| | | | | Exec summary: Michael Wolff's TV tour is about to begin... BuzzFeed is about to get a new W.H. reporter... NPR's Robert Siegel is about to retire... Plus much more... | | Trump is fueling the "Fire" 🔥 | | | Thursday will be remembered as the day President Trump tried and failed to stop an unflattering book from being published. Uncharted territory? Oh yeah. One of his personal attorneys, Charles Harder, sent a threatening cease and desist letter to author Michael Wolff and publisher Henry Holt. The publisher spent a few hours reviewing the letter. Then it decided to respond by speeding up the release of Wolff's book "Fire and Fury." The book will be available to the public at 9am ET on Friday... | | No new comment from Harder | | | I've been emailing and calling Harder's office all evening. No luck... So far Trumpworld has no new comment about the book's impending release. But Trump does: | | Trump says the book is "full of lies" | | | Just before 11pm Thursday, @realDonaldTrump said the book is "phony" and "full of lies." Trump claimed that "I authorized Zero access to White House," which contradicts Wolff's portrayal. Trump added: "Look at this guy's past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!" Wolff will have a chance to respond on Friday morning... | | Wolff's promo tour begins Friday on "Today" | | Savannah Guthrie will interview Wolff in the 7am hour. Some possible questions: "What were your interactions with POTUS?" "How many of your interviews did you tape?" "Is Steve sloppy?" (Just kidding about that last one.)
After several other NBC and MSNBC interviews, Wolff will make his late night debut on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" Monday night... | | One other story is competing for airtime and attention... | | | That's the exclusive reporting by the NYT's Michael Schmidt, which hit during the 7pm hour on Thursday. Wolff has been a critic of the NYT for years, so I wonder how he feels about competing with Schmidt and co... | | The NYT's reporting is all about "obstruction" | | The headline: "Obstruction Inquiry Shows Trump's Struggle to Keep Grip on Russia Investigation." On CNN's "AC360," Jeffrey Toobin said "this is potentially MORE evidence that the president was obstructing justice in connection with the Comey investigation." Maggie Haberman said "this is the clearest, most substantial reporting we have seen about what the president demanded and what he wanted of the attorney general with regards to this probe."
This moment cries out for explainers -- stories that start at the beginning, not in the middle -- after all, these twists and turns are confusing for insiders, and even more confusing for casual readers/viewers!
--> CNN's summary: "NYTimes: Mueller learned of Trump attempt to stop Sessions recusal" | | | Stephen Hayes filed this Weekly Standard column before the NYT story hit: "Trump wants a book banned, a political opponent in jail, and says his former adviser is insane. This is all dangerous..." | | Two new excerpts from the book | | | On Thursday THR published "My Year Inside Trump's Insane White House" by Wolff, and the British edition of GQ published an excerpt from the book that focused on Trump's complicated relationship with the media. There's a LOT in this GQ piece... | | Harder's Thursday morning missive was a pretty standard cease and desist letter -- except that it involved the president. What a sentence: "Mr. Trump hereby demands that you immediately cease and desist from any further publication, release or dissemination of the Book, the Article, or any excerpts or summaries of either of them, to any person or entity, and that you issue a full and complete retraction and apology to my client as to all statements made about him in the Book and Article that lack competent evidentiary support."
Even Fox host Tucker Carlson and guest Roger Stone seemed baffled about why Trump would go this route, given the ineffectiveness of the legal letter...
--> Jake Tapper: Trump is trying to quash the book because it "hurts his feelings..." | | | The publisher's 4:49pm statement: "Henry Holt confirms that we received a cease and desist letter from an attorney for President Trump. We see 'Fire and Fury' as an extraordinary contribution to our national discourse, and are proceeding with the publication of the book." | | | Brian Lowry emails: David Frum summed up my initial thoughts about the cease-and-desist letter, wryly noting that publicists "yet unborn" will be talking for years about the legal challenge from a sitting president as the standard against which all publicity -- intended or otherwise -- will be judged... | | | Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley to the WashPost: "Trump is stealing a page out of Richard Nixon's playbook once again. When you get criticized by the press or a book that attacks you, you attack back with ferocity... It's a misuse of presidential powers." | | -- Kramerbooks in DC announced that it was staying open til 1am Friday... so that it could sell the book starting at 12am...
-- Matt Viser tweeted: "Trump spent much of his career proudly mastering the 'tabloid gossip' pages. It's a bit rich that now his administration is trashing an unfavorable book as 'tabloid gossip...'"
-- Janice Min, who dined with Wolff, Steve Bannon and Roger Ailes, speaking on "AC360:" What was mind-blowing "was the level of trust they had in Michael Wolff..."
-- On MSNBC, Joy Reid and Jennifer Rubin wondered aloud if Wolff "heard things that he thinks are obstruction of justice," and surmised that Mueller would want to know about it...
