Is Trump’s Reignited Feud With Kristen Welker a Sign He Fears His Political Mortality?

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TOP STORY

TRUMP’S FCC THREAT AGAINST WELKER

President Donald Trump fired off a virtual rampage against Meet the Press host Kristen Welker Sunday, and called on the FCC to take action against her for “purposeful inaccuracy” in her reporting and interviewing. Trump is, of course, mad that Welker accurately noted he hasn’t racked up wins across the board in terms of primaries carried out so far this year.

Welker said Sunday the president has had “mixed results” with recent GOP primary endorsements. A dozen Trump-backed candidates have gone down in this election, including six in the month of August. (To say nothing of the close call for Sen. Darline Graham despite a massive push from Trump and his allies.)

Still, the president was livid, writing on Truth Social, “How can anyone be allowed to say this, working for freely given Public Airwaves? Results are attached. Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment.”

NBC News immediately defended Welker, but per our stack, the president’s fixation probably isn’t going away anytime soon.

THREE TAKES

TheWrap, J. Kim Murphy — Trump’s outburst “marks Trump’s latest call upon the federal regulatory agency to act against coverage that he deems antagonistic,” Murphy pointed out today, and his wrath against NBC is unfolding as the FCC “fields the ABC lawsuit.” That lawsuit is the result of similar ire the president directed at ABC earlier this year, which inspires a question: will NBC take a similar route if the network finds itself seemingly without options in Trump’s media war?

The Poynter Report, Tom Jones — Trump’s problem, at least in part, is that Welker offered “accurate commentary,” Jones noted today. Despite that, “Trump lost his cool,” and now Welker and NBC will be forced to deal with whatever comes next. Jones also correctly pointed out that “the FCC does not have the authority to punish Welker or NBC over what she said.” But the president may have a larger goal at play, he continued: “Trump’s threats undermine our democracy. And, more concerning, Carr seems to react to Trump’s complaints.”

CNN’s Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter — Stelter noted the remarks by the president were his “most explicit efforts yet to direct the FCC to carry out his wishes.” FCC chair Brendan Carr did not comment on the matter to CNN. Trump’s demands also go against the very rules of the FCC, Stelter added. Those rules note the agency “cannot prevent the broadcast of any particular point of view,” and the idea of punishing Welker “would historically be a nonstarter.” Stelter continued, “But Carr has been quick to respond to Trump’s requests to go after media organizations … and he has taken aggressive action against some FCC licensees.”

TAKEAWAY: Why Welker and why now? Welker often seems to roil the Left as well as the Right — and those are the media figures who often seem to stymie Trump the most. It’s easy for him to go after a partisan critic. But an even-handed reporter with serious journalistic bona fides who happens to point out inconvenient facts? Trump has always had trouble dealing with that. (Even more so if it’s coming from a woman — as evidenced by the president’s attacks on both Welker and Maggie Haberman in the last week.)

And this particular subject hits Trump hard because it shines a light on his political mortality. There are nine weeks left until the midterms, after which he becomes a lame duck. His power thereafter will rest almost entirely on the degree to which Republicans fear his wrath. If his primary endorsement is no longer an automatic, more and more will see fit to cross him.

📰 TOP SCOOPS & ANALYSIS 📰

SCOOP 🍨 The Bulwark’s Morning Shots, Jim Swift — The town of Springfield, Ohio, has seen ICE  arrest 34 Haitian residents since July, Swift noted today. Pastor Carl Ruby of Central Christian Church told Swift, who has traveled to the city throughout Trump’s second presidency, that Springfield is “under siege.” The Greater Grace Temple has become a hub for activists, who are doing everything from helping their fellow residents “write letters in Haitian Creole to detainees” to packing food boxes, and they’re also placing a lot of phone calls to Republicans Gov. Mike DeWine and Sens. Jon Husted and Bernie Moreno. “This is what Trump is doing to our towns and cities. In the name of cracking down on immigration, he has ripped our social fabric apart,” Swift wrote. “And it is small acts of decent human beings—people who don’t want to live in a society in which the state terrorizes families, schools, and churches—that is keeping it together.”

SCOOP 🍨 Status, Natalie Korach — Scripps is eliminating 268 jobs and replacing many of them with AI and automated news delivery services. Some of the cuts impact anchors who have served their communities for years. Though it “may seem odd that the company is parting with scores of its most recognizable faces,” the decision is “by design,” Korach reported today. In a decision that’s sparked internal and external “scrutiny,” Scripps has “adopted a 24/7 streaming model in around a dozen of its markets” that will feature “anchorless news broadcasting.” Instead of live news, viewers receive “a rolling stream of prerecorded stories.” As Korach put it, “What’s missing, in other words, is a person.”

