Good morning,

Thanks for reading The Backstory, our weekly capsule of the best new work at Puck.

Yes, yes, I say this all the time (because it’s true), but it was another fabulous week here at Puck: Dylan Byers got inside Ari Enamuel’s merger, Teddy Schleifer decoded Jeff Bezos’s deal heat, Tara Palmeri reported on the G.O.P. megadonors’ anxiety about DeSantis, Matt Belloni unearthed a Bachelor scandal and Bill Cohan wondered whether Jamie Dimon is headed for the Treasury.

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

WALL STREET:
Bill Cohan observes Dimon Diplomacy and evaluates Bob Iger’s first six months as Disney’s boomerang C.E.O.

SILICON VALLEY:
Teddy Schleifer digs into the calculus of Jeff Bezos’s NFL play.
and…
Baratunde Thurston assesses Elon Musk’s blue period.

MEDIA:
Dylan Byers has the readout from Ari Emanuel’s made-for-HBO deal.

HOLLYWOOD:
Matt Belloni breaks down a major reality TV legal scandal.
and…
Jonathan Handel goes inside the room in the writers’ battle.
and…
Julia Alexander and Matthew Ball discuss the great streaming money squeeze.

WASHINGTON:
Tara Palmeri reports on donors’ mounting DeSantis-itis.
and…
Tina Nguyen explains Trump’s secret MAGA squeeze play.

PODCASTS:
Matt and Tara talk about DeSantis vs. Iger on The Town.
and…
Peter Hamby and I discuss the Trump cable news revenge circus on The Powers That Be.

When we finally sat down in a relatively nondescript conference room (frosted glass, big TV, lush fruit plate, you know the deal), I had a punch list of a zillion things I wanted to ask him: details about the early days of his career, some of the critical decision points he’d faced along the way, and how he currently saw the markets, in addition to the evolution of our industry. But instead this person, an entrepreneur at heart, really wanted to talk about Puck: he wanted to ask what we were seeing out there in our business. We sat for an hour swapping stories and trading impressions. It was easily the most enjoyable afternoon that I’ve had in ages.

The conversation was off the record, so I’ll have to keep the details to myself, but it was revelatory and illuminating for one reason I can share. As I spoke with this executive, I was able to see just how much his perspective and personality had laid the course for the corporate strategy that defined his extraordinary success. At the end of the day, as Graydon Carter has reminded me my whole career, media is the people business.

It’s a leitmotif that is constantly emerging in the work at Puck, especially this week. In The Art of Ari’s WWE Deal, Dylan Byers captures the single-minded ferocity of Ari Emanuel, the agent-turned-mogul, in pure unadulterated deal heat: a negotiation at Wrestlemania, a secret meeting at Raine, an emotional pitch at WWE’s corporate headquarters in Stamford. In the end, Ari harpooned his whale to the tune of a $21 billion deal, besting John Malone in the process.

Meanwhile, Bill Cohan analyzed the business story of our time: Bob Iger’s boomerang return as the C.E.O. of Disney, where he has just passed his first six-month threshold. In The Iger Six-Month Itch, Bill details the numerous short-term successes, including both eluding the activist investor Nelson Peltz while also taking some of his tough love to heart. In the process, Bill also offers an analytical observation for the ages. Re-reading Peltz’s proxy materials led him to believe that the Disney board suddenly defenestrated Bob Chapek, Iger’s successor (and predecessor), because he likely would not have engendered as much support among shareholders at a proxy vote. He didn’t have Iger’s body of work, sure, but he didn’t have his wits, either, and the board knew it. True Succession-type stuff.

But if you only have time to read one thing I’d implore you to carve out a moment for Tara Palmeri’s fantastic piece on another character with Washington ambitions. In DeSantis Donor Quakes, Tara reveals how the G.O.P.’s top benefactors are growing concerned about the DeSantis camp: the putative candidate’s flagging poll numbers and recent political gambles, sure, but even his own ultra Harvard-Yale-Navy-guy arrogance. At the end of the day, the private equity and Fortune 100 titans who help anoint candidates know what I am reminded about again and again: it all comes down to the personalities of the people in charge. It’s the story of our time, and precisely what you should expect to read in Puck.

Have a great weekend,
Jon