The most consequential effect of CNN’s Trump town hall and its resulting fallout has been the exacerbation of network employees’ frustrations with Chris Licht’s leadership—and that includes Christiane Amanpour.
New, from
@DylanByers
NEW: A group led by private equity billionaires David Rubenstein and Mike Arougheti is buying the Orioles for $1.725 billion.
Puck sports business correspondent
@Ourand_Puck
reports.
BREAKING: Embattled CNN chief Chris Licht will be leaving the company, sources tell
@DylanByers
, and long-time top executive Amy Entelis will step in to steady the ship until Warner Bros. Discovery C.E.O. David Zaslav picks a new leader.
I’ve never seen the
#Oscars
audience stunned into silence like that, and I was here for the Moonlight/La La Land debacle. This is officially now the craziest Oscars moment ever.
Taylor Swift’s innovative deal with AMC might open the gates for a new genre of D.T.C. theatrical concert films, even if it angers the rest of Hollywood.
New, from
@MattBelloni
Federal agents drew up a statement laying out the case for arresting Pitt. But after meeting with an assistant U.S. attorney, they decided not to pursue criminal charges. Now Jolie is demanding to know more.
New, from
@eriqgardner
The biggest rumor swirling around town is that Alan Horn is returning to Warner Bros. under the new Zaz era.
Here’s what Horn told
@MattBelloni
about the chatter…
In a surprising about-face, Warner Bros. executives will allow the filmmakers of Coyote vs. Acme—a $70 million live action/CGI hybrid Looney Tunes film—to shop the movie to other potential distributors.
New, from
@MattBelloni
.
Britney Spears’ former business manager, Lou Taylor—who was involved in her conservatorship—has weaseled her way into the life of another troubled pop star: Justin Bieber.
@MattBelloni
reports.
The longtime Wheel of Fortune co-host hasn’t had a pay increase in 18 years. Now with Pat Sajak leaving, Vanna White has hired an aggressive new lawyer and is finally asking for more.
@MattBelloni
reports.
“The problem is that Trump is endearingly weird to his people,”
@reedgalen
says. “And DeSantis is just weird weird.”
@tina_nguyen
on whether DeSantis can overcome his personal deficit with the G.O.P. base.
On CNN, it sure looked like Trump won over the crowd during his town hall interview with Kaitlan Collins. But the reality was different in the room—and in the state of New Hampshire.
Read
@tarapalmeri
’s conversation with
@MRBartlettNH
.
NEW: John Avlon, the CNN anchor and senior political analyst, intends to run for Congress this year in New York’s 1st congressional district.
@DylanByers
reports.
It was a nightmarish 48 hours at CNN, with Zaz lieutenant David Leavy being brought in as C.O.O., marginalizing Chris Licht’s authority. Is this the beginning of the end for CNN’s embattled C.E.O.?
From
@DylanByers
With the Manhattan district attorney threatening to put Trump on trial, and DeSantis declining to stand in his way, GOP operatives are coalescing around the notion that it’s now the ex-president’s race to lose.
New, from
@tina_nguyen
A lackluster pre-indictment-gate small-dollar haul highlights an unlikely vulnerability vexing the Trump campaign: the easy money is no longer there.
New, from
@tarapalmeri
What happened: After a joke about Jada’s hair being for “GI Jane 2,” Will Smith just walked on stage and smacked Chris Rock in the head. Seemed like a bit but he started screaming: “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth!”
“At some point, the creditors Elon Musk is mindlessly stiffing on a regular basis are going to get sufficiently pissed to throw Twitter into bankruptcy.”
New, from
@WilliamCohan
“As a friend of mine and mother of three recently told me, ‘Suddenly planning for my children’s future is not about saving for college—it’s finding ways to protect them from being thrown in jail for having a miscarriage.’” —
@baratunde
Russia spent three generations building a business out of selling energy to Europe that Putin destroyed in a year. As it turns out, Russia needed Europe far more than Europe needed Russia.
New, from
@juliaioffe
Contrary to Western optimism, there is emerging evidence that Russians are now rallying around their flag and their president. As
@juliaioffe
reports, some are now refusing to accept anything less than total victory.
Both Trump and DeSantis are soliciting the financial support of Home Depot gazillionaire Bernie Marcus, the ultra prolific G.O.P. donor who’s suddenly noncommittal. Should Mar-a-Lago be worried?
