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Peter Hamby

Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Peter
Hamby.

Tonight, some thoughts on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s holiday party performances in D.C.—and the intriguing results of our new poll, in partnership with Echelon Insights, which reveals a few openings for Democrats as they lick their wounds and plot ways to fight back against Donald Trump’s incoming administration.

A MESSAGE FROM INSTAGRAM

Congress can help keep teens safe online today by putting parents in charge of teen app
downloads.

Congress has the opportunity to establish a national standard requiring app store parental consent and age verification for teens.

This puts parents in charge of which apps teens download, making it easier for them to help keep teens safe. That's why 3 out of 4 parents agree: teens under 16 shouldn't be able to download apps without parental
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Tell lawmakers: support a national standard requiring app store parental consent and age verification for teens.

But first…

🎧 Pollsters on notice & ABC News’s $15 settlement: Our resident legal expert Eriq Gardner joined me on The Powers That Be this morning to break down Trump’s head-spinning lawsuit against the renowned Iowa pollster Ann Selzer—and how other pollsters might respond to this alarming development. We also discussed Disney’s $15 million decision to settle the Stephanopoulos defamation lawsuit.
[Listen Here]
Will CNN be sold?: Last week, in the aftermath of WBD’s perhaps inevitable decision to separate the company’s declining cable assets from its streaming and studio businesses, my partner Dylan Byers reported on how the news is reverberating inside Hudson Yards—and whether
David Zaslav is preparing CNN to be spun off…

Dylan Byers

Inevitably, attention has turned to CNN, which, as I’ve reported ad nauseam, has been significantly diminished since WBD took it over in 2022. Since Mark Thompson’s arrival as C.E.O. last summer, the network has effectively forfeited the linear ratings war and now draws an audience smaller than the Food Network—yet another WBD asset that Zaz may seek to sell.
At the same time, Thompson still hasn’t
shown meaningful progress toward articulating a post-linear vision for the business, despite his many promises. Either way, the new WBD structure positions CNN squarely in the linear unit, alongside the likes of Animal Planet and TLC, rather than as a potential streaming asset. Is that cruel irony, or an admission of defeat?

Several media executives have told me they anticipate the news network will be sold off by the end of next year. In a recent note, LightShed media analysts
Rich Greenfield and Brandon Ross said they expect WBD “to be opportunistic selling non-core assets, such as CNN or Food Network, neither of which is driving the Max story.” If so, CNN could join MSNBC in the wilderness, cut loose from the growth-oriented streaming business. Of course, no one is quite sure who would buy the asset, though Jeff Zucker’s name reliably, and unsurprisingly, comes up any time one broaches the topic.
[Read More]

—Dylan Byers

And now, the latest on Kamala…

Kamala’s No-Pity Party & America’s DOGE Skepticism

As Harris postures for her next political opportunity, exclusive
data from Echelon Insights suggests a future angle for Democrats: Trump’s appointees don’t poll all that great, tariffs are unpopular, and Elon and Vivek have some explaining to do.

Peter Hamby

For Democrats in Washington, this year’s holiday party circuit
isn’t exactly merry and bright. In just over a month, Republicans are set to take over not just the White House, but every lever of power in the city. Donald Trump is returning to office with more public goodwill than ever. Democrats, meanwhile, are going on television reciting talking points about how they didn’t lose as badly as they could have. It’s depressing, but what else is there to say? At least it’s the holidays. ’Tis the season for banal pleasantries,
beef tenderloin, drone sightings, and belts of champagne to dull the pain.

At a holiday reception for the Democratic National Committee on Sunday night at the Willard, just steps from the White House, President Biden acknowledged his party’s plight with predictable garbled bromides, thanking supporters for their work and urging them to keep fighting. “While our time in
office is coming to an end, the America of our dreams is calling us to stay engaged,” Biden said, flanked by his wife, Jill; Vice President Kamala Harris; and her husband, Doug Emhoff. “We just have to remember—you’ve heard me say it a thousand times—remember who we are: We’re the United States of America, for God’s sake!”

Biden wouldn’t take any blame
for the party’s defeat, of course. He said the electorate just didn’t understand his accomplishments. “Folks, look, all the things we passed—we knew people weren’t going to see it,” Biden told the crowd. “Billions of dollars being invested. It just takes time to get it built. It takes time to get it going. It’s not going to happen for another five, six months, in many places. It’s just getting started.” One day, surely, the voters will finally get it.

A MESSAGE FROM INSTAGRAM

Instagram Teen Accounts: automatic protections for teens

Parents want safer online experiences for their teens. That's why Instagram is introducing Teen Accounts, with automatic protections for who can contact teens and the content they can see.

A key factor: Only parents can approve safety setting changes for teens under 16.

Learn more

I found another holiday reception more illuminating. This one
was off the record, hosted last Wednesday by Harris at the V.P.’s residence at One Observatory Circle. In a video clip posted on social media by a Democrat in the room, Harris didn’t appear chastened at all. Donning a bright red pantsuit and playing off the crowd, Harris urged people in the room to take it easy during the holidays and cook up some holiday recipes with family and friends. But this was not an elegy. “We are not having a pity party!” Harris declared. She said a few weeks of rest
and relaxation before January will be critical, because Democrats must saddle up for some big fights in 2025. “We are clear-eyed,” she added, urging Democrats to “prepare for the new year” and the incoming Trump-Vance administration. “We are not going to be defeated.”

