Oval Office Tour Guide: Politico’s White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns who up and till Monday had not seen the Oval Office in person. (Photo by Shannon Finney/Getty Images)
Welcome to the latest edition of Breaker. If this email has been forwarded, you can subscribe here and send your questions and complaints here. If you have a tip contact the 24/7 Breaker Tip Hotline via text or Signal # 551 655 2343. Anonymity guaranteed!
In tonight's scoop-packed edition, POLITICO had a big get with a sit-down with Donald Trump – their first in five years. But how the beleaguered publication managed to land the interview has POLITICO journalists curious and concerned.
Also tonight, The Ankler CEO Janice Min is this week's guest on The Breaker Pod. With the Netflix WBD deal having just broken when we sat down to record the pod there was much to chinwag about the future of Hollywood.
Plus, we’ve finally gotten to the bottom of why Sean Spicer and Dan Turrentine quit Mark Halperin’s 2WAY, Newsmax can’t tell us (or the SEC for that matter) about the origin of a $41.3 million settlement, we have a scene report from Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me 3rd anniversary bash at The Waverly, the PR pros toasting a new AI tool for spin doctors and why former CNN head honcho Jeff Zucker was in Abu Dhabi this week.
Finally, it’s Tuesday which means Hamish’s Hot Sauce (now alternating with Lionel Barber’s Briefing) is back to weigh in on the Netflix/WBD/PSKY deal-palooza.
Mentioned tonight: David Zaslav, Ted Sarandos, David Remnick, David Ellison, Kaitlan Collins, Louise Story, Piers Morgan, Will Welch, Samuel Hine, Adam Faze, Alex Vadukul, Jessica Testa, Michael Grynbaum, David Haskell, Charlotte Klein, Emma Wartzman, Derek Blasberg, Kristina O'Neill, Danny Karel, Helen Tobin, Joe Weisenthal, Mary Hood, Maxi Tani, Oliver Darcy, Paul Needham, Becca Parrish, Brooks Reitz, Emmett Shine, Cami Fateh, Jason Lee, Daniel Lippman, Caitlin Oprysko, Tilly Norwood, Michelle Masek, Eleanor Hawkins, Jesse Angelo, Brittney Le Roy, Riley Konsella, Alex Konrad, Lauren Starke, Rachael Bade, Jack Blanchard, Mike Allen, Jake Sherman, Anna Palmer, Anita Kumar, Bill Daddi and more.
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Janice Min Breaks Down The Netflix WBD Deal And What It Means For The Future of Hollywood
(Exclusive.) No one knows Hollywood quite like Janice Min. The former editorial director of The Hollywood Reporter and editor-in-chief of Us Weekly now runs Ankler Media, the Town’s must-read newsletter that was started by Richard Rushfield.
So with the Netflix/WBD/PSKY deal-palooza in full flight it was lucky timing from the newsgods that Min was in New York for a flying visit from Los Angeles at the weekend and joined The Breaker Pod.
From Fish Cheeks in Noho (cheers to the owner Jenn Saesue for inviting us down) we chinwagged about Netflix’s $83 billion deal to buy Warner Bros. (the pod was recorded before Paramount made its hostile bid Monday morning).
“Everyone thought Paramount was the shoe-in. I mean, is there a picture that David Ellison has not been in with Donald Trump? They're like sitting at UFC together. He's at dinner with MBS, the state dinner at the White House,” Min told us.
“So there was first overcoming that shock element. And then, then sort of the reality set in fast and hard in Hollywood yesterday, which was, Hollywood's very good at this, probably better at it even than journalists. Full blown panic.”
In this unmissable episode, we also discussed Disney succession, Bob Iger’s legacy, what it was like to work for Jann Wenner and Jimmy Finkelstein, AI in Hollywood and The California Post.
Catch more in this week's episode of The Breaker Pod. Make sure you check us out and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your pods.
Politico’s Trump Card
(Exclusive.) It’s a trick as old as time. Award Donald Trump something, anything and score a potentially newsmaking interview in the process.
Time magazine has perfected this maneuver, splashing the President on the cover of Time Magazine as Person of the Year and landing a sitdown with Trump.
So can you really blame a beltway outlet that is limping along, hungry for relevancy, for throwing Trump to the top of a list of the most powerful people in Europe shaping 2026?
Sure, the list has traditionally included only people living and working in Europe (such as Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni).
And the last time we checked 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was a bit more than a hop, skip and a jump from Brussels, but times are tough in the news biz. And Politico is closing out one hell of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year.
But after the Axel Springer-owned outlet placed Trump atop its ranking of the 28 most powerful people expected to shape European policy and politics in 2026, Politico was granted its first one-on-one interview with Trump since June 2020.
Politico’s brain trust, including Editor-in-Chief John Harris, Executive Vice President Jonathan Greenberger, senior executive editor Alex Burns, deputy executive editor Julia Marsh, and Playbook Executive Producer, Kyle Blaine, were all in attendance.
The job of actually conducting the on-camera interview fell to White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns, the former NBC News national correspondent, who Breaker has learned was brought into the Oval office 15 minutes before the interview was set to start by senior administration officials including communications director Steven Cheung, White House Press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles who made it clear they expected …
3WAY
(Exclusive.) When Sean Spicer and Dan Turrentine quit 2WAY last month, as first reported by Breaker, fans were left wondering why the pair were departing Mark Halperin's fledgling media company.
Now Breaker has learned that the falling out between the trio was over…