Call me nostalgic. I miss the days when like, if someone tried to take out the president of the United States, we might all stop what we're doing and come together and actually like treat that as an abnormal moment in society. Welcome to the Powers That Be daily, Puck's podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby. It's Tuesday, April 28th. Today, I'm joined by Dylan Byers, who has some thoughts about political media in the wake of the attempted Trump assassination at the White House Correspondents' Dinner last weekend. We also discuss whether the dinner will be rescheduled this year or if the gathering will take place next year or ever again. And Dylan has some reporting on changes at 60 Minutes, which, as the most watched news show on TV, doesn't seem like it needs changing. But, of course, this is Barry Weiss' network now. We'll discuss all that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be. United Health Group is bringing in-home treatment directly to patients, closing care gaps, identifying risks earlier, and improving patient outcomes. In 2025, patients received over 19 million home visits. Learn more at unitedhealthgroup.com slash commitment. Happy Tuesday, everybody, and welcome to the powers that be. We're going to continue this week with media coverage, of course, after Saturday night's White House Correspondents Dinner, debacle, scare, malice at the Hilton, whatever you want to call it. I'm joined today by Dylan Byers, of course, our media reporter here at Puck, host of The Grill Room, author of In the Room. We're also going to talk a little bit about plans for 60 Minutes. CBS News was in the spotlight this weekend, this past weekend, before the attempted shooting, of course. But Dylan, speaking of In the Room, we were in the room together at the dinner on Saturday. John Kelly and I spent a little time on Media Monday yesterday talking about our experiences in there. I do want some color from you, maybe just what you observed. I know it's been a few days now. Maybe people kind of get the picture or they can watch it on TV. But also, there's been some chatter that this dinner might get rescheduled. Trump wants it rescheduled. It's clear Trump wanted to do it after avoiding it for so many years. There's also some chatter that this whole dinner might get killed off completely in the future. And we've kind of heard that before. We heard it in the first Trump term. I'm curious what your takes are on all three of those questions I just shot at you. Yeah, well, I was in the room. And as you know, Peter, hundreds of other journalists were too. And so the benefit of that is that everyone has told their version of the story. And I don't need to go over exactly what my vantage point was on how Secret Service ran through the room or which cabinet member was evacuated first. Look, I will say this. It was a harrowing experience for all of 30 seconds until we actually knew what was happening and that we were all okay and that the gunmen never got close. But I was happy to be in the room with all those people. I cover a lot of those people. They're not just my colleagues and contemporaries, but they're actually my source material. And I will say, not to be sentimental here, but there was some real camaraderie there. and uh and i i'm sure you could probably feel it too will they do the dinner again i think they should i know that not everyone feels that way i don't think even everyone at puck feels that way i i do i we talked about this last week before the dinner happened i think it's a good thing for everyone to come together and do it i highly doubt that they will do it at the hilton again i think one thing we've learned is that that thing is just quite porous and there are a lot of ways in, including obviously staying at the hotel. But I think that this is a big night in Washington. And I think that for all the hand it a night that a lot of people in Washington on both sides of the aisle that being the media side and the government side do cherish and enjoy And so I think we have it I think we have to find a venue I don think it be the Trump ballroom, but I do think the show will go on. And if anything, an event like this probably only reinforces the desire to have it and the fact that it is, or at least has the potential to be a truly historic night i want to talk to you dylan actually about um uh post you did on twitter slash x afterwards that uh thanks to the fact that you can post entire essays on twitter now is longer than your usual post but i i kind of got pulled in a different direction i was with some friends when we headed toward 18th street you guys and the puck gang went to the hamilton over by the white house and you posted that you were there with our colleagues watching TV on mute, having some drinks, sort of just collecting her thoughts afterwards. And one of you asked to put Trump's press conference on the TV there in the bar. And look, the Hamilton is right by the White House. It is always, every time I've been there, yes, there's tourists and stuff, but it's full of, you know, people in town for some like cement conference or like lobbyists. It's just full of DC people. Every time I go there, I run into some Republican I know from South Carolina or some Democrat I know