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Wednesday, November 19, 2025 |
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What do David Ellison, David Remnick, Cindi Berger, Rupert Murdoch, Lainey Wilson, Suzanne Scott, Larry Summers, and Perry Sook all have in common? They're all making news in this Wednesday edition...
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Last Friday, Trump snapped at Bloomberg's Catherine Lucey: "Quiet, piggy."
On Sunday night, he scolded Lucey a second time: "You are the worst. You're with Bloomberg, right? You are the worst. I don't know why they even have you."
And yesterday, he berated ABC's Mary Bruce for being "insubordinate." Then he said his ally, Brendan Carr, the FCC chairman, should "look at" punishing ABC by stripping its licenses.
Both reporters were asking about Jeffrey Epstein. (The second time around, Lucey was asking about Tucker Carlson's interview of Nick Fuentes.)
The unacceptable "piggy" comment didn't get much immediate attention, in part because the White House pool reporter that night failed to mention the insult.
But it was part of a clear pattern now — Trump is especially jumpy about Epstein-related questions.
It's also a window into how he tries to control the information ecosystem around him. On that note, it's tempting to move on quickly from yesterday's embarrassing display in the Oval Office, since there's so much else going on, but that would be a mistake. Yes, Trump derides journalists all the time, but his outburst hit differently with a Saudi prince by his side. It showed how intertwined his media-bashing and autocrat-admiring instincts really are.
In Saudi Arabia, "independent media are non-existent," according to Reporters Without Borders. "Despite societal reforms, journalists are still being detained and media outlets operate under strict state control."
Trump has no such control over the American media, but he acts like he wants to have it. He'd like his government to retaliate the way a dictator would.
"With his own open threat against ABC, the president certainly must have made his guests feel right at home," Anderson Cooper said last night. Here's my CNN.com analysis piece all about this.
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Trump snapped at Bruce after she invoked the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents. Trump's dismissive answer appalled press freedom groups and led the Washington Post editorial board to say Trump's distortions were "beneath the office of the president."
Trump's chief concern was the prince's comfort. "You don't have to embarrass our guest by asking a question," he said to Bruce. Most tellingly, he immediately brought up ABC's relationship with the government: "I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake."
I know I'm a broken record on this subject, but the FCC does not regulate the ABC network; it licenses local stations, some of which ABC owns. The FCC has "neither the legal authority nor the constitutional right to pursue broadcasters for their journalism," Democratic FCC commissioner Anna Gomez wrote on X. "These threats sound ominous, but they're empty."
An FCC source reiterated that point to CNN's Liam Reilly, saying the agency is powerless to do much about license revocations. What’s more, ABC doesn't have any licenses slated to be reviewed in the near future, and any attempt to revoke a license outside of the normal eight-year renewal window would face strong judicial scrutiny on First Amendment grounds that the FCC cannot defend, the source added.
>> Neither Disney nor ABC News responded to requests for comment, but Disney is well aware of that legal reality...
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Fox anchors Bret Baier and Maria Bartiromo were both guests at last night's White House dinner for the Saudis. So was Paramount CEO David Ellison, right on the heels of a story about his talks with Saudi investors. (See below.) And so was Elon Musk, who looked totally comfortable in the East Room.
"The relationship between Musk and Trump has obviously improved dramatically (remember Charlie Kirk's memorial) but this is I think Musk’s first time back at the White House (publicly) at least since that Oval Office send off," CNN's Hadas Gold noted. The NYT's Theodore Schleifer has more on Musk's current political involvement here...
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Speculation about 'the role of Middle East wealth...' |
"As Paramount, Comcast and Netflix prepare bids for Warner Bros. Discovery ahead of a Thursday deadline, speculation is growing about the role of Middle East wealth in the game-changing transaction," Deadline's Dade Hayes and Jill Goldsmith wrote last night.
Earlier in the day, Variety reported that Paramount was putting together an "investment consortium with the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi" to help fund its bid for WBD (CNN's parent). But a Paramount rep said the info was inaccurate, adding, "This is a confidential process, which we respect and, as such, will not be commenting until the process is over."
My best sense is that the FT's reporting is right on: Ellison has held "preliminary talks with Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund and other major Gulf investors" about backing the WBD bid, and in recent weeks, Ellison "separately met the kingdom's Public Investment Fund and other officials from the region."
>> "When I hear about attempts by Saudi Arabia to potentially buy media companies in the US and wield that kind of power, it scares the hell out of me," Jason Rezaian said on CNN yesterday. "We can still do our jobs" here in America, he said, "but the heat behind our backs is getting higher and higher."
>> "As for WBD, Paramount is still widely regarded as the one to beat in the chase," the Deadline reporters wrote. More to come later this week, quite possibly...
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Congress is sending a bill that would compel the DOJ to release all of the Epstein case files to the president.
Trump is speaking at a US-Saudi investment forum at noon.
Lainey Wilson is hosting the Country Music Association Awards on ABC tonight...
