EXEC SUMMARY: This edition of the newsletter is a sandwich... some media scoops up top, impeachment coverage in the middle, and some entertainment stories at the bottom. Hope you're hungry!
The first excerpt from Ronan Farrow's book...
 ...Will be out on Monday morning on The New Yorker's website. This is the start of a multi-week rollout for one of the most anticipated titles of the season. It is under a strict embargo.
"Catch & Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators" has been in the works since 2017. The book contains brand new info about Farrow's experiences covering Harvey Weinstein, President Trump, American Media Inc., and other stories. He has new interviews and new accounts of how his subjects tried to shut down his work.
Farrow's first excerpt will go live at this NewYorker.com link at 5 a.m. ET. In it, I'm told, "Farrow describes being surveilled by two operatives, working for the Israeli private-intelligence agency Black Cube, who became embroiled in an international plot to suppress allegations of sexual assault against Harvey Weinstein." Parts two and three of "The Black Cube Chronicles" will be published on Tuesday and Wednesday morning.
>> Plus: Farrow's first interview is with The Hollywood Reporter... It will come out mid-week...
>> Also in the book: Farrow has the first on-the-record interview with the woman whose sexual misconduct complaint caused NBC to fire Matt Lauer...
Week ahead planner
Monday: The Supreme Court begins its new term...
Monday: James B. Stewart will be on "Today" for his first interview about "Deep State," which comes out on Tuesday...
Tuesday: Andrew Marantz's "Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation" hits bookshelves... And in the pro-Trump section, Gregg Jarrett's "Witch Hunt" comes out...
Thursday evening: Trump holds a rally in Minneapolis...
Thursday evening: Equality in America town hall event on CNN...
Friday: "El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie" launches on Netflix and in select theaters...
Friday: Trump flies to Louisiana to stump for the GOP ahead of the state's gubernatorial election on Saturday...
YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST...
James Murdoch speaking at VF's summit
On Monday morning Vanity Fair is announcing the final round of speakers for this year's New Establishment Summit, which gets underway in L.A. on October 21. Among the big-name additions: James Murdoch will "discuss his plans for the future" with Richard Plepler, and Monica Lewinsky "will lead a discussion on the blind spots of recent history" with Ronan Farrow and Jared Cohen.
I'm on the list as well... I'll be interviewing David Zaslav and Martha Stewart on stage... Other new headliners include Anthony Scaramucci, Jodie Turner-Smith, Jared Cohen, Kal Penn, Tristan Harris, and YouTube celeb LaurDIY...
THE IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY
Let's start with the good news!
Instead of opening Sunday's "Reliable Sources" by bemoaning just how dark these days are -- a president blowing his top, accusing opponents of treason, calling the press corrupt -- I poor inted out the numerous reasons to be optimistic. Chief among them: The system is working. The press is exposing Trump's abuse of power, explaining the evidence, decoding the texts, interviewing sources from DC to Ukraine, and asking the right questions...
>> Three big challenges for both the press and the public right now: Keeping up with the torrent of news. Keeping an open mind. And keeping a wary eye on the lies...
Sunday morning's surprise
I don't know if the lawyers intended it this way, but they sure took control of the Sunday news cycle. Around 8:30 a.m. ABC broke the news that the lawyers representing the original whistleblower are now representing a second person. Andrew Bakaj said "I can confirm that my firm and my team represent multiple whistleblowers," and Mark Zaid said "they also made a protected disclosure under the law and cannot be retaliated against."
Breaking news for Monday morning's shows
The WSJ had this scoop Sunday night: "A group of about 90 former national-security officials who served under Democratic and Republican presidents, including Mr. Trump, released a public letter calling on the government and media to preserve the whistleblower's anonymity, saying the individual used the channels created under federal law to register concerns of wrongdoing." CNN has confirmed this info and obtained the letter, which states that "being a responsible whistleblower means that, by law, one is protected from certain egregious forms of retaliation..."
Q's for the week ahead
George Stephanopoulos laid out all the questions on "This Week" Sunday morning: With the impeachment probe proceeding at a breakneck pace, "will the White House delay by defying subpoenas, drawing new charges of obstruction? What new evidence will the investigation reveal? Is impeachment in the House now inevitable? Will the Republicans hold the line in the Senate?"
"Sound familiar?"
