michelle goldberg

I’m Michelle Goldberg.

ross douthat

I’m Ross Douthat.

frank bruni

I’m David Leonhardt. Just kidding. I’m Frank Bruni, your new host, and this is “The Argument.” [MUSIC PLAYING] This week, how should the media cover the White House news briefings?

michelle goldberg

Yeah, you cover it, but you don’t air the whole thing live.

frank bruni

Then, learning how much we need to be together, just when we’re told to be apart.

ross douthat

I think we all have to have a certain amount of tolerance for the reality that you’re just going to bump up against the limits.

frank bruni

And finally, a recommendation.

archived recording (donald trump) OK, thank you very much. Good to be with you all. We’re in a very critical phase of our war against the coronavirus. It’s vital that every American follows our guidelines on the 30 days to slow the spread.

frank bruni

The daily White House briefings are a news staple these days. The president shows up regularly, and so do members of the coronavirus task force. It’s a sharp turn from about nine months ago, when the president instructed a new White House press secretary to stop the longstanding daily briefings. Some news organizations have been airing them live without any real-time fact checking or correction, and some of the information from the briefings has been flatly irresponsible and just plain wrong.

archived recording (donald trump) Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low. Don’t do anything, just ride it out, and think of it as the flu.

frank bruni

We’re recording this on Tuesday, when we just got word that someone connected to the task force tested positive for the coronavirus. So it’s possible the briefings could change. Meantime, though, there’s an ongoing debate about the responsible way to cover them. The New York Times and the Washington Post are temporarily boycotting the briefings, while others see it as their duty to air pretty much any public statement the president makes right now. Ross, I want to start with you. Which side are you on?

ross douthat

Well, first, Frank, it’s great to be here with you for your first solo episode of “The Argument.” I just wanted to — wanted to get that out of the way first. And you’re doing amazingly so far. [LAUGHTER] You sound just like David. It’s terrific.

frank bruni

I practiced. I practiced.

ross douthat

So — yeah, so I, fairly predictably, think that all of the angst over how to cover these briefings is a little bit pointless. We’ve spent a lot of time in the Trump presidency with people lamenting and/or making jokes about the fact that not only does Trump not give a lot of press conferences, but he has a press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, who doesn’t give press conferences either, doesn’t do a daily briefing. And now Grisham has, in fact, left the job to rejoin Melania Trump’s team without having ever done a daily briefing. So if our complaint is that the Trump White House, you know, isn’t available to the press, everyone should be very excited that the president is there every day, you know, taking questions, yelling at the media, acting ridiculous, acting completely like himself, and mixed in with that, there are, you know, some people who actually know what they’re talking about giving briefings on the virus. And I think you have to cover it. I don’t think — I don’t think Trump is stealing any bases from anybody or, you know, pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes by being on TV for an hour every day. What’s the cost of covering that? Do I have to cover it?

michelle goldberg

OK, so Ross, this argument that you made, it reminded me of the argument that people made about Trump’s handling of North Korea, right? Like, first he threatens to obliterate them in a fiery genocide, and people don’t like that. And then he declares that he’s, you know, in love with Kim Jong-un and gives him a tongue bath [LAUGHTER] and kind of has these ridiculous summits, and people say, well, what? You don’t like this either? I mean there is a huge middle ground between a press secretary that only goes on Fox News and these daily kind of two-hour perseverations that Trump treats himself to, because he knows that he’s going to get non-stop coverage. In retrospect, a lot of us, I think, understand that cable channels made a huge mistake by covering non-stop Trump’s rallies in 2016 and that he probably wouldn’t be president today if they hadn’t gone for these kind of easy rating grabs by just putting him on and seeing what outrageous thing he was going to say. So the problem with what Trump is doing now is that he basically— he can’t do his rallies anymore, but he knows there is a way for him to grab, and not just an hour, you know, two hours, sometimes more, of national air time. You know, he’s basically laughing that this is a way for him to dominate the public conversation, you know, for him to kind of ensure that it all revolves around him, and to crowd out his enemies. There’s no reason that any news network should be going along with it. Yeah, you cover it, but you don’t air the whole thing live.

