On this day in 1966, outgoing Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin was born. Apparently, the sweater vest aficionado is actively being considered as a replacement for one of Donald Trump’s most controversial cabinet secretaries… 👀 Stay tuned for more!

Good morning! Peter here. Later today, at 12pm ET, Home of the Brave contributor and former police officer Michael Fanone, who was injured on Jan. 6, 2021, will join me live on Substack to discuss several of the stories covered in today’s ‘First Draft.’ Let me know in the comments which news items Michael and I should hone in on!

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ Donald Trump’s billionaire buddies seek to control even more of America’s corporate media, young voters sour on the GOP, and the Supreme Court appears poised to expand presidential powers yet again.

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Trump’s Billionaires Brawl for American Eyeballs

*Larry Ellison and Donald Trump laugh during a news conference at the White House on Jan. 21, 2025. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images*

“The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world,” the legendary Gore Vidal proclaimed in his 1992 book of essays, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire. “No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity, much less dissent.”

What would Vidal say if he lived to see the state of the media today, some three decades later?

One can’t imagine his assessment would be anything but bleak.

First, consider the Murdoch family and its sprawling properties: through News Corp and legacy entities like 21st Century Fox, the oligarchs own and control the broadcast scourge that is Fox ‘News,’ the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and a vast apparatus of foreign print outlets.

Then, there is Apartheid Clyde himself, “First Buddy” Elon Musk. As the grand dragon, err… sorry, grand poobah of the “Nazi porn bar” that is Twitter (no one calls it “X”), Musk arguably controls the most influential social media platform in the world. With hundreds of millions of active monthly users, it’s the digital town square! Yes, Bluesky is wonderful and all, but that’s not where the overwhelming majority of DC bigwigs are consuming their political discourse.

Last, but certainly not least, come MAGA’s newest oligarchs on the scene: father and son duo Larry and David Ellison. Currently, with their new posts atop Paramount Skydance, the pair controls Showtime, MTV, BET, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, and most critically CBS News, where they installed Bari Weiss to turn the Tiffany Network into all but a Fox doppelgänger. What’s more, they will soon also have sway over the screen in your pocket. In September, President Donald Trump greenlit a plan for Oracle, the tech company Papa Ellison co-founded and still controls, to join the investor consortium that will operate the American version of TikTok, which touts a whopping 170 million users in the US.

Those aren’t enough eyeballs for the Ellisons, however. They want far, far more. For some time, the men have been seeking to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in order to snatch up HBO, Cinemax, TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, and, yes, CNN.

These billionaires are intent on controlling reality itself, and the scheme they have in store is so much more sinister than anything you could imagine.

📺 The MAGA Moguls’ Media Takeover

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