Mediaite ONE SHEET: Trump’s Media Court Battles Escalate, Nancy Guthrie Blame Game and More!

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TOP STORY

TRUMP’S MEDIA COURT FIGHT RAMPS UP

Now that responses to this week’s elections (and the inevitable civil war debates on both the right and the left) are cooling off, there’s renewed attention being paid to the fact that President Donald Trump is still waging his own battle against the media. The president is in chaos goblin mode, seemingly shifting from target to target, looking for an easy win without having to give up anything he doesn’t want to.

Those media lawsuits seem to be more about how negative coverage made the president feel more than anything, and – as some of our authors point out today — Trump can, has, and probably will continue to misdirect some of those feelings at more of our American institutions.

THREE TAKES

The Poynter Report, Tom Jones — The president’s second attempt to sue the Wall Street Journal over the paper’s 2025 report on his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is “on shaky ground,” Poynter pointed out today. Jones noted reporting from The Guardian, which said Florida’s U.S. District Court Judge Darrin P. Gayles “seemed skeptical” of arguments from Trump’s lawyer Alejandro Brito that the president actually took a financial hit from the coverage.

This particular piece — “Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump” — has been a thorn in the president’s side since it was published. It offered the clearest ties to date between Trump and Epstein, and the president was forced to watch the WSJ win the Katharine Graham Award for Courage and Accountability for its coverage at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. The first lawsuit fell apart because the president couldn’t prove the paper “acted with malice” — because, it turns out, not liking how people write about you isn’t the same thing. And Jones makes clear Trump’s second lawsuit is now “in trouble” as well.

CNN’s Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter — Trump isn’t winning across the board, but he’s also not losing across the board. That’s the message from Stelter, who reported today on the president’s “temporary” win in his defamation lawsuit against the BBC. That order will remain in place until the judge (who was appointed by Trump, Stelter noted) “considers the president’s request to amend his complaint to nix claims about damage to his business.”

Are you catching a theme yet? Trump’s BBC claim is remarkably similar to the same one that appears to be slowing down his WSJ lawsuit. Stelter took things one step further and pointed to a reason why the president might be willing to toss out the financial hit component of his case: doing so would “eliminate the basis for obtaining his financial records.” Trump originally claimed the BBC’s coverage resulted in “massive economic damage to his brand value.” There’s no way for him to prove that without opening up his books.

The Bulwark’s Morning Shots, Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger — These back and forth in his court battles are only one way Trump is upping the ante and raising the stakes, Egger wrote this morning. While it’s not easy to know what’s coming in midterms this November because “polling is broken and the world is crazy,” Trump is giving us an idea. The president is “less popular than ever,” a result of “having squandered his second year back in office on a fruitless, expensive war, an elections bill that has been DOA for months, and a cornucopia of vanity projects and self-enrichment schemes.”

In a lot of ways, Egger continued, “the first half of Trump 2.0 is shaping up a lot like the first half of Trump 1.0.” The president has accomplished essentially the same things (fewer border crossings and a tax bill). But, unfortunately for many of us, the damage is far more severe this time around. “Trump has dragged America from crisis to crisis, rattling the global economy, our international alliances, the rule of law, and our norms against political and personal corruption”—and the midterms remain an area in which Trump “could still do immense harm before next year.”

TAKEAWAY: The president is showing no signs of abandoning his personal vendettas, nor is he shying away from using the powers of his office to do so. But his rate of success is dwindling, and it seems he’s struggling to convince the people who make decisions (in this case, judges) to take his side. He’s also not achieving what seems like his real goal: intimidating the media into only writing nice stories about him (or not writing at all).

📰 TOP SCOOPS & ANALYSIS 📰

SCOOP 🍨 Punchbowl News AM, Laura Weiss, Andrew Desiderio, and John Bresnahan — Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has no interest in litigating the past, even the very recent past, even the past from two days ago when Abdul El-Sayed bested Rep. Haley Stevens in the Michigan Senate race, Punchbowl reported today. An interview with Schumer revealed he “has zero regrets about wading into the Michigan primary” and “conceded not every endorsement may have been the right call.”

