Mediaite ONE SHEET: GOP Balks at Blanche, ABC Fights Back, and More!

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TOP STORY

TRUMP VS. CORNYN HEATS UP

Will President Donald Trump manage to push through the confirmation of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche? It seems increasingly unlikely as Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) continue to stand their ground.

But as some of our newsletter authors point out this morning, Cornyn and Tillis may not have the stamina for that kind of political brawl with Trump. Cornyn and Tillis were pushed out of the Senate in part thanks to Trump, which likely means they’re not concerned about remaining in his good graces (or crawling back to him). That bravado could bolster their refusal to confirm Blanche.

But the president can also wait them out, something he may even prefer. Managing to deny Blanche would be a short-term win for the president’s opposition given his role in the Epstein files mess.

THREE TAKES

The Bulwark’s Morning Shots, Bill Kristol—The question of whether or not Blanche is confirmed as Attorney General is not the point, Kristol argued this morning. “That corruption will continue under Blanche or any Trump-appointed successor,” he wrote, a salient observation that’s likely to hold no matter who ends up in the AG seat. “So this victory may only be transient, and in any case will be limited in its practical effects.”

But that doesn’t mean the fight to block his nomination has been fruitless. “Even if he eventually makes it, he will have been weakened,” Kristol added. “And in any case the protracted and well-publicized fight over Blanche has been a setback for Trump and Trumpism.” The general public is more aware of the president’s “determination to transform the Department of Justice into a Department of Retribution, Weaponization, and Election Subversion,” and has been reminded of Blanche’s role in the attempted Epstein cover-up. That Blanche’s opposition chose to go out on a limb in the first place may make all the difference, no matter who sits in that chair.

Townhall, Matt Vespa and Cameron Arcand—Unsurprisingly, MAGA media is preparing the pitchforks for Cornyn and Tillis, something both Vespa and Arcand made clear this week. Cornyn is “on a revenge tour,” Vepsa wrote, and is spending his time “whining” about a potentially canceled August recess. As a result, the GOP is stuck contending with “too many panics, too many losers, and too many Cornyn folks who think nuking the filibuster is a bad idea.” Blocking Blanche would aid Cornyn in halting the progress of the $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, he added.

Arcand added that Cornyn and Tillis are also concerned about IRS audits that have come to light during the confirmation process. But maybe delusion is the name of the game: Per a question he asked Trump, the president still seems to believe Blanche will “go through quite nicely.”

POLITICO Playbook PM, Ali Bianco—While many have described Sens. Cornyn and Tillis as lame ducks heading into midterms, Bianco cited an even bigger loser in the Blanche debacle this morning: Trump himself. The president is “locked in a game of chicken” with the very senators he is trying to get rid of, she wrote, and now both parties are “daring each other to blink.”

The possibility that the president could pull back the nomination and try again once Cornyn and Tillis aren’t problems does exist, and will “test the resolve” of both. Cornyn has also implied there are more in the Senate who share the concerns he and Tillis have made public, including the tax settlement lawsuit. The road ahead is dicey, however, because “if there’s anything that’s become clear from the last decade of Trumpian politics, Trump sets the rules of engagement.” The president has “the most at stake” right now as midterms loom.

TAKEAWAY: Sens. Cornyn and Tillis don’t have to care about Trump’s response if they don’t want to, which puts the pair in a rare situation for many Republicans. They may use this power for the (temporary) greater good, but many fear that any Trump nominee will be as corrupt as the last (or even more so). The duo is amassing bipartisan support from those who want someone a bit more honest in such an important role, and Blanche’s nomination is something of a flashpoint for a larger conversation about how much influence Trump still has in the Senate.

📰 TOP SCOOPS & ANALYSIS 📰

SCOOP 🍨 Status, Oliver Darcy—A Status review earlier this year uncovered a curious little fact: The Wall Street Journal has applied quite a few corrections to stories about Apple, Google, Palantir, Oracle, and Amazon this year. Reporters at WSJ have begun to “buzz” about the topic, too. Though “many” of those corrections were “minor” and reflected “factual mistakes that appeared to stem from errors in the reporting or editing process,” the rate at which they popped up is of note.

“In any event, corrections at The Journal are no small thing,” Darcy pointed out. “Even if an error is not significant, appending a correction to a story triggers an arduous process that is no fun at all.” Stories by the Journal are “expected to be airtight,” and these corrections come as Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker has been “overhauling the technology desk” — changes that have “manifested themselves in the spate of sloppy mistakes warranting formal corrections.” Per Darcy, morale is low, and what Tucker wants to happen next at the desk is difficult to discern.

