A MESSAGE FROM DISNEY

Disney has been bringing happiness to families and communities for over a century, and continues to be a powerful economic contributor. Here’s how: Since 2017, Disney has nearly doubled spending on film and television content, and is spending $23B in FY25. Explore Disney’s Impact

But first, here’s Abby with the latest on the “big, beautiful bill”...

With his whirlwind Middle East dealmaking trip in the rearview, Trump headed straight to Congress this morning to browbeat Republicans into alignment with his legislative agenda—i.e., getting fiscal hardliners to ease up on demands for Medicaid cuts, and SALT caucus stalwarts to accept a higher cap. But his overtures aren’t working on members quite yet, and in some cases might be backfiring. Yesterday, an aide to one of the SALT holdouts said that any Trump-led attack on the pragmatist wing of the party would only stiffen their spines. I was skeptical, despite the rising number of Republicans who seem willing to challenge the president. But then Mike Lawler, the New York swing-district Republican flirting with a run for governor, told reporters, “While I respect the president, I’m not budging on it”—underscoring once again how the narrowness of Mike Johnson’s majority gives individual members like Lawler tremendous power. Of course, this fight is about much more than Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” So far, the president’s second term has been defined by the exercise of executive power, supplanting and sometimes overriding Congress. The megabill under consideration right now may end up comprising the whole of his legislative legacy this term, and the only major Republican initiative on the agenda before the midterms. If he loses here, it’s unlikely he will pick up enough seats in either chamber to secure lasting policy wins. The fight also signals something about Trump’s political dominance of the Republican Party. All winter, senators capitulated to him over cabinet nominations, casting “yes” votes that could come back to haunt them. And yet, this week, members from both ends of the G.O.P. ideological spectrum are challenging him. That said, the threat of a primary challenge is a powerful thing, and Republican moderates in particular tend to cave at a remarkable clip once Trump starts working the phones. The tides could turn several more times before Johnson’s self-imposed Memorial Day deadline.

On yesterday’s episode of The Powers That Be, our flagship daily podcast, my partner Dylan Byers dropped in to discuss two of the biggest hot-button political topics in Washington right now. In this lightly edited and condensed excerpt, Dylan reveals what really happened when CBS News C.E.O. Wendy McMahon “resigned” earlier this week amid all the turmoil surrounding Shari Redstone’s attempt to get the Paramount-Skydance deal across the finish line. (As Dylan reported last month, Shari has become an increasingly interventionist presence within CBS News, pushing leadership to make its reporting more pro-Israel and pressuring 60 Minutes, in particular, to back away from coverage that might irritate Trump.) We also discussed the publication of Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin—their much-hyped tome about Joe Biden’s decline in office, which came out today.

Peter Hamby: What was the reason that Wendy McMahon left this week? Was she fired?

A MESSAGE FROM DISNEY

Disney has been bringing happiness to families and communities for over a century, and continues to be a powerful economic contributor. Here’s how: With more than $30 billion in investments in U.S. parks, Disney is creating nearly ten thousand jobs. Explore Disney’s Impact

