Lonsdale’s Beauty Pageant, The Ukraine Endgame, Peacock’s Cable Reinvention

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon crib sheet for Puck’s latest reportage.

Today, we lead with Julia Alexander’s dissection of a Netflix mystery: Why is a 2018 Mel Gibson bomb trending on the service—and what does it say about the streamer’s unique market positioning?

Then, below the fold: Julia Ioffe reveals why the D.C. "Blob" is secretly at loggerheads with Biden’s White House. Teddy Schleifer identifies the Silicon Valley technocrats rolling out the green carpet for Ron DeSantis. And on The Powers That Be, Peter Hamby and Dylan Byers unpack Peacock’s unexpected cable news streaming innovation.

JULIA ALEXANDER

While its rivals shift back to a theatrical-first, monetize-as-you-can content strategy, Netflix is doubling down on what it does best: leveraging its massive scale, data, and that coveted home page to resurface content that the rest of Hollywood needs to sell.

JULIA IOFFE

The D.C. foreign policy establishment is growing restless as the Biden White House resists calls to articulate a more specific strategy if Ukraine fails to make significant gains by the fall.

TEDDY SCHLEIFER

Joe Lonsdale, the outspoken Palantir co-founder and V.C., is rolling out the green carpet for Ron DeSantis at a splashy event next month. Will the rest of the Silicon Valley G.O.P. billionaires follow suit?

PETER HAMBY, DYLAN BYERS, BEN LANDY, and JULIA IOFFE

Dylan Byers joins Peter to discuss Peacock’s cable news streaming innovation, and whether it might work. Then Ben Landy and Julia Ioffe weigh in on the foreign policy secret around town: just how long the Biden administration will support Ukraine.