| | | | | Exec summary: Mark Zuckerberg emerged "unscathed" from his first day of testimony... Some observers even thought it was "boring..." But Wednesday morning's sequel could be more eventful... Scroll down for complete coverage... | | | "This is one of those days when it sort of feels like all of Washington is on eggshells. Something is about to crack," Rachel Maddow said Tuesday night... | | How does this story end?
President Trump is seething. Sources are telling CNN that he is considering firing Deputy A.G. Rod Rosenstein. Monday's raid on Michael Cohen could "prompt the President to take more aggressive action" against special counsel Robert Mueller. Some lawmakers are renewing their warnings that firing Mueller could be the end of his presidency -- even likening it to "suicide." Trump critics are dreaming of impeachment and removal from his office while supporters are denouncing a "runaway investigation."
So this is the great mystery in American life right now. What does Mueller know that we don't know? Will Trump stop us from knowing? And what would happen then? How would the public react? Would the president's fans rally around him? Would his opponents take to the streets in record numbers? Then what? These questions are undergirding much of the news coverage right now... | | CNN banner on Tuesday afternoon: "TRUMP'S ANGER OVER RAID SURPASSES PREVIOUS TANTRUMS..."
Trump is skipping his trip to South America while contemplating Syria strikes...
The White House says Trump believes he has the "power" to fire Mueller...
The NYT reports that Trump sought to fire Mueller in December, partly due to faulty news stories that had to be corrected...
Stormy Daniels is cooperating with the investigators...
Michael Cohen is playing nice with the feds, saying the agents were courteous and respectful...
Preet Bharara predicts the likelihood that Cohen is going to be charged is "high..."
Amid all this, Trump's homeland security adviser, Thomas Bossert, resigned on Tuesday morning... The turnover rate is extraordinary... | | | Carl Bernstein, on "AC360," reacting to the widespread speculation that Trump will move against Rosenstein/Mueller: "We have a President of the United States willing to risk a constitutional crisis for this nation so he can avoid legitimate investigation" and stop the facts from coming out "the way they ought to..." | | What are GOPers saying in private? | | | Senator Mark Warner to MSNBC's Chris Hayes: "I've never seen anything like this in my whole life. I know a lot of my Republican colleagues have privately expressed real concern and consternation. My hope is that for the sake of this country, that someone will rein this president back in..." | | What Rush Limbaugh thinks | | | He says the "Drive-By Media" is "trying to goad him into firing Mueller." On the radio on Tuesday, he cautioned that such a move "would not stop the investigation no matter what." But he claimed that journalists would be "giddy" because "they believe it would be the end of Trump..." | | Another example of the Trump <--> TV pipeline | | | Lawyer Alan Dershowitz was on "Hannity" Monday night giving advice to the president via TV. On Tuesday, Dershowitz was with the president in person, meeting and dining with him at the W.H. The official reason: Middle East policy. Are we supposed to believe the Russia probe didn't come up? Well, Dershowitz told the WashPost's Philip Rucker after dinner, "I do not have a lawyer-client relationship with him and therefore did not give him legal advice..." | | Comey's book is right around the corner... | | | On Tuesday James Comey tweeted a picture of the set-up for his interview with George Stephanopoulos. The sit-down was taped on Monday, I'm told... It'll air this Sunday night... | | Facebook had a... good day | | | Mark Zuckerberg topped expectations for his debut day of testimony on Capitol Hill. The same cannot be said about his questioners. In the tech press and beyond, there was widespread criticism of the lawmakers... "Many American lawmakers are illiterate when it comes to 21st century technology," Dylan Byers wrote... For that reason, "Zuckerberg was rarely pressed, rarely forced off his talking points, almost never made to answer for the very real questions his platform faces," Chris Cillizza wrote... | | | The cable newsers juggled the hearing along with the W.H. press briefing and other stories... On broadcast, ABC and CBS aired the first few minutes of the hearing, then went back to regular programming... NBC stayed with it for an hour and a half... | | After the Senate hearing concluded, I corresponded with a plugged-in emailer who expects the House hearing to be tougher: "Members will have seen today's hearing and want to do something different, unique, harder," plus "there are some interesting characters in the House..."
-- Wired mag suggests four Q's for Zuck to be asked onn Wednesday...
