“President Donald Trump is filing a libel lawsuit against the publisher of the Wall Street Journal and reporters who wrote a story about a collection of letters gifted to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003, including a note bearing Trump’s name and an outline of a naked woman,” CNN reports.

Update: “A person close to Trump’s legal team told Business Insider that the president has not yet filed his lawsuit over The Wall Street Journal report, and that his legal complaint is still in the works.”

Donald Trump celebrated CBS’s decision to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and attacked the two remaining broadcast network late night hosts, Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon, Deadline reports.

Said Trump: “I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.”

A Kentucky public television station will not cover this year’s Fancy Farm Picnic political event due to the elimination of federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, WPSD reports.

David Graham: “For much of the 20th century, American broadcast television revolved around three networks: NBC, ABC, and CBS. William S. Paley, CBS’s longtime CEO, made sure that his company—the Columbia Broadcasting Service—was a leader among them. The network was home to Edward R. Murrow, who brought World War II in Europe home to Americans on CBS Radio; after the war, Murrow’s reporting played a pivotal role in bringing down Senator Joseph McCarthy. Walter Cronkite dominated American evenings from his perch at the Evening News. And from the days of Mike Wallace to the more recent era of Lesley Stahl and Scott Pelley, 60 Minutes set the standard for long-form television reporting.”

“Yet CBS’s current ownership seems determined to demolish this legacy. This evening, the network announced plans to end The Late Show With Stephen Colbert when the host’s contract ends next May. Late-night personalities come and go, but usually that happens when their ratings sag. Colbert, however, has consistently led competitors in his timeslot. CBS said this was “purely a financial decision,” made as traditional linear television fades.”

“Perhaps this is true, but the network that once made Cronkite the most trusted man in America no longer gets the benefit of the doubt. CBS’s owners have made a series of decisions capitulating to President Donald Trump, and the surprise choice to allow Colbert—a consistent, prominent Trump critic—to walk seems like part of that pattern.”

CNN: “Halfway through her 7 p.m. hour last night, Fox’s Laura Ingraham seemed poised to cover the bombshell reporting from a fellow Murdoch-owned outlet. ‘We have new news coming on about this as well from the Wall Street Journal. A new report tonight, next,’ she said.”

“But that ‘new report’ never came. Ingraham did not mention the Journal story at all during the rest of her hour; neither did the rest of the Fox primetime lineup.”

Brian Stelter: “At a time when other media outlets are hesitating and capitulating, Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal just stood up to President Trump and scooped one of the biggest political stories of the summer…”

“And yet… Murdoch’s Fox News has not mentioned the story once. So let me take a stab at answering all the questions I’m getting about the media mogul and his role.”

“Murdoch, age 94, wants to have it both ways. He wants to be a newsman (that’s how he sees himself) but also needs to be a businessman. He wants a muscular Journal breaking big stories but he also needs Fox News to keep printing money for his family and other shareholders.”

“It’s been readily apparent for years that Fox succeeds when it is The Trump Show. So Fox does what it does, ignores what it ignores. But Murdoch, who has always cared most of all about old-fashioned newspapers, derives satisfaction and a sense of power from the Journal.”

Oliver Darcy notes the White House — including Trump himself — pressured Murdoch to not publish the story.

“President Donald Trump said Thursday he would sue the Wall Street Journal and its owner over a new bombshell report about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to begin the process of unsealing grand jury testimony in the disgraced financier’s criminal case,” Politico reports.

“Trump said he had personally warned the Journal’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, and its editor in chief, Emma Tucker, that the letter was ‘fake’ before the report was published, calling the story ‘false, malicious, and defamatory.’”

“We need to learn from the blacks. The way they were able to remove the power from the n-word word by using it. So from now on it’s: What up, my Nazi? Hey, what up, my Nazi? Hey, what’s hanging, my Nazi?”

— Greg Gutfeld, on Fox News.

Brian Stelter: “Fox News has taken President Trump’s plea for his allies to stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein almost literally. The network didn’t mention Epstein at all yesterday until a panel discussion in Bret Baier’s 6 p.m. hour. Questions about the admin’s handling of the ‘files’ were totally absent from primetime, a stark contrast from last week.”

“A resurfaced clip from a Fox News interview with President Trump in 2024 has social media users calling for former Vice President Kamala Harris to follow Trump’s lead and sue over election interference,” The Wrap reports.

“The resurfaced, unedited version has sparked cries of hypocrisy, as Trump successfully sued CBS for airing an edited version of an interview with his 2024 presidential opponent.”

Advertisers are flocking to Fox News to reach “an audience of one,” according to the network’s head of ad sales, as companies, advocacy groups and foreign leaders try to lobby President Trump through his television screen, the Financial Times reports.

Said as sales president Jeff Collins: “News has always attracted advertisers that are trying to reach influential folks, but I think a lot of folks are aware that the president and a lot of the folks in his administration are watching the network. We’re seeing a lot of advertiser demand that are coming in for that audience, whether it’s an audience of one or an audience of 12… we’re seeing quite a bit of demand for that.”

New York Times: “Congress is expected to vote by the deadline on Friday on a White House proposal, known as a rescission package. It would pull back more than $500 million per year in federal funding that is set to go to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the government-backed company that supports public radio and TV stations across the country.”

“Last week, President Trump urged legislators to support the cuts, and threatened to withhold his support for any Republican lawmakers who oppose the proposal.”

“The company that owns the social media platform Truth Social and counts President Donald Trump as its largest shareholder said Monday that it had reached a deal with Newsmax, which its founder has described as ‘supportive of the President and his policies,’ to stream Newsmax content globally,” the Washington Post reports.

“The unprecedented deal links a company whose largest shareholder is the sitting president with a conservative media ally, in a deal that could benefit both parties financially.”

President Donald Trump raged at the media during Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, ominously claiming that the media “ought to make a lot of changes” and adding that “changes are going to be made,” Mediaite reports.

Trump Media launched its TV streaming platform, Truth+, globally on Monday, featuring the cable channel Newsmax to support the company’s expansion, Reuters reports.

President Trump has all but confirmed a so-called “side deal” with the would-be future owners of Paramount, after they announced a settlement with the president, Variety reports.

On top of the publicly announced $16 million payment to settle Trump’s dubious “60 Minutes” lawsuit, David Ellison had secretly agreed to run $16 million worth of advertisements for Trump-aligned causes. 

Paramount denied any knowledge of the side deal, but that was the point — the company’s current management wouldn’t know.