Trump's calling
Plus: There’s going to be a Cher memoir for kids now
“Well over 100” people have President Donald Trump’s personal phone number, one ally said in a new report. Meanwhile, Republican town halls are going about as well as you’d expect considering what’s come out about the Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Welcome to this week’s issue of Whig. Read to the end to learn why pop music’s metabolism has slowed. — Hunter
Trump’s calling:
Trump allies who spoke to The Atlantic said the president has at least two and as many as three phones, including one that some aides suggested could be for social media. “Probably a ton” of people have his personal number, one aide said, and another estimated “well over 100” have it. “He just answers the phone,” an outside advisor said. “He doesn’t want to miss phone calls.”
The lock screen of one phone as photographed Friday by Reuters (below) has a picture of Trump pointing at the camera and his ringtone is the default “Reflection.” Ben Rhodes, who was a deputy national security adviser to former President Barack Obama, said Trump’s phones were “an obvious massive risk,” especially since a Chinese hack on U.S. telecommunications networks last October. Joel Brenner, a senior research fellow at MIT’s Center for International Studies, said it’s “terribly dangerous.”
Trump’s list of pardons keeps getting longer:
Trump this year has pardoned Jan. 6 rioters and former Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.), who was convicted of tax fraud in 2014, and last week Trump added some new pardons to the list. Last Tuesday he pardoned “Chrisley Knows Best” stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who were convicted of tax evasion and bank fraud in 2022, and on Wednesday, he pardoned NBA YoungBoy, who was sentenced on gun charges in 2024, and Larry Hoover, whose case has been elevated by artists like Drake and the rapper previously known as Kanye West.
Capital Jewish Museum reopens after shooting:
Washington, D.C.’s Capital Jewish Museum reopened last Thursday after the fatal shooting of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, staff members at the Israeli Embassy who were shot after attending an event at the museum by a suspect who shouted “free Palestine.”
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser thanked the museum for reopening in her remarks, saying, “We have to get back to normal, to allow people to come back to work. We have to allow people to grieve, we have to allow people to talk, and we have to live our missions.” The violence in D.C., was followed Sunday by an attack at an event in Boulder, Colo., that injured 12.
Fed forecasts stagflation:
The Federal Reserve doesn’t look like they’ll be lowering interest rates anytime soon. They expect Trump’s tariffs will “boost inflation markedly this year” and employment could “weaken substantially,” according to minutes of their May meeting released Wednesday.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell met with Trump at the White House Thursday at Trump’s invitation, per a Fed statement, and “Chair Powell did not discuss his expectations for monetary policy, except to stress that the path of policy will depend entirely on incoming economic information and what that means for the outlook.”
This DOGE employee got fired after he said the government was more efficient than he thought:
Elon Musk retired from government service with an Oval Office ceremony sendoff Friday. Trump gifted the world’s richest man with a gold novelty key and said Musk brought about “a colossal change in the old ways of doing business in Washington.” Musk showed up with a literal black eye, which he blamed on his son.
But Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has fallen far short of its goals. Musk once projected as much as $2 trillion in government spending cuts, but DOGE only says it’s slashed $175 billion, and even then, its own figures have been shown to be inaccurate and may be overinflated. One reason Musk’s DOGE efforts might not have cut as deep as he wanted? There’s less fat than he and some on the right might assume.
Sahil Lavingia, who was employee No. 2 at Pinterest and the founder of the sales platform Gumroad before working for DOGE, was fired from his position at DOGE after he told Fast Company last month, “the government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest.”
Republican town halls are going about as well as you’d expect:
With Congress on recess, lawmakers are home holding town halls and Republicans were hammered over Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Act. The bill passed the House and experts said it would help the rich, hurt the poor, and add to the national debt.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) defended the bill’s cuts to Medicaid that one woman at her town hall said would lead people to dying by responding, “well, we all are going to die.” Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.) admitted he didn’t read the bill’s provision to make it harder for courts, including the Supreme Court, to challenge Trump, and that he wants it changed in the Senate version.
“I am not going to hide the truth. This provision was unknown to me when I voted for that bill, and when I found out that provision was in the bill, I immediately reached out to my Senate counterparts and told them of my concern,” Flood said. “I do not agree with that section that was added to that bill.”
This congresswoman’s ex staffers said she made them make burner accounts:
Former staffers for Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) told Wired she had them “make multiple accounts, burner accounts, and go and reply to comments, saying things that weren’t true—even Reddit forums.” Mace spokesperson Sydney Long told People, “As Congresswoman Mace’s Communications Director, I can say with complete confidence: I’ve never been asked to create a burner account, and the suggestion is laughable.”
Clinton sounds off on Trump, Biden:
Former President Bill Clinton, who’s promoting his forthcoming novel The First Gentleman with co-writer James Patterson, told “CBS Sunday Morning” he believes Trump will pay a political price for his “name-calling and throwing his weight around.” Eventually. “Look, only elections are going to change this,” he said.
“We've never seen anything like this before in my lifetime,” Clinton said. “Somebody that says, 'Whatever I want should be the law of the land. It's my way or the highway.' And most Americans don't agree with that.” Regarding reports of former President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, Clinton said he never saw Biden “and walked away thinking he can't do this anymore.”
Anna Wintour had a meeting at the White House:
In an appeal to the Trump administration to back off tariffs that are hurting the fashion industry, Condé Nast chief content officer and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour went to the White House. Wintour met last Thursday with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles along with American Apparel and Footwear Association president Stephen Lamar and Council of Fashion Designers of America CEO Steven Kolb.
