Happy Monday! First, a correction: At the top of Friday's newsletter, I misspelled Barry Ritholtz's name. My apologies. Over the weekend, I finished his new book "How NOT To Invest," and it was a genuinely great investment.
It's a busy morning. Here's the latest on Blue Origin, Politico, "60 Minutes," CBS, "Minecraft," and much more...
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Kenny Holston/Pool/AFP via Getty Images |
Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is going on trial today. If the judge sides with the FTC in the blockbuster antitrust case, Meta could be forced to break itself up by selling Instagram and WhatsApp, and other tech giants could be put on notice. But there is another if: whether President Trump will intervene.
On the one hand, Trump has been harshly critical of Zuckerberg and Meta for years. On the other hand, Zuckerberg has bent over backwards to forge an alliance with the president in recent months. Zuckerberg was most recently spotted at the White House on April 2; that same day, the NYT and the WSJ reported that he was lobbying Trump to resolve the FTC case.
Under normal circumstances a president's personal relationships and opinions would have no bearing on a federal trial. But these are not normal times. The FTC's historic independence has been thrown into doubt during Trump's second term. So "even if Trump allows the trial to proceed, it’s possible that the president could intervene down the line," Politico's Brendan Bordelon wrote yesterday.
But if Trump is inclined to give Meta a reprieve, he has not said so publicly. He has recently praised moguls like Jeff Bezos but hasn't expressed any warm and fuzzy feelings about Zuckerberg. Here's my trial curtain-raiser story for CNN.com...
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>> In another twist of sorts, the US district judge assigned to the case is Judge James Boasberg, who has attracted Trump's ire by ruling against his use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.
>> Zuckerberg is expected to be the "marquee witness" in the trial, the NYT notes. NPR says it will take seven to eight weeks.
>> On Friday Meta added Dina Powell McCormick to its board. "Her appointment represents another sign of Meta's alignment with Republicans," CNBC's Jordan Novet wrote.
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Palin/NYT retrial starts today |
Starting today Sarah Palin "has the rare opportunity to retry her defamation case" against The New York Times "even though she lost it twice in a 24-hour period in early 2022," NPR's David Folkenflik writes. Jury selection is slated to begin today in federal court in Manhattan "after a judge's misstep in the initial suit opened the door to a retrial." Read on...
>> Much of the trial will be a repeat, but "what has changed is the country," the NYT's David Enrich and Katie Robertson write...
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☝️ That's how CBS is promoting today's launch. Blue Origin "is taking a star-studded crew of six female passengers to the edge of space" this morning "in one of the most closely watched suborbital space tourism missions in years," CNN's Jackie Wattles writes.
Since Gayle King is one of the passengers, her morning show "CBS Mornings" will have special live coverage of the journey. The launch window will open at 9:30am ET. Blue Origin is streaming anchored coverage, led by Charissa Thompson, Kristin Fisher, and Ariane Cornell, right now...
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🤔 Trump's message to the FCC |
Last night Trump was so angry about these "60 Minutes" segments about Ukraine and Greenland that he posted twice about the show on Truth Social. He repeated bogus claims about his frivolous lawsuit against "60," then relayed a message to his FCC chair: "They should lose their license! Hopefully, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), as headed by its Highly Respected Chairman,
Brendan Carr, will impose the maximum fines and punishment, which is substantial, for their unlawful and illegal behavior. CBS is out of control, at levels never seen before, and they should pay a big price for this."
This is, of course, of a piece with Trump directing the Justice Department to investigate his critics. Trump talked about revoking licenses on the campaign trail, but this is one of the first times he has brought it up since taking office. I asked Carr if he has any comment on Trump's post, and Carr has not responded.
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Scott Pelley asked Zelensky, "When President Trump called you a dictator and said that Ukraine started this war, what did you think?"
Zelensky said "I believe, sadly, Russian narratives are prevailing in the U.S. How is it possible to witness our losses and our suffering, to understand what the Russians are doing, and to still believe that they are not the aggressors, that they did not start this war? This speaks to the enormous influence of Russia's information policy on America, on U.S. politics, and U.S. politicians."
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First POTUS interview since... |
Trump's first interview since his "Liberation Day" is being taped later today. Fox's Rachel Campos-Duffy is sitting down with Trump "for the Spanish-language 'Fox Noticias' program," Stef W. Kight reported for Axios. FOX Deportes will air it in two parts, Tuesday and Wednesday at 4pm ET, with portions airing on Fox News too. At the moment there is no indication that a clip will be released today.
>> Last Wednesday, shortly after Jamie Dimon used Maria Bartiromo's Fox Business show to warn about a likely recession, Bartiromo spoke with Trump on the phone about the interview. "He said Jamie made some good points," Bartiromo recalled to the WSJ's Isabella Simonetti.
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The FT's front page headline this morning: "Big Tech dealt blow as Lutnick warns US tariff exemption will only be brief." But stocks are up in premarket trading anyway. The WSJ editorial board says it was "a confusing weekend that offers more lessons in the arbitrary nature of Trump trade policy." Of course, some experts think that's precisely the point. Fareed Zakaria's Sunday essay about the "orgy of corruption" was outstanding.