Also of note: Schumer said “over and over again — and over again, we’re not kidding — that Democrats need to be a ‘big-tent’ party that welcomes rather than suppresses opposing visions of its future,” a remarkable take from a man who so recently spent weeks asking party donors to back Stevens.

SCOOP 🍨 Status, Oliver Darcy — The National Review columnist Andy McCarthy is out as a Fox News contributor, Darcy reported today. McCarthy’s contract with the network “ended earlier this year,” and he chalked up the decision to walk away to age. McCarthy also told Status he  “no longer wanted the responsibility of being on-call as a contributing commentator.” The network was “very gracious” about the decision, and McCarthy will focus more on writing. Plus, McCarthy added, “I’ve been invited to appear on Fox a number of times since then.”

SCOOP 🍨 Status, Oliver Darcy — The FBI and local authorities are still “trading blame” in the ongoing case surrounding the disappearance and death of Nancy Guthrie, Darcy also noted today. That’s causing “frustration” that is “mounting behind the scenes,” where there’s a lot of finger-pointing and not as much case-solving. FBI Director Kash Patel brushed off questions from White House reporters about Guthrie this week, even Trump deflected a similar question while speaking to reporters Monday.

“The statements—or in Patel’s case, lack thereof—haven’t exactly inspired confidence that authorities are hard at work marshaling the enormous resources of the government to bring the case to a resolution,” Darcy wrote. Frustration over the “inability” of federal and local authorities “to work together diligently to solve the case,” and it might not abate anytime soon.

SCOOP 🍨 Page Six Hollywood, Ian Mohr— Hollywood was “shaken yesterday” by the news that a posthumous book by columnist Nikki Finke is being shopped around, Mohr reported today. Reactions range “from PTSD to piqued interest,” and the tale of who is behind the book and why is “as thorny as Finke’s reputation, we found out.” Connie Su, who was reportedly a “longtime friend” of Finke, has the book. After Page Six sent out an inquiry to Su “about her role as the unlikely custodian of a manuscript that would presumably rock the town,” they were met with a vacation responder and then silence.

Others are poking holes in the idea that Su and Finke were really that close. One source Mohr spoke with was “unnerved that someone is attempting to revive this book four years after Finke’s death.”

ANALYSIS 👀 The Free Press, Rod Dreher — There are rumors of a Tucker Carlson presidential campaign in 2028, but Dreher has big beef with that, and more specifically with Carlson’s repeated insistence he’s not antisemitic. That’s a claim that Dreher’s having a hard time believing because Carlson keeps platforming open antisemites on his show.

“Let’s stipulate that it is certainly possible to criticize Israel and its government without being antisemitic. Heck, Jews do it all the time,” Dreher wrote. But, he continues, that’s not what Carlson’s guests are doing. At this point, he continued, Carlson has “become one of the most sophisticated mainstreamers of antisemitic tropes in American media.”

📈BUSINESS OF MEDIA 🎥

CJR The Media Today, Jem Bartholomew — Major news outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal are increasingly utilizing artificial intelligence text-to-speech tools to narrate their journalism. (Actually, a few of the newsletters One Sheet reviews every morning have also started doing the same thing!) Bartholomew notes that ElevenLabs, the leading AI voice company powering many of these features, has recently surpassed $500 million in annual recurring revenue as publishers aggressively push audio options to meet reader demand. QUOTE 📣  Per The New Yorker‘s Monica Racic, the audio strategy is about “giving all readers greater flexibility in how they want to consume our journalism—whether they’re reading or listening while commuting, walking the dog, or doing the dishes.”