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Trump fails to revive 'Big Lie' lawsuit against CNN |
This is an important legal win to keep in mind the next time Trump sues a news outlet: A federal appeals court has rejected Trump's attempt to revive his 2022 defamation lawsuit against CNN. A three-judge appellate panel called his arguments "meritless," ruling the president failed to show "falsity," a key element to proving you've been defamed.
A Trump legal team spokesman said the president "will pursue this case against CNN to its just and deserved conclusion." But the takeaway is that news outlets tend to prevail when they stand their ground rather than settle out of court with Trump. Here's my full story...
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Liam Reilly writes: "Resilience" was the word of the night at New York Public Radio's annual fundraising gala last night. LaFontaine Oliver, NYPR's president and chief executive, said the GOP's rescission of public media funding was "meant to bring about an ending," but it failed because "you can't defund the truth."
>> The New Yorker's longtime editor, David Remnick, who accepted NYPR's Media Innovation Award, said, "We cannot kid ourselves about the era that we are living in. This is a test, a test you could say of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is a test of all of us in this room to stand up for what we say that we believe in..." Right now "is the time to show that we have backbone, endurance, and will not put up with the shit."
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FIRE takes on 'Facebook jail' IRL case |
Remember Larry Bushart, who spent more than a month behind bars for posting an anti-Trump meme? Well, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression was monitoring Bushart's case (in fact, the organization helped me with background info when I decided to write about it), and now it's representing him. "What happened was absurd, cruel, and unconstitutional — and we'll see the sheriff in court," FIRE says, signaling legal action to come...
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Local TV consolidation watch |
Tegna shareholders have voted to approve the company's merger with Nexstar. Next step: An FCC review. THR's Alex Weprin has all the details here. In a long statement written to appeal to Trump and Carr, Nexstar CEO Perry Sook positioned his company as "anti-fake news" in "an age of disinformation and political agendas."
>> Scripps Broadcasting CEO Adam Symson told employees "that a takeover by rival Sinclair Broadcasting is far from a done deal, even after Sinclair announced it had purchased more than 8% of Scripps stock and had been in merger talks for months," Al Tompkins reports for Poynter.
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"Meta scored a major win on Tuesday after a federal judge ruled that it is not a social networking monopoly, shooting down an argument from the US Federal Trade Commission that it should be forced to spin off two of its most popular platforms,” Clare Duffy reports.
>> The Information's Martin Peers remarked: "So much for all those breathless headlines suggesting Meta might get broken up!"
>> Peers also observed that the judge "would have had a harder time ruling in Meta's favor if TikTok had been banned" in the US.
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Murdoch toasts California Post |
Last night, News Corp threw a party on the Fox lot in L.A. to woo advertisers for the forthcoming launch of the California Post, its spinoff of the New York Post. My old pal Amy Chozick was there, and she wrote on Instagram, "Rupert was there along with a lot of print journalists ready to stir some shit. I love it." |
>> New this morning: Former Harvard president Larry Summers is resigning from the OpenAI board after his correspondence with Epstein was published last week. (CNN)
>> Speaking of Summers, a rep for The New York Times says it does "not intend to renew" his contract as a contributing opinion writer. (The Crimson)
>> "Frontline" is launching Frontline Features, "a new documentary production and distribution initiative." (Variety)
>> The Financial Times is starting a free newsletter on Substack "in an effort to engage younger readers." (Press Gazette)
>> Jason Del Rey is "launching an independent media company, The Aisle, to cover the AI era of commerce." He'll continue to host events with Fortune. (LinkedIn)
>> In a "Hollywood PR shakeup," most of R&CPMK is moving to Michael Nyman's ACC, which has "partnered with R&CPMK chief Cindi Berger to create PMK Entertainment." (Variety)
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Speaking with students in South Carolina last week, Fox News Media boss Suzanne Scott said, "There's too much doomerism in the storytelling of AI." Young people," she said, "should be getting themselves educated about different AI tools in different industries."
I thought of that when Sara Fischer reported that "Fox News Media has been working with Palantir for the past year to build a suite of custom AI newsroom tools alongside its journalists." Fox's deals are "structured to prevent its AI partners from training on or otherwise exploiting its content."
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>> Google has launched its latest version of Gemini, "emphasizing that the new capabilities will be immediately available in several profit-generating products like its search engine." (Reuters)
>> And/but: In a sit-down with the BBC, Sundar Pichai said people should not "blindly trust" everything AI bots tell them, saying the tools are "prone to errors." (BBC)
>> It happened again: Cloudflare's global outage yesterday "is the latest in a continuing trend of infrastructure providers going offline and taking swaths of the Internet with them," Emarketer analyst Jacob Bourne said. (AFP)
>> "TikTok is rolling out new digital well-being features like an affirmation journal and a background sound generator aimed at improving the mental health of its users." (TechCrunch)
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Can't compete with the NFL! The TV Academy and NBCUniversal announced that the 2026 Emmys will take place on Monday, Sept. 14, meaning the awards show won't conflict with NBC's "Sunday Night Football." |
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