THE SET-UP: A truly weird presidential campaign got truly weirder this week. It seems like a year since Trump professed his admiration (penis envy?) for Arnold Palmer’s genitalia. That’s probably because a couple days later we got Gen. John Kelly’s on-the-record reveals about Trump’s Hitler envy. We barely had time to chew that over before the news-cycle served-up today’s revelation that Jeff Bezos spiked the WaPo’s ready-to-hit-send endorsement of Kamala Harris. And that came a day after an eerily similar controversy spilled out of the editorial board of the LA Times, where Patrick Soon-Shiong nixed their planned endorsement of Harris. As you’ll see below, Bezos and Soon-Shiong may have self-interested reasons for genuflecting to Trump.
The week ended with a flourish when the Wall Street Journal dropped a bombshell report on Elon Musk’s surreptitious chit-chats with Vladimir Putin. And yes, I agree that “bombshell report” is overused. But this one qualifies in no small part because of the nature of the business Elon conducts both with the US government and behalf of Donald Trump.
In fact, Musk has morphed into a sort of funhouse mirror reflection of his anointed savior of Western Civ. Among the traits he’s acquired is a staggering deafness to his own hypocrisy. Despite getting rich off subsidies and tax credits and government contracts, Musk uses his control over X to force-feed its users his tweeted tripe about the evils of excessive government spending. And if you’re not on the platform-formerly-known-as-Twitter … trust me … logging on to X is like walking into an incel’s idea of Oceania after that incel scored Series B funding, got some hair plugs and then spent a month intermittently fasting and memorizing the writings of Bronze Age Pervert and Mencius Moldbug.
Now that his re-carpeted head is duly filled with what he no doubt regards as the sweet smells of his own flatulence, Big Brother Musk floods everybody’s feeds with a constant barrage of brain-farts and provably false pro-Trump propaganda. While some might wonder what’s “gone wrong” with the “genius,” the explanation is shockingly banal.
Sadly, it makes sense … dollars and cents. - jp
TITLE: The Washington Post opinion editor approved a Harris endorsement. A week later, the paper’s publisher killed it.
https://www.cjr.org/political_press/the-washington-post-opinion-editor-approved-a-harris-endorsement-a-week-later-the-papers-publisher-killed-it.php
EXCERPTS: On Friday, the Washington Post’s publisher, Will Lewis, announced that the paper would no longer make endorsements for president—after its journalists had already drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Over a period of several weeks, a Post staffer told me, two Post board members, Charles Lane and Stephen W. Stromberg, had worked on drafts of a Harris endorsement. (Neither was contacted for this article.) “Normally we’d have had a meeting, review a draft, make suggestions, do editing,” the staffer told me. Editorial writers started to feel angsty a few weeks ago, per the staffer; the process stalled. Around a week ago, editorial page editor David Shipley told the editorial board that the endorsement was on track, adding that “this is obviously something our owner has an interest in.”
“We thought we were dickering over language—not over whether there would be an endorsement,” the Post staffer said. So the Post, both news and opinion departments, were stunned Friday after Shipley told the editorial board at a meeting that it would not take a position after all. This represents the first time the Post has sat out a presidential endorsement since 1988.
The move follows one by my former colleague Mariel Garza, who resigned on Wednesday from her position as the editorials editor at the Los Angeles Times in protest of a decision by Patrick Soon-Shiong, the publisher, to block the editorial board’s plan to endorse Harris. The Times did not make presidential endorsements from 1976 through 2004 but resumed the practice in 2008 and endorsed Democrats in the past four elections.
The decisions at both newspapers have angered staff members, who point out that both papers have published editorials for more than nine years now describing the threats Donald Trump poses to American democracy; his constant stream of falsehoods; his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol; his public policies; and his promises to be a dictator—for one day, at least—if elected.
Ian Bassin, a democracy expert, calls these moves “anticipatory obedience”: fear by owners that if Trump wins he could take vengeance on companies that cross him. They noted that the leadership at CNN and the Post changed after the Trump administration tried to block the takeover of CNN’s parent company and tried to deny a cloud computing contract for Amazon, whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns the Post.
Bezos bought the Post in 2013, from the Graham family, for $250 million. Soon-Shiong bought the Times in 2018, from the Tribune Company, for $500 million. Both billionaires initially attracted praise but have since come under fire. Neither paper managed to be a breakout economic success; both have had layoffs. In each newsroom, respected editors were brought in (Sally Buzbee at the Post, Norman Pearlstine and Kevin Merida at the Times) only to later leave under pressure or in frustration.
Martin Baron, who edited the Post from 2012 to 2021, winning wide acclaim for his leadership of the newsroom during the Trump presidency, issued a statement to NPR denouncing the last-minute decision to withhold an endorsement. “This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty,” he said. “Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners). History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”
Opting against endorsements has drawn harsh scrutiny on social media. Many readers—more than thirteen hundred at the Times, according to a report by Semafor—have canceled subscriptions. Others have asked (reasonably, in my view) why newspapers endorse candidates at all—and whether endorsements have a negative influence on the balance and objectivity they expect from news coverage.
The most serious allegation, though, is that Soon-Shiong and Bezos are trying to hedge their bets out of fear that their business interests could be harmed during a second Trump presidency. Soon-Shiong, who made his fortune as a biopharmaceutical innovator, is working on new drugs that would presumably require FDA approval. Amazon faces an antitrust lawsuit, brought last year by the Biden administration, that will take years to litigate or settle.
