Murdoch Miscalculations, Iger’s Choice, Hidden China Hawks

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon compilation of Puck’s latest reporting.

Today, we lead with Julia Alexander’s artful deconstruction of the false binary facing Bob Iger as he mulls what to do with Hulu, Disney’s most confounding streaming asset.

Then, below the fold: Julia Ioffe reveals how DeSantis and others within the G.O.P. are couching their lust for a China confrontation inside a burgeoning anti-Ukraine stance. And on The Powers That Be, Eriq Gardner sits down with Peter Hamby to hypothesize the endgame of the Fox-Dominion lawsuit.

JULIA ALEXANDER

The conversation surrounding Hulu has become oversimplified and binary, suggesting that either Disney buys Comcast’s third of the company, or Comcast buy’s Disney’s two-third’s stake. But that’s unreflective of the complex industrial phase that streaming has entered.

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JULIA IOFFE

In the zero-sum world of rightward Republicanism, politicians are using a yearning to confront China as a veil to abandon Ukraine.

PETER HAMBY, ERIQ GARDNER, BEN LANDY and JULIA IOFFE

Eriq Gardner joins Peter to hypothesize the endgame of the Fox-Dominion lawsuit. And Julia Ioffe and Ben decipher Ron DeSantis’s Putin fantasy.

TARA PALMERI

Five years into her legislative career, a more subdued and party-line-toeing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is inciting all kinds of curiosity. She’s either playing three dimensional chess en route to the Senate and beyond, or she’s diligently earning her stripes on the Hill. Which is it?