CNN’s Balancing Act, Box Office Predictions, Trump’s ’24 Machine

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon roundup of the latest reporting from Puck.

Today, Dylan Byers articulates the high-level murmurs, and skepticism, surrounding the public explanations for Tucker Carlson’s ouster. Plus, how Trump’s CNN town hall is triggering PTSD within Hudson Yards.

Then, below the fold: Bill Cohan chronicles Jamie Dimon’s hero’s journey on Wall Street. Tina Nguyen observes the surprising Kevin McCarthy-Taliban Twenty détente. On The Powers That Be, Peter Hamby and Tara Palmeri dig into the operational capacity of the Trump ’24 machine, while Julia Ioffe and Ben Landy discuss the Biden-Putin hostage swap calculation. And on The Town, Matt Belloni and The Wrap’s Scott Mendelson predict which summer blockbusters might smash expectations at the box office.

DYLAN BYERS

News and notes on the latest comings and goings in the land of cable news: suspicions regarding the trending explanations for Tucker Carlson’s ouster, and all the internal feels about CNN’s Trump town hall.

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WILLIAM D. COHAN

A brief history of how Jamie Dimon and JPM became the saviors of Wall Street.

PETER HAMBY, TARA PALMERI, BEN LANDY, and JULIA IOFFE

Tara Palmeri joins Peter to dig into the surprising operational capacity of the Trump ‘24 machine—at least for now. Then Julia Ioffe and Ben Landy discuss the latest Biden-Putin hostage swap calculation.

TINA NGUYEN

As the debt ceiling looms, sources around the so-called Taliban 20 are expressing something unprecedented: admiration and trust that McCarthy, once considered the ultimate RINO, can deliver for them.