One of Obama's ambassadors to Russia, Michael McFaul, tweeted Sunday: "Putin is the master of propagating disinformation often and loudly until people begin to believe the fairy tales, fabricating false corruption charges to arrest opponents, and pivoting to whataboutism to distract from his own misconduct and belligerent behavior. Sound familiar?"
"Senator Johnson, please"
Seconding what Vox's Aaron Rupar said, "Wow. I have never seen Chuck Todd this angry." 👇 | | Todd's interview with Senator Ron Johnson went viral on Sunday morning... It showed the collision that happens when two completely different universes of information come together... Todd angrily rejected Johnson's "Fox News conspiracy propaganda stuff" and tried to get Johnson back on track, and you can watch what happened here...
>> Trump saw the segment later in the day; attacked Todd as "not very bright;" and called Johnson "highly reaspected," misspelling the word "respected."
Former Fox host says they're "lying by omission"
Juliet Huddy, who co-hosted "Fox & Friends Weekend" back in the day, joined me on "Reliable" with insight into her former network, specifically the right-wing talk shows that are smearing the whistleblower(s). "They're doing something that we did when we were little kids, which is, lying by omission," she said. "They leave out the the context, they leave out facts, they spin it so that it gives just enough information, but not all of the info." Here's more of what she said...
A pathetic talking point
Oliver Darcy emails: Over the weekend, I noticed some of Trump's media allies continue in their attempts to convince people that the whistleblower complaint was inaccurate. Such arguments are remarkable. For one, the W.H.-released transcript supported the complaint. But perhaps even more importantly, Trump has now openly called for Ukraine and China to probe the Bidens. He's admitted to the very accusation that was at the center of the complaint! If the right-wing media wall is going to protect Trump, it's going to need to be constructed with stronger arguments than this...
Does Trump know about Tucker's op-ed?
Oliver Darcy adds: Trump spent part of his weekend lacing into Mitt Romney for the Utah senator's remarks critical of his Ukraine call. That had me wondering: Does Trump know about the op-ed Tucker Carlson co-wrote? Carlson and his co-writer Neil Patel ultimately said Trump's behavior didn't rise to the level of impeachment, BUT they did say Trump's call was inappropriate. And they said there is "no way to spin this" as good. Carlson's comments are actually on the same wavelength with Romney's remarks. The comments also stand in stark contrast to Trump's claim the call was "perfect." So I wonder: Does Trump know?
>> Another Q: Will other members of the pro-Trump universe follow Carlson's lead and concede the call was inappropriate, but argue it doesn't rise to the level of impeachment?
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- WaPo's most-read story all day long: "Inside the Republican reckoning over Trump's possible impeachment." Remarkable quotes here... (WaPo)
-- Trump spent the weekend tweeting out clips from favorable Fox News shows... (Mediaite)
-- He also repeated some easily disproven facts, as CNN's Daniel Dale noted. He claimed a "95% approval rating in Republican party," for example, but "he's still in the 80s..." (Twitter)
-- Breitbart News is less popular than it was a few years ago, but this is still noteworthy: The site "has gone into 24-7 campaign mode" against impeachment, and "the president has been lapping up Breitbart's coverage," Jonathan Swan reports... (Axios)
-- Speaking of pro-Trump voices, John Solomon has joined Fox as a contributor... (Examiner)
MISSING: White House spokespeople
The big Sunday A.M. public affairs shows routinely ask the White House for guests -- cabinet officials, aides, etc. This week, every show came up empty. No Trump admin officials came on the airwaves to defend Trump or talk policy. NYU's Jay Rosen commented: "When people who work in the White House appear on the Sunday shows, it's almost all noise— or worse. But when no one will show up... that's signal. It happened this week."
--> My sad but true observation: Trump W.H. guests typically spin and spread falsehoods, so conversely, when there are no W.H. guests on TV, there's less misinformation to contend with...
Tapper's questions
On "SOTU," Jake Tapper called out the absence of W.H. guests. He said his CNN team also invited "every member of Senate leadership and the top House Republicans. They all declined or did not even respond." So he read three of the questions he would have asked:
-- "One, why did senior U.S. diplomats believe that U.S. military aid was being withheld as a tool to pressure Ukraine to announce an investigation into the Bidens and into attempts to undermine the Mueller investigation?"
-- "Two, can this White House name another instance, just one, in which President Trump personally pushed a foreign leader to investigate an American citizen who was not one of his political opponents?"
