Forward

Day 700

"If your head's not spinning, you're not listening," CNN's Chris Cuomo said Thursday night. The banner below him said, "Trump turmoil: Defense secretary quits amid shutdown battle, market free fall, DOJ controversies and Russia probe."

The resignation by Defense Secretary James Mattis was the biggest headline of them all. It received the six-column treatment on Page One of Friday's NYT:

The Times' front page described a government in "turmoil," a "jittery capital," and a looming shutdown.

A couple hundred miles south, WaPo captured all of it in this paragraph: "At perhaps the most fragile moment of his presidency — and vulnerable to convulsions on the political right — Trump single-handedly propelled the U.S. government into crisis and sent markets tumbling with his gambits this week to salvage signature campaign promises."

The Post cited interviews with 27 sources to say that "Trump has been isolated in bunker mode in recent weeks as political and personal crises mount."

Here's the Post's page one:

Trump's most loyal media outlets are averting their eyes and downplaying the chaos while emphasizing the border $$$ fight. Everyone else has eyes wide open:

-- CNN: "Shaken, saddened, scared: Washington erupts over Mattis resignation"

-- The banner headline on NYTimes.com: "Day of Upheaval"

James Mattis' warning to America

Hopefully by now everyone has read his resignation letter. If you haven't, here it is. CNN political analyst Julian Zelizer says the letter is a "warning to America."

National Review's David French wrote: "This letter represents America's most-respected warrior telling the nation that he does not believe the president sees our enemies clearly, understands the importance of our alliances, or perceives the necessity of American leadership."

After the news broke around 5:20 p.m. ET, many analysts talked about the "wheels coming off" the Trump admin. Karen Tumulty commented on Twitter: "There were wheels?" George Conway replied: "It's the axles now."

Key quotes

-- Cuomo: "All kinds of chaos erupting in the season finale of the 2018 version of The Trump Show..."

-- Mark Hertling on "AC360:" "When a guy like Mattis says he's gone, there's something dysfunctional..."

-- Speaking with Rachel Maddow, historian Michael Beschloss said a defense secretary has never resigned in protest before...

-- Courtney Kube to Maddow: "Are we going to see military resignations over this?"

-- Eli Stokols: "People inside the White House really don't know what's coming next..."

-- MSNBC's Chuck Todd just minutes after the news broke: "I just had somebody email me who's usually very much a Trump person who said, 'I think you're underplaying the crazy that's going on today!' Like we're numb to it. This feels extraordinarily serious. He is on a one-man temper tantrum right now..."

-- Susan Glasser's newest column: "When I started writing this column, the freakout was over Syria. By the time I finished it, Mattis was resigning..."

-- John Kerry on the phone with Brian Williams: "This is the continuation of a crisis that too many people have been too content to live with..."

-- James Clapper to Don Lemon: "Knowing Jim as I do, I figured it was a question of time -- when he would reach the point where he would have to do what he did...."

-- Navy Adm. Jim Stavridis, a former NATO supreme allied commander, tweeted: "Very challenging days ahead for the Pentagon and the nation..."

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Stephen -- hold on a minute -- calm down a minute, we don't have to yell."

--CNN's Wolf Blitzer calming down Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller's overheated comments on "The Situation Room..."

What will Friday bring?

I don't know. But I expect it will be bad. The possibility of a partial government shutdown at the end of the day Friday will loom over everything.

WaPo's Matt Viser wryly pointed out: Friday "is the darkest day of the year."

Shutdown countdown

Some of the cable newsers have started to use shutdown countdown clocks... It's hard to see how a shutdown is going to be avoided at this point... Here's CNN.com's latest...

Right-wing media shutting down the government?

Oliver Darcy emails: Trump can withstand criticism from mainstream media outlets. His base doesn't pay much attention to the news organizations that fall under this category, and he can dismiss unflattering reports from outlets like CNN, NYT, and WaPo as so-called "fake news."

The problem for Trump is when he's on the receiving end of sharp criticism from the outlets that his base does, in fact, pay attention to. That's what happened this week. Fox News personalities, Rush Limbaugh, the Drudge Report, Breitbart, and others all excoriated Trump for what they have characterized as him caving on his pledge to build a wall on the US-Mexico border.

On Thursday, it seemed that the pressure cracked the president. Trump announced he would not sign a measure to provide funding for the government if it didn't include funding for a wall...

Trump told aides to "fix it"

Darcy emails: Early Thursday, CNN's Kaitlan Collins tweeted that Trump was monitoring the coverage he was receiving and telling aides to "fix it." Soon after, Rush Limbaugh, who was lacing into Trump over the wall funding, said he received a message. "You tell Rush that if there's no money in this, it's getting vetoed," Limbaugh said, describing the message he received. "If there's no money for a wall, I'm vetoing this plain and simple." Limbaugh later added, "The president has gotten word to em that he is either getting funding for the border or he's shutting the whole thing down."