frank bruni

Ross, so are there no parameters you would draw around this? You said you have to cover these, you know, because it’s the president. Does that mean you have to cover them if it goes to three hours, to four hours? Does that mean you have to cover them, even if mostly what you’re hearing is misinformation? Are there not parameters to be drawn about that notion of having to cover it?

ross douthat

I mean, look, it’s a free country. You don’t have to cover it at all. But I’m pretty familiar with what’s on cable news at any given hour of the day, and I can assure you that the President of the United States taking questions from the press and talking about the virus ravaging the country, with the misinformation and ridiculousness, is way more newsworthy and interesting than almost any other two-hour block of cable news programming that you’re likely to see. So it just — it just seems to me, you know, yes, there are going to be moments where Trump is going to use it to preempt Joe Biden, which would also be newsworthy. But most of the time, you know, this is — I mean this isn’t even happening in primetime, right?

michelle goldberg

Well, sometimes they’ll stretch it out to primetime, right? He’ll start at 5:00, but then he’ll do — or maybe not primetime, but he’ll do an hour of something else first to sort of get into the dinner hour.

ross douthat

Right. No, I mean look, I don’t dispute what you’re saying about how Trump imagines himself using this, Michelle. And I completely agree with you about the irresponsibility of CNN and Fox just sort of taking his rallies live for hours at a time in the Republican primary in 2016. But back then, he was just a rich celebrity candidate for president. Today, he is, in fact, you know, for better or worse, the most powerful person in the United States in the midst of a global epidemic and a transformational moment in our history. I mean I guess, to Frank’s point, I think you can do all kinds of things as context. You know, you can have people — you can have your anchors and your reporters saying all kinds of things. You have actual journalists in the room who are tangling with him. I guess my assumption is, watching it, that it’s different from his rallies. He’s not just doing a stream of consciousness speech in front of a rapt audience. He is sharing the stage with experts who sometimes get in sort of very public quasi-confrontations with him, which is certainly newsworthy, and he’s taking questions from reporters that are often good questions, which lead him to yell at reporters. And this — I mean this doesn’t seem to me like a grand infomercial for Trump. It seems like a way for him to, in certain ways, not be able to make the case that he needs to make to be re-elected, which is that Joe Biden is senile and corrupt or something. He’s just out there every day displaying his incapacity in the midst of a crisis, and frankly, I kind of think Biden should welcome it. I think a Trump interview at this moment is much better for Biden than a Joe Biden town hall.

michelle goldberg

Although, well, so the part of that that I agree with is that you see Biden pretty immediately taking some of these clips, particularly some of Trump’s really contemptuous back and forth at Yamiche Alcindor. You know, he doesn’t like being questioned by women. He really doesn’t like being questioned by black women. And so she kind of asks him these very cool neutral questions, and he goes bananas. And then, you know, just a few hours later, there are ads for Joe Biden. So fair enough, right? Trump gets to go up there and display who he is. But again, these things are not just about the coronavirus. And so part of what I’m saying is that when he does an hour on something else, a press conference that, in the normal course of events, news stations would not preempt their normal coverage to do, they shouldn’t be doing it here either.

frank bruni

Because apart from the whole question of whether he is making a fool of himself in the course of this hour or over two hours sometimes, he’s putting out a great deal of misinformation. I mean given that television stations haven’t figured out a way to do what we in the print media do — and we do real-time online corrections of State of the Union addresses, of debate statements— given that TV stations haven’t figured out a way to do that, should they really be covering these things in full? Should they be cutting away? Should they not cover them in full until they figure out how to let misinformation be corrected right away so it doesn’t stick?

ross douthat

Well, Frank, let me turn — I’m going to turn the question back on you, because unlike certain pundits who spent their whole careers just opining, mostly me, you’ve actually been a White House correspondent. You’re in charge of the New York Times’ coverage, let’s say. What’s your approach? Or maybe you’re in charge of CNN’s coverage.

