Good morning, It was another fabulous week: Kim Masters chronicled Brian Grazer’s political pivot; Matt Belloni revealed the shortlist to direct the next Bond film; Eriq Gardner dissected Bob Iger’s new A.I. battle; Julia Alexander reviewed David Zaslav’s sports strategy, while Bill Cohan ran the numbers on his coercive debt tender; John Ourand assessed Peacock’s latest moves; Dylan Byers weighed Substack’s exit options; Lauren Sherman evaluated Kering’s incoming C.E.O. and spoke with Ryan Murphy about his Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy headache; Rachel Strugatz caught up with a beauty M&A kingmaker; Sarah Shapiro charted Tuckernuck’s northern migration; Marion Maneker captured the mood in Basel; and Julie Davich spotlighted a Christie’s photography sale. Meanwhile, John Heilemann conferred with former D.H.S. Secretary Jeh Johnson; Julia Ioffe investigated the Trump-Bibi maneuvering over Iran; Leigh Ann Caldwell relayed the pressure campaign surrounding the president’s signature bill; and Abby Livington popped into the Capitol Hill boiler room. Check out these stories, and others, via the links below. And stick around for the backstory on how it all came together.

Lauren Sherman chats with Ryan Murphy about his styling choices for his forthcoming J.F.K. Jr.–C.B.K. show—and analyzes Kering’s next C.E.O. and… Rachel Strugatz examines why Vennette Ho has been on the sidelines this summer. meanwhile… Sarah Shapiro details the next step in Tuckernuck’s manifest destiny.

Marion Maneker takes the temperature of the market in Basel. and… Julie Davich previews the sale of an historic John Wilkes Booth photo.

Matt Belloni uncovers the Bond director shortlist and Blumhouse’s next steps. and… Kim Masters tracks Brian Grazer’s rightward lurch and… Eriq Gardner heralds the “2.0 A.I.” cases era in entertainment law. meanwhile… Julia Alexander explains how niche TV replaced peak TV.

Dylan Byers peers behind the curtain of the Substack hype machine. and… John Ourand yuks it up with NBC Sports president Rick Cordella. meanwhile… Julia Alexander unpacks Zaz’s sports abandonment issues.

Bill Cohan breaks down WBD’s unusual debt tender offer.

Leigh Ann Caldwell scrutinizes Trump’s carrot-and-sticks strategy for persuading senators to submit to his Big Beautiful Bill. and… Julia Ioffe pulls the thread on Bibi’s courtship of Trump on Iran. meanwhile… Abby Livingston revisits the Hill’s day-trading dilemma.

Dylan and Julia Alexander consider the latest signs of YouTube’s categorical domination on The Grill Room. and… John Ourand and CNBC’s Alex Sherman predict the next round of media rights musical chairs on The Varsity. and… Lauren and Imaginary Ventures’ Nick Brown discuss the industry’s most investible trends on Fashion People. and… John Heilemann and Jeh Johnson, the former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, contemplate the current moment on Impolitic. and… Matt and Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw rank the biggest overreactions of 1H25 on The Town. and… Kim joins Julia Alexander for a little Iger succession update on The Powers That Be.

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Last Friday morning, hours after Israel initiated a bombing campaign on a depleted Iran, I awoke to the same confusion as everyone else, my mind reeling with questions. Was Bibi Netanyahu really willing to open up a new front of war? Despite Marco Rubio’s statement that Israel had acted unilaterally, had the White House and State Department offered their tacit  approval? Or had the U.S. received only a brief diplomatic heads-up from its most important ally in the region? And perhaps most importantly, was this mounting regional crisis going to metastasize into a conflict with global implications? Naturally, in those early hours, I asked the expert I knew and trusted the most: my partner Julia Ioffe. Among other details, she was already transfixed by one of the storylines percolating through the Gang of 500 crowd in D.C.—early rumblings that Trump might have known about the attacks all along and strategically lulled Iran to sleep. Outside of the looming Senate negotiations on the president’s Big Beautiful Bill, of course, this was the talk of the town. Julia had already begun making calls within the intelligence and foreign policy communities, determined to make this the topic of her next piece. Two days ago, Julia published her latest tour de force, Inside Bibi’s Trump–Iran Psyop, which focused on the most recent twist in the skirmish: Israel’s attempt to publicly credit Trump for the initial attacks and thereby entice him to enter the fray. Indeed, both Israeli media and American outlets reported that Israel had coordinated the attacks with the U.S. Barak Ravid, Axios’s ace on the region, quoted a pair of sources suggesting that the attacks had been “all coordinated with Washington.” Had Trump really been a party to Bibi’s plan? Had he (very uncharacteristically) kept this secret to himself and his generals and cabinet officials? Or was Israel actually running a psychological operation, or psyop, on the ayatollahs—convincing them, as it were, that they already had the muscle of the U.S. president behind them? Or… did Bibi, who has long been one of Trump’s staunchest defenders and supplicants, have something even more insidious up his sleeve. In her brilliant piece, Julia laid out her own evolving scholarship on the topic. “In the week since the Israeli attack on Iran commenced, it’s been looking more and more like the story of that brilliant Trump–Bibi psyop was itself a psyop, with Trump as the target,” she wrote. “Whatever the president’s level of involvement in, or assent to, Israel’s bombing campaign—and all we have now are conflicting accounts—it’s clear that Bibi knows how to manipulate his counterpart, possibly right into a war that Trump has claimed he doesn’t want.” If you have any time this weekend, I behoove you to read Julia’s excellent report. It’s deeply sourced and remarkably insightful on the multiple levels of this international crisis, and an honest assessment of the players involved. Indeed, the aftermath of these two weeks will be one of the most consequential stories of our time, and precisely what you should expect from Puck.

Have a great weekend, Jon

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