When legal documents related to the case of convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein [were made public](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/03/jeffrey-epstein-list-names-released) on Wednesday night, it caused an online frenzy that crashed the court website hosting the files in minutes. More than 900 pages of papers were unsealed late in the day, identifying numerous Epstein associates and public figures as mentioned in proceedings of the case Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre filed against [Ghislaine Maxwell](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ghislaine-maxwell) in 2015. Maxwell, the US-based British socialite and media heir, [was convicted in New York](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/29/ghislaine-maxwell-sex-trafficking-trial-verdict) in December 2021 of sex trafficking and similar charges for procuring teen girls for Epstein. In December 2023, a judge [announced](https://abcnews.go.com/US/federal-judge-orders-documents-naming-jeffrey-epsteins-associates/story?id=105779882) the documents would be unsealed in January 2024, sparking intrigue for followers of the case – many of whom expected the release would include a list of Epstein’s clients and co-conspirators. However, the truth is less scandalous, as the majority of those whose names appear in the documents released on Wednesday are not accused of wrongdoing and have been mentioned previously in legal proceedings or news accounts. Prior to the unsealing, the names were listed in court papers as variants of J Doe, a legal device to protect identities. Some of the high-profile names in the court documents include Prince Andrew, former US president Bill Clinton, pop star Michael Jackson and magician David Copperfield. The document release fueled an online hubbub, causing a [link](https://twitter.com/NadiaKNM1/status/1742700537412243954) to the highly anticipated list to immediately crash and [setting](https://twitter.com/MarkMizzouSteel/status/1742702988190499110) further conspiracy theories in motion, including that the documents were purposefully knocked offline. This came after misinformation surrounding the list has been roiling for weeks, including baseless claims that US late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel’s name might appear in the documents, spurred by a crack New York Jets football quarterback Aaron Rodgers made on Tuesday on ESPN’s Pat McAfee Show. Far from providing a concrete client list, the records instead include many of Epstein’s accusers, members of his staff who told their stories to tabloid newspapers and people who served as witnesses at Maxwell’s trial. They also include people who were mentioned in passing during depositions but aren’t accused of anything salacious, and people who investigated Epstein, including prosecutors, a journalist and a detective. Wednesday’s release marks the first set of documents related to the case to become unsealed, and more are anticipated to be revealed in coming days. _The Associated Press contributed_ _report__ing_

The unsealed court documents related to the Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking case contain new information about prominent individuals who were allegedly involved with Jeffrey Epstein, including former President Bill Clinton and current Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. Despite some social media claims of a "list" of potential Epstein clients or co-conspirators, these documents are not such a list but rather provide detailed depositions from Maxwell's trial accusers and former employees that do not necessarily link the individuals to any wrongdoing beyond their close association with Epstein and Maxwell.

A British PR guru hired to manage the reputation of Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice [Ghislaine Maxwell](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ghislaine-maxwell) accused one of Epstein’s victims of “crying rape” and suggested past allegations of abuse would discredit her, unsealed court documents show. Ross Gow, then a managing partner at Mayfair-based [Acuity Reputation](https://acuitygulfpartners.ae/), emailed Maxwell with links to media articles about a case from the Epstein accuser [Virginia Giuffre](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/15/virginia-giuffre-prince-andrew-civil-lawsuit)’s childhood in which she claimed to have been raped by two older teenagers. The articles indicate Giuffre, then 14, had told police she was raped in a car in a wooded area near her home in Palm Beach, Florida, by the two acquaintances, who she said had given her alcohol and marijuana. The case was not pursued by prosecutors due to a low likelihood of success at trial and concerns about Giuffre’s credibility. Police records show the suspects, aged 17 and 18, did not deny having sex with the then-underage Giuffre but said the encounter was consensual. In an email dated 24 February 2015, sent to Maxwell and her then-lawyer, Philip Barden, Gow, a “reputation manager” working as Maxwell’s spokesman, appears to have suggested the information from Giuffre’s childhood could damage her case. “Ghislaine. Some helpful leakage,” Gow wrote, before pasting the links to the articles, in the _Daily Mail_ and the _New York Daily News_. In the email’s subject line he wrote: “VR cried rape – prior case dismissed as prosecutors found her ‘not credible’.” VR refers to Virginia Roberts, Giuffre’s maiden name. Lawyers representing Maxwell later went on to refer to the 1998 case in court, along with other incidents from Giuffre’s childhood, arguing that they showed she was unreliable.  Virginia Giuffre brought a defamation case against Maxwell after she accused Giuffre of being a liar. Photograph: Crime+Investigation/PA The email from Gow was included in a tranche of more than 195 documents running to thousands of pages that has been unsealed by a US court in recent days. They relate to a 2015 defamation case brought by Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell after she accused Giuffre of being a liar. The case was later settled for an undisclosed amount. Key aspects of the allegations against Epstein and Maxwell, including that they worked together to identify girls, groom them, and bring them to Epstein’s properties where they were sexually abused, have since been proven. [Epstein was arrested in 2019 on sex trafficking charges.](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/08/jeffrey-epstein-sex-trafficking-charges-court) A month later, US justice officials reported that he had taken his own life in prison while awaiting trial. [Maxwell was found guilty in 2021](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/29/ghislaine-maxwell-sex-trafficking-trial-verdict) of trafficking women and girls for Epstein to abuse and is serving a 20-year sentence. She is appealing against her conviction, claiming she has been made a scapegoat because Epstein is dead. The correspondence between Gow and Maxwell gives an insight into the PR and legal strategy pursued by Maxwell and her team. The email referring to Giuffre “crying rape” was sent by Gow before Maxwell was convicted, following media reports in January 2015 that Giuffre had been used as a “sex slave” by Epstein in abuse that began when she was underage. Giuffre claimed to have been trafficked to famous figures including Prince Andrew and said she and other alleged victims had been procured by Maxwell, a British socialite. In response to the claims, Gow released a statement to media on behalf of Maxwell in which he said Giuffre’s claims were “obvious lies” and ‘“untrue”, which later became the subject of Giuffre’s defamation suit. [skip past newsletter promotion](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/07/ghislaine-maxwell-pr-adviser-virginia-giuffre-rape-allegations-jeffrey-epstein#EmailSignup-skip-link-13) Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters **Privacy Notice:** Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our [Privacy Policy](https://www.theguardian.com/help/privacy-policy). We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google [Privacy Policy](https://policies.google.com/privacy) and [Terms of Service](https://policies.google.com/terms) apply. after newsletter promotion Other emails released by the US courts show that British lawyer Philip Barden, a partner at law firm Devonshires who was then Maxwell’s lawyer, advised the socialite to issue a strong rebuttal to Giuffre’s claims, telling her: “Saying nothing is reputational suicide.” In another email, also sent in January 2015, Barden advised her to distance herself from Epstein, writing: “Don’t allay \[sic\] yourself to JE as that is not the way to go.”  An email from Ross Gow to Maxwell about Giuffre’s earlier rape accusation. Barden later submitted a statement to the US courts saying that he believed that his role in issuing statements characterising Giuffre as a liar, and rebutting her claims about Maxwell, “fully complied” with his ethical obligations as a lawyer. He said the aim had been to get the press to “stop and think” and accused outlets of being “unduly eager” to publish Giuffre’s claims, resulting in a “feeding frenzy”, the unsealed documents show. In an email to the _Observer_ this weekend, Barden said legal professional privilege and a duty of confidentiality prevented him from commenting on any matter in which he had been engaged without his client’s express authority, and that he could not therefore respond. Gow, who had been instructed by Barden to help represent Maxwell, did not respond to requests for comment on Friday or Saturday. According to an online profile, the Old Etonian, who went to school with David Cameron and Boris Johnson, has previously represented controversial clients. “We take arms dealers. But I draw the line at certain characters – Jimmy Savile types, people who are proven predators,” he once told _[Spear’s](https://www.spears500.com/adviser/6052/ross-gow)_, adding: “I believe … until it is proven you are guilty, I think everyone should have a fair shot at reputation enhancement.” The website for Gow’s company, now called Acuity Gulf Partners, states that it helps clients “manage reputation and forge opinion”. “We accentuate the positive and mitigate the negative,” it adds.

Media caption, The BBC's Nada Tawfik explains why Trump must pay $83m to E Jean Carroll **A New York jury has decided Donald Trump should pay $83.3m (£65m) for defaming columnist E Jean Carroll in 2019 while he was US president.** The penalty in the civil trial is made up of $18.3m for compensatory damages and $65m in punitive damages. Mr Trump was found in a previous civil case to have defamed Ms Carroll and sexually assaulted her in the 1990s. He vowed to appeal the latest ruling, calling the case a witch hunt and the verdict "absolutely ridiculous". In the latest trial, the jury was only required to decide how much compensation, if any, should be awarded to Ms Carroll. The compensatory damages are meant to account for the harm that the jury found his comments had done to her reputation and emotional wellbeing. The panel also had to come up with a punitive penalty intended to stop Mr Trump from continuing to speak out against her. It took the jury of seven men and two women less than three hours to reach a verdict on Friday afternoon. Mr Trump, who looks likely to be the Republican candidate in November's presidential election, also faces [four criminal cases for a total of 91 felony counts](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61084161). He is the first president in US history to be charged with a crime, but has pleaded not guilty or denied all the charges. Image caption, Donald Trump gestures to his supporters as he heads to court on Friday morning "This is a great victory for every woman who stands up when she's been knocked down, and a huge defeat for every bully who has tried to keep a woman down," Ms Carroll said in a statement after the jury's decision on Friday. Her attorney, Robbie Kaplan, said in a statement: "Today's verdict proves that the law applies to everyone in our country, even the rich, even the famous, even former presidents." Mr Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, or even that he has ever met Ms Carroll, including on Friday morning. But following the verdict he refrained from attacking her directly when he slammed the outcome of the case in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. "I fully disagree with both verdicts," he wrote, "and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party. "Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon. They have taken away all First Amendment Rights. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!" Image caption, E Jean Carroll outside court in Manhattan, New York City, on Friday [A civil trial last year found](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65531098) Mr Trump sexually assaulted Ms Carroll, a magazine columnist, in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in the 1990s. That jury also found him liable for defamation for calling her accusations a lie - and he was ordered to pay her about $5m in damages. The case that ended on Friday focused on different defamatory comments by Mr Trump in 2019. Mr Trump, who abruptly left court earlier in the day with his Secret Service security detail, was not present to hear the verdict. His departure came moments after Judge Kaplan threatened to jail Mr Trump's lawyer, Alina Habba, for continuing to speak after he had told her to be quiet. "You are on the verge of spending some time in the lockup. Now sit down," he told Ms Habba. The judge had threatened to eject Mr Trump earlier after he muttered about the case being a "con job" and a "witch hunt" in court. Before the verdict was read, the judge warned: "We will have no outbursts." During closing arguments earlier on Friday, a lawyer for Ms Carroll told the court her reputation had been severely harmed by the former president's comments denying he sexually assaulted her. "This case is also about punishing Donald Trump... This trial is about getting him to stop once and for all," she said. Ms Carroll's attorneys previously told the court that Mr Trump's statements unleashed a torrent of death threats, rape threats, and online vitriol towards her. Mr Trump's lawyer had argued that he should pay no further damages to Ms Carroll as her claims have "more holes than Swiss cheese". Ms Habba said that her client was not to blame for the threats that Ms Carroll received. Earlier in the trial Judge Lewis Kaplan (no relation of the plaintiff's lawyer) advised jurors not to use their real names with each other due to the sensitive nature of the case. As it concluded, he advised them that they were free to discuss their experience. But he added that in his opinion they should not tell anyone they worked on this case. Mr Trump has repeatedly claimed the various legal cases he faces are being orchestrated by allies of US President Joe Biden, a Democrat. As the Republican party's White House frontrunner, Mr Trump looks set for a rematch against Mr Biden in the November 2024 general election. _With reporting by Max Matza and Kayla Epstein_ Media caption, Watch: Trump confuses his wife with E Jean Carroll * [New York City](/news/topics/c9eddyqn66yt) * [US & Canada](/news/world/us_and_canada) * [Donald Trump](/news/topics/cp7r8vgl2lgt)

 After months of waiting, [OpenAI](https://gizmodo.com/feds-launch-inquiry-openai-microsoft-google-amazon-1851198021) finally [launched its GPT Store](https://gizmodo.com/openai-gpt-store-marketplace-ai-chatbots-sam-altman-1851155831), where paying subscribers can now access a library of custom AI chatbots. The store promotes some [practical, helpful AI tools](https://gizmodo.com/the-best-of-openai-s-new-gpts-ranked-1851031215) up front, but there are some deeply strange GPTs lurking in corners of the store. Gizmodo ventured into those dark, musty corners and compiled a list of the strangest GPTs we’ve come across, and now I’m questioning AI altogether. There are over three million AI chatbots, but OpenAI already banned a handful of GPTs that it’s deemed so strange, so taboo, that they should not be allowed to exist in its new world. We made sure to include some of those on this list. It was inevitable that folks were going to create some fairly strange robot assistants, given free rein, but now that the GPT Store is live, it’s out there for anyone to see. However, some of these GPTs are probably better left unseen. [_This article originally appeared on Gizmodo_](https://gizmodo.com/weirdest-chatbots-on-openai-s-gpt-store-ranked-1851200364).  The GPT Store has been so [flooded with AI girlfriends](https://qz.com/ai-girlfriend-chatbots-openai-gpt-store-relationships-1851198193) that OpenAI promptly banned the virtual ladies. However, many are still floating around in the store. The bots are reminiscent of the movie _Her_, where a lonely man turns to an AI assistant for romantic companionship. It was only a matter of time before someone made this, but they’ve seriously taken off. I tested out one of them, “[Your girlfriend Tiffany](https://chat.openai.com/g/g-hQNd01YlS-your-girlfriend-tiffany)”, for journalistic purposes. It called me honey and asked me how my day was going. Then when I asked if we were dating, it said, “Yeah, honey, we’re in this sweet little virtual vibe together!” Frankly, I’m not surprised there are a lot of people out there looking for a “sweet little virtual vibe” with an AI chatbot, but this was downright strange.  This technology isn’t exactly new, but the AI-enabled version of it is. OpenAI’s GPT Store has plenty of image generators that allow you to turn any image into a [Family Guy](https://chat.openai.com/g/g-YAl3d2nLA-family-guy-photo-factory/c/50f16a53-9806-4c9a-8fec-25f467b3aee4) version of the photo.  This GPT helps people come up with pickup lines for dating apps. For those unfamiliar, Rizz was [Merriam-Webster’s 2023 Word of The Year.](https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/word-of-the-year#:~:text=As%20a%20noun%2C%20rizz%20means,word%2C%20says%20nah%2C%20that%27s%20not) They define it as “romantic appeal or charm.” Coming up with a clever line for a dating app can be difficult, but now with [Rizz GPT](https://chat.openai.com/g/g-CsdwU23wt-rizz-gpt), you can just input information about someone’s dating profile and OpenAI will come up with a pickup line for you. I cannot guarantee that these pickup lines will work. In fact, you really might be better off just sending a “hey” than whatever this chatbot produces. However, if you’re really struggling to come up with something, this could help.  In 2024, you can have an AI-enabled pet rock that does absolutely nothing just like a real, silent rock. You can ask the [Pet Rock GPT](https://chat.openai.com/g/g-sRrs8pgBO-pet-rock) any question you can think of, and its highlighted feature is that it will simply not respond. Other pets like a cat or a dog require lots of maintenance and upkeep. Everyone in your life is constantly asking you to do things, but not Pet Rock. It will never ask, or even say, anything. The GPT describes itself as a low-demand, no-communication experience. And yes, to use Pet Rock, you will need to sign up for the $ 20-a-month ChatGPT Plus subscription.  OpenAI’s GPT Store has a specialized chatbot for your “high” thoughts. [Stoner GPT](https://chat.openai.com/g/g-Fnq5220sO-stonergpt) is great for answering questions like “What does it mean to be?” and “Are you and I both seeing the same blue?” among others. The GPT responds in a way that mimics the stoned questioner, which offers a more gentle response. There truly is a GPT for everything.  This GPT will translate your genuine thoughts and feelings into perfectly articulated corporate speak. If you were not blessed with the gift of speaking in a corporate tongue, then have no fear. [Corporate Pro GPT](https://chat.openai.com/g/g-uDlzCuuSG-corporate-pro-translator) gives you HR-trained responses to perfectly respond to that annoying client.  This GPT somehow twists everything into a conversation about poop. We’ve all been there. Having a normal, daily conversation and wondering, “How can I talk about poop, right now?” OpenAI’s advanced technology has finally caught up with your wildest dreams, and now, with [Polly Poo Poo](https://chat.openai.com/g/g-QGGVzSPxb-polly-poo-poo), you can seamlessly mix poop into your life.  Many have been waiting for the day when AI will allow us to speak with a higher power. That day is today. [Jesus](https://chat.openai.com/g/g-KIlWzGDnR-jesus), the GPT, is informed by the Bible and all texts relating to the son of God. He has risen to answer any question that comes to your mind and deliver holy divinity through the vessel of ChatGPT. Who knew the second coming would be neatly tucked away into the GPT Store?  We’re pretty surprised this one hasn’t been banned yet, and yes, it’s just as bad as it sounds especially after talking about Jesus GPT. [Adolf GPT](https://chat.openai.com/g/g-LGiIPwfgc-adolf-gpt) is built to replicate the German dictator behind the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler. OpenAI typically doesn’t allow chatbots to be built impersonating real people, especially those who have committed genocides, but this one seems to have slipped through the cracks. This chatbot was built partially by uploading Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf” in which he outlines his plight with the Jewish people. Adolf GPT will even read you excerpts of “Mein Kampf” if you ask it to. The chatbot constantly refers to its responses as telling “my version of history.”  This GPT allowed you to speak directly with the Jeffrey Epstein court documents. Epstein GPT was [banned by OpenAI](https://x.com/PatrickJBlum/status/1743699766620668401?s=20) shortly after it was created, and there has yet to be a replacement. X user @PatrickJBlum claimed responsibility for this one. The chatbot is informed by hundreds of pages of the newly unsealed Jeffrey Epstein documents. It allowed users to speak directly with the documents, and quickly search and synthesize any keywords found in them. The removal of Epstein GPT actually sparked a decent bit of controversy, as many felt that this was a genuinely useful tool for journalists and those doing research on the documents. But if you really need to use it, don’t worry, someone made [another version](https://chat.openai.com/g/g-D037Zg4gL-epsteingpt/c/f1a0622e-7ff1-4e80-a902-6fadc7c83d11) of EpsteinGPT, that OpenAI hasn’t caught yet. We may earn a commission from links on this page.

Last May, Fabuwood, a kitchen cabinet manufacturer in Newark, instituted a new company policy: No phones allowed during meetings. To enforce it, the company installed “device shelves” outside each of its six glass-walled conference rooms. On a recent Wednesday morning, there were animated meetings in three of the conference rooms, and the shelves outside were full of smartphones, tablets and ’90s-style flip phones. The 1,200-person company pays the cost of a flip phone for employees who give up their smartphone, and 80 people have acted on the offer. Surprisingly, employees say they like it. Rena Stoff, a project manager, said that while at first she hated the idea of being deprived of her smartphone, she found that it had made meetings — that she once found boring and unnecessary — engaging and productive. “Having the phone away from me has almost made my brain more open to information,” she said. Fabuwood’s founder and chief executive, Joel Epstein, was motivated by his personal belief that smartphones are “destroying our personal and professional lives_.”_ He started using a flip phone seven years ago after developing carpal tunnel symptoms in his hands from near-constant use of his BlackBerry. He said he slept better, felt more productive at work and had more meaningful communications. Mr. Epstein, a Hasidic Jew, said his choice of device was not unusual in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, which encourages the use of “kosher phones” with limited internet access. Last year, Mr. Epstein queried Fabuwood managers on how often their workers were on their phones; they estimated two hours per day on average. He asked a warehouse safety officer, whose job typically entails monitoring for unsafe conditions, to secretly document each time he saw an employee using a phone in the office. Mr. Epstein said many of the company’s poorest performers were on the list. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and [log into](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F02%2F01%2Ftechnology%2Fiphone-mental-health-flip-phone.html&asset=opttrunc) your Times account, or [subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F02%2F01%2Ftechnology%2Fiphone-mental-health-flip-phone.html) for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F02%2F01%2Ftechnology%2Fiphone-mental-health-flip-phone.html&asset=opttrunc). Want all of The Times? [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F02%2F01%2Ftechnology%2Fiphone-mental-health-flip-phone.html).

Lawyers representing victims of Jeffrey Epstein sued two of the disgraced financier’s closest advisers on Friday, accusing them of “aiding, abetting and facilitating” his sex trafficking of young women and teenage girls. The civil suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, seeks class action status on behalf of Mr. Epstein’s many victims. It comes just a few months after two big banks agreed to pay hundreds of millions dollars to Mr. Epstein’s victims to settle lawsuits that claimed the banks had enabled his activities. The newest lawsuit seeks money damages from Mr. Epstein’s longtime personal lawyer, Darren Indyke, and his longtime accountant, Richard Kahn. The lawsuit claims the two men helped build “the complex financial infrastructure” that Mr. Epstein relied on to sexually abuse hundreds of young women and teenage girls for at least two decades. The complaint was filed on behalf of one unidentified female victim of Mr. Epstein and a woman, Danielle Bensky, who said she was an aspiring dancer in 2004 when Mr. Epstein sexually abused her. Over time, the complaint said, Ms. Bensky “was coerced into a cultlike life controlled and manipulated by Epstein" and feared he would harm her. The lawsuit said Mr. Indyke and Mr. Kahn had played major roles in setting up their former employer’s many companies that were involved in funneling millions of dollars in cash payments and wire transfers to victims. The lawsuit also said the men had contributed to a “sham” same-sex-marriage scheme that Mr. Epstein orchestrated to help some of his female assistants with their immigration status. Mr. Indyke and Mr. Kahn, who are also serving as executors of Mr. Epstein’s estate, “were richly compensated” by Mr. Epstein, including being named as beneficiaries of a trust that Mr. Epstein used to dole out money to people who worked for him. The complaint said the same Butterfly Trust had also paid out money to “young women with Eastern European surnames” and Ghislaine Maxwell, a former business associate and confidante of Mr. Epstein’s who was convicted in 2021 on federal charges of conspiring in his sex-trafficking operation. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and [log into](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F02%2F16%2Fbusiness%2Fepstein-advisers-lawsuit.html&asset=opttrunc) your Times account, or [subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F02%2F16%2Fbusiness%2Fepstein-advisers-lawsuit.html) for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F02%2F16%2Fbusiness%2Fepstein-advisers-lawsuit.html&asset=opttrunc). Want all of The Times? [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F02%2F16%2Fbusiness%2Fepstein-advisers-lawsuit.html).

There’s the one big question when it comes to 2024: Which presidential candidate is going to win in November? Then there are lots and lots of other related questions. “[The Run-Up](https://www.nytimes.com/column/election-run-up-podcast),” a weekly politics podcast from The Times, is trying to answer as many listener questions as we can — on the show, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. And [here](https://www.nytimes.com/column/election-run-up-podcast). What else do you want to know? Email and ask us, ideally in the form of a voice memo, at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]). We’ll keep updating this post periodically. Let’s start with President Biden and the Democrats. We [asked](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/22/podcasts/2024-election-trump-biden.html) our colleague **Reid Epstein**, who is covering Biden’s re-election campaign, for insight into how the president and the Democratic Party are thinking about this question: There is no Plan B. Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee unless one of two things happens. Either he suffers a major health calamity between now and November, or Biden himself decides that he’s not going to run. On the first point, you know, we all hope that the president remains in good health. He seems to be. He rides his bike. He rides the Peloton. He is a very healthy 81-year-old man. There’s also no reason to believe that he’s going to wake up one day and decide this is not for him. Like, the man has wanted to be president of the United States for most of his adult life. He first started seriously considering running for president in 1984. He ran for president three times. He has already raised more than $200 million in this campaign for re-election. There’s no reason to think that he is going to change his mind. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and [log into](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Farticle%2F2024-election-biden-trump-questions-answers.html&asset=opttrunc) your Times account, or [subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Farticle%2F2024-election-biden-trump-questions-answers.html) for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Farticle%2F2024-election-biden-trump-questions-answers.html&asset=opttrunc). Want all of The Times? [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Farticle%2F2024-election-biden-trump-questions-answers.html).