>> Economist Justin Wolfers predicts "high tariffs for everyone except those who curry favor with the king" and says the lesson is "it's more important to compete at Mar-a-Lago than in the market."
>> Bloomberg's Marc Gurman and Shawn Donnan say "Apple has managed to dodge its biggest crisis since the pandemic — for the moment, at least."
>> Christopher Mims says Nintendo, with the Switch 2 on the way, "is navigating tariff chaos with secret shipments and new factories."
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Very different info diets |
Most Americans recognize that the economy is getting worse, according to new CBS polling, but the partisan divides (80% of Democrats call the economy "bad" while 62% of Republicans call it "good") are a testament to differing info diets, among other factors. The pollsters asked "where people go for trusted information about the tariffs and their impact," and "for Republicans, they trust Trump 'a lot' for that information, far more than they do Wall Street or business leaders in general."
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Politico Live's new editorial director |
Politico is promoting Steven Overly, the host of the brand's twice-weekly tech podcast, to be editorial director of Politico Live, North America. He'll report to Annie Allen, who says "Steven shares the belief that while Politico Live's events are the physical, in-person manifestation of our incredible journalism, they must also be multi-platform experiences that live across social media, video, audio and our newsletters and stories."
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'She intends to starve us' |
Kari Lake, the Trump loyalist who was tasked with unwinding the U.S. Agency for Global Media, still has not spoken with the heads of broadcasters like Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN for short).
"We're left to conclude that she intends to starve us of the money we need to pay our hard-working staff," MBN CEO Jeffrey Gedmin wrote in a memo over the weekend.
Calling the funding disruption "unlawful," Gedmin said "we depend on Congress and the courts to rescue MBN's future." Until or unless that happens, MBN has halted newscasts on the Alhurra network and cut about 90% of its staff...
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ICYMI over the weekend... |
>> Donie O'Sullivan's latest edition of "MisinfoNation" premiered last night. Check out his companion column: "What I learned in the manosphere." (CNN)
>> Recounting his recent dinner with Trump, Bill Maher told viewers: "A crazy person doesn’t live in the White House. A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there, which I know is fucked up. It's just not as fucked up as I thought it was."
>> Joseph Bernstein went in-depth on Darryl Cooper, "an idiosyncratic autodidact with no formal affiliations who has built a huge audience by promising his listeners ostensibly forbidden histories." (NYT)
>> A Post team conveyed how David Sacks "helped red-pill Silicon Valley" and became Trump's AI and crypto czar. (Wash Post)
>> VF alum Delia Cai connected Radhika Jones' departure to the "death of the media dream job." (Deez Links)
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Rory McIlroy completed his long-awaited career grand slam with a triumph at the Masters last night – and it was obviously a triumph for CBS too. "This will be the most-watched Masters final round in at least a decade," Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal predicted afterward. Saturday's third round action averaged 7.6 million viewers, "up 16% from last year," he added...
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>> "Sony has raised the price of its PlayStation 5 consoles worldwide, citing 'challenging' market conditions." (BBC)
>> When NYC Mayor Eric Adams promoted FBI director Kash Patel's old book "Government Gangsters," print sales "skyrocketed" (from 228 to 2,019 copies) (NYT)
>> Stars of "The Breakfast Club" reunited Saturday for the first time in 40 years. (CNN)
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Another huge 'Minecraft' haul |
"There's no slowing down A Minecraft Movie, which hurtled past the $550 million mark at the global box office on its way to likely becoming the first title of 2025 to join the $1 billion club," THR's Pamela McClintock reports. "The Warner Bros. family event pic easily stayed No. 1 in its second weekend with a huge domestic haul of $80.6 million." Details here...
>> Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw looked at why forecasters missed the massive success of "Minecraft."
>> ICYMI: In a Q&A with Deadline's Mike Fleming Jr, Warner Bros. Pictures co-chairs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy painted a picture "full of hope that they will be at the studio a good long time, and show Minecraft was no fluke."
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Coachella's memorable weekend |
Coachella's first weekend "wrapped Sunday with a star-studded performance from Megan Thee Stallion, a solo turn from Blackpink's Jennie and more," the LA Times reports. CNN has five buzzy moments from the stages here. Among the surprises: Senator Bernie Sanders showed up ahead of Clairo’s set to urge concertgoers to oppose Trump's policies. The schedule is mostly the same for weekend two...
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Rest in peace, Don Mischer |
Don Mischer has died. He was 85. Mischer was a television legend – "one of the preeminent live event directors of the past six decades," as Deadline's Nellie Andreeva writes here, and a 15-time Emmy winner. Just one week before his death, Mischer directed the telecast of the Breakthrough Prize Ceremony. He had decided it would be his "last show."
"I started at the PBS station in Austin at the University of Texas campus in 1963, and I turned 85 last week," he said in an email as he prepared for the awards show. "Man, it feels like time has just flown by."
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