On Wednesday morning, "a quiet, retired public servant will go before a pair of House committees to talk about a 448-page document," though perhaps only former Special Counsel Robert Mueller would prefer his high-profile testimony be described that way, Anderson Cooper said on CNN Tuesday night. "House Democrats who will be questioning him tomorrow spent the day prepping for it. The president's Republican defenders circulated talking points, which CNN has now obtained. The president has been tweeting and talking about it — no surprise — and this is, whether he thinks it ought to be or not, a key moment in his presidency and a critical one for the country."

Even if Mueller stays within the confines of his report on Russian election interference and Trump obstruction of justice, his testimony "is still tremendously important," because "most people have not" read his report, and "so many, including the president — especially the president — have been mischaracterizing what the report actually says," Cooper said. So he read some key parts of the report, including its opening and closing lines, and sections in which Mueller suggests he would have charged Trump with obstruction of justice if he thought he could.

"By the way, one of the Republican talking points ... says: 'The president never interfered with anyone or any part of the investigation and was committed to transparency throughout the entire process,'" Cooper said. "I mean that, that's a talking point. It's clearly not true, according to the Mueller report. ... As for another talking point, that the report did not establish that the campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election interference, that is true. What's not true is the talking point claiming the report confirmed there was no collusion, which it didn't."

"Just to repeat Robert Mueller's first words, 'The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion,'" Cooper said. "As for his last words on the subject, stay tuned til tomorrow." Peter Weber

President Trump has a new target for his Twitter ire — Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Khamenei on Friday morning called Trump a "clown" who is only pretending to support Iran's people, and criticized the Trump-authorized killing of top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. In Khamenei's first time leading Friday prayers at the Mosella mosque in Tehran since 2012, he said Iran's retaliatory missile strikes were a "slap on the face" to the U.S. that demonstrated Iran's "power."

Trump responded with a tweet on Friday evening, adding the zinger that Khamenei had "not been so Supreme lately."

Aside from the schoolyard taunt, Trump threw in a vague threat, noting Khamenei "should be very careful with his words!" That will surely calm the simmering tensions between the two nations.

There's a brand new way Democrats can make the debate stage next month.

The Democratic National Committee announced requirements to qualify for February's primary debate Friday, saying the donor threshold will remain steady, with candidates needing at least 225,000 unique donors. Candidates will also, as before, need to hit at least five percent in four qualifying national polls or seven percent in two polls of New Hampshire, Nevada, or South Carolina voters. But there's now a third path that candidates can take to replace the poll requirement: If they win just one delegate in Iowa, they're in.

This could open a path for candidates such as entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who hit the donor requirement but didn't have enough qualifying polls to make January's debate. The Iowa caucuses are Feb. 3, and the next debate is Feb. 7 in New Hampshire. Kathryn Krawczyk

After traveling the world hunting for treasure in his personal life, Nicolas Cage can soon resume doing so in the movies, too.

A third National Treasure film is in the works at Disney with Bad Boys for Life's Chris Bremner writing a screenplay, The Hollywood Reporter wrote Friday.

No further details were provided in the report, which only briefly mentioned National Treasure while focusing on the status of a fourth Bad Boys film, which is also apparently happening. But this news comes more than a decade after National Treasure: Book of Secrets hit theaters, easily outgrossing the original but for some reason not being followed by five to eight more installments centered around Benjamin Franklin Gates' increasingly wacky adventures.

A third National Treasure has been discussed going back years, though, to the point that this movie could just be about the mythical quest for its own screenplay. Director Jon Turteltaub in 2018 suggested the odds it would come together weren't great, telling /Film, "I don't think Disney wants to make it," though he suggested it could happen as a streaming-exclusive film.

Now that it's apparently moving forward, though, what treasure hunt might be at the center of this installment? Could it just completely ignore the first two films and turn into a documentary about Nicolas Cage the actor's totally real attempt to locate the Holy Grail, which he revealed last year and dubbed his "grail quest"? Probably not, but Disney can have that idea for free. Brendan Morrow

The Harvey Weinstein trial officially has its jury.

Jury selection in the trial of the disgraced film producer ended Friday with seven men and five women set to serve, Variety reports. Three alternates, one man and two women, were also selected.

Lead prosecutor Joan Illuzzi during jury selection accused the defense and trying to "systematically exclude" young white women, The Hollywood Reporter writes. "They have eliminated every single white woman from this prospective jury panel," Illuzzi said, Variety reports.

The defense, in turn, accused the prosecution of trying to exclude men from the jury, but the Reporter writes Judge James Burke didn't accept either argument. The defense reportedly said it didn't seek to exclude young women but that, as The Associated Press writes, they "didn't want jurors who were too young to understand the way men and women interacted in the early 1990s."

The defense objected to one particular juror, a woman who wrote a forthcoming novel whose plot has to do with "predatory older men," Deadline reports. The judge ultimately said the woman could serve on the jury and denied the defense's subsequent request for a mistrial.

Weinstein is facing rape and sexual assault charges, which he has pleaded not guilty to. Opening arguments in the trial are set to begin on Jan. 22. Brendan Morrow

Former Vice President Joe Biden is still promising "If you like your insurance, you can keep it" — with a twist.

In his endorsement interview with The New York Times published Friday, Biden is asked about that phrase both he and former President Barack Obama have said in the past. And after accepting that he actually did say it, Biden promised that "if you like your plan, you can keep it," provided "your employer doesn't take it away from you."

While the ObamaCare mantra of keeping the insurance you like ended up not exactly being true, Biden still modified it in a July 2019 primary debate to say under his presidency, "If you like your health care plan, your employer-based plan, you can keep it. If in fact you have private insurance, you can keep it." There's video proof of Biden saying that but, when confronted with it in his Times interview, Biden replied with "I didn't say that, by the way."

The interview moved on, and Biden was asked about how if there was a public health insurance option, employers may stop offering insurance altogether.

That all devolved into what Biden saying something that would look perfect on a campaign coffee mug as long as it fits: "If you like your plan, you can keep it, assuming — I should add the obvious — if your employer doesn't take it away from you. Okay?" Kathryn Krawczyk

An era in the film industry has officially come to an end.

Disney is rebranding the 20th Century Fox film studio it purchased in its acquisition of Fox assets last year, Variety reports. Going forward, 20th Century Fox will instead be known as 20th Century Studios, and Disney will also rebrand Fox Searchlight Pictures as just Searchlight Pictures.

Audiences will start seeing these changes fairly soon, as The Call of the Wild will reportedly be released next month under the new 20th Century Studios branding, although the opening logo complete with that iconic fanfare will be kept unchanged other than the altered name being swapped in.

This decision, The New York Times notes, will mean that "consumers do not mistakenly think the movie studio has anything to do Rupert Murdoch's polarizing Fox News media empire." Indeed, an insider told Variety, "I think the Fox name means Murdoch, and that is toxic." Fox News was among the assets Disney didn't acquire in its $71 billion 21st Century Fox purchase, which gave it the rights to properties like Avatar, X-Men, and The Simpsons ahead of the launch of its streaming service, Disney+.

Still yet to be decided, according to Variety's report, is whether Disney will similarly rebrand 20th Century Fox Television and Fox 21 Television Studios, which produce shows like The Orville, This Is Us, and Pose. On TV, then, the Fox name lives on inside Disney — for now. Brendan Morrow