Disney shares sink, Business Insider Editor-In-Chief Nicholas Carlson says he will step down, the Gateway Pundit reveals how much it profited in 2023, the Donald Trump hush-money trial turns NSFW, TikTok sues the USA, Reddit shares head toward the moon, Meta encourages Insta users to post to Threads, "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" readies to take over the box office, and so much more. But first, the A1.

The Autocratic Assault

CNN Photo Illustration/The Atlantic

Anne Applebaum is sounding the alarm.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and historian published an 8,000-word piece in The Atlantic this week, warning about "the new propaganda war" and the dangers disinformation poses to the free world. The cover piece — excerpted from her forthcoming book, "Autocracy Inc." — spotlighted how autocratic forces across the globe, including Donald Trump in the U.S., are waging sophisticated information wars "to discredit liberalism and freedom."

The efforts, Applebaum stressed, are having the intended corrosive impact on the public discourse, warping the way in which people view democratic governments and the principles in which they stand for. In Applebaum's eyes, the deployment of propaganda by authoritarians — and authoritarian wannabes such as Trump — is one of the most profound issues of our time.

"I think it is at the center of one of the worst crises for American democracy this century, certainly in recent decades," Applebaum told me by phone Tuesday. "If we can't agree on what happened yesterday, then how do we write legislation about it? If we don't share the same reality in the democracy, then how do we debate how we should organize our world?"

"It's incredibly undermining to democracy," she added. "Democracies rely on people having a shared perception of the world."

Which is why, Applebaum said, those who hunger for power seek to destroy the very notion of truth. Applebaum explained that Vladimir Putin's Russia "pioneered" the "firehose of falsehoods," a tactic that Trump has employed in the U.S. and others have used across the world to seize and maintain power. 

"The idea that if you lie connately and repetitively all the time, is that you make people feel that they don't know what is true," Applebaum told me. "They don't believe journalists. They don't believe independent ombudsman. They don't believe institutions or science. And it's a very useful thing to dictators."

Indeed, it's easy to see how Russia's propaganda war has had enormous benefit for the Putin-led country as it simultaneously wages its kinetic war on Ukraine. Notably, the narratives the Russians have sowed into the public discourse have been echoed by popular American commentators who have influenced the public and made it incredibly difficult for Congress to pass legislation providing necessary aid to Ukraine.

What makes the situation in the U.S. differ from other countries, however, is that the disinformation is not flowing from state-controlled media. There is no RT, Sputnik, or Xinhua. Instead, Trump wields an army of free and willful collaborators — people and institutions who lie on his behalf, choosing to serve as propaganda vessels. 

Instead of being ordered by force into action, these outlets and pundits have been incentivized by a broken information economy that algorithmically rewards them for spreading dishonest ideas, outright falsehoods, and dangerous conspiracy theories. Trafficking in lies has enriched and empowered people like Rupert Murdoch, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Steve Bannon, and an entire platoon of right-wing media figures. 

"It's a voluntary network," Applebaum acknowledged. "And it shares Trump's goals. It makes people distrust and dislike traditional sources of information. Presumably, it's done with the idea that they will be the beneficiaries. If people no longer believe doctors and newspapers and universities, then what are they going to turn to? They're going to turn to other sources of information. Maybe that's Steve Bannon's podcast — and that's then good for Steve Bannon."

Everyone else, of course, bears the cost.

Bizarrely, though, despite the clear toll that the lies promoted by Trump and his propaganda servants are taking on American society, the legacy news media continues to largely turn a blind eye to the story. You won't find evening news anchors like David Muir, Lester Holt, and Norah O'Donnell regularly covering the destructive lies unleashed upon the public by MAGA Media. Outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post inexplicably decline to even identify networks such as Fox News as "right-wing" in their news reporting. 

And yet, it's not possible to actually understand the biggest issues of our time without understanding the propaganda pipeline poisoning the information well. It is not possible to understand why Congress could not pass Ukraine funding without knowing how figures such as Carlson helped spread Russian propaganda to the masses. It is not possible to understand why most of the country does not believe the election results without understanding the role MAGA Media played in undermining the elections system. It is not possible to understand why Trump continues to hold a firm grip over the Republican Party without understanding the propaganda machine at his disposal.

When I asked her why the establishment press is not more aggressively covering the story of our time, Applebaum, however, appeared stumped. 

"I don't know why it's not covered more," the celebrated writer candidly told me. "It seems to me to be one of the very central issues of modern society."

