Elon Agita, Media M&A Moneyball, and D.C.’s Trump Hangover
Good afternoon and welcome back to The Daily Courant, highlighting the latest and most noteworthy journalism across Puck.
Plus, below the fold, Matt Belloni enumerates Hollywood’s five biggest windfalls of the year and Bill Cohan goes to lunch with James Gorman.
Year-end reflections on the political-media industrial complex, Biden’s health secret, Harris’s 2024 odds, and Putin’s next move. The Swamp slumbers during these days between Christmas and New Year’s, but we at Puck never sleep. So we’re bringing you a conversation between me and Jon Kelly, our co-founder, editor-in-chief, and, more importantly, my friend. Herewith, my conversation with Jon, about the D.C. media’s post-Trump hangover, Kamala’s 2024 question, and the Manchin infrastructure disaster, among others.
Jon Kelly: Julia, you wrote a great piece over the summer about the mild dystopia engulfing the D.C. media in the post-Trump era. In the last week or so, both the Journal and AP have published significant pieces confirming what we already presumed—Americans’ appetite for political news, once the coin of the realm, has faded considerably.
I know that some of your sources expressed relief at no longer being beholden to Trump’s Twitter feed. But I presume many others—especially the journalists who tied their identity to covering the 46th president—are worried about this economic chill.
Julia Ioffe: Oh, for sure. What you saw among journalists in the first few months of Joe Biden’s presidency was this mix of relief and nostalgia. Relief at having their weekends back, relief at not worrying that the President of the United States of America will tweet-create three new news cycles while they were in the shower, relief at not having to deal with the most insane and corrupt presidency in recent memory—and one that vilified and promoted violence against them. And nostalgia for, well, all of those same things. The Trump presidency was a total shitshow, but it was also the best and unceasingly dominant story in the U.S. It was exciting to cover Trump, it was often easy to cover Trump—unlike the Biden White House, his administration leaked like the Titanic—and it was a system of instant gratification: every scooplet went absolutely viral and reporters quickly became #resistance celebrities. Readers and viewers were absolutely hooked, and ratings and traffic were always somewhere in the stratosphere.
Now, we’re back to normal in more ways than one. The Biden administration hasn’t really had any scandals, no matter how hard the right wing tries with stories about Hunter Biden. The administration’s press strategy has been very disciplined and largely free of leaks. The historically gaffe-prone president himself has given very few interviews—and regular interviews, each of which featured a half dozen jaw-droppers, were one way Trump kept the news cycle spinning on his own terms…
Some deep thoughts and burning concerns about MacKenzie, Jack, Bezos and other card-carrying members of the new establishment. It’s been a quiet few weeks over the Christmas season, which makes it the perfect time to take stock of some of the biggest storylines in Silicon Valley politics and philanthropy. Today I’m chatting with my boss, Puck co-founder and editor-in-chief Jon Kelly, about what is to come.
Jon Kelly: Teddy, a big story of the holiday season has been the hyper-aggressive and absurdist back-and-forth between Elon Musk and a couple of America’s most prominent liberals, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, about everything from taxation to some more prurient elements. What’s your view on their holiday cheer?
Teddy Schleifer: It felt awfully unbecoming, Jon. Look, these are all big boys and girls—progressive politicians should have free rein to whack whatever rich guy they want, and the rich guys, in turn, are under no obligation to shush their lips and take it. But we’re not exactly getting a high-minded defense of capitalism and wealth accumulation from the world’s richest man. We’ve got Elon telling Bernie that he keeps “forgetting that you’re still alive”; calling Warren “Senator Karen”; and, in some ancient history from November that you probably forgot, reply-guying to Ron Wyden about whether he had just… ejaculated.
Does some of the lefty rhetoric about the evils of the ultra-wealthy veer into histrionics from time to time? Sure. Elon told none other than the satirical Babylon Bee the other day that his Karen tweet was essentially because, well, Warren started it. She and Bernie and Wyden have been raging about his lack of tax payments, casting him as a tax cheat. And that made him mad. I’m sure it did, but that’s a remarkable display of thin skin for a 50-year-old entrepreneur who has been in the public eye for two decades. Elon has at times made the more sophisticated defense of his tax record: That he is set to pay $11 billion in taxes this year, what he claims to be the largest single-year payment in American history (he elides the $0 he paid in 2018); and that he is a better capital allocator than the American bureaucracy (perhaps!). That terra firma is what makes the tweets so childish. I know trolling is a part of his identity, but I wonder if Elon has come to terms with the symbolic significance of his wealth…
FOUR STORIES WE’RE TALKING ABOUT
A wholly unscientific, entirely subjective assessment of the five most fortunate beneficiaries of Hollywood’s overheated economy.
MATT BELLONI
Joe Biden’s staggering unpopularity among younger voters suggests that Democrats don’t have any idea what matters to their kids.
PETER HAMBY
Reflections on Jan. 6, cable news myopia, Web3 scammers, bitcoin democracy, and the regenerative technology that gives me hope.
BARATUNDE THURSTON
The C.E.O. of Morgan Stanley dishes on Goldman and succession, among other topics, over bespoke sushi.
WILLIAM D. COHAN |