🔌: Laurie Segall and I will preview Wednesday's hearing on CNN's "New Day" around 8:45am ET... | | -- "Reddit on Tuesday announced that it had banned 944 accounts it believes are associated with Russia's Internet Research Agency and said those accounts would remain up now for transparency but soon be taken down..." (The Daily Beast)
-- The Telegraph broke this news: The London offices of the Fox Networks Group, a division of 21st Century Fox, were raided on Tuesday... (Telegraph)
-- More on the raid: The European Commission is conducting an "antitrust investigation into the distribution of sports programming..." Fox says it is cooperating... (NYT)
-- "An unhinged man sucker-punched ABC Eyewitness News reporter Tim Fleischer in the Rockaways, Queens, on Tuesday, police said." The suspect was charged with assault and harassment... (NYDN) | | | Michael Wolff has been on a "Fire and Fury" book tour for the better part of three months, but now he's returning to his role as a columnist for The Hollywood Reporter. I hear Wolff's new column will be posted online on Wednesday morning... and it's being billed as his "Fire and Fury diaries..." With jabs at his critics and the "bureaucracy media" that he says is enabling Trump... | | | Hadas Gold emails: Wednesday is the big day: DOJ expert professor Carl Shapiro will take the stand for what the judge said will be a "very full day." Each side gets 2.5 hours and then 15 minutes redirect to question. On Thursday we will get AT&T's expert professor Dennis Carlton -- same rules. | | Like a table read for a show... | | Hadas Gold adds: The court experienced a strange bit of theater on Tuesday as lawyers read aloud a deposition from retired CableOne executive Randy Sejen. He was unable to travel to DC to testify, but AT&T wanted his testimony heard before Shapiro testifies. So an AT&T lawyer sat in the witness chair and read from Sejen's deposition, and a DOJ and AT&T lawyer read their respective portions from the deposition. It was like a table read for a show...
--> Why it mattered: Sejen's testimony seemed helpful to AT&T's case -- he said that when CableOne had a Turner blackout in 2013, the company only lost .6% of subscribers -- "fairly insignificant" -- though he cautioned it would have been a different story had the blackout occurred during March Madness... | | "CBS News is creating a workplace council to address employee issues" | | | WashPost's Erik Wemple scoops: "In editorial meetings on Monday, CBS News President David Rhodes informed colleagues that a top network official would be heading up a workplace council for employees to channel comments and complaints regarding sexual harassment and other concerns at the storied broadcast outlet, according to network sources. Karen Raffensperger, the network's director of standards and practices, will be heading up the group..." | | -- Variety's 2018 Power of Women NY list is out... Check it out here... (Variety)
-- "Handmaid's Tale," "American Vandal," CNN's Leyla Santiago, Vice's Charlottesville coverage, and "S-Town" are just a few of this year's Peabody nominees. Here's the list... (Peabody Awards)
-- It's time for the annual Pulitzers preview by Roy J. Harris Jr... The prizes will be awarded next Monday... (Poynter) | | In a memo to staffers on Tuesday, Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley said he is sorry -- not about the controversial promos that local anchors had to read, but about the "politically motivated attacks" that followed. Ripley referenced "extremists," which is a strange word to use, since his own staffers were the ones who originally raised concerns over the mandatory promos.
Soon after the memo came out, Sinclair's new crisis PR firm 5WPR, led by Ronn Torossian, promoted a four-minute-long video that called me a hypocrite and criticized CNN. Sinclair shared the anti-CNN video at the top of its local station web sites.
The AP's David Bauder explains: "The video calls the network reprehensible for reporting on its directives, and said the 'fake news' message was similar to warnings that CNN and its media reporter, Brian Stelter, have been giving for years." Of course, the term "fake news" had a very different meaning in 2016 than it does today. Trump has successfully redefined and exploited the term... | | Reactions to the "attack" | | Anyway, HuffPost called the Sinclair video "misleading," THR called it an "attack" on CNN, and the WashPost pointed out the "problems" with it. Alex Burns tweeted: "How better to allay concerns that you are turning local TV stations into a pro-Trump machine than ... a coordinated denunciation of CNN?"
I'll leave it to others to address the substance of Sinclair's complaint. I'm not trying to argue with anyone, I'm trying to report. But here's the important point: There's a big difference between my coverage and Sinclair's mandatory promos. No one tells me what to say. But these anchors were told exactly what to say... | | -- The Guardian's Jon Swaine landed an interview with David Smith, the chairman of Sinclair. The news: Smith met Trump at the White House "during a visit to pitch a potentially lucrative new product to administration officials..."
