ReportWire

Tag: Jeff Zucker

  • Why Republican Politicians Do Whatever Trump Says

    Why Republican Politicians Do Whatever Trump Says


    The story Donald Trump tells about himself—and to himself—has always been one of domination. It runs through the canonical texts of his personal mythology. In The Art of the Deal, he filled page after page with examples of his hard-nosed negotiating tactics. On The Apprentice, he lorded over a boardroom full of supplicants competing for his approval. And at his campaign rallies, he routinely regales crowds with tales of strong-arming various world leaders in the Oval Office.

    This image of Trump has always been dubious. Those boardroom scenes were, after all, reality-TV contrivances; those stories in his book were, by his own ghostwriter’s account, exaggerated in many cases to make Trump appear savvier than he was. And there’s been ample reporting to suggest that many of the world leaders with whom Trump interacted as president saw him more as an easily manipulated mark than as a domineering statesman to be feared.

    The truth is that Trump, for all of his tough-guy posturing, spent most of his career failing to push people around and bend them to his will.

    That is, until he started dealing with Republican politicians.

    For nearly a decade now, Trump has demonstrated a remarkable ability to make congressional Republicans do what he wants. He threatens them. He bullies them. He extracts from them theatrical displays of devotion—and if they cross him, he makes them pay. If there is one arena of American power in which Trump has been able to actually be the merciless alpha he played on TV—and there may, indeed, be only one—it is Republican politics. His influence was on full display this week, when he derailed a bipartisan border-security bill reportedly because he wants to campaign on the immigration “crisis” this year.

    David Frum: The GOP’s true priority

    Sam Nunberg, a former adviser to Trump, has observed this dynamic with some amusement. “It’s funny,” he told me in a recent phone interview. “In the business world and in the entertainment world, I don’t think Donald was able to intimidate people as much.”

    He pointed to Trump’s salary negotiations with NBC during Trump’s Apprentice years. Jeff Zucker, who ran the network at the time, has said that Trump once came to him demanding a raise. At the time, Trump was making $40,000 an episode, but he wanted to make as much as the entire cast of Friends combined: $6 million an episode. Zucker countered with $60,000. When Trump balked, Zucker said he’d find someone else to host the show. The next day, according to Zucker, Trump’s lawyer called to accept the $60,000. (A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)

    Contrast that with the power Trump wields on Capitol Hill—how he can kill a bill or tank a speakership bid with a single post on social media; how high-ranking congressmen are so desperate for his approval that they’ll task staffers to sort through packs of Starbursts and pick out just the pinks and reds so Trump can be presented with his favorite flavors.

    “I just remember that there’d be a lot of stuff that didn’t go his way,” Nunberg told me, referring to Trump’s business career. “But he has all these senators in the fetal position! They do whatever he wants.”

    Why exactly congressional Republicans have proved so much more pliable than anyone else Trump has contended with is a matter of interpretation. One explanation is that Trump has simply achieved much more success in politics than he ever did, relatively speaking, in New York City real estate or on network TV. For all of his tabloid omnipresence, Trump never had anything like the presidential bully pulpit.

    From the January/February 2024 issue: Loyalists, lapdogs, and cronies

    “It stands to reason that [when] the president and leader of your party is pushing for something … that’s what’s going to happen,” a former chief of staff to a Republican senator, who requested anonymity in order to candidly describe former colleagues’ thinking, told me. “Take away the office and put him back in a business setting, where facts and core principles matter, and it doesn’t surprise me that it wasn’t as easy.”

    But, of course, Trump is not the president anymore—and there is also something unique about the sway he continues to have over Republicans on Capitol Hill. In his previous life, Trump had viewers, readers, fans—but he never commanded a movement that could end the careers of the people on the other side of the negotiating table.

    And Trump—whose animal instinct for weakness is one of his defining traits—seemed to intuit something early on about the psychology of the Republicans he would one day reign over.

    Nunberg told me about a speech he drafted for Trump in 2015 that included this line about the Republican establishment: “They’re good at keeping their jobs, not their promises.” When Trump read it, he chuckled. “It’s so true,” he said, according to Nunberg. “That’s all they care about.” (Nunberg was eventually fired from Trump’s 2016 campaign.)

