| | | | | Exec summary: Monday was "opening salvo" day... Tuesday is Halloween... President Trump hasn't tweeted since news of the George Papadopoulos guilty plea broke... Trump has no on-camera events scheduled on Tuesday... But tech execs will be on-cam, testifying on Capitol Hill about Russian interference... | | "I think today proved how little we know about this investigation," Nia-Malika Henderson said on Erin Burnett's show Monday night. "It's being conducted in a way that we may not like in Washington, because we like leaks, but... they have done this under the radar, they have done it quietly, and there's a lot more that we don't know... I think a lot of Washington and a lot of the nation is going to be surprised by what we find out in this investigation."
She's right. Pro-Trump hosts on Fox are huffing and puffing about leaks. But the truth is that Papadopoulos's arrest was kept secret for more than three months. As NBC's Garrett Haake tweeted: "That Papadopolous flipped in July and pled nearly a month ago and it never leaked, or got on Senate intel radar, shows how far ahead Mueller is..."
-- Evan Perez at the end of the evening on CNN: "There's plenty more that the Mueller team has... There's more here that we don't know..." | | "I live for days like this, but..." | | Monday was "significant in the history of the presidency -- it is that big of a day," Anderson Cooper said at the top of the 8pm hour, twelve hours after Paul Manafort and Richard Gates surrendered to the FBI.
Because CNN reported on Friday night that arrests were expected on Monday, the experts were in place. CNN's senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin started his day on "New Day" at 6am. I just looked up and saw him again on "AC360." I asked him what this day was like. "I live for days like this, but I am very much looking forward to a scotch," he replied at 9pm...
MSNBC's chief legal correspondent Ari Melber was on every hour from 7am till 3pm... including about three hours of rolling coverage... and then he hosted "The Beat" at 6pm. He was back on "The Last Word" at 10pm. Oddly, Fox's equivalent of Toobin and Melber, Judge Andrew Napolitano, was hardly on the air at all on Monday... His analysis from the morning was re-aired in the afternoon... | | Trump was watching TV and "seething" | | CNN's Jeff Zeleny and Kevin Liptak report: "Watching the developments unfold on the large TV screens installed in his private residence, Trump was 'seething,' according to a Republican close to the White House..."
-- More: The WashPost has an "inside the W.H." piece that cites 20 sources. Trump digested the news "with exasperation and disgust," the story says. It quotes a "senior Republican in close contact with top staffers" as saying, "The walls are closing in. Everyone is freaking out..." | | -- Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell to CNN's Jake Tapper: We now see an "eagerness and willingness to work with the Russians..."
-- Chris Hayes at the beginning of his interview with Carter Page: "Congrats for not being indicted!"
-- In the interview, Page "admitted that the topic of Russia 'may have come up' in emails" with Papadopoulos...
-- Fox's Sean Hannity: "Is this all Mueller has? Because if it is, it's pathetic..." | | What Fox's prime time shows told Trump | | | Tom Kludt writes: Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity provided a tour de force in deflection and dismissal. Carlson led his broadcast by shedding light on what his show's graphics described as the "Real Russia scandal," which of course dealt with the Clintons and Democrats, not Trump. And Hannity reassured viewers that "there is zero evidence of Trump, Russia collusion, zero evidence of campaign collusion." His target? "The media" that has been "lying to you all day, and all weekend long..." | | The fog is getting thicker | | | My overall impression? The Trump administration and its media allies want this to be foggy. When you say "Russia," they say "Hillary," thickening more fog. It happened at Sarah Sanders' briefing on Monday afternoon. And it continued in the evening on Fox. GOP congressman Dana Rohrabacher to Carlson: "Why aren't we looking into Hillary?" An hour later, Hannity literally said "President Clinton," by accident, I guess. Clinton joked about Fox's fixation at a Monday night event: "All the networks except Fox are reporting what's really going on... It appears they don't know I'm not president..." | | | What's going on at the WSJ? Its editorial page has been challenging Mueller's credibility and even calling on him to resign. Politico's Jason Schwartz says the Journal + Murdoch's NYPost + Murdoch's Fox News are all bashing Mueller "seemingly in unison..." | | Here's a thought experiment | | | While taping an interview for CNN International, John Vause asked me, how would Fox News cover a Democratic president whose former campaign chairman was indicted? I laughed, scarcely able to imagine the wall-to-wall coverage that would consume months of airtime... | | | Tuesday's NY Daily News cover features Mueller and three "Trumpkins:" | | -- CNN legal analyst Joan Biskupic: "Why Robert Mueller is the most powerful man in Washington..."
