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Wednesday, January 21, 2026 |
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Good morning. A Zohran Mamdani film is in the works. Gayle King is weighing her future at CBS. The NYT is launching a two-player game. Michelle Obama is on "Call Her Daddy." But first... |
Greenland as a 'breaking point' |
President Trump is speaking right now at Davos, so anything I write here might be out of date in an hour. "He's doing his briefing room bit again, but for a room full of world leaders and CEOs," editor Andrew Kirell texted just now. One of CNN's live blog headlines is "Trump goes on tirade against windmills."
The biggest news from the speech so far is this seemingly scripted line: "I'm seeking immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States, just as we have acquired many other territories throughout our history, as many of the European nations have."
"As we've been reporting this week, Trump is more emboldened than ever to go after Greenland following his administration's successful capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro," CNN's Alayna Treene wrote on X.
And longtime US allies are no longer whispering their criticism. Before Trump's speech began, Jim Sciutto said on CNN that European officials had been telling him "in private for months that they see the world order collapsing; they no longer trust the U.S. as a security partner; they're beginning to doubt America's commitments to its existing alliances, etcetera."
"They are now saying it in public," Sciutto said. "Greenland seems to be a breaking point for them, and particularly the Danish."
Trump's push to take over Greenland has certainly been a breaking point for some conservative commentators. They're calling the president manic, self-defeating and worse.
This morning, the National Review home page says "the president needs to calm down." WSJ columnist Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. decries the "foolishness" and says Trump "needs therapy more than the U.S. needs to own the island to ensure its defense." Erick Erickson says Trump has "insane impulse control issues." The Washington Examiner labels Trump's recent texts "almost deranged."
This is a movie we've seen many times before, with some principled conservatives speaking up while MAGA propagandists rush to explain — yet again — how this is actually strategic genius or 4D chess.
>> "Hand it to Trump," Tina Brown wrote in her Fresh Hell column earlier this week. "His surreal gift is the ability to force the entire world to enter his mad, magical thinking and give it serious credence."
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Normalizing 'mad, magical thinking' |
It's a sign of the times that Bloomberg published an explainer yesterday titled "Could the Constitution's 25th Amendment Be Used to Oust Trump?" (Democratic lawmakers have brought up the 25th Amendment in recent days, and a few GOP-aligned writers have done the same.)
But it's equally revealing that the same Bloomberg journalist published a very similar piece back in 2018.
>> "Hand it to Trump," Tina Brown wrote in her Fresh Hell column earlier this week. "His surreal gift is the ability to force the entire world to enter his mad, magical thinking and give it serious credence."
>> The NYT's Peter Baker put it this way: "It is a measure of how much Mr. Trump has changed the definition of normal that his appetite for seizing land that does not belong to him is debated as a serious proposition rather than dismissed out of hand as a brazen violation of U.S. treaty obligations and international law."
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A few notes about Trump's presser... |
During Trump's 104-minute-long visit to the WH briefing room yesterday, he marveled at the size of the press crowd and muttered about media coverage of his first year back in office. "Maybe I have bad public relations people," he said at one point.
>> It was intriguing to hear Trump celebrate his cuts to PBS and NPR and say "I heard they're closed up" right in front of reporters from... PBS and NPR. In Trump's mind, it seems, public media is dead, while it's still very much alive despite federal defunding.
>> Trump notably drove right past a conspiracy-bait "question" pushed by a Lindell TV personality.
>> Hunter Walker wrote about Trump's tirade against Somalis for TPM, then pointed out a relative dearth of other stories about it: "We live in a world where the president calling an ethnic group 'very low IQ' and 'bad for our country' while insisting they 'ought to get the hell out of here' barely makes headlines."
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4️⃣ things to watch today |
>> The Fed heads to SCOTUS today. Oral arguments are set for 10 a.m. ET in the case of Fed Governor Lisa Cook. Expect widespread live coverage on cable.
>> Michelle Obama is the guest on Alex Cooper's newest episode of "Call Her Daddy." There's lots of talk about social media in the two-hour conversation.
>> Longtime sportscaster turned conservative commentator Michele Tafoya announced a run for US Senate in Minnesota via video this morning, CNN's David Wright reports.
>> The BBC has confirmed "what it is billing as a 'strategic partnership' with YouTube that will see the British broadcaster produce original content for the video platform," Variety's Alex Ritman reports.
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A Mamdani film is on the way |
Julia Bacha, a New York-based filmmaker, has been following Zohran Mamdani on and off for "the two and a half years," The New Yorker's Molly Fischer reveals in a new piece this morning. Bacha "has just begun editing some two hundred hours of material, a process she expects to last for the next four or five months. The result will be her next film: the story of a little-known state assemblyman’s path to becoming New York City's mayor."
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Stars & Stripes call for help |
"Your help is urgently needed to keep Stars and Stripes operating as an independent news source that adheres to journalistic principles and ethics," the newspaper's ombudsman Jacqueline Smith writes in this column responding to the Pentagon's recent talk of overhauling the paper. Smith urged readers to lobby their lawmakers.