    This ethos of job preservation at all costs is not a strictly partisan phenomenon in Washington—nor is it new. As I reported in my recent biography of Mitt Romney, the Utah senator was surprised, when he arrived in Congress, by the enormous psychic currency his colleagues attached to their positions. One senator told Romney that his first consideration when voting on any bill should be “Will this help me win reelection?”

    From the November 2023 issue: What Mitt Romney saw in the Senate

    But the Republican Party of 2015 was uniquely vulnerable to a hostile takeover by someone like Trump. Riven by years of infighting and ideological incoherence, and plagued by a growing misalignment between its base and its political class, the GOP was effectively one big institutional power vacuum. The litmus tests kept changing. The formula for getting reelected was obsolete. Republicans with solidly conservative records, such as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, were getting taken out in primaries by obscure Tea Party upstarts.

    To many elected Republicans, it probably felt like an answer to their prayers when a strongman finally parachuted in and started telling them what to do. Maybe his orders were reckless and contradictory. But as long as you did your best to look like you were obeying, you could expect to keep winning your primaries.

    As for Trump, it’s easy to see the ongoing appeal of this arrangement. The Apprentice was canceled long ago, and the Manhattan-real-estate war stories have worn thin. Republicans in Congress might be the only ostensibly powerful people in America who will allow him to boss them around, humiliate them, and assert unbridled dominance over them. They’ve made the myth true. How could he possibly walk away now?



    McKay Coppins

    Source link

  • The Year in Media: 7 Cliff-Hangers as We Close out 2023

    The Year in Media: 7 Cliff-Hangers as We Close out 2023

    Can Mark Thompson save CNN?

    I began this same feature last year by asking, “Can Chris Licht Turn CNN Around?” It turned out the answer to that question was ‘no.’ But the oddsmakers may feel more confident about Mark Thompson, still fewer than three months into his tenure leading the beleaguered cable news network. Behind the scenes, Thompson has, by all accounts, been saying the right things to instill confidence in CNN’s long-suffering worker bees that he was the right choice for the job, anointed by Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav practically in a heartbeat after Licht’s notorious implosion. The seasoned BBC pedigree, the triumphant New York Times turnaround, the crucial blend of television and digital smarts—these are the résumé highlights that seem to be nudging most observers to place their chips on Thompson. 

    Mark ThompsonBy Bloomberg/Getty Images.

    Cable, of course, is an industry struggling with inexorable decline, and CNN continues to struggle with ratings that typically keep the channel in a distant third behind MSNBC and Fox News. There’s also the question of whether the digital transformation Thompson oversaw as CEO of the Times is something he can replicate for an entirely different business model. Puck’s Dylan Byers reported recently that Thompson is at work on a 2024 business plan that will reorient CNN around a “multiplatform philosophy.” Which is to say, we should have a better sense of where things are headed in the coming months. As one CNN journalist put it to me on the day of Thompson’s coronation, “You have to think, if he can’t make this work, then no one can.”

    Can Will Lewis win over The Washington Post?

    Will Lewis, the former Telegraph and News Corp. honcho whom Jeff Bezos recently appointed to steady the Post, is another executive whose London lilt has served him well in meet and greets. “I think we’re all really excited by your enthusiasm,” one Post journalist told the incoming publisher last month during an introductory town hall. “I think we’re like most Americans who are charmed by the accent.” (Can’t hurt that the guy was knighted a few months ago.) 

    William Lewis

    William Lewisby Elliott O’Donovan for The Washington Post/Getty Images.

    But make no mistake: Lewis is inheriting a restive staff, currently in the painful process of shedding about 240 jobs. He’s likewise inheriting business challenges that include stagnant revenues, soft subscription growth, and a miserable advertising market. (Then there’s the question of whether Lewis will seek to replace executive editor Sally Buzbee, although she presumably has a rapport with Lewis via his board seat at the Associated Press, where Buzbee served as executive editor before arriving at the Post, so there’s that.) For Lewis’s part, he’s projecting nothing but mojo. “We’re going to expand. We’re going to get our swagger back,” he said in a recent interview. “I know that right now is not our greatest time, but we’re going to grow again. And we’re going to get that confidence back and that swagger back. I can tell you that with absolute confidence.” 

