do was like kind of humiliating. Like he would, you know, drive a go-kart around the studio and do like cooking demonstrations with Billy Ray Cyrus. And it was, you know, it was like a way for Ailes to just kind of put Tucker in his place. And to Tucker's credit, like he did it all with a smile. Like he didn't complain. He threw himself into it. I think privately he didn't like it, but publicly, you know, he went along with it and it was, you know, that was like his role at Fox basically. He was, I mean, it's kind of funny, like years later, you know, Pete Hegseth had the same job. And, you know, he rose from that to like be Secretary of Defense. So that was like a pretty big leap. But until Pete Hegseth, like Tucker was like Fox and Friends Weekend's greatest success story. Such as it is. So he does the sad grunt work. Eventually, post-Ales, he finds his way back to prime time. How would you describe his on-air style versus other Fox stars? It was the most interesting on air style, I thought, especially in the Trump era. He. His his his move to primetime coincides with Trump winning the election and where the rest of the primetime lineup just, you know, fell in line with Trump and joined the cult of personality like no one more so than Sean Hannity. um tucker tucker really kind of resisted praising trump as like a person i mean he definitely supported trump's policies sometimes more than trump himself and would you know criticize trump from the right when he thought trump had kind of strayed from the ideological line um but it was it was an interesting show it was it was it was interesting because you never quite knew what was going to happen. You didn't know if Tucker was going to maybe criticize Trump or take a shot at Republicans or who he was going to go after. It just, it was also like for Fox, like a pretty smart show. I mean, it was the only show on Fox that like, you know, could launch 10 Ross Douthat columns, you know, like people, conservative intellectuals would watch that show because Tucker was sort of trafficking in ideas that came out of their world. I mean, he's doing a lot of other stuff too but it was for fox it was like an unusually kind of perceptive and interesting show how did that show influence trump during his first term so tucker was very wary of getting personally close to trump and and unlike someone like kennedy who you know at the time like he was referred to as the shadow white house chief of staff because he spent so much time in the white house or he spent so much time on the phone with trump and other staffers tucker kind of didn't do all that. He didn't really resort to like special pleading off air. Instead, he just talked to Trump through the television. And at first he didn't, I don't think he quite realized like that he could do that. But eventually he saw that things he said on air, Trump would then repeat and they would become government policy. And he really started, you know, programming his show with this kind of an eye towards this audience of one. I mean, he would, he would write his monologues to, you know, influence Trump, he would book guests who he knew would maybe say something about someone who was going to get a government appointment that he didn't want to get that appointment and that and Trump would see that and he, you know, nicks them from his list. I mean, it really, it became sort of like the, I think in the book, I say something like, you know, the Tucker Carlson, a block like replace the interagency process, basically, in the first Trump administration, and Tucker would just talk to him through the television. in one case was actually able to convince Trump to call off airstrikes against Iran in 2019. Yeah. No, he has all these sort of like policy wins that, you know, are just kind of crazy. Really is really, really fascinating. So he gets fired by Fox in 2023. And then he goes to Twitter X and he also hosts a podcast. And this is a period in which he's interviewing Vladimir Putin in Russia, and he is interviewing Nick Fuentes, which causes this big earthquake at the Heritage Foundation. How would you describe Carlson's influence now? I think in a weird way, it's actually more significant than it was before. When he got fired from Fox, I think most people thought he would basically follow in the footsteps of all the other people who've watched out of Fox, who were huge stars and then became irrelevant, like, you know, Bill O'Reilly. But Tucker has like, he's really managed to stay in the picture. And I mean, he's done that a couple of ways. One, I think he's he's figured out the attention economy as well as anyone. And he understands that outrage will generate listeners for his podcast or eyeballs for his video podcast. So, you know, he'll look, he'll look Andrew Tate on as a guest or have Alex Jones or, you know, Putin. And look, I mean, I think any any serious news person would want to interview Vladimir Putin, right? I mean, the thing that Tucker did that pissed people off was he did a softball interview with him. But he's been very good at, you know, using guests and the like to maintain people's attention. He's also, you know, upped his own kind of outrage quotient. He just says crazier and crazier stuff, which is a way to get people to pay attention. The other thing that he's done that is different is he has embraced Trump himself in a way that he never did during Trump's first presidency. He, he and Trump, I mean, you know, in his first presidency, like he was sort of famous in inside Fox and in Washington to like, sometimes letting Trump's calls go to voicemail, you know, like it was just kind of a flex. He didn't like to be seen with Trump. Like when he visited Mar-a-Lago for the first time, like he wanted it to be a secret. He arranged to go in sort of through a back door so people wouldn't see him. But the secret got out, he got discovered. But he was just very sensitive to that. Now, you know, he'd go to Mar-a-Lago and try to be seen. He basically became a member of Trump's like 2024 presidential campaign. He would give speeches for him. He'd appear at his rallies. He spoke at the Republican convention. And I