Hey! FYI, we'll be off next week for spring break. But we're here today and tomorrow with the latest on Artemis II, Bruce Springsteen, WaPo, "Summer House," YouTube, the MLB, "interest media," and more... |
President Trump says Iran has been "beaten" and "essentially is really no longer a threat" — but the war is not over.
"We are on track to complete all of America's military objectives shortly, very shortly," Trump declared in a primetime address to a war-weary America. It sounded like he ad-libbed the "very shortly" part. But then he said, "We're going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We're going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong."
The address was immediately criticized for lacking concrete new information. But I didn't hear any of that criticism on Fox News, where Sean Hannity and guests took Trump at his word and lavished praise on the speech.
The Fox talking heads acted reassured by Trump's "two to three weeks" phrase; it came up nearly a dozen times during the post-speech analysis, and it's in heavy rotation again this morning.
But more skeptical conservative media voices are pointing out some, shall we say, inconsistencies.
Dylan Housman, managing editor of The Daily Wire, wrote on X that "today was day 32, so 4.5 weeks. We were told it was going to be 4-6 weeks, and the White House said last week they're 'ahead of schedule.' So 'ahead of schedule' was not true, and best case is now past the original timeline."
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Trump also used the "two or three weeks" line with the press on Tuesday, which sent me searching the NYT archives for this classic Shawn McCreesh story.
"Two weeks" is one of Trump's "favorite units of time," McCreesh wrote last year. "Tax plans, health care policies, evidence of conspiracy theories he claimed were true, the fight against ISIS, the opening of some coal mines, infrastructure plans — all were at one point or another riddles he promised to solve for the public in about two weeks."
"It is a slippery thing, this two weeks — not a measurement of time so much as a placeholder," McCreesh went on. "Two weeks for Mr. Trump can mean something, or nothing at all. It is both a yes and a no. It is delaying while at the same time scheduling. It is not an objective unit of time, it is a subjective unit of time. It is completely divorced from any sense of chronology. It simply means later. But later can also mean never. Sometimes."
Maybe it means something this time — but Trump lost "two weeks" credibility almost a decade ago. As CNN's Kevin Liptak observed last year, "Trump has been setting two-week deadlines since at least the start of his first term in 2017 — for policy plans, long-awaited decisions or unspecified major announcements. Many never arrived."
Now we have to ask: Is "three weeks" the new "two weeks"? Bottom line: "We still don't know an exit strategy," Christiane Amanpour said on CNN this morning. "We don't know why it's going to take another three weeks, which he's always saying..."
>> Speaking of the Trump admin's public-facing inconsistencies, CNN's Aaron Blake pointed out how Secretary of State Marco Rubio's four stated objectives for the war have changed over and over again.
>> Trump's "haphazard messaging and habit of providing war updates via social media and erratic, angry rhetoric have helped drive public confidence in his presidency near historic lows over his two terms," CNN's Stephen Collinson wrote this morning.
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Fox's weirdly dark camera shot |
Fox News was the TV pool for last night's address, which means Fox operated the only video camera in the room, and all the other networks picked up the feed. When the speech began, folks in various control rooms noticed the shot seemed unusually dark, and several networks made adjustments to brighten it a bit. |
That's how Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Russell Berman describe this moment in a new piece for The Atlantic. They say "members of Congress — particularly swing-seat Republicans — seem to be in hiding," as "hardly any are holding town halls or other well-publicized events that could put them face-to-face with frustrated voters."
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Report: Militia proposes trade for kidnapped journalist |
Iran-aligned paramilitary group Kataib Hezbollah "offered on Wednesday to negotiate with the Iraqi government for the release of" Shelly Kittleson, the NYT's Erika Solomon and Falih Hassan report. The group "contacted Iraqi government officials" and "demanded the release of several detained militia members in exchange for freeing the journalist," the pair writes.
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If you need a break from ~all of this~ just click over to NASA's YouTube channel. NASA is providing multiple live streams of the Artemis II mission, including an "official broadcast" and a raw feed from the Orion spacecraft without commentary.
If you start to watch and see a blue screen, that's due to a "loss of signal" or limited bandwidth. But when I clicked over this morning, I enjoyed this view of the earth 👆🏻
>> What yesterday's launch felt like: "Somehow, the palpable thrill of a moon mission returned," Chris Taylor wrote for Mashable.
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🎉 We're a Mirror Award finalist! |
The Mirror Awards, presented by the Newhouse School at Syracuse University, recognize excellence in media reporting, so each year I like to note the finalists. This year we're a finalist in a new category, Best Media Newsletter, alongside Oliver Darcy of Status, Tom Jones of Poynter, and Bill Grueskin of CJR. Congrats to all! Check out the complete list of finalists here...
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WaPo rehires multiple laid-off reporters |
Multiple laid-off Washington Post staffers "have accepted roles to return to The Post, including Nitasha Tiku, Jake Spring, and Naftali Bendavid," Natalie Korach reports for Status. A Post rep said the reporters are "not being hired back from the same roles they had before," adding that "We are listening to customer feedback and addressing it in real time."