The trio went to talk to Wiles about “balanced trade and how best to maintain those jobs in the U.S., and preserve American prosperity,” Lamar told WWD. Already, apparel brands like Nike, Ralph Lauren, and VF Corp, which own The North Face, Vans, and Timberland, have said they are or are considering increasing their prices because of tariffs.
“I am happy for her”: T Swift owns all her music again:
Taylor Swift announced Friday that she bought back the master recordings to her catalog, and she shared details about her last two “Taylor’s Version” albums. Swift bought her masters from Shamrock Capital, a private equity firm that bought them from Scooter Braun’s holding company Ithaca Holdings in 2020. Braun told Billboard, “I am happy for her,” and sources told the outlet Swift spent about what Shamrock paid for them, which was about $360 million.
“I really get to say these words: All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me,” Swift wrote in a post on social media. “And all my music videos. All the concert films. The album art and photography. The unreleased songs. The memories. The magic. The madness. Every single era. My entire life’s work. To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it.”
Swift said she’s re-recorded her self-titled debut album but that Reputation is “the one album in the first 6 that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it” and she’d rather re-release it with unreleased tracks instead of re-recording it. “Those 2 albums can still have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right,” she said. Glad that’s settled then.
Ari wanted her Wicked follow-up to be a comedy and her wish came true:
Ariana Grande is set to star in Meet the Parents 4 next year alongside Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro after this fall’s Wicked: For Good, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Grande has reportedly been offered and turned down roles from Universal, Sony, and Warner Bros. following her Oscar-nominated turn as Glinda, and she was intent on her next role being in a comedy.
There’s going to be a Cher memoir for kids now:
Cher’s Cher: The Memoir, Part One debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times Bestseller when it came out in 2024, and while we wait for Part Two, due out later this year, Little Golden Book Biographies announced their own illustrated book about the pop star’s life out this December. The series also has books about Harriet Tubman, former Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, Bob Ross, Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Presley, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
Avril Lavigne says it was her idea to spell “Sk8r Boi” that way:
While she’s out on the road for her Greatest Hits Tour with Simple Plan, Avril Lavigne talked ‘00s pop punk nostalgia with Kylie Kelce in an episode of the host’s podcast “Not Gonna Lie” last Thursday. Lavigne said she wrote the scribbled name and album title on her debut Let Go album art on her own, and all the lyrics in the CD booklet were also handwritten by her. As for styling the title of her single “Sk8r Boi” like an AIM Instant Messenger screen name, Lavinge said, “that’s how I spelled some stuff was just, like, doodles, like dotting the Is with stars.”
Lavigne said she doesn’t know what she was doing with the signature necktie in the “Sk8r Boi” music video. “I did a bunch of my dad’s ties, and I threw them on, and I wore it in the video.” She said she “wasn’t really thinking about it,” but at a show at the Roxy in Vancouver, she first saw fans wearing neckties themselves. “I was like, wait this is so crazy.”
“No one’s sure what works.” What Hollywood publicists say about promoting movies today:
Speaking anonymously to discuss the state of their industry frankly, nearly a dozen Hollywood publicists told Vulture today’s publicity circuit is “overwhelming.” The formula for success is always changing, and some podcasts and YouTube shows are as competitive to book as late-night TV.
“The value of doing interviews with journalistic rigor will always exist,” one publicist said. “But now you can just do one of those and really round it out with much more friendlier stuff.” While new media helps reach a more fractured audience, traditional media brings prestige. “Old media isn’t how you sell, but for a lot of people, it’s how you show you’ve earned your place,” another said.
Timothée Chalamet’s quirky, surprising, and ubiquitous press tour for the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown was cited as the benchmark, with the actor showing up everywhere from College Game Day to a riding Lime scooter on a red carpet, and interviews with Nardwuar, Theo Von, and Brittani Broski. “There used to be kingmakers,” a literary agent said. “None of these things really work as the pillar of a campaign anymore. Now you need everything to hit at the same time from multiple different directions, and even then it doesn’t always work. It’s totally maddening.”
Pop music’s metabolism has slowed:
Teddy Swims’s “Lose Control” set the record for the longest stay on the Billboard Hot 100 at 92 weeks, and Billboard notes it’s part of a larger trend: the average number of weeks spent on the chart by the songs in the top 20 has risen over the past five years from 18.75 weeks in 2020 to 30.35 weeks today. Industry insiders suggested there’s a post-pandemic backlog of tunes since listeners turned to their favorite music as “comfort food” when COVID-19 hit, and only now are songs from as far back as 2020 taking hold, like Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” or Charli XCX’s “Party 4 U.”
“I feel like a whole new generation found their new favorite artist and their new favorite song, and they’re digging in on that,” Spotify editorial lead Talia Kraines said. Others think changing media habits are the cause. SiriusXM + Pandora vice president of music programming Alex Tear said listeners “wants to hear more than one song being played over and over again” and he can go up to two, three, or four songs deep with follow-up singles from artists like Sabrina Carpenter, which wasn’t the case for radio playlists before streaming.
Radio programmer and consultant Guy Zapoleon believes longer running hits is caused by a “lack of consensus” since there are so many platforms for listeners to find and stream new music. “Because there’s so many different sources to go to, it’s difficult for songs outside the very biggest songs to become hits, and because of that, those songs take a while to become hits, and then they stay there for the longest period of time — longer than we’ve ever seen in the history of music,” he said.
Thanks for reading! See you next week. ⭐