frank bruni

Well, one of the reasons I’m not in charge of the Times’ or CNN’s coverage is because I’m sort of humble about these things, and I recognize there’s no perfect decision, and I don’t want to be the one to make that final decision. But I think in this instance, the New York Times and the Washington Post have both done the right thing, because Trump is using the reporters in that room as mere props. He’s getting into theatrical sparring matches with them, and to their credit, many of them are asking very good questions. But it’s in vain, because if he doesn’t like the question, he just basically rants at them and moves on. He even chides them for not saying nicer things. I watched Monday night’s news briefing very carefully. And what I heard was President Trump spending so much time talking about the good job he’s doing and the good jobs that everyone around him were doing that I wondered how they had any time to do these good jobs when they’re standing up there bathing in their good jobness for so very long. I heard him go off on people in government whom he’s still convinced are trying to undermine him. I mean I heard self-pity. I heard self-aggrandizement. I did not hear much that was that constructive. And I also heard— and this happens night after night after night, and this is why I think these briefings are dangerous— I heard a lot of false hope being given about therapies in the pipeline, about vaccines. To hear him talk, we’re right on the cusp of conquering this thing, and we’re not. I mean, don’t we need to be a little bit more discriminating about what we let come through our megaphones via the president? I don’t know. Michelle, am I crazy?

michelle goldberg

Yeah, no, I think absolutely. It’s not just that he is going to manipulate this crisis to get a chance to stand up there and play president. It’s also that he’s going to give people false information about matters of life and death. And you know, Ross, you might say — I mean you have a column saying, well, the experts don’t know that much than the rest of us, when it comes to this — nevertheless, the fact that you have Trump, and now his whole army of sycophants promoting this anti-malarial drug, which, you know, whatever— might, indeed, have promise. But nobody really knows right now how much promise it has.

frank bruni

He’s not — President Trump is not only talking about that drug. He is talking about all of these strides being made so quickly, and he’s basically, I think, if you listen to him credulously, giving the impression that science is going to tackle this at any moment. And my question to you, Ross and Michelle, is if he’s doing that, is that not at odds with motivating people to keep doing the social distancing that’s also being recommended? Is that not at odds with motivating them to practice the kinds of behavior that will bend the curve?

michelle goldberg

Well, by him telling you, him basically going up there and saying, well, yeah, I’m not going to wear a mask. It’s optional. This is the exact opposite of the message, and you can say that there’s been, as you, yourself, Ross, have written that there have been a lot of expert screw-ups in the mass guidance up until now. But it seems that all kinds of people who know what they’re doing are coalescing around the idea that we should all be wearing masks, you know, except for our president, who’s too vain to do it, but he’s not going to admit that that’s not why he’s doing it. And so he’s basically—

ross douthat

Well, he basically admitted that, right? He said, it wouldn’t look good behind the Resolute desk.

frank bruni

We started this by talking about the briefings and what kind of attention the media did or didn’t owe them. Let me make a proposal. Let me ask you two if you think something like this could work. What about if the media limited their coverage of each of these briefings to an hour, and then moved on and then went to a panel that talked about what was said and what — what meant something and what was wrong? For starters, I think if the media cut away for an hour, wouldn’t Trump start shortening them?

michelle goldberg

Yeah, I mean the trick is that, like I said, he’ll sometimes do the extraneous part first. So I think they just shouldn’t cut into it until he’s actually speaking about something newsworthy. But then, yeah, of course, they should. Of course, they should limit it, and, of course, they should contextualize it and fact check it.

ross douthat

Well, I just think the limit runs into the problem of, one, as Michelle said, if you have Dr. Fauci out there in hour two, you’re actually going to want to cut back to it. But two, again, Trump— I continue to think that there’s this distinct difference between the rallies and this moment in that Trump actually wields immense power in this situation. I don’t think he’s capable of executing it particularly well, but he is an incredibly powerful person in the midst of a crisis. And so how he’s handling that, you know, you’re getting a view of how he’s handling and thinking about it in these conferences. The fact that he says this stuff about the masks and so on, the fact that he’s touting these particular drugs, this is all, you know, again, more newsworthy than almost anything that you could air live. And you know, the media business is — it’s just — I think it puts too much weight on producers at CNN to say that we’re going to sort of choose exactly which moment to cut in and cut out and so on. So by all means, at the end of the press conference, have your panel of experts, have Sanjay Gupta say, you know, this was a terrible thing the president said. But I don’t think there is some structural way that you can solve the problem of newsworthiness and the problem of Trump at the same time.

