Axios

Rudy Giuliani has vanished from your television. The last time the president's once-ubiquitous attack dog did a major TV appearance was on Sunday, Jan. 20, when he went on NBC's "Meet the Press" and CNN's "State of the Union."

Between the lines: Sources familiar with Giuliani's thinking say he views a major part of his job as trying to undermine public confidence in the Mueller probe and harden the support of Republican voters for Trump to protect him against impeachment. So for Giuliani to stay off TV for an extended stretch is odd.

Since taking office and replacing his Rolls-Royce with an armored Cadillac called "the Beast," Trump seems to have spent more time thinking about cars than any other industrial sector, per aides past and present. He's also bred uncertainty, including over whether he’ll slap tariffs on imported cars.

Why it matters: Trump wants to restore American auto manufacturing to what he considers its mid-20th-century greatness, according to aides. But his ideas for saving the industry are creating angst for its top execs.

SPIVA is a national treasure. Run by S&P Dow Jones Indices, it's by far the most rigorous attempt to measure the probability that an active fund manager will outperform the relevant passive index.

The median wage for 132 CEOs of S&P 500 companies jumped from $11.7 million in 2017 to $12.4 million — or more than $1 million per month — in 2018, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

Why it matters: If the trend applies to the rest of the companies in the S&P, it would set a new compensation record for the third consecutive year — and "one of the starkest examples in years of shareholder performance trailing CEO pay," according to the Journal. The median pay raise for the 132 CEOs was 6.4%. Ordinary workers, meanwhile, have seen their pay grow at a steady, but slower rate, with hourly wages for nonsupervisory workers jumping to 3.5% in February from a year earlier.

President Trump came to Fox News anchor Jeanine Pirro's defense on Sunday in response to the network taking her off the air without explanation, one week after she implied Rep. Ilhan Omar's (D-Minn.) use of a hijab was antithetical to the U.S. Constitution.

"Bring back @JudgeJeanine Pirro. The Radical Left Democrats, working closely with their beloved partner, the Fake News Media, is using every trick in the book to SILENCE a majority of our Country. They have all out campaigns against @FoxNews hosts who are doing too well. Fox must stay strong and fight back with vigor. Stop working soooo hard on being politically correct, which will only bring you down, and continue to fight for our Country. The losers all want what you have, don’t give it to them. Be strong & prosper, be weak & die! Stay true to the people that got you there. Keep fighting for Tucker, and fight hard for @JudgeJeanine. Your competitors are jealous - they all want what you’ve got - NUMBER ONE. Don’t hand it to them on a silver platter. They can’t beat you, you can only beat yourselves!"

Fox News replaced Jeanine Pirro's prime time TV show with a repeat of the documentary "Scandalous: The Trial of William Kennedy Smith" Saturday night.

The details: The Fox News host's show, “Justice With Judge Jeanine,” was taken off air without explanation one week after the network said it "strongly" condemned comments she made on the program on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). In her opening monologue, Pirro suggested wearing a hijab meant she followed Sharia law. Axios asked Fox News why the program was missing from its regular time slot. A spokesperson would only say: "We’re not commenting on internal scheduling matters.”

The N.Y. Times' Peter Baker and The New Yorker's Susan Glasser are finishing 6 years of work on a James Baker book, a full biography of his life and times, and plan publication by Doubleday next spring.

The big picture: Peter Baker tells Axios that James Baker, age 88 — former Secretary of State, Secretary of Treasury and White House chief of staff — is "the last of an era of politics that has vanished in today's polarized atmosphere."