-- Jon Favreau on the newest episode of "Pod Save America:" The pro-Trump "propaganda machine" has "reached new levels of both absurdity and danger..."
-- Breitbart is promoting this Daily Beast story that says Steve Bannon wants the president's lawyers to get more aggressive... | | Where are the RNC talking points? | | David Frum, speaking on "The Last Word" Monday night, said, "It's striking to me that there are no Republican lawmakers on TV" supporting Trump. To that point, someone who's on the RNC's mailing list for TV surrogate talking points emailed me and said: "They send a blast on just about everything. Talking points on Special Counsel indictments notably absent from my inbox..."
-- Related: Some lawmakers "literally" dodged Q's on Monday, as CNN's Ted Barrett reports here... | | | TUESDAY ON CAPITOL HILL... | | "Facebook will inform lawmakers this week that roughly 126 million Americans may have been exposed to content generated on its platform by the Russian government-linked troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency between June 2015 and August 2017," Dylan Byers reports. In written testimony, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch says the Russian-bought ads were "deeply disturbing..."
Here's the thing: Russian-made types of "content" -- divisive stories, hoaxes, truly "fake news" -- were much more widespread than Russian ads. But the ads were important, partly because, as Stretch says, "a number of the ads encourage people to follow Pages on these issues, which in turn produced posts on similarly charged subjects." And some of those posts went "viral..."
--> Tuesday 2:30pm: The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism will hear from Stretch and reps from Google and Twitter...
--> Then there will be two more public hearings on Wednesday... | | Twitter's new disclosures | | | More from Byers' story: In Twitter's written testimony, which was obtained by CNN, "the company disclosed that it identified 2,752 accounts that were linked to the Internet Research Agency. Those accounts posted a total of 131,000 tweets in the period ranging from September 1, 2016 to November 15, 2016." Twitter has found a total of "36,746 accounts that appeared to be associated with Russia" which posted "automated, election-related content..." | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- Danish inventor Peter Madsen "has admitted to dismembering the body of Swedish journalist Kim Wall on his privately built submarine but continues to deny killing her, Danish police said..." (CNN)
-- The NYT is betting on service journalism and interactive "Guides" to double its digital revenue... (Digiday)
-- CJR looks at CalMatters, a nonprofit in California that is working with local newsrooms to distribute its stories... (CJR) | | One day after apologizing for an alleged sex assault against a minor and saying "I choose now to live as a gay man," Kevin Spacey didn't say a word publicly on Monday. But the fallout was swift:
-- GLAAD president Sarah Kate Ellis criticized Spacey: "Coming out stories should not be used to deflect from allegations of sexual assault..."
-- Statement: "Media Rights Capital and Netflix are deeply troubled by last night's news concerning Kevin Spacey..."
-- Another statement: "The International Academy has announced today that in light of recent events it will not honor Kevin Spacey with the 2017 International Emmy Founders Award..." | | "House of Cards" is ending -- but it's unrelated to the Spacey scandal | | What about Spacey's role on "House of Cards?" Well an anonymous source told news outlets on Monday that the sixth season, currently in production, will be its last season. The source told CNN's Sandra Gonzalez that the decision to end the show and the allegations facing Spacey were "two separate things."
In fact, two other sources close to the show said that the production team was told months prior to filming that the sixth season would be its last. No official comment from Netflix... | | | More from Gonzalez's story: Spacey is one of the stars of Ridley Scott's "All the Money in the World." The film is set to be the closing night film for AFI Fest, taking place November 9-16 in Los Angeles. A spokesperson for the festival said that plan remains in place: "Our programming is locked and there will not be any changes to our film schedule..." | | "A brave source with a tough story to tell" | | The allegations against Spacey were revealed in this Sunday night story by BuzzFeed's Adam B. Vary.
