Sun Valley Notes, Paris’s Art Olympics, Biden’s New Calculus

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your pocket guide to Puck’s best new reporting.

First up today, John Heilemann shrewdly assesses how the Trump assassination attempt will reverberate through this week’s Republican National Convention and the race writ large, the cynical finger-pointing blame game underway on X, Biden’s appeal to “lower the temperature,” and much more.

Plus, below the fold: William D. Cohan chronicles the interstitial Paramount drama as the clock ticks down for another bidder to emerge. Marion Maneker explains why Paris is the new gravitational center of the European art market. Dylan Byers chronicles the Thiel-Hoffman showdown in Sun Valley. On Somebody’s Gotta Win, Tara Palmeri enlists Politico’s Meridith McGraw for an emergency pod to discuss all the angles of Saturday’s horrific shooting. And on The Powers That Be, Jon Kelly joins Peter Hamby to consider whether the violence in Pennsylvania will quell Biden’s dissenters, before turning to the latest dramas at The Washington Post.

JOHN HEILEMANN

In Milwaukee this week, a Republican Party that already saw Donald Trump as a righteous victim even before he dodged an assassin’s bullet will hail him as more than a martyr: as a bona fide hero, a literally bloodied warrior, maybe even a messiah. But many Democrats fear that Trump’s brush with death will make him something else: a landslide winner in November.

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WILLIAM D. COHAN

The Ellison/RedBird deal to buy Paramount includes a 45-day “go-shop” period, during which the special committee is empowered to consider other bidders: Sony and Apollo, Bronfman and Bain, Barry Diller, or Steven Paul. But there are a dozen reasons to believe that none of these rumored suitors will upset the apple cart.

MARION MANEKER

Amid the political turnovers in England and France, the shift in emphasis from London to Paris as Europe’s leading art center is gaining momentum.

DYLAN BYERS

News and notes from inside the Lodge, where former classmates Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel had a very public quarrel, Zaslav revealed his ’24 agenda, and masters of the universe debated the fate of Joe Biden.