BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith has an inside baseball report about a January 5 meeting between Republican frontrunner Donald Trump and the editorial board of The New York Times. According to Smith, many Times employees believe Trump conveyed to the paper—during a portion of the meeting deemed off-the-record —that his extreme policy positions on immigration are more flexible than he’s publicly admitted. Still, the Times refuses to release a transcript of the meeting, or even discuss Trump’s off-the-record comments:

Joe Scarborough—former Republican Congressman, current co-host of Morning Joe, and erratic political columnist—has a complicated relationship with Donald Trump, who lifts the ratings of his morning MSNBC show but is also a bigot and maybe an actual fascist. Trump has even called Scarborough and his co-host Mika Brzezinski “supporters” and “believers” in his campaign—an understandable statement, given the free publicity Morning Joe has offered the Republican frontrunner. But now Scarborough, writing in The Washington Post, seems to have suddenly soured on Trump...over Trump’s predictable refusal to disavow David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan:

Business Insider has publicly stated that it wants to significantly expand its operations in Europe.

Al-Jazeera America, the soon-to-be-dead U.S. outpost of the Qatari government’s global television network, published an opinion essay on Thursday morning that satirized—subtly, but not that subtly—a number of new (or newly relaunched) media companies, including Mic, The New Republic, and Al-Jazeera America itself. Hours later, however, the network’s website replaced the entire essay with the following editor’s note:

The Riverfront Times has a lengthy investigative profile of the disgraced journalist Juan Thompson, who was fired from The Intercept in January after his editors discovered several instances of fabrication in his stories.

The wreckage of Jeb Bush’s foredoomed campaign has already inspired dozens of articles about the mistakes and miscalculations that led donors, consultants, and Bush himself to believe he had a shot at winning the 2016 race. This genre of journalism reliably offers revealing anecdotes and bitchy anonymous quotes about a campaign’s internal dysfunction. The journalists on Bush’s case, however, seem preoccupied not with behind-the-scenes drama, but with the question of Bush’s soul. Indeed, four reports published in the last four days have emphasized that Bush is “human.” That seems like a trend!

There are very few people who can speak about their personal connections to Donald Trump who aren’t hideous in some way, but that doesn’t mean CNN should keep asking Roger Stone, a bad person, to be a guest.

Not only did the New York Times give former CIA director Michael Hayden its top Sunday Review slot yesterday to opine on the usefulness of drone warfare; the paper didn’t even make him disclose his ties to defense contractors who are in the drone business. Very gracious of them.

Midway through The Hollywood Reporter’s entrancing cover story this week on how David Milch blew an enormous fortune gambling, there is this paragraph:

Below, we have a 10-minute segment from today’s Morning Joe in which co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski address the criticism that they are too friendly with Donald Trump to cover him objectively. To give you a sense of the tenor of the video, Mika shouts about pizza within the first three minutes, and Joe closes it by whispering like a comic book villain.

Louise Mensch, an English author of popular fiction and unpopular political columns, as well as, for a few years, a Conservative member of Parliament, will start a new website, called “Heat Street,” for News Corp, Buzzfeed reports.

Two days after Joe Scarborough and Donald Trump maybe shot the shit for like five minutes inside Trump’s New Hampshire hotel room, CNN is reporting that staffers at Scarborough’s employer are getting just a wee bit uncomfortable about his apparent friendship with the human Pantone chart.

Today’s episode of Fox News’ early morning variety hour, Fox & Friends, featured Gawker’s recent post about the ways in which Hillary Clinton’s press operation bends reporters to their will. You can watch Steve Doocy interview Judge Andrew Napolitano about the emails we published on Tuesday above.

Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, and Donald Trump either hung out and chatted like old chums in Trump’s New Hampshire hotel room last night or maintained a cool professional distance, according to conflicting reports from CNN and Scarborough himself.

I just got back from several days in New Hampshire, attending political rallies across the state and observing thousands of voters in their natural habitat. What have I learned about what will happen in the presidential race? Nothing!

Hillary Clinton’s supporters often argue that mainstream political reporters are incapable of covering her positively—or even fairly. While it may be true that the political press doesn’t always write exactly what Clinton would like, emails recently obtained by Gawker offer a case study in how her prodigious and sophisticated press operation manipulates reporters into amplifying her desired message—in this case, down to the very word that The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder used to describe an important policy speech.

A little after 1 a.m. this past Saturday morning, Martin Shkreli did what he does more or less all the time now: he turned on his computer and began livestreaming on YouTube to his small but feverish fanbase. Normally Shkreli might strum his guitar or engage in inane conversations with his viewers, but this time, at least at first, something was different: a woman was sitting on his lap, and later she would use several needles in an attempt to drain a cyst above his elbow.

Most people in Washington attribute the success of Politico’s marquee morning newsletter, Playbook, to the superhuman work ethic of its main author and Politico’s Chief White House correspondent, Mike Allen. According to several 2010 emails recently obtained by Gawker, however, Allen has employed one unusual productivity trick: letting someone he covers ghostwrite an item for him.

“Hillary Clinton Is Again Put on the Defensive Over Perceived Ties to Wall Street,” the New York Times frets today. Whatever could be going on here?

Peggy Noonan—white of skin, fair of hair, pure of heart. An American, a care bear, in the state of New Hampshire, alert. Whot doth Peggy espy approaching nigh? Lo—it is those whose skin is brown. Question them, we shall.