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TOP STORY
MUSKIFICATION 2.0
Elon Musk-backed PACs and Musk himself have invested a massive $400 million in this year’s midterms, besting his roughly $300 million in 2024 contributions. Back then, that was enough money to essentially buy his way into the White House. This year, Musk is tangoing with Ellisons, Trumps, and, with the release of Alex Gibney’s eponymous documentary, more negative scrutiny than the first time around.
This week’s been a busy one, which is of little surprise at this stage in the election cycle. Musk has danced along the edges of the stack all week, and today we finally take a closer look at what he’s up to.
THREE TAKES
The Ankler’s The Wakeup, Sean McNulty — Musk may have “a deep history” with Larry Ellison, but that doesn’t guarantee his decision to sink $1 billion into Skydance is a good one. Maybe this is just a little quid pro quo between old friends. After all, Ellison owns SpaceX and Tesla stock and loaned Musk $1 billion to make his X takeover a reality. But there’s a theory out there that SpaceX and Starlink will join forces with Skydance, and we’ve seen that before. “Are we really back to the ‘the pipes owning the content’ conversation that has been proven wrong time after time over the past 30 years?” McNulty asked. “Ask AT&T, AOL, COMCAST, TIME WARNER CABLE and several others just how that worked out.” Also important: Musk didn’t donate the money; he invested it. “All the billions in the world from rich pals can’t save SKYDANCE if it doesn’t deliver financial results Wall Street wants,” McNulty warned.
CNN’s Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter — “Different writers have different theories” about what the $1 billion investment really means, Stelter pointed out. Friendship theories aside, others have raised the possibility that this gives Musk an in with “the media-entertainment world” and “a content pipeline at X” — something the platform needs. As Stelter pointed out, Techdirt had an interesting question: Will HBO stream Gibney’s Musk doc? It’s set to begin streaming on the platform in January, but pouring a bunch of money into Skydance might be Musk’s attempt to stop that completely.
The Free Press, Nellie Bowles — Musk announced this week that “every kid in America” will get shares of SpaceX, and those shares will “apparently be distributed through Trump Accounts.” Those accounts are “turning into a very interesting little charitable financial vehicle, Bowles wrote. Trump Accounts are also set to be expanded to people under 40. Bowles observed, “It’s starting to look a little like a new Social Security system being built in parallel … Everyone gets to go for a fun ride with SpaceX stock. By the way, as a CEO, it’s a great way to sway the public in your favor: All of America’s children are by default invested in the success of this one company? Perfect.”
TAKEAWAY: This isn’t the first time Musk has stepped into the Trump political sphere, but this time with the notable failure of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under his belt. That Musk is being positively received at all could be an indication of just how badly certain GOP candidates need his money. Trump usually doesn’t let those who’ve embarrassed him come back around, but Musk does have those deep pockets.
TOP SCOOPS & ANALYSIS
SCOOP Status, Oliver Darcy — Darcy offered the deepest look into what went wrong for Politico after the news organization decided to publish a report that indicated White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles set up former Press Secretary Katie Zacharia’s appearance on Sean Hannity’s show. Per Darcy, Politico’s Sophia Cai gave Fox News 35 minutes to respond to her initial query. “Despite the inquiry arriving well outside normal business hours, I’m told a Fox News representative looked into the matter under the constrained timeframe and phoned Cai to respond to her questions about the fateful interview,” he wrote. “The network representative provided an on-the-record statement that said Hannity decides whom he interviews, not anyone else.” Politico “faced strong resistance over the story that very night, including being told that it was in fact Hannity’s team which had reached out earlier in the week to secure the interview,” and Politico’s Washington executive editor Jen Marsh “emphatically stood by the story, despite the fierce denials.” At Politico, “[S]ome staffers have been dismayed by the fact the story was published, despite the reporting and editing team evidently not stress testing the core points enough to ensure the piece was airtight.”
SCOOP The Washington Sun, Evan McMorris-Santoro, Jasmine Wright, and Manuela Silva — Seven hours after The Sun first published its scoop on Foreign Service officers being asked who they voted for in recent elections by the State Department, a new statement was released. The State Department noted that those in the organization “reject this absurd premise that individuals are being asked about their political affiliations, and even more so for promotions.” The statement continued, “This Administration will prioritize merit rather than giving out leadership positions based on the number of years individuals have been at the Department.”