    Will Fox and Smartmatic settle?

    Joe Pompeo

    Source link

  • Former CNN Boss Jeff Zucker Eyes Return To Media With Britain’s Daily Telegraph

    Former CNN Boss Jeff Zucker Eyes Return To Media With Britain’s Daily Telegraph

    Source link

  • Variety’s “Battle Over CNN” Feature Has Set Off a Full-on Media Brawl

    Variety’s “Battle Over CNN” Feature Has Set Off a Full-on Media Brawl

    It’s been 48 hours and the media world is still abuzz over a Variety feature about CNN that is purportedly ridden with inaccuracies and has prompted outcry from several of its subjects. The Tuesday story—written by Tatiana Siegel—casts Jeff Zucker, the former CNN president who was ousted last year, as being on a desperate and bitter “quest to recapture the CNN throne,” with anecdotes about him traveling the world in pursuit of an international network of investors, including Jeff Bezos, Alex Soros, and Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.

    Fast forward and Siegel’s attempt to expose the mess seems to have set off a full-on media brawl. Zucker’s spokesperson, Risa Heller, denied that Zucker had ever discussed buying CNN with Bezos—or anyone—and said that Zucker has “never met or spoken to” Soros or Abramovich. “It is stunning to read a piece that is so patently and aggressively false,” Heller said in a statement to Vanity Fair. “On numerous occasions, we made it clear to the reporter and her editors that they were planning to publish countless anecdotes and alleged incidents that never happened. They did so anyway.” (Asked for comment on the response to the story, including calls for retractions, a Variety spokesperson told Vanity Fair, “Variety stands by our investigative story about CNN written by one of the best journalists in the business.”)

    Apart from Zucker’s alleged takeover bid, Siegel is also getting flack for what she described as the “climate of betrayal” left in Zucker’s wake at CNN, as well as Zucker’s “behind-the-scenes attempts to undermine” both Chris Licht, his successor, and David Zaslav, the Warner Bros. Discovery CEO. Zaslav fired Licht in June, following a blistering 15,000-word profile—written by The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta—of Licht’s disastrous year atop the cable news network.

    However, the Variety piece suggests Licht fell victim to cheap reporting, and questioned the journalistic “liberties” that Alberta took, such as “key off-the-record details and quotes [that] were used on the record.” Siegel also took aim at Puck’s Dylan Byers, who relentlessly chronicled the Licht era (and worked at CNN under Zucker), which made him a character in Alberta’s piece. She specifically alleged that “Byers’ conflict of interest runs much deeper than a kinship with a former boss,” pointing out that Zucker and Puck are both represented by Heller and asserting that Byers failed to disclose that Zucker had spoken to Puck about a potential investment in the startup—a detail reported by the New York Times last month.

    A torrent of backlash among top media brass has ensued: Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg told CNN on Tuesday that “Siegel was informed by The Atlantic that the charges were completely false, but she nevertheless decided to smear Alberta.” According to Byers, Puck co-founder and editor-in-chief Jon Kelly also “sent an email to the author and the editors of the Variety piece on Tuesday outlining demonstrably false claims.” And on Wednesday, TheWrap reported that “Penske Media Corporation, the owner of Variety, has been contacted by Zucker’s team with a request to issue a retraction of the article.”

    Meanwhile, Byers and Alberta have themselves taken to Twitter to refute various aspects of the story. Alberta in a series of tweets went point by point, from the number meetings Siegel said Alberta had with Licht, to her allegation that Licht’s now-infamous quote at the gym—that “Zucker couldn’t do this shit”—was actually something that Alberta said and Licht repeated. “If @Variety had real editorial standards this piece never, ever would have published,” Alberta wrote. Likewise, Byers on Wednesday claimed that the opening scene in Siegel’s piece—a run-in between a teary-eyed Zucker and Zaslav at a Miami Beach hotel—was riddled with factual errors. He also addressed Siegel’s conflict-of-interest allegations, acknowledging that Heller represents Puck but claiming that he was “wholly unaware” of Zucker’s conversations with his employer about a potential investment “until it was reported in the press. (Siegel was told that, too, but did not include it.)”

