Good morning. The on-camera spar between President Trump, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer was political theater at its finest ... and left us with a Doug Mills classic for the history books.

• What's next, via NYT's Michelle Cottle: "The next two years of divided government promise to be a freak show of finger-pointing and point-scoring and people talking over and past one another with no hope of, or even much interest in, engaging the other side."

Mark Wilson

The Meng Wanzhou flashpoint

Moving the Market: President Trump told Reuters last night that he would personally intervene in the Justice Department’s case against Huawei's Meng Wanzhou if it would help trade relations with China, throwing his weight into an international legal battle that has business leaders from Silicon Valley to Wall Street on edge.

• The Backstory: The Justice Department believes Meng tried to help Huawei dodge U.S. sanctions on Iran and is trying to extradite her from Canada to New York. Meng was granted a $10-million bail in Canada yesterday.

• The Big Picture: Meng's arrest has become a flashpoint in the fragile truce between Washington and Beijing, and business leaders fear that her arrest could result in China arresting U.S. business leaders.

• The Latest: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said yesterday that one of its former diplomats has been detained in China, raising fears that Chinese retribution for Meng's arrest has already begun.
.
What's Next: The Justice Department is preparing to crack down on China after determining that it has been conducting a coordinated intelligence-gathering effort to hack U.S. citizens private information, NYT's David Sanger et al report.

Bloomberg

Sundar Pichai wins the Hill

Talk of the DCA-SFO: Google chief Sundar Pichai emerged unscathed from his 3.5 hour hearing with the House Judiciary Committee yesterday.

• The showdown was instead an indictment of lawmakers who were as inept at questioning Pichai on substantive issues as they were ignorant of how the internet, social media and mobile technology actually work.

• Most conservative lawmakers focused their questioning on the (unfounded) suspicion that Google's algorithm harbors a liberal bias. Even if such bias existed, the issue is far less significant than Google's data monitoring practices, control of the digital advertising market and ambitions to work with China.

• Lawmakers who did do their homework, most notably Rep. David Cicilline, were outnumbered by those who seemed most upset by the negative news stories that showed up when they Googled their own names.

The Big Picture, via Bloomberg's Shira Ovide: "Our elected representatives are too often failing us when it comes to holding powerful tech companies to account. .... The powerful tech companies are also failing in being accountable to the public."

Bonus: "The 8 Strangest Moments" via BuzzFeed.

🎅 Rally the Market: Sign up friends and colleagues for Byers Market here ... and thanks for reading.

Steven Ferdman/Getty

Hans Vestberg breaks Oath

Digital Media Meltdown: Verizon's Hans Vestberg has slashed the value of AOL and Yahoo by $4.6 billion, making the two sites essentially worthless and the latest victims of a rapidly contracting digital media landscape.

• Backstory: Yahoo and AOL were already in decline when former Verizon chief Lowell McAdam bought them for $10 billion and merged them under the Oath operating division. Widespread revenue declines in the face of the Facebook/Google advertising duopoly made them untenable.

What's Next:

• "The move will erase almost half the value of [Oath], which houses AOL, Yahoo and other businesses like the Huffington Post," Bloomberg's Scott Moritz reports.

• "The playbook from here on out calls for a series of staff cuts and asset sales, followed by more writedowns, followed by more cuts, etc.," per Recode's Peter Kafka.

The Big Picture, via Moritz: "Verizon is conceding defeat."

• Salt in the Wound: T-Mobile CEO John Legere: "I’ve been telling @Verizon this for years… in fact, I told them the day they bought those ‘90s relics. Hopefully they learned from this $$$ mistake, but I don’t have a ton of hope."

Market Links

• Joe Ianniello avoids controversy on the CBS call (THR)

• Kathie Lee Gifford is leaving the Today show (Deadline)

• Novelists find new life on late night television (NYT)

Charley Gallay/Getty

The Academy scrambles

Talk of Tinseltown: The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences is still scrambling to find a host for the Oscars five days after Kevin Hart's departure, Hollywood sources with knowledge of the discussions tell me.

• The Big Picture: The Academy's inability to identify a willing and able host highlights how undesirable that job has become in an era when public figures are aggressively scrutinized on social media.

• "No one wants to host the Oscars," a Hollywood exec told me last week. "Every year everyone says no. It’s a thankless job. Ratings plummeting. Social media snark with millions of instant critics. And political land mines every year from #MeToo to #TooWhite.”

Scuttlebutt: Wanda Sykes is among the most talked about possible replacements, topping a list that also includes Tiffany Haddish and the SNL alumni duo Tina Fey and Amy Pheohler.

But ... as Hollywood sources warn, none of these folks have the national public recognition to match previous hosts.

Bonus, via NYT's Cara Buckley: A new study from Creative Artists Agency and shift7 says that movies starring women earn more than male-led films," whether they were made for less than $10 million or for $100 million or more."

What's Next: Netflix reveals 2018's most binged shows, while The New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum delivers her perspective on the best TV shows of the year.

See you tomorrow.