A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

SUGARCANE follows a groundbreaking investigation that exposes a shocking cover up of cultural genocide perpetrated by the church and
government, while also illuminating the enduring love, courage and beauty of an Indigenous community. Described by The New York Times as "a must-see film...stunning.”  For your consideration in Best Documentary Feature, SUGARCANE is now streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu. To uncover a glimpse of the truth, watch the trailer.

Marion Maneker
scrutinizes the advisor trade and parses a politically loaded retrospective.

and…

Julie Davich
conveys the buying opportunities in Gstaad.

Matt Belloni
chats with Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s chief content officer, about the Emilia Pérez Oscar scandal.

and…

Kim Masters
unveils the bizarre origin of Amazon’s Melania doc.

meanwhile…

Eriq Gardner unearths
a loaded Disney culture war suit.

Bill Cohan
prophesies about the carried interest threat and offers some Goldman kremlinology.

Dylan Byers
captures the latest pillow screams at CBS and some brewing A.I. legal beefs.

and…

John Ourand
has the latest details on the ESPN-MLB renegotiation… and Bristol’s NFL media deal heat.

Leigh Ann Caldwell
diagnoses Mike Johnson’s one-bill-versus-two-bill-itis and Trump’s very own Chip Roy problem.

and…

John Heilemann
asks Laurence Tribe to assess our constitutional precarity.

meanwhile…

Peter Hamby presages the
Kamala-Caruso showdown in California.

🎧 Dylan questions David Remnick,
the legendary editor of The New Yorker, about his A.I. anxieties on The Grill Room. 

and…

Ourand asks NBA scoop machine Shams Charania how he landed the Luka-A.D. exclusive on
The Varsity.

and…

Heilemann talks to Shams’s predecessor, Adrian Wojnarowski, on Impolitic.

and…

Lauren welcomes the designer Todd Snyder on Fashion People.

and…

Listen to the first of Matt’s two-part interview with Bela on
The Town.  

and…

Tara Palmeri discusses Pennsylvania’s red turn with Rep. Brendan Boyle on
Somebody’s Gotta Win.

and…

Kim explains how the Trumps rescued Brett Ratner from the penalty box on
The Powers That Be.

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It’s hard to ignore the sensation that we’re living through strange days, with cultural
micro-convulsions occurring at nearly breakneck speed. To wit: It seemed like only a few weeks ago that Congress prioritized its stewardship of our national purse, USAID stood as an heirloom of Kennedy-era internationalism, and the body of water along Florida’s western coast was inarguably known as the Gulf of Mexico. 

Similarly, it wasn’t so long ago that Elon Musk
seemed like a lonely zillionaire—largely a threat only to himself and the denizens of X, the platform not so long ago known as Twitter. Back in the quaint days of a couple months ago, Bobby Kennedy Jr. was a Covid-era quack and drive-by presidential candidate most notable for his recent digital tryst with Olivia Nuzzi. For his part, Pete Hegseth was a pretty boy TV host with a Luke Perry streak, and
Karen Bass seemed like a shoe-in to win reelection as Los Angeles mayor. Time flies. When was the last time you read about Kamala Harris or Tim Walz? The erstwhile ticket members now seem like minor figures from a distant civilization.

The shock and awe of the second Trump era has been arresting in more ways than one, with endless observers
hypothesizing about when a new chapter will begin—one perhaps catalyzed by Democratic resistance or some behind-the-scenes fracturing within the G.O.P. But I wondered whether a more insidious threat had already emerged: Earlier this month, I’d learned that the administration was kicking the tires on closing the carried interest loophole, the mother’s milk of the ~$6 trillion private equity industry.  

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

SUGARCANE follows a groundbreaking investigation that exposes a shocking cover up of cultural genocide perpetrated by the church and
government, while also illuminating the enduring love, courage and beauty of an Indigenous community. Described by The New York Times as "a must-see film...stunning.”  For your consideration in Best Documentary Feature, SUGARCANE is now streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu. To uncover a glimpse of the truth, watch the trailer.

Carry, after all, represents a deal partner’s position in a company. And for ages, the
loophole has allowed P.E. executives to have their liquidity taxed as capital gains (23.8 percent) rather than income, which is probably around 41 percent for this crowd. Having spent a couple years in the higher calling of P.E., I appreciate how this incentivization structure works: The lower tax consequences encourage general partners to put money at risk, to invest or buy into companies, when they could divert it elsewhere. Regardless, the carried interest loophole remains as unpopular
politically as it is sacred on 57th Street. So when I heard that Trump was considering closing it, I asked my partner Bill Cohan to call his friends and sources at the top of the industry and take their temperature. Did Trump’s donors and pals view this as a fatwa?

After rolling calls with eminences across the industry, Bill delivered his latest masterpiece:
Trump’s Carried Interest Insurrection, which artfully conveyed the complexity of the situation. Indeed, the vibes were mixed, but a number of investors actually championed Trump’s decision—these dealmakers were betting that Trump was trying to placate his base, but would never actually push to sew up the loophole. Revealingly, the whole scenario reminded Bill
of a conversation he’d had with Apollo C.E.O. Marc Rowan a couple years earlier. “Why do you think the carried interest tax comes up every time there’s an election?” Rowan asked Bill, rhetorically, at the time. “Because the Dems know it’s good for the unions and the Republicans know it’s good for squeezing money out of private equity. And the last thing they want to do is actually solve the issue because, God forbid, they wouldn’t be able to fundraise off of it. Why solve
anything? Why not just have emotional issues that you can perpetuate?” Perhaps not everything in the culture is changing as we speak.

But if you have time to read only one piece this weekend, I’d turn your attention to Peter Hamby’s excellent story on Rick Caruso’s post-fires political awakening in Los Angeles. The developer, who lost the ’22 mayoral race to Bass,
is apparently deciding whether he wants a rematch—or to try his hand at the governor’s mansion, which would put him squarely in the crosshairs of Harris, who is ostensibly eyeing that seat. In Caruso, Kamala, and the Battle for L.A., Peter gracefully articulates the endless and intractable nuances of the political situation. Caruso, of course, has
been portrayed as a Trumpian figure, but he also projects a kind of can-do aplomb that’s currently appealing in the Democratic diaspora of L.A. (As a lifelong New Yorker, I’m reminded of Giuliani’s appeal to citydwellers after the Koch–Dinkins era. That story, of course, took a weird twist.)

Caruso also seems to define himself as a post-partisan
bullshit assassin—the kind of guy made for a new era when old political fault lines seem outdated. You may not agree with his politics, but I have to admit I found his worldview at least a little refreshing—a positive development, as it were, amid a cavalcade of disturbing regressions. “I think we’ve got to get out of the business of, if you have an R behind your name or a D behind your name, you’re either right or you’re wrong, or you’re not allowed to talk to each other,” Caruso told Peter.
“It’s just such a foolish way to try to manage this country. Donald Trump is the president of the United States, period. End of story. And we need his help and we need federal dollars. And I was grateful that he was actually pushing the elected officials, Get this done. Now we need more of that. So of course I would work with Trump. I would have worked with Joe Biden. That doesn’t matter, and it shouldn’t matter to anybody.”

Indeed, more than anything else, this realignment is the story of our time—and it’s one with endless applications across our economy. It’s also precisely what you should expect to read about in Puck.

Have a great weekend,

Jon

P.S.: In case you were wondering—as my partner Abby Livingston reported this week—Walz is also eyeing his next job: the soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat in Minnesota. 

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