Get me rewrite

Big shoes to fill

The tale of the administration’s too-big shoes began when President Trump told The New York Times in January that he had recently purchased four new pairs for both Mr. Rubio and Mr. Vance (whom he referred to as “kids”)...

... Mr. Trump seemed not to aim for precision in his gifting. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Mr. Trump often guessed a person’s size.

Men’s shoe specialists were not at all surprised that the president appeared to be guessing too big. Men, they said, often buy the wrong size when buying their own shoes. And they almost always estimate too large.

— New York Times, “Why Do Men Buy Shoes That Are Too Big?”

[A month or so in the future. A glass-enclosed conference room at New York Times headquarters, as seen previously in “At home with the liberal media” and “Paper warfare.” Seated at a small conference table is deputy executive editor NED BINS; he has allowed his buzzcut to grow out and now keeps his hair a bit messy, like an MOR version of Palantir cofounder Alex Karp, and wears a dark blue Canali notched-lapel single-breasted suit, black Berluti Shadow Sneakers, and a light grey mock turtleneck shirt. Youngish reporters ELOISE WHALLEY-JENSEN and PHILO BRICTAL are seated with him. WHALLEY-JENSEN has apparently been on a GLP-1 regimen and looks hungry and hostile; BRICTAL has filled out since last time, mostly from alcohol. They wear some Indochino and Suit Supply shit they got at a discount. iPhones are on the table.]

BINS: OK, kids, very busy week in trends.

WHALLEY-JENSEN: Please stop calling us kids.

BINS: I know you have stories working but this is hot and you guys have the contacts we need.

BRICTAL: Speaking of kids, what happened to those guys you hired last month.

BINS: [As if flummoxed] We’re constantly hiring. You mean —

BRICTAL: The ones you got from the Dalton School.

BINS: You mean the interns?

BRICTAL: You said they were going to do trends.

WHALLEY-JENSEN: I heard they went to Anthropic.

BINS: They needed some seasoning. You’ll see them again. But not on these — these stories need pros. OK, Markwayne Mullin, as you know, punched a couple guys in a DC bar. Cabinet official, drunken brawl, if these were normal times it’d be a big story, ha ha. Politics and public safety are all over it, but what about the trend among young men getting in fights as a sort of signifier of masculinity?

[Pause. BINS picks up his iPhone, starts tapping.]

BRICTAL: What.

BINS: I’m just an old guy but I’ve been seeing a lot of stories about young men getting in fistfights, and it’s not always the kind of young men you’d expect. I just sent you some links.

[BRICTAL and WHALLEY-JENSEN look at their phones.]

I’m not telling you how to do your jobs but I think if you do a little digging you’ll see what I’m talking about. Maybe this generation has its own “Fight Club.”

BRICTAL: Isn’t Mullin like 50?

BINS: So look at the 50-year-olds. Maybe this is a pan-masculine thing -- all ages, income levels. Maybe not. Pull the string! See what you get. Maybe you’ll find that some say — [will greater heft] some say — [back to normal tone] — that males of whatever type are engaged in, let’s call it fightmaxxing, and Mullin’s just someone who got swept up in it.

[Long pause.]

BRICTAL: We’ll look into it.

BINS: OK.

WHALLEY-JENSEN: [muttering to herself] Mogging — nogging — slogging —.

BINS: What’s that, Ellie?

WHALLEY-JENSEN: Nothing.

BINS: OK. Fast as you can, alright? We already have the layout. Aaand maybe we get a twofer, because, and if this is just me — and Joe, and A.G. — apologies for the goose chase, but doesn’t it strike you that young people are drinking more alcohol than they have since, oh, since everything got woke and they moved on to ayahuasca and clove cigarettes?

WHALLEY-JENSEN: With respect, Ned, alcohol use is actually dropping among all age groups.

BRICTAL: And didn’t we do a story about that last year?

BINS: The situation is fluid. Maybe there’s a rise in drinking that the social scientists haven’t picked up on it yet. Journalists are the canaries in the coal mine! Like I said, a twofer, pull the string, see what you get. Now — this last one, it’s a long shot. OK. The Trump incident. You know.

WHALLEY-JENSEN: He walked into the bookcase.

BINS: Not that one.

BRICTAL: The poop.

BINS: [nodding] The poop.

WHALLEY-JENSEN: Jesus.

BINS: It’s when you think you’ve seen all the angles that inspiration strikes. I want you to look at this —

BRICTAL: A trend?

BINS: There’s always some weird little scene somewhere where people are doing weird things and, we don’t have to draw any conclusions, but look, for days people have been saying, oh, Trump showed his poop, the poop was in his hands, etcetera etcetera. They all assume he’s senile, right? Except Megyn Kelly, who did that terrific op-ed about how skillfully he associated excrement with immigrants -- speaking to his voters in his way, and we have to respect that. But what if this isn’t just about Trump! Like with the shoes — everyone thought he was making his cabinet wear big shoes to humiliate them, but we showed that it was actually part of a trend. Maybe, and we don’t have to prove the connection, but maybe now there’s a trend that involves —

BRICTAL: [In an extremely reasonable tone] Ned. Ned. This is not a trend. Trump is mentally impaired. He’s not following a trend. He hasn’t noticed a trend since padded shoulders and Cinemax. He just did a — a really fucked-up thing.

[Pause.]

BINS: Oh. Is that all? Is that what we and all the other papers have devoted tens of thousands of words to? Well, Philo, we don’t just say “fucked-up thing” and move on, We look for the story behind the story. Or, in Trump’s case, the story in front of the story. [Chuckles briefly.] Because people get sick of Orange Man Bad and Orange Man Clinically Insane, right? What we do is look for angles. We run down leads, regardless of our personal moral and political feelings. And sometimes the lead comes from a source, or a leak, or just luck, but in this case you have the extreme good fortune to get it from your editor. Who is very invested in your success, and the success of this news organization, where we don’t just say Trump did a fucked-up thing.

[Pause.]

BRICTAL: OK.

WHALLEY-JENSEN: [Almost simultaneously] OK.

BINS: OK then. Happy hunting!

[BRICTAL and WHALLEY-JENSEN silently leave. BINS picks up his iPhone and makes a call.]

Simon! “Pete Hegseth’s Bombsmaxxing”! Beautiful!