think he recognized that proximity to Trump was a way for him to stay relevant. And, you know, with that proximity, I mean, he's become like a really important advisor to Trump. Trump wants to hear from him and listens to his opinion, and Tucker doesn't hesitate to offer it. During the campaign, he was a pretty critical voice supporting J.D. Vance to be the running mate. He and Vance, I think his relationship with Trump is tight. I think his relationship with Vance is even tighter. And he is someone that those people listen to. He has a lot of allies in the administration, people who he helped place there, like Bobby Kennedy. I don't know if he's HHS secretary unless Tucker's lobbying for him. Tulsi Gabbard, I don't know if she's at DNI without Tucker lobbying for him. Sub-cabinet posts as well. I mean, he really involves himself in the transition process. So he has lots of people he's friendly with who listen to him who are all over the administration. And he is not shy about exercising that influence. And he's also not shy about wanting to be perceived as influential. Like I think the first time around, he his his show was enough and the built in audience. His show ad was enough. Now, I think he realizes that in order for people to keep on paying attention to him, they have to think and they have to know that he's someone that Trump and others are paying attention to. So he's he's kind of shifted his approach. One thing that's happened to conservatism during the Trump years and the Tucker years is that ideas like replacement theory have been dragged into the conservative mainstream. How much blame does Carlson deserve for that, do you think? Oh, I think, well, blame or credit depends on your point of view, right? I think Tucker, I think Tucker's one of the big functions he served at Fox, and I think he's continuing to do it now on his video podcast, it's a little bit different, is he was excellent at finding these fringe. theories or stories or ideas, you know, oftentimes like in the deep recesses of like the conservative internet and bringing and smuggling them into the mainstream and presenting them in such a way that, you know, the median 70 year old Fox viewer would be like, oh, that's a good idea. You know, like great replacement theory. I think if I would, I would like to think I'd like to hope that an average Fox viewer who encountered kind of great replacement theory in its like original rawest form, which is just like purely racist, purely anti-Semitic, you know, founded on some like, you know, Daily Stormer article or whatever, they would be repulsed by that. But Tucker can take that from the Daily Stormer and translate it and make it a little bit more palatable and put it on his Fox show. And people are like, oh, that's actually not such a crazy idea. And he's done that countless times. I think great replacement theory is the most sort of prominent and probably problematic example, but he's done that a lot and he continues to do it on his, on his podcast now. Two quick ones before you go. I've always been fascinated by Tucker Carlson face, by which I mean, he's interviewing somebody in his Fox and he looks like he's just smelled the worst smell in the world. And you write in the book that they did this on purpose at Fox. The idea was just really split screen it. So we would see his disgust right now. Yeah. Well, I'm smiling at you, Jason. I'm not making that face. The idea was just to register his disgust to the guests. So that would be a visual element of the show. Yeah. Yeah. They I mean, they would they would have even if the guests appeared remotely like I am now, even if they were in the same place, even if they were in Washington and Tucker was doing a show from Washington, they would oftentimes put the guest like in a separate studio so he wouldn't be sitting across from a table with Tucker. And that way they could frame both their faces and they would just keep it up as a two shot. And that was half the thing, just Tucker's face. I mean, when when Biden gave some joint address to Congress, I remember Fox, it aired during what was Tucker's normal showtime. And so Fox aired it. But then like halfway through, they put up a little like, you know, box of Tucker, just him watching, you know, and just making facial responses. And, you know, they had like a chiron that said, you know, Tucker's response coming up in five minutes. But, you know, they were they were showing like a live kind of Tucker reaction shot. Like it became, I mean, I don't know. I think back to, you know, that period like 2017 to 2023 and Tucker's face, that kind of dumb look on his face like that, just that symbolizes that period to me. Last one for you, the you mentioned in the book that during your magazine days and his magazine days in Washington, that you guys were you knew him, right? He was a guy that you would sometimes reach out to if you're writing a story because he was not a friend. but definitely someone I knew and everyone, everyone knew. I mean, he was, yeah. And he was gossipy. He would get on the phone and talk to you for a story that was about conservatism or some story accessible. Yeah. Super accessible, super gossipy and super helpful. I mean, and in a way that like, uh, you know, everybody has like sources and people they talk to. But the thing that I really liked about Tucker was even though he had left magazine writing behind, he still had the muscle memory of a great magazine writer. And I think like I think in some ways missed it. And so the conversations with him would be just it would be almost like talking to like you or like talking to an editor or something who, you know, he kind of had ideas like and he sort of like understood the story that I was trying to do. and maybe actually understood it better than I did sometimes and would sort of, you know, give me ideas that I could then use in the story. It was just like it was more like talking to a colleague in some ways that it was not the kind of kind of conversation you often would have with a source. So what did he make of the Jason Sangerly Tucker Carlson biography? I'm not I've not heard that he did not cooperate with with