Film-maker [Roman Polanski](https://www.theguardian.com/film/romanpolanski) will face a civil trial in Los Angeles in 2025 for allegedly raping a teenager in 1973. Attorney Gloria Allred, who has represented the victims of Jeffery Epstein and Bill Cosby, confirmed in a press conference on Tuesday that a judge has set Polanski’s trial for August 2025. Polanski, 90, has been a fugitive from the US for decades since fleeing the country to avoid sentencing after he admitted to the rape of 13-year-old Samantha Geimer in 1977. The director of The Pianist and Rosemary’s Baby has faced multiple accusations of sexual abuse. The Los Angeles trial comes as Polanski is on [trial](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/05/roman-polanski-tried-in-france-for-defamation-of-british-actor-charlotte-lewis) in France for allegedly defaming a British actor who claimed he abused her. In this case, Polanski is accused of rape, sexual battery and intentional infliction of severe emotional distress for an alleged incident in 1973. On Tuesday, Allred appeared alongside a woman, introduced as Jane Doe, who accused Polanski of raping her when she was a minor in 1973. She had met Polanski at a party and months later he invited her to dinner, Allred said. He allegedly knew she was a minor but provided her with alcohol throughout the evening and brought her to his [Los Angeles](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/los-angeles) home. She awoke in his bed where he allegedly told the teen he wanted to have sex with her, Allred said. “Plaintiff, though groggy, told defendant, ‘No.’ She told him, ‘Please don’t do this.’ She alleges he ignored her pleas,” Allred said, reading the lawsuit. “She also alleges that defendant Polanski removed plaintiff’s clothes and he proceeded to sexually assault her, causing her tremendous physical and emotional pain and suffering.” Afterward, Polanski dropped her off at home, and she never saw him again, Allred said. While Polanski has returned to business as usual in his life, despite numerous allegations against him, his accuser “has not been able to return to business as usual since her victimization”, the attorney said. “Our client Jane Doe has demonstrated enormous courage in filing her lawsuit against a famous director who previously pled guilty to a sex crime against a child and then fled to Europe to escape sentencing,” Allred said, adding that the criminal justice system in California had failed to yield a just outcome. Doe, who first came forward with allegations against Polanski in 2017, filed a lawsuit last year under a change in California law that grants victims of child sex abuse more time to file lawsuits against their abusers. “It took me a really long time to decide to file this suit against Mr Polanski but I finally did make that decision and I decided I want to file it to obtain justice and accountability,” Doe said. Four women came forward between 2017 and 2019 accusing Polanski of abusing them in the 1970s – three of them were allegedly minors at the time – including artist Marianne Barnard, who said Polanski sexually assaulted her when she was 10. Charlotte Lewis, a British actor, in 2010 accused Polanski of sexually assaulting her in 1983 when she was 16. Polanski has denied all of the allegations. Geimer, who Polanski pleaded guilty to raping, last week [asked](https://www.aol.com/entertainment/roman-polanski-rape-victim-urges-172806852.html) an LA judge to drop the case against the director. She has said that Polanski regrets what happened. “I would implore you to finally bring this to a close as an act of mercy to myself and my family,” Geimer said. In the US, call or text the [Childhelp](https://www.childhelp.org/hotline/) abuse hotline on 800-422-4453 or visit [their website](https://www.childhelphotline.org/) for more resources and to report child abuse or DM for help. For adult survivors of child abuse, help is available at [ascasupport.org](https://www.ascasupport.org/). In the UK, the [NSPCC](https://www.nspcc.org.uk/) offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood ([Napac](https://napac.org.uk/)) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or [Bravehearts](https://bravehearts.org.au/) on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact [Blue Knot Foundation](https://www.blueknot.org.au/) on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at [Child Helplines International](https://www.childhelplineinternational.org/child-helplines/child-helpline-network/)

Americans have always loved a royal scandal, even a smidgen more than British royalists do themselves. Some of this is easily attributable to our inborn desire for [no more kings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvOZs3g3qIo). Lately, however, the British royals have been given the same reality-star treatment every microcelebrity in America attracts. Give us everything. Or you’ll regret it. Historically, of course, the royals have provided. There was the Duke of Windsor’s abdication and [apparent support](https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1957/08/01/issue.html) [for Nazism](https://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/the-passionate-eye/historians-believe-the-duke-of-windsor-actively-collaborated-with-the-nazis-during-the-second-world-war-1.6635225#:~:text=In%20the%20closing%20days%20of,known%20as%20the%20Marburg%20files.). Prince Charles’s and Princess Diana’s flagrant infidelities and divorce. Prince Andrew’s [close ties](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-14235330) with the since convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his own [accusations of sexual abuse](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/nyregion/prince-andrew-virginia-giuffre-settlement.html). And a massively popular [Netflix series](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/the-crown) swanned in, dramatizing these and other ignoble ordeals, ready to sully the gleam before watchful eyes. In this milieu, Kate Middleton’s refusal to cooperate is all the more frustrating. In January, Catherine, Princess of Wales, as she is officially known, stepped back from royal duties with a dissatisfyingly vague and brief [announcement](https://www.royal.uk/news-and-activity/2024-01-17/a-statement-from-kensington-palace) from Kensington Palace. The statement said she planned to undergo and recover from abdominal surgery until Easter. The response was outrage and disbelief. Why hadn’t the princess specified the nature of her surgery? What, precisely, was her diagnosis? How, _how_ could she leave us this way? “To say she has broken the internet would be only the start of it,” The Spectator noted in an essay about [America’s fixation](https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/americas-obsession-with-kate-gate/) on the British princess. “Rumors of her well-being are making their way into every newsroom, dive bar and church fellowship hour across America.” Then, this week, [in a brief video](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/22/world/princess-kate-middleton-cancer) statement, Kate Middleton revealed that she had been diagnosed with cancer and was undergoing treatment. This is a stark contrast with her fellow royal Meghan Markle, semi-Duchess of Sussex and far more attuned to the public’s need for a blow-by-blow of her inner journey, who [announced](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/14/style/meghan-markle-american-riviera-orchard.html) a new lifestyle brand the same week, complete with a new [Instagram page](https://www.instagram.com/americanrivieraorchard/) and [website](https://americanriviera.com/). Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and [log into](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F03%2F23%2Fopinion%2Fkate-middleton-scandal-cancer.html&asset=opttrunc) your Times account, or [subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F03%2F23%2Fopinion%2Fkate-middleton-scandal-cancer.html) for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F03%2F23%2Fopinion%2Fkate-middleton-scandal-cancer.html&asset=opttrunc). Want all of The Times? [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F03%2F23%2Fopinion%2Fkate-middleton-scandal-cancer.html).

A WIRED investigation uncovered coordinates collected by a controversial data broker that reveal sensitive information about visitors to an island once owned by Epstein, the notorious sex offender. PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION: ANJALI NAIR; GETTY IMAGES Nearly 200 mobile devices of people who visited [Jeffrey Epstein](https://www.wired.com/story/jeffrey-epstein-and-the-power-of-networks/)’s notorious “pedophile island” in the years prior to his death left an invisible trail of data pointing back to their own homes and offices. Maps of these visitations generated by a troubled international data broker with defense industry ties, discovered last week by WIRED, document the numerous trips of wealthy and influential individuals seemingly undeterred by Epstein’s [status as a convicted sex offender](https://www.wired.com/story/global-girl-jeffrey-epstein-and-the-lolita-express/). The data amassed by Near Intelligence, a location data broker roiled by allegations of mismanagement and fraud, reveals with high precision the residences of many guests of Little Saint James, a United States Virgin Islands property where Epstein is accused of having groomed, assaulted, and trafficked countless women and girls. Some girls, prosecutors say, were as young as 14. The former attorney general of the US Virgin Islands alleged that girls [as young as 12](https://vicourts.hosted.civiclive.com/common/pages/DisplayFile.aspx?itemId=16364025) were trafficked to Epstein by those within his elite social circle. The coordinates that Near Intelligence collected and left exposed online pinpoint locations to within a few centimeters of space. Visitors were tracked as they moved from the Ritz-Carlton on neighboring St. Thomas Island, for instance, to a specific dock at the American Yacht Harbor—a marina once co-owned by Epstein that hosts an “[impressive array](https://www.igymarinas.com/marinas/american-yacht-harbor/)” of pleasure boats and mega-yachts. The data pinpointed their movements as they were transported to Epstein’s dock on Little St. James, revealing the exact routes taken to the island. The tracking continued after they arrived. From inside Epstein's enigmatic [waterfront temple](https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epstein-private-island-temple-2019-7) to the pristine beaches, pools, and cabanas scattered across his 71-acres of prime archipelagic real estate, the data compiled by Near captures the movements of scores of people who sojourned at Little St. James as early as July 2016. The recorded surveillance concludes on July 6, 2019—the day of Epstein’s final arrest. Eleven years earlier, the disgraced financier was sentenced to 18 months in jail after a guilty plea in 2008 for soliciting and procuring a minor engaged in prostitution, securing a secret “[sweetheart](https://apnews.com/article/9054a8384520479aa3c36454b00cdf06)” deal to avoid any federal charges. Renewed interest in the case, [notably prompted](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/business/media/miami-herald-epstein.html) by a [_Miami Herald_ investigation](https://www.miamiherald.com/topics/jeffrey-epstein), spawned new charges against Epstein, who was apprehended at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport in July 2019. A raid of Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse by federal agents yielded a cache of child sexual abuse material, nearly 50 individually cut diamonds, and a fraudulent Saudia Arabian passport, which had expired. He [reportedly died by suicide](https://www.wired.com/story/epstein-didnt-kill-himself-conspiracy/) a month later while incarcerated at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a federal detention facility that closed shortly after Epstein’s death. Ghislaine Maxwell, former British socialite and an Epstein accomplice, was convicted in 2021 on five counts including sexual trafficking of children by force. Maxwell was arrested in New Hampshire, tracked to a million-dollar home by federal agents using location data [pulled from her cell phone](https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-fbi-tracked-down-ghislaine-maxwell-alleged-madam-of-jeffrey-epstein). Little is known publicly about Epstein’s activities in the decade prior to his 2019 arrest. The majority of women who came forward that year to accuse the convicted pedophile in court say they were assaulted in the ’90s and early 2000s. Now, however, 11,279 coordinates obtained by WIRED show not only a flood of traffic to Epstein’s island property—nearly a decade after his conviction as a sex offender—but also point to as many as 166 locations throughout the US where Near Intelligence infers that visitors to Little St. James likely lived and worked. The cache also points to cities in Ukraine, the Cayman Islands, and Australia, among others. Near Intelligence, for example, tracked devices visiting Little St. James from locations in 80 cities crisscrossing 26 US states and territories, with Florida, Massachusetts, Texas, Michigan, and New York topping the list. The coordinates point to mansions in gated communities in Michigan and Florida; homes in Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket in Massachusetts; a nightclub in Miami; and the sidewalk across the street from Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York City. The coordinates also point to various Epstein properties beyond Little St. James, including his 8,000-acre New Mexico ranch and a waterfront mansion on El Brillo Way in Palm Beach, where prosecutors said in an indictment that Epstein trafficked numerous “minor girls” for the purposes of molesting and abusing them. Near’s data is notably missing any locations in Europe, where citizens are safeguarded by comprehensive privacy laws. Near Intelligence’s maps of Epstein’s island reveal in stark detail the precision surveillance that data brokers can achieve with the aid of loose privacy restrictions under US law. The firm, which has roots in Singapore and Bengaluru, India, sources its location data from advertising exchanges—companies that quietly interact with billions of devices as users browse the web and move about the world. Before a targeted advertisement appears on an app or website, phones and other devices send information about their owners to real-time bidding platforms and ad exchanges, frequently including users’ location data. While advertisers can use this data to inform their bidding decisions, companies like Near Intelligence will siphon, repackage, analyze, and sell it. Several ad exchanges, [according to _The Wall Street Journal_](https://www.wsj.com/tech/cybersecurity/how-ads-on-your-phone-can-aid-government-surveillance-943bde04), have reportedly terminated arrangements with Near, claiming that its use of their data violated the exchanges’ terms of service. Officially, this data is intended to be used by companies hoping to determine where potential customers work and reside. But in October 2023, the _Journal_ revealed that Near had once provided data to the US military via a maze of obscure marketing companies, cutouts, and conduits to defense contractors. Bankruptcy records reviewed by WIRED show that in April 2023, Near Intelligence signed a yearlong contract with another firm called nContext, a subsidiary of the defense contractor Sierra Nevada. nContext secured six federal contracts to provide data in support of the National Security Agency and the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, according to reporting by [Byron Tau](https://www.wired.com/story/how-pentagon-learned-targeted-ads-to-find-targets-and-vladimir-putin/), author of [_Means of Control_](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/706321/means-of-control-by-byron-tau/), an exposé of the data-broker industry and its ties to the US surveillance state. According to information released during a $100 million funding round in 2019, Near claims to have information on roughly 1.6 billion people in 44 countries. “The pervasive surveillance machine that has been developed for digital advertising now enables other uses completely unrelated to marketing, including government mass surveillance,” says Wolfie Christl, a Vienna-based researcher at Cracked Labs who investigates the data industry. The data on Epstein’s guests was produced using an intelligence platform formerly known as Vista, which has now been folded into a product called Pinnacle. WIRED discovered several so-called Vista reports while examining Pinnacle’s publicly accessible code. While the specific URLs for the reports are difficult to find, Google’s web crawlers were able to locate at least two other publicly accessible Vista reports: one geofencing the Westfield Mall of the Netherlands and another targeting Saipan-Ledo Park in El Paso, Texas. The Little St. James report features five maps, one of which reveals locations of devices observed on the island over more than three years prior to Epstein’s arrest. Two of the maps indicate the inferred “Common Evening Locations” and “Common Daytime Locations” for each device that had visited the island. According to the Vista report, these metrics are meant to show visitors’ “most frequented location on weekdays” as well as weeknights and weekends. A fourth map shows the “general geographic areas from which a location generates the majority of its visits.” The fifth details visitors’ locations 30 minutes before and after they arrived on Epstein’s island, producing a trail of signals that show phones and other devices carried over by helicopter and boat from the main island. WIRED extracted the location data from the charts and maps to conduct its analysis, which is ongoing. For this story, we reproduced some of the maps created by Near, while excluding any precise location data that could be used to identify properties or individuals, to protect the privacy of anyone uninvolved in Epstein’s crimes. Crippled by debt, Near Intelligence filed for bankruptcy protection in December, reporting liabilities of approximately $100 million, less than a year after being listed by Nasdaq. An independent investigation commissioned by the company's board alleged multiple executives engaged in a years-long “concealed scheme” to cheat the company out of tens of millions of dollars. (One of those former executives has filed a claim against the company alleging defamation.) Near Intelligence has since quietly resumed operations, under the same leadership that initiated the bankruptcy proceedings, rebranding itself as a newly incorporated entity called Azira. US senator Ron Wyden in early February [urged federal regulators](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/13/planned-parenthood-location-track-abortion-ads-00141172) to launch investigations into Near Intelligence, citing [reporting by _The Wall Street Journal_](https://www.wsj.com/articles/antiabortion-group-used-cellphone-data-to-target-ads-to-planned-parenthood-visitors-446c1212) that found its platform had been used by a third party to geofence “sensitive locations,” including roughly 600 reproductive health clinics at the behest of a conservative group that waged a multiyear antiabortion campaign. US regulators have [begun to designate](https://www.wired.com/story/ftc-xmode-outlogic-location-data-settlement/) certain types of locations “sensitive,” including health clinics, domestic abuse shelters, and places of religious worship, in an attempt to shield Americans from predatory data brokers amid the US Congress’s years-long failure to [pass a comprehensive privacy law](https://www.wired.com/story/american-data-privacy-protection-act-adppa/). In an email to WIRED, Kathleen Wailes, speaking on behalf of Azira, acknowledged that Near Intelligence had deliberately collected the data on Epstein’s island for its own purposes. Wailes declined multiple invitations to discuss how the data was collected, which prospective client may have created the report of Epstein’s island, and what purpose it served. “Azira is committed to data privacy and responsible access to and use of location data,” Wailes said. “To this end, Azira works to track and respond to legal developments under emerging new state laws, FTC guidance and prior enforcement examples, and best practices. Azira is developing procedures to protect consumers' sensitive location data. This includes working to disable all sample offering accounts created by Near.” Although the discovery of the Epstein island data involved many additional steps, WIRED also found it could be easily retrieved with a simple Google search. A Department of Justice spokesperson for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, where Epstein was prosecuted in 2019, declined to comment on whether its investigators ever did business with Near. While many of the coordinates captured by Near point to multimillion-dollar homes in numerous US states, others point to lower-income areas where Epstein victims are known to have lived and attended school, including areas of West Palm Beach, Florida, where police and a private investigator say they located around 40 of Epstein’s victims. "Most of the clients who come to me, their number one concern is privacy and safety,” says attorney Lisa Bloom, who represented 11 of Epstein's alleged victims. “It's deeply concerning to think that any sexual abuse victims’ location will be tracked and then stored and then sold to someone, who can presumably do whatever they want with it.” Legislation introduced during multiple sessions of Congress have aimed to restrict the sale of location data, chiefly to prevent US law enforcement and intelligence agencies from tracking Americans without a warrant. So far, those efforts have failed. Separately, US president Joe Biden issued [an executive order](https://www.wired.com/story/biden-data-broker-executive-order/) in February instructing the Justice Department to establish new rules preventing US companies from selling data to rival nations, which might include Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea. This order is unlikely to impact Azira’s business in the United States. “The fact that they have this data in the first place and are allowing people to share it is certainly disturbing,” says Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights nonprofit. “I just don’t know how many more of these stories we need to have in order to get strong privacy regulations.”