SCOOP 🍨 POLITICO Playbook, Will Steakin, Adam, Wren, and Dasha Burns — Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) is blaming Democrat leaders if progressive candidates fail. “I think there are a few who would say, ‘You know what? It’s not worth it,” he told Playbook of Democrats “who want to see [Abdul] El-Sayed lose. El-Sayed represents “a threat to oligarchy,” he added. Sanders also pointed out, “You’re talking about a small number of people who are at the head of the Democratic Party. You’re talking about the donor class. Are they less than enthusiastic about Abdul? Yes, they are.” Sanders also wasn’t so quick to insist El-Sayed should cut ties with left-wing commentator Hasan Piker. “Like every other podcaster in the world, he says dumb things that people should reject,” Sanders said. “Apparently it works when you and others talk about Mr. Piker.”

ANALYSIS 👀 To The Contrary, Charlie Sykes — Democrats might have a Hasan Piker problem, but Republicans have an Elon Musk problem, Sykes wrote today. Musk, who has revived America PAC and is pouring money into Republican races, will “once again” be made “the face of the party.” The GOP has also “weaponized” the relationship between the Democrats and Piker, but concerns about Piker pale in comparison to those about Musk, “the richest, loudest, and most virulent antisemite and racist on the planet” who is “bankrolling and campaigning with pretty much the entire GOP.” Sykes concluded, “If Piker is awful (and he is), Musk is (and I’m trying not to be hyperbolic here), a trillion times worse.”

ANALYSIS 👀 Semafor, Ben Smith — Smith is also keeping an eye on Musk’s resurgence in the GOP. Though Musk has “moved on” from the “early days of the Trump administration” during which he would “amplify and drive his assault on government agencies through an array of commentators on his platform X,” he left behind a “cottage industry.” DataRepublican, aka Jennica Pounds, has found great success pushing “groundless USAID theories in the early days of DOGE [and] with Musk’s help.” Pounds has “built one of the top businesses in X’s (modest) subscription program” and is making around $300,000 just on X. That’s a “sign of the extent to which the power and money involved with social media are more powerful than more traditional forms of patronage.”

ANALYSIS 👀 The Poynter Report, Tom Jones — The G20 is holding “high-level finance meetings” in Asheville, North Carolina, this week, and “certain reporters from three major news outlets” were denied credentials ahead of the event. Those reporters planned to cover the meetings for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg News. The affected reporters include Alan Rappeport, who has “attended nearly a dozen G7 and G20 meetings in person” and the Journal’s economics reporter, Matt Grossman. Troublingly, “it’s not clear exactly why certain reporters were denied credentials.”

📈BUSINESS OF MEDIA 🎥

The Ankler’s The Wakeup, Sean McNulty — Major music publishing giants Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell have joined forces to file a massive copyright infringement lawsuit against AI firm Anthropic. The action alleges widespread, unlicensed scraping and reproduction of protected song lyrics, reigniting high-stakes litigation over generative training datasets and compounding an active lawsuit previously initiated by Universal Music, Concord, and ABKCO.  QUOTE 📣 The parties claim it’s “one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history.”

The Ankler’s The Wakeup, Sean McNulty — Penske Media Corporation has officially acquired 100% ownership of the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin. The buyout folds the entirety of the influential tech, music, and film event into Penske’s expansive entertainment portfolio—which already includes Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone, and Billboard—shoring up the publisher’s monetization play across major live cultural tentpoles. One Sheet readers will recall that a few months ago, all the newsletters were buzzing about how live events might be the thing to save traditional media. Penske obviously took that bet.  QUOTE 📣 “I write everything using AI now for the same reason I use a calculator when I do math problems.”

Feed Me, Emily Sundberg — The Sports Gossip Show, hosted by Madeline Hill and Charlotte Wilder, is exiting The Athletic Podcast Network after a one-year stint under The New York Times banner. This is one of many, many podcast exits the Times has been dealing with lately. Originating as a Substack newsletter before joining The Athletic, the show covered major cultural intersections across a variety of major American sports leagues. Hill and Wilder stated they are departing to take their next step as independent creators exploring off-the-field culture. QUOTE 📣 “[R]est assured that now 100% of your attendance money in March is going to the PENSKE empire.”

Semafor Media, Max Tani — A Semafor analysis of 310 guest op-eds published over the past month across The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post revealed that all three papers are regularly publishing AI-generated text in their opinion sections. Two out of the three have strict rules prohibiting that, but it doesn’t look like those regulations matter much: Using the AI detection tool Pangram, the review found varying degrees of synthetic text across opinion pages. This follows billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller’s pretty straightforward admission he drafted a Journal column using AI and editor Paul Gigot’s subsequent defense of the practice.  QUOTE 📣 “Still, it’s likely text from large language models will someday be indistinguishable from human writing.”