-- "Three, would you think it entirely appropriate for a Democratic president to use the power of his or her office to demand foreign governments conduct investigations into Republicans and their families?"
Only the tip of the iceberg?
With so many stories involving Trump and his cabinet, it seems we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg. Only months or years later do we see the entire piece, whether through book reporting, FOIAed papers, or interviews with former officials. Michael Shear and I talked about this on Sunday's "Reliable Sources." Shear and Julie Davis are out with their new book "Border Wars" on Tuesday... And Shear said many sources only cooperated with the knowledge that the info would come out months later.
"We all think we know President Trump and what's going on because he's tweeting constantly... But the truth is, despite that sort of illusion of transparency, there's a LOT going on inside this administration that we don't know," Shear said...
Surprising prediction from a former Trump Org exec | | On Sunday's "Reliable," I asked former Trump Organization exec Barbara Res to predict how the Trump presidency ends. After one full term? Two full terms? Or sooner? Res said she was hesitant to share her opinion, because "I could very well be wrong." But she has first-hand experience working with Trump for many years. And she said "he does a lot of things to save face."
"It would be very, very, very bad for him to be impeached," Res said. "I don't know that he'll be found guilty but I don't know that he wants to be impeached. I think that's what this panic is about. And my gut [instinct] is that he'll leave office, he'll resign. Or make some kind of a deal, even, depending on what comes out." CNN Business' Clare Duffy recapped the interview here...
The view from Iowa
Robert Leonard is something of a Trump translator... He's the news director of two radio stations in Knoxville, Iowa, and he occasionally writes op-eds for the NYT about what the NYC and DC press corps are missing. So I checked in with him on Sunday morning, and he made a couple key points:
-- Amid all the impeachment inquiry headlines, many conservatives are "standing strong behind President Trump because he is a kind of a golden hammer" that they believe is "needed to break what they see as the liberal stranglehold on America."
-- Fox anchors like Shep Smith are sharing the facts about the Ukraine scandal, but many Fox viewers watch "Fox & Friends," go to work, and tune back in when it's time for "Tucker" and "Hannity." In other words, they're only seeing the opinion shows...
How to catch up on "Reliable"
Watch the video clips on CNN.com... Or listen to the podcast edition via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, or your preferred podcast player...
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- Sign up for CNN's Impeachment Tracker newsletter... (CNN)
-- Jon Lemire: "The speed of the story has stunned a capital already used to a relentless Trumpian news cycle..." (AP)
-- Masha Gessen suggests that we have "normalized Trumpism to such an extent that journalists and politicians didn't know how to think about the Ukraine story until the whistle-blower framed it as an egregious abuse of power..." (The New Yorker)
-- Julia Ioffe's latest: "Here's why Ukraine pops up in so many U.S. scandals..." (GQ)
History will "likely not be in a forgiving mood"
"From the moment that Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy began his smear campaign in February 1950 up until his censure by the U.S. Senate in 1954, the story of McCarthy was not just the story of indecency, and lies, and law breaking. It was also the story about just how much Republican lawmakers were willing to take," Jake Tapper said at the end of Sunday's "SOTU."
Watch his comments here or read the transcript. "There ARE empirical wrongs in the world," he said. "Smearing innocent people is one of them. Using your political office to force foreign nations to dig up dirt on your political opponents is another one. That is not what foreign policy is for. You know this. I know this. And I would bet that most Republicans on Capitol Hill know this." He said they should learn lessons from the McCarthy era, "because history will one day come looking for them, too. She will want to know what they said and did during this time. She will likely not be in a forgiving mood."
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- "Why are people rising up from Baghdad to Kyiv to Haiti to Hong Kong?" Will Bunch says his new column is about "what the media won't tell you about the revolutions of 2019..." (Inquirer)
-- "Fox Corporation and Dish ended a programming blackout Sunday that had kept thousands of the satellite-provider's subscribers from watching 'Thursday Night Football' and other Fox network favorites for the past week or so," Brian Steinberg reports... (Variety)
-- "Star-crossed:" George W. Bush and Ellen DeGeneres were suite mates at the Cowboys-Packers game... (Star-Telegram)
Tracking SI's devolution
Kerry Flynn writes: The new era of Sports Illustrated is already upon us. When theMaven took full ownership last week, the company laid off more than 40 employees and revealed plans to hire more than 200 contractors to cover local sports. These contractors are already writing for the site... And some readers are shocked by the low-quality work...
