Greetings from Los Angeles and welcome back to In the Room. I’m still waiting for the smartest take on this petulant spat between Trump and Musk, and what it says about our culture… But perhaps there are no smart takes on this topic. Quite fittingly, however, the memes are excellent. I suppose every generation gets the political discourse it deserves. In tonight’s issue, news and notes on the other Beltway squabble over former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s decision to defect from the Democratic Party. The move, which appears to be a blatant and bizarre cash grab, has set Bidenworld and the press corps alight and inspired a torrent of criticism from nearly every corner of the Brady Briefing Room. 🍸 Plus, on the latest edition of The Grill Room, Julia Alexander and I unpacked the shifting logic behind sports streaming deals, and how platforms are rethinking how they value audience engagement and viewership. We also discussed how generative A.I. will disrupt the advertising business and the unexpected opportunities it could create—a topic Julia explored in her latest excellent analysis for Puck, YouTube’s Imminent A.I. Revolution. Follow The Grill Room on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to listen. Mentioned in this issue: Bob Iger, Robert Gibbs, Gilda Squire, Rob Manfred, Rob McDowell, Olivia Metzger, Molly Morse, Anita Dunn, John Kirby, Jimmy Pitaro, Jay Carney, Jen Psaki, and many more… Let’s get started…

The Shari situation: Shari Redstone, who is desperately awaiting federal approval for Paramount’s sale to Skydance, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and underwent surgery last month, she confirmed to the Times. The cancer had already spread to her vocal cords by that point, but her spokesperson, Molly Morse, said her prognosis is “excellent,” and that “she is maintaining all professional and philanthropic activities throughout her treatment, which is ongoing.” We wish her the best.As you know, Shari’s deal approval is seemingly contingent on a settlement between Paramount and Trump over his $20 billion lawsuit against 60 Minutes, and mediation talks between the two parties are ongoing. Meanwhile, at least some executives and board directors remain concerned that a settlement could expose them to bribery charges. Though, as my partner Eriq Gardner pointed out, the board may simply “want a settlement that looks defensible—a sum in line with the Bob Iger market rate.” (Obviously, settling a meritless lawsuit isn’t really defensible at any price, but I guess we’re past that.) In any event, the stakes are high for Shari, in light of her myriad debts and the declining value of the asset. As I’ve written, the alternative to a deal is, at minimum, a multi-hundred-million-dollar bath and shittier exit options. On Thursday, former F.C.C. Commissioner Rob McDowell put the extent of Shari’s current crisis in sharp relief: “If this is not the deal for Paramount, then it’s a melting ice cube,” he said at the Gabelli Funds’ media conference. “What would be the next price? Who would be the next buyer?”

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MLB rights moneyball: At this week’s annual Major League Baseball owners meeting, commissioner Rob Manfred hinted that a third mystery suitor had emerged alongside NBC and Apple for the package of games that ESPN recently dropped in its contentious uncoupling with the league. “Two have been out there, and the third I’m not going to get into,” Manfred said of the media negotiations.As my partner John Ourand recently noted, it’s possible that the third partner is Fox. But my suspicion is that Manfred is actually referring to ESPN, even if the two have not formally renewed talks. Yes, Rob and ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro have blown each other up in public, but they may both need each other more than they can countenance being apart—albeit at a very different rate from the $550 million per year that ESPN was paying MLB. As a third partner, ESPN might be able to offer a fraction of that fee for some tonnage on Flagship—I mean ESPN, the service. At the very least, intimating that there is a third partner is one way to try to drive up the price. (By the way, Jimmy and I reflected on the MLB-ESPN split in a recent episode of The Grill Room, which you can listen to here.)
O for 3: The Lionsgate-backed management and production company 3 Arts Entertainment has expanded into the news space: On Thursday, it acquired Olivia Metzger’s independent talent agency, OManagement, which represents Fox’s Harris Faulkner and a handful of 30 Rock green-room denizens, including Craig Melvin, Kristen Welker, Steve Kornacki, and Ari Melber. The deal comes on the heels of 3 Arts’ push into sports via last week’s acquisition of A&A Management, which represents Travis Kelce, Jonathan Kuminga, and other athletes.

And now, the main event: the other squabble in Washington…

Karine Toward a Cliff

K.J.P. is politically homeless after an ill-timed defection from the Democratic Party—yet another misstep for a White House press secretary who could never read the room. Worse, she appears to be positioning herself for a second act on television at the very moment that the industry is melting away.