New, from
@teddyschleifer
NEWS:
@MattBelloni
reports that Bob Iger has told at least a couple friends that he’d love to front a bid for the
@Suns
if the
@NBA
team were to become available (pending the league’s investigation into owner Robert Sarver).
Read it here:
If you’re interested in understanding what is happening with Russia and Ukraine,
@juliaioffe
’s work is a key resource. Along with her most recent piece, she recommended her Jan. interview with Fiona Hill as being particularly relevant to today’s escalation.
Over the last few weeks, the Biden administration has made a number of intelligence disclosures, aiming to preempt, expose, or disrupt various Russian plans. By Friday, it was clear that almost all of them have checked out.
From
@juliaioffe
:
During the past few days,
@juliaioffe
has been talking to Republican operatives across D.C. They were all careful not to gloat, but they’ve also been shocked at how little the Democratic Party is doing to fight back.
What happened to Desus & Mero? Blame their manager.
As
@MattBelloni
reports, a dispute over their long time manager (and credited producer on 𝘋𝘦𝘴𝘶𝘴 & 𝘔𝘦𝘳𝘰) Victor Lopez is what ended the Showtime comedy duo’s successful partnership.
NEW: Jeff Bezos is not in the bidding process for the Washington Commanders and is not currently planning to make a bid for the team, a source with direct knowledge tells
@teddyschleifer
Gaetz and Boebert may grandstand about aid to Ukraine, but the reality is that the majority is being spent on munitions factories in the ruby red states of their allies.
New, from
@juliaioffe
Jean-Michel Scherbak, a young actor and model from Moscow, has turned into perhaps the most unlikely dissident hero in the current crisis.
@juliaioffe
reports on how he is educating multiple generations of Russians about what’s really going on in Ukraine.
After seven months, the war has come home to Russia as Vladimir Putin desperately conscripts more than one million male soldiers, leading to a stampede at the border, a mass exodus, and the growing sense that Putin has blown it.
New, from
@juliaioffe
Kremlin state media has been elated since Ron DeSantis finally clarified his position on Ukraine on Tucker Carlson’s show Monday night
@juliaioffe
examines why right-wing Republicans are hawkish on China but soft on Russia.
Putin believed that vast oil and gas fields gave Russia irrevocable superpower status, and that using it as a cudgel on his clients would never backfire.
“He has certainly overplayed his hand,” Russian oil expert
@DanielYergin
tells
@juliaioffe
.
I'm reading
@teddyschleifer
's interview with Peter Thiel's disciple Joe Lonsdale and I got to the part where he says not all billionaires are bad. Does he...not know how that story ends? -JI
“[Putin] can do anything he wants in Moscow, he can get his way by breaking anyone over his leg like a twig—but not here.”
@juliaioffe
speaks with
@mefimus
, who is on the ground in Kyiv where the national resistance is growing.
Catch Puck’s
@juliaioffe
in
@frontlinepbs
’s “Putin and the Presidents” documentary, airing on
@PBS
Tuesday at 10/9c and streaming now.
Watch here 👉
Subscribe to Julia’s newsletter, “The Best & The Brightest,” here 👉
BREAKING: Chris Cuomo and CNN have lawyered up over his firing, reports
@MattBelloni
. Cuomo has hired litigator Bryan Freedman, who handled Megyn Kelly’s NBC exit, and CNN is working with WarnerMedia litigator Daniel Petrocelli.
A gripping conversation between
@juliaioffe
and
@christogrozev
, lead Russia investigator for Bellingcat, about his role in the Oscar-nominated doc “Navalny,” sleeper agents in Europe, and why he can’t go home again.
Before the invasion, the Biden administration was hesitant to provide too many weapons to Ukraine since, the thinking went, they wouldn’t stop the inevitable and would likely end up in Putin’s hands. Now, the calculus is different.
New, from
@juliaioffe
:
Putin’s childhood taught him lessons that shape his thinking to this day: might makes right, existing hierarchies can only be changed through violence, force is the only language that matters, and power is always a zero-sum game.
New, from
@juliaioffe
:
There is a growing fear in Washington that Russia will resort to hybrid tactics to inflict pain on Western powers in ways that it can no longer achieve through conventional warfare alone.
New, from
@juliaioffe
People in the Biden administration are worried that Putin will unleash a wave of asymmetric chaos across the West: political interference, cyberattacks, and assassinations.
@juliaioffe
explains.