The upbeat clip could be viewed in the context of Harris mulling a run for California governor next year. But it also aligned with a
sentiment I’ve been hearing a lot from hopeful Democrats and shrewd pollsters over the past few weeks: that while Dems might be broken and angry right now, opinion-shifting events large and small will obviously occur once Trump takes office, bringing dispirited voters back to the fold. We might not see the rise of Resistance 2.0, and media companies might not get the “Trump bump” that inflated their viewership and traffic for so many years, but it would be a mistake to think that the country is
suddenly on the brink of some permanent Republican realignment. The vice president knows that. And while Biden may be ready to bicycle off into the sunset, Harris is clearly signaling that she plans to stay in the game.

Polling Trump’s Appointments

The first big showdown for Democrats will likely take place in the
Senate, where a battery of Trump’s controversial cabinet nominees are set to face confirmation hearings. A new poll from Echelon Insights, in partnership with Puck, suggests that Democrats have an opportunity to drive a wedge between the American public and Trump on the subject of his more outré picks: Pete
Hegseth for secretary of defense, Kash Patel for F.B.I. director, Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of health and human services.

While a slim majority of likely voters in the poll (52 percent) approved of Trump’s transition so far, their views shifted when asked questions about his nominees, their experience, their views, and the role of the Senate in approving those nominations. Americans overall defend the Senate’s right to confirm or reject presidential nominees, even if it conflicts with a president’s wishes. For instance, half of Americans (50 percent) say it’s appropriate for members of the
Senate to reject presidential nominees if they have concerns about them. Only 39 percent say the president should have his nominees confirmed simply “because he was elected by the people and has a mandate to choose the people he wants.” I also had Echelon ask voters if they support recess appointments, which we defined in the poll as “when the president makes appointments temporarily without the approval or vetting normally done by the Senate.” The concept was not popular, even with a proviso
that the appointments would be constitutional. Only 30 percent of voters supported recess appointments, while 45 percent opposed the idea.

All of Trump’s picks are currently undergoing the security clearance process conducted by the Department of Justice, including Hegseth, who has faced questions about his drinking habits and a sexual assault allegation he settled in 2017; and Gabbard, who is viewed
suspiciously by Democrats and establishment Republicans for regurgitating Russian state media talking points. In the poll, a substantial majority of voters (68 percent) said the Senate should reject Trump nominees who “cannot pass a standard security clearance.” Majorities also gave the Senate latitude to reject a nominee “who does not know a lot about the field they are being nominated for,” a nominee “who has conflicting business interests,” and a nominee “who has acted immorally in their
personal life.”

The latter standard would almost certainly apply to Hegseth, whose own mother has accused him of immoral behavior toward women. Trump continues to stand by his Pentagon pick, though, even inviting him to the Army-Navy game over the weekend for a photo op. But while Hegseth is still largely unknown to the American public, the voters who do know about him don’t like him: 28 percent of voters have an
unfavorable view of the Fox News host, compared to only 21 percent who like the guy.

Democrats might also have a chance to derail Patel, Trump’s
F.B.I. pick, if they’re able to paint him as a political loyalist rather than an independent law enforcement official. In the poll, Echelon asked, “Should the F.B.I. Director primarily be an independent law enforcement official or a political ally of the president?” By an enormous margin—72 percent to 14 percent—voters said the position should be independent. Most voters don’t know who Patel is, but among the ones who do, he is unpopular. Patel’s favorable ratings are about the same as
Hegseth’s.

And what about Kennedy? He’s obviously far more well-known and his favorable ratings are above water. At the same time, voters aren’t convinced he’s qualified to lead H.H.S.: 41 percent support his nomination, 45 percent oppose, and 13 percent aren’t sure. We also asked voters if they believe vaccines are linked to autism. Sixty percent of voters said no, 17 percent said yes, and the rest said they weren’t
sure.

Tariff Fears & DOGE Resistance

Trump might be coming into office with his highest favorability
rating ever, and feeling untouchable after winning the popular vote, but his favorable rating is still only at 46 percent. And while Echelon found that Americans are generally supportive of the White House transition process, hopeful about the next four years, and mostly aligned with Trump’s proposals on immigration and border security—voters start to get skeptical when pressed on the specifics of some of his plans.

When it comes to Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on imported goods, for instance, the public is split: 39 percent support the proposal, and 41 percent oppose. But when the question is posed a different way—“If tariffs led to increased prices on all goods and services, to what extent would you support or oppose imposing tariffs on imported goods?”—support for tariffs plummets to a mere 30 percent.

Another complexifier: Voters are queasy about eliminating or drastically reducing the size of several federal agencies that Trump and his superheated allies are champing at the bit to decimate. With DOGE, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are proposing bone-deep cuts to the size of government. Patel has floated the idea of shrinking the F.B.I., the very agency he wants to run. Kennedy has long attacked the Centers
for Disease Control. And the president-elect has vowed to abolish the Department of Education—a piece of Republican campaign rhetoric that’s been around for decades, long before Trump came along.

But Echelon found that majorities of voters want to either “keep most positions” or “not fire anyone” at the F.B.I., C.D.C., and the Defense Department. And when it comes to the Justice Department, H.H.S., and the Department
of Education, pluralities prefer to keep them in place rather than “eliminate most positions” or “start fresh.”

Puck senior political correspondent Tara Palmeri grapples with the aftermath of what may be the most chaotic and
consequential presidential election cycle of our lifetime. With 15 years covering politics, Tara speaks with the smartest political minds to discuss what’s happening behind the scenes in Washington, D.C., from the campaign trail to the Capitol.

An insider-friendly tip sheet from Matthew Belloni, who spent 14 years in the trenches at The Hollywood Reporter
and five before that as an entertainment lawyer. Subscribers also receive What I’m Hearing+, a companion email focused on entertainment law, the streaming industry, and more.

Iger’s Surrender

MATTHEW BELLONI

Trump’s Warning Shot

TARA PALMERI

The Him of Skims

LAUREN SHERMAN

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