I know I say this all the time, but it was another incredible week here at Puck: Dylan Byers captured the renewed anxiety inside CNN; Tara Palmeri previewed the new cast of characters in Trumpworld; Teddy Schleifer broke the news on Hillary Clinton’s next move; Matt Belloni and Julia Alexander picked apart Disney’s Star Wars conundrum; Eriq Gardner explored a legal family feud; Julia Ioffe penetrated Tehran’s politics; and Bill Cohan envisioned the next Treasury secretary.

Check out these stories, along with the rest of our best work from the week, via the links below. And stick around for the backstory on how it all came together.

WALL STREET:
Bill Cohan runs the numbers on the next Janet Yellen.
and…
Eriq Gardner gets into the weeds of a legal-financial money mess.

WASHINGTON:
Tara Palmeri reveals who’s in and who’s not in Trumpworld, 2024 edition.
and…
Tina Nguyen chronicles Dr. Oz’s ascent.
and…
Julia Ioffe weighs in on the Tehran-Moscow Axis.

HOLLYWOOD:
Matt Belloni profiles Disney’s Star Wars anxiety.
and…
Julia Alexander explains what Andor says about the franchise’s streaming strategy.

MEDIA:
Dylan Byers conveys the current anxieties inside CNN as layoffs loom.

PODCASTS:
Peter Hamby and I chat about Semafor’s launch on The Powers That Be.
and…
Matt delves into the future of streaming with Paramount Global’s Tom Ryan on The Town.

Meanwhile, I also encourage you to take advantage of our article gifting feature. You can share our work with your colleagues, friends, and family. Subscribers are entitled to 5 article gifts per month.

The stars of this cast, inevitably, were Trump’s own family members: the ruthlessly ambitious Jared and Ivanka, the pugilistic and self-infatuated Don Jr., the opportunistic Eric, and then Tiffany off to the side. It was such a sharp-elbowed, zero sum, vote-em-off-the-island set-up that the terms “reality show” and “civil war” had become platitudinous within days of the commencement of his administration.

Over the course of his four year term, few outside Javanka, former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin had the stamina to endure it all. After all, the chaos—the Muslim Ban, Charlottesville, the Mueller saga, Kavanaugh, and so forth—had torn the crew apart. Even Elaine Chao, a near lifer at Transportation, called it quits after January 6th. Brad Parscale, whose profile ascended more than perhaps any other star in the Trump constellation, found a way to stay in Trump’s good graces until the election math said otherwise. Mike Pence essentially turned in his Trumpworld card shortly after certifying the election by building his own 2024 campaign architecture in relatively open view.

Politics makes strange bedfellows, and Trumpworld makes for even stranger ones. Interestingly, and perhaps not all that surprisingly, few appear poised for another round. As Tara Palmeri brilliantly reports in Trump ’24 Foreplay, Trump’s kids are either satisfied with their public service or consumed with their own fiefdoms. Some old hands like Parscale and Jason Miller may be vendors and sounding boards, but not much more. Instead, we’ll be introduced to a new set of characters, like Susie Wiles, the Florida expert and elite MAGA operative, and Chris LaCivita, who Tara says is the early frontrunner to be Trump’s campaign manager. (Wiles will assume more of a Podesta-like role.) LaCivita may not be known to the broader culture, but his work sure is. He was the architect of the Swift Boats campaign that destroyed John Kerry’s presidential ambitions.

Unsurprisingly, Tara notes, there is already some agitation inside the pre-campaign braintrust. As we know from Trump’s history, of course, the first team is rarely the final one. Indeed, Trump ’24 Foreplay articulates an enduring truth about our political media-industrial complex: the characters change but the plot often remains the same. It’s the leitmotif of our time, and precisely the sort of story you can only find at Puck.

Have a great weekend,

Jon