SCOOP 🍨 POLITICO Playbook, Adam Wren, Dasha Burns, and Will Steakin—Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has got some interesting tricks, Politico’s trio reported today. That includes somehow knowing LeBron James had signed a deal with the 76ers three minutes and 46 seconds after the news was shared—something Shapiro managed because he was “far more hands-on in the process than previously known,” a source told Politico. Shapiro began lobbying James’ agent, Rich Paul, this month and was “relentless” until he secured the win.

But that’s not all. The governor also secured a second win in the same week when DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin opted to “back off efforts to turn two warehouses in Berks and Schuylkill counties into ICE detention centers.” Shapiro used an existing relationship with a mutual friend — Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt — to work “together discreetly.” These “soft power wins” are possible because Shapiro is far ahead of Republican Treasurer Stacy Garrity, and  “illustrate the kind of big swings he can afford to pull off.”

ANALYSIS 👀 CJR’s Laurel and Darts, Susie Banikarim—New York City’s “right-wing rags” have gone “full racist” when covering Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Banikarim wrote this morning. She cited an image that accompanied Matthew Hennessey’s opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on whether the mayor is encouraging antisemitism in the city — an article that is “laden with a casual Islamophobia.” The “appalling image” in question featured “a photograph of a man holding an obviously doctored cut-out of Mamdani’s head with a green Hamas headband emblazoned with markings meant to imitate Arabic script” and “overly racist tropes.”

To make matters worse, Paul Gigot, the Journal’s editorial page editor, said, “I don’t see it as racist” after the mayor’s office spoke out. Banikarim said she would typically ignore “unhinged coverage” of Mamdani (including a New York Post article referenced frequently by Hennessey) but “bigotry aimed at Middle Eastern Americans remains one of the last forms of prejudice this country still tolerates.” She concluded with a warning: “If we do not confront it, it will only grow.”

ANALYSIS 👀 The Free Press, Nellie Bowles—What’s going on with the New Right? That’s the question Bowles posed this morning after offering evidence that whatever it is, it’s not really good for them. Candace Owens is arguing that accused Charlie Kirk killer Tyler Robinson was “wrongly framed,” and openly racist conspiracy theorist Owen Benjamin is now insisting the refusal to reveal Charlie’s burial spot is part of a larger cover-up because, (*checks notes*), “‘they’ ritualistically eat people, especially their enemies.” Benjamin added, “Obviously I don’t know but I think the most likely outcome is his body was eaten by America’s ‘trusted allies.’”

That’s “Israel or the Zionists or the Jews,” by the way, Bowles pointed out — in case you weren’t sure. This is a reminder that mainstream media is important, she continued, because the “popular alternative to large news brands is unfortunately medieval lunatics bringing us back to the Dark Ages.”

Bowles is going to get a little extra attention here because she also closed out with a banger: “As my harem leader and America’s sperm donor, Elon Musk, put it this week: ‘Never forget how fragile the tiny candle of consciousness is.’ So right he is. That’s my trillionaire.”

ANALYSIS 👀 The Poynter Report, Tom Jones—ABC’s filing against the FCC this week means the network is “done playing defense,” Jones pointed out today. The filing, which “called out” both Trump and FCC head Brendan Carr directly, is a clear indication the network is finished with the pair’s attempts to “intimidate.” More than 150,000 people have left comments on the FCC’s website in support of the network, and “Disney and ABC appear to be gearing up for a fight.”

📈BUSINESS OF MEDIA 🎥

Awful Announcing, Drew Lerner — DAZN is trying to shed its niche reputation in the American market by aggressively pursuing exclusive local broadcast rights for NBA teams. The Minnesota Timberwolves are formalizing a deal to make the London-based platform their exclusive local home, securing a rights fee at the high end of DAZN’s offers. The deals smartly include one-year exit clauses in anticipation of the NBA’s own local broadcast hub. QUOTE 📣 “The Timberwolves will receive a rights fee at the ‘top end’ of the previously reported $8 million to $20 million DAZN is offering NBA teams for exclusive rights partnerships.”

Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter, Simon Owens — Traditional publishers are increasingly looking to Substack as a top-of-funnel marketing tool, with Vox recently joining pubs like The Economist and New Yorker by announcing a new newsletter on the platform. However, Owens warns that legacy media outlets will likely be disappointed if they simply paste existing content into the CMS without utilizing Substack’s full suite of tools, including video, live streaming, and direct monetization. QUOTE 📣 ”Substack was once seen as a traditional media competitor built to steal away star reporters. Today, those same outlets view it as a top-of-funnel marketing tool — much like Twitter, Facebook, or TikTok.”

Breaker, Lachlan Cartwright — CNN CEO Mark Thompson recently rallied his senior staff over Zoom to address the lingering uncertainty surrounding the paused Paramount-WBD merger. QUOTE 📣  “Thompson, I’m told, encouraged his leadership team to carry on with their jobs as normal, and not to be distracted by the headlines about the company and its fate. After delivering some introductory remarks, in which he also told staffers to be kind to one another, CNN’s top lawyer, David Vigilante, briefed the group about the deal’s legal landscape.”

Digiday Daily, Seb Joseph — Advertising holding companies are bracing for a massive economic shift as artificial intelligence compute costs become the industry’s next big commodity. The rapid and expensive rise of AI technology has forced agency CEOs to answer tough questions about how they plan to fund these new capabilities without eating up their profit margins. QUOTE 📣 “AI has gotten expensive enough, fast enough, that holdco CEOs are now being asked outright how funding it won’t come at the expense of staying profitable.”

Feed Me, Emily Sundberg — Former CNN anchor Don Lemon is officially cementing his independent media footprint by signing a new three-year hosting and advertising deal with podcast platform Libsyn. QUOTE 📣  “That explains why his team just posted three roles on the Feed Me Job Board.”

Morning Brew, Dave Lozo — Corporate sponsorships are officially coming to the jerseys of major college sports programs. Ohio State and Notre Dame have struck massive, multi-year deals to place corporate patches directly on their uniforms, with OSU securing a reported $17 million annually from JPMorgan Chase and Notre Dame partnering with SoFi. QUOTE 📣  “Penn State could be the next major university to form a brand partnership, with Pennsylvania-based Utz and Hershey among the predictions.”

OTHER COOL STUFF

Morning Brew: The New York Mets just became the first Major League Baseball team to officially sign a deal with a prediction market. In a biting quip from the newsletter: It’s probably the only time the team will manage to come in first in anything this season.

Feed Me: Pinot noir? More like pinot no-more. The California pinot noir boom is officially coming to a close. Winemakers are currently ripping out their grapes, burning their vineyards, and selling off land as national sales hit their lowest level in more than two decades. With younger consumers pivoting to canned cocktails and seltzers, it’s just one of those generational changes.

Status: Netflix has been slapped with a whopping $105 million lawsuit after the streaming giant reportedly managed to lose a hard drive containing an entirely unreleased Nicolas Cage movie. Doesn’t that… sound like the plot of a Nicolas Cage movie?

👀 WHAT GOT MISSED? 👀

Simon Owens’ Media Newsletter, Simon Owens—Mr. Beast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, brings in astronomical amounts of money, Owens reported today. He’s making at least $100 million a year in brand partnerships, something that is “only a fraction of his revenue.” He also pulls in significant money via YouTube AdSense with “tens of millions of subscribers” to multiple channels, and has made at least $100 million from Amazon Prime to produce Beast Games. In other words, he’s “printing money, and it feels like he’s still in the early innings of building his company.”

🏆 NEWSLETTER OF THE DAY 🏆

The Bulwark’s Receipts, Catherine Rampbell—Some Fridays offer an opportunity to close out a little more light-heartedly than we usually do, but today is not one of those. Rampbell offered up a sprawling assessment of the GOP’s attempts to both pass “budget-busting bills” and promise “spending cuts will come out tomorrow,” a frustrating reality for political leaders and constituents alike.

The tale from “supposed fiscal hawks in the GOP” is that they need to get “just one more unfunded spending binge out of their system” before they finally bring financial security to us all. This is the fourth time Republicans have pushed a reconciliation bill under Trump 2.0, and “it’s unusual to have this many bites at the reconciliation apple,” Rampbell insisted. Instead, this fourth attempt is “a new milestone, and a sign of just how broken our budget process has become” and evidence that “what was once an arcane procedural measure designed as a deficit-discipline mechanism is now one of the primary tools for getting bills through.”

The budget process “appears irreparably broken” — but don’t worry, she concluded: “presumably the next reconciliation bill will take care of it.”

This newsletter was produced by Lindsey Ellefson.