CNN Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter — The Federal Communications Commission is voting to eliminate the national broadcast ownership rule, which currently bars a single company from reaching more than 39% of U.S. television households. The repeal, pushed by Republican FCC Chair Brendan Carr without congressional approval, is expected to spark intense legal challenges but serves as a massive victory for right-leaning broadcasting giants eager to acquire more local stations. QUOTE 📣  Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley says, “We couldn’t be happier.”

CNN Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter — Fox is putting a hard stop to the NFL’s efforts to renegotiate its massive television broadcast rights deals early. Following a reported political pressure campaign to block the league’s maneuverings, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch used the company’s quarterly earnings call to officially confirm that the network will hold the line and honor its existing contract through the end of the decade. QUOTE 📣 “Folks are still processing what this means, but Variety’s headline reads, “Fox Appears to Block NFL’s Effort to Re-Do Massive Rights Deal.”

Poynter, Angela Fu — The New York Times is facing a bit of scrutiny from Wall Street after reporting its smallest quarterly subscriber gain in a year, adding just 280,000 net digital subscriptions. Despite posting a $155.3 million adjusted operating profit, the legacy publisher saw its stock plunge over 13% as investors balked at the slowing growth and a massive 11.2% spike in total operating costs, largely fueled by heavy investments in video production. QUOTE 📣 Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien says, “We believe video allows us to have even greater impact with our journalistic investment because we’re penetrating a large market and a new market for us.”

Awful Announcing, Sean Keeley — Audacy has officially partnered with veteran fantasy sports analyst Matthew Berry to distribute and monetize his Fantasy Football Happy Hour podcast. The audio giant will now exclusively handle sales and distribution for the popular show, which was previously housed under the NBC Sports umbrella before Berry’s recent departure from Football Night in America.

OTHER COOL STUFF

POLITICO Playbook: The National Gallery of Art has been studying whether its priceless artwork will be affected by vibrations from the upcoming Freedom 250 IndyCar race, which will feature drivers weaving through federal buildings at speeds up to 185 mph. No word yet on the results, but how wild is it to even consider that sort of thing?

CNN Reliable Sources: A24 just dropped the newest trailer for its upcoming movie Primetime, which will notably feature Robert Pattinson starring as former To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen.

Status: If you plan on reviewing the luxury hotel brand Aman’s newest $6,000-a-night property in Mexico, you better have the right affiliation. The brand has apparently banned independent press from reviewing the resort, even going so far as to call the police on well-regarded travel critic Ryan Walker after inexplicably turning him away at the gate.

👀 WHAT GOT MISSED? 👀

Morning Brew, Molly Liebergall — Here’s something a little odd: “they” have “gene-edited the allergen out of dogs,” Liebergall wrote today. The “they” in question is biotech startup Kindred Companion Sciences, which announced Wednesday that its scientists have successfully used “CRISPR-edited beagle skin cells” to edit out an “allergy-causing protein” that makes it difficult for some beagle-lovers to keep the breed as pets. Interestingly, skin prick tests performed on founder Matt Walker did result in reactions to “a sample from a poodle and goldendoodle, which are known as hypoallergenic breeds.” Allergy-friendly beagles aren’t available to the public just yet, but that could change.

🏆 NEWSLETTER OF THE DAY 🏆

Status, Oliver Darcy — Today’s newsletter is the best of what’s been a strong week for Status: Today’s update in the Nancy Guthrie case caps six months of public interest, offers even more context into in-fighting and confusion that’s dogging progress, and makes a story that’s been perpetually topping headlines for half a year just as relevant as it was in late January. The rest of the newsletter hits all the big guys: Trump and the NYT, ongoing tension at CBS News (as well as at ABC News and NBC News), and even a curious tale of a $6,000-a-night Aman resort shutting out independent travel critic Ryan Walker literally at the gate.

Status also has a penchant for breadcrumbing topics that often become dominant stories within days. The bottom half of today’s newsletter is a great example of doing that well.

This newsletter was produced by Lindsey Ellefson.