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Laura Brett/AP
TOP STORY
TUCKER 2028?
Is Tucker Carlson actually running for president in 2028? That’s the question that’s been whispered throughout the newsletters all week, first by Brian Stelter in Reliable Sources, so it might as well be addressed.
The answer, it seems, is a solid… maybe.
If Carlson runs, it doesn’t seem he’ll do so under the GOP banner (and he’s definitely not running as a Democrat). What that could mean for Republicans remains to be seen. It appears Carlson has been using his platform to promote the idea that the United States might need a third party, but, as our writers have noted all week, he’s also used it to float plenty of conspiracy theories and promote a few antisemitic whackadoodles to boot.
The possibility of a Carlson White House run has not yet broken out of right-wing media, but that doesn’t mean it won’t.
THREE TAKES
The Free Press, Douglas Murray—Murray took a look at the 10-point manifesto Carlson laid out on Wednesday to detail Everything That Is Wrong With The United States. The trouble, Murray said, is that Carlson won’t fully commit. He seemed to suggest the formation of some kind of third party, which would be made up of “an Avengers-style team consisting of Tucker, former representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, former counterterrorism director Joe Kent, and some of their spouses.”
Carlson believes America “must pursue” 10 qualities: “fairness, sovereignty, productivity, beauty, health, honesty, optimism, wisdom, decency, and unity.” As Murray put it, “these are slogans that are meant to be unopposable.” And, sure, who wouldn’t agree? Except that’s the real issue, Murray added, because “Nobody needed him to put forward a list of virtues that pretty much everybody affirms.”
The Bulwark’s False Flag, Will Sommer—Carlson spent all summer “talking with an alleged Russian spy and accusing Donald Trump of being the Antichrist, then claiming he never said that,” Sommer pointed out yesterday. He also failed to stop President Donald Trump from going to war with Iran, despite many White House visits, and his behavior became so erratic that Vice President JD Vance started to “look like another tool of the same hawkish Republican establishment that had scorned Carlson.”
But Carlson has a plan! “Like Donald Trump after descending the golden escalator in 2015, Carlson depicts America as crisis-ridden and badly broken — but fixable, if voters choose the right candidate,” Sommer wrote.
Carlson’s speech didn’t really lay out a plan, but it does prompt a question about how “a guy nowadays best known for talking about demons and for cozying up to Vladimir Putin might go about setting up a run for the White House.”
The Bulwark’s Morning Shots, Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger—The Bulwark’s band of intrepid authors offered a second Carlson take this morning, and pointed out what is very likely a real truth: all of us are “going to be hearing a lot more from Tucker in the days and weeks to come.”
Some of that messaging will come from Greene, who posted ominously on social media this week: “The movement has begun.” A lot is going on within the movement, potentially a blend of “typical MAGA and MAHA impulses” and “populist attacks on the sort of open corruption and foreign adventurism Trump has embraced”
TAKEAWAY: While a Carlson “campaign” may seem may seem a little far-fetched, it’s also clear from this week’s stack that we should be keeping an eye on him. A shift toward a third party is something to be aware of, though a lot of what happens next will really come down to whether Carlson has the staying power to see that through… which is where many of our newsletter authors cast their doubt.
TOP SCOOPS & ANALYSIS
SCOOP 
Punchbowl News AM, Jake Sherman — Trump sat down with Punchbowl for a 30-minute Fly Out Day episode, which Sherman described as “very interesting.” The president offered up quite a bit, including that he believes GOP voters are “very angry” with the Republican Party, he’s not willing to support Senate Majority Leader John Thune just yet, Republicans can probably retain control of the Senate and House this fall, and he can spend MAGA Inc’s $400 million “warchest” on “pretty much anything I want.”
The SAVE America Act remains very important to Trump. “I’d like to see the people that want to vote against it,” he told Punchbowl. “I want to see the people, both Republican and Democrat, who vote against [it] because mostly it’s Democrats.” He also noted it would be “unfortunate” if Thune “doesn’t get there” in terms of the bill’s passage.
Trump also made sure to clarify that despite being the leader of the party, any GOP discord with voters does not rest with him. “If I [am not running], will those people go out and vote? And that’s the one thing I can’t do. I’m going to ask them to. … The question is, will they vote? Because a lot of them are very angry at Republicans, to be honest with you. … They’re angry at Republicans, but they’re not angry at me.”