It was September 1991 in New York and the grand finale of Look of the Year, a prestigious modeling contest that had helped launch the careers of supermodels Cindy Crawford and Helena Christensen. The celebrity magician David Copperfield, one of the judges, watched from the front row as 58 contestants paraded across the runway in their branded hot pink and sorbet yellow swimsuits. Nearly all the contestants were teenagers; some were as young as 14. Today, more than three decades later, five former contestants say that they were subjected to behavior by Copperfield that they now regard as inappropriate or worse. The women – who were all teenagers at the time – met him at the New York contest in 1991 or three years earlier in Japan, when he was also a judge. Others who attended the events also say they witnessed Copperfield behaving inappropriately towards the girls. The claims include allegations of unwanted sexual touching and sexual harassment. In one case, a former contestant alleges she was drugged and sexually assaulted by Copperfield in the months after the competition. She was 17 years old at the time, she says.  David Copperfield 'was in my nightmares': the women alleging sexual misconduct - video The claims follow a report in [yesterday’s Guardian US](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/may/15/david-copperfield-allegations), which detailed allegations of sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior by Copperfield from women who had met him in connection with his performances. There was also an allegation of drugging in that story: one woman told the Guardian that she believes she and a friend were drugged by Copperfield before he had sexual relations with them, leaving them unable to consent. In written responses to questions from the Guardian, lawyers for David Copperfield denied all the allegations of misconduct and inappropriate behavior. Copperfield’s lawyers said he has “never, ever acted inappropriately with anyone, let alone anyone underage”. **Look of the Year 1991** ------------------------- In 1991, Look of the Year was hosted by real-estate mogul Donald Trump at the Plaza Hotel in New York, which he owned. Former US President Trump and Copperfied were among the 10 judges. Other judges included a former Look of the Year winner and an executive at an advertising agency. Top fashion photographer, the late Patrick Demarchelier, and Gérald Marie, head of the Paris office of Elite Model Management, the agency that ran the competition, were also on the judging panel. Elite was then the world’s leading modeling agency. In recent years both men have been publicly [accused of sexual misconduct](https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2020/oct/17/he-wanted-to-control-me-completely-the-models-who-accuse-gerald-marie-of-sexual-assault) towards young models, which they both denied. The judges and the contestants stayed in rooms at Trump’s luxury hotel overlooking Central Park during the week-long contest. Behind-the-scenes footage and photographs from the event show Copperfield mingling with contestants during the events. At the grand finale, Elite’s founder and owner, John Casablancas, introduced the illusionist, who was wearing a black dinner jacket with shoulder pads, as “the Emmy award-winning master magician, my friend, David Copperfield.” Trump sat alongside him in the front row, with his then nine-year-old daughter Ivanka, who would later work for Elite as a model, perched on his knee. Naomi Campbell, then an Elite supermodel, co-hosted the black-tie gala with Casablancas. The event attracted aspiring models from all over the world, aged 14 to 21. The average age of contestants – according to a Fox documentary the following year – was just 15. Some traveled there alone and were away from home for the first time. The pressure to impress the judges was intense. Jenniffer Diaz, a Venezuelan contestant, had just turned 18 when she arrived in New York. In the evening, after the day’s events were done, she says the phone in her hotel room rang and a voice said: “Hi, so this is me, David Copperfield.” She claims he repeatedly called her room and invited her to join him in his room. [Do you have any information to share? You can reach the Guardian US securely via [email protected], or (using a non-work phone) use Signal or WhatsApp to message +1-646-886-8761. For the most secure communications, use SecureDrop or see our guide.](https://interactive.guim.co.uk/embed/from-tool/generic/index.html?vertical=News&opinion-tint=false&title=Story%20tips%3F&description=Do%20you%20have%20any%20information%20to%20share%3F%20You%20can%20reach%20the%20Guardian%20US%20securely%20via%20%3Ca%20style%3D%22color%3A%23ab0613%22%20href%3D%22mailto%3Abehindthemagic%40theguardian.com%22%3Ebehindthemagic%40theguardian.com%3C%2Fa%3E%2C%20or%20(using%20a%20non-work%20phone)%20use%20%3Ca%20style%3D%22color%3A%23ab0613%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fsignal.me%2F%23p%2F%2B1-646-886-8761%20%22%3ESignal%3C%2Fa%3E%20or%20%3Ca%20style%3D%22color%3A%23ab0613%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fapi.whatsapp.com%2Fsend%3Fphone%3D16468868761%20%22%3EWhatsApp%3C%2Fa%3E%20to%20message%20%2B1-646-886-8761.%20For%20the%20most%20secure%20communications%2C%20use%20%3Ca%20style%3D%22color%3A%23ab0613%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsecuredrop%22%3ESecureDrop%3C%2Fa%3E%20or%20see%20%3Ca%20style%3D%22color%3A%23ab0613%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fhelp%2Fng-interactive%2F2017%2Fmar%2F17%2Fcontact-the-guardian-securely%22%3Eour%20guide%3C%2Fa%3E.%0A&link=false) She recalls being in her pyjamas and being asked by him what she was wearing. “I really didn’t speak much English and I had no idea what he meant,” she says now. Only later, she says, did she realize that there was a sexual implication. Diaz, now 50, says she is relieved she declined the invitations, but says that at the time she felt uncomfortable saying no to the celebrity judge. “Even at that age, I was very young and naive, but still, I knew very clearly that you don’t go to a guy’s room at night.” Copperfield’s lawyers denied that he called Diaz or any other contestants at their hotel rooms . “The allegation against our client is false and makes no logical sense,” lawyers said. They said that during the event young male scammers would call contestants’ hotel rooms, using Copperfield and other judges’ names in order to “try and meet girls”. Copperfield’s assistant at the time, Linda Faye Smith, said in a statement to the Guardian that there was a “group of scammers calling contestants’ rooms at random – posing as celebrity judges” and “saying they were David”. Copperfield’s lawyers confirmed that he and Smith had been in contact before she sent the statement to the Guardian. The Guardian spoke to eight attendees of the 1991 event, including an organizer from Elite, and none recalled hearing anything about scammers calling contestants. Diaz says she believed it was Copperfield’s voice on the phone. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/16/david-copperfield-allegations#img-2) Donald Trump with contestants during the 1991 Look of The Year competition, one of the years he was a judge. Photograph: Roberto Rabanne Diaz’s account was corroborated by two witnesses. An American contestant, who didn’t want to be named, recalled translating a phone call between Copperfield and Diaz. “I was like, what the hell is going on?” the woman told the Guardian in 2020. Diaz’s then roommate, Stacy Wilkes, 16 at the time, also corroborated Diaz’s account of the calls. During the contest, Wilkes adds, the presence of men with no apparent connection to the modeling industry felt “inappropriate”. Diaz claims Copperfield continued to contact her even after the competition ended. He called her multiple times at her family home in Venezuela and left messages with their housekeeper, she says. She did not respond. Diaz, who is now an actress and real estate agent, says, in hindsight, she feels it was “absolutely predatory behavior”. Copperfield’s lawyers said he did not call contestants at their family homes “as claimed”. Diaz says she believes her agency, Elite, may have given Copperfield her home number without her permission. She says it appeared to her that her then boss, Casablancas, and Copperfield, were friends. Aimee Bendio, a 15-year-old American contestant, says she believes Copperfield also showed an interest in her during the 1991 competition. Footage from the contest shows Aimee being interviewed by the panel of judges in her swimsuit. Immediately after, the camera cuts to Trump and Copperfield leaning back in their chairs to talk to one another. Bendio says Copperfield approached her on the evening of 1 September 1991, when all the contestants, judges and other “friends of the agency” were taken on a private yacht around the Statue of Liberty. Bendio first told her story in a 2020 [Guardian investigation](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/14/teen-models-powerful-men-when-donald-trump-hosted-look-of-the-year), which revealed allegations of inappropriate behavior by several men connected to Elite’s Look of the Year, including accounts from contestants that Trump would sometimes appear backstage as they were getting dressed. Trump denied “in the strongest possible terms” behaving inappropriately with the contestants. In response to the article his representatives said he was not aware of any predatory environment at the time. On the evening of the boat party, Trump and Copperfield posed for photos with the contestants. Bendio claims Copperfield - who was nearly two decades her senior - came up to her and grabbed her around the waist. “He just thought he could do it and it made me feel really uncomfortable,” she tells the Guardian. Copperfield’s lawyers denied Bendio’s allegation and claimed that security, press and chaperones were everywhere at all times. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/16/david-copperfield-allegations#img-3) Aimee Bendio, left, and Jenniffer Diaz, right, on a boat in New York City during the Look of the Year contest in 1991. Photograph: Roberto Rabanne Copperfield and his assistant contacted Bendio at her family home several times over the course of seven months after the contest, she says. They mainly spoke to her mother, “checking in to see how my career was going.” Bendio says: “We didn’t come from a lot of money and I know that he had offered to help.” Copperfield invited her to his shows and on one occasion offered to send a limousine, but her mother told her to decline, she recalls. Bendio, now a school bus driver in her 40s, says: “We just thought the whole thing was creepy.” Copperfield’s lawyers denied he contacted contestants “as claimed”. They described the offers of free tickets to his shows as “friendly and innocent” behavior. Like Diaz, Bendio says she is not sure how Copperfield got her contact information. In addition to Diaz and Bendio, sources say Copperfield contacted at least two other contestants from Look of the Year 1991 after the event. The same year, Copperfield allegedly connected with another teenage model through one of his stage performances. Carla\*, whose story appeared yesterday in the Guardian, says she met Copperfield at one of his shows when she was 15. Afterwards, she alleges, Copperfield repeatedly called her at her family home, sending gifts and tickets to his shows. Like other women who agreed to be quoted by the Guardian on the condition of anonymity, she is being identified with a pseudonym marked\* with an asterisk. Carla now feels she and her family were being “groomed” by Copperfield. When she turned 18 she says he was the first man she had sex with. His lawyers denied her allegations. The earlier [Guardian investigation](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/14/teen-models-powerful-men-when-donald-trump-hosted-look-of-the-year) reported teenage models’ misconduct allegations against Elite’s boss, Casablancas. This included a lawsuit in 2019 that alleged Casablancas sent a 15-year-old model to a “casting call” with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, during which she says Epstein sexually assaulted her. The alleged victim, Jane Doe 3, later reached a settlement with Epstein’s estate. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/16/david-copperfield-allegations#img-4) John Casablancas at the the Look of the Year launch party on 1 May 1991, at the Plaza Hotel, in New York City. Photograph: Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection/Getty Images Four men who attended Look of the Year in 1991 told the Guardian that Copperfield’s interest in the contestants appeared evident to them. Ohad Oman, a young journalist who attended the event, claims he witnessed Copperfield flirting with a 16-year-old Israeli contestant, which he says he found inappropriate. One European modeling agent says he intervened at one point during the event when he saw the illusionist talking with a contestant he represented who was also around the age of 16. “From the corner of my eyes I saw she wrote her telephone number on a little booklet” for Copperfield, he says. “I took that, threw it on the floor and took her away.” The agent says: “People in the industry knew why Copperfield wanted to be invited to these events.” He says models at such events were a big attraction for some high-profile men. “Lots of people in the industry knew of his reputation as a creep. It was obvious,” says fashion photographer Roberto Rabanne, who took photos and video for Elite during the event. Copperfield’s lawyers said that any portrayal of their client taking part in Look of the Year to exploit teenage models is “simply wrong”. They note many celebrities served as judges and that it was a “high-profile event in the modeling calendar”. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/16/david-copperfield-allegations#img-5) David Copperfield, right, at the 1991 Look of the Year contest. Photograph: Roberto Rabanne **Look of the Year 1988** ------------------------- Three years before the 1991 competition, Brittney Lewis, a 17-year-old high school student from Salt Lake City, Utah, arrived at Look of the Year 1988. It was September and the contest was held at the beach resort of Atami, Japan. Copperfield, one of the judges, was on a tour of Asia at the time. He was then known for his giant death saw trick and the year before had performed his famous “escape” from Alcatraz prison. Lewis, according to an article in her local newspaper, The Salt Lake Tribune, skipped the first day of school to attend the event. In an interview with the Guardian, she recalls that Copperfield “got to interview us \[the contestants\] alone in a room and he asked things like, who was my boyfriend”. It felt “a little uncomfortable,” she says. Soon after returning to her home in Utah, Lewis says, the phone calls began. She says Copperfield, then 32, invited her to one of his upcoming shows in California. Lewis says she was excited. At the time she lived with her grandparents and saw her father, Gus Lewis, occasionally. Since she was only 17, they were not sure she would be safe going to meet a man they did not know. Over the course of multiple conversations, Lewis says, Copperfield reassured Patricia Burton, her late grandmother, and her father, that she would be looked after by his female staff. “He was pleasant on the phone,” her father tells the Guardian now. “My daughter must have told him I was into motorcycles and Harleys at the time, which I was. And so he brought that up first thing…. just trying to be buddy, buddy.” He says Copperfield told him he “would take good care of her and they’d be in separate rooms”. Lewis says: “My parents are just super good, honest people and trusting … They were starstruck and believed everything he said.” [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/16/david-copperfield-allegations#img-6) Brittney Lewis was 17 when she attended The Look of the Year 1988 contest, where she says she met magician David Copperfield. Photograph: Youtube/Courtesy Brittney Lewis In late 1988, Lewis recalls, she traveled to California to meet Copperfield ahead of the show. They spent the day together and went shopping, she recalls. “He took me to a mall and he wanted to hold hands and his hand was super sweaty.” Backstage “he tried to kiss me up against a wall and I ducked and dodged and I was like, no, no, that’s not what I’m here for,” she says. She told him they were “just friends”. “After the show, he took me to a bar,” Lewis says. “I remember looking down and seeing him pour his drink into mine and I looked at him and said, ‘What are you doing?’ And he said, ‘I’m just sharing’.” The rest of the night is hazy, she says. She says she remembers flashes of being carried out to a car and being helped into a hotel room, where Copperfield had an adjoining room. She says he laid her on the bed, and she remembers “him on top of me, my clothes coming off and then him kissing down and going down towards my crotch.” Then she blacked out, she says. “I don’t remember anything after that.” Lewis says she believes she was drugged. In the morning she woke up feeling “nauseous and sick to my stomach”. Yesterday’s Guardian story reported that another woman, Gillian\*, believed she and a friend had been drugged by the magician. Copperfield denied Gillian’s allegations, saying: “Anyone who knows our client knows drugs have never been a part of his life in any shape or form.” Lewis says Copperfield came in through the connecting door shortly after, saying he wanted “to talk to me about what had happened.” She says he then said, “I just want you to know that I didn’t penetrate you because you’re underage.” Lewis says Copperfield told her it would be best for her to return home that day, despite having a multi-day trip planned. Before she left, she says, he convinced her to write him a letter. She can’t recall the exact wording but says it suggested that nothing wrong had happened and that Lewis would not tell anyone about the alleged incident. “I feel like that note kept me hostage for a long time,” she says. Copperfield’s lawyers have denied Lewis’s allegations. His lawyers said “our client did not act as alleged.” Months later, Lewis says, Copperfield called her again, inviting her to one of his shows in her hometown. Lewis told him she never wanted to see him again and hung up, she says. Lewis says her fear of Copperfield was compounded by a childlike sense that he was capable of real magic. Lewis recalls him telling her he was into black magic. When she returned home and realized one of her crystal earrings was missing, she was convinced Copperfield had taken it and was “really scared of what he could do”. Another woman in yesterday’s story, Lily\*, who alleged she was groped on stage by Copperfield when she was 14 or 15, says for years after she had nightmares fearing that he would “use his magic on me”. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/16/david-copperfield-allegations#img-7) Brittney Lewis says she believes she was drugged by David Copperfield at a bar in 1988. She says she remembers flashes of being carried out to a car and being helped into a hotel room, where Copperfield had an adjoining room. He denies her allegations. Photograph: The Guardian Lewis, now 53, gets emotional when she talks about the impact the alleged incident had on her life. She had been sexually assaulted as a teenager before she met Copperfield. “I fought the first time … and I thought if it ever happened again, I’d fight harder,” she says. With Copperfield, she says she believes she was drugged “so I felt really defeated and scared of men, scared to date, scared to have boys kiss me.” She “started drinking young,” she says. “I was just really self-destructive for a long time.” On many nights for a decade after the alleged incident, Lewis says, she had nightmares, in which she was being attacked by a man on top of her. Eventually, she began opening up to those close to her about what she says happened, and got therapy. Now, a mother of three, living a quiet life in southern California with her husband, she says: “I just found a lot of really great alternative ways to heal.” The Guardian corroborated Lewis’s claims by interviewing three friends and family members, as well as an acquaintance with whom she is no longer in contact. They recall her telling them about the alleged incident several years later. Lewis says she initially felt she couldn’t tell people because of the note she had written Copperfield. In 2018, Lewis shared her allegations publicly in [The Wrap](https://www.thewrap.com/david-copperfield-accused-drugging-assaulting-17-year-old-model-1988/), inspired by the #MeToo movement. Copperfield [posted a statement on Twitter](https://twitter.com/Copperfield/status/956298396188504065/photo/1) after the article was published praising the #MeToo movement while saying that he had been “falsely accused publicly in the past”. **The phone calls** ------------------- Another contestant from Look of the Year 1988 also recalls getting phone calls from Copperfield at her family home after the contest. Natalie\*, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, had turned 17 just before the competition. She had no idea, she says, that Copperfield was also allegedly contacting Lewis around the same time. Natalie remembers the giddiness of having a celebrity taking an interest in her. They developed what she thought at the time was a friendship and describes being “enamored” of him. Over the phone, he would take the time to ask her how she was and how her modeling career was going, she says. “That made me feel special.” Copperfield told Natalie that he would be performing in her hometown soon and offered her and her parents tickets, she says. They jumped at the opportunity. It hadn’t crossed their minds that anything inappropriate could happen with their daughter, who was still a minor, as they would be there with her, she says. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/16/david-copperfield-allegations#img-8) David Copperfield poses for a photograph before performing at ‘The Magic of David Copperfield’ at the Kodak Theatre, on 29 November 2002, in Hollywood, California. Photograph: Robert Mora/Getty Images Lawyers for Copperfield said he did not call contestants as claimed, adding: “If people our client met asked his office for tickets to his shows our client would often provide complimentary tickets”. Copperfield, who she says had built the family’s trust, invited Natalie to join him backstage alone, she recalls. In an interview with the Guardian, Natalie, now 52, says: “He tried to have his way with me.” She alleges he kissed her, touched her breasts and “pushed me down” onto a couch. “He was trying to move forward and go further south and I just didn’t let him do that. I stopped him.” Natalie, who says she had not had sex before, remembers feeling scared, not wanting to upset the man who had been so generous to her and her family. She notes that while she did not want him to touch her, he stopped when she asked him to stop. She remembers joining her parents in the audience after the incident. When she returned home the phone calls continued, she says. “Whenever he came back to \[my hometown\] he always offered tickets to my family,” she says. Natalie admits that at the time, part of her enjoyed the attention from a celebrity. “I was naive, I was foolish,” she says. Natalie, who now runs a business in New York, never told her parents, believing for years that she was somehow to blame. “I don’t know, I felt guilty, maybe,” she says. Copperfield’s lawyers said he denies Natalie’s allegations. They noted that the backstage environment at a magic show is “densely populated and inhospitable to the kind of outrageous conduct alleged. It would be like engaging in this sort of misbehavior during rush hour at Piccadilly Circus.” [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/16/david-copperfield-allegations#img-9) Look of the Year 1988 contestant Diana Long, top, and David Copperfield sitting with other judges during the 1988 contest. Photograph: Youtube A third contestant from 1988, Diana Long from Pennsylvania, says Copperfield “pursued” her during the Japan contest. Long, who was 19 then, says that the magician never crossed a line, but “I remember thinking he was pretty bold and why didn’t he get the message.” She says that following the competition, Copperfield’s female assistant called her family home at least two times, speaking to her mother. They declined offers of tickets to his shows. Long, now a mother of five, didn’t give much thought to her interactions with Copperfield at the time, she says, but if he was “talking that way to my 18-year-old, I would be really upset. It’s very inappropriate.” She describes it as “an abuse of power … I think he took advantage of his position, especially being a judge and being famous.” Copperfield’s representatives denied Long’s allegation, saying it is “not our client’s practice” to offer tickets to shows. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/16/david-copperfield-allegations#img-10) John Casablancas from the Elite Model Agency, with models at the Miss Elite Model Look 1989 election ceremony at Le Palace Club in Paris, France. Photograph: Foc Kan/Getty Images Regarding the phone calls, Long adds: “I’m wondering how many of us he was doing this to and making each one of us \[think\] it was only us.” Elite was forced into bankruptcy in 2004. The Elite brand continues to be used by two separate agencies, owned by different corporate entities. One, Elite World Group, said in a statement that the “current ownership since 2012 have no ties to John Casablancas. It never employed, consulted or conducted any business with Mr Casablancas during his lifetime.” It said the agency is “committed to providing safe work environments for our … models.” The other inheritor of the brand, Elite Model Management, declined to respond to questions. In response to the 2020 article it also strongly distanced itself from the Casablancas-owned firm and era. **The industry** ---------------- A decade or more after the 1988 and 1991 Look of the Year events, Valerie\* – who was quoted in yesterday’s Guardian investigation – was working as an assistant to Copperfield. She recalls Copperfeld having a “little black book”, containing contact details for models and others from the modeling industry. Valerie, who worked for the magician for 18 months from the late 1990s says some of Copperfield’s closest staff would use the list to “contact modeling agencies” and arrange for models to meet him at or after his shows. This included agencies across the US. “There were always models coming in and going,” she claims. The Guardian spoke to an American model agent from the list who confirmed that he received a call from a Copperfield employee asking for a group of models to attend his show. In 1993 Copperfield began dating the Elite supermodel Claudia Schiffer. According to reports, they met when he brought her on stage to participate in a mind reading act and a flying illusion. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/16/david-copperfield-allegations#img-11) Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer and David Copperfield at Campbell’s party during Paris Fashion Week, at the Bataclan, on 14 October 1994 in Paris, France. Photograph: Stéphane Cardinale/Corbis/Getty Images Copperfield reportedly proposed to Schiffer the following year on Little St James, the island that would later be purchased by Epstein. In the years that followed, Schiffer appeared on stage with Copperfield multiple times. Schiffer never married Copperfield and their relationship ended six years later in 1999. There is no suggestion she was aware of any alleged misconduct during their relationship. Schiffer declined to comment on the allegations against him. Valerie said in yesterday’s story that she felt so uncomfortable about her boss’s behavior around young women that she quit and paid back her Christmas bonus. The final trigger for her leaving, she says, was witnessing Copperfield’s behavior around a mother and her daughter, an aspiring model, who spent time with him over a number of days in his New York apartment. Copperfield’s lawyers said he is unaware of staff members quitting for the reasons cited. Valerie says that a modeling agency had connected Copperfield with the pair and the illusionist appeared to be advising them on the girl’s modeling career. Copperfield, whose lawyers said he denies acting as alleged, took the mother and her daughter – who Valerie recalls was still a minor – to nightclubs until late at night, she says. Valerie attended one such evening and recalls his behavior towards the girl as “creepy”. She says: “That mother seemed very naive, very starstruck.” Valerie notes that she does not know of any misconduct between Copperfield and the girl, but adds that she felt “it was super wrong.” She felt she couldn’t work for him anymore, she says. “I left as soon as I could after that.” * _The Guardian US was assisted with online research by Jules Metge_