I asked Ben Smith how the story came about. He replied: "People talk about earning trust, and that's really what Adam Vary did here for a brave source with a tough story to tell. And the way he told it, I hope, validated the trust Anthony Rapp put in him. I should also note that his editor, Marisa Carroll, also handled our R Kelly coverage, and Shani and I are excited that she's now leading our entertainment enterprise coverage." | | NBC terminates Mark Halperin's contract | | Monday's other developments | | -- A Mark Halperin accuser, Lara Setrakian, gave an exclusive TV interview to Judy Woodruff on "PBS NewsHour." She said "the sexual objectification of women in journalism" pushes women "out of the field..."
-- Another Halperin accuser, Eleanor McManus, spoke out on "Megyn Kelly Today..."
-- The NYT's Ellen Gabler, Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor published another shocking story with even more allegations against Harvey Weinstein...
-- A source told Page Six's Ian Mohr that Weinstein has been telling confidantes "that he was born to take the fall for his behavior in order to 'change the world.' He is resigned to his punishment -- as a martyr for social change." What?!
-- Sandra Gonzalez's latest: Weinstein "has been banned for life from the Producers Guild of America..."
-- In this blog post, Nick Denton pointed out that stories about Weinstein, James Toback and other alleged predators "have been circulating on the industry grapevine," via sites like Gawker, for years... | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- CrowdTangle data seems to suggest that Tasty's Facebook interactions dropped from 74 million in May 2016 to 20 million in September 2017... (Max Benwell on Twitter)
-- Tow Center fellow Chi Zhang has an informative analysis on how misinformation spreads on WeChat... (CJR)
-- INSIDER's new editor in chief is Julie Zeveloff... (Twitter) | | "Why ESPN Could Abandon NFL Football" | | | Frank Pallotta emails: James Andrew Miller has a great guest column for THR about why ESPN should – wait for it -- abandon NFL football when its deal with the league ends in 2021... | | Laurie Segall's new series | | | Monday marked the launch of Laurie Segall's new five-part CNN series "Divided We Code," about the fault lines of the tech industry. Segall emails: Monday's installment looked at the culture war playing out in Silicon Valley. We talked with "undercover conservatives." I've protected identities of everyone from sex workers to hackers for stories... but being asked to hide someone's identity because they're conservative in tech is a new one for me... | | Lowry reviews "Thor: Ragnarok" | | | Brian Lowry emails: "Thor: Ragnarok" has already opened strong overseas, and should dominate the U.S. box office this weekend. For Marvel, this latest sequel offers a bit of a creative departure by consciously seeking to flex its comedy muscles, which yields some fun moments, although most of the best stuff can be found in the movie's preview... | | How's "Stranger Things 2" doing? Hard to tell | | | More from Lowry: Netflix's refusal to provide user data for its shows tends to make media outlets grasp at straws for ways to measure their reach. So while the anecdotal evidence would suggest that "Stranger Things 2" is generating a lot of interest and excitement, it's not clear we learn much of anything from statistics like the fact that it broke a Twitter record by becoming the "the most tweeted-about streaming show" during its opening weekend... | | | For the record, part three | | | By Frank Pallotta:
-- ABC is asking for $2.6 million for 2018 Oscars ads... (Variety)
-- "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" is new this week, but the show will have guest hosts while Kimmel is out. Monday's guest host was Shaq...
-- On Monday, "SNL" announced its next three weeks of talent: Nov. 4 with Larry David and Miley Cyrus; Nov. 11 with Tiffany Haddish and Taylor Swift; and most intriguing is the Nov. 18 combo of Chance the Rapper as host and Eminem as musical guest...
-- Speaking of Haddish, the actress starred in a PSA today where she caught people in the act of not washing their hands... (YouTube)
-- Mark Hamill, everyone's favorite last Jedi Luke Skywalker, spoke with the NYT about the upcoming "Star Wars" film and his return to the character... (NYT) | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... I appreciate every message. The feedback helps us craft the next day's newsletter! | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