Meantime, "the House Armed Services Committee has sent a bipartisan query to the Defense Department asking how it plans to safeguard the publication's congressionally required independence, among other questions," the NYT's Erik Wemple reports. "The committee is waiting on a response."
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CPJ releases 2025 prison census |
Liam Reilly writes: A total of 330 journalists were behind bars globally in 2025, just shy of 2024's record 384, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists' annual report on imprisoned journalists. The top jailers of journalists were China, Myanmar, Israel and Russia. “Persecuting journalists is a means of silencing them," CPJ chief Jodie Ginsberg says. "That has profound implications for us as individuals and for society as a whole."
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CBS News 'veering toward dysfunction' |
"Ten people familiar with the workings of CBS News say the Paramount Skydance unit is veering toward dysfunction, with a management team led by Bari Weiss that doesn't value the standards held by veteran journalists," Variety's Brian Steinberg reports. Here is the full piece...
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Remember the spasm of news stories last October about Gayle King's future at CBS? With her contract coming due in May, "King is said to be considering various options, including a special correspondent role that would have her making appearances on CBS News properties but not being a regular host, or another that might keep her on the air for another year but at a lower salary, giving her 12 full months to bid farewell to viewers," Steinberg reports...
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Ellison highlights Paramount's local TV footprint |
Per a tipster, Paramount CEO David Ellison landed in Atlanta yesterday afternoon for a visit to WUPA, a longtime independent station that transformed into the new CBS-owned-and-operated station in the market last summer. Top lieutenants George Cheeks and Jennifer Mitchell joined Ellison on the visit to highlight Paramount's local TV portfolio...
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Recapping Netflix earnings report... |
Netflix shares are trading down more than 7% in premarket trading the morning, continuing a months-long slide, after the streaming giant reported Q4 earnings and a lower-than-expected forecast for 2026.
Even though the Q4 results "largely beat Wall Street estimates," Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw notes, the company issued "a cautious forecast for the months ahead, citing higher program spending and the cost of closing its deal with Warner Bros. Discovery."
Following this earnings report, "investors will ponder whether Netflix becoming HBO faster than HBO became Netflix serves their interest. So far, markets have not responded kindly to the acquisition," Emarketer senior analyst Ross Benes said.
>> Let these #'s sink in: Netflix also revealed it now has 325 million subscribers, which Sarandos said translates to roughly 1 billion people overall.
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Three key quotes from Sarandos |
Liam Reilly listened in to the investor call and heard Sarandos checking all the possible boxes to temper antitrust concerns about the Warner Bros. deal:
>> "YouTube is not just UGC and cat videos anymore," Sarandos said, adding, "They are TV." And "Instagram is coming next."
>> Sarandos again stressed that "Warner Brothers films are going to be released in theaters with a 45-day window, just like they are today," and added, "We're expanding content creation, not collapsing it in this transaction."
>> Sarandos also acknowledged that Netflix didn't initially plan to acquire WBD: "It was our default position going in that we were not buyers..." but then "we both got very excited about this amazing opportunity."
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Nielsen shows Netflix's big December gains |
Nielsen's monthly snapshot into TV viewership for December showed Netflix to be a big winner. The streaming giant's viewership was up 10% month-over-month, occupying 9% of all TV viewership, a personal best driven by "Stranger Things" and back-to-back NFL games. YouTube still topped the chart with 12.7% of all TV viewership.
>> Paramount also achieved a personal best, nabbing 2.5% of all TV, aided by "Landman" on Paramount+.
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🔤 NYT launches two-player game |
This item is for my better half Jamie, who crushes me in Wordle and Spelling Bee: The New York Times is announcing its "first-ever 2-player game, Crossplay," this morning. The Times says it is "designed for real-time competition and social play in a new app, where fans can go word to word with fellow puzzle lovers and, for our launch, go head to head with songwriters known for their way with words." The app is available via Apple and Android...
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>> Substack challenger Beehiiv "expects to nearly double annual revenue to $50 million this year." The startup says "roughly one in seven new writers" are arriving from Substack. (Reuters)
>> The Washington Free Beacon has acquired Ira Stoll's Substack, The Editors, and hired him as a senior writer. (Free Beacon)
>> Snap has settled a "tech addiction lawsuit," thereby avoiding what would have been a landmark trial, Cecilia Kang reports. (NYT)
>> The FTC says it "will appeal the November ruling in favor of Meta in its antitrust case against the social media giant." (AP)
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>> Sabrina Carpenter is the "first confirmed artist to perform" at the Grammys, coming up on Feb. 1. (THR)
>> Stephen Colbert is visiting Seth Meyers' show next Tuesday. (LateNighter)
>> Adobe "is pledging close to $10 million in grants and product donations this year to support filmmakers, including funding creators directly for the first time." (THR)
>> Netflix launched "Star Search" last night, and with it, a new way for "users to interact with live content through voting." (TechCrunch)
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Oscar noms coming tomorrow |
This year's Oscar nominations will roll out tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. ET live on ABC's "GMA" and all the other usual spots. Variety's Clayton Davis says "Sinners" is "projected to make Academy Awards history with a staggering 15 nominations," while "One Battle After Another" is "forecast to earn" 13 noms. Details here...
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