frank bruni

OK, let’s stop there. When we come back from the break, we’ll talk about being alone together. We’ll be right back. [MUSIC PLAYING, PARK SOUNDS] Every spring, Fort Greene Park comes alive. There are kids and dog walkers and soccer parents all claiming a small bit of Brooklyn greenery. But this weekend, just as the weather warmed, an enormous red sign popped up at the park entrance. On it, there’s a big white arrow, six feet long, and the message, “Keep this far apart.” Social distancing is a kind of brand new oxymoron, and people, it seems, are figuring out their own interpretations. For some, social distancing means going to a park with friends but keeping a strict six feet away from them. For me, it means that I don’t see my aunts and uncles, but I do see my siblings, though, first, I grill them to make sure they’ve been as quasi-quarantined as I have. It seems that we’re all making our own calculations about how careful is careful enough. Extreme social distancing is clearly the best strategy to stay physically healthy, but at some point, we’ve got to factor in our emotional health, too. Michelle, I want to start with you. How strict are you being about social distancing?

michelle goldberg

So I think this is a difficult thing to talk about, because there is so much — there’s so — there’s such intense judgmentalism about it, and I understand it, because it’s one of those situations where people’s propensity to break the rules doesn’t just endanger them. It sort of endangers the whole community. And so what we’ve done— and I hesitate to— I hesitate to say this, because I — you know, I just was — obviously, I’m not the President of the United States, but we were — I was just kind of criticizing the president for setting a bad example. And I think that one reason that I hear a lot of people speaking quietly about what they’re doing but not saying so publicly is because, you know, you don’t want to sound like you’re giving people permission or an excuse to flout the rules. Nevertheless, what I’ve done and what a lot of people I know have done is team up with another family. And so we were quarantined separately by ourselves for two weeks, and now we’re all — we’re in two adjoining houses in the country together. It’s not going to last indefinitely, but it’s been — it’s at least taken some of the pressure off having both — other parents to share the burden and another kid for my kids to play with.

frank bruni

Ross, what about you?

ross douthat

You know, we’re in a similar boat to Michelle in that we have three children home, and we have the extra excitement of a fourth child apparently going to be born in two weeks. And then we have the extra extra excitement of maybe but maybe not having actually had this. So in certain ways, we’ve been very strict. We haven’t seen anybody or sort of done anything remotely social. We keep our distance from neighbors and so on. I haven’t seen my father or my sister, who are both in state, since any of this started. And we have sort of careful contact with our respective — the grandmothers on both sides of the family, who seem to have had the same illness that we had. So presumably, our — if we did have it, we’re all in the same boat. But it’s a very — I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think there’s anything remotely wrong with what you’re doing, Michelle. I mean I assume that you guys were generally pretty careful about who you saw in the time before you blended your families. You know, I think we all have to have a certain amount of tolerance and, you know, tolerance for the reality that you’re just going to bump up against the limits of how exactly, how distanced you can be. And we’re also — you know, you’re sort of well outside New York now, Michelle, I know. And we’re in New Haven in a neighborhood that’s pretty walkable and has freestanding homes, and we can drive to the emptier state parks and so on. But Frank, you’re in New York, right? I mean, it seems to me that this is like — this is hardest on people in dense urban environments, right?

frank bruni

Well, I’m actually — yeah, I’m actually in the suburbs of New York, but going through a lot of the same calculations I think that you two are. I’m here because I’m taking care of an 84-year-old father, and his age is very much on my mind. At 84, he’s someone who, if he got this virus, might have an experience with it that would be pretty harsh. And so I’m calibrating all my actions and filtering all my actions through the question of, if I got infected, what would happen to him? I’m his caretaker right now. And Michelle, it’s so interesting you talk about making choices that other people might not agree with or everyone having to be very personal about this. My dad’s birthday is this week. He’s turning 85, which is a sort of milestone birthday. And it kills me and my siblings that he’s celebrating that birthday virtually — almost alone. And we’ve made the decision that my sister, because she has been super careful, and it’s just one person, she is going to come. She’s going to bring food, and she and I will celebrate with him so he’s not having the umpteenth meal with just me alone. Is that a little bit of a risk? I guess so. But where do you find that sweet spot between continuing to live a life and living in a bubble?