CNN Photo Illustration/Michael Buckner/Penske Media/Getty Images

Disney in the Dumps: Disney shares closed down nearly 10% Tuesday after the company reported earnings, beating analysts expectations, but offering investors soft guidance moving forward. While the Bob Iger-led entertainment juggernaut said it had turned as surprise $47 million profit at Disney+, it also said it would likely not add subscribers in the next quarter and would revert back to losing money (Disney did, however, say it hopes to then see profitability return in Q4 and that streaming will "be a meaningful future growth driver" for the company). Additionally, Disney warned that its Parks and Experiences division will experience a slowdown. CNBC's Alex Sherman and Lillian Rizzo have more here.

Other highlights from the investor call: 

► Iger said Marvel will offer a "reduced" slate of programming, after having previously acknowledged the lucrative studio sacrificed quality for quantity. The Disney boss said moving forward that it will produce "at most" three films a year and two original series. "We’re slowly going to decrease volume," Iger explained.

► Iger signaled Disney might license more of its content. "We’re already doing some licensing with Netflix, and we’re looking selectively at other possibilities," he said. "I don’t want to declare that it’s a direction we’ll go more aggressively or not. But we certainly are taking a look at it and being expansive in our thinking about it."

► Iger voiced confidence that Disney will retain its NBA rights: "We feel really good about the potential package that we will end up with in terms of it, basically enabling ESPN to continue to shine in the television sports business."

CNN Photo Illustration/By Lukas Schulze/Sportsfile for Collision/Getty Images

BI Boss Bows Out: Business Insider is going to need to recruit a new editor-in-chief. Nicholas Carlson, who has served in the role since 2017, announced Tuesday to staffers that he will step down — though he stressed the move was not connected to criticism he had faced from Axel Springer leadership over how he had handled the outlet's reporting on Neri Oxman, the academic married to billionaire Bill Ackman. "Every year I’ve been in this job we’ve published journalism that, though fair, has left very powerful people mad at us," Carlson wrote. "That’s a fact of journalism, and that’s never going away." Carlson said that he will transition to editor-at-large and work on other projects. Semafor's Max Tani has more here.

► Axel Springer, for its part, praised Carlson, with a spokesperson saying in a statement that his leadership "enabled Business Insider to become an award-winning newsroom that reaches hundreds of millions of readers and viewers monthly around the world." The spokesperson added, "We are excited for CEO Barbara Peng to lead the search for Business Insider’s next Editor in Chief."

CNN Photo Illustration/Ben Jackson/Getty Images

First in Reliable | The Gateway to Profit: How much money can you make peddling far-right clickbait and conspiracies? My colleague Marshall Cohen found the answer in recent court filings from the Gateway Pundit, whose parent company said it made about $3.1 million in gross income last year. The notorious website, founded by Jim Hoft, is in the process of declaring bankruptcy while it tries to fend off major defamation lawsuits about its conspiracy-filled 2020 election coverage. The new court filings also indicate that Gateway Pundit’s current defamation insurance would only cover $2 million in payments. That’s a tiny sliver of what other 2020 election deniers have been forced to shell out to the victims of their lies. Fox News paid $787 million to settle a similar case last year, and Rudy Giuliani was ordered to pay $148 million to the Atlanta election workers suing Gateway Pundit.

CNN Photo Illustration/Will Lanzoni

TikTok v. USA: TikTok is not going quietly into that good night. The short-form video giant on Tuesday filed a lawsuit challenging the divest-or-ban legislation that was recently signed into law by President Joe Biden (whose campaign still uses the app), setting up a historic First Amendment case. "For the first time in history," TikTok said in its lawsuit, "Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban, and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than 1 billion people worldwide." The expected move is TikTok's last recourse after its lobbying efforts and expensive marketing campaign failed to work in stopping Congress from forcing ByteDance to sell the app. Legal experts have said that TikTok does have a strong First Amendment argument to make. CNN's Brian Fung has more here.

► Meanwhile, as TikTok faces an uncertain fate in the U.S., Substack is moving in on the app's creators, announcing video features aimed at luring them to the platform. 

CNN Photo Illustration/20th Century Studios

Box Office of the Apes: The apes are preparing to take over the box office. Disney's latest entry into its hit "Planet of the Apes" franchise, "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes," is looking to rake in at least $50 million at the domestic box office. At the international box office, the film is trending at more than $80 million. "Based on those projections, the film should end up on Sunday with a solid $130 million to $140 million at the global box office," Variety's Rebecca Rubin reported. Rubin has more here.