Happy Tuesday! Here's the latest on Sun Valley, Jon Stewart, Joe Rogan, Christine Brennan, Salena Zito, Bluesky, the "Superman" premiere, and much more...
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'This stinks. This just reeks.' |
The Trump administration is coming under rare and intense scrutiny from its usual pro-Trump media allies. The reason? That new statement from Pam Bondi's Justice Department refuting right-wing conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein.
The criticism is not just coming from MAGA media's fever swamps — though there's plenty of anger there. It's coming from Fox News, too, which means the president is almost certainly hearing about it.
Fox's Peter Doocy pressed Karoline Leavitt about the matter yesterday, and numerous shows highlighted the controversy. "WE NEED ANSWERS ON EPSTEIN," blared a banner on Jesse Watters' show. Watters devoted a full segment to the topic and featured two guests who alleged an ongoing cover-up.
This is, of course, how it always works: As Cass Sunstein once said, "the self-sealing quality of conspiracy theories creates severe practical problems for government; direct attempts to dispel the theory can usually be folded into the theory itself as just one more ploy by powerful conspiracy members."
That's what is happening now. Tellingly, Watters did not criticize Trump directly but instead blamed "the feds" in general. "The government's been keeping us in the dark for generations," he said. And he ended the segment by saying Bondi, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino are "great Americans, but this stinks. This just reeks."
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"This is what happens when the dog catches the car. Or, to put a finer point on it, when you and the people around you become the very 'Deep State' you have spent years attacking," Chris Cillizza wrote over at "So What."
Back when Bongino was just a podcaster, "he felt comfortable speaking about theories and allegations as if they were proven facts," National Review's Jim Geraghty observed. Bongino confidently talked of "overturning that rock and seeing what's underneath." Now he has... and "sometimes you overturn a rock, and you just find the bottom of a rock."
But Bongino's fans don't believe him. He posted Trump's timely praise of the FBI on Monday and was deluged with angry replies on X. The Bulwark's Will Sommer detailed the MAGA world "meltdown" here. Another example just landed in my inbox: Tucker Carlson's morning newsletter asserts that "the government is doing a bad job of getting us to believe its Jeffrey Epstein story" and accuses Bondi's DOJ of "covering up" Epstein's crimes. Simply put, a two-page memo is not sufficient. (But for true believers, nothing will be.)
"I've been lurking in and out of right-wing conversations about the Epstein files" and "it can't be said enough how much legitimate friction and chaos this has created within the MAGA coalition," former Kamala Harris senior advisor Mike Nellis tweeted. "A lot of them feel really betrayed over it—and for good reason."
>> Tangle's Isaac Saul expressed a hopeful note: "It is wild (and ironic), but this might honestly be the thing that wakes up the furthest right-wing, super online zealots about all the B.S. they have been fed by conspiracy-laded accounts. I haven't ever really seen this much fury about something."
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Another Democrat goes on 'Rogan' |
Two weeks ago, Bernie Sanders was on "The Joe Rogan Experience." Today is James Talarico's turn. "The viral Democratic Texas state representative and seminarian," who may run for U.S. Senate in 2026, "has become the latest member of a rarified group of Democrats to record an interview" with Rogan, Politico's Adam Wren reports. "Rogan invited Talarico on the podcast after seeing one of his viral political videos about the Ten Commandments, according to a person familiar with the matter."
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Jon Stewart on 'shameful settlement' |
"The Daily Show" host "returned from a two-week vacation last night" and "opened his monologue with a cry of outrage at the 'shameful settlement,' only to be faux-interrupted by an old-fashioned 'Please Stand By' card faux-sponsored by Arby's," LateNighter's Bill Carter writes.
Ha-ha. The point was that Stewart would not be silenced. His guest was former "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft, and the two men "went all the way there in describing the threat—not just to '60 Minutes,' but to journalism itself and even, Kroft said, the First Amendment." Here's the segment on YouTube.
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Skydance deal window extended |
A "second 90-day extension" of Paramount Global's pending sale to David Ellison's Skydance was automatically triggered on Monday "as per the deal agreement, leaving the parties and the FCC more time to nail things down," Deadline's Jill Goldsmith reports. The deal window now runs through early October.
>> Charlie Gasparino hears that "the regulatory nod is coming in a few weeks."
>> "The fact is that anyone working at '60 Minutes' from now on has to worry about what is going to be allowed on the air," legendary former "60 Minutes" producer Lowell Bergman said on "The Daily."
>> "Let's be honest about what the threat is here. Trump has threatened to put the force of the federal government against these private companies," Abby Phillip said during a "NewsNight" discussion of Paramount's deal and Google's settlement talks.
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Allen & Company's annual Sun Valley gathering is getting underway, and "the growing emergence of artificial Intelligence is expected to be the hot topic," the NYPost's James Franey writes from Idaho. Variety obtained the guest list last month and said the names included Tim Cook, Ted Sarandos, Greg Peters, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Sam Altman, David Zaslav, Brian Roberts, and Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch.
>> TheWrap's Sharon Waxman expects moguls will be gossiping about Shari Redstone and the aforementioned Paramount settlement, with some coming to her defense and arguing she did the "best" she could...
>> Puck's Matthew Belloni reports that Ellison will be in attendance...
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Today's new nonfiction releases |
CNN sports analyst Christine Brennan is out today with "On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women's Sports." The book is already #2 on Amazon's new releases list, signaling that it's going to be a big hit. CNN.com has a fantastic excerpt that's specifically about Brennan and the media's role covering the WNBA.
Two new releases in politics are also selling well: Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf's "2024" and Salena Zito's "Butler."
>> Also hitting shelves: "The Man Who Would Be King: Mohammed bin Salman and the Transformation of Saudi Arabia" by Karen Elliott House, "A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck" by Sophie Elmhirst, and "Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists Are Re-creating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations" by Sam Kean...
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>> Trump's media company says its TV streaming platform, Truth+, is now online. It includes live streams of Newsmax and OAN's free ad-supported offshoots. (Reuters)
>> Private equity firm TPG has "completed its $7.6 billion purchase of the 70% stake it didn't already hold in DirecTV from AT&T." (Axios)
>> Gray Media and E.W. Scripps are swapping TV stations "cross five mid-size and small markets, resulting in the creation of new duopolies for each." (TV News Check)
>> "Manchester United have withdrawn from secret talks over a record-breaking Amazon Prime access-all-areas documentary next season after concluding it could distract from the progress of the first team," David Ornstein and Adam Crafton report. (NYT)
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'Europe's crackdown on speech goes far and wide' |
Americans who don't pay close attention to European politics might be taken aback by the details in this new WSJ story. It describes how "loosely defined hate-speech laws and the rise of social media have led to zealous policing" of speech across the continent.
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