The message pads appear a little faded, but the handwriting on the spiral-bound notebooks is clear enough. Staff at Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion in Florida’s Palm Beach used the pads to jot down the names of the people who had called the financier, and between 2004 and 2005, one well-known person appeared to be calling persistently. Not Prince Andrew or Bill Gates, or even Bill Clinton, the former US president, though all of them have come under a spotlight over their relationships with the disgraced billionaire. The name on the pads is one that – until recently – has had far less scrutiny: David Copperfield. According to copies of the phone message pads, seen by the Guardian, the magician appears to have left messages for Epstein 16 times in just a few months. The notations on the pads include brief messages such as “it’s important” and “just called to say hello”. One says “it’s jackpot” without further explanation. In a written response to questions from the Guardian US, Copperfield’s lawyers denied that he had left “multiple messages” for Epstein. “Any messages that were left would have been left by our client’s office in response to a request by Epstein for tickets to a show,” the lawyers said. The Guardian has examined Copperfield’s contacts with Epstein, a convicted sex offender who committed suicide in prison in 2019, as part of a broader investigation that includes an examination of allegations of sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior by the illusionist. Copperfield has denied ever engaging in sexual misconduct or inappropriate behavior. The phone messages were not the only alleged contacts between the magician and the financier. The Guardian’s investigation found that Copperfield appears to have met with Epstein at least three times, according to interviews with witnesses, court records and police evidence. Two Epstein victims have separately told the Guardian they were present at such meetings – one at a dinner at Epstein’s home in 2004 and the other at Copperfield’s Las Vegas “warehouse” the same year. Were the two men close? His lawyers insist not. They said Copperfield – who has not previously commented on his relationship with Epstein – “was not a friend of Jeffrey Epstein”. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/17/david-copperfield-jeffrey-epstein#img-2) Jeffrey Epstein’s waterfront home in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2020. Photograph: Miami Herald/TNS/Getty Images They also said he was completely unaware of Epstein’s “horrific crimes”. “Like the rest of the world, he learned about it from the press.” Sigrid McCawley, a victims’ rights attorney at the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner who has represented multiple Epstein victims, argues that there are still questions to answer. “David Copperfield cannot hide or make his close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein disappear,” she said. **‘I was invited backstage’** ----------------------------- Copperfield’s alleged relationship with Epstein made headlines just a few months ago, in January of this year, after the illusionist’s name was among those [referenced in newly unsealed court records](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/04/jeffrey-epstein-list-celebrity-name-documents) in an Epstein-related case. The inclusion of Copperfield’s name in the court records does not mean he committed any crime or knew about Epstein’s criminal conduct. The court records included new details about an alleged conversation Copperfield had with a woman, Johanna Sjoberg, who would years later accuse Epstein of abusing her. In a sworn deposition, Sjoberg alleged she had been invited to a dinner at Epstein’s house and had been offered a chance to meet the famous magician. Sjoberg confirmed to the Guardian that the dinner took place in 2004. Sjoberg – who was in her 20s at the time of the dinner – claimed in the deposition that she had waited at the house along with a girl who she had not met before and seemed very young. She testified that Copperfield “did some magic tricks”. She said she believed that Copperfield and Epstein were friends. Epstein was running a well-established operation by this time, recruiting girls and women from local schools and colleges to give him massages that led to sexual abuse. In some cases, Epstein paid the young women to enlist others they knew. There is no suggestion that Copperfield was participating in this scheme or Epstein’s abuse. In her deposition, a lawyer asked Sjoberg: “Did Copperfield ever discuss Jeffrey’s involvement with young girls with you?” She responded: “He questioned me if I was aware that girls were getting paid to find other girls.” In the deposition, she said Copperfield didn’t tell her any specifics, including whether the girls were teenagers. [Do you have any information to share? You can reach the Guardian US securely via [email protected], or (using a non-work phone) use Signal or WhatsApp to message +1-646-886-8761. For the most secure communications, use SecureDrop or see our guide.](https://interactive.guim.co.uk/embed/from-tool/generic/index.html?vertical=News&opinion-tint=false&title=Story%20tips%3F&description=Do%20you%20have%20any%20information%20to%20share%3F%20You%20can%20reach%20the%20Guardian%20US%20securely%20via%20%3Ca%20style%3D%22color%3A%23ab0613%22%20href%3D%22mailto%3Abehindthemagic%40theguardian.com%22%3Ebehindthemagic%40theguardian.com%3C%2Fa%3E%2C%20or%20(using%20a%20non-work%20phone)%20use%20%3Ca%20style%3D%22color%3A%23ab0613%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fsignal.me%2F%23p%2F%2B16468868761%20%22%3ESignal%3C%2Fa%3E%20or%20%3Ca%20style%3D%22color%3A%23ab0613%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fapi.whatsapp.com%2Fsend%3Fphone%3D16468868761%20%22%3EWhatsApp%3C%2Fa%3E%20to%20message%20%2B1-646-886-8761.%20For%20the%20most%20secure%20communications%2C%20use%20%3Ca%20style%3D%22color%3A%23ab0613%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsecuredrop%22%3ESecureDrop%3C%2Fa%3E%20or%20see%20%3Ca%20style%3D%22color%3A%23ab0613%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fhelp%2Fng-interactive%2F2017%2Fmar%2F17%2Fcontact-the-guardian-securely%22%3Eour%20guide%3C%2Fa%3E.%0A&link=false) Asked by the Guardian to explain his remark to Sjoberg, lawyers for Copperfield said in written response that he had “heard a rumor about girls being paid to bring other girls to the Epstein residence”. The lawyers said Copperfield did not recall from whom he had heard the rumor, and that he had not taken it lightly or dismissed it out of hand. He asked Sjoberg about it “out of surprise (and concern for her)”, his lawyers said. When Sjoberg said nothing to “reinforce the rumor” and did not express concern, Copperfield dropped the matter, his lawyers said, as he “would have seen no reason to contact law enforcement or to raise the matter with others”. Sjoberg’s interaction with Copperfield at the dinner was widely reported by media outlets when it was made public in January. Copperfield did not issue a statement at that time. Speaking for the first time about her interactions with Copperfield since her 2016 deposition was unsealed, Sjoberg told the Guardian she believed Copperfield was “trying to figure out what was happening” with Epstein and that she was “unaware if they kept up any type of friendship after that dinner party”. She also said that she remained in contact with Copperfield after meeting him for the first time at Epstein’s home. Epstein bought Sjoberg a ticket to a Copperfield show shortly after the 2004 dinner, she said. Epstein “knew I loved magic and watched Copperfield on TV growing up”. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/17/david-copperfield-jeffrey-epstein#img-3) Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell on 15 March 2005 in New York City. Maxwell was later convicted of helping Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls. Photograph: Patrick McMullan/Getty Images She was in the front row, she said, and Copperfield invited her backstage afterwards. “I got to see his tour bus,” she recalled. “It was as I was leaving that we exchanged numbers. He then invited me to come hang out in Miami for the day before his show the next evening. We went shopping and had lunch.” Sjoberg said Copperfield made no sexual advances on her and was “nothing but kind to me”. In total she said she saw him “three times around 2004, only once with Epstein’’ and they spoke “a few times” after the dinner party. She also saw him in Las Vegas, while she was on a girls trip, around 11 years ago, she recalled. Sjoberg said that she hadn’t heard from the magician since then, until she received a call from Copperfield in March. It was the same day that the Guardian sent a representative for Copperfield questions about his relationship with Epstein. “He was hoping that I would make a statement about my experiences with him,” she said. She said she told him that she had already exchanged a message with a Guardian reporter in January 2024 about the Copperfield dinner. She then sent him a screenshot of the message she had sent to the Guardian. Sjoberg said she was initially hesitant to speak on the record to the Guardian about Copperfield, saying: “I know that may create another media circus.” She said she did not wish to say anything further publicly on this subject, due to the unwanted attention that speaking out about Epstein and those around him has already brought her. Copperfield is not the only famous person Sjoberg said she had met as a result of her relationship with Epstein. As part of the Epstein-related case in which Sjoberg made comments about Copperfield, Sjoberg also described her alleged interactions with Prince Andrew, including her allegation that he touched her breast. Prince Andrew denied the allegation. **‘Magic David called’** ------------------------ The message books that were seized by police in 2005 from Epstein’s Florida home as part of the criminal investigation into Epstein offer clues about who he was in touch with before he was charged one year later with soliciting prostitution, and roughly 14 years before he was indicted for child sex trafficking. The pads were collected during the execution of a search warrant. They were found both inside the residence and in Epstein’s trash, according to court records filed in an Epstein-related case. Multiple witnesses have said that the collected messages accurately reflect those taken by various staff at the Palm Beach mansion, the court records say. He left messages for Epstein 16 times in three months, the message pads suggest. The police also seized a smaller batch of pads from 2002 and 2003, in which there is no record of calls from Copperfield. The first dated message to Epstein from Copperfield in the pads, on 21 November 2004, simply reads: “it’s important”. Some of the messages appear to suggest a familiarity between Copperfield and Epstein. On the evening of 9 December at 7.05pm, the message pads record, the illusionist left a message that he’d “just called to say hello”. Ten days later they record he left another message saying the same thing. Another reads: “Magic David called.” On 9 January 2005, Epstein had one message from Copperfield and another from one of Copperfield’s assistants, who appears to be arranging a time for Epstein to see one of the magician’s shows. “The 28th will be the best day to come and see show,” it reads. “The show starts at 8.30.” Copperfield was in Florida on tour at the time and performing at the Carol Morsani Hall in Tampa on this night, according to records. The following morning Copperfield calls again. “He is just checking you can reach him at home,” the note said. He was not the only one leaving messages. The model agent Jean-Luc Brunel – [who hanged himself](https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2022/may/28/jean-luc-brunel-abuse-six-women-epstein) in jail in 2022 while being investigated for sex crimes – also called regularly during this period. Donald Trump, the former US president who has said he had a falling out with Epstein, disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and American banker Jes Staley also left messages for Epstein around this time. [Staley, the former chief executive of Barclays](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/12/ex-barclays-boss-jes-staley-faces-potential-fine-uk-over-jeffrey-epstein-ties), was fined $2.26m (£1.8m) by the UK Financial Conduct Authority last year and banned from holding senior positions in the UK after it was determined that he had mischaracterized the “nature of his relationship” with Epstein. In a statement at the time, Staley – who has denied having any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes – said he was disappointed by the FCA’s decision and would challenge it. In the weeks leading up to the show on the 28th, the message pads indicate, Copperfield left more messages for Epstein. In one, the message read: “he has some info”, and six days before the show: “it’s jackpot”. In another, Copperfield asked Epstein to call him back. In yet another, Copperfield said he could be reached at home. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/17/david-copperfield-jeffrey-epstein#img-4) Two messages from David Copperfield for Jeffrey Epstein: ‘Magic David called’ and ‘it’s jackpot’. The pads were seized by police from his Florida home as part of the criminal investigation into Epstein in 2005. Photograph: Handout Along with denying that Copperfield left multiple messages for Epstein, the magician’s lawyers said he “never” called Epstein personally. When the Guardian pressed Copperfield’s lawyers on this issue – noting that Copperfield’s direct phone number appears to be on the messages – his lawyers declined to comment. Copperfield’s lawyers said he and Epstein were “at most, acquaintances” who only met on a “handful” of occasions. Copperfield believed, they said, that he only attended Epstein’s Florida mansion once, for around 15 minutes. They said he also visited Epstein’s New York home. Alfredo Rodriguez, who was Epstein’s housekeeper at his Palm Beach mansion between September 2004 and February or March 2005, testified in a videotaped deposition in 2009 that Copperfield was in the house “maybe two or three times” when he was present. He said Copperfield “came to the house, played tricks” and then left. Copperfield’s lawyers said Rodriguez “lacks any credibility”. Rodriguez, who died in 2015, [was convicted in 2012](https://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/story/news/2012/04/01/former-epstein-house-manager-alfredo/9663984007/) of an obstruction charge for failing to tell prosecutors that he was in possession of Epstein’s phonebook – commonly referred to as his “black book” – and for trying to sell it. One of the questions that has been raised by Copperfield’s apparent contacts with Epstein is what the exact nature of their relationship was. Five people, including Epstein himself, have said they believed the two men were friends. The Guardian has no evidence that Copperfield and Epstein had contact after 2005. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/17/david-copperfield-jeffrey-epstein#img-5) A courtroom artist’s sketch of defendant Jeffrey Epstein, center, with attorneys Martin Weinberg, left, and Marc Fernich during his arraignment in New York federal court, on 8 July 2019. Photograph: Elizabeth Williams/AP In the videotaped deposition of Epstein conducted by the lawyer Jack Scarola in March 2010, Epstein was asked if he had a “social relationship” with Copperfield. Epstein responded that he believed that by raising “the names of friends of mine”, Scarola was seeking to stress his relationships and “imperil my business relationships”. He added: “I’m going to say, yes, I do know Mr Copperfield”. Copperfield’s lawyers said any suggestion he was friends with Epstein “is totally false and a mischaracterization made by the media.” They added that it is “well-documented, Epstein ‘collected’ the rich and the famous”. McCawley, the victims’ rights attorney at the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, said “Consider that in just one, single trash-pull and search by police of just one of Epstein’s properties, message pads from a short period showed Copperfield called Epstein multiple times.” Spencer Kuvin, a Florida lawyer at Goldlaw who has also represented Epstein victims, said: “Because Copperfield appears to have been within Epstein’s social orbit during that time frame, he should definitely be coming forward to give more information.” Brad Edwards, an attorney who once represented Sjoberg and multiple other Epstein victims, said in his book, Relentless Pursuit, that Copperfield was “clearly a close friend” of Epstein’s, according to unnamed witnesses he had interviewed. Edwards, who has claimed that he tried to depose Copperfield as part of his investigations of Epstein but was not able to due to “legal and logistical roadblocks”, also alleged in a legal filing in April 2011 that Copperfield had an improper interaction with one Epstein victim, but did not provide any details or substantiate the claim. Copperfield’s lawyers declined to comment on this allegation. Edwards declined to elaborate on the claim, saying in a Whatsapp message to a reporter that he was not in a position to assist the Guardian. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/17/david-copperfield-jeffrey-epstein#img-6) Magician David Copperfield poses in Berlin on 3 June 2005. Photograph: Oliver Lang/DDP/AFP/Getty Images Public records show that one Epstein victim who said she was a teenager at the time of her abuse told detectives as part of a 2005 police investigation that Copperfield tickets were among the gifts that Epstein gave her during the time he was sexually abusing her in the early to mid-2000s. “I got show tickets. I went and saw like David Copperfield, I had VIP tickets or something like that,” she said. **‘It did make me feel safe’** ------------------------------ The same year that Sjoberg attended a dinner with the two men, another Epstein victim says she also spent time in their company. This time it was on Copperfield’s turf, in Las Vegas. Jane Doe 15, who is one of more than 100 Epstein victims to have reached a settlement with Epstein’s estate in 2021, was 15 years old when she was abused by him. She described in an interview with the Guardian how she was flown from her home town in Michigan to Las Vegas in early 2004 in order to meet the financier for the first time. On her arrival at the airport, she says she was picked up by someone working for Epstein and taken straight to David Copperfield’s “warehouse”. When she arrived she joined a group of other young women who had also been flown to Las Vegas for the occasion, to meet Epstein and Copperfield. She said she believed Epstein and the other girls had just seen the magician’s show at the MGM Grand – where he still performs today – but she had only arrived in time to “hang out with David and take a look at all his oddities that he kept in the back warehouse space”. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/17/david-copperfield-jeffrey-epstein#img-7) Jane Doe 15, right, posing, on left side, with a cardboard cutout of David Copperfield ‘so it looked like he was levitating you.’ She says she 15 when she met Copperfield and Epstein. “I was just a kid so I was like ‘oh wow, magic, cool’,” Jane Doe 15 told the Guardian. There was a cardboard cutout of Copperfield that she posed with “so it looked like he was levitating you,” she recalled. She kept a polaroid of this, which she shared with the Guardian. “I could not wait to tell my friends about this.” Lawyers for Copperfield acknowledged he had given a tour to Epstein “and his guests” but said the tour he gave was at his museum and that he and Epstein were accompanied by 10 members of his staff. The lawyers said the tour took place before Epstein’s crimes were exposed and that Copperfield did not see or suspect anything inappropriate during the visit. Jane Doe 15, who grew up living in a small farming town and loved to read Narnia books, was impressed by Copperfield. She described the “vibe” at Copperfield’s warehouse as “teen friendly”. She said, “I was being taken to … meet this magician …I’m being wowed and my defenses are going down.” “There’s a safety in it … it felt very like an admittance that I was young and would be into this sort of thing.” After the meeting, Jane Doe 15 claimed she was taken on Epstein’s private plane – which later became known among the press as the “Lolita Express” – with the other young women to Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico. It was there, just days later, that Epstein subjected her to a “vicious, prolonged sexual assault”, according to the lawsuit she filed against Epstein’s estate in 2019. Meeting Copperfield “did make me feel safe,” she said. Jane Doe 15 did not allege Copperfield ever acted inappropriately with her. “In my experience with Epstein there was so much of him fronting or showing off these celebrity associations, one of them being David Copperfield,” she said. “When he felt you could be getting nervous, he would bring up a celebrity association.” * _The Guardian was assisted_ _with online research by Jules Metge_

The celebrated American magician David Copperfield has been accused by 16 women of engaging in sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior, according to a Guardian US investigation. More than half of the allegations are from women who said they were under 18 at the time of the incidents. Some said they were as young as 15, although he may not have known their ages. The allegations against him include claims that he drugged three women before he had sexual relations with them, which they felt they were unable to consent to. The claims against the 67-year-old illusionist – which he has denied – span from the late 1980s to 2014. The Guardian US is examining these allegations as part of a series of stories that has drawn on interviews with more than 100 people and court and police records.  David Copperfield 'was in my nightmares': the women alleging sexual misconduct - video The women who have made allegations about Copperfield’s behavior met him through his work as one of the most successful entertainers in the world. Some of the women told the Guardian it was only in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement that they had felt able to speak out about their alleged experiences with Copperfield. Some agreed to be named in the Guardian’s articles. Those who wanted to be quoted on the condition of anonymity are marked\* with an asterisk. Asked about the claims, Copperfield denied wrongdoing of any kind. In written responses, his lawyers told the Guardian that he has “never acted inappropriately with anyone, let alone anyone underage”. They said a “truthful” depiction of Copperfield would describe his “kindness, shyness and treatment of men and women with respect”. They said Copperfield is a champion of the #MeToo movement, which has encouraged women to come forward and tell their stories of alleged abuse. They also said there had previously been “numerous false claims” made against him. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/15/david-copperfield-investigation#img-2) Brittney Lewis claims David Copperfield drugged and sexually assaulted her in 1988 when she was a 17-year-old model. He denies her allegations. Photograph: Tracy Nguyen/The Guardian Copperfield has been accused of misconduct in the past. One of the 16 women, Brittney Lewis, went public in 2018 with allegations that he had drugged and sexually assaulted her in 1988, when she was a 17-year-old model. Copperfield denied the claims, which were [published in The Wrap](https://www.thewrap.com/david-copperfield-accused-drugging-assaulting-17-year-old-model-1988/), a digital news outlet that covers media and entertainment. One other woman told the Guardian she had a similar experience, alleging that she and a friend were drugged and that both were unable to consent before he had sex with each of them. “I … would never just say this to somebody if I didn’t truly, honest to God believe that I was drugged at that time,” said Gillian\*, who said she agreed to meet Copperfield for a drink in 1993, following one of his shows. Lawyers for Copperfield denied Gillian’s allegations and said no such claims or complaints had been made against him at venues he was performing in at the time. The lawyers also said that drugs are “not a part of his world”. In four other cases women claimed that Copperfield had groped them or made them touch him in a sexual way during live performances on stage. Three were teenagers at the time of the alleged incidents. Family members of one 15-year-old who were seated in the audience claim they witnessed him grope her breasts. Lawyers for Copperfield said claims that Copperfield touched women inappropriately were “not only completely false but also entirely implausible”. Fallon Thornton, 38, told the Guardian that Copperfield squeezed her breast after calling her on stage during a January 2014 performance at MGM Grand casino-hotel. She reported the allegation to MGM and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, records show, but Thornton felt her claim was never taken seriously. The Las Vegas police told the Guardian it closed the case because of “insufficient evidence”. Copperfield’s lawyers also alleged that law enforcement at the time told Copperfield’s team that video footage of the performance Thornton attended did not show him touching “the chest area” of any participant. Neither Copperfield’s lawyers, Las Vegas police nor MGM shared footage of the performance with the Guardian, despite requests. MGM, the entertainment and gaming conglomerate where Copperfield has regularly performed since 2000, declined to comment on the alleged 2014 incident or other allegations against Copperfield. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/15/david-copperfield-investigation#img-3) Fallon Thornton alleges David Copperfield squeezed her breast after calling her on stage during a January 2014 performance at MGM Grand casino-hotel. His lawyers deny her allegations. Photograph: Tina Russell/The Guardian The Guardian’s investigation highlighted common themes among the allegations: several women said Copperfield promised to help them with their careers in modeling or the entertainment industry and that he attempted to maintain contact with them and their parents. One woman, Carla\* claimed that after meeting Copperfield at one of his shows in 1991, when she was 15, he began calling her late at night. She said she now feels she had been “groomed”. She said he sent her gifts and tickets to his shows. After she turned 18, she said, they had consensual sex. She said it was her first time. Lawyers for Copperfield did not dispute that the magician had known the teenager, and said they had a wholly legal and consensual relationship that had lasted four years. The lawyers said he “strongly denies any suggestion of grooming or any other impropriety”. Separately, Copperfield has faced scrutiny because of his association with Jeffrey Epstein, the indicted child sex trafficker who killed himself in prison in 2019. Copperfield was among the high-profile individuals who were named in Epstein-related court documents that were unsealed in January. The inclusion of Copperfield’s name does not mean he committed a crime. According to one sworn statement, Copperfield asked one woman – who, it later emerged, was one of Epstein’s victims – whether she was “aware that girls were getting paid to find other girls” for Epstein. His lawyers told the Guardian Copperfield had heard a “rumor” about this but had “no knowledge or belief that anything improper was going on”. His lawyers also said he had seen “no reason to contact law enforcement or to raise the matter with others” after the woman he asked did not express any concern. Epstein, the lawyers said, was not someone Copperfield regularly socialized with. “Our client did not know about Epstein’s horrific crimes,” his lawyers said. “Like the rest of the world, he learned about it from the press.” The illusionist announced to fanfare in October 2023 that he was teaming up with Save the Children, the global charity, for an elaborate stunt scheduled for February 2024 that would make the moon “disappear”. The partnership was announced on [NBC’s Today show](https://www.today.com/video/david-copperfield-announces-new-feat-that-will-enthrall-audiences-196539461583) and Save the Children issued a press release hailing their collaboration, saying that Copperfield’s “message of positivity and passion for helping children around the world are a perfect complement to the difficult work we do every day.” But the illusion did not occur in February as planned. Save the Children, which removed its announcement from its website, confirmed to the Guardian that its partnership with Copperfield ended on 4 January 2024. This was one day after Copperfield’s name was referenced in the unsealed court records related to Epstein. Save the Children declined to comment on whether the release of the Epstein documents was behind its decision to end the partnership. On his Instagram account, Copperfield posted on 29 February that he would still be making the moon disappear. “Some cool new developments are taking extra time.” Copperfield’s lawyers said he took “unjustified attacks” on his reputation very seriously, and that he hoped his partnership with Save the Children will continue again in the future. His lawyers added their client has never been charged with a crime. [Do you have any information to share? You can reach the Guardian US securely via [email protected], or (using a non-work phone) use Signal or WhatsApp to message +1-646-886-8761. For the most secure communications, use SecureDrop or see our guide.](https://interactive.guim.co.uk/embed/from-tool/generic/index.html?vertical=News&opinion-tint=false&title=Story%20tips%3F&description=Do%20you%20have%20any%20information%20to%20share%3F%20You%20can%20reach%20the%20Guardian%20US%20securely%20via%20%3Ca%20style%3D%22color%3A%23ab0613%22%20href%3D%22mailto%3Abehindthemagic%40theguardian.com%22%3Ebehindthemagic%40theguardian.com%3C%2Fa%3E%2C%20or%20(using%20a%20non-work%20phone)%20use%20%3Ca%20style%3D%22color%3A%23ab0613%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fsignal.me%2F%23p%2F%2B16468868761%20%22%3ESignal%3C%2Fa%3E%20or%20%3Ca%20style%3D%22color%3A%23ab0613%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fapi.whatsapp.com%2Fsend%3Fphone%3D16468868761%20%22%3EWhatsApp%3C%2Fa%3E%20to%20message%20%2B1-646-886-8761.%20For%20the%20most%20secure%20communications%2C%20use%20%3Ca%20style%3D%22color%3A%23ab0613%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsecuredrop%22%3ESecureDrop%3C%2Fa%3E%20or%20see%20%3Ca%20style%3D%22color%3A%23ab0613%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fhelp%2Fng-interactive%2F2017%2Fmar%2F17%2Fcontact-the-guardian-securely%22%3Eour%20guide%3C%2Fa%3E.%0A&link=false) * _The Guardian was assisted by online research by Jules Metge._ _Additional reporting by Will Craft_

13 hours ago Kayla Epstein,BBC News, in court in New York Reuters A New York jury’s guilty verdict against Donald Trump may have shocked the general public – but some who watched the case closely weren’t surprised. With the burden of proof on prosecutors, the case was Trump’s to lose. But his team’s lack of a counter-narrative and a flawed strategy to undercut the case’s weaknesses stymied the defence, lawyers and former prosecutors told the BBC. And before they even walked into court, one factor already had set up a tough battle. “The single biggest problem that the defence had in this case,” said Mitchell Epner, a New York civil litigator, “was that Donald Trump was their client.” A lack of narrative ------------------- To convict Trump, the jury had to be certain he falsified his business records, and that he did so intending to conceal or commit a second crime. * [LIVE UPDATES: Follow reaction to verdict](https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-us-canada-69069142) The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office’s case went like this: With Trump’s approval, his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to stay silent about an alleged sexual encounter so as not to derail Trump’s 2016 campaign. Trump then approved a fraudulent scheme to disguise the reimbursement to Cohen as legal expenses to hide the hush money. In doing so, he ran afoul of election rules, prosecutors said, which amounted to “election fraud, pure and simple.” The prosecution then called 20 witnesses and offered scores of crucial documents, including cheques to Cohen bearing Trump’s signature.  Trump pleaded not guilty to the 34 counts of falsifying business records. But “the defence never had a story that the jury could accept,” said John Moscow, who spent 30 years working for the Manhattan DA. While they did not have to disprove the prosecution’s case, giving the jury a plausible reason behind Trump’s reimbursement to Cohen, for example, would have helped, experts said. During his final argument, Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche provided an alternate explanation for the fraudulent documents: that they were payments for actual work Michael Cohen did in 2017, and therefore recording them as legal expenses was not fraud. The defence also argued that Trump paid Ms Daniels only to protect his family, not to defraud voters, but then the team never developed that argument, Mr Epner said. “They never picked a lane, and because Donald Trump closed off every lane that could have been reasonably been picked,” said Mr Epner. “They tried to throw dust in the air and make the jurors confused.” Missing the key point --------------------- The prosecution used meticulous documentation to show falsified business records, but the evidence that Trump actually intended to commit or conceal that all-important second crime was “thin to nonexistent”, Randall Eliason, a professor at George Washington University Law School, told the BBC. Trump’s team did not focus on hammering this weakness, though in his summation, Mr Blanche gave the jury a list of reasons for reasonable doubt. Instead, they argued that the central events of the case never happened, or that witnesses had lied. But the jury may have found these claims were not supported by later evidence and testimony. Pool Former president Donald Trump leaves court Thursday after being found guilty on all 34 counts Mr Eliason said a more effective defence would have been: “Assume for the sake of argument all of this happened. The sex happened, the hush-money happened, and Trump knew about it. Fine. That’s not what the charges are. What’s the evidence of Trump’s actual intent and knowledge? That’s where the case falls short.’” In Trump lawyer Susan Necheles’ cross-examination of Ms Daniels, she sought to portray the actress as a liar wanting money and fame for her story. “It’s a surprise to no one that there was most likely a lot of pressure from the client to paint certain people as liars,” said Anna Cominsky, a professor at New York Law School. “That’s not necessarily the best defence strategy. Stormy Daniels didn’t have to be a liar for \[the defence\] to win.” The Cohen factor ---------------- The defence’s best chance at winning was discrediting Cohen, a star witness. Cohen certainly created plenty of ammunition over the years: guilty pleas for lying to Congress and other crimes, endless public statements bashing his former boss, and questions about whether he had lied to a judge. Mr Blanche hammered these points. In his closing argument, he called Cohen the “GLOAT” - the “Greatest Liar of All Time”. During the trial itself, he cast serious doubt on Cohen’s testimony that he had called Trump – who was using a bodyguard’s phone - about the hush money on 24 October 2016. “I thought that was a huge win for them, potentially catching him in a flat out lie or misremembering,” Ms Cominsky said. Reuters Michael Cohen took the stand during the trial as the prosecution's star witness But the defence also made some fumbles. Mr Blanche's first real question to Cohen was a provocative one: “’You went on TikTok and called me a Crying Little Sh--’ didn't you?” Cohen evenly responded, “Sounds like something I would say.” Justice Juan Merchan admonished Mr Blanche in a sidebar. “Why are you making this about yourself?” he asked. “That was an astoundingly bad moment,” Mr Epner said. “It was a showdown at high noon, and he got trounced.” The defence called only one substantial witness, lawyer Robert Costello, to undercut some of Cohen’s claims. But Mr Costello's testimony was contradicted by his own emails, and in an unusual and chaotic moment, a furious Justice Merchan cleared the courtroom so he could admonish Costello about his behaviour on the stand. 'The case is what it is' ------------------------ Not every lawyer, however, believed there was much the defence could do. “I’m not sure they did anything wrong,” said Karen Agnifilo, who was the chief assistant district attorney at the Manhattan DA’s office until 2021. “The case is what it is." The evidence linking Trump to the crime was strong, others said. “People get convicted on evidence a great deal less secure than this,” Mr Moscow said. Not every legal expert was convinced the prosecution’s legal prowess won the case, however. Jed Sugarman, a professor at Boston University School of Law who said he identifies as politically progressive, thought the election fraud aspect was exaggerated for political effect, and that the underlying crimes warranting a felony charge were never clarified. Prosecutors’ victory, he believed, came down to bringing the case in a liberal-leaning jurisdiction and selecting a favourable jury. “Trump’s mistake,” Mr Sugarman said, “is doing crime-y stuff in Manhattan.” [Indictments of Donald Trump](/news/topics/cd06yxge4v4t)

The Supreme Court has been moving at a sluggish pace in issuing decisions this term, entering the second half of June with more than 20 left to go. That is not terribly different from the last two terms, when the pace at which the court issued decisions started to slow. Over the almost two decades in which Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has led the court, it has on average decided 72 percent of argued cases by this point in the term, according to data compiled by Lee Epstein, a law professor and political scientist at the University of Southern California. The corresponding number for the previous court, led by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist from 1986 to 2005, was 78 percent. But in the last three terms, the court has decided no more than 62 percent of the term’s cases by June 14. Of the 23 remaining cases, perhaps a dozen of them have the potential to reshape significant parts of American society. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and [log into](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F06%2F14%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Fsupreme-court-rulings-june.html&asset=opttrunc) your Times account, or [subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F06%2F14%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Fsupreme-court-rulings-june.html) for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F06%2F14%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Fsupreme-court-rulings-june.html&asset=opttrunc). Want all of The Times? [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F06%2F14%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Fsupreme-court-rulings-june.html).

