Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest.

I’m Abby Livingston, filling in for Tina Nguyen. In today’s dispatch, an inside look at how Nancy Pelosi’s masterfully equivocal Morning Joe appearance is ricocheting across Capitol Hill, and whether it opened the floodgates for more Democrats to begin openly calling for Biden’s withdrawal. Then, my partner Dylan Byers has the latest on the Biden media circus, from Karine Jean-Pierre’s credibility crisis to the latest on the George Stephanopoulos-TMZ brouhaha.

🎧 From the Puck podcast network: On the latest episode of John Heilemann’s Impolitic, Guardian columnist and BBC radio host Jonathan Freedland offered a tour d’horizon of political news in Europe—and the U.S. as seen from across the pond. On Tara Palmeri’s Somebody’s Gotta Win, she chatted with CBS News’s Weijia Jiang about Biden’s disastrous media week and attempts at damage control, and on The Powers That Be, Tara joined Peter Hamby to discuss the anguished chatter circulating among Capitol Hill Democrats. You can check out all those episodes, and more, right here.

On the surface, the words she chose sounded innocuous enough. “It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run,” Pelosi told Jonathan Lemire. “We’re all encouraging him to make that decision. Because time is running short.” But for the Democratic political class, her words may as well have been a thunderclap. Biden, of course, has been adamant, over and over again, that he’s already made his decision. Here was Pelosi, the elder stateswoman of the Democratic Party, blowing right past her president’s public statements and firmly and unequivocally resetting the table.

Several Democrats I’ve spoken with since her appearance—operatives, members, former members, leadership aides—interpreted her remarks as providing permission for members to speak their minds about whether Biden should end his campaign. “Some people saw it as cover, I saw it as her releasing the floodgates,” a Democratic consultant told me. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”

In the hours since Pelosi’s appearance, she has gently, and adroitly, backpedaled. “I think the president is great. And there are misrepresentations of what I have said. I never said he should reconsider his decision” she told CBS’s Jalaa Brown, giving a masterclass in old-school political bobbing and weaving. Of course, her calculated revisionism didn’t exactly contradict her initial message: that the president has a decision to make.

Whatever Pelosi’s intention, the Democratic Party remains in a state of unstable equilibrium, with most lawmakers holding off from public airings of their private concerns. Only Pat Ryan, a Frontliner from New York, and Earl Blumenauer, a progressive member from Oregon, have called for Biden to withdraw since Pelosi’s Morning Joe jolt. But there’s a newfound bravery coursing through members in both chambers, who are increasingly using language that signals to Biden that it’s time to let go. In the Senate, perhaps taking cues from Pelosi as well as Michael Bennet’s needle-threading, not-quite-calling-for-Biden-to-step-down interview on CNN last night, Richard Blumenthal told reporters this afternoon that he was “deeply concerned about Joe Biden winning this November.” Senator Peter Welch joined the chorus, saying, “I want him to look at the evidence and make a hard decision. He’s earned that.”

Of course, Pelosi is also among a very small group outside the Biden inner circle—Jill and Hunter, Mike Donilan, Anthony Bernal, Ron Klain, Anita Dunn, Ted Kaufman—who has any hope of influencing the president’s decision. Biden’s complicated relationships with Obama and the Clintons has pushed them to the sidelines (at least publicly). Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are busy balancing their caucuses’ politics. And while Pelosi’s statement could be interpreted as bigfooting her successor, no Democrat I’ve spoken with has characterized Pelosi as undercutting Jeffries, who’s been performing shuttle diplomacy among the various factions: the Congressional Black Caucus, the New Dems, the Frontliners—the kind of hustling Pelosi used to do as leader, and he’s in listening mode.

Pelosi is not merely an elder Democratic stateswoman. She’s the only major player here who comes close to Biden’s stature. She took power in 2002 (before some Capitol Hill interns were even born…) and has led Democrats through several eras as tumultuous and unnerving as the current one—the 2008 financial crisis, the A.C.A. passage, the Trump years, the insurrection, etcetera. As speaker, she crossed paths with practically everyone who matters in Democrats politics, and because she no longer has any professional hills to climb, she’s perceived as an honest broker on the Hill. The former speaker, who at 84 is three years older than Biden, has a long history with the president. She’s been in too many negotiations with him to count, dating back to his V.P. tenure. A former Democratic leadership aide characterized their relationship as “old-school Catholic pals.”

In my conversations with Hill insiders during the past weeks’ collective panic attack, many expressed relief that Pelosi was still around. One former Democratic Hill operative, who was most certainly not down with N.D.P. 10 years ago, admitted he’s taken to referring to her as “the godmother.”

It’s also important to remember that Pelosi, a daughter of the Baltimore political machine, taught Democrats how to be ruthless. Moreover, she has always been in tune with House Democrats, and her rhetoric tends to track with the caucus’s evolving mindset. The consensus after her TV appearance this morning was that she was saying the quiet part out loud. Said the former Pelosi detractor, “She’s where everyone is.”

