| | | | After a "hot mess" of a week... | | | "Unmoored." "Unglued." "Unraveling." This is how U.S. officials and President Trump's allies are describing him. His allies! As Jake Tapper said on "The Lead," this was a "hot mess of a week..." | | Here's a guide to the weekend: | | | Saturday: The Gridiron Club dinner in DC and "SNL" in NYC. Sunday: The Academy Awards in L.A. and AIPAC's annual policy conference in DC... | | Just a few of the questions at the end of this wild week:
-- Why did John Kelly once again mislead reporters about the Rob Porter scandal timeline on Friday?
-- Chuck Todd on MSNBC: "Can you believe this White House? Really. Can you 'believe' it? Can you believe this president on guns, or on tariffs? Can you believe the White House's attempts at cleaning up both? How can you?"
-- When will Hope Hicks' resignation take effect? FT's Courtney Weaver writes: "She leaves a huge void. The question is, who will fill it?"
-- Jake Tapper: "One friend of President Trump's told CNN that Hicks' departure would send the president into a 'tailspin,' which of course prompts the question: She hasn't even left yet. If this isn't a tailspin, what is it?"
-- Jennifer Rubin's prediction: "Don't worry -- it'll get worse. It always does." What's next? | | Trump @ the Gridiron Dinner | | The Gridiron Club's clubby, white ties and tails dinner will be held on Saturday night in DC... and Trump will be there. Last year Mike Pence spoke but Trump did not. Trump will speak for about ten minutes...
--> The event used to be completely off the record... Nowadays, the speeches are on the record and W.H. pool reporters are in the room... But no TV cameras are allowed...
--> Former Obama speechwriter David Litt argues that cameras should be allowed inside this year... | | Baldwin on "SNL" on Saturday? | | | Alec Baldwin had hip replacement surgery four weeks ago. So I'm not sure if we'll see him on "SNL" on Saturday night... A spokeswoman for the show didn't respond to my request for guidance... Charles Barkley is the host and Migos is the musical guest on the episode... | | But Baldwin was up bright and early on Friday... Almost as early as Trump. This is a three-part story:
1: A segment on "Fox & Friends First" highlighted Baldwin's recent remark that playing Trump is "agony."
2: Trump tweeted about it twice. First, he wrote that "Alex" Baldwin's "dieing" career was saved by the "terrible impersonation." Then he deleted the tweet, corrected the typos, and reposted it. "Bring back Darrell Hammond," he said...
3: Baldwin responded: "Agony though it may be, I'd like to hang in there for the impeachment hearings, the resignation speech, the farewell helicopter ride to Mara-A-Lago. You know. The Good Stuff. That we've all been waiting for."
--> Dean Obeidallah writing for CNN.com: "What if Trump gave Putin the Alec Baldwin treatment?" | | Tariff talk on the Sunday shows | | | The White House will be out promoting Trump's proposed tariffs this weekend: Peter Navarro will be on CNN, CBS and Fox's Sunday political programs... while Wilbur Ross will be on ABC and NBC... I wonder if Ross will bring any props with him... | | Sunday on "Reliable Sources" | | | I'll be joined by the WashPost's scoop machine Josh Dawsey, NYMag's Hope Hicks profiler Olivia Nuzzi, and The Atlantic's Russia probe expert Natasha Bertrand... Plus Jeff Greenfield, Steven Brill, and Jordan Klepper. Why Klepper? Because one topic the late-night comedian takes seriously is the gun debate. Last year he hosted an hour-long Comedy Central special on the subject... | | T-minus two days til the Oscars | | | Via Lisa Respers France, here's a 2018 Oscars viewing guide. Scroll down for our complete preview... | | iHeartMedia may file for Chapter 11 | | Radio giant iHeartMedia, which "is strapped for cash in part because of debts run up by Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners after a 2008 leveraged buyout, is preparing for a bankruptcy filing as early as this weekend," Bloomberg reports. The papers are already ready.
WHAT TO WATCH: John Malone's Liberty Media has "emerged as a potential white knight." Liberty has been buying up iHeart's debt "to inject itself into restructuring talks for iHeart in an effort to take control of its radio business." Picture a SiriusXM + iHeart tie-up... | | All six episodes of "Patty Has a Gun" are now streaming | | | May I recommend some weekend listening? "Patty Has a Gun" is our six-part podcast about the life and crimes of Patty Hearst. I hosted the series along with Jeffrey Toobin as a companion to CNN's original series about Hearst. The sixth and final episode came out on Friday... Check out the series here on Apple Podcasts... | | -- No new Comcast/Fox/Sky updates today...
-- Megyn Kelly had a second sit-down interview with Vladimir Putin on Friday... He addressed/dodged her Q's about election meddling... (NBC)
-- Oprah Winfrey and Ava DuVernay will be on "The Van Jones Show" on CNN next weekend... (CNN) | | Haberman: "Everyone sounds very alarmed" | | Gloria Borger's latest column for CNN.com: "The great unraveling: Trump's allies are really worried about him." This past week is "different," a Trump ally told Borger. "Something is very wrong."