-- A Sinclair host in St. Louis has resigned "after making vulgar comment about Parkland student David Hogg," CNN's Eliott C. McLaughlin reports... | | | For the record, part three | | | -- Publishers like Bustle and Curbed "are treating Instagram Stories like episodic TV..." (Digiday)
-- Didja know? Publishers Clearing House "Is now a cutting edge, data-driven digital media powerhouse," Mike Shields writes... (BI)
-- Smart piece by Daniel D'Addario: "Laura Ingraham Is Fox News's Problem, and Its Way Forward" (Time)
-- "Fox News analyst Marie Harf and contributor Guy Benson are teaming up for a new show on Fox News Radio..." (Mediaite) | | Oh, to be a fly on THIS wall... | | | Oliver Darcy emails: Jeff Bezos dined last month with leaders of The New York Times and The Washington Post, Dylan Byers and I have learned. Bezos was spotted at The Ribbon on Manhattan's Upper West Side with Times executive editor Dean Baquet, NYT publishers Arthur and A.G. Sulzberger, NYT Co. CEO Mark Thompson, Post CEO Fred Ryan, and Post executive editor Marty Baron. "Leaders of the Post and The Times have gotten together periodically for decades and still do," Baquet said. "Arthur and Don Graham were friends, as were Katharine Graham and Arthur's father. When Jeff Bezos bought The Post, Arthur thought it was a tradition worth maintaining. So we have..." | | "Trump's Takeover" on "Frontline" | | Brian Lowry emails: "Frontline" continues to do a yeoman job of trying to bring context and sobriety to the breakneck pace of the Trump presidency, even if the news cycle occasionally laps it. The latest case in point: "Trump's Takeover," chronicling the shift toward the president within the GOP, and his clashes with the establishment leading up to it...
Read more, and check out the documentary here... | | Velocity being renamed Motor Trend Network | | | "Discovery will remodel its automotive-focused Velocity cabler as Motor Trend Network in the fall, part of a strategic effort to deliver more direct-to-consumer streaming services tailored for viewers with rabid interests," Variety's Cynthia Littleton reports... | | | Chloe Melas emails: Its equal pay day, and I spoke to Liv Tyler about the pay gap in Hollywood. She also talked with me about being raised by strong women & why the #MeToo movement is so important for women in all industries... | | | Megan Thomas emails: Former E! News host Catt Sadler wrote for Vanity Fair about equal pay day about her battle with the "mom tax." I think a lot of people in Hollywood are rooting for Catt... | | | Lisa Respers France emails: Former "Silicon Valley" star T.J. Miller is facing a federal charge for allegedly calling in a fake bomb threat on an Amtrak train... | | "Roseanne" reruns getting a new lease on life | | | Brian Lowry emails: Paramount Network is taking advantage of the gift it's received from ABC's high-rated "Roseanne" revival. Paramount holds the reruns... So the network will bring the show back with a two-hour afternoon block every Wednesday, the day after kicking that off with an 11-hour marathon on April 17... | | A wave of king-sized biographies | | Brian Lowry emails: A byproduct of the explosion of viewing options is giving filmmakers more time to flesh out projects. That has included a spate of king-sized TV biographies, from HBO¹s upcoming documentary "Elvis Presley: The Searcher" -- which clocks in at 3.5 hours -- to scripted fare like National Geographic Channel's second run of the 10-part limited series "Genius," devoted to Pablo Picasso. Still, not every life merits such epic treatment, and there's some value in knowing when to say "cut," as evidenced by HBO Sports' "Andre the Giant," which premiered Tuesday night, and runs a concise 85 minutes.
Read Lowry's full column here... | | "Up & Vanished" the movie? | | Sandra Gonzalez emails: If anyone was as obsessed with the podcast "Up & Vanished" as I was, here's some interesting news from a panel I moderated at NAB in Las Vegas: The addictive podcast about of a missing Georgia woman might be coming to theaters. Host and producer Payne Lindsey said he has plans for a film version of the story, which is already being made into a docuseries for Oxygen.
"The whole time I was doing it, I was like, 'This is a movie! This is a movie.' So I want to make a movie about it — a scripted movie about what happened," he said.
Lindsey was joined on the panel -- about the deluge of Podcast-inspired programming that's being adapted for television -- by Donald Albright, Zach Braff and Matt Tarses. You can watch the whole "From Podcast to Broadcast" panel here... | | | For the record, part four | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- When his first son was born two years ago, Seth Meyers joked that his wife's labor progressed so quickly they worried she'd give birth in their Uber. On Sunday they didn't even make it to the car... And she delivered their second son in the lobby of their NYC apartment building...
-- Speaking of babies, Cardi B received some of her first baby gifts when she co-hosted "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" on Monday...
-- The creators of "Westworld" said they were planning on spoiling their second season themselves to deal with inaccurate fan "theories." Here's how singer Rick Astley is involved... | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... the feedback helps us improve this newsletter every day... Thanks! | | | | | | |
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