Semafor Media, Max Tani — Highlighting the harsh limits of chasing creator-driven audiences, the joint-effort book of YouTube titan Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast) and bestselling author James Patterson, The Most Dangerous Games, is on track to become a major commercial mess for publisher HarperCollins. Despite Donaldson’s massive global following and aggressive promotions on his channels, preorders hovered in the low four digits, sitting at a nasty #20 on Amazon’s new release charts and falling far short of justifying the enormous upfront talent fees. QUOTE 📣 “Good news for the subset of MrBeast fans who love to read mystery novels…”

Page Six Hollywood, Tim Baysinger — A juicy feud between United Talent Agency (UTA) and Penske trade publication Variety is escalating. PSH’s Peter Kiefer and Tatiana Siegel reported on contentious text messages between veteran journalist Matt Donnelly and agency reps. The public friction prompted UTA chief executive David Kramer to circulate a widely discussed company-wide internal memo addressing relations with the trade outlet. QUOTE 📣 “While the temps in LA were unseasonably warm, it wasn’t as heated as the beef between Hollywood agency UTA and Penske pub Variety.”

Poynter, Tom Jones — In an unexpected executive shakeup, ESPN has axed the position of senior vice president and editor-in-chief Roxanna Scott less than 10 months after hiring her. It’s not just that she’s out; the role is eliminated. Network management described the departure as part of a restructuring of the sports network’s news division rather than a broader wave of talent layoffs, restructuring its editorial leadership to streamline core newsgathering operations.

CJR’s The Media Today, Ivan L. Nagy — Fired Stars and Stripes editor-in-chief Erik Slavin, publisher Max Lederer, and Middle East reporter Lara Korte filed a federal lawsuit in Washington, D.C., district court against the Department of Defense. One Sheet readers already know about this suit, but CJR had a great, thorough look at it this morning that’s worth checking out for some solid context and reporting. The complaint alleges the Pentagon violated their First Amendment rights by unlawfully terminating them for insubordination after they defended the 165-year-old newspaper’s statutory editorial independence and resisted directives restricting newsroom reporting. QUOTE 📣 “While the Pentagon has been busy dismantling Stars and Stripes, the rest of the press has heard little from the DoD. The last press briefing inside the Pentagon was held on May 5; since then, a ceasefire with Iran has ended, five US service members have been killed and hundreds more injured, Donald Trump left a NATO summit in a catering truck and an unmarked military jet, and sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln tried to jump overboard as their deployment in the Arabian Sea extended to more than two hundred and fifty days. The Pentagon didn’t respond to my questions about the lack of press briefings.”

OTHER COOL STUFF

Feed Me — Queens underground techno nightclub Basement has drawn a hard line against wearable tech, outlawing smart glasses and threatening a lifetime ban against anyone who dares bring them into the space where Nicole Kidman shot that rave scene for Babygirl.

Page Six Hollywood — Forget ordinary wills and trusts: Hollywood A-listers are now actively factoring digital resurrections into their estate planning. The move comes as both Gene Wilder and Val Kilmer are being revived using AI for upcoming entertainment projects.

The Wakeup — Pop superstar Olivia Rodrigo made good on her philanthropic promises over the weekend and threw a heck of a party. Her Daisy Chain Fields Festival, modeled after Lilith Fair, raised $20 million for 10 nonprofits that support women and girls.

Status — A former White House teleprompter operator has been accused of placing bets on Kalshi regarding what the president would say in speeches and has been ordered to pay $172,000 as a result.

👀 WHAT GOT MISSED? 👀

Morning Brew, Adam Epstein — While the U.S.-Canada tariff feud rages, geopolitical tensions are running high on the other side of the Atlantic as well. Icelanders voted against joining the EU, with many of those who pushed the “no” vote voicing concerns “that joining the bloc would threaten Iceland’s control of its lucrative fishing industry.” This is being described as a “setback,” especially as the EU “is trying to attract new member states and gain a stronger foothold in the Arctic.” Those in favor hoped “joining the EU could boost the country’s economy and stabilize its geopolitical standing,” as Iceland remains the only member of NATO without a military of its own.

🏆 NEWSLETTER OF THE DAY 🏆

The Poynter Report, Tom Jones — Jones very nearly showed up in every section of our own newsletter today, which makes this crown particularly easy to bestow. From his analysis of the simmering Trump/Welker/NBC battle to his elevation of stories about DHS’ insistence on a New York Times report on how ICE treats citizens in custody, Jones yet again demonstrates his ability to hone in on the details of what makes each story important.

This newsletter was produced by Lindsey Ellefson.