In light of the national fervor over Biden’s disastrous debate performance, two weeks ago, Stephanopoulos’s gaffe struck a nerve. Through a spokesperson, he told me he “shouldn’t have” responded to his interlocutor. Meanwhile, his network distanced itself from what it stressed was their $20 million dollar-a-year anchor’s “own point of view.” But it was obvious to everyone that George had meant what he’d said and that it was indeed yet another meaningful vote of no confidence in the president—not just from someone who had recently sat down with him in person, but from a 30-year veteran journalist and former Democratic White House press secretary who has deep respect for the office and the institution.

As I noted last week, the Biden press corps has the bit firmly between its teeth and is relentlessly pursuing scoops and chronicling developments on the Biden-in-decline beat with a collective tenacity and urgency unseen in years. In the process, they are pressing an evasive Karine Jean-Pierre for answers in a manner that has made the Brady Briefing Room once again a relevant theater for live coverage. “We are miffed around here!” CBS News’s Ed O’Keefe shouted at her the other day, calling to mind the tensions of the Sarah Huckabee Sanders era. (For what it’s worth, the vast majority of briefing room denizens I surveyed this week think Jean-Pierre has lost all credibility. Alternatively, one White House reporter said the press corps “looked like bitchy little babies who carried on about a story that had no basis in fact because they’re trying to fetch their way into a coverup.” In any case, it’s interesting again.)

The mainstream punditocracy has also enjoyed a revival. In the Biden era, the vast majority of columnists and talking heads have been predictably and uninspiringly aligned on partisan sides. But once the existential dread began simmering after the debate, the proclamations of Friedman (adios, Joe) and Remnick (ditto) or Scarborough (“turncoat,” per one of his fellow MSNBC hosts) took on renewed significance well beyond the green room. (Scarborough and Mika have since settled back into a far less antagonistic position.) Hell, even the declarations of The New York Times editorial board felt momentarily notable.

Of course, this aberrant moment in American political history is hardly an enduring lifeline for industries beset by changing business models and new technologies, to which most news outlets have struggled to adapt. Prior to June 27, you may recall, D.C. media was navel-gazing over the perceived ethical shortcomings of Washington Post publisher Will Lewis, whose still-nebulous plans to modernize the inert legacy media property were being bogged down by internal friction. Amid all the drama of this week, CNN chief Mark Thompson still found time to unveil a long-awaited strategic reorganization that will prioritize digital while also slashing yet another 100 positions. On Wednesday, CBS News president Ingrid Ciprián-Matthews stepped down in part to avoid the tough and unforgiving task of implementing more cuts. Legacy news remains a rapidly shrinking industry, and no jolt of campaign drama can fundamentally change that.

It can, however, buy it a little more time. Many news companies do indeed see their fortunes rise and fall with current events, particularly when the nation’s focus centers on one big story (the Zucker thesis). In the first Trump era, both the Times and the Post grew subscriptions 50 percent year over year. The ultimate goal, as the Times’s unique success has shown, is to have a multifaceted business that isn’t so vulnerable to these ebbs and flows (hence Lewis’s “third newsroom,” or Thompson’s forthcoming subscription product). But big news definitely helps. And no matter what Biden decides to do, this moment is likely to stretch on until the election in November, fueled either by the anxiety around Biden’s obstinance or the suspense around the formation of a new ticket—followed, of course, by the drama of the election itself, then the first hundred days, and so forth.

Several media executives I spoke to this week predicted that the current momentum is likely to sustain if Trump wins, because the stakes of the coverage will be so enormous, or if Biden somehow wins, because it will be what one referred to as “a death watch.” Healthier news organizations, like the Times and the Journal, are likely to thrive in that environment. Those that have suffered through years of mismanagement, such as CNN and the Post, will have a far tougher row to hoe. Indeed, as predicted, CNN’s ratings since the debate have been relatively paltry: The network is once again a distant third behind its competitors, even during major news events.

As for Stephanopoulos, he’ll be just fine. He got to be a star during the ascendant glory years in this business, when the paychecks were fat and the medium really mattered, and anyway, he recently ceded some of those duties and went back to writing history bestsellers and making Hulu shows under his production shingle, BedBy8. Meanwhile, while this White House may not be calling anytime soon, Steph remains the perfect guy for these big interviews: a consummate professional and disciplined TV animal who maintains his figure (yes, this is 63, if you do the daily exercise and the yoga and eat an apple every day at 9 a.m.) and can otherwise enjoy life with his very beloved wife, actress Ali Wentworth, sip a martini at East Hampton’s 1770 House just down the way from their Sagaponack summer home, and play golf. And, while he may not have intended for it to happen, he also has the distinction of fulfilling the duties of his office, which is to actually tell viewers the truth.