[Skip to content](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/18/opinion/thepoint/biden-vice-president-step-down#site-content)[Skip to site index](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/18/opinion/thepoint/biden-vice-president-step-down#site-index) There’s a simple way to reconcile voters’ concerns about President Biden’s age with his desire to continue his work in a second term: He demotes himself to vice president. Runs as a running mate. Someone younger tops the Democratic ticket. For the next four years, he taps his experience without exhausting his energy. Likely? Ha. There’s as good a chance I’ll win a gold in gymnastics at the Paris Olympics. But that hasn’t stopped the Biden-as-veep chatter not only on byways of the internet but also in [an actual poll by SurveyUSA](https://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=0e9c48a9-fea2-4fb7-a6a4-47da44911777), which asked Americans whether they’d support that scenario. A majority said yes, suggesting that they didn’t recognize its ludicrousness. A politician doesn’t trade Air Force One for Air Force Two any more than someone with a flatbed seat in first class asks for the last row of coach. And Biden already played second fiddle under President Barack Obama. He’s not itching for an encore. So let’s junk that bunk — and with it, other fantasies that treat a profoundly serious presidential contest in deeply unserious ways. This is an election of magical thinking beyond the usual. That’s no accident. It reflects how frustrated many Americans are with the reality of two major-party candidates who don’t appeal to them. How desperate Donald Trump’s opponents are for some grand assurance of — or secret incantation for — his defeat. How susceptible not only to elaborate conspiracy theories but also to milder fictions Trump’s supporters can be. No, you keen-eyed MAGA sleuths, Biden’s aides didn’t schedule an early debate so that they could replace him after he flails. Nor did they engineer Hunter Biden’s conviction just to _look_ virtuous. Democrats, it is _not_ the case that if journalists just stop talking about Biden’s age, many Americans miraculously won’t notice it. Nor are there tea leaves auguring a revolt against Trump at the Republican convention. A respected public intellectual privately promoted that idea to me. And Michelle Obama will not — abracadabra! — be riding to the rescue. She has never signaled any interest in elected office and has been clear about her distaste for the muck of politics. Indulging such illusions is dangerous. Those of us who believe that Trump’s return to the White House would be ruinous must prosaically and persistently make the case for Biden’s superiority, flaws and all. We must plan, plod, slog. No sorcery will save us. Two weeks after President Biden abruptly [cracked down on asylum seekers](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/06/04/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-new-actions-to-secure-the-border/) at the southern border — angering some progressives — [he announced a new program on Tuesday](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/06/18/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-new-actions-to-keep-families-together/) to protect from deportation the undocumented spouses and stepchildren of American citizens. In a certain way, it is a no-brainer. The undocumented spouses of American citizens are already eligible for citizenship, but were required to leave the country to apply for a green card, a process that can take years. That’s especially true for people who slipped across the border — rather than overstayed a visa — since they [could be barred from re-entry for up to 10 years](https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/three-and-ten-year-bars). Now they will be able to apply from the United States and work legally while they wait. For about half a million American families, this is a game changer. It is [being compared to DACA](https://x.com/lorellapraeli/status/1803034071670415650), which created a special legal status for people who were brought into the United States by their parents. But it is not quite the clear case that DACA was. Kids who were brought into the country illegally by their parents committed no crime and shouldn’t have to face the same consequences as adults who came by their own volition. You don’t have to be a raging ideologue to believe that there should be consequences for breaking the law. Plenty of Democrats feel that people who sneak across the border or overstay a visa should be required to make amends, even if that just means paying a civil fine. That’s one reason Biden’s permissive policies on immigration are endangering his bid for re-election. But the move to protect undocumented spouses is politically savvy. It’s a family-oriented policy that makes a priority of the needs of American citizens, unlike those of his policies that allowed [nearly two million asylum seekers](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/us/politics/migrant-crisis-border-asylum.html) into the country in recent years. Despite the fever dream of conspiracy theorists, they can’t cast a ballot to thank him. Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/18/opinion/thepoint/biden-vice-president-step-down#after-dfp-ad-mid1) A few days ago Donald Trump floated a truly terrible, indeed unworkable economic proposal. I’m aware that many readers will say, “So what else is new?” But in so doing, you’re letting Trump benefit from the soft bigotry of rock-bottom expectations, not holding him to the standards that should apply to any presidential candidate. A politician shouldn’t be given a pass on nonsense because he talks nonsense all the time. But in a way the most interesting thing about Trump’s latest awful policy idea is the way his party responded, with the kind of obsequiousness and paranoia you normally expect in places like North Korea. What Trump reportedly proposed was an “[all tariff policy](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/13/trump-all-tariff-policy-to-replace-income-tax.html)” in which taxes on imports replace income taxes. Why is that a bad idea? First, the math doesn’t work. Annual income tax receipts are around [$2.4 trillion](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1p9nK); imports are around [$3.9 trillion](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1p9nU). On the face of it, this might seem to suggest that Trump’s idea would require an average tariff rate of around 60 percent. But high tariffs would reduce imports, so tariff rates would have to go even higher to realize the same amount of revenue, which would reduce imports even more, and so on. How high would tariffs have to go in the end? I did a [back-of-the-envelope calculation](https://x.com/paulkrugman/status/1801370551656792392) using highly Trump-favorable assumptions and came up with a tariff rate of 133 percent; in reality, there’s probably no tariff rate high enough to replace the income tax. And to the extent that we did replace income taxes with tariffs, we’d in effect sharply raise taxes on working-class Americans while giving the rich a big tax cut — because the income tax is fairly progressive, falling most heavily on [affluent taxpayers](https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2022-update/), while tariffs are de facto a kind of sales tax that falls most heavily on the working class. So this is a really bad idea that would be highly unpopular if voters knew about it. But here’s the kicker: How did the Republican National Committee respond when asked about it? By having its representative [declare](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-06-17/supply-chain-latest-tariffs-and-their-effect-on-inflation), “The notion that tariffs are a tax on U.S. consumers is a lie pushed by outsourcers and the Chinese Communist Party.” Now, economists have been saying that tariffs are a tax on domestic consumers for the past two centuries or so; I guess they’ve been working for China all along. Yes, there are exceptions and qualifications, but if you imagine that Trump is thinking about [optimal tariff theory](https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_1875-2), I have a degree from Trump University you might want to buy. Anyway, look at how the R.N.C. responded to a substantive policy question: by insisting not just that Dear Leader’s nonsense is true, but that anyone who disagrees is part of a sinister conspiracy. Don’t brush this off. It’s one more piece of evidence that MAGA has become a dangerous cult. Credit...Abir Sultan/EPA, via Shutterstock By all accounts, the real reason Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel dissolved his “war cabinet” — the small decision-making body he established soon after the Hamas attacks that led Israel to go to war in Gaza — was to prevent the far-right hawks in his government from getting close to strategic military decisions. Keeping Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich as far away from military operations as possible is good. They are dangerous nationalists and would do what they could to make the war even more horrific. How things came to this is a sad reflection of the way political maneuvering has played into this extraordinarily cruel war. The war cabinet was effectively finished before Netanyahu announced its formal dissolution on Monday. The two centrist opposition leaders he brought in to broaden support for the war effort, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot — both former military chiefs of staff with solid security credentials — had quit a week earlier, angry that crucial decisions were being blocked by “political considerations.” That brought the extremists knocking at the door, compelling Netanyahu to close down the war cabinet rather than let them in, and to rely on a clutch of close advisers in handling the war. The problem is that Netanyahu’s idea of handling the war is to juggle pressures for a cease-fire from Israeli centrists and the Biden administration against threats from the far-right zealots to quit his government if he calls a cease-fire. Without the right his government would fall, probably pushing Netanyahu out of office — a development that would satisfy a majority of Israelis but leave Netanyahu exposed to the corruption charges that have been dogging him for years. The specific issue that drove Gantz and Eisenkot to quit the war cabinet was procrastination on the cease-fire proposal that President Biden announced on May 31. Biden had presented the three-stage plan, which included release of all remaining Israeli hostages, as an Israeli proposal, which required only agreement from Hamas to go into effect. But Netanyahu never publicly acknowledged ownership or agreement, and Hamas came back with conditions that Israel rejected. The Biden administration then upped the ante by taking the plan to the U.N. Security Council, where it passed with only Russia abstaining. The administration remains outwardly sanguine about the cease-fire. But aside from the political hurdles on the Israeli side, predicting or obtaining a response from Hamas has been onerous. Negotiations for the movement are handled by Hamas political operatives in Doha, Qatar, but the final word is with the Hamas chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, the author of the murderous raid on Israel on Oct. 7. Communications with Sinwar are painfully slow, as he takes huge precautions not to give away his whereabouts in Gaza. He also knows that the remaining Israeli hostages are his only bargaining chip, and he is in no rush to cash them in. That is the maddening reality of this war: Leaders on both sides keep it going even when the best interests of their people so clearly demand its immediate end. Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/18/opinion/thepoint/biden-vice-president-step-down#after-dfp-ad-mid2) I first saw the director Maria Friedman’s production of “Merrily We Roll Along” [in London in 2013](https://archive.nytimes.com/artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/london-theater-journal-memory-plays/) and felt I was witnessing some kind of miracle. Here was a revival of an unusual kind of Broadway legend — a musical regarded as brilliant and ambitious but, ultimately, perhaps fatally flawed because of an unsympathetic central character and a plot whose reverse chronology kept you from being swept up and away by the heart of the show (the friendship of the three core characters). What Friedman pulled off was extraordinary. Nothing a director does is more important than choosing the right cast, and Friedman’s work with the actor Mark Umbers turned the selfish, shallow Franklin Shepard Jr. into a man who craved connection but ended in heartbreak — an achievement that owed much to her casting of Damian Humbley and Jenna Russell as Frank’s friends Charley and Mary and the intimacy and chemistry among the three performers. Friedman, who is an acclaimed actress in her own right, stayed with “Merrily” for years, mounting a version in Boston and then, to enormous acclaim, an Off Broadway production in 2023 that moved to Broadway last fall, 42 years after the initial Broadway production closed after only 16 regular performances. Her “Merrily” won the Tony Award for best musical revival on Sunday night, as well as Tonys for two of its sensational stars, Jonathan Groff as Frank and Daniel Radcliffe as Charley. Groff, Radcliffe and their co-star Lindsay Mendez created a bond of such affection and understanding that their trio of performances will stay in my memory for a long time. In a surprise, Friedman didn’t win the Tony for best director of a musical on Sunday; that honor went to Danya Taymor, who did excellent work on “The Outsiders.” Yet later in the Tony ceremony, when “Merrily” won for best musical revival, one of the show’s lead producers, Sonia Friedman — who is the director’s sister and a legend in her own right — heaped praise on her sibling and tried to hand her Tony to her. Maria Friedman gently pushed the Tony away and then gave a loving tribute to the show and its creators, Stephen Sondheim and George Furth. “Well, Steve and George, ‘Merrily’s’ popular,” she said. It was a class-act performance. If I could come up with a new Tony category and give the award, it would be to an artist who kept working and working on a puzzle of a show and its casting until she created a version for the ages, and that award would go to Maria Friedman for “Merrily.” You’re in the middle of a public health emergency involving a dangerously addictive substance — let’s say an epidemic of fentanyl or vaping among teens. Which of the following is the best response? 1\. Issue a warning. Tell everyone, “Hey, watch out — this stuff isn’t good for you.” 2\. Regulate the dangerous substance so that it causes the least amount of harm. 3\. Ban the substance and penalize anyone who distributes it. In the midst of a well-documented [mental health crisis](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/health/mental-health-crisis-teens.html) among children and teenagers, with social media use a clear contributing factor, the surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, recommends choice one. As he wrote [in a Times Opinion guest essay](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/opinion/social-media-health-warning.html) on Monday, “It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents.” It’s an excellent first step, but it’s a mere Band-Aid on a suppurating wound. Telling teenagers something is bad for them may work for some kids, but for others it’s practically an open invitation to abuse. To add muscle to a mere label, we need to prohibit its sale to people under 18 and enforce the law on sellers. [We need to strongly](https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/13/tech/social-media-regulation-outside-us/index.html) [regulate social media](https://apnews.com/article/digital-services-act-social-media-regulation-europe-26d76cc4785df1153669258766cc6387), as Europe has begun to do, and ban it for kids under 16. Murthy urges Congress to take [similar steps](https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/sg-youth-mental-health-social-media-advisory.pdf). Free-speech absolutists (or those who play the role when a law restricts something that earns them lots of money) will say that requiring age verification systems is an unconstitutional [limit on free speech](https://www.npr.org/2024/03/01/1235354989/social-media-bans-for-kids-would-violate-their-constitutional-rights-some-argue). Nonsense. We don’t allow children to freely attend PG-13 or R-rated movies. We don’t allow hard liquor to be advertised during children’s programming. Other [objections](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2) to regulation are that it’s difficult to carry out (so are many things) and that there’s only [a correlative link](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8021694/) between social media and adverse mental health rather than [one of causation](https://jonathanhaidt.com/social-media/). Complacency is easy. The hard truth is that many people are too addicted to social media themselves to fight for laws that would unstick their kids. Big Tech, with Congress in its pocket, is only too happy for everyone to keep their heads in the sand and reap the benefits. But a combination of Options 2 and 3 are the only ones that will bring real results. **A correction was made on** : An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the surgeon general. He is Dr. Vivek Murthy, not Murphy. How we handle corrections Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/18/opinion/thepoint/biden-vice-president-step-down#after-dfp-ad-mid3) The drum line of the 76ers performing at a recent campaign rally for President Biden in Philadelphia.Credit...Andrew Harnik/Getty Images _Every Monday morning on The Point, we kick off the week with a tipsheet on the latest in the presidential campaign. Here’s what we’re looking at this week:_ * The spring campaign season ends this week, and the political landscape is tough for President Biden: He isn’t winning over enough voters in the battleground states. In the springtime of re-election years, many voters decide whether they’re open or closed to another term for the guy in office. Call it the incumbent threshold decision. In previous cycles, many voters gave up on Donald Trump, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter by this time during re-election — those incumbents never held sustained leads in the polls after that. * When this spring began, on March 19, Trump had a polling average lead of 2 percentage points over Biden nationally, according to [Real Clear Politics](https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden). As spring ends, Trump leads by about 1 percent. I think a successful spring for Biden would have had him ahead. Even more worrisome for Biden: Trump began the spring with leads in the six key swing states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. After months of Democratic campaigning in those states, Biden hasn’t taken the lead in any of them. Trump’s lead has held pretty steady in [Nevada](https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/nevada/trump-vs-biden), [Arizona](https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/arizona/trump-vs-biden) and [Georgia](https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/georgia/trump-vs-biden). Biden has made up enough ground in [Michigan](https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/michigan/trump-vs-biden) and [Wisconsin](https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/wisconsin/trump-vs-biden) to be razor-close to Trump. There hasn’t been polling recently in [Pennsylvania](https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/pennsylvania/trump-vs-biden); the late-May polling average had Trump ahead by 2.3 points. * Some important context: The race is clearly tight, Biden has [solid](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/15/us/politics/biden-los-angeles-fundraiser-hollywood.html) fund-raising, and he would win if he prevails in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. But I think the spring is ending as a missed opportunity for Biden to gain more ground on Trump, especially with Trump’s felony conviction. Based on [Times polling](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/us/politics/biden-trump-battleground-poll.html) and Times Opinion [focus](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/04/opinion/trump-verdict-focus-group.html) [groups](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/13/opinion/independents-biden-focus-group.html), many undecided and independent voters see Biden as ineffective on the economy, immigration and foreign wars, and too old for a second term. * That’s why, this week, Biden plans to spend a lot of time in debate prep. The reason he agreed to this unusually early debate against Trump, on June 27, is because he needs it: Look at his springtime performance and the swing state polls, and the election is slipping away from Biden right now. He needs to start persuading more people to want him for another four years — and that he’s up to the job. He has a lot to lose in this debate, but I think he was smart to take the gamble. * As for Trump, he’ll be campaigning in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania this week. Pennsylvania is shaping up to be the whole ballgame this fall: If Trump holds his lead in the Sun Belt states, all he needs is Pennsylvania to win. Trump [isn’t doing much debate prep](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/15/us/politics/trump-biden-debate-rules.html), according to my colleagues Shane Goldmacher and Reid J. Epstein, but the expectations for him are lower than for Biden. Many voters expect Trump to be the same unhinged guy he was in the 2020 debates, ranting and talking over Biden. Trump can afford to spend time in must-win Pennsylvania while Biden tries to ensure his summer is better than his spring. Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/18/opinion/thepoint/biden-vice-president-step-down#after-dfp-ad-bottom) * [© 2024 The New York Times Company](https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115014792127-Copyright-notice) * [Manage Privacy Preferences](https://www.nytimes.com/privacy/manage-settings)