Last week,
@juliaioffe
was in Europe for the Brussels Forum, where conversations were haunted by fears that there will be no second Biden term—and that the return of America-first isolationism will soon leave Europe at Putin’s mercy.
“I understand that China won’t throw Russia under the bus, but they’re not thrilled with the position that Putin has put them in. They’re shackled to a corpse,” a veteran American diplomat tells
@juliaioffe
.
As the war in Ukraine grinds on, pressure is building for the Biden administration to begin negotiations with the Russians, if only to prove what everyone in Washington already knows: the Russians have zero interest in negotiating.
New, from
@juliaioffe
There's something uniquely stomach-turning about the arrest of Evan Gershkovich—a provocation without precedent since 1986. It’s not just that Russia is “banking hostages,” a common F.S.B. tactic. It’s that Putin is out for revenge.
New, from
@juliaioffe
Days before Russian tanks started rolling, Kenya’s ambassador to the U.N. made a viral speech framing the brewing conflict as an anti-colonial struggle—by Ukraine against Russia.
@juliaioffe
speaks with Martin Kimani about standing up for Ukraine.
In the days since he was fired from Fox News, Tucker Carlson has been hailed as a hero and a truth-teller in Russian state media—a testament to his utility in Putin’s wartime campaign.
@juliaioffe
reports.
Under Swiss guard and fearing for his safety, Boris Bondarev, a former Russian diplomat who made international news by resigning in protest, opens up to
@juliaioffe
about his shocking resignation, Putin’s nuclear threat, and how it all ends.
Vladimir Putin’s misbegotten war is a blatant attempt to restore his vision of the Russky mir. And yet his war is being waged by the very young men, and supported by the families, that his government has oppressed.
New, from
@juliaioffe
:
In his new piece,
@WilliamCohan
reveals how the F.B.I. is fighting to redact thousands of pages of documents related to its 2006 investigation into Jeffrey Epstein—and why the agency is working to keep Americans in the dark.
NEW: Top Gun: Maverick co-writer Ehren Kruger is now officially at work on a follow-up to the 2022 megahit that will reunite Tom Cruise with co-stars Miles Teller and Glen Powell.
@MattBelloni
reports.
Twitter, which was once a peer with Facebook, is now 1/15th its size, its most fastidious user is trying to take it private, and seemingly everyone hates it despite their own contrary addictions.
An anatomy of a social media tragedy, by
@baratunde
:
SCOOP:
@DylanByers
has learned Chris Licht plans to offer Kaitlan Collins a new contract to serve as the host of the network’s 9 p.m. primetime hour, once the province of Chris Cuomo (and, very briefly, Jake Tapper).
Within Putin’s propaganda machine, two-thirds of Russians allegedly support the “special military operation” against Ukraine. But as with everything in Russia, the reality is much more complicated.
New, from
@juliaioffe
:
Cord Jefferson is a great story. TV writer, American Fiction is first produced film script, movie was tweaked heavily before its Toronto premiere, then it kills and goes all the way to
#Oscars
. AND he’s also a very nice guy.
America's national security elite came to the Aspen Security Forum prepared to talk about Russia, but the Chinese ambassador wanted them to know it isn't Moscow that should worry them—it's Beijing.
Read
@juliaioffe
’s latest:
David Zaslav’s cold-hearted decision to kill off 𝐵𝑎𝑡𝑔𝑖𝑟𝑙 for a tax credit isn’t simply the fault of the filmmakers, Jason Kilar, or Warner Bros. It’s on Hollywood, as a whole, for worrying about being left behind by Netflix.
New, from
@MattBelloni
:
“Why does one rich man have that much power over the public sphere globally?” – Nobel Prize Winner
@mariaressa
joins
@mcuban
and
@juliaioffe
for a debate about Elon’s Twitter tyranny on a special year end podcast. Full interview drops Monday on
@ApplePodcasts
No Labels has raised over $50 million for the singular purpose of getting a third party candidate on the presidential ballot in all 50 states. But when
@tarapalmeri
asked about this initiative, CEO Nancy Jacobson gave a surprising response:
NEWS: The Athletic has now entered into exclusive talks with The New York Times regarding a sale of its 1.2 million subscriber business, a source directly familiar with the matter tells
@DylanByers
.
Story here:
News of the ex-president’s unsecured intel stash is triggering national-security P.T.S.D. all over this town. The man who tormented their sleep for years, it turns out, might still have the nuclear codes after all.
