J.D. Vance speaks at a Breitbart event. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
On Thursday morning in Washington, just around the corner from the White House, Vice President J.D. Vance marched onto the stage of the historic Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium on Constitution Avenue. Dressed in a navy suit and red tie, Vance was there for a Breitbart event in which he sat for an interview with the right-wing outlet’s Washington bureau chief, Matt Boyle—who, in a near-perfect mirror image, sported a similar navy suit and red tie, which has to a degree become the unofficial uniform of the Donald Trump faithful in the capital.
The conversation opened predictably. Vance thanked Breitbart for the platform, before launching into his familiar set of talking points, jabbing the establishment press covering the event by quipping that he could “see their fake news eyes” from the stage. But he also used the moment to make a bit of news, lavishing praise on Boyle as the “most well-sourced journalist in Washington” and casually dropping a revelation that is certain to reverberate across Washington media: He had pitched Jeff Bezos on hiring Boyle to run politics coverage at The Washington Post.
“Maybe six months ago, maybe it was a year and a half ago, when there was this big conversation at The Washington Post about, ‘How do we get in touch with the other half of America? How do we actually make our journalism more appealing to the half of the country that doesn’t agree with far-left politics?’” Vance recalled. “And I actually texted Jeff Bezos and I said if you’re really serious about this, you should just hire Matt Boyle and make him run your entire political reporting shop.”
Vance’s confession will surely trigger some raised eyebrows in The Post’s newsroom, which never hired Boyle, but has nevertheless watched as Bezos pushes its opinion pages in a more Trump-friendly direction. In any case, what really caught my attention as I was watching the event was actually out of plain view from the cameras…
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Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison sits with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Ellison’s CNN Agenda: Billionaire Larry Ellison, a Trump ally and father of Paramount chief David Ellison, reportedly held talks with White House officials about a potential takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. According to The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, Ellison discussed “axing CNN hosts” that Trump dislikes—including Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar—and floated airing “60 Minutes” on the cable news outlet. The story ricocheted throughout the halls of Hudson Yards on Thursday…
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