Good morning,

It was a groundbreaking week here at Puck: John Heilemann reported from the Biden bunker while Julia Ioffe gathered the world leader gossip at the NATO summit, Tara Palmeri captured the gloating at Mar-a-Lago, Peter Hamby assessed the Kamala question, and Abby Livingston deciphered Pelosi’s political triangulation. Meanwhile, Matt Belloni chatted with David Ellison and Gerry Cardinale about their New Paramount baby, as Bill Cohan tried to divine whether Jeff Zucker would enter the mix. Dylan Byers got the readout from the lodge in Sun Valley, Lauren Sherman revealed Condé Nast’s troubles abroad, Rachel Strugatz examined Gwyneth Paltrow’s “experiential” pivot, and Eriq Gardner assessed Alec Baldwin’s legal chances.

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

ART MARKET:
Marion Maneker checks in on the Aspen and Dune Road crowd on holiday.

HOLLYWOOD:
Matt Belloni talks with David Ellison and Gerry Cardinale about their vision for Paramount.
and…
Eriq Gardner analyzes the Hollywood ramifications of Alec Baldwin’s Rust trial.

WALL STREET:
Bill Cohan digs into the hidden numbers in the Paramount deal.

MEDIA:
Dylan Byers captures the essence of Stephanopoulosgate and recounts the Peter Thiel-Reid Hoffman confrontation in Sun Valley.
and…
John Ourand relays the inside conversation as CBS Sports imagines Jeff Shell’s rule.

WASHINGTON:
John Heilemann penetrates Bidenworld while Peter Hamby runs the numbers on Kamala.
and…
Abby Livingston administers a Hill lie-detector test as Tara Palmeri gathers the tea at Mar-a-Lago.
and…
Julia Ioffe unearths NATO’s White House gossip.

PODCASTS:
Matt has a post-deal chat with Ellison and Cardinale on The Town.
and…
Heilemann and James Carville weigh Biden’s fate on Impolitic.
and…
Tara and Abby measure the Capitol Hill storm surge on Somebody’s Gotta Win.
and…
Lauren and Dylan critique mogul fashion at the lodge on Fashion People.
and…
Peter and Dylan swap notes on the nascent war between Biden and the White House press corps on The Powers That Be.

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Meanwhile, the on-the-ground-dynamics could not be more vexing or strangely fascinating. As John Heilemann noted in Biden vs. The World, the president’s normally unified and lockstep inner circle has, to steal one of the piece’s most choice lines, turned into a circular firing squad that makes the final scene of Reservoir Dogs look like a Merchant Ivory period piece. Naturally, this explains all the pernicious and obfuscatory leaking that fingered former chief of staff Ron Klain for overpreparing Biden at Camp David and top advisor Anita Dunn for advising a communications strategy that kept the president in bubble wrap.

And then there’s the battle taking shape between the journalists who cover the White House, many of whom feel duped, and the president’s larger comms apparatus that is trying to maintain the status quo amid a historical crisis. As Dylan Byers explained in his excellent Curious George Stephanopoulos, relations between the two entities have descended to a post-Iraq War nadir. “For what it’s worth,” Dylan wrote, “the vast majority of briefing room denizens I surveyed this week think [press secretary Karine] Jean-Pierre has lost all credibility.” In Bidenworld War, Tara Palmeri reported that the White House had even considered a seemingly desperate primetime Oval Office address before settling on a slightly less illogical interview with Lester Holt on Monday. (A White House spokesperson denied this.)

All of this was playing out, of course, amid the historic backdrop of NATO’s 75th anniversary, which was being commemorated in Washington last week. Before Biden took the podium for his memorable press conference, Julia Ioffe gathered the chatter among the chattering classes of the international order. NATO’s Five Stages of Biden Grief is a sophisticated and complex piece that captures the funereal mood of the Western world as the Democrats attempt to handle their family business in a transcendentally messy fashion. Puck, as I’ve noted before, endeavors to be the biography of our age, one day at a time. Amid the heat and unpredictability of this ground-shifting July, I couldn’t be more proud of my partners’ reporting, which captures the nuances and stakes of the moment.

But if you’re currently in need of a break from the Biden crisis, perhaps searching for something a little beachier, I’d turn your attention to Rachel Strugatz’s excellent and illuminating piece on Gwyneth Paltrow’s latest pivot at Goop. It’s hard to recall, but Paltrow was the culture’s first A-list movie star to fully cross over into the world of lifestyle entrepreneurship—a prescient decision that shaped the mid-careers of innumerable followers. Goop, her woo-woo and beauty company, was initially derided for all the obvious reasons. More than a decade later, Paltrow remains C.E.O., and she’s embarking on an executive and strategic shake-up. The dynamics of the shift—both the strategy, itself, and the hybrid identity of its architect—are representative of these strange times we’re living through. Indeed, it’s merely one of the great plotlines of our age, and precisely what you should expect to read in Puck.

Have a great weekend,
Jon