michelle goldberg

Well to me — this is what I’m interested in is that, I mean, I think it’s entirely possible that most people listening to this podcast are stronger and have more fortitude than I do. But I also think that this kind of life is not sustainable for anyone, and some people might be able to last longer than others. But especially if you have little kids. I mean on my social media feeds, I see people without children furious at people with children, who are letting them play on jungle gyms, because you don’t know who else touched that. And I just think there’s several times a week where I feel like I would happily risk, at least for myself, the most horrific physical consequences to have kind of five-minute respite from the pressure of this. And so it’s hard for me to judge anyone else who takes those opportunities. It just seems, you know, again, especially my experiences with children, caring for children, not caring for parents, and so the pressures and responsibilities are a little bit different.

ross douthat

Frank, how much are you going out?

frank bruni

I’m trying to go out as little as possible. But living in this area — I’m glad you asked that, Ross, because living in this area, it’s interesting. Today was a good example of this. We’re out of some staples, grocery-wise. My father likes his cereal every morning, and he’s almost out of his Lactaid milk. And I tried a gazillion ways last night to find delivery, and because this is the New York metropolitan area, it was not doable. And then I went out this morning with a makeshift mask and gloves, and I even had some wipes with me. And I went to two different supermarkets both just as they were opening, and in each case, the lines were so long outside that if I’d gone grocery shopping, I might not be here recording the argument with the two of you.

michelle goldberg

Wow.

frank bruni

So Dad’s going to have to eat eggs tomorrow morning, and I’m going to begin the hunt, the forage for groceries again. I mentioned it just because I think everybody is trying to be really good and coming up, depending on where they live, against circumstances that make that super difficult. And Michelle, you used a great word before that I wanted to hear both of you talk a little bit more about, which was judgmentalism. You know, we’re now told we should wear masks when I’ve been out, which is not much, most people have. Some people haven’t. Are there situations in which the two of you have found yourselves judging the way other people are responding or situations in which you felt judged?

michelle goldberg

I mean I feel judged, because I feel like we’re sort of breaking the rules with what we’re doing. And I also feel just like a little bit guilty — not a little bit guilty. I feel tremendously guilty at my sort of inability to cope. And so I’m not judging other people. I’m just— I’m feeling like I see people, particularly on social media, doing all these crafts and baking bread. And my god, I just —

ross douthat

Sourdough starter.

michelle goldberg

— and talking about how they feel in this moment like a sense of pause or deeper connection. And you know, I have a lot of advantages, and I’m still just absolutely climbing the walls desperate for the resumption of civilization. And I feel pretty guilty about how relatively badly I’m coping. I don’t usually — in the past, I don’t usually compare my real life to other people’s social media feeds. But there’s something about this moment where I just feel like I am failing on so many different levels as a teacher, as a parent, as a citizen, that I can’t help but kind of judge myself against everybody else’s public presentation.

frank bruni

Could you guys see something like — this may sound like a strange question, but I found myself wondering if handshaking as a form of greeting might start to fade away. We’ll get past this pandemic, but that’s always going to be a way in which something can be transmitted. Will the elbow bump replace the handshake, and how do we feel about that?

ross douthat

I think it’ll go away. I think handshaking will lag other forms of reconnection, so I’ll be sitting in my coffee shop again before I’m shaking hands again. But I miss the handshake, too. Handshakes are good, you know. Like, pressing the flesh. We developed it for a reason. And, you know, I think it’s like masks, right? People will — it will become much more normal to wear a mask on a trans — you know, on a long plane flight in the Western world now than it was. And people will continue to do that, I think, well after this has passed. But I also think — I don’t expect everyone to be wearing masks in airports in a year and a half. And I expect people to be shaking hands again.

frank bruni

What’s one small thing that’s gone away, for now, that you miss most?

ross douthat

Hmm, that’s a good question. I mean, I think that — I mean this is not a small thing, but this is what my wife and I joke about, and this is like how Michelle feels, too. But making lunches for my children — you know, every school morning, it’s like, oh, I’ve got to cut the sandwiches and figure out the little carrots and this sort of faux gourmet lunch thing. And yeah, and so that — I miss that. I miss — I miss that, in part, because it’s a sign that you’re getting the kids out of the house, which doesn’t happen anymore.

frank bruni

I’ll tell you what I miss, guys. I never realized until this happened how many people in my life — friends in the office — I would hug hello. I never — it never occurred to me — it never — until those hugs went away. And I think — I wonder if that sort of physical contact is going to be forever altered or at least altered for a long time because of the caution we’re all feeling.