    Variety is, as of now, sitting tight. Despite the public appeals to correct the record, CNN’s Oliver Darcy reported Wednesday that the outlet has “resisted taking any such action, outside quietly removing the widely panned Tatiana Siegel-written feature from its online homepage.” But the apparent errors, as Darcy writes, “raise serious questions about the editorial process at Variety that allowed Siegel’s feature to be published.”

    Charlotte Klein

    Source link

  • Why CNN Gave Trump a Prime-Time Town Hall—And Why Trump Accepted

    Why CNN Gave Trump a Prime-Time Town Hall—And Why Trump Accepted

    News that CNN will hold a town hall with former President Donald Trump in New Hampshire next Wednesday came as a surprise on multiple fronts. For one, Trump, who repeatedly dismissed CNN (among several other outlets) as “fake news” throughout his presidency, has not done an interview with the network since his 2016 presidential campaign. Plus, it’s a risky move for CNN, given the challenge of responsibly platforming the twice-impeached, indicted, insurrection-inciting former president. Trump still refuses to accept the results of the election he lost nearly two and a half years ago to Joe Biden, which begs the question: Does CNN plan to fact-check Trump in real time? What happens if Trump repeats the lie that the 2020 election was “rigged,” as he did just last week from the rally stage? I put such questions to CNN political director David Chalian on Tuesday, as the network prepares its program.

    “We obviously can’t control what Donald Trump says—that’s up to him,” said Chalian. “What we can do is prod, ask questions, follow up, and try to get as revealing answers as possible.” Chalian added that it’s “not new for CNN journalists to question Donald Trump” (though he didn’t specify whether this would take the form of a live fact-check). Ultimately, it’s CNN’s view that while Trump is “a unique candidate,” who “since being president has a series of investigations around him”—and “there was how he left the presidency,” Chalian also noted, ostensibly referencing the January 6 insurrection—the network is going to treat him like any other presidential candidate. While “all of that context makes him a unique candidate,” it “does not make our approach any different, in the sense that we hold every candidate who comes to CNN accountable for their words,” Chalian said. He added that CNN has approached every major presidential candidate and potential candidate about participating in CNN’s coverage—the presidential town hall being a part of that.

    Moderators will be coming in with follow-up questions, which Chalian said is part of CNN’s “typical standard” for holding candidates accountable. “But the primary focus of a presidential town hall is to have the candidate interact with the voters, and that’s why we convene these things—because we think it’s so important to the process of voters making their choices,” he said. 

    Trump’s appearance on CNN signals a shift in the former president’s campaign strategy heading into 2024. Per Politico, those in Trump’s orbit “believe that by giving interviews and access to mainstream outlets, they can broaden Trump’s message—and create a contrast with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.” The Trump team has reportedly “been in talks with sit-downs with several other notable outlets, including NBC.” (NBC also got a spot on Trump’s campaign plane recently, though it hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing: I recently reported how Trump tossed NBC reporter Vaughn Hillyard’s phones during a tirade on the plane home from a March rally.) DeSantis, Trump’s biggest rival, who has yet to officially announce a presidential run, has mostly ignored mainstream news organizations, giving access instead to a handful of conservative outlets, from Fox News to fringe publications. 

    “Going outside the traditional Republican ‘comfort zone’ was a key to President Trump’s success in 2016. Some other candidates are too afraid to take this step in their quest to defeat Joe Biden, and are afraid to do anything other than Fox News,” a Trump adviser told Vanity Fair. “CNN executives made a compelling pitch.”

    Chalian would not get into specifics about what that pitch was, but suggested it was no different than the one CNN has made to other candidates. “The heart of the pitch is that this has been a central part of our campaign coverage, and it’s something we take really seriously and that we really do quite well,” he said.

