Presidential Debate in Philly: Behind the Scenes of the "Spin Room" with Michael Tracey

all right here we are Philadelphia uh the debate is happening tonight we are in I don't know some little side Center that they shunt the media into to keep us all plated and to keep us running around like little Lemmings I'll try to avoid getting too immersed in the media pack mentality one funny thing about these debates is that there's tons of foreign media conventions too and they really have no clue what they're doing no offense to them nor should they like I mean if I went to Australia there's an Australian lady doing some kind of social media video right near us right now get it get her get a good look at her she seems fine uh she might be from New Zealand I don't know sounds Australian to me but like but like I mean if I were covering Australian politics unless I did a really deep de research dive I'd be kind of out of out my element as well and yet here they are and so we just uh we just bore witness to a giant mob of journalists that surrounded Anthony scaramucci who was press secretary for Trump for like what was it 12 days in 2017 and he's the big kamla Harris surrogate now and he was being sworn by journalists as though he were the king of England maybe even above the king of England because he's a republican who has denounced Trump um and so there's not really a whole lot to to do right now other than just kind of mosy around looking like we're doing something important which we're not um so I figured I would just do this little intro video because you know you might want to get a little bit of a behind the scenes Peak at where the media have been relegated to and even identifying as media I have some reservations about so here you see like I guess this is ABC with their setup and maybe CNN or all the people who can afford to spend I don't know like $10 million or something on having their Dopey little remote Studio set up and then if you want to pay just like I don't know $1 million or something you can get one of these smaller little setups uh we are we are not well endowed enough financially to afford one of these but then again do we really want them I mean I don't see the added journalistic benefit oh there's scaramucci looking um looking very important look like like he's a hot commodity um we could probably interview him I mean he's being ushered around like he's a uh the star of the show it was embarrassing I mean I felt like I felt like I would be disgracing myself and you the viewer if I joined that massive scrum of reporters that encircled him as though they were hanging on his every word um yeah so I me most of what the journalists are doing here I mean we heard overheard one NPR reporter saying excuse me I have to do my I'm going to be on air in a minute so we had to like move from her table and um her report was like we are here in Philadelphia which as you might know is the capital of Pennsylvania a key swing state um and that's the big NPR report and they just like recite the most benol conventional wisdom imaginable about expectations for the debate what does kamla Harris have to do what does Donald Trump have to do we all for are familiar with Donald Trump but we're maybe not quite as familiar with KL Harris therefore what do they each respectively have to do um so what do I have to do that's a better question maybe I don't know I guess we'll we'll hang around here for the next several hours and we'll uh maybe do a little bit of trolling have a little bit of fun have some laughs have some tears and and then once the uh the surrogates are funneled into this spin room so I guess you can demarcate the spin room versus the media filing Center based on the color of the carpeting that's my understanding a lot of really intense Logistics went into that um they're C spaming they're the only ones who I don't resent I actually app genuinely do appreciate C-SPAN so uh I even got a C-SPAN t-shirt and sweatshirt recently partly because I wanted the t-shirt and sweatshirt but also because I wanted to just contribute to C-SPAN because I use tons of their content without compensating them um so there's your little uh I guess Civic good you know uh civic responsibility note and yeah they just were overrun with journalists who were just staring at their computers doing who God knows what um they could be home I guess instead of here but you have to be here because that makes you a serious journalist uh or something right I don't I don't know you tell me um so what does k Harris have to do what are you expecting what does Donald Trump have to do what are you expecting for his performance that that's the those are the utterly forgettable questions which will be repeated over and over again today and we'll have no lasting news value or informational value whatsoever so that's the Fate that we've been beset with all for your edification and for my eternal dismay and yeah ABC News um these are the first debates I mean this actually is somewhat notable these are the first debates meaning tonight's debate hosted by ABC news then the one in June hosted by CNN which led to Biden being unceremoniously dumped from the nomination uh that have been organized not by the commission on presidential debates which for decades had been the inter intermediary between the media organizations and the campaigns to host debates uh but by the actual media company itself in this case ABC News and then the two Respec campaigns so I don't know I mean people talk about how Corporate media is like on the decline I don't really get the sense of that that's true based on the dominance that corporate media has asserted over the debates this cycle um so yeah there you go oh and there's Byron Donalds maybe we'll go chat with him um all right that's it for now sorry goodbye