Happy Friday and welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon medley of Puck’s best new reporting. First up today, Julia Ioffe digs into the multilayered drama surrounding Trump’s hasty declaration that U.S. bunker busters “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program: Pete Hegseth’s media obfuscation, the schadenfreude from certain corners of the Blob, how military intelligence gets politicized, and the real reason to be skeptical of that leaked D.I.A. assessment. Plus, below the fold: Matt Belloni breaks down HBO’s surprising new comp structure for stars and creators. John Ourand spotlights an unexpected ripple effect from the failed Venu streaming experiment. And exclusively for Inner Circle members, Lauren Sherman handicaps the American Vogue succession sweepstakes as Anna Wintour prepares to abdicate her legendary editorship. Meanwhile, on the pods: Dylan Byers is joined by Front Office Sports C.E.O. Adam White on The Grill Room to scrutinize the oversaturated sports media landscape. On Fashion People, Lauren and longtime fashion critic Robin Givhan explore the late Virgil Abloh’s anti-perfectionist approach to creation. On Impolitic, John Heilemann rings up Pulitzer Prize–winning author Ron Chernow to discuss his bestselling biography on Mark Twain. And on The Powers That Be, Julia Alexander connects with Puck’s newest author and resident A.I. expert, Ian Krietzberg, for a rollicking chat about the disruptive promise of artificial intelligence—and why Anthropic’s big legal victory isn’t quite what it seems.

WASHINGTON

The president rushed to insist on the complete and total success of his Iran strikes without waiting for a full assessment; his critics similarly rushed to declare he must be wrong. The reality is that the full picture will take time to emerge—but in the meantime, intelligence is being further politicized. Read Now

HOLLYWOOD

The prestige outlet is moving to a “bonus” system based on thresholds of “success” in different categories. It’s all dependent on HBO’s definitions of success, and not dissimilar to how other outlets calculate payouts. But it raises a troubling question: Why? Read Now

SPORTS

Venu, the sports frankenstreamer that died on the vine, did have one lasting impact on the sports viewing universe: It gave birth to skinny bundle offerings, like DirecTV’s, that were meant to compete against it. Read Now

FASHION

The surprising and yet totally expected news that Anna Wintour is dropping her day-to-day American Vogue responsibilities has the industry in a predictable tizzy. Here’s what the replacement leaderboard looks like. Read Now

MEDIA

Adam White, founder and C.E.O. of Front Office Sports, joins Dylan to recount how he transformed a college class project into a fast-growing, multiplatform media company—now majority-owned by RedBird IMI. Adam explains the company’s editorial thesis, how they stay relevant in an oversaturated sports media landscape, and why he’s betting big on their newly launched Front Office Sports Studios, a longform content arm focused on producing films and documentaries. Listen Now

FASHION

Lauren’s guest today is Robin Givhan, longtime fashion and cultural critic and author of Make It Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture With Virgil Abloh. They chat about the late designer’s upbringing, his anti-perfectionist approach to creation, and the imprint he made on Louis Vuitton. They also get into the changing definition of luxury, and Abloh’s role in that transformation. Plus, Lauren shares a dispatch from Paris, where she co-hosted a Puck private dinner at La Petite Chaise with ShopMy earlier in the week. Listen Now

WASHINGTON

John is joined by National Book Award– and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Ron Chernow to discuss his new, bestselling biography, Mark Twain. Chernow explains why Twain, who he argues was America’s original political pundit, exerts a powerful and enduring hold on America’s imagination; why his insights and humor remain not just relevant today but timeless; and how Twain, in the course of his life, became “de-Southernized.” Listen Now

A.I.

Puck’s newest author and resident A.I. expert, Ian Krietzberg, makes his podcast debut with guest host Julia Alexander for a rollicking conversation about the disruptive promise—and misconceptions—of artificial intelligence. Ian unpacks what we’re getting right and wrong about A.I. panic, then breaks down the major implications of a recent court ruling in a landmark case against Anthropic, one of the biggest A.I. companies in the world, in which a judge found that using copyrighted books to train A.I. models constitutes fair use. Listen Now

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