from some campaign five years ago. And they said they had a no politics policy and they couldn't put it on television. Look, some people were like, oh, that's refreshing. Not everyone cares about politics. That is a take. That is a cold take. That is a Peter Hamby take from 2011. I get that. We all know. But this is Washington, D.C., a big, scary moment. certainly will be written about in history books, actually. What did you make of that moment and what it said about our media and politics culture? Yeah, well, first of all, thanks for calling attention to the tweet. One of the benefits of early era Twitter was that you had to be pithy, and now you can just drone on forever. I lived in Washington in an era when you could walk into any P.J. Clark or Hamilton-style bar and Fox and C-SPAN and CNN were much more likely to be on. And I don't begrudge anyone for expecting a bar on a Saturday night to show some NHL or NBA playoffs. I think that is a good thing. I think my only point is it's very surreal, Peter, to walk out of an attempted assassination where you've been ducking behind your chair and Secret Service and security have been like running across tabletops to protect the president and vice president and various cabinet members and so on, and then just sort of walk down the room and be told that actually you can't watch coverage of that because there's no politics policy. One, it obviously speaks to just sort of how partisan the discourse has become. And I also think it speaks to just how disengaged some people have become. I think there is a extremely engaged population online. And I've no doubt that a lot of people got the push notification sitting in that bar. But I do call me nostalgic. I miss the days when like, if someone tried to take out the president of the United States, we might all stop what we're doing and come together and actually treat that as an abnormal moment in society. And those moments aren't abnormal anymore. Shootings are not abnormal. Political violence is not abnormal. Something crazy coming out of Washington, D.C. in the Trump 2.0 era is certainly not abnormal. That is the world we live in today. And I think I think we've grown pretty desensitized to it as a society. And I just yeah, again, like call me old fashioned, call me nostalgic. I long for the days when people would have turned their heads up and decided that it was time to turn up the volume and see what the president of the United States had to say. All right, Dylan, well, I'm sorry I didn't get to hang out with you after. I feel like I missed out. I also had to leave before our Sunday party. but alas I think we will drink cocktails again pretty soon somewhere along the line let take a quick break Dylan when we come back I want to ask you about some changes possibly coming at 60 minutes Here's a shift worth noting. Better health care is care that meets patients where they are. UnitedHealth Group is bringing it directly to living rooms. This is a win for patients managing chronic conditions. And here's the interesting thing. By closing those care gaps, administering in-home exams, and identifying risks earlier, more diseases can be prevented and patient outcomes can improve. In 2025 alone, UnitedHealth Group patients received over 19 million home visits. Learn more at unitedhealthgroup.com slash commitment. Hi, my name is Lloyd Lockridge, and I'm the host of a new podcast from Odyssey called Family Lore. In this podcast, I'm going to have people on to tell unusual and sometimes far-fetched stories about their families. I've heard my whole life that she invented the margarita. And then we're going to investigate those stories and find out how much of it is true. He gets a patent one month before the Wright brothers. Oh my God. Please follow and listen to Family Lore, an Odyssey podcast available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your shows. Welcome back to the Powers That Be, everybody. I'm talking to my colleague Dylan Byers. Dylan, you know, Barry Weiss and the CBS team were all over Washington this past weekend. Donald Trump went on 60 Minutes on Sunday with Nora O'Donnell. He got a little mad with her for asking a totally reasonable question, as he does. 60 Minutes has been it sounds like and you've done reporting on this scrutinized by the new leadership at CBS they were obviously it leaked that they were meddling in the editorial side of things right after Barry Weiss came in this is to me has always seemed like something you don't meddle with there's obviously aging hosts and correspondence that you eventually cycle out over the years but fundamentally you don't really mess with the brand as far as television news programs go. There aren't many that are as watched as 60 Minutes, so why mess with it? But it sounds like there might be some changes coming. There are changes coming, and I would say two things are happening here on Twin Tracks. One, CBS News underwent layoffs a month or two back, and Barry and Tom Sebrowski, the president of the network, were at least savvy enough to know that maybe doing layoffs in the middle of the 60 Minutes season wasn't the way to go. So they've delayed those. But now that the season is approaching its end in mid-May, those layoffs are coming. The other thing that's