Fascinating news this afternoon that CBS and its parent company Paramount are considering settling a lawsuit Trump filed against them late last year alleging “election interference” and demanding $10 billion in damages. We know there’s been a lot of this of late. ABC settled an incredibly weak case Trump brought over George Stephanopoulos’ correct use of the word “rape” to describe what a jury in New York concluded Trump had done to E. Jean Carroll. But there’s weak and there’s weak. The suit against CBS isn’t weak. It’s absurd. There’s no tort of editing. But Paramount is considering settling and generally going full Oprah cash & prizes for Donald Trump. This WSJ article, which broke the news, tells us what the issue is: CBS has a merger it’s trying to get approved. And the Trump team, including incoming FCC chair Brendan Carr (who has promised to abuse his power starting on day one), have made it clear that companies have to give Trump cash and prizes if they don’t want trouble.

CBS and Paramount have gotten the message.

I’m starting to get a strong Iraq War vibe about Greenland.

By this, I want to be clear, I don’t mean that I expect a catastrophic and ruinous U.S. invasion to take place. I’m referring to something different … but let’s just say: still not great. One of my strongest memories of those dark times 20-plus years ago was a peculiar dynamic that took hold in Washington after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The desire to invade Iraq was already a big thing in elite conservative circles in the late Clinton years. That was the origin of the “Iraq Liberation Act” of 1998. After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration quickly made clear it wanted to overthrow the Iraqi regime either as retaliation for the attacks or as some sort of preemptive action to forestall future attacks. The ambiguity was of course an important tell about what and why any of this was happening.

I wanted to thank everyone who came out to our live audience taping of the podcast last night in DC. About 200 TPM Readers joined Kate and me in downtown DC where we discussed nomination hearings and more. We hope you had a great time. We definitely did. If you’re a regular podcast listener we’ll be posting last night’s edition, just a little later than usual. We expect to have it in your feeds sometime Friday afternoon.

This was our first time out doing one of these and we’ll be doing more of them. Later this year we’re going to try to do our first live event beyond the east coast. I know this can come off as some kind of east coast elitism. But really it’s logistical. We’re a very small organization. And we have staff in DC and New York. So we can scout out locations, set things up, have people in place to do all the little things that go into an event. Anywhere else is totally different and a different level of planning and resources. But we’re up for it. So we’ll be checking in with readers to see where the demand is — West Coast, Chicago, St. Louis, Texas or any of the gagilion other places in the USA … We have no idea. But somewhere off the eastern seaboard. So keep an eye out for that. And thank you again to everyone who came out. We truly appreciate it and we’re honored by your readership and support.