Good morning,

Welcome back to The Backstory, your weekend review of the best new work emanating from Puck.

I say this all the time, but only because it’s true: It was another remarkable week. Matt Belloni convened his annual high-school panel to take Hollywood’s temperature with Gen Z; Kim Masters checked in with Mike Ovitz and hunted for the remaining vulnerabilities in the Paramount–WBD deal; Eriq Gardner unpacked the Rebel Wilson defamation oddity and pried open the Vince McMahon–TKO lawsuit; Dylan Byers scooped Jeff Bezos’s pick for the next WaPo C.E.O.; Bill Cohan autopsied a $5 billion Thoma Bravo wipeout and revisited Sam Bankman-Fried’s $82 billion Anthropic what-if; John Ourand sized up MLS’s Don Garber succession field; and Ian Krietzberg parsed Sam Altman’s sudden people-first messaging pivot.

Meanwhile, Lauren Sherman scrutinized Delphine Arnault’s Dior gambit; Rachel Strugatz broke the news of Bobbi Brown’s department-store retreat; Malique Morris tallied the warning signs at post-Yeezy Adidas; Marion Maneker clocked Claude Lalanne’s record-rewriting $33.5 million mirror sale; and Dan Duray caught up with new Guggenheim director Melissa Chiu.

And then, down in D.C., Peter Hamby crunched the polling on the left’s political-violence blame game; Julia Ioffe trailed Gen. Christopher LaNeve’s charm offensive on the Hill; Leigh Ann Caldwell captured the Democratic donor revolt against Chuck Schumer; and Abby Livingston war-gamed a mid-cycle House flip.

Check out these stories, and others, via the links below. And stick around for the backstory on how it all came together.

Lauren Sherman diagnoses Delphine Arnault’s “daunting” Dior bet on Jonathan Anderson, tracks Phoebe Philo’s subversive Bloomingdale’s play, and trades notes with MillerKnoll’s Kelsey Keith on Salone.
and…
Rachel Strugatz breaks the news of Estée Lauder’s decision to pull Bobbi Brown from U.S. department stores.
meanwhile…
Malique Morris tallies the warning signs at post-Yeezy Adidas under Bjørn Gulden.

Marion Maneker decodes the Claude Lalanne $33.5 million mirror moment and sits down with painter Emma Webster ahead of her New York debut.
and…
Dan Duray catches up with new Guggenheim director Melissa Chiu.
meanwhile…
Ingrid Abramovitch dishes on luxury’s Salone takeover.

Matt Belloni convenes his annual high-school panel to grade Hollywood’s 2026 summer slate and offers the latest intrigue regarding the CAA–Range beef.
and…
Kim Masters hunts for the lingering vulnerabilities in the WarnerMount merger.
meanwhile…
Eriq Gardner connects the dots on the Rebel Wilson defamation curiosity.

Ian Krietzberg parses Sam Altman’s sudden humanity-laced messaging pivot from Chris Lehane, and profiles the post-Sora deepfake-protection gold rush.

Adam Rapoport examines the club sandwich’s Carbone-esque revival.
and…
Joseph Rodota opens up the Chandra Levy cold case.

Dylan Byers scoops Jeff Bezos’s pick of Jeff D’Onofrio atop the Will Lewis greasy pole at WaPo.

John Ourand sizes up the Don Garber succession shortlist at MLS and stress-tests Roger Goodell’s 2026 rights-deal timeline.
and…
Eriq pries open the Vince McMahon–TKO shareholder suit.

Bill Cohan autopsies Thoma Bravo’s $5 billion wipeout and revisits S.B.F.’s $82 billion Anthropic might-have-been.

Leigh Ann Caldwell captures the donor-class revolt against Chuck Schumer.
and…
Julia Ioffe trails Gen. Christopher LaNeve’s hearts-and-minds tour.
and…
Abby Livingston war-games a mid-cycle Dem House flip.
meanwhile…
Peter Hamby crunches the polling on the left’s political-violence blame problem.

Dylan and Fox News war correspondent Trey Yingst talk multiplatform reach on The Grill Room.
and…
Ourand reunites with amateur vintner Andrew Marchand to grade NFL Draft weekend on The Varsity.
and…
Lauren and designer Nili Lotan trace her namesake brand’s journey on Fashion People.
and…
Matt and Scott Mendelson rank the 2026 summer slate on The Town.
and…
Peter and Leigh Ann chew over the Voting Rights Act and the Thune–Johnson standoff on The Powers That Be.

At around 9 p.m. on Saturday evening, while sitting amid the din of the cavernous and subterranean ballroom at the Washington Hilton, I spotted a phalanx of Secret Service agents running down a narrow ambulatory corridor—guns out, moving fast, heading right toward a raised dais where President Trump, the First Lady, Vice President J.D. Vance, and others were noshing on a first course of chilly burrata and cucumber. Within an instant, approximately 2,700 dinner guests fell to the floor.

There were faint cries instructing guests of the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner to hit the deck, but the truth is that they weren’t even warranted: Men in their tuxes and women in ballgowns followed one another into crouched formation, perhaps with the lone exception of CAA agent Michael Glantz, who has a bad back and seemed unperturbed as he picked away at his salad. As I glanced out from my vantage point, I beheld a vista of starched white tablecloths, askew chairs, and tablescapes of strewn wine bottles.