happening is, as with all aspects of CBS News, Barry wants 60 Minutes to be different. And I think she wants it to be different in a couple ways. One, I think there's certain talent there she just doesn't want, including Sharon Alfonsi, who, of course, went to war with her over the preemption of the inside Seacott thing. That was sort of one of the more infamous incidents of meddling. Anderson Cooper has already said that he intends to leave. And of course, the great irony here is he might end up working with Barry anyway when Paramount takes over Warner Brothers Discovery and therefore CNN. But the other thing that's happening is they don't want to blow up the core Sunday evening news magazine. And I think they're at least smart enough to realize what you just said, Peter, which is like if we have one asset that's working for us right now, it's 60 minutes. But she also feels, I think, what probably other folks upstairs at Paramount feel, which is they feel like 60 was too left of center, too hard on Trump, didn't reflect the views of all Americans. And I think they want to change it. And I think one idea they have in their head is that they can franchise the asset. So 60 Minutes does not need to be contained to an hour on Sunday You can have digital packages You can have an internet presence You can up the game on social You can bring in voices from elsewhere at CBS News and certainly from the free press and sort of expand what 60 Minutes is I think that is the right instinct All I will say is this brings to mind when Chuck Todd got it in his head that he was going to franchise Meet the Press. And I think the problem here is that as great as they may be, as storied as they may be, brands like Meet the Press and 60 Minutes are not nearly so influential in the lives of Americans as we think, no matter what the ratings are. And that at the end of the day, people need 60 Minutes on Sunday night. Maybe eight or nine million people need 60 Minutes on Sunday night. The world is not clamoring for 60 Minutes branded digital content day in and day out. And I think that's going to be a problem for them here. And I also think with Anderson out of the building, with Sharon going, you know, who knows what happens to like a Scott Pelley. I think we're going to arrive at a point where maybe all the talent leaves the building. And then you're going to, she's going to have to recast that show. And I'm not sure she's going to do it in a way that everybody likes, but we shall see. Dylan, I also saw CBS Evening News anchor Tony DeCupo over the weekend. Nice guy. Great hair. But there are some concerns about very good hair. He also had on like a pretty sick kind of like double-breasted like suede blazer going on. This was the Friday night. Anyway, Tony, nice fit. There are concerns about CBS's ratings for that show. Are they recovering or getting worse? They're getting worse. And I think for some people that feels like an existential crisis. There are certainly previous executives and executive producers at CBS who said, you know, the day the day the CBS evening news ratings fall below 4 million a night, you know, I'll self-defenestrate. And in fact, like they're down at around 3.8 million. They could go down further. But big asterisk here, Peter, is that actually, and I genuinely mean this, people with low ratings tend to say the ratings don't matter. But in this case, they actually don't. Because Barry's, yes, do they lose money every time the ratings go down a point? Absolutely. Does it become a problem if it gets down to $3 million or even $3.5 million? Sure. But Barry's project at CBS News broadly and at CBS Evening News specifically is one of an editorial shift. And in the grand scheme of things, it's more about recognizing that editorial and ideological shift and, frankly, having that happen in the service of the Ellison's broader ambitions with the WBT takeover and the CNN takeover with, you know, Larry Ellison getting his stake in TikTok's U.S. business, keeping in the good graces of the Trump administration, and then perhaps just satisfying like Barry's itch to make this storied media organization less liberal. Like that's the goal here. And they have a lot of runway and declining ratings only matter if David Ellison feels like it matters. And I think he has given Barry a long leash. Barry has given Tony a long leash. And I just think we got many months of this to go. And I don't think they're sweating the ratings. All right, Dylan. Thank you so much, buddy. It was good to see you. And I'll talk to you soon. All right, my man. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of The Powers That Be. As a reminder, The Powers That Be is the official podcast of Puck. We'd like to thank Ben Landy, Liz Goff, and Alex Bigler for their editorial and production guidance. If you like what you hear, please share with a friend. It really helps us keep delivering the inside scoop that only Puck can offer. Follow us on Twitter at Puck News. I'm Ben Landy. See you tomorrow. This has been a presentation of Odyssey. Please listen, rate, review, and follow all episodes wherever you get your podcasts. The Powers That Be Daily is executive produced by John Kelly, co-founder of Puck, Bob Tabador, and Ben Landy, executive editor at Puck.