michelle goldberg

I don’t know. I wonder— you know, it’s funny. For a different piece I wrote, I spoke to someone who wrote a book about pandemic psychology. And I was asking about different ways that the world would change and different ways that people are traumatized by quarantine. One of the things he said to me is that you would be surprised how quickly people forget. And I mean, I think — I could be wrong, but I feel like I’ve seen some writing about why there’s so little — there’s so few books or so kind of — so little memorialization of the 1918 influenza. And I wonder if that’s part of it, that it’s like there’s no kind of heroic battles to memorialize. There’s nothing to really feel nostalgic about. It’s just something you want to move past. [MUSIC PLAYING]

frank bruni

Before we head to our recommendations, we want to hear from you. How are you interpreting and practicing social distancing? Are you missing human contact or secretly enjoying the solitude? Leave us a voicemail at 347-915-4324.

michelle goldberg

Now it’s time for our weekly recommendation, where we suggest something to help take your mind off the unfolding apocalypse. Frank, since it’s your first full week on the show, what do you have?

frank bruni

Michelle, my recommendation, which is geared but not limited to this chapter of sheltering in place, is a kind of board game, one that I guess has been around for about five years, but I just stumbled across it recently. It involves two teams and can be played by a total of four people or eight people, but it’s probably best with about six people. And those group sizes seem, to me, to apply to many families and even groups of friends who’ve been locked down together for one, two, or three, or four weeks now, like the way your situation is, Michelle. The game is called Codenames, and that’s spelled —

michelle goldberg

Oh, that’s funny!

frank bruni

You know it.

michelle goldberg

So I’ve never played it, but I actually have a group of friends that we all go on vacation together every summer. And the kids always play it, but I’ve never played it with them.

frank bruni

You should play it, because I think — well, one of the things great about it is I think it can accommodate any skill level, but it definitely works super well for adults. It’s basically you have a grid of 25 cards in a 5 by 5 configuration, and it gets a little — it’s complicated to explain in this format but very easy to play once you get going. But basically, it’s about figuring out which words connect in which ways and how to give clues so that your team picks out their cards and not the opposing team’s cards. And it’s just — you know, very few games hit that sweet spot between cerebral and accessible. This is one of them.

michelle goldberg

OK, I will absolutely get it, because I am really, really sick of Uno and Monopoly, which are the two games that we were playing over and over and over again.

ross douthat

So we have — regular listeners may know when I think David has recommended board games in the past, so you’re continuing a sterling tradition, Frank. But my oldest daughter has not yet really learned to lose, so we’ve sort of struggled to become a board game family. But she has actually become — I have — my homeschooling curriculum involved teaching my 7-year-old and 9-year-old daughter to poker over the last week. And the 9-year-old has become obsessed with poker to a point where she’s willing to — you have to play enough games with her, so she wins some of the time, but she’s willing to lose. So maybe this is the tipping point where we can adopt board games, too.

frank bruni

Ross, Ross, are you telling me that you’re teaching your children to gamble?

ross douthat

I mean, look, in the post-COVID economy, I think high stakes professional poker is probably going to be really the only — you know, I mean it’s going to be the only — it might maybe the only sport to survive, because you can do it remotely.

frank bruni

I had a very different moral assessment of you, Ross, a very different one.

ross douthat

There’ll be no World Series, but there’ll be a World Series of Poker, so I think this is a good investment.

michelle goldberg

So Frank, what is the recommendation again?

frank bruni

The recommendation is a kind of board game called Codenames, and that’s one word, Codenames. [MUSIC PLAYING] That’s our show this week. Thanks so much for listening. Leave us a voicemail at 347-915-4324. You can also email us at argument@nytimes.com. And if you like what you hear, leave us a rating or review at Apple Podcasts. This week’s show was produced by James T Green for Transmitter Media and edited by Sara Nics. Our executive producer is Gretta Cohn. We had help from Tyson Evans, Phoebe Lett, Michele Teodori, and Ian Prasad Philbrick. Our theme was composed by Allison Leyton-Brown. We’ll see you back here next week.

michelle goldberg

Sorry if you can hear my kids. They’re in the other room.

ross douthat