| | | | | Exec summary: President Trump defends Sinclair, Roseanne Barr schedules an interview with Sean Hannity, AT&T and Verizon report earnings, and much more... Scroll down for details... | | "We have one of the Michael Cohen tapes."
With that, Chris Cuomo began his most explosive episode yet.
This was a big scoop for CNN and for Cuomo's two-month-old program "Cuomo Prime Time." Cuomo was joined by Cohen's attorney Lanny Davis, who provided the recording. Davis said he wanted everyone to hear it because "the tape contradicts" some of Rudy Giuliani's claims. Here's CNN's full story about the tape.
It's incredibly jarring to think that Cohen was walking around taping these sorts of conversations. Is this the only time he taped Trump?
As I said on "CNN Tonight," this seems like a profound betrayal of Trump. Or: Maybe there's a more innocent explanation? Maybe Cohen made tapes because his boss frequently contradicted himself, changed his mind, denied reality, etc? | | While most reporters are focusing on the "cash" versus "check" part of the tape, I'm most interested in the earlier portion, when Cohen says this: "Um, I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David."
All signs point to "David" being American Media Inc. chairman David Pecker. (The alternate theory is that Trump is referencing his alter ego David Dennison.)
"So what are we gonna pay--" Trump asks. "Yes, um, and it's all the stuff," Cohen says. He repeats: "All the stuff, all the stuff because you never know where that company – you never know where he's gonna be."
What if, Trump suggests, Pecker "gets hit by a truck?" Meaning, what if his friend is no longer in charge of the company that owns some of his secrets? "Correct," Cohen says, "so I'm all over that." (To be clear, this is my interpretation of the tape. Trump didn't name Pecker.)
THE BIG Q: What is "all the stuff?" What else did American Media have in its possession, beyond the life rights to Karen McDougal's account of her alleged affair with Trump? | | | I reached a spokesman for AMI just as Cuomo's show started airing. Since then, the spokesman has not responded to requests for comment... | | -- Michael Avenatti to Don Lemon: "I'm hearing these two co-conspirators trying to figure out how they are going to make this payment, which appears to not be unusual..."
-- Jennifer Rubin on MSNBC: "What is going on here? He walks in with a wire to tape his client?!"
-- At one point on Fox, Laura Ingraham mixed up the McDougal and Stormy Daniels cases, which... uh... really spoke volumes. A minute later, Ingraham was talking about the Clintons...
-- Ingraham's bet: "I think nobody cares about this. That's my view."
-- Emily Jane Fox on MSNBC relaying what sources in Cohen-land are saying: "It is not just what's on the recording. It is the backstory... This is the tip of the iceberg..." | | Trump defends Sinclair... | | And says the FCC's action is "disgraceful" | | Until the tape dropped, the lead story in this newsletter was GOING to be Trump's surprise tweet about Sinclair. I was at a dinner party with a bunch of fellow media wonks when Trump's tweet came out... and we were all flabbergasted. This is Trump blasting the FCC, chaired by Trump's own choice, Ajit Pai:
"So sad and unfair that the FCC wouldn't approve the Sinclair Broadcast merger with Tribune. This would have been a great and much needed Conservative voice for and of the People. Liberal Fake News NBC and Comcast gets approved, much bigger, but not Sinclair. Disgraceful!"
So let's unpack this for a moment. He's complaining about the nearly decade-old NBCU deal... And saying Sinclair's bid for Tribune shouldn't have been held up by the FCC... In part because, he says, Sinclair is "conservative." Wow.
Over to you, Mr. Pai... | | All of the OTHER stories... | | As Brian Williams said on MSNBC Tuesday night, "There were a whole bunch of stories we were going to cover before the audiotape came out tonight."
Among them:
-- Trump lambasted the "fake news" while speaking before hundreds of vets. Some of the attendees booed and taunted the press corps. ABC's Martha Raddatz penned this remarkable response op-ed...
-- At the same event, Trump delivered an Orwellian "what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening" warning...
-- Anderson Cooper's reaction: For POTUS "to tell people to stop believing what they see or what they read -- It's what dictators, it's what authoritarian rulers say. It's unbelievable in the truest sense of the world..."
-- Speaking of that... Rachel Maddow pointed out that the "White House transcript of Trump/Putin presser has edited out the question asking Vladimir Putin if he wanted Donald Trump to win the election..."
-- Kaitlan Collins' scoop: "The White House has suspended the practice of publishing public summaries" of Trump's phone calls with world leaders...
-- Meanwhile... Chris Cillizza says "every sign is pointing to a Democratic wave in November..."
-- And Trump says Russia is meddling to help the Dems in the midterms. The NYT says "the president effectively said black was white..."