--> The Boston Globe's sports media columnist Chad Finn writes: "SI deserved better, and so did its readers..."
Tinder's got a show (but only on Sunday evenings)
Kerry Flynn writes: Tinder's original series "Swipe Night" launched on Sunday. The choose-your-own-adventure show is only available within the dating app starting at 6 p.m. to midnight on Sundays this month. I think the show's a smart effort to spur more engagement in the app. Interestingly, it'll match viewers with other app users who watched based on each of their choices. WaPo's Lisa Bonos writes, "At the very least, it's an amusing way to spend five minutes." And I agree! I loved how it was shot, and the ability to swipe to make choices. It's way less time-consuming but a similar concept to Netflix's "Bandersnatch..."
| | "Joker" has record weekend despite (or due to?) controversy
Frank Pallotta writes: "Joker" broke box office records this weekend, even as its themes and its controversial depiction of violence made some critics and authorities nervous. The Warner Bros. film opened to $93.5 million domestically, which is the biggest debut for an October movie ever. The film had a strong opening globally as well, making $234 million worldwide.
So did the controversy help boost box office numbers? Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, believes so. "It became a cultural phenomenon," Dergarabedian said. "All the talk around the film made it a must see event."
What about week two?
Brian Lowry emails: Box-office forecasting isn't an exact science, and it's impossible to know exactly how many people were drawn to "Joker" to see what the fuss is all about, balanced against losing a few of those who didn't want to brave the extra security, etc. It's obviously an impressive opening – including international returns – but from a PR standpoint, nobody should be spiking the football just yet...
Pallotta adds: Agreed -- it'll be interesting to see how the film performs next weekend considering that the talk around it may have cooled down by then. It'll also have some stiff competition with Will Smith's "Gemini Man" opening on Thursday evening...
-- Related: Writing for CNN Opinion, Jeff Yang says "Joker" is "a political parable for our times..."
Two telling jokes from "SNL" | | The setup for the first joke came from Matthew Broderick as Mike Pompeo: "Listen, I've been asking around, and I think that this whole impeachment thing could be really bad." Kate McKinnon as Rudy Giuliani had the punchline: "Not according to this 'Breitbart Office Poll' that says 121 percent of people want Biden impeached." Breitbart, naturally, posted the quip right away.
The second joke came from Michael Che during "Weekend Update," referring to Trump: "I don't know how to ask this, but are we sure that it's OK to make fun of this guy? Did you ever read Of Mice and Men? Remember how Lennie was really 'strong?' What if Trump is really strong? I've got a cousin who is also strong..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
-- Here are Taylor Swift's "SNL" performances of "Lover" and "False God" (CNN)
-- "She's been compared to some of the greatest singers of our time:" Lizzo was profiled on "CBS Sunday Morning..." (YouTube)
-- News from New York Comic Con: "There will be an 11th season of The Walking Dead," and Lauren Cohan's character, Maggie Greene, "is returning to the show..." (Deadline)
Can "Supergirl" save journalism?
Brian Lowry emails: On Sunday night's season premiere of "Supergirl," the news organization where the title character's alter ego works is being acquired by what amounts to a corporate raider, and there's an ensuing argument about the new owner's push for clickbait versus journalistic principles. So much for light escapism...
Art vs. commerce
Brian Lowry writes: Martin Scorsese's dismissal of Marvel movies as more theme-park rides than cinema produced a fairly robust art-vs.-commerce debate over the weekend, with some filmmakers – most notably Joss Whedon and James Gunn – respectfully pushing back, usually with a "still a big fan" disclaimer. There is some irony in Scorsese making this argument at the moment he's behind a prestige title for Netflix, "The Irishman," which reportedly carries a $175-million price tag, but won't be subjected to the same sort of box-office scrutiny as more traditional releases...
LAST BUT NOT LEAST...
My thanks to "This Is Us"
Has a TV show ever reconnected you with a singer you used to love? That's what NBC's "This Is Us" did for me this week. Jamie and I just watched a couple of nights ago. I hadn't listened to Alexi Murdoch in years -- but the end of the episode featured Murdoch's song "Some Day Soon" -- and it brought me right back. Now I'm hooked on Murdoch's playlists again. Here's his YouTube channel in case you want an intro. Anyway, it reminded me about the power of a well-placed and well-timed song...
| | | Thanks for reading! Email me your feedback, or connect on Twitter. See you tomorrow... | | | |
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