>> One has to wonder: Which other pundits/outlets in conservative media did Trump or the White House reach out to? 🤔

The power of Limbaugh, Drudge, and the rest

Darcy adds: Throughout Trump's presidency, there has been a lot of coverage of Sean Hannity and "Fox & Friends." And rightfully so. However, other key figures in the conservative news space, like Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge, have often stayed hidden beneath the radar. But they retain a significant amount of power and influence in the right-wing universe -- and Trump knows this. He understands that THESE are the people who can hurt his numbers with his base. And his decision to shut down the government over wall funding underscores how influential some of these other individuals are...

This is meta!

Fox's Ed Henry talked about the right-wing media megaphone in a live report on "Hannity" (hosted by Dan Bongino) Thursday night. "Conservatives like Rush Limbaugh have spent the last 24 hours telling the president, urging him not to cave," Henry said. "Ann Coulter warning he'll lose reelection if he does not stand and fight..."

Howard Fineman, over on MSNBC's "Hardball," put it more bluntly: "Right now it looks like the administration is being run by a combination of Laura Ingraham and Vladimir Putin..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

-- A tale of two morning shows: After the firing of Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer, "CBS This Morning" has lost momentum, while the "Today" show ratings have been holding steady, David Bauder reports... (AP)

-- "Vox Media is now asking people to help cover the high cost of making videos with a $4.99-a-month membership program..." (BI)

-- Abby Ohlheiser and Gene Park's latest: "The forever war of PewDiePie, YouTube's biggest creator..." (WaPo)

New episode of our "Reliable Sources" podcast

Media in 2018

So much happened this year, we broke our year-in-review podcast into two parts. And part one is online now! Hadas Gold, Oliver Darcy and Tom Kludt joined me with insights about 2018's biggest storylines in media and its intersections with politics, business and tech. They even shared some predictions about what might happen in 2019. Listen to the pod via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, or your preferred app...

Today in Facebook...

-- Did Mark Zuckerberg lie to Congress about data privacy, as some critics are claiming? Or did he just artfully construct an answer to a question?

-- Senator Rod Wyden to WaPo: Zuckerberg is "racking up the Pinocchios..."

-- Nick Bilton's latest for VF: "Can Facebook ever solve its truthiness problem?"

Tucker's ad load keeps shrinking

The ad boycott against Tucker Carlson, spearheaded by liberal groups, is starting to have a visible effect on his Fox News program, as Oliver Darcy wrote here.

Most major corporate brands are steering clear of Carlson's hour. On Thursday night, there were only 23 ads, including PSA's and house ads for Fox content, according to THR's Jeremy Barr. Two weeks ago, the show had 40 ads...

FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

-- Curious: Sean Hannity has unfollowed all but just a few accounts on Twitter... (The Wrap)

-- A judge sentenced former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer James Wolfe to two months in prison Thursday, "following a guilty plea in October for lying to the FBI" about his contacts with reporters... (CNN)

-- "Here's an unexpected development," Dan Kennedy writes: "The Boston Globe, which has been losing money more often than not for years, is now turning a profit, according to publisher and owner John Henry..." (Media Nation)

-- Anonymous Content has a deal to adapt Joanne Lipman's book "That's What She Said" into a scripted TV series... (Deadline)

Der Spiegel editors apologize

Oliver Darcy emails: Steffen Klusmann and Dirk Kurbjuweit, the two chief editors of Der Spiegel, published a statement on Thursday about its award-winning reporter, Claas Relotius, who the German news magazine says fabricated events and sources. The editors said they have "had a number of crisis meetings" over the matter. Describing Relotius' conduct, they wrote, "He wrote about people that he never met or simply invented them out of thin air. He described scenes that never happened."

Klusmann and Kurbjuweit said they were "deeply sorry" about what happened, and even extended an apology to other members of the press. "We are aware that the Relotius case makes the fight against fake news that much more difficult," they wrote. "For everyone. For other media outlets that are on our side and for citizens and politicians who are interested in an accurate portrayal of reality. We would like to apologize to them, too. But we can assure them: We understand the gravity of the situation. And we will do everything we can to learn from our mistakes."

Meanwhile, right-wing outlets dishonestly use scandal to smear CNN...

Darcy emails: The right-wing universe is often too predictable. Thursday was no exception. Outlets and individuals living in this space seized on the Der Spiegel scandal to...slime CNN. How did they do this? Well, it turns out Relotius was once honored at a CNN-backed awards ceremony for German-language journalists several years ago for a story published in a Swiss magazine. That prompted misleading headlines like this one from Sean Hannity's website, which read, "Really Fake News: CNN's 2014 'Journalist of the Year' Admits to Faking Stories, Sources."

CNN VP Matt Dornic corrected the record, tweeting this:

"1) He never worked for CNN, never published by CNN.
2) Honored for a piece published by a Swiss magazine - 4+ yrs ago.
3) German award & unique to that market.
4) The award was sponsored by CNN but judged by an independent jury.
5) His award was revoked by that panel this AM."