-- That same NYT story also contains a stunning leak out of the White House: An email exchange revealing that POTUS was not pleased when Melania Trump's TV "aboard Air Force One was tuned to CNN." Read this... | | -- Matt Lauer's ranch in New Zealand is in a battle with groups that want to pass through the property to access a nearby park. Lauer says the groups are trying to take advantage of his "difficult times..." He says he's being targeted because he is an "easy mark..." (NYT)
-- Charter says John Malone is retiring from the board of directors, "but will continue to serve as a director emeritus..." (CNBC) | | What's left of the Daily News? | | About 45 journalists... A skeleton crew... In the wake of Monday's 50% cut.
Tom Kludt emails: In an hour-long meeting on Tuesday, led by Tronc exec Grant Whitmore and new Daily News EIC Robert York, the tabloid's staffers expressed concern and confusion over what looks -- both from outside and inside the newsroom -- like a completely haphazard strategy.
York urged staffers to give him 30 days to make things right, while Whitmore was forced to own up to the reality that Tronc executed the sweeping layoffs before a concrete strategy was hatched. Their audience was, in the words of my source, "deeply skeptical." Read the rest here... | | Local news "death spiral" | | CJR EIC Kyle Pope on the "death spiral" of America's local news: "What had been a crisis has become an emergency, akin to a health epidemic, and time is not on our side."
Pope says journalists should "stop framing this as OUR problem." It has to be about "why the country should care if local news goes away... What are the effects on a democracy if local news is no longer in the picture?" Read on... | | "Digital media can do important things print cannot. But one thing it's been relatively lousy at is holding local government to account..."
--SE Cupp in her latest column for the Daily News... | | Tuesday marked the first time that Time Warner/now WarnerMedia's earnings were part of AT&T's results. Just 16 days of earnings were included... So Q3 will be a fuller report...
As for Q2, the report was mixed... Earnings were ahead of estimates... But investors were not overly impressed. Here's CNBC's recap... | | CEO says the "distraction" is over | | | On an earnings call, CEO Randall Stephenson referenced the court case, but not the DOJ's appeal that's still underway: "We've had a few months of distraction. And make no mistake about it. It's been a bit of a distraction for both businesses, the WarnerMedia, as well as the AT&T side. That is behind us, and we are executing." | | How Stankey is describing his plans for HBO | | Jill Disis emails: WarnerMedia chief John Stankey said the company wants to invest more in HBO while maintaining the network's "high quality and unique brand position."
That's from today's AT&T earnings call. Stankey said his "goal is to give the HBO team the resources to greenlight additional projects already in the development funnel," i.e. $$$ that wasn't available when Time Warner was in charge. Stankey didn't disclose a dollar amount... | | Verizon is going in the opposite direction... | | Content and distribution have to come together, right? So Verizon has to buy a media company, the way AT&T bought Time Warner?
Verizon says: Wrong.
"We are not going to be owning content," CEO Lowell McAdam said on Tuesday's earnings call. "We are not going to be competing with other content providers. We are going to be their best partner from a distribution perspective, and that make a lot of great sense."
McAdam is about to hand things off to CTO Hans Vestberg. Craig Moffett says that's another signal that "wireless technology, not media diversification, is the path forward" for Verizon. Moffett says "today's strong results suggest that sticking to wireless might not be a bad idea..." | | -- Heather Kelly's latest: "Facebook says it is trying to prevent massive election interference like it saw in 2016. But the company won't say if it has seen similar interference from Russia or other groups ahead of the US midterm elections..." (CNNMoney)
-- "Facebook reports its second quarter earnings results after the bell on Wednesday, providing the clearest glimpse yet into how its data debacle impacted user growth and ad sales..." (CNNMoney)
-- One of CNN's best, S. Mitra Kalita, has been promoted to SVP of programming, national news and opinion for CNN Digital... (Twitter)
-- Ben Berkowitz, most recently VP of digital at WNBC, is the new EIC at News Corp's Storyful... (News Corp) | | The media's fascination with Breitbart has faded | | Oliver Darcy emails: In the early days of the Trump admin, the DC press corps was fascinated with Breitbart. But now, more than a year and a half into the Trump presidency, much of the interest seems to have dissipated. TV mentions for Breitbart are down 69%. Half a dozen White House reporters told me they don't read the site anymore or pay considerably less attention to it. And even people close to the website concede the website's influence is in decline.
>> Why? Reporters and people close to the site told me they think Bannon's divorce with the site played a big role. But they also noted, among other things, that the website rarely breaks news and that Fox News has built a prime time lineup around essentially unwavering support for Trump...
