Happy Monday! Hope you were able to recharge over the weekend. Today is Veterans Day in the U.S. Here's how to make it a meaningful day. Now to the latest media world news, from Fox to "SNL," A.I. to "Yellowstone." |
Elon Musk's influence with Donald Trump is one of the biggest stories in media, tech and politics right now.
Musk has "loomed over" all the action at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club since Trump's election night victory, CNN's Kaitlan Collins reported last night. Musk has been dining with Trump on the patio, hanging out on the golf course, and, more importantly, "weighing in on staffing decisions, making clear his preference for certain roles."
Musk has also been in the room when world leaders have phoned the president-elect. "Musk is not only close to Trump but also with his transition co-chair, Howard Lutnick, who is leading the personnel side of the transition," Collins reported. Trump is "loving just having Musk by his side," CNN's Alayna Treene told her.
Much of Musk's immense wealth comes directly from the federal government, which has handed billions of dollars in contracts and subsidies to Tesla and SpaceX, raising the potential for enormous conflicts of interest as Musk helps Trump create winners and losers of his new administration. His ownership and clear support for Trump on X also raises concerns he will use the social platform to push political narratives that further his business interests, intertwining the US government and the world's richest man like never before.
>> Musk is acting like he wants to crowdsource the transition process. He wrote on X overnight that it "would be interesting to hear recommendations for roles in the new administration for consideration by the President."
>> Meantime, any story you see about Musk's skyrocketing net worth is instantly out of date because Tesla shares keep surging. Tesla is up more than 6% in premarket trading again this morning...
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Covering the Mar-a-Lago scene |
Reporters who are well-sourced at Mar-a-Lago have the edge for the next few months. As CNN's Kristen Holmes reports, people are flocking to the club to "secure a job in the next administration." She quotes a source close to Trump who said "someone came up to me last night [at Mar-a-Lago] and said they were up to be press secretary. I have never seen this person in my life."
The BBC published a great West Palm Beach "scene" story over the weekend. Keep an eye on Trump's granddaughter Kai's X feed – she posted a picture with "uncle" Elon on the golf course yesterday.
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'MAGA media flexes muscle' |
Yesterday, Stef W. Kight of Axios observed that MAGA media stars like Tucker Carlson were "cranking up pressure on Trump and Republicans to dump the two establishment frontrunners" for Senate leader, and pick Sen. Rick Scott of Florida instead. The pressure seems to be having an effect. On Sunday when Trump demanded that the candidates "embrace using 'recess appointments' to bypass Senate confirmation votes," all three candidates "quickly saluted" by posting on Musk's X, Axios AM notes.
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Trump taps Fox contributor as 'border czar' |
I'm having some serious 2016-2017 flashbacks right now as I see Fox return to the center of political power. Last night, Trump confirmed on Truth Social that Tom Homan will be "in charge of our nation's borders." Homan was acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the beginning of Trump's first term, and segued right into a Fox contributor gig, which means he has been a steady presence on Trump's favorite network ever since. He was on with Maria Bartiromo on Sunday morning talking about deportations – and criticizing the media.
"I keep reading stories about, you know, 'concentration camps.' ICE has the highest detention standards in the industry," Homan said. "These people will be well taken care of. It'll be a humane operation, but it's a necessary mass deportation operation."
>> Homan was on "Fox & Friends" this morning. He will no longer be a Fox contributor, effective today, a network spokesperson confirms.
>> On Friday's "Friends" Ainsley Earhardt said, "I wonder if Elise Stefanik would join the cabinet?" "The UN, I think, would be it," Brian Kilmeade said. Last night, after Collins reported that Trump had, in fact, offered Stefanik the U.S. ambassador to the UN job, Trump confirmed the news via a statement to the New York Post. (I can't help but observe that it was CNN, not Fox or the Post, that actually broke the news.)
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On Sunday's "Inside Politics," Maggie Haberman talked with Manu Raju about how Trump's second term will be different than his first, with an eye toward Trump's audacious stated agenda. "One of the things that tends to be a bulwark against what he wants to do is press coverage," Haberman noted. "I understand that his campaign has very effectively used podcasts and non-mainstream media to sell his message." But Trump is still "an almost 80-year-old man who does care about legacy media and headlines he sees and cable coverage he sees. We'll see how he reacts to it as he goes in because that's what happened last time."
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The post-campaign critiques of the media keep coming. To all of you who have replied with constructive criticism, thank you!
On Friday, CBS correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns made this important point: "Discussions about what the 'media' missed should differentiate between cable pundits and those of us who were doing on the ground reporting actually listening to voters all year."
True. "The clues were there for those of us who bothered to listen," Snapchat's Peter Hamby texted me over the weekend. "That normies don’t think Donald Trump is as evil or racist as MSNBC says he is. That 'the economy' isn’t about BLS data, it’s about making ends meet. That Democrats were are about as culturally relevant as the new Katy Perry album. And that the onetime party of the middle class and workers now sounds like the most tedious know-it-all you actively try to avoid at a party."
It's tiring, he said, to hear news execs say "we're out of touch" when "they aren’t sending reporters out into the country to just listen to voters and ask open-ended questions about their daily lives. And if they do — and many reporters do — newsrooms and executive producers aren't highlighting their work. We get takes and polling models and pundit panels occupied by stables of 'experts' who haven’t actually lived in a purple or red state in decades or carried debt on their credit cards since college."
