What mattered this week: GDP rips, CBS trips, more Epstein tales from the crypt

Plus: Bombs for evangelists

FOUR THINGS THIS WEEK:

The booming economy … ? GDP grew by a surprisingly strong 4.3% in the third quarter, which ended in September. That’s not a fake number, but it’s a headscratcher anyway. Consumer spending was strong, but mainly because people drew down savings. Much of the spending increase came in health care, which might be related to higher expected costs in 2026 as government subsidies for some health care plans expire. There was no increase in disposable income, a warning sign.

The K-shaped economy remains intact. Wealthier Americans are spending enough to support growth. Poorer Americans are struggling with high prices and worried about job security. Like Joe Biden before him, President Trump can point to data showing the economy is solid, which millions of Americans will find totally unconvincing.

📈 Stocks ended the week up 1.4%, with the S&P 500 index hitting a new record high on December 24. A Santa Claus rally seems to be underway🎅. That’s loosely defined as a bump in stocks during the last five trading days of the year plus the first few days of the new year. Stocks will post nice gains in 2025, for the third year running.

Epstein non-shocker. Mainstream media is treating the latest dump of material on dead sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein as a Donald Trump gotcha moment. The documents clearly show that Trump traveled on Epstein’s private plane at least eight times in the 1990s, despite Trump’s 2024 claim that “I was never on Epstein’s plane.”

Wow! Trump lied!

This is no surprise. It’s been apparent for a long time that Trump and Epstein were buddies in the 1990s and that Trump has been trying to cover that up. Trump supporters can decide whether they care if he lied about his friendship with Epstein, but the files still contain no evidence Trump had any kind of sexual encounter with any of the underage women Epstein assaulted and offered to some of his friends like party favors.

If the Trump Justice Dept. was ever going to release anything that incriminates Trump, the logical time would have been around the Christmas holidays, to bury the story, even if this one can’t be buried. That obviously didn’t happen. If there’s a more devious PR strategy on this, it would be for Trump to start a war or create some other war-level distraction and then reveal the dirtiest dirt.

That’s a bit too fantastical, even for Trump. Prediction: The Trump administration will never release anything that incriminates Trump in the Epstein matter. That doesn’t mean there’s no such evidence. It just means that if there is, Trump won’t be the one who lets it out.

The Bumbling Broadcast System. New CBS News boss Bari Weiss spiked a 60 Minutes segment on Venezuelan men the Trump administration has deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador known as CECOT. It looks as if Weiss is kowtowing to Trump by refusing to air journalism that’s unflattering to him. Should you care? Let’s break this down into five points.

1. Trump would love to control the media. He certainly has some leverage. The Federal Communications Commission regulates over-the-air networks, which include CBS, NBC and ABC. The FCC can abuse its power to harass the networks. Some critics of the agency argue that FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr has already done that. Another Trump lever is antitrust enforcement, which he can exploit to influence the outcome of media deals such as the bidding war between Netflix and Paramount over Warner Brothers—which owns CNN.

2. Trump has powerful allies in a position to control CBS News. In August, Skydance Media bought Paramount, CBS’s parent firm. The CEO of the new firm, Paramount Skydance, is David Ellison, son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. Both Ellisons are billionaire members of Trump’s inner circle, and they seem intent on building a new media empire. It would be naïve to think journalistic integrity at a storied news organization such as CBS is more important to them than power or money. The Ellisons could easily turn CBS News into a Trump mouthpiece.

3. Bari Weiss is a controversial figure who, at 41, might be in over her head as editor-in-chief of a major news organization. She left her job as a columnist for the New York Times in 2020, claiming the paper was too liberal to accommodate her anti-woke views. That became a big media story, making her sorta famous. Then she started The Free Press, which attracted some big-name writers and prominent investors, and became fairly successful. Paramount tapped her to run CBS in October, even though she had no relevant broadcast experience. One sign of amateurism in the 60 Minutes brouhaha is that Weiss reportedly skipped earlier screenings of the CECOT segment and only canceled it at the last minute, making the move more disruptive and controversial than necessary.

4. CBS News isn’t the titan it used to be. Supporters of the First Amendment and an actual free press should always push back against any government effort to control the media. But one network doesn’t matter nearly as much as it used to. Fewer than 20% of Americans get their news from a broadcast network these days, down from 70% in 1990. Cable news, digital publishing, social media and podcasts have obviously become more prevalent. Trumpworld goons could certainly gain control of some media, and use it for nefarious purposes. But not all media.

5. Censorship often backfires. The 60 Minutes CECOT segment aired in Canada and went viral on social media, proving for the bajillionth time that banning something is a surefire way to draw more attention to it. CBS looks stupid.

Trump war watch. Trump ordered US airstrikes against supposed terrorist sites in northwestern Nigeria, saying Islamicists there have been massacring Christians. This is weird. Parts of northern Nigeria are a lawless zone patrolled by armed gangs such as the notorious Boko Haram. Christians have been killed, but so have many Muslims. Some American evangelicals have called for the United States to intervene to protect Nigerian Christians, which is probably why Trump ordered an attack that has no direct bearing on American security interests. Trump has signaled more attacks may be coming. But a handful of missiles won’t do much to disrupt cells dispersed across a huge area, including deep forests. These strikes are likely a political sop to evangelical voters Trump considers a key part of his base.

Trump continues to raise the stakes regarding Venezuela, with his administration leaking that special-operations forces and equipment are now in the region. Trump keeps saying a “land program” is coming, which sounds like an invasion. But that’s probably a bluff. Airstrikes are easy (for the United States), but a land invasion would require thousands of troops and entail a lot of risk. If Trump’s real goal is to depose dictator Nicolás Maduro, threatening an invasion would be a logical tactic. Going through with it might be foolish, though.

Ukraine is now saying it might support a peace plan backed by President Trump, who is due to meet soon with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky. But don’t expect peace to break out. Any deal amenable to Ukraine is a non-starter with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and vice versa. Putin wants to dominate Ukraine and won’t agree to anything less until the pain of continuing the war gets a lot more severe. The real news might be that Zelensky is getting smart and learning to portray himself as the one interested in peace, framing Putin [correctly] as the real warmonger.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT WEEK:

New stock milestone? Traders are looking for the S&P 500 index to hit 7,000 for first time. That would only take a 1% gain from current levels, which could easily happen during a holiday-shortened trading week with no major economic catalysts. Round number thresholds have no inherent importance, but they’re fun to celebrate anyway (as long as stocks are going up, not down🙂).

The S&P closed at 6,000 for the first time on November 11, 2024. It’s first 5,000 closing was on February 9 of the same year. It closed above 1,000 for the first time on February 2, 1998. To close above 8,000, it would need to rise about 14%. That’s at the high end of forecasts for 2026.