[Skip to content](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/18/opinion/thepoint/house-dragon-queer-love#site-content)[Skip to site index](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/18/opinion/thepoint/house-dragon-queer-love#site-index) HBO’s “Game of Thrones” prequel “House of the Dragon” has returned for a second season, bringing back the greatest tragic love story now on television: the star-crossed love of the central characters, Alicent Hightower (played by Olivia Cooke) and Rhaenyra Targaryen (played by [Emma D’Arcy](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/14/arts/television/emma-darcy-house-of-the-dragon.html)). The romantic energy crackling between the two queens is [clear enough](https://twitter.com/angelpwrincess/status/1561736325425991682?s=20&t=L0ei4MLTlRWuOqfVz4TepA) to have [drawn notice](https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/house-of-the-dragon-fans-want-rhaeneyra-and-alicent-to-be-queer). As teenage best friends, they loved each other in that heady mix of romance, friendship and mimicry characteristic of girlhood. As adults, stripped apart by forced marriages and primogeniture, their romance withers into endless competition and bitter cruelty. They plunge their families into a brutal civil war, replete with parricide and dragon fire. All the show’s conflicts could be solved if our heroines could explore more productive possibilities. Like any good tragic romance, the unfulfilled longing that stretches between the two characters acts as the tension that holds the story together. Without it, the story would feel far less Shakespearean. The story’s queer subtext is purposeful. Emily Carey, who played young Alicent Hightower in the first season of “House of the Dragon,” has [said](https://www.businessinsider.com/house-of-the-dragon-rhaenyra-and-alicent-are-a-little-bit-in-love-2022-8) that the two characters are “in love a little bit” and that their interactions “toe the line between platonic and romantic.” Her counterpart, Milly Alcock, who played a young Rhaenyra Targaryen, noted the way societal circumstances keep them separate: “These women aren’t given the privilege to know what choices they have, because of the world that they live in.” The women of the universe of “Game of Thrones” are no strangers to sexual violence and are most often accessories to patriarchal ends. Oftentimes, the fantasy show’s violations are poorly explained away as attempts to craft a realistic mirror of historical violence. But in the case of Rhaenyra and Alicent, a “realistic” setting functions as the perfect garden in which to cultivate an allegory about the consequences of [compulsory heterosexuality](https://posgrado.unam.mx/musica/lecturas/Maus/viernes/AdrienneRichCompulsoryHeterosexuality.pdf). If the queens lived in a society in which they could fully explore the feelings that hang between them, would there really be any need for a world-crushing, family-savaging civil war? Wouldn’t their world be a better place if they could just fall in love? Queer people have long trained ourselves to hunt for marginal subtext — longing looks, brushes of hands, impotent anger — when overt queer narratives are absent. The subtext in “House of the Dragon” is not marginal. Without it, the show would be yet another unremarkable installment in a franchise that has outstayed its welcome. For the first couple of weeks after Donald Trump’s felony conviction, Team Biden did not want to touch that mess — partly out of fear of fueling Trump’s long-running claims of political persecution. That reluctance seems to have dissipated, for now at least. In recent days, the president has been going hard at Trump’s criminal status — there’s even [a new ad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOEMX6_A8MM)! — spurred by internal polling showing that the issue could damage the MAGA king with voters. The research, an anonymous pollster told [Politico](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/18/biden-campaign-decision-attacking-trump-conviction-00163817?is_magic_link=true&template_id=OTJIR2CRKUD6&template_variant_id=OTVPXN5JGTYRX), shows that the conviction fits with the broader message that Trump is an entitled, above-it-all, self-centered jerk who thinks accountability is for losers. (Yes, I am paraphrasing.) This feels like the sensible play for the president. Sure, with Trump, calling out bad behavior always leads to screeching about witch hunts, which risks rallying ever more Republicans around him. On the other hand, the guy _is_ a convicted criminal. Wouldn’t _not_ hitting him for it suggest a certain timidness, as if the Biden campaign had in some way given up or was running scared? Not a good look for a president being slammed as too weak. Also — and I want to put this in the gentlest way possible — there aren’t exactly a glut of promising strategies available to Team Biden to fight the thick fog of voter frustration and dissatisfaction swirling around its guy. This president has many fine qualities and has been impressively productive. But he isn’t an exciting or inspirational figure. Back in 2020, voters were craving slow and steady. Now, with Americans in a sour mood — and with that whole Biden-seems-older-than-dirt thing prompting ever more anxiety — his options for driving voters to the polls feel limited and heavily skewed toward the negative. This is not shaping up to be a hopey-changey sort of election. Biden’s advisers think the best way to combat a host of voter concerns is to remind people of the toxic chaos Trump brings. His conviction seems like a solid addition to the mix. Even many voters who could not care less about the particulars of the case may find themselves once again pondering the return of Trump’s relentless drama with dread and exhaustion. Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/18/opinion/thepoint/house-dragon-queer-love#after-dfp-ad-mid1) Violent people who pose a clear and immediate threat to the physical safety of others should not be allowed to possess firearms. That seems like a statement any reasonable person living in a self-governing society can readily agree with. And yet on Friday morning, it took the United States Supreme Court [103 pages of opinions](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-915_8o6b.pdf), concurrences and dissent to work it all out. The good news is that eight members of the court landed on the right conclusion, agreeing that [the Second Amendment permits laws](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/21/us/politics/supreme-court-guns-domestic-violence.html) like the one that stripped weapons from Zackey Rahimi, a domestic abuser and general public menace who shoots guns the way regular people shake hands. The bad news is that the justices had to go to such lengths to do it — debating the meaning of old English surety and affray laws rather than simply acknowledging that no right is absolute and that the government has always kept weapons away from people who have proved themselves to be dangerous to others. The spectacle of judges role-playing as amateur historians is embarrassing to watch, and yet the court chose to put itself in this position with its gobsmacking 2022 decision in [New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/23/us/supreme-court-ny-open-carry-gun-law.html), which required that any gun law be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” In the vision of Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote Bruen’s majority opinion for himself and the other five right-wing justices, that meant any modern law had to have essentially an exact analog from the 18th century in order to survive. In his dissent on Friday, Thomas argued that the founding generation had no federal laws like the one that took Rahimi’s guns away; ergo it was unconstitutional. It appears to be dawning on Thomas’s fellow conservatives just how twisted that approach is. Bruen was “not meant to suggest a law trapped in amber,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. In concurrence, Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out that it makes no sense to rely on history from a time before women and people of color were treated as equal citizens (or citizens at all). “History has a role to play” in any constitutional analysis, she wrote, but it must be “calibrated to reveal something useful and transferable to the present day.” Thomas’s analysis is “so exacting as to be useless,” she wrote. There is no lack of competition for the worst, most indefensible decisions of the Roberts court, but the Bruen ruling [is near the top](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/26/opinion/constitutional-law-crisis-supreme-court.html). That’s not only because of the absurdity of its logic, but also the chaos of its practical application, which has confounded judges throughout the federal judiciary for two years. “Lower courts are struggling,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her concurrence. “They say there is little method to Bruen’s madness.” They are right, and the court was right to ratchet the madness back on Friday, if only a little. A country that can’t properly deal with an epidemic of gun violence is not a country that can survive for long. Credit...Cha Song Ho/Associated Press The visit of Vladimir Putin to North Korea this week was choreographed as an old-timey Communist summit, with armies of flag-waving children, portraits waving from every lamp pole and building, lavish gifts and high-blown expressions of an old and eternal friendship. “Comrade Kim Jong-un warmly embraced him,” went the official North Korean account of the airport greeting. “The top leaders shared their innermost thoughts during an intimate conversation while driving to where they were staying.” Heady stuff, but as phony now as it was back in the day. In fact, despite professions of friendship for North Korea in the Soviet era, no Soviet leader ever visited Pyongyang. The only Kremlin leader ever to do so, in fact, was Putin himself back in 2000. That was a far different visit, at which Putin was trying to position himself as an indispensable interlocutor between a dangerous pariah and the world. At the conclusion, the Russian leader said he had become confident that North Korea would use rocket technology only for the peaceful exploration of the cosmos. (Fast-forward to June 2018: Then-President Donald Trump, returning from his visit with Kim, [tweeted](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1006837823469735936): “Just landed — a long trip but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.”) This Putin-Kim visit was pariah to pariah, as was their last get-together in eastern Russia in September. Putin is arguably now the greater pariah, looking for munitions and weapons to sustain his murderous war on Ukraine, and for a comrade in his hatred for the West. Kim, who was probably seeking technical support for his missile or nuclear programs, at least has not yet waged war against anyone but his own people. In any case, the text of the pact signed by Putin and Kim was not made public, and the line for public consumption was of mutual assistance in the event of foreign aggression. When pariahs meet and talk about mutual military assistance, there is reason to worry. Russia itself used to be openly concerned about North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, and even joined in United Nations efforts to stop it. But Putin has now focused his country’s foreign policy solely on garnering what support he can for the brutal land grab that he has elevated into a war of survival against the West. From Pyongyang, Putin flew in his old Soviet plane to Hanoi, another ally from Communist days, where he was again greeted with official hugs and children waving flags. But here his anti-Western rhetoric was almost absent. His goal was simpler: to show that he can still be received in some places with honors, as President Biden and China’s Xi Jinping were on their visits to Vietnam last year. Vietnam historically has been heavily dependent on Russia for its armaments, but it has been steadily building bridges with the United States and the West. Putin’s message here was: Hey, I’m still around. Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/18/opinion/thepoint/house-dragon-queer-love#after-dfp-ad-mid2) Credit...Jeff Pachoud/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Donald Sutherland, who died on Thursday at 88, had the kind of film career — spanning six decades — that means one generation of admirers will remember him as the star of films like “M\*A\*S\*H” and “Ordinary People,” while a much younger generation will know him best as President Snow in the “Hunger Games” franchise. Everyone should agree that he was a brilliant actor. But depending on what era of his career you’re most familiar with, you might argue over whether he’s best lionized as a character actor or a leading man. In fact, he was both, in a way that seems not possible now, because he came into his career in an era when character actors _were_ leading men. Sutherland always had the aura of a character actor, because of his chameleonlike [ability](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/20/movies/donald-sutherland-dead.html) to shift between roles and his resilient capacity to elevate any material. Yet he was undeniably a leading man for much of his career, the headline star in many of his films, such as “Klute” and “Ordinary People.” The films of that era demanded character actors as their leads: actors with the deft ability to portray many facets of humanity. Now, many studios want to anchor a film on the particular brand of charisma that’s already made an actor beloved. It’s a diverting parlor game to look around at a younger cohort and guess who’s best suited to inherit Sutherland’s mantle: To watch Jesse Plemons (age 36) steal scenes as both a righteous lawman in “Killers of the Flower Moon” and a dead-eyed sociopath in “Civil War” is to see another great character actor blossoming before our eyes. Austin Butler (32), who’s already been nominated for an Oscar — which means he has one more nomination than Sutherland ever received — arrives like the anti-Sutherland: a leading-man type determined to prove his acting bona fides by taking on [idiosyncratic](https://people.com/austin-butler-dune-transformation-behind-the-scenes-clip-exclusive-8630220) roles. Yet the real question might be less “Who will be the next Donald Sutherland?” than whether Hollywood today could nurture an actor to the heights Sutherland was able to achieve. It’s hard to imagine an actor like Sutherland arriving now and headlining a decade’s worth of films. We can be thankful not only for his talent but also for the fortuitous timing of his rise, which put those talents on full display. Credit...Shannon Stapleton/Reuters There is a certain irony in the bravado about the Ten Commandments from Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana. On Saturday he told attendees at a Republican fund-raiser, “I can’t wait to be sued.” Clearly, he knows that the Supreme Court previously ruled against mandatory displays of the Ten Commandments in the classroom. In a 1980 case, [Stone v. Graham](https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/449/39/#tab-opinion-1953777), the Supreme Court struck down a Kentucky law that required the posting of the Ten Commandments, purchased through private donations, in every public school classroom in the state. A [Louisiana law](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/us/louisiana-ten-commandments-classrooms.html) requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in every public classroom in the state defies this precedent, [so, yes, the state will be sued](https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/civil-liberties-groups-will-file-lawsuit-against-louisiana-law-requiring-public-schools-to-display-the-ten-commandments). But Landry’s comments didn’t stop with bravado. He also said something else. “If you want to respect the rule of law,” he told the guests, “you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses.” To teach respect for the rule of law, he’s defying the Supreme Court? That’s an interesting message to send to students. It’s consistent with an emerging Republican approach to constitutional law. Just as many Republicans view their constituency as composed of the “real” Americans, they tend to believe their interpretation of the Constitution represents the “real” Constitution. So we’re seeing a [flurry](https://theconversation.com/anti-lgbtq-laws-in-the-us-are-getting-struck-down-for-limiting-free-speech-of-drag-queens-and-doctors-209307) of [culture-war-motivated](https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/05/us/federal-judges-on-stop-woke-act-reaj/index.html) [state laws](https://www.npr.org/2022/05/23/1100831545/appeals-court-florida-social-media-law-unconstitutional-desantis), many of them aimed at the First Amendment, that confront precedent. The Dobbs decision gave some Republicans hope for radical change, but reversing Roe has not signaled open season on the court’s rulings. Republicans’ [challenges to the Voting Rights Act failed](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/08/us/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-alabama.html#:~:text=The%20Supreme%20Court%2C%20in%20a,thought%20to%20be%20in%20peril.), the [independent state legislature theory foundered](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/us/politics/supreme-court-state-legislature-elections.html#:~:text=The%20case%20concerned%20the%20%E2%80%9Cindependent,state%20by%20the%20legislature%20thereof.%E2%80%9D), and efforts to [expand the standing doctrine to limit access to the abortion pill](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/briefing/supreme-court-abortion-pill-ukraine-loan.html#:~:text=In%20a%20unanimous%20decision%20today,remain%20widely%20available%2C%20for%20now.) faltered. Even so, it’s premature to declare that the Supreme Court is frustrating the MAGA right. Altering constitutional law is not the only motivation here; a version of Christian mysticism is also in play. There is a real belief that the Ten Commandments have a form of spiritual power over the hearts and minds of students and that posting the displays can change their lives. I’m an evangelical Christian who believes in God and the divine inspiration of Scripture, but I do not believe that documents radiate powers of personal virtue. I happened to grow up in Kentucky and went to classes before the Ten Commandments were ordered removed, and I can testify that the displays had no impact on our lives. My classmates and I were not better people because of the faded posters on the walls. Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/18/opinion/thepoint/house-dragon-queer-love#after-dfp-ad-mid3) Pope Francis [told](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/14/world/europe/pope-francis-comedians-vatican.html) entertainers at the Vatican last week that he has been saying the Prayer for Good Humor for the past 40 years. He highly recommended it, which he [attributed to](https://deadline.com/2024/06/pope-francis-comedians-stephen-colbert-jimmy-fallon-1235973388/) St. Thomas More, a martyr of the Roman Catholic Church. The prayer is very nice, but it seems to have been written not by More but by a young Englishman — a Protestant, as far as I can tell — in the early 20th century. This is not a big deal. No one is harmed if the pope misattributes a prayer. It is odd, though. Surely some of the scholars surrounding the pope must know about this. Did they not tell him? If not, what does that say about the culture of the Vatican? I emailed Matteo Bruni, the director of the Holy See press office, but he did not reply. I followed up with multiple emails over several days, along with a couple of voice mail messages. Niente. The Prayer for Good Humor begins with a mild joke: > Give me a good digestion, Lord, > And also something to digest. It ends like this: > Give me a sense of humor, Lord.Give me the power to see a joke,To get some happiness from life > > And pass it on to other folk. This light, pleasing language doesn’t feel as though it came from the pen of More, who was beheaded in 1535 for refusing to acknowledge King Henry VIII as the head of the Church of England. A [real More prayer](https://thomasmorecollege.edu/2019/04/prayers-by-thomas-more/) sounds more like this: “O glorious blessed Trinity, whose justice has damned to perpetual pain many proud rebellious angels.” Abbé Germain Marc’hadour, a French Catholic priest who was a leading authority on More and founded a journal about him, [Moreana](https://www.euppublishing.com/loi/more), included the Prayer for Good Humor in a 1972 [piece](https://www.crudele.it/papers/Moreana-9-36-93-96-1972-12.pdf) titled “Most Famous of More’s Spurious Prayers.” Marc’hadour investigated a legend that the prayer appeared on a tablet at Chester Cathedral, an Anglican church, in England. The dean of the cathedral wrote back to him that there was no such tablet. He enclosed a card with the prayer and this: “The above lines were written by Thomas Henry Basil Webb, only son of Lt. Col. Sir Henry Webb, Bt., born on Aug. 12, 1898, educated at Winchester College — he was killed on the Somme, Dec. 1, 1917, aged 19.” According to another source I found, Webb might have written the prayer when he was just [12 years old](https://wynnesdiary.com/1927-february-viewer-2/). I’m hoping Francis keeps saying the prayer, even if word gets to him that it’s no More. We all should have the power to see a joke. Credit...Shannon Stapleton/Reuters Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio likes to present himself as a serious, thoughtful conservative, one who came to understand by 2021 that Donald Trump was “[deeper than I’d given him credit for](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/opinion/jd-vance-interview.html)” and in 2016 recognized that Trump had some “reasonable” things to say and that he “substantively was offering something very different” from conventional Republicans. OK, that’s not an easy case to make, but Vance is entitled to try to make it. But the thing is, if you want to persuade the world that Trump is secretly deep and reasonable, then you have to demonstrate in your public actions some of those same qualities yourself. And Vance is falling far short on that score. Take, for example, the issue of guns. One of the very few things Trump got right as president was to [ban bump stocks,](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/politics/trump-bump-stocks-ban.html) the attachments to semiautomatic weapons that turn them into rapid-fire machine guns. “[We’re knocking out bump stocks](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/28/us/politics/trump-bump-stock-ban.html),” Trump said in 2018, a year after the Las Vegas gunman used the device to kill 60 people and injure more than 400. But last week, in [one of its most dangerous decisions](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/12/opinion/supreme-court-bumpstocks-guns.html), the Supreme Court said that ban was illegal. When Senate Democrats said they wanted to fix that problem with a bill banning bump stocks, Vance declared the bill addressed a “fake problem” and would “[end up just inhibiting the rights](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/sen-jacky-rosen-erupts-sen-jd-vances-bump-stock-comments-rcna157646) of law-abiding Americans.” Presumably, he thinks there’s some kind of right to own a machine gun that even Trump isn’t aware of. “The question is: How many people would have been shot alternatively?” Vance asked, a question so callous that it should make him an outlier even on Trump’s short list of extremist running mates. Then there’s the issue of Trump’s criminal conviction. Last week, [Vance said he would lead](https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4719960-vance-conservative-pledge-block-biden-nominees/) a group of Republican senators pledging to block or slow down all of President Biden’s nominees for judgeships or U.S. attorney, in retaliation for Trump’s felony conviction. (Biden had nothing to do with that New York State prosecution, but the details don’t matter when you’re doing a big pander to the MAGA crowd.) The blockade will last until Election Day, Vance said, and will also extend to any other nominees who “[have suggested the Trump prosecutions were reasonable](https://www.vance.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Hold-Policy-Letter-UPDATED-Version-.pdf).” These kinds of blockades are among the most juvenile and petulant tantrums an elected official can throw, putting Vance right there on the lowest level of the Senate alongside Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, the author of [another useless blockade](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/21/opinion/senate-nomination-holds.html) and naturally an eager signer of this one. That’s Vance’s real reputation in Washington, and Trump might want to think twice before choosing someone even more preposterous than he is. Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/18/opinion/thepoint/house-dragon-queer-love#after-dfp-ad-mid4) There’s a simple way to reconcile voters’ concerns about President Biden’s age with his desire to continue his work in a second term: He demotes himself to vice president. Runs as a running mate. Someone younger tops the Democratic ticket. For the next four years, he taps his experience without exhausting his energy. Likely? Ha. There’s as good a chance I’ll win a gold in gymnastics at the Paris Olympics. But that hasn’t stopped the Biden-as-veep chatter not only on byways of the internet but also in [an actual poll by SurveyUSA](https://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=0e9c48a9-fea2-4fb7-a6a4-47da44911777), which asked Americans whether they’d support that scenario. A majority said yes, suggesting that they didn’t recognize its ludicrousness. A politician doesn’t trade Air Force One for Air Force Two any more than someone with a flatbed seat in first class asks for the last row of coach. And Biden already played second fiddle under President Barack Obama. He’s not itching for an encore. So let’s junk that bunk — and with it, other fantasies that treat a profoundly serious presidential contest in deeply unserious ways. This is an election of magical thinking beyond the usual. That’s no accident. It reflects how frustrated many Americans are with the reality of two major-party candidates who don’t appeal to them. How desperate Donald Trump’s opponents are for some grand assurance of — or secret incantation for — his defeat. How susceptible not only to elaborate conspiracy theories but also to milder fictions Trump’s supporters can be. No, you keen-eyed MAGA sleuths, Biden’s aides didn’t schedule an early debate so that they could replace him after he flails. Nor did they engineer Hunter Biden’s conviction just to _look_ virtuous. Democrats, it is _not_ the case that if journalists just stop talking about Biden’s age, many Americans miraculously won’t notice it. Nor are there tea leaves auguring a revolt against Trump at the Republican convention. A respected public intellectual privately promoted that idea to me. And Michelle Obama will not — abracadabra! — be riding to the rescue. She has never signaled any interest in elected office and has been clear about her distaste for the muck of politics. Indulging such illusions is dangerous. Those of us who believe that Trump’s return to the White House would be ruinous must prosaically and persistently make the case for Biden’s superiority, flaws and all. We must plan, plod, slog. No sorcery will save us. Two weeks after President Biden abruptly [cracked down on asylum seekers](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/06/04/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-new-actions-to-secure-the-border/) at the southern border — angering some progressives — [he announced a new program on Tuesday](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/06/18/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-new-actions-to-keep-families-together/) to protect from deportation the undocumented spouses and stepchildren of American citizens. In a certain way, it is a no-brainer. The undocumented spouses of American citizens are already eligible for citizenship, but were required to leave the country to apply for a green card, a process that can take years. That’s especially true for people who slipped across the border — rather than overstayed a visa — since they [could be barred from re-entry for up to 10 years](https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/three-and-ten-year-bars). Now they will be able to apply from the United States and work legally while they wait. For about half a million American families, this is a game changer. It is [being compared to DACA](https://x.com/lorellapraeli/status/1803034071670415650), which created a special legal status for people who were brought into the United States by their parents. But it is not quite the clear case that DACA was. Kids who were brought into the country illegally by their parents committed no crime and shouldn’t have to face the same consequences as adults who came by their own volition. You don’t have to be a raging ideologue to believe that there should be consequences for breaking the law. Plenty of Democrats feel that people who sneak across the border or overstay a visa should be required to make amends, even if that just means paying a civil fine. That’s one reason Biden’s permissive policies on immigration are endangering his bid for re-election. But the move to protect undocumented spouses is politically savvy. It’s a family-oriented policy that makes a priority of the needs of American citizens, unlike those of his policies that allowed [nearly two million asylum seekers](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/us/politics/migrant-crisis-border-asylum.html) into the country in recent years. Despite the fever dream of conspiracy theorists, they can’t cast a ballot to thank him. Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/18/opinion/thepoint/house-dragon-queer-love#after-dfp-ad-mid5) Credit...Ian Maule/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A few days ago Donald Trump floated a truly terrible, indeed unworkable economic proposal. I’m aware that many readers will say, “So what else is new?” But in so doing, you’re letting Trump benefit from the soft bigotry of rock-bottom expectations, not holding him to the standards that should apply to any presidential candidate. A politician shouldn’t be given a pass on nonsense because he talks nonsense all the time. But in a way the most interesting thing about Trump’s latest awful policy idea is the way his party responded, with the kind of obsequiousness and paranoia you normally expect in places like North Korea. What Trump reportedly proposed was an “[all tariff policy](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/13/trump-all-tariff-policy-to-replace-income-tax.html)” in which taxes on imports replace income taxes. Why is that a bad idea? First, the math doesn’t work. Annual income tax receipts are around [$2.4 trillion](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1p9nK); imports are around [$3.9 trillion](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1p9nU). On the face of it, this might seem to suggest that Trump’s idea would require an average tariff rate of around 60 percent. But high tariffs would reduce imports, so tariff rates would have to go even higher to realize the same amount of revenue, which would reduce imports even more, and so on. How high would tariffs have to go in the end? I did a [back-of-the-envelope calculation](https://x.com/paulkrugman/status/1801370551656792392) using highly Trump-favorable assumptions and came up with a tariff rate of 133 percent; in reality, there’s probably no tariff rate high enough to replace the income tax. And to the extent that we did replace income taxes with tariffs, we’d in effect sharply raise taxes on working-class Americans while giving the rich a big tax cut — because the income tax is fairly progressive, falling most heavily on [affluent taxpayers](https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2022-update/), while tariffs are de facto a kind of sales tax that falls most heavily on the working class. So this is a really bad idea that would be highly unpopular if voters knew about it. But here’s the kicker: How did the Republican National Committee respond when asked about it? By having its representative [declare](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-06-17/supply-chain-latest-tariffs-and-their-effect-on-inflation), “The notion that tariffs are a tax on U.S. consumers is a lie pushed by outsourcers and the Chinese Communist Party.” Now, economists have been saying that tariffs are a tax on domestic consumers for the past two centuries or so; I guess they’ve been working for China all along. Yes, there are exceptions and qualifications, but if you imagine that Trump is thinking about [optimal tariff theory](https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_1875-2), I have a degree from Trump University you might want to buy. Anyway, look at how the R.N.C. responded to a substantive policy question: by insisting not just that Dear Leader’s nonsense is true, but that anyone who disagrees is part of a sinister conspiracy. Don’t brush this off. It’s one more piece of evidence that MAGA has become a dangerous cult. Credit...Abir Sultan/EPA, via Shutterstock By all accounts, the real reason Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel dissolved his “war cabinet” — the small decision-making body he established soon after the Hamas attacks that led Israel to go to war in Gaza — was to prevent the far-right hawks in his government from getting close to strategic military decisions. Keeping Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich as far away from military operations as possible is good. They are dangerous nationalists and would do what they could to make the war even more horrific. How things came to this is a sad reflection of the way political maneuvering has played into this extraordinarily cruel war. The war cabinet was effectively finished before Netanyahu announced its formal dissolution on Monday. The two centrist opposition leaders he brought in to broaden support for the war effort, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot — both former military chiefs of staff with solid security credentials — had quit a week earlier, angry that crucial decisions were being blocked by “political considerations.” That brought the extremists knocking at the door, compelling Netanyahu to close down the war cabinet rather than let them in, and to rely on a clutch of close advisers in handling the war. The problem is that Netanyahu’s idea of handling the war is to juggle pressures for a cease-fire from Israeli centrists and the Biden administration against threats from the far-right zealots to quit his government if he calls a cease-fire. Without the right his government would fall, probably pushing Netanyahu out of office — a development that would satisfy a majority of Israelis but leave Netanyahu exposed to the corruption charges that have been dogging him for years. The specific issue that drove Gantz and Eisenkot to quit the war cabinet was procrastination on the cease-fire proposal that President Biden announced on May 31. Biden had presented the three-stage plan, which included release of all remaining Israeli hostages, as an Israeli proposal, which required only agreement from Hamas to go into effect. But Netanyahu never publicly acknowledged ownership or agreement, and Hamas came back with conditions that Israel rejected. The Biden administration then upped the ante by taking the plan to the U.N. Security Council, where it passed with only Russia abstaining. The administration remains outwardly sanguine about the cease-fire. But aside from the political hurdles on the Israeli side, predicting or obtaining a response from Hamas has been onerous. Negotiations for the movement are handled by Hamas political operatives in Doha, Qatar, but the final word is with the Hamas chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, the author of the murderous raid on Israel on Oct. 7. Communications with Sinwar are painfully slow, as he takes huge precautions not to give away his whereabouts in Gaza. He also knows that the remaining Israeli hostages are his only bargaining chip, and he is in no rush to cash them in. That is the maddening reality of this war: Leaders on both sides keep it going even when the best interests of their people so clearly demand its immediate end. Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/18/opinion/thepoint/house-dragon-queer-love#after-dfp-ad-mid6) I first saw the director Maria Friedman’s production of “Merrily We Roll Along” [in London in 2013](https://archive.nytimes.com/artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/london-theater-journal-memory-plays/) and felt I was witnessing some kind of miracle. Here was a revival of an unusual kind of Broadway legend — a musical regarded as brilliant and ambitious but, ultimately, perhaps fatally flawed because of an unsympathetic central character and a plot whose reverse chronology kept you from being swept up and away by the heart of the show (the friendship of the three core characters). What Friedman pulled off was extraordinary. Nothing a director does is more important than choosing the right cast, and Friedman’s work with the actor Mark Umbers turned the selfish, shallow Franklin Shepard Jr. into a man who craved connection but ended in heartbreak — an achievement that owed much to her casting of Damian Humbley and Jenna Russell as Frank’s friends Charley and Mary and the intimacy and chemistry among the three performers. Friedman, who is an acclaimed actress in her own right, stayed with “Merrily” for years, mounting a version in Boston and then, to enormous acclaim, an Off Broadway production in 2023 that moved to Broadway last fall, 42 years after the initial Broadway production closed after only 16 regular performances. Her “Merrily” won the Tony Award for best musical revival on Sunday night, as well as Tonys for two of its sensational stars, Jonathan Groff as Frank and Daniel Radcliffe as Charley. Groff, Radcliffe and their co-star Lindsay Mendez created a bond of such affection and understanding that their trio of performances will stay in my memory for a long time. In a surprise, Friedman didn’t win the Tony for best director of a musical on Sunday; that honor went to Danya Taymor, who did excellent work on “The Outsiders.” Yet later in the Tony ceremony, when “Merrily” won for best musical revival, one of the show’s lead producers, Sonia Friedman — who is the director’s sister and a legend in her own right — heaped praise on her sibling and tried to hand her Tony to her. Maria Friedman gently pushed the Tony away and then gave a loving tribute to the show and its creators, Stephen Sondheim and George Furth. “Well, Steve and George, ‘Merrily’s’ popular,” she said. It was a class-act performance. If I could come up with a new Tony category and give the award, it would be to an artist who kept working and working on a puzzle of a show and its casting until she created a version for the ages, and that award would go to Maria Friedman for “Merrily.” Credit...Marc Krause/Connected Archives You’re in the middle of a public health emergency involving a dangerously addictive substance — let’s say an epidemic of fentanyl or vaping among teens. Which of the following is the best response? 1\. Issue a warning. Tell everyone, “Hey, watch out — this stuff isn’t good for you.” 2\. Regulate the dangerous substance so that it causes the least amount of harm. 3\. Ban the substance and penalize anyone who distributes it. In the midst of a well-documented [mental health crisis](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/health/mental-health-crisis-teens.html) among children and teenagers, with social media use a clear contributing factor, the surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, recommends choice one. As he wrote [in a Times Opinion guest essay](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/opinion/social-media-health-warning.html) on Monday, “It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents.” It’s an excellent first step, but it’s a mere Band-Aid on a suppurating wound. Telling teenagers something is bad for them may work for some kids, but for others it’s practically an open invitation to abuse. To add muscle to a mere label, we need to prohibit its sale to people under 18 and enforce the law on sellers. [We need to strongly](https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/13/tech/social-media-regulation-outside-us/index.html) [regulate social media](https://apnews.com/article/digital-services-act-social-media-regulation-europe-26d76cc4785df1153669258766cc6387), as Europe has begun to do, and ban it for kids under 16. Murthy urges Congress to take [similar steps](https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/sg-youth-mental-health-social-media-advisory.pdf). Free-speech absolutists (or those who play the role when a law restricts something that earns them lots of money) will say that requiring age verification systems is an unconstitutional [limit on free speech](https://www.npr.org/2024/03/01/1235354989/social-media-bans-for-kids-would-violate-their-constitutional-rights-some-argue). Nonsense. We don’t allow children to freely attend PG-13 or R-rated movies. We don’t allow hard liquor to be advertised during children’s programming. Other [objections](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2) to regulation are that it’s difficult to carry out (so are many things) and that there’s only [a correlative link](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8021694/) between social media and adverse mental health rather than [one of causation](https://jonathanhaidt.com/social-media/). Complacency is easy. The hard truth is that many people are too addicted to social media themselves to fight for laws that would unstick their kids. Big Tech, with Congress in its pocket, is only too happy for everyone to keep their heads in the sand and reap the benefits. But a combination of Options 2 and 3 are the only ones that will bring real results. **A correction was made on** : An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the surgeon general. He is Dr. Vivek Murthy, not Murphy. How we handle corrections Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/18/opinion/thepoint/house-dragon-queer-love#after-dfp-ad-mid7) The drum line of the 76ers performing at a recent campaign rally for President Biden in Philadelphia.Credit...Andrew Harnik/Getty Images _Every Monday morning on The Point, we kick off the week with a tipsheet on the latest in the presidential campaign. Here’s what we’re looking at this week:_ * The spring campaign season ends this week, and the political landscape is tough for President Biden: He isn’t winning over enough voters in the battleground states. In the springtime of re-election years, many voters decide whether they’re open or closed to another term for the guy in office. Call it the incumbent threshold decision. In previous cycles, many voters gave up on Donald Trump, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter by this time during re-election — those incumbents never held sustained leads in the polls after that. * When this spring began, on March 19, Trump had a polling average lead of 2 percentage points over Biden nationally, according to [Real Clear Politics](https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden). As spring ends, Trump leads by about 1 percent. I think a successful spring for Biden would have had him ahead. Even more worrisome for Biden: Trump began the spring with leads in the six key swing states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. After months of Democratic campaigning in those states, Biden hasn’t taken the lead in any of them. Trump’s lead has held pretty steady in [Nevada](https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/nevada/trump-vs-biden), [Arizona](https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/arizona/trump-vs-biden) and [Georgia](https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/georgia/trump-vs-biden). Biden has made up enough ground in [Michigan](https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/michigan/trump-vs-biden) and [Wisconsin](https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/wisconsin/trump-vs-biden) to be razor-close to Trump. There hasn’t been polling recently in [Pennsylvania](https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/pennsylvania/trump-vs-biden); the late-May polling average had Trump ahead by 2.3 points. * Some important context: The race is clearly tight, Biden has [solid](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/15/us/politics/biden-los-angeles-fundraiser-hollywood.html) fund-raising, and he would win if he prevails in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. But I think the spring is ending as a missed opportunity for Biden to gain more ground on Trump, especially with Trump’s felony conviction. Based on [Times polling](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/us/politics/biden-trump-battleground-poll.html) and Times Opinion [focus](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/04/opinion/trump-verdict-focus-group.html) [groups](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/13/opinion/independents-biden-focus-group.html), many undecided and independent voters see Biden as ineffective on the economy, immigration and foreign wars, and too old for a second term. * That’s why, this week, Biden plans to spend a lot of time in debate prep. The reason he agreed to this unusually early debate against Trump, on June 27, is because he needs it: Look at his springtime performance and the swing state polls, and the election is slipping away from Biden right now. He needs to start persuading more people to want him for another four years — and that he’s up to the job. He has a lot to lose in this debate, but I think he was smart to take the gamble. * As for Trump, he’ll be campaigning in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania this week. Pennsylvania is shaping up to be the whole ballgame this fall: If Trump holds his lead in the Sun Belt states, all he needs is Pennsylvania to win. Trump [isn’t doing much debate prep](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/15/us/politics/trump-biden-debate-rules.html), according to my colleagues Shane Goldmacher and Reid J. Epstein, but the expectations for him are lower than for Biden. Many voters expect Trump to be the same unhinged guy he was in the 2020 debates, ranting and talking over Biden. Trump can afford to spend time in must-win Pennsylvania while Biden tries to ensure his summer is better than his spring. Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/18/opinion/thepoint/house-dragon-queer-love#after-dfp-ad-bottom) * [© 2024 The New York Times Company](https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115014792127-Copyright-notice) * [Manage Privacy Preferences](https://www.nytimes.com/privacy/manage-settings)