the with the book. I mean, I tried, you know, and honestly, like I thought he might because he's he was always been happy to talk over the years and always quite responsive. But when I told him I was writing a book about him, he was, you know, he said, oh, that's why would you ever want to write a book about me? But then, you know, I sort of made the pitch and he was like, well, that sounds reasonable. He's like, but I don't know if Fox will let me do it. I kind of doubt they will. But let's see. I'd like to do it. We'll see. And then, you know, that was sort of like this kicked off like a six month, eight month process where he would say he was trying to get them to cooperate. or let him cooperate, but they wouldn't. And then finally it just kind of petered out. And then when he got fired, I went back to him and was like, hey, you know, Fox can't stop you from cooperating now, but did not have any luck there. And I have not heard anything from him about the book since then or yet. You and I have known each other for 25 years, Jason. I know. That's crazy. At the New Republic. And I have to thank you because way back when my first job, and I say job in the sense that it paid $300 a week. I think I got $200 a week when I was an intern. You should be grateful. There was a raise. I got offered this internship at the New Republic. I was at the University of Texas. And when I got offered it, my first response was, let me think about it. Instead of, you know, I will gratefully accept this internship that you're giving to a state school kid. And I have this memory of you and Ryan Lizza, who's been in the news recently, calling me in my office at the Daily Texan newspaper and saying, very gently and very sweetly, you know, you should probably say yes to this. We were desperate for you to come, I think, in part because I think Ryan and I were like the only two people at the New Republic who didn't go to Yale or Harvard. So just like, I mean, during the internship application process, like when we were looking at applications, one of the people who was in charge of that, he referred to you as Tex. like that that was your nickname Tex because like you were like yeah like the only guy who wasn't a Harvard or Yale person like that's how you were that's that's how you were distinctive so that's why Ryan and I really wanted you very nice and uh George Bush was running for president this is this is the background that's true I don't think I don't think we were that we weren't thinking that far ahead probably Tex had a little bit of a cultural salience maybe that it wouldn't have had before anyway the book is terrific it's hated by all the right people Tucker Carlson and the unraveling of the conservative mind you are commanded to go buy it right now Jason thanks for coming on the press box thanks so much for having me around this was fun all right it's time for david shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline yeah can i ask you a question about about tucker carl actually this is not about tucker carlson did you hear the right thompson just thinking of great magazine writers did you hear the right thompson monologue uh that before the super bowl i don't think i did was this on the espn show i don't remember i don't remember what i was watching it might have been on espn was right going live on instagram my question is Do you think is right? Does right Thompson at this point pitch monologues to open things or do the ESPN programmers go to right Thompson to get one? I think it's the latter because he's been doing this for a while. No, I know. I know. But is he just always sitting there thinking, what can I say about San Francisco? You know, like whatever. And then it's wait. Does he think in the same voice he talks with? Yes. Well, it's my take on the whole Seattle thing. I love Wright Thompson. All right. Our last headline, but it's been a little bit a while. We've been on emergency footing here on the press box a lot. Our last headline was about the end of LeBron James' run as an all-star game starter, and it was King James aversion. Today's headline, David, comes to us from alert listener Brandon Folsom. It's from the old New York Post. Man, has the New York Post done an Undertaker sit-up since Zoran Mondani became mayor of New York City. They know what they got to do. The subhead here is trash piles up on streets as traffic snarls. I want you to think of New York anthems as you ponder. What was the New York Post's strain pun headline? New York Anthem? It's not New York, New York, or on Broadway? New York, New York is good. Oh, like the words of the song. I'm like, it doesn't really work. Start spreading the trash. That's not it. I want to. It's the city that. Oh, the city that never sweeps. That's fantastic. The city that never sweeps. Well done, sir. There you go. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Producing magic by Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin. Thank you, gentlemen. I want you to follow the Press Box on Twitter and Blue Sky. It's at the Press Box pod. We are at PressBoxRinger on Instagram. Please, I ask you, because this is the year of shameless commerce at the PressBox. Retweet us or reskeet us, however you prefer. We'd love you to do that. As mentioned, I got a new pot up with Tim Miller of The Bulwark, who David was kind enough to come by the Ringer offices in Los Angeles. I was not. It sounded like you said I was at the Ringer office. No, Tim Miller was at the Ringer office. Tim Miller was at the Ringer office. Yeah. Came in his, you know, Tim Miller is a Denver Nuggets and Denver sports fan. I did not know that. No. He's from Colorado. And remember when we were trying to find celebrity Nuggets fans when they were in the finals? And like Ken Jeong was randomly doing a gaggle with the press. And we were like, is Ken Jeong a Nuggets fan or is he just here? Tim Miller is the actual celebrity Denver sports fan. Okay, cool. He is the Denver sports fan. New email address, pressboxringer at gmail.com. me hit us up there. Joel's here Thursday. David, I'll see you next Tuesday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you later, Brian.