Dylan Byers: Yeah, she was fired. George Cheeks, co-C.E.O. of Paramount, put the call in over the weekend, and basically informed her that there were two ways this could go. She could be fired, or she could sort of resign on her own terms with her head held relatively high. And, of course, at a moment when Paramount is in mediation with Trump over the 60 Minutes lawsuit and the looming Skydance-Paramount deal, it’s impossible to ignore that context. It’s also impossible to ignore that Bill Owens, the executive producer of 60 Minutes, similarly resigned recently. And yes, one of the sticking points here was that, just as Bill Owens said he would not apologize for anything 60 Minutes had done, Wendy McMahon would not apologize either. I don’t want to ignore that there’s a degree to which Wendy is sort of wrapping herself in the cloak of the First Amendment and the fourth estate in order to go down as something of a martyr, when in fact there have been long-standing frustrations, on both the CBS-Paramount side and the Skydance side, over how Wendy did her job. Peter: There was a line in the recent Times piece that said “Mrs. McMahon’s critics also believe the reporting at 60 Minutes had become politically biased, exposing the company to unnecessary criticism.” What is that in reference to? Dylan: These things get complicated, and two things can be true. One is, there are things that were happening at 60 Minutes that pissed off Trump, and therefore complicated getting the [Skydance-Paramount] deal done, which didn’t make anyone who was trying to get this deal done happy. It’s also true, not mutually exclusive by any stretch, that there were just general frustrations with the nature of 60 Minutes programming more broadly—that it had become too topical and too politicized. And, of course, in the era of Trump, how can it not be? There’s a long list of things that happened at 60 Minutes or CBS News over the last year that might have complicated this deal. There’s also the fact that Wendy and Owens decided to get rid of Norah O’Donnell at CBS Evening News, and since then, the program has hemorrhaged one and a half million viewers. That has nothing to do with Trump, and has nothing to do with this deal. It’s just bad leadership. Peter: By the way, these broadcasts are still much bigger than any cable news show. But that’s right, even if CBS is getting 6 million a night, shedding more than a million viewers over a matter of months is pretty bad. Dylan: It’s just economics. Ostensibly, you get rid of Norah O’Donnell, and you put these two co-hosts in her place so you can save a few million bucks a year. But if you’re going to hemorrhage one and a half million viewers in the process, you’re actually going to end up losing money. I think if Shari had her way, she would have gotten rid of Wendy a long time ago. In fact, I first wrote three or four months ago that Wendy wasn’t going to survive the merger, because the guys at Skydance felt the same way. The context here is that Wendy was a lame duck, and she knew her time was coming. And the option to get out now—by initially claiming to have resigned for not apologizing for the 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, that certainly no one should have to apologize for—she’s at least leaving on better terms, and there’s a better narrative around that than the fact that she really just didn’t do a great job. Peter: Who might be next to take this newsroom over, and what do they need?

Dylan: For the time being, it’ll be Tom Cibrowski, who’s a pretty well-respected guy in the industry who came from the world of ABC. He’ll look at everything that’s happened until now and be able to manage this, I think, in a way that won’t create too many headaches. Now, as for who should take it over in the long term? I don’t know the longevity of this sort of evening format, or even the CBS Mornings format. I think Gayle King is probably gonna leave soon, so I don’t know what that becomes afterward. 60 Minutes is actually a much more interesting question, because the nature of long-form investigative programming like that has a much better shelf life on a streaming service. You could see a scenario where, if you got a really good, competent leader in place, who could create packages that were a little less topical and more evergreen, 60 Minutes could actually continue to exist in a meaningful way in the post-linear landscape. You could have a Jeff Zucker type, or a Ben Sherwood type—or, perhaps, a younger person in the school of investigative journalism who could turn it on to audiences below the age of 65. I don’t know, but I’m more bullish on the future of 60 Minutes as a brand than I am on the rest of CBS News.

Peter: To switch gears a bit, I assume [Biden’s recent cancer diagnosis] will help with Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s [Original Sin] book sales. But I’m also curious how Jake and Alex confront this issue… Dylan: Yeah, it’s interesting. They’re still going to do the tour, and they will stop by all the familiar venues to promote the book, and have already started. I believe they’re coming on The Grill Room at some point, unless my recent reporting on the Tapper–Hunter Biden riff pissed them off. After every presidential administration and every election cycle, there are a lot of postgame analyses and postmortems. Losing to Trump for the second time has created a lot of soul-searching among Democrats. I think there are a lot of folks looking around and wondering, What the hell happened? I think a lot of people go searching for someone or something to blame. Original Sin lands at a particularly opportune time because those feelings are still very raw, and what the book is effectively saying is: There’s a cover-up. There’s a conspiracy here that Biden and his family and the people around him kept this hidden. And on top of that, the press didn’t do a good enough job investigating it. I think this is a very convenient book for people in the Democratic Party who want to run for office and say, The Democrats didn’t lose because they lack vision, the Democrats lost because of this specific thing. That’s a very nice narrative if you’re a Pete Buttigieg. People also love the idea of a conspiracy or cover-up. Jake and Alex’s book promises to take us behind the scenes of that. Plus, at the end of the day, they’re right. When you think about the stakes being what they are with Trump’s second term, I think people do sort of want to take a minute to reckon with that. So Jake and Alex are going to come out swinging. I don’t think the aggressive prostate cancer diagnosis means you have to stop the book tour. They’ll go out and talk their book, and I think it will do quite well by the standards of a political book.

Need help? Review our FAQ page or contact us for assistance. For brand partnerships, email ads@puck.news. You received this email because you signed up to receive emails from Puck, or as part of your Puck account associated with . To stop receiving this newsletter and/or manage all your email preferences, click here.

Puck is published by Heat Media LLC. 107 Greenwich St, New York, NY 10006