TITLE: What a Trump win could mean for Elon Musk’s businesses
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4947335-elon-musk-trump-government-contracts/
EXCERPT: “A reasonable individual can look at a situation such as that of a very wealthy individual who has government contracts coming into the government where he would be put in a position where he could influence current and future contracts and regulations of his businesses,” said John P. Pelissero, the director of government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University..
A New York Times analysis published Monday found Tesla, Musk’s electric vehicle company, and SpaceX, his aerospace firm, have inked $15.4 billion in government contracts over the past decade.
NASA and the Department of Defense have the largest contracts with SpaceX, equal to $11.8 billion and $3.6 billion, respectively, over the past 10 years, according to the analysis.
Space Force, the military branch formed under Trump, is a major supplier of these contracts. Just last week, it awarded SpaceX more than $733 million for a new batch of rocket launches.
NASA is an even bigger supplier of grants as it becomes increasingly reliant on SpaceX for government space programs, while Tesla receives millions in government subsidies.
As government agencies continue to work with or regulate his businesses, Musk has taken a major shift into right-wing politics following his endorsement of Trump in July.
Weeks later, Trump pledged to establish a “government efficiency commission” to conduct a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and make recommendations for drastic reforms.
The former president said Musk should lead this commission, and the tech mogul signaled he would be willing to, though it remains unclear exactly what the panel would do.
Musk last month suggested SpaceX could reach Mars “so long as it is not smothered by bureaucracy,” and called Trump’s proposed department “the only path to extending life beyond Earth.”
Musk’s “fortune, making him the richest man in the world, is based on government contracts like SpaceX and subsidized businesses like Tesla,” former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Tom Wheeler told The Hill.
“If he is that dependent on the decisions of government, he either needs to totally divest in order to do anything in government, or not take the kind of positions that have been promised or been suggested,” Wheeler said, adding the circumstances are “an existential threat for responsible government.”
The FCC is responsible for granting and rescinding broadband subsidies for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite units. Musk criticized the agency this month for what he said was “illegally” revoking some Starlink subsidies.
TITLE: Elon Musk touts his influence under a Trump administration in a ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ after blowout Tesla earnings
https://fortune.com/2024/10/24/elon-musk-donald-trump-election-tesla-robotaxi-cybercab-earnings-doge/
EXCERPT: Elon Musk already has a clear plan for the first political favor he’ll seek if Donald Trump wins next month’s election.
The Tesla CEO aims to roll out an advanced version of his Full Self-Driving (FSD) software next year, allowing cars to operate without driver supervision.
Musk acknowledged Wednesday that the timeline for the release of FSD, initially set for California and Texas, depends on state regulations—an area where he currently has no sway.
“If there’s a Department of Government Efficiency, I’ll try to help make that happen,” Musk said during Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call, adding it would benefit all industries, not just Tesla.
Musk, like many tech billionaires, frequently clashes with regulators, whom he views as obstacles to innovation.
Should Trump be elected, the Tesla CEO will volunteer to create a kind of garbage collection service that tosses out old rules and regulations.
Musk has suggested scrapping about three-quarters of federal agencies to streamline operations.
As head of a proposed new department under Trump, dubbed DOGE, Musk would advocate for a national approval process for autonomous vehicles, replacing the current patchwork of state regulations.
This process, as Musk envisions it, would involve minimal paperwork, easing the path to approval.
Rival Waymo, for example, has spent years sharing safety data with California regulators before gaining approval for its robotaxi service.
Tesla, by contrast, has avoided this by classifying its FSD software as a driver-assist feature rather than a fully autonomous system.
Musk, a vocal Trump supporter, has already hinted he would direct regulatory questions to Trump, paving the way for legislation that could benefit his companies.
TITLE: Exclusive: NASA head says report of Elon Musk talking to Putin should be investigated
https://www.semafor.com/article/10/25/2024/nasas-bill-nelson-calls-for-investigation-into-report-of-musk-putin-calls
EXCERPT: “I don’t know if that story is true,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said. “If it’s true there have been multiple conversations with Elon Musk and the president of Russia, then that would be concerning, particularly for NASA and the Department of Defense,” he added.
SpaceX is a key commercial partner for NASA: On Friday, NASA’s Crew-8 mission members returned to Earth on a SpaceX capsule. Speaking at Semafor’s World Economy Summit in Washington, DC, Nelson stressed that the agency was nonpartisan and praised his dealings with SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell. The NASA head said that Musk largely leaves her to run the company, which he added has “been phenomenally successful.”
The [Wall Street] Journal reported Thursday that Musk has been in regular contact with Putin since late 2022, citing former US, European, and Russian officials. The two men allegedly discussed both personal topics as well as others related to business and geopolitical tensions. Musk’s business ties with US intelligence and military agencies has given him “unique visibility into some of America’s most sensitive space programs,” the Journal wrote, and he has access to certain classified information.
Musk has not responded to the allegations, and the Kremlin said that the billionaire and Putin spoke only once and discussed “space as well as current and future technologies.”
SEE ALSO:
SpaceX wants to go to Mars. To get there, environmentalists say it’s trashing Texas
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/10/nx-s1-5145776/spacex-texas-wetlands
Elon Musk at Cato Conference: Government Needs a “Regulation Removal Department”
https://www.cato.org/blog/elon-musk-cato-conference-government-needs-regulation-removal-department-0