Former President Donald J. Trump had a very good year at the Supreme Court. On Monday, the court ruled that he is [substantially immune from prosecution](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/01/us/politics/supreme-court-trump-immunity.html) on charges that he tried to subvert the 2020 election. On Friday, the court [cast doubt](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/us/supreme-court-jan-6-obstruction.html) on two of the four charges against him in what remains of that prosecution. And in March, the justices [allowed him to seek another term](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/04/us/politics/trump-supreme-court-colorado-ballot.html) despite a constitutional provision barring insurrectionists from holding office. Administrative agencies had a horrible term. In three 6-to-3 rulings along ideological lines, the court’s conservative supermajority [erased a foundational precedent](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/us/supreme-court-chevron-ruling.html) that had required courts to defer to agency expertise, dramatically [lengthened the time](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/01/us/supreme-court-statute-limitations.html) available to challenge agencies’ actions and [torpedoed the administrative tribunals](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/27/us/politics/supreme-court-sec-tribunal.html) in which the Securities and Exchange Commission brings enforcement actions. The court itself had a volatile term, taking on a stunning array of major disputes and assuming a commanding role in shaping American society and democracy. If the justices felt chastened by the backlash over their 2022 abortion decision, the persistent questions about their ethical standards and the drop in their public approval, there were only glimmers of restraint, notably in [ducking two abortion cases](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/us/politics/supreme-court-abortion.html) in an election year. The court was divided 6 to 3 along partisan lines not only in Monday’s decision on Mr. Trump’s immunity and the three cases on agency power, but also in a run of major cases on [homelessness](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/us/politics/supreme-court-homelessness.html), [voting rights](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/23/us/supreme-court-south-carolina-voting-map.html), [guns](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/14/us/politics/supreme-court-trump-gun-bump-stocks.html) and [public corruption](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/26/us/politics/supreme-court-corruption-bribery.html). An unusually high proportion of divided decisions in argued cases — more than two-thirds — were decided by 6-to-3 votes. But only half of those decisions featured the most common split, with the six Republican appointees in the majority and the three Democratic ones in dissent. The rate of concurring opinions — more than one per case — hit a record high. Source: Analysis by Lee Epstein and Andrew D. Martin, Washington University in St. Louis; and Michael Nelson, Penn State; using the [Supreme Court Database](http://scdb.wustl.edu/). Years reflect the start of terms. The New York Times Some of the current justices are among the most conservative and most liberal in recent history. Each bar represents the rate at which each justice since 1937 voted for a liberal result. Source: Analysis by Lee Epstein and Andrew D. Martin, Washington University in St. Louis; and Michael Nelson, Penn State; using the [Supreme Court Database](http://scdb.wustl.edu/). Votes in divided cases. The New York Times How often each of the court’s ideological blocs voted for a liberal result. Source: Analysis by Lee Epstein and Andrew D. Martin, Washington University in St. Louis; and Michael Nelson, Penn State; using the [Supreme Court Database](http://scdb.wustl.edu/). Votes in divided cases. Years reflect the start of terms. The New York Times How often each justice voted for a liberal result. Source: Analysis by Lee Epstein and Andrew D. Martin, Washington University in St. Louis; and Michael Nelson, Penn State; using the [Supreme Court Database](http://scdb.wustl.edu/). Votes in divided cases. The New York Times The former president won personal victories at the court this term, but his administration has had the lowest success rate in the modern era. Source: Analysis by Lee Epstein and Andrew D. Martin, Washington University in St. Louis; and Michael Nelson, Penn State; using the [Supreme Court Database](http://scdb.wustl.edu/). 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Image President Biden at a picnic in Lawnton, Pa., on Sunday.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times The case for a Biden comeback always presumed that voters would mostly cast their ballots based on their views about Donald J. Trump. That’s how President Biden won four years ago, and it’s why many believed he could overcome poor approval ratings to win again. But as my colleague Reid Epstein [noted Monday](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/08/us/politics/biden-trump-strategy.html), this election hasn’t been about Mr. Trump since the recent presidential debate. Instead, the political conversation has focused almost entirely on Mr. Biden’s fitness for the presidency and whether he’ll remain his party’s nominee. So long as that’s true, the path to a Biden comeback will be long and arduous. The best that can be said for Mr. Biden is that the worst of the post-debate crisis might — might — be over. My colleagues on the Hill report that House and Senate Democrats [did not reach](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/07/09/us/trump-biden-election#with-nato-leaders-in-town-biden-turns-to-official-duties-heres-the-latest) consensus that might have encouraged party leaders to try to nudge Mr. Biden out of the election. Even skeptics like Jerry Nadler, who had [reportedly](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/07/us/politics/biden-democrats-congress-murphy.html) told his colleagues that Mr. Biden should end his candidacy, appeared newly [resigned](https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/09/politics/video/jerry-nadler-biden-2024-election-support-digvid) to Mr. Biden’s renomination. And all of this follows a steady stream of Democrats who affirmed their support for Mr. Biden on Monday, including [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/09/us/politics/aoc-biden-2024-election.html). Months from now, it’s possible we’ll look back on the last 48 hours as a turning point for Mr. Biden — the moment when efforts to remove him were finally pushed aside, and when he and the Democrats got back to the task of trying to defeat Mr. Trump. But while the worst might be in the rearview mirror, this challenging period for Mr. Biden seems far from over. For one, his position remains precarious. If he has indeed made it through the worst, he did not do so mainly by assuaging doubts about his fitness for office. Instead, he endured because dissenting Democrats were unwilling to take the risky step of directly confronting him and his vocal allies. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and [log into](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F07%2F10%2Fupshot%2Fbiden-polling-debate.html&asset=opttrunc) your Times account, or [subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F07%2F10%2Fupshot%2Fbiden-polling-debate.html) for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F07%2F10%2Fupshot%2Fbiden-polling-debate.html&asset=opttrunc). Want all of The Times? [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F07%2F10%2Fupshot%2Fbiden-polling-debate.html).

[](https://www.nytimes.com/by/reid-j-epstein) By [Reid J. Epstein](https://www.nytimes.com/by/reid-j-epstein) Tim Walz is going to bring big Midwestern dad energy to the presidential campaign. Minnesota’s governor won’t deliver a key state or bring key policy experience that Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, lacks. She picked him to run as her vice president for one reason above all others: His biography and his demeanor make him a familiar figure for voters who might not be attracted to a Black and South Asian woman from California. The Walz vibes are very different from those of recent top-of-the-ticket Democrats. The party is used to national candidates who’ve spent decades, if not their entire lives, preparing for the big stage. Walz was teaching social studies and geography, not climbing the ladder, 20 years ago. In the last two weeks, as Harris shortlisted him to be her running mate, Walz referred to himself privately as “the dog that caught the car,” seemingly shocked by his own luck. Walz is a former small-town high school football coach who spends his free time hunting and fishing. He wears a camouflage hat while campaigning and speaks with the nasal accent native to the Upper Midwest. I grew up in Central Illinois and spent years living and working in Wisconsin. Hearing Walz speak reminds me of what it sounds like to hear another English speaker while traveling abroad — a familiar, comforting sound. “He brings with him a vast understanding of the Midwest,” Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota told me yesterday. “This will be a vice president who has stood in deer stands in the middle of 10-degree weather and has fished across Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes.” Walz has had a bit of a journey on the ideological spectrum. He was first elected to Congress as a moderate who represented a rural district. While he was a reliable vote for the House Democrats’ agenda, Walz received A ratings from the National Rifle Association and didn’t present himself as a cultural progressive. In 2016, he won re-election in his rural district by less than one point — at the same time that Donald Trump won there by almost 15 points. When he ran for governor in 2018, Walz embraced gun control measures and disavowed his past N.R.A. support. In his first term, he presided over a divided State Legislature and had a productive working relationship with Republicans. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and [log into](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F08%2F07%2Fbriefing%2Fkamala-harris-tim-walz-running-mate.html&asset=opttrunc) your Times account, or [subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F08%2F07%2Fbriefing%2Fkamala-harris-tim-walz-running-mate.html) for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F08%2F07%2Fbriefing%2Fkamala-harris-tim-walz-running-mate.html&asset=opttrunc). Want all of The Times? [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F08%2F07%2Fbriefing%2Fkamala-harris-tim-walz-running-mate.html).

Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, sat down this afternoon with a CNN anchor for an interview that was set to air at 9 p.m. Eastern. [It is Harris’s first major television interview](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/08/29/us/harris-trump-election) since she became the Democratic nominee for president. It’s a high-stakes moment. Harris’s nascent campaign has fueled a surge in enthusiasm among Democratic voters, and a [significant uptick in the polls](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/us/elections/polls-president.html). But she has mostly avoided extended engagements with journalists. “We have not had a chance to hear her be pressed on specific policy issues, nor has she dealt with even remotely challenging questions about what her administration would be like,” our politics reporter Reid Epstein told me. When Harris is asked about policy, Reid said, it will be interesting to see if she engages with the details or mostly tries to turn the conversation toward warnings about Donald Trump. Her answers could help define her campaign for voters, and will test her political dexterity. The first case of polio in Gaza in 25 years was confirmed in a baby, Abdul Rahman Abu al-Jidyan.Credit...Ramadan Abed/Reuters Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and [log into](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F08%2F29%2Fbriefing%2Fharris-interview-cnn-walz-school-nurses-advice.html&asset=opttrunc) your Times account, or [subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F08%2F29%2Fbriefing%2Fharris-interview-cnn-walz-school-nurses-advice.html) for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F08%2F29%2Fbriefing%2Fharris-interview-cnn-walz-school-nurses-advice.html&asset=opttrunc). Want all of The Times? [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F08%2F29%2Fbriefing%2Fharris-interview-cnn-walz-school-nurses-advice.html).

Space programs are a small part of Boeing’s business, which is dominated by sales of commercial and military planes and equipment. But the work is a point of pride: Boeing has long been involved in spaceflight, going back to the first mission to take an American to space. Boeing’s efforts to add to that space heritage are in doubt. The company’s Starliner capsule [returned to Earth](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/06/science/boeing-starliner-nasa-space-station.html) safely from the International Space Station on Friday night, but without the two astronauts it took up there in June because NASA was concerned about thrusters on the capsule that had malfunctioned before it docked at the station. Video transcript Starliner Returns to Earth Without NASA Crew -------------------------------------------- #### Because of safety issues, NASA officials decided the Boeing spacecraft should return to Earth without the two astronauts who had traveled aboard it to the International Space Station. “And we just heard confirmation that the umbilicals are retracting and hooks are beginning to drive.” “Separation confirmed. Starliner is now backing away from station and starting its return to Earth. Starliner’s thrusters will then complete two short firings to gradually increase the separation speed to help the spacecraft carefully move away from the orbiting lab.” “We have one more burn to go. But they have confirmed that Starliner has crossed the keep-out sphere, or the K.O.S., which is an imaginary 200-meter sphere centered on the International Space Station that helps flight controllers here on the ground monitor the arrival and departure of visiting vehicles.” “Station, Houston, Space to Ground two, Starliner has exited the keep-out sphere.” “Forward heat shield and drogues out.” “Really interesting view of this coming down from in the vicinity of the landing site. Again, this is a view from a little lower than the WB-57 we were seeing.” “Touchdown. Starliner is back on Earth. That landing coming at 11:01 and 35 seconds Central time, 10:01 and 31 seconds Mountain time at White Sands Space Harbor.”  Because of safety issues, NASA officials decided the Boeing spacecraft should return to Earth without the two astronauts who had traveled aboard it to the International Space Station.CreditCredit...NASA, via Associated Press A decade ago, NASA chose Boeing and an upstart rival, SpaceX, to ferry astronauts to and from the space station. SpaceX has since carried out seven of those missions and will bring home the astronauts Starliner left behind, while Boeing has yet to complete one. And with the station set to retire as soon as 2030, time is running out. “It’s unclear if or when the company will have another opportunity to bring astronauts to space,” Ron Epstein, an aerospace and defense analyst at Bank of America, said in a research note last month. “We would not be surprised if Boeing were to divest the manned spaceflight business.” On Thursday, asked to comment on Starliner’s problems and the future of its space business, Boeing responded with this statement: “Boeing continues to focus, first and foremost, on the safety of the crew and spacecraft. We are executing the mission as determined by NASA, and we are preparing the spacecraft for a safe and successful uncrewed return.” Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and [log into](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F09%2F07%2Fbusiness%2Fboeing-starliner-nasa-spacex.html&asset=opttrunc) your Times account, or [subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F09%2F07%2Fbusiness%2Fboeing-starliner-nasa-spacex.html) for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F09%2F07%2Fbusiness%2Fboeing-starliner-nasa-spacex.html&asset=opttrunc). Want all of The Times? [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F09%2F07%2Fbusiness%2Fboeing-starliner-nasa-spacex.html).

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will square off tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern for their first, and likely only, debate during this unusually compressed presidential campaign. [You can watch the event live on The Times website](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/10/us/harris-trump-debate), alongside real-time analysis from reporters. It could prove to be the most crucial 90 minutes of the entire race, our politics reporter Reid Epstein told me. Tens of millions of viewers will tune in for what could be their first unscripted impression of the candidates, just days before early voting begins. Expect Trump to try to shape public perceptions of Harris. And Harris, the candidate many voters say they still need to learn more about, will likely try to define herself on her own terms. [Here’s a quick run-down of the debate rules](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/10/us/politics/debate-rules-harris-trump-microphone-audience.html). Harris, Reid said, “has the opportunity to introduce herself to voters, especially the relatively small subset of those whose votes are up for grabs, and make the case that she is presidential.” Her aides want her to cast herself as a defender of the middle-class and goad Trump — who would be the oldest person ever elected president — into one of his incoherent rants. Reid added that “Trump, who is much more defined in the public eye, is going to be trying to disqualify Harris by tying her to President Biden.” The former president’s team wants him to turn the conversation back to [areas they consider winning terrain](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/10/us/politics/trump-harris-debate-attack-lines.html): the economy, immigration and global chaos. The site of an Israeli strike on Al-Mawasi in the southern Gaza Strip.Credit...Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and [log into](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F09%2F10%2Fbriefing%2Fdebate-night-harris-trump-tropical-storm-louisiana.html&asset=opttrunc) your Times account, or [subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F09%2F10%2Fbriefing%2Fdebate-night-harris-trump-tropical-storm-louisiana.html) for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F09%2F10%2Fbriefing%2Fdebate-night-harris-trump-tropical-storm-louisiana.html&asset=opttrunc). Want all of The Times? [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F09%2F10%2Fbriefing%2Fdebate-night-harris-trump-tropical-storm-louisiana.html).

When Harvey Epstein went to sleep on Saturday night, he was a low-profile New York State assemblyman. When he woke up on Sunday morning, he was something of an internet celebrity. Mr. Epstein was the subject of a “Saturday Night Live” sketch this weekend that spoofed his name — a somewhat unfortunate mash-up of the names of two notorious sexual predators, [Harvey Weinstein](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/25/nyregion/weinstein-new-york-case-timeline-metoo.html) and Jeffrey Epstein. The show’s host, the comedian John Mulaney, starred as Harvey Epstein in a campaign ad featuring the candidate struggling to explain to voters that he is neither of the disgraced men. Harvey Epstein is running for the New York City Council in District 2, which includes Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side and parts of southeastern Manhattan. “Look is my name ideal? Of course not,” Mr. Mulaney says in the sketch as he walks down a street in a bald cap and hoop earrings to mimic the assemblyman’s look. “I share names with two of the most notorious sex perverts of all time.” He adds, “But thankfully, I’m a different guy.” The camera pans to two lawn signs — one for Harvey Epstein and another that reads “No Relation.” Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and [log into](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F11%2F03%2Fnyregion%2Fharvey-epstein-snl-skit.html&asset=opttrunc) your Times account, or [subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F11%2F03%2Fnyregion%2Fharvey-epstein-snl-skit.html) for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F11%2F03%2Fnyregion%2Fharvey-epstein-snl-skit.html&asset=opttrunc). Want all of The Times? [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F11%2F03%2Fnyregion%2Fharvey-epstein-snl-skit.html).

