Good morning,

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

It was another fabulous week. Matt Belloni uncovered Hollywood’s Kalshi habit; Bill Cohan tried to make sense of the Big Five banks’ record-shattering quarter; Julia Alexander sized up the Bravo–Hulu reality TV rivalry; Eriq Gardner investigated whether Netflix is astroturfing the WarnerMount dissent; John Ourand explained the NFL’s D.C. charm offensive; Dylan Byers considered Bari Weiss’s WHCD power play; Ian Krietzberg deflated an A.I. replacement theory myth; Lauren Sherman decoded Luca de Meo’s Kering turnaround; Rachel Strugatz got to the bottom of the Kris Jenner “slipping” facelift scandale; Malique Morris evaluated the Vestiaire Collective reboot; and Marion Maneker interrogated Artsy C.E.O. Jeff Yin.

Meanwhile, down in D.C., Leigh Ann Caldwell surveyed the Eric Swalwell wreckage and G.O.P. midterm jitters; Peter Hamby parsed voters’ Iran war confusion; Julia Ioffe exposed the Pentagon purge fueling Gen. Christopher LaNeve’s rise; and Abby Livingston assessed the political damage from Trump’s feud with Pope Leo.

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

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

New Poll Reveals Top Voter Concern Ahead of The Midterms
America’s affordability crisis is top of mind for many midterm voters, especially prescription drug costs.

86% of Republican voters agree: Big Pharma must be held accountable for rising drug costs.

In fact, the same poll finds that 90% of Republican voters support requiring pharmaceutical companies to charge Americans the same lower drug prices paid in countries like Canada and Japan.

It’s time for Big Pharma to put Americans first and make prescription drugs more affordable and accessible.

Learn more.

Lauren Sherman goes deep with Bryanboy on the Blazy Chanel spell and outlines the industry skepticism around Luca de Meo’s Kering overhaul.
and…
Rachel Strugatz wades through of the Kris Jenner facelift discourse.
meanwhile…
Malique Morris peeks in on Ty Haney’s Outdoor Voices redux and weighs Vestiaire Collective’s chances of catching The RealReal.

Marion Maneker grills Artsy C.E.O. Jeff Yin on the platform’s bloodletting, annotates the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s Calder retrospective, and spotlights Christie’s outsider art gambit.

Matt Belloni scrutinizes Hollywood’s insider-betting habit on Polymarket and Kalshi.
and…
Julia Alexander praises Bravo’s Summer House hot streak.
meanwhile…
Eriq Gardner sniffs out the financing behind the “Block the Merger” letter.

Ian Krietzberg ponders Maine Gov. Janet Mills’s data center dilemma.

Paul Goldberger offers the definitive review of LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries.
and…
Jay McInerney heads back to the Odeon.

Dylan Byers dissects the Weiss–Ellison White House charm offensive.

John Ourand sits down with NBC Sports’s Jon Miller to discuss the network’s nine-figure bet.

Bill Cohan convenes the analysts on the Big Five banks’ record quarter and untangles the Brightline restructuring mess.

Leigh Ann Caldwell searches the Swalwell wreckage for signs of deeper Hill dysfunction, and presses Sen. Jim Banks on G.O.P. midterm fears, presented by the Pharmaceutical Reform Alliance.
and…
Julia Ioffe reveals the Pentagon purge behind Gen. Christopher LaNeve’s ascent.
and…
Peter Hamby highlights exclusive data regarding voters’ profound confusion about the Iran war.
and…
Abby Livingston gauges the midterm fallout from Trump’s feud with Pope Leo.

Dylan and The Onion C.E.O. Ben Collins make sense of the Infowars acquisition on The Grill Room.
and…
Matt gathers producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Emma Thomas, plus Cinema United C.E.O. Michael O’Leary, for a Hollywood confessional on The Town.
and…
Tom Nichols joins John Heilemann to take stock of the Iran war at week eight and Tucker Carlson’s mea culpa on Impolitic.
and…
Lauren and MillerKnoll’s Kelsey Keith offer a Salone del Mobile postmortem on Fashion People.
and…
Peter rings up Bill to diagnose the Main Street–Wall Street disconnect on The Powers That Be.

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By the time you read this, I’ll be on the Acela, probably somewhere around Philadelphia en route to Washington, D.C., for a packed (if truncated) weekend of business and revelry. Tonight is the annual White House Correspondents’ Association gala, of course, and the town has already been ablaze for days with parties and pregame soirees.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

New Poll Reveals Top Voter Concern Ahead of The Midterms
America’s affordability crisis is top of mind for many midterm voters, especially prescription drug costs.