-- The Atlantic's James Hamblin tweeted: "So the presidency defined by polarizing dynamics of the high tech digital media landscape could be undone by a good old fashioned book..." | | Here's why the book is important | | The Bannon vs. Trump stuff is intriguing, I admit. But the coverage of the salacious, gossipy details misses the bigger, more important thread in Wolff's reporting. The book suggests that Trump is unstable and raises alarms about his fitness for office.
Between Wednesday and Thursday, there was a noticeable shift in the coverage, away from the specific and sometimes gossipy claims and toward the bigger-picture portrait of a White House in crisis. Here's my CNNMoney column all about that... | | | Wolf spoke with top officials like Bannon and lower-level aides. He wrote in THR: "My indelible impression of talking to them and observing them" is that "they all — 100 percent — came to believe he was incapable of functioning in his job." | | On MSNBC on Thursday, anchor Katy Tur, who covered the Trump campaign, recalled that a former Trump staffer asked her a couple of months ago, "Do you think he's lost a step since the campaign?" "This," she said, "is a pervasive view among those who know him. That should not be surprising."
But it is surprising -- and disturbing -- to many viewers and readers. Books like "Fire and Fury" are bringing these fears to the forefront... | | "It's been an open secret all along" | | | That's what James Fallows says in this compelling new column... | | Michelle Goldberg read the whole book, and she says... | | | NYT op-ed columnist Michelle Goldberg "Most of all, the book confirms what is already widely understood -- not just that Trump is entirely unfit for the presidency, but that everyone around him knows it." Here's her full column... Let's see how Wolff addresses Q's about this on NBC... | | This is the front page of The Times, one of Murdoch's papers | | | The headline in The Times of London on Friday is "Trump's mental health questioned by top aide." It's a reference to Bannon telling Wolff that Trump has "lost his stuff." This is significant because the paper is owned by Rupert Murdoch, a key figure in the book... | | The answer is reporting, not rumors | | | Nate Silver tweeted: "I do think there's a vacuum in good reporting on Trump's mental health and that vacuum is starting to be filled by rumors and hot takes." More reporting is needed... | | | "After the shock of Michael Wolff's account of President Trump's willful ignorance and intellectual incoherence fades, Americans will be left with the inescapable conclusion that the president is not capable of fulfilling his duties as commander in chief," Joe Scarborough predicts in Friday's WashPost ... | | | Columbia prof Emily Bell tweeted this, and I noticed that Wolff RTed it: "Dilemma of the Wolff book for journalism commentators: those who said press should break the rules, not normalize Trump, call it what it is etc., did not anticipate the most effective route to that would be by pulling off the most audacious act of access journalism of all time..." | | His latest piece for Politico is a must-read: "Wolff's penetration of the White House presents two equally damning conclusions about Trump -- that he's too much of an egoist to care who might be loitering around the White House, gathering string on him, and that he's too incurious about the world to spot a potential danger to his presidency." Shafer concludes: "If ever there were a man who deserved to get Wolffed, it's Donald Trump."
-- Related: Here's Tom Kludt's profile of Wolff... | | | Oliver Darcy emails his latest story: Steve Bannon's future as executive chairman of Breitbart has been thrown into question due to the Wolff book. A person familiar with the matter told me that there has been a "hard push" to convince Breitbart CEO Larry Solov and Susie Breitbart, the widow of website founder Andrew Breitbart, to fire Bannon. The WSJ reported on Thursday that Breitbart's board members were debating whether or not to oust Bannon, and on Thursday afternoon Rebekah Mercer, the conservative mega-donor who owns a stake in Breitbart, publicly rebuked Bannon in a rare public statement... | | "We've been told nothing" | | | More from Oliver Darcy: Inside Breitbart, staffers were left in the dark, people familiar with internal deliberations told me. "Internally, we've been told nothing," one staffer said. "Everything most in the company know about Steve Bannon's situation is coming from press accounts." Read more... | | -- "Bloomberg Businessweek editor Megan Murphy is departing the company." Joel Weber will take over... (TVNewser)
-- Spotify just topped 70 million subscribers... (Axios)
-- BTIG's Rich Greenfield tweeted out this chart comparing "global subscriber growth trendline from point each passed 20 million subs..." (Twitter) | | WSJ says Weinstein Co. is close to a sale | | "Weinstein Co. is nearing the end of a sale process in which the embattled independent film studio could go for less than $500 million and its shareholders may lose all of their equity," the WSJ's Ben Fritz and Keach Hagey reported Thursday, citing "people close to the discussions."
--> More: "Following a Dec. 22 deadline that saw about 20 offers come in, Weinstein Co.'s owners and board of directors have narrowed down a list of potential buyers to six, the people said." Details here...
