Top News/Talk Media Stories Over the Weekend
Former President Donald Trump’s “come after me I come after you” response to his indictment on charges related to January 6; the Hunter Biden on hold plea deal and calls for an investigation into the Biden family finances; the 2024 presidential race; A Ukrainian woman is arrested on charges of being part of a plot to assassinate Volodymyr Zelensky; the Russian and Chinese ships found patrolling near Alaska last week; the hoopla surrounding the possible Elon Musk–Mark Zuckerberg cage match; and the Barbie movie hits record $1 billion in box office receipts were some of the most-talked-about stories in news/talk media over the weekend, according to ongoing research from TALKERS magazine.
Accusing social media giant Meta of pilfering former Twitter employees to create a “copycat” application, Twitter is threatening legal action against Meta over “Threads,” Meta’s text-based “Twitter killer” platform. In a letter addressed to Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro argues that Meta used Twitter’s trade secrets and intellectual property to build Threads. Flatly dismissing Spiro’s letter, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone states on Threads, “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee – that’s just not a thing.” Heretofore silent on the launch of Threads, Twitter executive chair/chief technical officer Elon Musk late last week backed Spiro’s claims stating, “Competition is fine – cheating is not.” In addition, Twitter chief executive officer Linda Yaccarino tweeted that Twitter is “often imitated – but the Twitter community can never be duplicated.” According to Zuckerberg, Threads drew more than 30 million sign-ups within 48 hours of last Wednesday night’s (7/5) launch; that number has reportedly now more than tripled, exceeding the 100-million mark.
talk hosts he might be able to beat in a cage match, used the recently published 2023 TALKERS Heavy Hundred to muse over potential opponents. Kaye – ranked #81 on this year’s Heavy Hundred – says he’s pretty sure Sean Hannity (#1 on the Heavy Hundred) would kill him.