SCOOP POLITICO Playbook, Dasha Burns, Will Steakin, and Adam Wren — Florida Senate nominee Angie Nixon is being compared to Trump as part of a kind of “inverse MAGA” moment in the state, a source described as a “member of the Florida Republican executive committee” told Playbook. They said of Nixon, “Yes, she’s outlandish in her behavior — but she is Trump.” James Fishback, who launched his own gubernatorial race earlier this year, also said, “There are parts of her speech that were indistinguishable from a Trump 2024 speech.” He added that Democrats should invest more in Nixon’s race.
ANALYSIS The Federalist, Glenn T. Stanton — “The once-great and editorially troubled” Christianity Today published an article that claimed “evangelical stateswoman Elisabeth Elliot was a closeted bisexual,” and for Stanton, enough is enough. “This is what gay advocacy does. It falsely signs up good people for its cause, like they have shamelessly done with Abraham Lincoln, the great evangelical theologian J. Gresham Machen, and more recently senior White House adviser Stephen Miller,” Stanton wrote. Elliot was “speared to death” in 1956 alongside her husband and four others “by the very Auca Indians they were seeking to share Christ with.”
ANALYSIS CNN’s Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter — Analyzing “where, when and how people are ingesting information about the candidates and the races” is of the utmost importance ahead of the midterms, Stelter wrote, and that’s partly because, “A relatively small portion of the info stems from impartial news sources.” We used to collectively watch news channels and read newspapers, but now an increasing number of people get their news from square or rectangle-shaped posts and videos on social media. “When info, or a hot take, or an attack ad just washes over a voter for a second or two at a time, it’s processed differently,” he explained.
ANALYSIS The Bulwark’s Morning Shots, Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger — Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has apparently spent some time thinking about Dwight D. Eisenhower, even though his “temperament, his bearing, and his character couldn’t be more different from Ike’s.” Eisenhower “didn’t rest on his military laurels” and “made it all the way to the Oval Office.” That’s inspiring, Kristol wrote. “That’s what Pete’s always aimed for. So, Pete thought, 2026 could be the year he became like Ike, a lauded military commander. And then in 2027 he’d leave, enjoy the accolades, and respond to a groundswell demanding he run for the presidency in 2028.” Hegseth ordered his staff to bring two floor globes used by Eisenhower to his own office, a process that involved moving “the historical items” from the Pentagon. Per The Washington Post, “Hegseth’s staff dispatched its own team to relocate an Eisenhower globe. They lost control of the artifact and dropped it, sending the globe crashing onto its base and impaling the fragile shell . . . The resulting gash appears to be several inches wide.” As Kristol summed it up, “Everything Hegeth touches breaks.”
BUSINESS OF MEDIA 
ADWEEK Daily, Bill Bradley — Advertisers are pulling ad campaigns from Meta after Mark Zuckerberg‘s platform edited their ads with AI without brand approval, resulting in “serious slop.” Compounding the frustration, Meta’s updated Commercial Terms are taking effect Oct. 30 and will make advertisers solely responsible for whatever content its AI generates. QUOTE “Under Meta’s new terms, coming into play Oct. 30, advertisers are ‘solely responsible’ for whatever its AI creates. Sounds great. Nothing can go wrong, right?”
The Ankler Features, Degen Pener — Film and television production has been slumping across Los Angeles. Sure, this is a problem broadly, but if you’re crafty, even a loss can be a win: Pivoting to venues, Hollywood soundstages are finding lucrative new clients in wealthy parents willing to spend upwards of $100,000 on elaborate, red-carpet Bar Mitzvahs that rival studio movie premieres. QUOTE “At a recent L.A. mitzvah party for twins, a boy and a girl, the concept was pure TV. The night was themed as a fictional sitcom named for the kids, and instead of a typical hotel ballroom, the festivities took place on a set specially built on a Universal Studios soundstage.”
Awful Announcing’s The A Block, Drew Lerner — FIFA officially opened the bidding process for U.S. broadcast rights to the 2030 World Cup, encouraging broadcasters to submit bids for the tournament with options for 2034 while bundling English- and Spanish-language rights together. QUOTE “Should rights be sold to a streamer, precedent would suggest the streamer will have to sublicense at least a portion of games to a traditional broadcaster, or make a set number of games available in front of a paywall. Netflix, for instance, just won rights to broadcast the 2030 tournament in Spain, but the deal ensures at least one match per day airs on a traditional broadcaster, as well as all matches featuring Spain, and the semifinals and final.”
ADWEEK Daily, Bill Bradley — Something for the broadcasters considering those 2030 bids to keep in mind: Comcast reported that Telemundo and Peacock’s Spanish-language World Cup broadcasts brought in $224 million in incremental Q3 ad revenue, pushing Peacock to secure its second consecutive profitable quarter.
Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter, Simon Owens — Despite reporting strong overall earnings and user growth, Spotify is actually struggling in the effort to scale its advertising business. This shows that audio advertising is inherently harder to scale programmatically across platforms compared to video and display formats—but that doesn’t make it any easier for execs at the platform to swallow. QUOTE “Audio ads, on the other hand, have far fewer places to run at scale. Spotify is one of the only digital platforms with a truly massive audio audience. Beyond that, advertisers can buy inventory through a handful of podcast ad networks, but many podcasts still require individual negotiations. And I suspect most brands advertising on Spotify aren’t particularly interested in terrestrial radio.”
Awful Announcing’s The A Block, Matt Yoder — All the speculation around CBS’s top NFL broadcast booth is finally over: The network signed J.J. Watt to a full-time contract as lead analyst alongside partner Jim Nantz through at least next year’s Super Bowl. QUOTE “The former Houston Texans legend was moved up the depth chart alongside Jim Nantz when lead analyst Tony Romo was sidelined after his OWI arrest this summer. At first, it was an interim assignment with Romo’s future unknown. However, once Romo and CBS parted ways, the lead job was Watt’s for the duration of the season.”
The Ankler’s The Wakeup, Sean McNulty — Netflix struck a non-exclusive deal with Lumistella Company to stream episodes of Elf on the Shelf: Scout Elf Squad starting Nov. 4. This expands its partnership with YouTube-first kids’ IP while still allowing the series to remain accessible on YouTube.
OTHER COOL STUFF
Morning Brew — The New York City Council officially voted to ban horse-drawn carriages by June 2028, winding down a 160-year tourist tradition in Central Park following safety and animal welfare concerns. The city will work with operators to help them switch careers.
Page Six Hollywood — Disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes‘ partner, Billy Evans — you know, the “marquee villain” in A24’s massive hit You Can See Everything — has been attempting to lawyer up to demand a share of the film’s surging box-office profits.
WHAT GOT MISSED?
CNN’s Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter — Heidi Levine, the photojournalist who was attacked by a group of Israeli settlers last week, told CNN’s Jake Tapper the experience gave her insight into what’s going on in the country. As she put it, “What hurts me the most is I can now really understand what others have gone through, what Palestinian women, children, men have gone through.”
The Poynter Report, Tom Jones — Scientific American, the oldest magazine in the United States, “has shrunk considerably in recent years while grappling with pressure from corporate leaders to tone down its political reporting.” The magazine has “paused” its opinion desk, “which had published multiple editorials critical of Trump during the first few months of his second term,” and has “reassigned” those editors elsewhere. It has also laid off about 53 of 84 staff members.
The Washington Sun, Evan McMorris-Santoro, Jasmine Wright, and Manuela Silva — Fewer Americans are requesting absentee ballots, or that’s what early voting trends seem to indicate. “In Ohio, absentee ballot requests this year have decreased by about 28%, while early in-person voting has increased by about 196% compared to 2022. Similar things are happening in other states. Experts, election officials and Democratic voters tell Natalie [Fertig] that Trump’s attempts to control mail-in balloting has had an effect on people’s trust in the system.”
NEWSLETTER OF THE DAY
CJR’s Laurels and Darts, Bill Grueskin — This week CJR offered a celebration of a surprising news organization: Newsmax. “Yes, I suspect that many of you don’t share Newsmax’s right-wing slant on the news. Yes, I know the company had to pay more than a hundred million dollars to settle two lawsuits over its conspiracy-fueled coverage of the 2020 election,” Grueskin wrote before he asked readers to “put all of that aside for a moment.” Today’s subject is how foreign correspondent Shelby Wilder “has delivered vivid coverage of the conflict [in Ukraine] to an audience in and around the MAGAverse.”
“She met with a Ukrainian teenager who told the story of how Russian captors abducted him after a bombing. She posed a tough, detailed question to Jared Kushner when Trump’s envoy was in Kyiv last month. She covered Russian prisoners of war, explaining how they wound up in such dire circumstances. She has interviewed Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, multiple times,” Grueskin wrote. And she did all of this “against the backdrop of Donald Trump shredding support for Zelensky.” Grueskin’s conversation with Wilder deserves a celebration of its own.
This newsletter was produced by Lindsey Ellefson.
The post Musk By the Money: Media Voices Sound Off On Elon’s Return to Politics first appeared on Mediaite.
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