I'll have more on this tomorrow, so keep the emails coming...
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AI's impact: Eroding 'faith in reality' |
"AI seems to have done less to shape how people voted and far more to erode their faith in reality," The Washington Post's Pranshu Verma, Will Oremus, and Cat Zakrzewski write. "The new tool of partisan propaganda amplified satire, false political narratives and hate speech to entrench partisan beliefs rather than change minds, according to interviews and data from misinformation analysts and AI experts."
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More 'Art of the Surge' coming |
"Art of the Surge," a well-timed docuseries inside the Trump campaign made by Tucker Carlson's former top producer Justin Wells, premiered on Carlson's streaming site earlier this fall, and now it's available on services like Apple TV. Right now it is #1 on Apple's TV-shows-for-purchase chart.
"Frankly, I think the biggest question the series can answer is simple: How did this landslide occur?" Wells told me. "The first season, which is already out, is more relevant than ever. And just wait until the new episodes come out." Wells (seen below with Trump) said he filmed backstage on election night...
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Political media notes and quotes |
>> Over the weekend, The Washington Post pieced together Trump's "sprawling online strategy that gave him a direct line to a giant fan base of young American men." (Wash Post)
>> "The next Democratic candidate will surely sit" for Joe Rogan's show "wherever he asks them to sit. They won’t have a choice," Kaitlyn Tiffany writes. (The Atlantic)
>> "It's the networks, stupid:" Joe Trippi points to the right's "propaganda networks" on cable and online and says "knocking on doors in October every two years can not undo their relentless attacks and unanswered lies." (Sez.us)
>> "Trump broke American journalism; and it is likely to get worse as power and influence shifts toward platforms that honor algorithms more than truth," Charlie Sykes asserts. (To The Contrary)
>> Timothy Snyder: "Fascism is now in the algorithms, the neural pathways, the social interactions. How did we fail to see all this?" (New Yorker)
>> "I totally understand why countless people are demoralized, not just journalists. But I would encourage those journalists to get to their feet and stand up for an activity that, when practiced with energy and integrity, makes a difference," David Remnick tells Oliver Darcy. (Status)
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SNL's Trump support satire |
The cast of "SNL" pretended to be MAGA loyalists on Saturday night. "If you’re keeping some kind of list of your enemies," Keenan Thompson said... "we should not be on that list," Marcello Hernandez said, finishing the sentence.
"Their tone was light but the satire was dark," The Atlantic's Spencer Kornhaber wrote, "highlighting the way that leaders — in politics, media, and business — who were once critical of Trump have taken to flattering him out of fear of retribution. The sketch anticipated a future that would make recent speech wars look quaint."
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>> CNN, The Guardian and New Yorker alum Alex Koppelman, who used to edit this very newsletter among other things, is joining NBC News as assistant managing editor for the National Security and Justice unit...
>> Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson is jumping from the FT to Semafor... (X)
>> Business Insider's Henry Blodget is departing the board and thereby leaving the company he founded 17 years ago. He plans to help launch "new journalism projects" and publish his first novel... (Talking Biz News)
>> Gannett is investigating the apparent leak of Ann Selzer's (wildly off the mark) Iowa poll for the Des Moines Register, Shelby Talcott reports. (Semafor)
>> Tennis Channel pulled analyst Jon Wertheim off the air after he made an "inappropriate comment" about Wimbledon champ Barbora Krejcikova. (Post)
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'60' profiles Ukrainian war correspondent |
"For more than two decades, Andriy Tsaplienko has been a war reporter, traveling to conflict zones around the globe. Two and a half years ago, war arrived in his country, Ukraine." On Sunday's "60 Minutes," Holly Williams profiled Tsaplienko, who says "he is fighting for Ukraine's survival, using his reporting – and the truth – as his weapons." Here's the emotional report.
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Monday: Web Summit begins in Lisbon and continues through Thursday...
Tuesday: Spotify reports earnings after the close...
Thursday: Disney reports earnings before the bell...
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Why Netflix is going live |
Most Netflix subscribers "have no idea that the streaming service offers live programming," Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw writes. But it's getting harder to miss. Netflix "has aired a live tennis match, a hot dog eating contest, a comedy special and, in a few days, a boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson."
Why? For one thing, "live programming allows Netflix to put advertisements in front of all its customers, creating additional inventory it can sell. Even customers who pay for an ad-free plan will get commercials during football and wrestling."
"It’s also a vital new step for a streaming service that wants to offer customers a taste of every type of programming," Shaw writes. Read on...
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Last night, "Yellowstone," one of the biggest phenomenons in television, began "the back half of its fifth and final season, nearly two years after the season's first half began to air," The Ringer's Claire McNear wrote. "But all is not well in the land of the Duttons." She recaps the turmoil with Kevin Costner and Tyler Sheridan here. Spoiler alert: If you want to know what happened to Costner's character last night, Variety's William Earl has answers here...
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>> Beyoncé led all Grammy nominees on Friday "with 11 nods." Charli XCX, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar and Post Malone secured seven noms each... (Billboard)
>> The Beatles "earned two nods for their latest – and ‘last’ – song ‘Now and Then,’" Ali Rosenbloom reports... (CNN)
>> "For the third weekend in a row, 'Venom: The Last Dance' was the No. 1 movie at the box office..." (AP)
>> Joe Flint and John Jurgensen explore "the case of the disappearing Clint Eastwood movie..." (WSJ)
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