Speaking on "AC360" on Friday night, Maggie Haberman said Borger's column was "spot-on." Haberman said "everyone sounds very alarmed. People who know the president well; people who have only come to work for him recently; something has changed. They can't quite put their finger on what it is, but things around the White House feel, in the words of several West Wing advisers, a lot like the early weeks of the Trump administration, when there was total chaos... This feels a little more in free-fall, and it has been, I think, in large part, accelerated by this Rob Porter issue..." | | Some of today's headlines... | | -- WashPost: "Sarah Huckabee Sanders clarifies: Trump said lots of stuff this week he may not mean"
-- CNNMoney: "'Trade wars are good?' Two words: Great. Depression."
-- NBC: "Trump was angry and 'unglued' when he started a trade war, officials say"
-- AP exclusive: "Questions surround Trump's 1st wall contract"
-- ThinkProgress: "Trump confidant dumped millions in steel-related stock last week." The subhed: "Carl Icahn has impeccable timing..."
-- HuffPost: "Leaked Emails Appear To Show A Top Trump Fundraiser Abusing His Power"
-- WashPost: "'Jared has faded:' Inside the 28 days of tumult that left Kushner badly diminished"
-- NBC News: "Mueller team asking if Kushner foreign business ties influenced Trump policy"
-- Bloomberg: "Scaramucci Is on White House 'Exclusion List' Blocking Visits" | | One thing Trump isn't tweeting about... | | | Oliver Darcy emails: Trump used to tweet about it all the time -- 60 times since the beginning of 2017, in fact. And he often berated the media for supposedly ignoring it. But since the stock market's bull run stumbled, Trump has been noticeably quiet about the topic on Twitter, CNN's Paul R. La Monica noted in his latest story. According to La Monica, Trump hasn't tweeted about the market in more than three weeks. Read his full story here... | | "Stray from conservative orthodoxy on immigration and guns? That's trouble," Erik Wemple writes in this blog post titled "What does it take for Fox News stars to turn on Trump? We are finding out."
Case in point, Tucker Carlson called out Trump for talking about taking guns first and going through "due process second," and Shep Smith said something similar, calling it "as un-American as imaginable..." | | Tom Kludt emails: CNN's latest poll contained this intriguing little nugget: 56% of Americans believe the National Enquirer pays for exclusive rights to stories that may be damaging to President Trump. It would appear that Ronan Farrow's big story for The New Yorker last month resonated. That piece -- along with Jeffrey Toobin's own fantastic story for The New Yorker several months before -- helped bring attention to the Enquirer's distinct role in the pro-Trump media ecosystem...
--> Related: Check out Tom's latest video, which details how the Enquirer has covered Trump. There are cameos from Toobin and Stu Zakim, a former spokesperson for American Media... | | "Too many publishers have been patsies. What you are seeing, at last, is more publishers are prepared to be more vocal and that eerie collective silence has been broken."
--News Corp CEO Robert Thomson to Bloomberg's Gerry Smith... | | "Obama: An Oral History" coming in July | | | Brian Abrams has written Kindle Singles oral histories about "Late Night with David Letterman," Gawker and "Die Hard." His next project is bigger: It's about the Obama presidency. Abrams worked on it quietly for the past couple of years... For Amazon Publishing's Little A imprint... And it will come out in hardcover in July. He didn't get the Obamas, but he did interview Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod, Bill Daley, Rahm Emanuel, Jon Favreau, Jen Psaki, and 110+ others. "Had to work my way from the outside/in, which I suppose is pretty much how any story gets built," he says... | | | In Farhad Manjoo's newest "Week in Tech" column for the NYT, he says he's taking a book leave. I asked him what the book's about: "It's about the growing power of the five largest American tech firms -- Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Facebook and Microsoft." The book will argue that they "increasingly have the power we now associate with governments rather than companies." Simon and Schuster is the publisher... It'll likely come out sometime next year... | | Facebook has apologized for this: | | This is funny. You hafta admit this is funny: "CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine To Spin News Before Publication." This joke was posted on a "Christian news satire" site called The Babylon Bee.