--> I hear the sale will likely be formalized within the next week... | | Jimmy Iovine leaving Apple | | | Music industry giant Jimmy Iovine plans to leave Apple this summer, Recode's Peter Kafka reports. He says "Iovine's departure, timed to the end of an employment contract, has been widely discussed throughout the music industry for many months" and notes that Iovine "has had a limited role within the company for some time..." | | BuzzFeed's new W.H. correspondent | | | BI's Maxwell Tani scoops: In a memo, BuzzFeed said Capitol Hill reporter Tarini Parti will take over the White House beat after BuzzFeed's previous correspondent Adrian Carrasquillo was fired last month." Here's his full story... | | Robert Siegel is retiring on Friday | | | Via NPR's Twitter feed: "Robert Siegel has been the voice of All Things Considered for 30 years. He steps down from the host chair this Friday. Share your memories and well-wishes using #thanksrobert, or by emailing ThanksRobert@npr.org..." | | -- Didja see this? "Facebook will 'completely deprioritize publishers': Confessions of a publisher audience development head..." (Digiday)
-- Promotions and hires at EW as it prepares to relocate to L.A.: Bill Keith will replace Meeta Agrawal as deputy editor; Tim Leong will be exec editor; Katie Hasty will join the mag as senior editor, movies; Patrick Gomez will be senior editor, TV...
-- Josh Oshinsky is now the EP of Time Inc. Sports Video and VP of Programming for Sports Illustrated TV... | | The "bomb cyclone" reminded me... | | ...That Verizon FiOS still isn't carrying The Weather Channel. This stems from a carriage dispute dating back to 2015. When a Verizon customer pointed out on Thursday that the company was using The Weather Channel's storm name in a promo email -- "Winter Storm Grayson is here," the email said -- the channel saw an opportunity.
"Thanks so much for using our storm names in your communications to customers!" the channel tweeted at Verizon. "We love them as much as you do (some would argue even more), want to give them what they need most right now and put @weatherchannel back on?" | | Here's an NFL ratings reality ✅ | | | Frank Pallotta emails with the latest NFL ratings scoreboard: Game #'s were down roughly 10% this season, but the league is still the biggest thing on TV. Of the top ten most-watched telecasts last year, seven were NFL events, including the Super Bowl. Read more... | | "Alex Trebek on Brief Medical Leave From 'Jeopardy' After Surgery" | | | That's the headline from Variety's Cynthia Littleton. "Trebek is set to return to taping 'Jeopardy' in mid-January," she says. "He underwent surgery on Dec. 16 for a subdural hematoma, or blood clots on the brain, that he incurred from a fall back in October. He was released from the hospital on Dec. 18." He is "expected to make a full recovery..." | | -- "H. Brandt Ayers, former publisher of The Anniston Star, resigned his role as chairman of the board of directors of the company that owns the newspaper Thursday, after a series of allegations against him." His wife will replace him...
-- Chloe Melas writes: Mira Sorvino praised her father after he threatened to kill Harvey Weinstein for allegedly blacklisting her in Hollywood...
-- UTA "has cut ties with longtime client actor Danny Masterson, who is facing multiple rape allegations," Yashar Ali reports...
-- I forgot to include this in the newsletter earlier in the week: Alex Wagner is replacing Mark Halperin on Showtime's "The Circus..." | | Fox execs say it's "business as usual" while the Disney deal is pending | | Brian Lowry emails: Fox execs were clearly well-prepped in terms of what they could say, and couldn't, in regard to the Disney deal as the network kicked off the TV Critics Association tour. The mantra: Sure, there's some anxiety, but for the next 12 to 18 months, it's business as usual. Meanwhile, A-level producer Ryan Murphy noted that Bob Iger had reached out to him, another sign that the Disney chief is seeking to reassure key creative personnel about how they fit in the studio's plans.
Here's the full story by Lowry and Sandra Gonzalez... | | | Megan Thomas emails: Golden Globes host Seth Meyers tells THR he plans to focus on Hollywood politics instead of DC's drama: "I'm reserving the right to change my mind. But especially this year, with everything that's happened in Hollywood, it seems far more important to have the focus there as opposed to anything that's happening in Washington..." | | "Game of Thrones" to end in 2019 | | | HBO's announcement on Thursday: "'Game of Thrones' will return for its six-episode, eighth and final season in 2019. David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, David Nutter and Miguel Sapochnik will be the directors for the new season. Writers for the new season are David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, Bryan Cogman and Dave Hill." Here's the full story by Chloe Melas... | | Ouch. Brian Lowry tweets: Fox says every episode of "The Four," its new singing competition, is "like a finale." Great. Does that mean I don't have to watch next week?
Here's his full review... | | | Brian Lowry emails: Showtime's programming strategy has been all over the map of late, but the network delivers an inordinately strong drama in "The Chi," a multi-character serial set on Chicago's South Side. Created by Lena Waithe (who broke ground by winning an Emmy for "Master of None"), in its best moments the show feels like a spiritual heir to "The Wire..." | | Cate Blanchett's new role | | | More from Chloe Melas: Cate Blanchett has been named the president of this year's Cannes Film Festival jury... | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... I appreciate every message. Happy New Year! | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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