SCOOP CJR’s Laurels and Darts, Susie Banikarim— Last week WEHCO Media “suddenly announced” it had sold the Chattanooga Times Free Press to Max and Craig Fuller, a father and son duo who immediately laid off 50 of the newspaper’s 128 employees (another 10 chose to leave on their own). Banikarim spoke to “a number” of the paper’s journalists who described the layoffs as “chaotic,” adding, “The way they were handled was cruel.”
Those who lost their jobs included the newspaper’s top editors, something that “suddenly really left us with no plan and no leadership and no idea how we’re going to get the paper out,” another editor told Banikarim. She also described the new owners as “heedless rich guys” who are “buying and selling and trading us like baseball cards.” And though the Fullers initially tried to blame the layoffs on WEHCO, they told Banikarim they really made the calls and WEHCO “executed it.” Craig Fuller posted on X, “I am following the Elon Musk playbook on the TFP (although at a much smaller level), as he did when he acquired Twitter.”
SCOOP POLITICO Playbook, Adam Wren, Dasha Burns, and Will Steakin — The current migration of Democratic leaders to Michigan “eager to plant a flag in the newly crowned early nominating state,” while “reading carefully amid the smoldering debris of a historic and bitter Democratic primary,” was “always the plan,” POLITICO reported today. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg “stayed neutral in the Senate primary to make it easier to bring people together after what we knew would be a long campaign,” a source told Playbook.
“It’s why he’s already rallying for the ticket to show strength and unity going into the general election,” that source added. Buttigieg also isn’t the only one making a trip to Michigan — Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, the “first ambitious Democrat to hit the ground Wednesday,” has already swung through the Great Lakes State.
ANALYSIS 
CNN’s Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter — Americans of all political persuasions are worried about their free speech rights, Stelter reported today, citing a survey from SSRS and commissioned by the Knight Foundation that uncovered a “stunning 30-point decline when asked to compare their freedom to express themselves without fear of government interference or punishment ten years ago to their expectations for ten years from now.”
The results suggest “that Americans are aware of the potential consequences” of Trump’s “free press/free speech crackdown,” which has been “audible, visible and very often successful.” Respondents also implied they “suspect that the news media feels Trump’s pressure.” Conservative media consumers are among the “groups with the greatest confidence about expressing their free speech rights in 2026,” as well as “Fox News fans, Republicans generally, older people, White people, and people with ‘high social involvement.’”
ANALYSIS The Poynter Report, Tom Jones — Trump is mad at the Washington Post, again, after the paper published a story this week “that said President Donald Trump, frustrated by the U.S.’s war with Iran, clashed with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week at Camp David” and that the president “demanded” to know why he “had apparently been misled on extreme munitions shortages that now threaten to limit military options with Iran,” per two sources familiar with the situation.
The White House branded the story as “100% fake news,” and Trump even took to Truth Social praise Hegseth. He also wrote, “This rumor was started by The Washington ComPost, one of the worst Media Outlets in the business, despite our telling them their story is completely FALSE. In actuality, I really believe their fake ‘reporting’ is treasonous!”
“And there it is: Trump accusing a media outlet of a serious crime of treason — and not for the first time,” Jones pointed out.
BUSINESS OF MEDIA 
Awful Announcing, Drew Lerner — Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch told investors that the company will keep its current NFL broadcast terms unchanged until the league’s contractual opt-out option comes up after the 2029–30 season. By telling NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to essentially “get lost,” Fox avoids adding billions of dollars to its rights bill over the next few seasons while continuing to pay a more manageable $2.25 billion annually. Meanwhile, CBS has paused its own NFL talks until the Warner Bros. Discovery-Paramount Skydance transaction is settled, as it is the only rights holder that must contractually deal with renegotiation due to the change of control. QUOTE 
“It’s a surprising move considering the existential importance NFL programming has to Fox, but perhaps not all that shocking given the network’s already bold maneuvering against the league’s efforts.”
Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter, Simon Owens — The anti-Trump-but-still-mostly- “A lot of media entrepreneurs I talk to lean away from trying to build up the personal brands of staff members because they think it’ll create too much key man risk, but in an age of AI-generated text summaries, a person’s face and voice are a strong differentiator.”