    The town hall will be moderated by Kaitlan Collins and feature questions from New Hampshire Republicans and undeclared voters who plan to vote in the GOP presidential primary. Questions from voters will go through a “thorough vetting process,” Chalian said. “We want to make sure that everything being asked is factually accurate and on a topic that seems widely of interest,” he added, though questions won’t be tweaked. “It’s entirely a question that is written by the questioner and submitted by them.”

    Collins, a fast-rising star at the network, covered the Trump White House and has a reputation as a tough interviewer—one she’s continued to cement in her current role as a cohost on CNN This Morning. But this will be a particularly difficult one to get right; she has to engage with someone who is both a violence-inciting liar and the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. 

    However it pans out, the prime-time event is sure to bring eyes to CNN at 8 PM. CNN’s viewership has dwindled amid its attempt to reinvent itself following Trump’s presidency and under the new leadership of CEO Chris Licht. Part of that reset has involved turning down the decibel levels from the Jeff Zucker years by moving into what can be perceived as politically neutral territory. 

    Charlotte Klein

    Source link

  • Nikki Finke, sharp-tongued Hollywood columnist, dies at 68

    Nikki Finke, sharp-tongued Hollywood columnist, dies at 68

    NEW YORK — Nikki Finke, the veteran reporter who became one of Hollywood’s top journalists as founder of the entertainment trade website Deadline.com and whose sharp-tongued tenacity made her the most-feared columnist in show business, has died. She was 68.

    Finke died Sunday in Boca Raton, Florida, after a prolonged illness, according to Deadline.

    A famously reclusive blogger, Finke began writing LA Weekly’s “Deadline Hollywood” column in 2002 and made it essential reading for gossip and trade news. Four years later, she launched Deadline Hollywood Daily as a website.

    Blogging at Deadline.com, Finke made a pugnacious media empire of scoops and gossip, renowned for her “live-snarking” award shows and story updates that blared “TOLDJA!” when one of her earlier exclusives proved accurate.

    Finke’s sharp-elbow style earned her plenty of enemies in Hollywood. But the Long Island native’s regular drumbeat of exclusives proved her considerable influence with executives, agents and publicists. In 2010, Forbes listed her among “the world’s most powerful women.” Finke was unapologetic, declining to soften her approach for the most glamorous stars or the most powerful studio executives.

    “I mean, they play rough,” Finke told The New York Times in 2015. “I have to play rough, too.”

    Finke did it all largely from the confines of her apartment in west Los Angeles, not schmoozing at red-carpet premieres or cocktail parties. But from her reclusive remove, Finke could ruthlessly skewer executives whose decision making she disapproved of. She once called Jeff Zucker, then-president of NBC Universal, “one of the most kiss-ass incompetents to run an entertainment company.”

    “I can’t help it!” Finke told The New Yorker in 2009. “It’s like meanness pours out of my fingers!”

    In 2009, Deadline Hollywood was purchased by Jay Penske, whose company, Penske Media Corporation, would later also acquire Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. Finke often quarreled with Penske, particularly after his purchase of the Deadline rivals. She departed the site in 2013 after months of public acrimony, but remained under contract as a consultant. “He tried to buy my silence,” Finke wrote at the time. “No sale.”

    “At her best, Nikki Finke embodied the spirit of journalism, and was never afraid to tell the hard truths with an incisive style and an enigmatic spark. She was brash and true,” Penske said in a statement Sunday. “It was never easy with Nikki, but she will always remain one of the most memorable people in my life.”

    After her departure, Finke played with various projects but never returned to entertainment journalism. Her deal with Penske reportedly prohibited her to report on Hollywood for 10 years, though she at one time threatened to go solo again with NikkiFinke.com. Instead, she debuted HollywoodDementia.com, with fictional showbiz tales instead of real ones.

    Before her notoriety with Deadline, Finke had spent years as a reporter for The Associated Press, Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, the New York Post and the New York Observer. She inspired a 2011 HBO pilot that starred Diane Keaton as reporter Tilda Watski.

    Source link