>> Also noteworthy: After gutting the sports section in February's layoffs, the paper has hired "Bailey Johnson to cover the Capitals and Danielle Allentuck to cover the Nationals," Korach reports.
>> And TheWrap's Michael Calderone has this in-depth look at how WaPo's upheaval is "fueling a talent scramble" in DC media. The Post, he writes, is "now competing for turf with upstarts backed by families deeply tied to the city."
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Ex-CPB CEO speaks out on public media win |
Patricia Harrison, who was CEO of the now-dissolved Corporation for Public Broadcasting, spoke out after a federal judge ruled against Trump's executive order targeting funding for NPR and PBS, saying, "This story is not over."
"While yesterday's ruling is vital for the First Amendment, it does not address the devastating consequences of Congress' decision to defund CPB and the public media system," she pointed out in a statement. "Americans value public media, and as citizens, we must keep fighting to restore funding for public media for the benefit of the country and future generations..."
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"Major League Baseball's new season — and its new media deal — got off to a solid start, with opening games on Netflix and NBC turning in multi-year highs for the first week of the season," THR's Rick Porter reports. Here are all the #s... |
Andrew Kirell writes: Bruce Springsteen kicked off his "Land of Hopes and Dreams" tour on Tuesday night in Minneapolis. The set was full of political songs and speeches railing against Trump's "corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless, and treasonous administration."
It seems Springsteen struck a nerve, because this morning the president responded with a diatribe calling on MAGA to boycott the shows (though I highly doubt many were planning to attend!).
"Bad, and very boring singer, Bruce Springsteen, who looks like a dried up prune who has suffered greatly from the work of a really bad plastic surgeon, has long had a horrible and incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, sometimes referred to as TDS," the president wrote. "The guy is a total loser who spews hate against a President who won a Landslide Election."
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>> The BBC was aware of a police investigation into now-fired host Scott Mills' alleged sex offenses in 2017. (BBC)
>> YouTube has booked Trevor Noah to host and Chappell Roan to perform at its Brandcast 2026 event next month. (Adweek)
>> Paramount has promoted Allie McLarty to SVP of global communications. (TheWrap)
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Social media is out, 'interest media' is in |
Social media use in the UK "has fallen sharply," the FT's Daniel Thomas writes, citing Ofcom findings that usage is "becoming more passive and circumspect."
The story reminded me of something Gary Vaynerchuk recently said about the evolution of the internet. "Social media died four years ago and for the last four years we’ve been in interest media," he said. "You no longer get the content on your feeds from the people you follow like your cousin or your best friend from middle school. You get content based on what you've recently been into. Interest media is the term that's used for the current state of what it was known as social media. Where you get content that's based on what you're currently interested in."
He thinks platforms will eventually have "both an interest media feed and a social media feed, aka people that you want to follow. I think a double-feed platform is inevitable."
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>> Reece Rogers has a warning for chatbot users: "I asked ChatGPT what WIRED's reviewers recommend. Its answers were all wrong." His reminder: "Visiting the darn website is still the best and most reliable path." (WIRED)
>> Kathleen Kennedy says "the creative community would embrace AI faster if there was more transparency around how it’s trained and how it’s being deployed." (Deadline)
>> Reddit says its Pro Tools for Publishers are working: "Views to posts created by publishers on the discussion platform increased by nearly half." (Press Gazette)
>> “In an effort to regain its popularity," the celebrity greeting app Cameo has "launched a new TikTok integration." (TechCrunch)
>> Democratic strategist and former CNN host Stephanie Cutter is joining Kalshi "as a policy adviser as part of a bipartisan overture" by the prediction market. (Axios)
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Chuck Norris family kicks down slop |
Chuck Norris' family is calling out "AI-generated videos and posts circulating online that contain false and misleading information" about the late martial artist and actor.
In a Wednesday post to Norris' Instagram account, the family objected to "fabricated reports of past medical issues, as well as false narratives surrounding family relationships," and asked people not to share the slop. TheWrap's Casey Loving has more on that here…
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A few Hollywood headlines |
>> Zach Cregger and Zach Shields "will write the screenplay for the upcoming prequel to the critically acclaimed horror hit 'Weapons.'" (Deadline)
>> Huh?! "Paul McCartney was banned from Reddit after sharing pictures of a concert in the r/PaulMcCartney subreddit," Matthew Gault writes. (404 Media)
>> The Royal Shakespeare Company "has unveiled production dates and a full creative team for 'Game of Thrones: The Mad King.'" (Variety)
>> If you're like me and you loved season two of "Paradise," but you're impatient to get answers to your questions, Sterling K. Brown says fear not: "Everyone will get their answers by the time season three is done." (THR)
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Explaining the 'Summer House' scandal |
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