Tragically, duck-and-cover drills have become a ubiquitous part of American life—and increasingly common in our polarized and sometimes violent politics. In some ways, the threat experienced on Saturday night at the Hilton was hardly any different from what too many schoolchildren face on a regular basis. The only difference is that they are young kids, unprotected by the Secret Service in the cradle of the American federal government. Indeed, after a few pregnant, undeniably chilling moments in the Hilton ballroom, most people came to the same conclusion: We were probably in the safest room in all of America—a revelation that commenced an eerie Secret Service–chaperoned cocktail party. To be fair, everyone needed a drink.

As we got up from the floor, a fascinating specter of our modern media landscape took shape. Many journalists in the room, understandably shaken yet committed to their craft, attempted to live-tweet, live-Insta, take to YouTube, or find other ways to document the event, albeit with faint Hilton Wi-Fi. Some of the efforts were civic-minded, others admittedly ham-fisted, but it was nevertheless a pointed metaphor for this media era. Even members of legacy institutions took to their own disintermediated and personal channels to broadcast the biggest story in the world, which had taken place right in front of them and was already fast out of their control.

The WHCA weekend is one of my favorite annual rituals at Puck, and this was going to be a particularly poignant year. Not only is the long weekend of revelry and endless parties a great opportunity to connect with clients and friends, but my partners and I were investing in the tradition even more robustly.

All Photos: Getty Images for Puck

On Saturday evening, Puck hosted the most exalted pre-dinner party at The Hepburn, the exceedingly chic condo abutting the Hilton, with our presenting sponsor, Amazon, and support from the American Property Owners Alliance. As someone who started his career a lifetime ago as a seat-filler at the Vanity Fair Oscar party, I’ve been around a swell gala or two—and the event at The Hepburn, I can confidently tell you, was utterly fabulous.

Roaming around our branded ice luge and shuffleboard table were Gov. Gavin Newsom, former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, CNN’s David Urban, former CrowdStrike C.T.O. Dmitri Alperovitch, Trump official Seval Oz, Axel Springer C.E.O. Mathias Döpfner, Amazon’s Doug Stone and Rachael Lighty, APOA’s Colin Allen, MS NOW’s Sudeep Reddy and Molly Jong-Fast, Newsmax C.E.O. Chris Ruddy, C-SPAN kingpin Sam Feist, Beehiiv founder Tyler Denk, CAA executives and lifelong friends Judee Ann Williams and Rachel Adler, the Times’s Cecilia Kang and Michael Grynbaum, YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen, Breaker’s Lachlan Cartwright, and my partners Sarah Personette, Liz Gough, Stacy Eisner, Alex Bigler, Ali Hattamer, Meg Phillips, Kathy Gilsinan, Matt Belloni, Dylan Byers, Peter Hamby, Leigh Ann Caldwell, Marianna Sotomayor, Abby Livingston, Julia Ioffe, and so many more—including events masterminds Louise Johnson and Sarah Voss. My favorite perk of the night was Amazon’s banana-split dessert stand.

On Sunday afternoon, our sister brand, Air Mail, was staging the most fabulous send-off party at Ned’s Club, the most exclusive and beautiful venue in town. As I traipsed around the balcony, enjoying the views of the Treasury Department and Trump’s ballroom construction site, I rubbed shoulders with Air Mail editor-in-chief Julia Vitale; senior editor George Pendle; the ambassadors from the U.K., Ireland, Qatar, Oman, Serbia, and Jordan; Lady Victoria Hervey; D.C. mayoral candidate Kenyan McDuffie; Wonder Woman Lynda Carter; Kellyanne Conway; Time C.E.O. Jessica Sibley; former ambassador Dana Shell Smith; Ned’s eminence Emma Mears; actors Cory Michael Smith and Michael Chiklis; VF’s Aidan McLaughlin; and plenty of swells from the previous night.

Unsurprisingly, much of the conversation on Sunday focused on the scene that had unfolded the previous night—everyone shared their reflections, the oddity and dismay of it all, and the various elements of the collective media-political trauma bonding that had inarguably taken place. I even met with the woman who had been dubbed the “hot survivor” of the evening based on press coverage. Hours later, on the Amtrak home, I quarantined myself in a restroom and taped a special episode of The Powers That Be, Puck’s flagship podcast, with Hamby. It was a fitting tribute to a memorable and unpredictable weekend—and, in its own way, my contribution to the ad hoc assemblage of media disintermediation the prior night.

If you have time to read only one piece this weekend, I’d turn your attention to the story that Peter wrote the very next day, An American Sickness, which used the events in the Hilton ballroom as grounds for an exploration into our era of political violence, particularly on the left. Peter’s story is intellectually brave, data-driven, and filled with surprises. It’s also one of the best-written pieces in recent memory. If you have a moment this week, I’d urge you to sit down and read it in its entirety. It grapples with one of the great quandaries of our age, and a true obsession here at Puck.

Have a great and safe weekend,
Jon

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