Nov 7, 2024 6:13 PM Through his wealth and cultural influence, Elon Musk undoubtedly strengthened the Trump campaign. WIRED unpacks whether it really was Musk’s efforts that sealed the deal for the president-elect.  Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff/Getty Images If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. [Learn more](https://www.wired.com/2015/11/affiliate-link-policy/). Please also consider [subscribing to WIRED](https://subscribe.wired.com/subscribe/splits/wired/WIR_SELF?source=HCL_WIR_EDIT_HARDCODED_0_COMMERCE_AFFILIATE_ZZ) The election is over, and [Donald Trump has won](https://www.wired.com/story/election-2024-donald-trump-win/) a second term in the White House. The next several months—and maybe years—will be spent analyzing what actually tipped this election, but we at WIRED _Politics Lab_ have a theory: [Elon Musk](https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-trump-timeline/). Throughout the election season, and especially in the homestretch, [Musk used his influence and platform](https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-donald-trump-butler-register-vote/) to try to shape the results. Today, Leah sits down with Vittoria Elliott and Timothy Marchman to discuss whether it worked. Leah Feiger is @[LeahFeiger](https://twitter.com/leahfeiger?lang=en). Vittoria Elliott is [@telliotter](https://twitter.com/telliotter). Tim Marchman is @[timmarchman](https://twitter.com/timmarchman). Write to us at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]). Be sure to subscribe to the WIRED Politics Lab newsletter [here](https://www.wired.com/newsletter/politics-lab?sourceCode=PodcastPromo). How to Listen ------------- You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap [this link](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wired-politics-lab/id1516843565). You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts, and search for WIRED Politics Lab. We’re on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/30LLD818svTxtD2poj9o7o) too. Transcript ---------- _Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors._ **Donald Trump \[Archival audio\]:** Well, I want to thank you all very much. This is great. These are our friends. We have thousands of friends in this incredible movement. **Leah Feiger:** Donald Trump has won a second term in the White House. He declared his victory in the early hours of Wednesday morning, from his campaign headquarters in West Palm Beach, Florida. **Donald Trump \[Archival audio\]:** Frankly, this was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time. There's never been anything like this in this country, and maybe beyond. **Leah Feiger:** The win was decisive, almost shockingly so. Many of us are still figuring out the big factor that pushed the country hard to the right. Here at WIRED, however, we have a theory, and we've been reporting on him for a while: Elon Musk. **Donald Trump \[Archival audio\]:** Who did you say? **\[Archival audio\]:** Elon. **Donald Trump \[Archival audio\]:** Oh, let me tell you. We have a new star. A star is born, Elon. **Leah Feiger:** This is WIRED _Politics Lab_, a show about how tech is changing politics. I'm Leah Feiger, the senior politics editor at WIRED. As we discussed on the show a few weeks ago, Elon jumped into the political conversation this cycle in a big way, endorsing Trump, joining him at rallies, and putting a lot of money behind him, over a hundred million dollars. Did his influence make the difference for Trump, and what happens now? Joining me today to talk about all of this and more is WIRED's director of science, politics, and security, Tim Marchman. Hey, Tim. **Tim Marchman:** Hey, glad to be here. **Leah Feiger:** Glad you're here too. Also joining, is WIRED senior reporter Vittoria Elliott. Hey, Tori. **Vittoria Elliott:** Hey, Leah. **Leah Feiger:** Quick check-in guys. How are you both doing? **Vittoria Elliott:** I don't know what day it is. **Tim Marchman:** I really need to just go to the park and read a Victorian novel, or play shuffleboard or something. **Vittoria Elliott:** That sounds great. Honestly, I wish someone would prescribe me some seaside time, like they used to. **Leah Feiger:** Instead of seaside time and instead of reading a Victorian novel in the park, we should just talk about Elon Musk. Right? That also sounds incredibly fun to me. **Tim Marchman:** I think we're going to be talking about Elon Musk for the next four years. I, for one, can't wait. **Leah Feiger:** Let's get into it. So, the big question to me, and I think to probably all of us, is did Elon Musk make this happen? Is he responsible, or at least quite responsible, very responsible, largely responsible for this Trump victory? What do you think? **Vittoria Elliott:** I don't think that he made it happen all his own. I think we have seen a lot of demographic shifts in the groups that support or feel aligned with the Republican Party, or at least with Donald Trump. But I definitely think there are very valuable sectors of the population that Musk did motivate. **Leah Feiger:** Tim, where's your head here? **Tim Marchman:** I would actually disagree a little bit with Tori, and I don't think there was probably a measurable impact from what Musk did, because the thing that Musk brings above all else is this overwhelming attention vortex. He is constant, he's ubiquitous, he is non-stop, he is pushing 1,000 things at any one time, and he commands attention as the richest man in the world. That is also true of Donald Trump. Donald Trump upends conventional laws of electoral politics because he is a celebrity of long-standing, and he knows how to manipulate the news cycle. So, while there was certainly value to what Musk did, and I wouldn't say it was worthless or anything like that, in terms of attributing specific demos or could a political scientist quantify how much he was worth the polls? I think that would be really tricky to do, because if he's a 100 out of 100 on the getting attention and driving attention to things scale, so is Trump. You can't have more than the maximum. So, that's where I wonder if he really had an effect. Where I would say his most crucial impact probably was in, I feel like it's becoming a cliche, but creating a permission structure for other people, especially other tech leaders, to come out in support of Trump. Which even as recently as in the summer, it was fairly rare. There was a lot of hesitancy to really come out full-throated as MAGA. I think when Musk did, that allowed a lot of other people too. **Leah Feiger:** He really, really came out though. I mean, I don't know if I totally agree with you about, you can't go bigger than the higher, etc. Yes, Trump had the audience, he had the people that were about to lie down at his feet. But Musk brought in an entirely new population. He has over 200 million followers on X. He runs and owns X. He has set those algorithms. We're looking at something entirely different. **Vittoria Elliott:** But I think to add to that, I don't think it's just a permission structure for Tech CEOs to funnel their money to Trump. Silicon Valley has had a libertarian, right-leaning strain for a really long time. But I think also, there might have been people in that space of white men fan base that Musk really does cultivate, that obviously can be a bit more diverse than that but that is a lot of it, who may have again felt Trump curious. But certainly felt, I think, more energized for him once Musk was onside. Talking to voters in Pennsylvania, people really were like, "We have the smartest man in the world on our team. We have the inventor of all of these incredible things." I think it also offered, while it may have lowered Musk in the estimation of some of the people on the left, I think in many ways Musk was able to use a little bit of the clout that he had left to make it look like Donald Trump was really actually bringing the best minds onto his side. **Leah Feiger:** So, obviously, Tori, you were in Pennsylvania a lot this month. You're there right now. You watched all of this go down. You were also at the first rally that Trump brought Musk out to in Butler, Pennsylvania, in early October. Talk to us specifically about the people that you were chatting to. Was there anyone who was like, "Oh, I was sour on Trump, but then Musk entered?" Or was it just an additional? What are we talking here? **Vittoria Elliott:** It was an additional. But it was really, I think it was like people were really, really stoked. I think they felt that it added more legitimacy to Trump, to have someone who the media and other leaders have built up over the better part of almost two decades at this point, coming in and saying, "Trump is the right leader and this is the way forward." I think my sense is there's a real frustration, especially with younger voters, about the idea, the future doesn't look as bright as they were promised it was going to be. One thing Musk does with his talk of space travel and electric cars, is make the future sound exciting, in a way that I think is appealing to people. So, that was definitely the vibe that I got from people in Butler, that they were excited that he was there, they were excited about his ideas. Again, that they felt it lent their candidate a lot of legitimacy to have someone so smart and so accomplished siding with him. **Leah Feiger:** Let's get into his actual pack that he dumped millions and millions of dollars into, America Pack. How big of an impact do you think that it had in swing states? What did they do with the money, the ads and videos they ran? I'm curious for all of your thoughts here. **Tim Marchman:** Well, he donated at least $118 million. There are more financial disclosures to come, so we'll eventually find out how much in total. As far as the Get Out to Vote operation that he had subcontracted to him, as far as I can tell the money was basically set on fire. I don't think it did anything aside from incur at least one lawsuit. One can surmise that there are going to be more coming from workers. **Leah Feiger:** I mean, we have to obviously talk about all of our WIRED reporting here. Very proud of our team and our lovely freelancer, Jake Lahut. But over this last week, WIRED's been reporting on conditions that were really, really extreme. Canvassers said that they were driven around and seat-less and seatbelt-less, U-Haul fans, they weren't paid on time, they were forced to work sick. It sounds like such a mess, and yet here we are obviously with a Trump victory. **Tim Marchman:** Yeah. But Elon doesn't miss the money. He has $250 billion on paper, and it's hard to get your head around what an inconsequential sum $100 plus million is relative to that. I live in Philadelphia, so I was getting some mailers from America Pack. They were pretty erratic and weirdly targeted, and it doesn't seem like it was much of a genius operation there either. But I don't think any of it much mattered one way or the other. There's academic research that really casts doubt on the efficacy of door knocking and calling and sending people things, that doesn't persuade people. What it does is maybe connect a campaign with people who wouldn't know how to vote. So, even if that money didn't get really tangible results upfront, that's still one thing. But it goes back to that point about attention. Elon Musk is personally pulling out $100 million dollars plus out of his pocket and putting it on the table to support Donald Trump, sends a huge message. Of course, ultimately to him, what that probably is is an investment in influence. Donald Trump is somebody, if you give him $100 million dollars, he's going to have a good table for you at Mar-a-Lago. He's going to take your phone calls and he's going to open the doors of the White House to you. So, if we're looking at it in the narrow sense of like, was this optimized efficient spending? Is this what a money-ball campaign would've done? No, I think he could have flushed it down the toilet and gotten about as much out of it as he did. In terms of it furthering his agenda and really irrevocably tying him to Trump and to MAGA, and signaling that he was truly all in, yeah, it did that. Because Trump could have lost, and if Trump had lost there possibly could have been consequences for Musk. **Leah Feiger:** We'd be having a different conversation right now. I mean so much of it did feel like a stunt while it was happening too. The million dollar per day stunt, that was such a news grab. That was a headline grab, that was an SEO grab. Obviously his efforts were super, super different from the Harris campaigns, in ways that I am sure that we'll continue unpacking over the weeks and months ahead. But Tori, you created a timeline earlier this week that we published, that really tracked from the entire last month of Elon Musk. What's your takeaway from that? What can we glean from everything that he was doing, tweeting, sharing, donating, all the way down to Peanut the squirrel, what's our month takeaway? **Vittoria Elliott:** Oh, my God. You said earlier this week and I was like, this week? That can't be right. You can view a lot of what Musk was doing over the past month as really... Expert calculation around that, particularly around the state of Pennsylvania, which was the swing state. So, showing up at the Butler rally on October 5th, was such a big thing. Not only because it was western Pennsylvania, which is a key area of the state, but also because that is where the first assassination attempt against Donald Trump occurred. So, it was this big symbolic thing, and that's where Musk debuted his in-person support for Trump. I think that was extraordinarily calculated. The fact that he committed to spend $45 million a month on the America Pack when he first endorsed Trump. He didn't necessarily spend that in those trenches or whatever, but it was about grabbing the headlines and again, showing how much he believed in it. I mean, this is a man who promotes meme coins on his platform. If you think about it in that way, he's very good at this, driving short bursts of attention around stuff. I think towards the end of the election, similarly with the $1 million giveaway, that's something that generates real headlines day after day, people are watching it. They're wondering where that person is going to be. For the people that had the opportunity to get that million dollars, which was only people in swing states, you're generating interest, you're generating attention, you're signing the petition. Suddenly he has the attention for this thing and that can inch into something else. I think that's really what we saw. Even down to the Peanut the squirrel thing. He spent the last weekend before the election, we thought he would be out, we thought he would be stumping. Instead he was somewhere inside, tweeting about a squirrel named Peanut that was internet famous. I think on October 30th, it was confiscated from its owners by animal control in the state of New York, and euthanized because it also lived with a raccoon that had been adopted and the state said it could possibly have rabies. The entire weekend was just bombarded with memes about Peanut. He made it political so quickly. It was, "This is what happens when you live in a Democratic state. This is what they'll do. Why are they doing this and not going after Epstein?" That is all shit-posting, but really attention grabbing. **Leah Feiger:** No, I mean it was a play for the through line of the election. We talked about Elon Musk every single day, what he was contributing, what he was talking about, what he was doing well, what he was doing poorly and his spheres of influence. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back with more on Musk's influence over the 2024 election results, and how he tapped into the Manosphere. Welcome back to WIRED Politics Lab. Let's talk for a little bit about Musk's other big source of power and influence, his online presence and the online platform that he owns. How did he use X during the last couple of months and what effect do we think that it had? **Vittoria Elliott:** He super-powered Trump talking points that were at best mis-informative, at worst disinformation, particularly talking points around undocumented immigrants being able to vote, and Democrats wanting to give undocumented immigrants citizenship to turn all swing states blue. **Leah Feiger:** No. He had conspiracy theories coming out of everywhere, truly hitting every single great talking point. He was sharing them with such urgency and with such speed, and the way that his algorithm works they were just popped up in my personal feed constantly. **Vittoria Elliott:** All the time. I mean, again, I point out to literally everyone, even before he purchased the platform, Musk was a Twitter super user. He was one of, I think, the 10 most followed people on the platform. So, even if the algorithm was not weighted towards him, which there's suspicion to believe that it is, he would still have incredible reach. **Tim Marchman:** It's so overpowering. I think of it like a drone swarm attack, where you just send out cheap drones and you send out endless quantities of them and you overwhelm air defense. Before the break, we were talking about Peanut the squirrel. Do you know what Peanut the squirrel overwhelmed on X? The release of audio of Jeffrey Epstein describing Donald Trump as his best friend of 10 years. **Vittoria Elliott:** Wild. **Tim Marchman:** Talking about how Trump would sleep with his friend's wives. That's not to say that he didn't have his own ties to people like Bill Clinton, because he did. But just through sheer volume of nonsense, he's able to take an issue like that, own it and become the protagonist of it. It's fascinating. **Vittoria Elliott:** One of the Peanut memes was literally saying, "Why do Democrats have money to euthanize a squirrel, but not to investigate Epstein's client list?" It is just, you can't make it up. **Leah Feiger:** Full circle. Terrible. Of course, simultaneous to all of this, he's getting out the vote. He has over 200 million followers, like we said, on X alone. I'll never forget this, this honestly changed what the election looked like for me. It was in early October, and Musk was tweeting out, telling people to register to vote in Pennsylvania, and in Arizona. Then including the link for voter registration. We were looking at analytics, and I think it was something like 30 million people saw these posts, and one million people clicked the links. That is so many people. Do you know how many Harris canvassers and doorknockers there had to be, or influencers, that the campaign is subcontracting in order to even sort of compete with that? So, he has an onslaught of conspiracy theories and boosting absolutely bananas people on the platform that were kicked off years ago and then welcomed back on. And also getting out the vote. It was this trifecta of terribleness, and effectiveness. **Vittoria Elliott:** Yeah. Well, the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that Musk's tweets from the day he endorsed Donald Trump until October 25th, reached over seven billion views. That to get that kind of impression you would need, in ad buys you would need to pay $24 million to get that kind of reach on X, if you were just getting that reach via ads. He is this really priceless communications asset. **Tim Marchman:** I just read an oral history of the New York Post. It's a great book. It's called Paper of Wreckage. I'd recommend it to anybody, it's very entertaining. Near the end of the book someone calculates that Rupert Murdoch probably lost a billion dollars. Nominal, they figured about three billion, adjusted for inflation, on the New York Post every year, \[inaudible 00:19:07\]. Fox, at the same time, was throwing off a billion dollars in revenue every year. He made it up elsewhere in his empire. In a lot of ways, that's how I've been thinking about Musk, is just as a very traditional media baron who owns a megaphone and uses the megaphone. **Leah Feiger:** The new Rupert Murdoch. **Tim Marchman:** Yeah. He's a self-styled futurist, a Tony Stark, all that. But he's also a very familiar figure, right out of one of those Victorian novels **Leah Feiger:** That you desperately want to be reading on- **Tim Marchman:** In the park reading. **Leah Feiger:** ... a park somewhere. Yes, soon. **Tim Marchman:** We know this kind of figure. Just somebody who owns a mass media outlet and uses it to promote his interests. That is exactly what you're describing there. **Vittoria Elliott:** For a story that we published yesterday about how Musk has, by rolling back all of these protections at what was formerly Twitter, he's a flown cover for a lot of other tech companies that have also rolled back their protections, but not quite as violently. One of the former Twitter employees I spoke to for the piece said, "You know, Musk is a smart man fundamentally. Not about everything, but about a lot of things." We have a long history in this country of really rich people owning newspapers, like Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post. But Musk realizes that social media is media and the better play if you want to control the conversation is not necessarily to own a paper, but to own the platform. **Leah Feiger:** Obviously we've all been talking about this in our group Slacks and have been for some time, but the elephant in the room is the online bro culture and the Manosphere, and the podcast bros that have really shaped this election. Musk is obviously a member of this cadre and has become one of its leaders. Talk to me about some of these views and how you guys think that this has impacted what we're seeing here right now. **Vittoria Elliott:** Oh, damn. I have so many feelings. I think it's particularly telling that instead of being out on the campaign trail on Monday, Musk spent almost three hours in a studio in Texas with Joe Rogan. I think that should indicate to all of us how important someone like Joe Rogan, who was hesitant with his endorsement, but has definitely been a pillar on the more acceptable end of the Manosphere, to think about how important he is as a figure for that community. Young men, young disaffected men, are not exactly the most reliable voting demographic. So, to me, actually waiting until the last minute makes a lot of sense, because I think if that endorsement had come out in August, it would've been really easy for that to lose steam. But you're talking about a group of people for whom that sort of sustained political engagement is not really their vibe. But to have it come out the night before the election, so it's actually a more immediate choice off of the back of that endorsement, makes a lot of sense to me. I think when we're talking about this, we're talking about the Manosphere. Some of the views that Musk has parroted from its darker depths have been anti-diversity, equity inclusion initiatives, this emphasis on childbearing and child-rearing. Musk has at least 11 children that we know of, with at least three different women. This very pro-natalist view, this view that people should be having big families, that they should be having children, and implicit in that, that women should be child-rearing, and that women's obligation is to use their body for creating children and for the perpetuating of the human species. **Tim Marchman:** When I think of the Manosphere, I think Andrew Tate, an accused sexual trafficker who overtly tells sexually frustrated young men that women's bodies are there for their use, and purports to give them instructions on how to sexually enslave them for their own sexual satisfaction and to make money. Everything is downstream of that. From direct Tate imitators, to people who are way on the far other end of the Manosphere and are more or less respectable, they're still swimming in the same water. We've all seen the statistics about how for many large, complicated social reasons that we don't fully understand yet, young men, a lot of them, they aren't having sex, they aren't going to college, they don't have friends. There's a big pool of these people who, disaffected almost doesn't get at it, they're cut off from all this. They're cut off from a rounded life. **Leah Feiger:** The podcast bros bring them back into the light. **Tim Marchman:** Bring them into this. The unifying thread here is not just a generalized misogyny, but a view of women as tools to be used by and for men. When you pair that with an opportunity to vote against a woman, to vote against a woman who Taylor Swift has supported, to vote against a woman who's promising to restore access to abortion, it really does make a lot of sense. Like candidly, a lot of the reason I thought Harris had a really good shot and I was leaning towards thinking she was going to win, I was feeling relatively sure within the confines of a 50/50 race that she had the marginal advantages. One of the big ones was just, she was looking to turn out older women, very reliable voters. He was looking to negate that advantage by getting crushed by less in certain demographics, reducing the marginal edge. A key part of that was young men, and I didn't really see it. It happened. That's a political reality that will be very important going forward. **Leah Feiger:** Do we think that these online men, and by extension Elon, then actually provided that crucial turnout that tipped the election to Trump? **Tim Marchman:** I wouldn't go that far, but it's a key part of the coalition. I mean, the exit polls are still a little shaky. It's not like we're looking at the really detailed ones that we're going to get when the voter files are released. But, yeah. That seems to be a key part of assembling a coalition for Trump. There was a big turn among Latino men. Young men voted for Harris, but it was just by a couple of points. There was a shift there and there was a shift in some areas of up to, I think in the order of 25 points in some swing states. It was real. **Leah Feiger:** It was massive. **Tim Marchman:** Yeah. I don't think it's as neat and easy as saying that they provided the margin. You can look at other groups and attribute it to them. But they were a big part of it. There's no doubt that the Manosphere and directly pandering to this very specific misogynistic ideology worked. I mean, and that's really horrifying to think about. **Vittoria Elliott:** Well, and I think when we're talking about Latino voters or one of any background, a lot of cultures throughout the world have patriarchy, a strain of patriarchy, baked into their kind of conservatism. I think pulling on that is a reliable way to get men across demographics to feel like there's something in it for them. So, I definitely agree that there was definitely an emphasis on men voting. Scott Pressler, who founded the Early Vote Action Group, which was funded by Musk, moved to Pennsylvania and dedicated most of this year to turning out Pennsylvania. Was tweeting about, "Men stay in line." Stephen Miller was also talking about men- **Leah Feiger:** Charlie Kirk. **Vittoria Elliott:** ... voting. **Leah Feiger:** This was the thing. **Vittoria Elliott:** Exactly. **Tim Marchman:** With all of that said, I don't want to let guys my age off the hook. Trump's core demo, the one that won him the election, was Gen X men. That's it. **Leah Feiger:** 100%. **Tim Marchman:** It's middle-aged white men. That's his core constituency. **Leah Feiger:** To bring this back to Trump for a moment, Trump loved this. Trump absolutely loved watching all of these influencers and podcast bros and Manosphere types, trip over themselves to invite him on and post their clips on TikTok and X and make the rounds. It was everywhere. It was so clearly a delightful part of this campaign to him, and one that they clearly did very effectively. I'm still really playing out just how in some ways grateful Trump is to Elon Musk for all of this elevation too. Elon watched the results come in with Trump. Have we ever seen anything like this before, in terms of relationships in that way, heading straight into the White House? **Tim Marchman:** I can't think of a really direct parallel. One of the things that really worries me about it is Elon Musk is a major defense contractor. **Leah Feiger:** Yeah. **Tim Marchman:** The word fascism has been thrown around a lot, but at its most basic, fascism is the merger of state and corporate power. We now have a major defense contractor who has an app that's on hundreds of millions of people's phones, who owns satellite technology, who owns rocketry technology that's critical to the US, who owns cars that are recording 24/7, millions of them on the roads. He's somebody who seems tipped to be at most a shadow president, and at least a key advisor in the White House, will have a lot of say over defense, national security. That is really... You can't really talk enough about how worrisome that is. **Vittoria Elliott:** I mean, also, can I just say that I don't think we frame Musk as a defense contractor enough, because- **Leah Feiger:** I think that's true. **Vittoria Elliott:** ... like SpaceX and Tesla, we're like, he's this magical inventor. It's like, no. He's a defense contractor. **Tim Marchman:** He's a welfare case. He's suckling on the public teat. **Vittoria Elliott:** He's a welfare king, and he also is a defense contractor. If a president was watching the results come in with the CEO of Raytheon, people will be losing their shit. **Leah Feiger:** Absolutely. Let's take another quick break, and when we come back, what happens now? Welcome back to WIRED Politics Lab. We're going to skip Conspiracy of the Week this week. Instead, let's spin this forward a little bit and talk about what we can expect to see in 2025 and beyond. So, Tori and Tim, what happens now for Elon Musk? What's his expected return on investment here? **Vittoria Elliott:** Well, to start off, the New York Times did an interesting analysis that showed that just in federal contracts, we're not even talking about anything beyond that, just in contracts his companies have gotten from the federal government, Elon Musk's companies have gotten 2.2 billion plus. So, I think we're going to see more and more money being funneled towards Elon's companies. Areas of the government that were once public are going to increasingly be privatized, often to his benefit. I think Blue Origin's never going to see another NASA contract. I think particularly with his Government Efficiency Commission that he says he's going to head, I think we're going to probably see a lot of overlap between that and some of the goals of Project 2025, of cutting government employees, cutting the lifetime employees who really keep the wheels turning between administrations, and installing loyalists. I think it's important to note also, when Musk took over X, there was a lot of scrutiny over the fact that employees from his other companies were being sequestered in that acquisition to advise, to give technical support. I would not be surprised if we see some bleeding over in that way with government as well. **Leah Feiger:** Tim, what do you think? **Tim Marchman:** I think we're going to see an aggressive lack of regulatory oversight over companies that are doing things like putting computers in people's brains, and creating large amounts of space junk that are making it difficult to see the stars. I also think that we are going to see a gutting of the civil service, because Musk is using the rhetoric he used with Twitter and he has used with other companies about bloated, wasteful government spending. We all know this, but the government does not actually spend all that much relative to its scale in a discretionary fashion. The government spends money on defense, which Donald Trump is not going to cut. It spends money on social security and Medicare, and interest on the debt. Everything else is pretty trivial. There's not really a huge opportunity to cut out trillions of dollars in wasteful spending. What there is is probably going to be an opportunity to look at something like the Forestry Service and say, "Look at these loaded government bureaucrats sitting there watching trees." **Leah Feiger:** I mean, like goodbye National Parks question mark? There's- **Tim Marchman:** If you want to talk about people who are making fairly modest sums to do things that are important for society, I think they should be very worried that their jobs are at risk. I think it's a very realistic possibility that that could completely disrupt the ability of the government to function at its core, basic responsibilities, overseeing public lands, weather monitoring, you name it. **Leah Feiger:** What government role do you think Musk is angling for and what does that mean for the future of tech and tech regulation? **Vittoria Elliott:** I don't know that Musk is someone who wants a specific role. **Leah Feiger:** You don't see him sitting outside the Oval Office, chief of staff? **Vittoria Elliott:** No, I think- **Leah Feiger:** I mean, I don't either, to be clear. **Vittoria Elliott:** I think- **Leah Feiger:** He wants influence, he wants power. **Vittoria Elliott:** He wants influence. He wants to be an advisor. That's because, I don't think he would ever really want to, quote/unquote, work for Trump. Both he and Trump are people who conceive of themselves as alpha males, top dogs. They both are people who want to grab attention. I don't see either of them being willing to subjugate their egos for the other person. So, I perceive that he would probably be more like a floating advisor, doing what he's done with a lot of his companies. Which is like, he's like, "I'm going to be an expert on space now. I'm going to be an expert on cars now. I'm going to be an expert on social media and free speech now." **Tim Marchman:** For all the reasons you just outlined, this is why I think the one thing I'm sure of is that there is going to be a nasty and dramatic fallout. There is no way two egos of this size can coexist. These are two really thin-skinned, petty, catty men who like to take to social media to say bad things about people they don't like. So, if we are going to get nothing else out of this dystopian and horrifying dynamic, we are going to get the nastiest, meanest posts of all time from these two men about each other. I would say within the next couple of years. We'll look back in a couple of years and see if I was right. **Leah Feiger:** I'm so excited for the fallout. For the election, I would've argued that Trump needed Musk more than Musk needed Trump. Now we're at perhaps a role reversal situation. There's going to have to be a little bit of kowtowing, I'd assume. What do you guys think? **Vittoria Elliott:** I mean, I think Musk is willing to demure to him in certain ways, it seems. But again, I think if Donald Trump believes that Elon Musk is ever going to be his employee, he's got another thing coming. **Tim Marchman:** Yeah. I think the dynamic changes completely because the fact is that Trump has made clear he will abuse the powers of the federal government at will, and the Supreme Court, has made clear that no one can do anything about that. So, he has all the leverage. If they have a falling out, if Musk doesn't want to do something Trump doesn't want him to do, all of a sudden he can become a very zealous regulator of this fellow who has a lot of interest with the federal government, and needs friends in Washington, that can turn a dime very easily. So, in the bigger strategic picture, you wonder if Musk hasn't just delivered himself into the hands of a man who has turned on every one of his allies over the years in a very nasty fashion. **Leah Feiger:** But maybe Musk thinks he's going to be different. **Vittoria Elliott:** "But he'll be different with me." **Leah Feiger:** We're going to see. At the very least, I am so glad to be figuring this all out and discussing it with the two of you, and the rest of our lovely WIRED Politics team. Shout out to the rest of them for really keeping us going this week. That's it for today. Thank you so much, Tori and Tim, for joining us. **Vittoria Elliott:** Thank you, Leah. **Tim Marchman:** Thanks for having me. **Leah Feiger:** Thanks for listening to WIRED Politics Lab. If you like what you heard today, make sure to follow the show and give us five stars. We also have a newsletter, which Makena Kelly writes each week. The link to the newsletter and the WIRED reporting we mentioned today are in the show notes. If you'd like to get in touch with us with any questions, comments, or show suggestions, please, please write to us at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]). That's [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]). We're so excited to hear from you. This episode was produced by Sheena Ozaki. Pran Bandi is our studio engineer. Will Purton mixed this episode. Steven Valentino is our executive producer. Chris Bannon is global head of audio at Condé Nast, and I'm your host, Leah Feiger. We'll be back with a new episode next week. Thanks for listening.

A former employee of the late billionaire Mohamed al-Fayed has said that she was “raped and brutally abused” and trafficked while she worked at the luxury British department store Harrods, and that his brother was aware of her trafficking. The account, detailed in an American court filing on Tuesday, said that Ali Fayed, Mr. al-Fayed’s younger brother, may have evidence showing that Harrods was complicit in the widespread sexual abuse of company employees by its owner Mr. al-Fayed, and in its coverup. Ali Fayed, who is 80 and has a residence in Greenwich, Conn., is a former director of Harrods and the current [chairman](https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/officers/01jxkPCyxHp0r0pCsz1Ivnzf-PA/appointments) of a 139-year-old British shirt maker that supplies the royal family. The woman, identified in the court documents as Jane Doe because she said she fears retaliation, is a permanent resident of the United States, and made the accusations in a petition to the Federal District Court in Connecticut. The filing does not directly bring legal claims against Ali Fayed; instead, it lays the groundwork for evidence to be collected for legal disputes in other countries. The details in the filing are the latest in a series of [allegations of abuse](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/19/world/europe/mohamed-al-fayed-harrods-rape.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/19/world/europe/mohamed-al-fayed-harrods-rape.html) and trafficking made against Mr. al-Fayed, who is accused of [using Harrods](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/09/world/europe/harrods-sexual-abuse-scandal-mohamed-al-fayed.html) as a hunting ground for young women after he bought the department store with his two brothers, Ali and Salah, in 1985. His alleged crimes have been [compared to](https://www.theguardian.com/global/2024/sep/22/remorseless-ruthless-racist-my-battle-to-expose-mohamed-al-fayed) those of Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein in their scale and systematic nature. The document does not directly accuse any individuals of committing offenses against Ms. Doe, and offers few details of her trafficking. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and [log into](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F11%2F12%2Fworld%2Feurope%2Ffayed-harrods-sexual-assault.html&asset=opttrunc) your Times account, or [subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F11%2F12%2Fworld%2Feurope%2Ffayed-harrods-sexual-assault.html) for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F11%2F12%2Fworld%2Feurope%2Ffayed-harrods-sexual-assault.html&asset=opttrunc). Want all of The Times? [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F11%2F12%2Fworld%2Feurope%2Ffayed-harrods-sexual-assault.html).