Weinstein court case moves forward

Harvey Weinstein "is due back in New York court on March 7 after a judge Thursday morning ordered a pretrial hearing in the rape case," CNN's Eric Levenson and Elizabeth Joseph wrote.

Weinstein's legal team wanted the judge to throw out the charges against him. But no... A trial is on the horizon...

FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE

-- WaPo's Tony Romm has joined NBC and MSNBC as a contributor... (Twitter)

-- Joe Scarborough has released a holiday-themed EP. It's called "I Don't Want to Go Home for Christmas..." (Broadway World)

-- Troy Patterson's latest: "How Snap originals beat Facebook and Instagram in adapting TV to social media..." (The New Yorker)

-- I missed this yesterday: "In a move that caught many employees by surprise, Laura R. Walker, the longtime but recently embattled president and chief executive officer of New York Public Radio, announced Wednesday that she would leave her job in March..." (NYT)

Who owns these dance moves?

"Epic Games' Fortnite is the biggest game on the planet right now, but one of its biggest sources of revenue — the ubiquitous dance 'emotes' — are now under legal threat from the pop culture icons that claim to have created them," The Verge's Nick Statt wrote Thursday.

There are three pending lawsuits right now, each brought by the same law firm on "roughly the same grounds." It's unclear what will happen. But, Statt wrote, it's clear "that the video game industry, and Epic in particular, has been profiting off public forms of expression in a way that copyright law never quite anticipated..."

Kardashians dropping their paid apps

Page Six's Francesca Bacardi wrote: "Everyone's copying Kendall Jenner. A year after the supermodel decided to shut down her paid app, Kim Kardashian, Khloé Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian and Kylie Jenner announced on Wednesday that they are shutting down their apps and websites, which cost $2.99 per month, in the upcoming year..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR

-- Netflix VP of original series publicity Karen Barragan "will be taking over from the departing Teri Everett at the end of January as the head of marketing and communications for Blumhouse Productions..." (Deadline)

-- Adam Sharp, "whose career includes stints at NBC, C-SPAN and Twitter," is the new president and CEO of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences... (Deadline)

-- "NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros and Sky have offered to end anti-competitive movie licensing deals in a bid to stop an antitrust investigation, regulators said on Thursday, after Paramount and Disney made similar concessions..." (Reuters)

Christmas comes early at the movies this weekend

Frank Pallotta emails: 'Twas the weekend before Christmas and all through the movie house, there were plenty of films to choose from including one from a studio known for a mouse. "Mary Poppins Returns," "Aquaman" and the next "Transformers" film (which I hear is actually good!) "Bumblebee" all highlight what could be a big weekend for Hollywood at the ticket booth.

Analysts have the king of Atlantis taking the box office crown, but it should be a competitive weekend with each film offering something different to audiences. That's good news for theaters since it needs three big films to make up for the lack of last December's one big film, "Star Wars: The Last Jedi."

>> Related: Brian Lowry has a review of "Bumblebee" -- and he thinks it's "unexpectedly appealing." Read his full review here...

"Ray Donovan" gets a new season, but not "Who is America?"

Brian Lowry emails: Showtime has renewed "Ray Donovan" for a seventh season, meaning the show has survived its move to New York. Meanwhile, Sacha Baron Cohen told the Hollywood Reporter there won't be a second season of his prank satire for the network "Who is America?," saying, "I will never be able to get a politician to bare his buttocks while screaming 'God bless America!' and screaming the N-word."

Disney's practically perfect 2018

Frank Pallotta emails: Mary Poppins returns just in time to put a bow on Disney's big box office year -- a year in which Disney brought in more than $7 billion globally and broke multiple box office records. It was able to pull this off at a time when theaters face growing competition from streaming services such as Netflix.

Walt Disney Studios' chairman Alan Horn told me that 2018 showed that "great films bring people to the theater." "I'm a big believer in the power of the movie theater -- there's nothing else like it and when people enjoy that experience, it reinforces that and encourages folks to come back," he said. "But it has to be quality content, and when it is, as we've seen this year, there's room in the market for everyone."

2019 could be even bigger

Frank Pallotta adds: As successful as 2018 has been for Disney, it could be the prologue to even a bigger 2019, which I believe will be one of the most important in the company's 95-year history. Disney has a powerhouse lineup of films next year that includes "Avengers: End Game," "Toy Story 4," "The Lion King" starring Beyoncé, "Frozen 2" and "Star Wars: Episode IX." Disney is also expected to complete its purchase of most of 21st Century Fox's assets next year, will debut its streaming service "Disney+" and will open "Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge," the largest expansion ever at its theme parks. A mighty year for the House of Mouse.

FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE

By Lisa Respers France:

-- The hit Netflix movie "To All The Boys I've Loved Before" is getting a sequel...

-- In the end, David beat Goliath. "Survivor: David vs. Goliath" crowned its winner...

-- Ice, ice baby! Paris Hilton says she's keeping her 20-carat engagement ring after ending the relationship...

That's a wrap. Thanks for reading. Send me your feedback via email anytime! Back tomorrow...