Oliver Darcy emails with what happened next: Obviously the story was a joke, but Snopes fact-checked it just in case anyone fell for the story. Snopes is one of Facebook's partners, so FB ended up issuing a warning to the page's owner, Adam Ford. FB said the Bee could face de-monetization and reduced distribution in the future. After Ford called out the social network, FB apologized, saying in a statement, "There's a difference between false news and satire. This was a mistake and should not have been rated false in our system. It's since been corrected and won't count against the domain in any way." | | New WSJ story on Facebook's "tone-deafness" | | | This is a big new WSJ story about Facebook's missteps around Russia's exploitation of its platform. "The social-media giant's leaders for months appeared oblivious to deepening public concern about its social impact and Washington's increasing agitation, especially from the left... That misjudgment appears to have contributed to its halting response to the Russian manipulation." Read the rest here... | | By Oliver Darcy:
-- Foreign Policy's Jenna McLaughlin is joining CNN as a national security reporter. She starts March 12... (Twitter)
-- Washington Life Magazine is out with the 2018 Young & the Guest List of those under 40 in DC making a name for themselves... (Washington Life)
-- Katie Couric said at a forum on Thursday that she has faced sexism and "gross comments" throughout her career in journalism... (Page Six) | | Check out this crowdfunding campaign for the MSD student newspaper | | "Reliable Sources" P.A. Julia Waldow was the first to spot this -- Here's her story:
"In the two weeks since the shooting that claimed 17 lives at a high school in Parkland, Florida, hundreds across the globe have come together to pledge funds and support to the students documenting the tragedy and its aftermath for the school's newspaper and yearbook. A GoFundMe campaign created on the day of the shooting to benefit the student journalism program at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School has raised more than $15,000, half its $30,000 goal, as of Friday."
The campaign was started by a H.S. yearbook adviser several states away. Read more here... | | 🎧 This week's "Reliable" pod | | | My guests on this week's "Reliable Sources" podcast: Andrew Kaczynski, Chris Massie and Nathan McDermott of CNN's KFile investigative team. Listen to the pod via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or TuneIn... | | I promised more Alec Baldwin, so here you go... | | Jordan Valinsky flagged this: The interview where Baldwin claimed that playing Trump is like "agony" was a THR Q&A pegged to his new ABC show. So, about that new ABC show... It's a talk show that will get a try-out after the Oscars on Sunday. ABC has ordered eight other episodes that will air later this year.
Baldwin talked with THR's Lacey Rose about trying this talk show thing before: "I got parked at MSNBC to work out the kinks of the show before we were going to be moved to NBC. We were looking for a slot at NBC, but then the show died an ugly death. MSNBC was a horrible marriage and just a really bad experience..." | | Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty are back! | | TMZ broke this news after Thursday night's rehearsal. Variety explained it this way: "Despite last year's infamous best picture mix-up, Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty are expected back at this year's Oscars to again present the final award. Sources confirmed the duo will give it another try on Sunday, this time with much more attention to the handling of the envelope..."
--> Also: Jennifer Lawrence and Jodie Foster will present the Best Actress Oscar, replacing Casey Affleck... | | Megan Thomas emails with a quick explainer on why there's not a clear Oscar-frontrunner for best picture: Unlike the other Oscar categories, academy voters rank their choices for best picture in order of preference. A film needs to be ranked first by more than 50% of the voters before a winner is declared.
If you want to get really meta, here's the breakdown on picks from FiveThirtyEight. The site has "The Shape of Water" winning...
And here are the Vegas odds, courtesy of Bovada:
"Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" 20/23
"The Shape of Water" 7/5
"Get Out" 11/2
"Ladybird" 14/1
"Dunkirk" 33/1
"Call Me by Your Name" 66/1
"The Post" 100/1
"Darkest Hour" 100/1
"Phantom Thread" 100/1
Thomas adds: I'm going with "Get Out" to pull the win... | | There will be a "moment" dedicated to #MeToo | | Chloe Melas emails: Ava DuVernay told reporters on Friday that the leaders of the Time's Up initiative are not organizing on the Oscars red carpet. "We are not an awards show protest group. So we stand down this time," she said. But she did say that there will be a "moment" during the broadcast which will be a direct nod to the #MeToo movement...
--> BTW: E! reiterated on Friday that Ryan Seacrest will be co-hosting the channel's red carpet coverage... | | | Via Deadline's Anita Busch: Time's Up is striking a partnership with StoryCorps, the nonprofit org "founded by David Isay which records the stories of Americans from all backgrounds and beliefs to create a historical archive. The first three stories will be from Ashley Judd, Jane Fonda and America Ferrera. And it will go well beyond sexual harassment. Shonda Rhimes is also recording a story..." | | Lowry reviews "Red Sparrow" | | Brian Lowry emails: After a major box-office flop with "mother!," Jennifer Lawrence seeks to rebound with "Red Sparrow," a spy thriller that casts her as a Russian operative trained in the art of manipulation. Given recent headlines, the timing is somewhat better than the movie.
Read Lowry's full review here... | | The new "Death Wish" film is badly-timed | | | Brian Lowry emails: The strategy of gun lobbyists and supportive politicians trying to shift the gun-control debate to movies and video games is pretty transparent by now, and has been undermined in part by the increasingly global nature of the entertainment business. But Hollywood still does itself no favors -- and hands ammunition to its critics -- when it revives an artifact like "Death Wish," which opens this weekend... | | | For the record, part four | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- The award for Most Adorable goes to these kids... who, for the past few years, have been recreating famous scenes from best picture Oscar nominees...
-- With the focus on #MeToo and the Time's Up initiative, Dolly Parton thinks it's time for a "9 to 5" remake...
-- Chip and Joanna Gaines launching a "Fixer Upper" bonus series called "Behind the Design..." | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... the feedback helps us improve this newsletter every day... Thanks! | | | | | | |