>> The bottom line: While the website still has influence in the pro-Trump universe in which it primarily operates, its impact was for some time amplified by media outlets with larger platforms. Those media outlets carried Breitbart's narratives from the fringes of the right into the mainstream, and in doing so boosted the website's influence. Without that influence, and with its traffic in steep decline, it's difficult to see what Breitbart has left. Read the rest here... | | NYT's mea culpa about L.A. | | | Brian Lowry emails: The NYT has written any number of cultural stories about Los Angeles over the years that have triggered howls of derision from those who live out here. Too often, NYT writers act like they've just parachuted onto the Martian landscape and are stunned to discover habitable structures on the West Coast. But it's unusual for the paper to issue an apology for that. On Tuesday, this writer did. And editors of the Travel section said this: "Your concerns are being heard, and the issues you raise make us aware that we need to do a better job capturing the true Los Angeles, which did not come across in this piece..." | | | For the record, part three | | | -- Reader contributions at work: "The Guardian's parent company now earns more money from its digital operations than from its print newspapers for the first time in its history..." (The Guardian)
-- What's your voice strategy? Lucia Moses has a look at news publishers making content for smart speakers... (Digiday) | | "Zero-tolerance approach" in Hollywood? | | | Brian Lowry emails: Once again, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar asks the right questions in his look at Hollywood's new "zero tolerance" policy on offensive social-media postings and statements. In his THR column, he writes, "It's definitely important that businesses are vigilant in maintaining a strict corporate policy that does not tolerate racist, homophobic or misogynist language or behavior. But it's also important that we avoid the zero-tolerance approach that does not take individual circumstances into consideration..." | | Showtime signs first-look deal with Lena Waithe | | | "The Chi" creator Lena Waithe is expanding her relationship with Showtime... Through a first-look deal announced on Tuesday, "Waithe will develop comedy and drama projects for Showtime that she will both write and produce through her company Hillman Grad Productions," Variety's Joe Otterson writes... | | Bill Simmons staying put at HBO | | | HBO "has inked a new deal" with Bill Simmons, "still the most prominent voice in sports journalism," THR's Lacey Rose reports. "He'll continue to be focused on creating and producing sports-themed content across the portfolio" -- series, films or docs. "Still, the new deal is not as broad-sweeping as Simmons' original, which included a talk show..." | | TCA Press Tour begins Wednesday | | Brian Lowry emails: HBO leads off the TV Critics Assn. tour on Wednesday, with two caveats in terms of the event's news value: HBO CEO Richard Plepler won't be at the executive session, leaving programming chief Casey Bloys to field whatever questions might come up about the network's future under AT&T...
-- And another note: Press tour is a little less newsy now that it follows Comic-Con, where a horde of TV shows were already previewed..
-- As for sessions to circle, Viceland might have one of the buzziest on the roster, with Tom Arnold plugging his new "The Hunt for the Trump Tapes" show on Thursday... | | | >> The Wrap has "13 burning questions" for press tour, including "Will Tom Arnold have the Trump tapes?," "How will Amazon gain back lost ground to Hulu?," and "So where we at in 'Peak TV,' John Landgraf?" Here's the list... | | Bidding for a "Hamilton" movie may exceed $50 million | | | "Hollywood studios are currently bidding for the big-screen rights to Lin-Manuel Miranda's hit musical," the WSJ's Ben Fritz reports. "But in an unusual twist, the 'Hamilton' movie won't be a filmed adaptation. Instead, it is a recording of the show made in 2016 with its original cast." Fritz hears the bidding may top $50 million... | | Secretary of State reunion! | | | The season premiere of CBS's "Madam Secretary" will feature cameos by Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton. Albright shared this photo on Tuesday... The episode will air on October 7... | | Chloe's interview with The Fat Jewish | | | Chloe Melas emails: One of social media's biggest Instagram stars says the age of the influencer is nearly over. I sat down with The Fat Jewish aka Josh Ostrovsky to talk about why he's gotten into the wine business and begun stepping back from the platform that made him rich and famous. One of my favorite quotes: "People are starting to experience a little bit of social media burnout. How many times can I look at your baby? How many times can I look at a blazing, pink L.A. sunset, or your açaà bowl, or your 5K?" | | | For the record, part four | | | By Chloe Melas:
-- Karlie Kloss and Joshua Kushner are engaged...
-- "SNL" star Pete Davidson has quit social media because he says the internet is "evil..." | | Hannity interviewing Roseanne | | I purposefully saved this story for the very end. Roseanne Barr is doing press... She's sitting down for her first TV interview, on Thursday's "Hannity..." And she's appearing on a live podcast with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach that same evening...
-- Oliver Darcy tweeted: "Roseanne has been claiming her firing was because she was a Trump supporter, not her racist tweet, so this [Hannity] booking makes sense..."
-- Meanwhile: Work on the "Roseanne" spin-off "The Conners" is now well underway... And ABC has set a premiere date... The network's entire Tuesday lineup, including "The Conners," will premiere Oct. 16... | | | Let me know what you think of this newsletter. Email your likes, dislikes, thoughts: brian.stelter@turner.com | | | | | | |