Dylan Byers

On Wednesday, former Biden White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, whom many recall fecklessly defending the president in the wake of his CNN debate nightmare, announced that she was defecting from the Democratic Party she had served for the entirety of her career. The announcement was conveniently timed to the release of her forthcoming memoir, Independent. In a press release, Karine said she’d “determined that the danger we face as a country requires freeing ourselves of boxes.” Her publisher, Krishan Trotman, of Hachette’s Legacy Lit imprint, said K.J.P. “didn’t come to her decision to be an independent lightly,” and intimated that it was influenced by “the betrayal by the Democratic Party” that led to Biden’s decision to abandon his reelection bid. Had Trump and Elon Musk not picked this week to go full Teresa Giudice on one another, Karine’s P.R. effort, and its fallout, might have garnered a little more attention beyond the Beltway. After all, she’s the latest exemplar of a proud tradition: Facing her own political exile, she bravely chose door number three—pivoting her own beliefs and shitting on everyone in her past. In Washington, an insular town where everyone is up in everyone’s business and intimately familiar with one another’s motivations, Karine’s news set off a cascade of reactions that coalesced around some longstanding gripes: namely, that Karine is a nice but incompetent careerist who was demonstrably bad at her job and is now shamelessly using this pivot to stretch for another hoist up the political media industry’s greasy pole.

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Karine’s appointment was heralded for its groundbreaking nature—she was the first Black and openly gay person to lead the Brady Briefing Room. After her defection, however, she was soon held as singular for other reasons. “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say she was one of the worst press secretaries in the TV era,” one White House reporter told me. “The striking thing is that her colleagues all knew it but they decided they couldn’t fire her, even as they were saying democracy is at stake.” Another: “She was easily the most incompetent and irrelevant White House press secretary ever. Everyone who covered the White House knew she had no idea what was happening there while it was going on, and she wants everyone to believe she’s figured anything out since?”

Whatta Town

A White House communications official serves several constituencies, of course: the boss, the executive branch, the party, the press, and the public. Alas, even before becoming press secretary in 2022, Karine had jettisoned much of the good will she’d built with these groups—due to her managerial inexperience, her refusal to work stories, and her glaring lack of policy expertise. Her own team chafed at being forced to pick up her slack, while many members of the White House press corps were baffled by her unwillingness to engage on stories or even respond to them. Karine’s shortcomings were evident whenever she promised to “circle back” on a question she didn’t have a written answer for, and especially during the Israel-Gaza conflict. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby was frequently brought in to share the podium with her on account of her seemingly weak grasp of the topic. Several sources said Karine viewed Kirby’s presence as a threat and complained about it internally to senior Biden advisor Anita Dunn and chief of staff Jeff Zients. Last October, after Dunn left the administration, Axios reported that Karine had even moved to block Kirby from participating in briefings. Meanwhile, Karine often seemed preoccupied with her own personal brand and, perhaps, her career ambitions. White House communications pros who survive their tenures relatively unscathed tend to pick one of two paths out of 1600 Pennsylvania. The first and far more sustainable path runs through corporate affairs for the Fortune 100: Jay Carney at Amazon, Robert Gibbs at McDonald’s and then WBD, Tony Fratto at Goldman, etcetera. The second, which is more hit-or-miss, runs through the green room: George Stephanopoulos at ABC, Dana Perino at Fox, Jen Psaki at MSNBC, and so on. (If none of those options is available to you, you go on Dancing With the Stars and then get a job at Newsmax.) Karine’s predilection for Vogue photoshoots, Instagram reels, and one particularly ill-advised decision to invite the Real Housewives of Potomac to the White House and do a cameo on the show, suggested she aspired to the latter. Equally ill-advised was her decision, first reported in Politico, to take help from New York–based publicist Gilda Squire while she was still working in the White House. (Squire was occasionally copied on official White House emails.) Anyway, Karine’s attempt to put her own party on blast for the sake of book sales—and, it seems, some quixotic bid for another television job—likely tanked her standing with the one constituency she had left in her corner. On Thursday, anonymous former White House officials went scorched earth in pieces for Politico, Axios, and elsewhere. One described her to Axios as “ineffectual” and “underprepared,” adding that she “didn't know how to manage a team, didn’t know how to shape or deliver a message, and often created more problems than she solved.” Another called her political pivot “as breathtaking as it is desperate,” and “a bizarre cash grab.” It’s hard to fathom what Karine thought the outcome would be here. According to Politico’s Eli Stokols, she had harbored ambitions to be on The View, which seemed implausible before this rollout and impossible now. The tack away from the Democrats might suggest hopes for a Fox News contract, an ambition that a source at that network called “laughable.” More likely, her lack of competency in policy matters is simply matched by a misapprehension of how to actually advance one’s career. Indeed, Karine’s opportunism here is hardly exceptional—in Washington everyone has an angle and an agenda—but her decision underscores the validity of the criticisms about her in one central way. As loyal readers of this email may have gleaned, the TV news industry is undergoing historic disruption. MSNBC has been tied to a raft called Versant. CNN is soon about to be rolled into a spinco of linear assets that, given the figures involved, is likely to have far more attached debt and (if possible) an even stupider name. Newsmax, which just survived a whiplash C.E.O., is countenancing significant litigation. And Fox News, which is enjoying a profound thumping of its rivals, may be at the mercy of the Murdochs T&E lawyers and a court in Nevada. You don’t need to read the presidential daily briefing to know that this would have been a better time to get a job at Brunswick or Teneo and lie low for a bit. Of her various eye-rolling shortcomings—blithely acting like Biden was sharp as ever, switching parties, and monetizing it in book form—her biggest mistake was that she picked the wrong post-White House career path.

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