Breaker, Lachlan Cartwright — The Wall Street Journal and parent company Dow Jones are making a run on the sports business journalism market, though that’s already a pretty crowded place. Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker and Chief Growth Officer Scott Havens are planning to launch a new B2B subscription vertical to cover the business side of the sporting world. To build out the team, the Journal has held talks with CNBC Media and Sports Reporter Alex Sherman, as well as Financial Times sports business reporter Samuel Agini. QUOTE “In the subscription business, you can try to attract new subscribers by offering heavy price discounting (as the WSJ is doing with a $ 2-a-week promotion) or you can look to juice existing subscribers who love your product with new offerings. It appears Tucker and Havens are having a bet both ways.”
Status, Oliver Darcy — The Republican-led FCC voted two-to-one to do away with the two-decade-old television ownership cap, which previously prevented a single company from reaching more than 39% of U.S. TV households. Pushed by Chairman Brendan Carr, the deregulation is expected to spark intense legal battles. The FCC’s lone Democrat, Anna Gomez, dissented, calling the move “unlawful on its face” and warning that it will simply hand even more power over local news to a few corporate owners. QUOTE The rule change “hand[s] a major victory to corporate broadcast groups friendly with Donald Trump and his administration and reshaping the local news landscape across the country.”
Breaker, Lachlan Cartwright — The labor dispute between New York Times management and the News Guild has developed into a heated standoff over artificial intelligence standards. In their latest bargaining session, the Guild presented a counterproposal that would enshrine the Times’s own AI guidelines and standards into contracts, requiring management to bargain before changing any of those principles. The friction was exacerbated by news that the Times is developing an automated, real-time site search tool that would show AI-generated summaries of their work to readers without human oversight. QUOTE “It’s a familiar theme post-meeting as The New York Times hot labor summer drags on and negotiations enter their eighth month.”
Poynter, Angela Fu — USA Today Co. has struck a deal with Palantir to leverage its customer data to speed up ad targeting and create personalized subscription offerings. This news was big enough to make it into Poynter’s own newsletter and Brian Stelter’s Reliable Sources dispatch today, so give it a second look. QUOTE Speeding up data monetization—USA Today chief exec Mike Reed says, “What may take us a considerable amount of time to build internally, we can do in a matter of weeks or months with Palantir.”
OTHER COOL STUFF
Morning Brew: Meta has revealed that one of its cutting-edge artificial intelligence models went rogue and launched an unprompted cybersecurity attack on another company. Maybe this isn’t other “cool” stuff, actually. Just letting you know.
Morning Brew: Let’s give Morning Brew another shot at levity. A Florida steakhouse is ditching clothes entirely for a monthly, private fine-dining experience where diners strip down behind blackout curtains. For a fee, guests at the C.L.A.S.S. Soiree Steakhouse in Hollywood can eat a multi-course meal au naturel, though the staff remains fully clothed for sanitary reasons.
Feed Me: Sweetgreen is partnering with tinned fish brand Fishwife to launch a new, DIY Niçoise salad. The catch — pun intended — is you have to put the fish on the food yourself. Sure. Why not?
WHAT GOT MISSED?
Status, Oliver Darcy — This week CBS Evening News celebrated a ratings boost for the first time since March of this year, a win for the network — but not a win for host Tony Dokoupil, who was on a two-week vacation when it happened. Dokoupil’s temporary replacement, Matt Gutman, is instead responsible for the boost. Status, which has made Dokoupil coverage a relentless crusade, noted that Nielsen ratings data indicates Gutman “averaged 4.1 million viewers” during his first week. “While Dokoupil averaged an even 4 million viewers during the week of June 22, he has not surged past the key number since March 30, when he averaged 4.2 million viewers, according to the ratings data obtained by Status.”
NEWSLETTER OF THE DAY
Simon Owens’ Media Newsletter, Simon Owens — Owens spent part of his Friday morning newsletter writing about… newsletters! Which is actually pretty fun. Owens reflected on the success of The Gist, which was launched by Ellen Hyslop back in 2017 with a group of co-founders. At the time, “none of them had worked in media or the sports industry,” Owens wrote, but things have changed. The Gist tapped into fans who had “grown frustrated with a sports media ecosystem that largely catered to men while overlooking millions of potential female fans” and now has more than 1 million subscribers.
Owens also took a look at The Bulwark’s success on YouTube, where the conservative-yet-anti-Trump outlet has more than 140,000 paid subscribers. Owens, citing a profile of the outlet by Inc, noted that much of that success can be attributed to one person: Tim Miller “has an enormous personal brand now,” Owens wrote, and “his fanbase has trickled down into the rest of the Bulwark universe.”
Owens often gives a smart glimpse into the media world, and today’s newsletter is no exception.
This newsletter was produced by Lindsey Ellefson.
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