86% of Republican voters agree: Big Pharma must be held accountable for rising drug costs.

In fact, the same poll finds that 90% of Republican voters support requiring pharmaceutical companies to charge Americans the same lower drug prices paid in countries like Canada and Japan.

It’s time for Big Pharma to put Americans first and make prescription drugs more affordable and accessible.

Learn more.

Shortly after I drop my bags at the Riggs, I’ll be off for a cameo at Tammy Haddad’s famous brunch in Georgetown before hosting Puck’s pre-event gala, in partnership with Amazon, at a secret, undisclosed location around Kalorama. We’re thrilled to welcome members of Congress, media swells, TV people, fellow journalists, clients, maybe a governor or two, and D.C. grandees. Then there’s the dinner, followed by the afterparties. Tomorrow, Air Mail editor-in-chief Julia Vitale and I will be convening a weekend farewell bash at the Ned, the prettiest and toniest club in town, to wish everyone off. I did my best to pack light, although I threw in an extra pair of cufflinks for my partner Peter Hamby, who texted an S.O.S. message from his commercial flight to me, Matt Belloni, Dylan Byers, and John Ourand in search of an extra set.

Unlike his previous years in office, the president is planning on making an appearance this evening. Naturally, this development has much of the town aflutter with various emotions. Trump has hardly been a friend to the fourth estate, but the electricity surrounding his appearance has demonstrated his signature talent of consuming attention wherever he goes—often before he even gets there.

To wit, on Thursday, CBS News chief Bari Weiss and her newish boss, David Ellison, hosted an invitation-only dinner for their colleagues in honor of the president at the Institute of Peace. Yes, it’s been about 10 months since Trump settled his suit with the network over that whole phony 60 Minutes scandal, a truce that effectively paved the way for Ellison to acquire Paramount and begin his historic legacy-media barnstorming. Ever since, the young mogul has signaled hard that he’s focused on winning the president’s affection through all sorts of superficial tactics, like overbidding for the UFC and even acqui-hiring Weiss via his purchase of The Free Press. The dinner seems similarly contrived, as does the fact that Bari and her colleagues will host Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth at their tables tonight at the Hilton.

In The Weiss House, however, Dylan artfully explains the Weiss-Ellison calculus, and it may be more complex than meets the eye. “Fourth-estate purists have ample reason to bemoan Bari’s plan, but they shouldn’t ignore the strategic rationale, either,” Dylan wrote. “In TV news, only Fox has fortress business strategies, and David has enlisted Bari to play for that audience. In fact, despite her rocky start in the C-suite, I was told this week that he still hopes she can help CNN earn some of that audience after Paramount acquires WBD.” Perhaps Hegseth will continue his broadcast career on her air after he eventually leaves his administrative post.

But if you only have time to read one piece this weekend, I’d turn your attention to another masterstroke on our secretary of war. In Hegseth’s Useful Tool, my partner Julia Ioffe juxtaposes the SecWar’s recent Pentagon purge with the curious rise of Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the new chief of staff of the U.S. Army, who burst onto the scene during one of Trump’s inaugural celebrations and never left—riding a now-familiar career escalator built on sycophancy. “LaNeve is now squarely in line to potentially succeed Gen. Dan Caine when his term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff runs out in less than 18 months,” Julia wrote. “It’s been a remarkable rise for the subdued and soft-spoken LaNeve, who lacks the commanding presence of some of his peers and predecessors. More importantly, he doesn’t have a reputation as a warrior-scholar or a big-ideas guy—unwritten requirements for an ambitious general officer. Instead, colleagues have described him to me as ‘fine,’ ‘fine, not great,’ ‘white-bread,’ ‘not too much of a rockstar,’ and ‘unremarkable.’” Noted one Pentagon official: “He wasn’t a known quantity. He was just some guy.” (A Pentagon spokesman pushed back on this characterization and said that LaNeve has done everything asked of him.)

Anyway, we all know the drill here. Obsequiousness is a powerful tool in Trump’s Washington, and it will be interesting to see how some of this behavior is viewed over time. LaNeve may have buttressed his own career in the short term, but Julia discovered that, along the way, he’d lost the respect of many of his peers who felt, fairly or not, that he’d skipped a few rungs on the ladder.

How well will CBS News’s own reposturing age? Will Bari’s invitation of Hegseth and Miller one day seem like an olive branch to more conservative audiences in pursuit of a growing news platform, or merely a token gesture to lubricate Ellison’s WBD purchase, or perhaps something in between? It’s one of the great questions of our time, and something we’ll endeavor to answer here at Puck. In the meantime, I’ll be back next week with some pictures from the parties.

Have a great weekend,
Jon

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