New, from
@juliaioffe
Philippe Étienne, the French ambassador to the U.S., is probably the most popular, and polished, figure in establishment Washington. And he may know more about Russia than anyone else in this town.
New, from
@juliaioffe
Jen Psaki intends to leave the White House at some point this year and, according to sources familiar with her thinking, intends to go into television news—not as a contributor, but as a host.
New, from
@DylanByers
:
Who was Yevgeny Prigozhin?
Read
@juliaioffe
’s definitive profile on “Putin’s Chef,” her analysis of his June coup-that-wasn’t, and her reporting on the aftermath of his assassination, here 👉
Are there racist symbols hiding within Bored Apes? A new lawsuit could influence the future of the NFT market. Oh, and there are alleged Nazis, too.
New, from
@eriqgardner
Puck’s
@juliaioffe
on
@WagnerTonight
discussing Ukraine aid and the erosion of support in the Republican base.
Subscribe to Julia Ioffe’s Washington newsletter, “The Best & The Brightest,” here 👉
It’s all being kept quiet for now, but
@MattBelloni
is told the Academy is poised to enact a significant rules change, potentially adding a new theatrical distribution requirement for films to be eligible for best picture.
“First rule of Dictator Club is don’t allow anyone but yourself to have an army,”
@juliaioffe
tells
@AymanM
why the Prigozhin Rebellion was a crisis of Putin’s own making.
Puck is proud to welcome preeminent fashion journalist Lauren Sherman (
@lapresmidi
) aboard as our newest writer. Her private email covering the business of the fashion industry, Line Sheet, launches in April.
To receive the first Line Sheet, sign up 👉
An off-the-books, citizen’s backchannel to Russia exposes the ego and inanity of Washington “formers” freelancing as peacemakers without any consideration for Ukraine.
New, from
@juliaioffe
Neither side seems willing to negotiate: A source familiar with the Russian posture described Moscow’s opening position as “go fuck yourself”; another well-informed source said that’s Kyiv’s opener, too.
New, from
@juliaioffe
During this break, Denzel pulled Will aside to talk to him and they walk away from their seats together. Denzel now has his arm around Jada and is kneeling next to her even though the show has started.
#Oscars
“There is proclivity on the part of some Republican senators to treat women nominees differently than they treat male nominees.”
@SenatorShaheen
talks to
@juliaioffe
about Dr. Geeta Rao Gupta's stalled confirmation to the Office of Global Women’s Issues.
Puck welcomes
@ScottMendelson
aboard as our newest contributor. Scott will write a semi-regular Sunday column on movie box office for Puck’s Hollywood newsletter “What I’m Hearing” by
@MattBelloni
.
Subscribe here:
What to make of the long-rumored “post-Covid” financial comeuppance in the real estate sector?
@WilliamCohan
has the definitive, if alarming, download on the “perfect storm” that could be punishing the sector for years to come.
“I think our friends know we spy on them,” a senior State Department official tells
@juliaioffe
Official Washington is finally coming to terms with the reality of what got out in Teixeira’s alleged leak, what might follow, and why this keeps happening.
Evgeny Prigozhin, the terrifying and inscrutable muscle behind Russia’s most notorious mercenary group, has been the hidden hand behind some of the worst carnage in Ukraine—and an increasingly vocal threat to Putin, himself.
New, from
@juliaioffe
If the West was counting on sanctions to create enough economic pain for Russians to sweep Putin from power, they have been wildly unsuccessful. As
@juliaioffe
reports, many conscientious objectors who had fled the country are wending their way back home.
Reader: It worked on The Academy.
On Thursday,
@MattBelloni
revealed the mastermind behind the (ultimately successful) Andrea Riseborough Oscar campaign: Mary McCormack.
Larry Ellison, the megabillionaire backing Elon Musk’s bid for Twitter, was a longtime Clinton pal before a spat with Obama sent him spiraling rightward.
Now he’s poised to become one of the most powerful figures in the G.O.P.
New, from
@teddyschleifer
:
Musk’s confab with Kevin McCarthy in Wyoming, on the same day that Republicans are running Liz Cheney out of town, raises questions about his new political allies.
New, from
@teddyschleifer
The shock and disgust that many Russian elites felt at the beginning of the war—at the notion that Putin had just single-handedly made a disastrous decision that would destroy their own country—has abated.
New, from
@juliaioffe