| From: Bill Wolf | 7/4/2024 8:55:38 AM | | | | | | Opinion
Declarations
Biden Can’t Spin His Way Out of This
The president’s handlers think he can plow ahead, but his position will only get worse. What a tragedy.
By Peggy Noonan
July 3, 2024 5:27 pm ET
We are living big history. We do that so often we don’t always notice. But a proud president is hunkered down in the White House, and his party is frantically trying to decide whether to press him to step aside from his bid for re-election after a catastrophic 90 minutes revealing that he is neurologically not up to the demands of a campaign or a second term. (And revealing, too, that his true condition, the depth of his decline, had been kept, quite deliberately and systematically, from the American people. Oh, the histories that will be written, and the villains that will be named.)
To me it feels like August 1974. The president’s position isn’t going to get better, it is going to get worse. The longer he waits to step aside the crueler his departure will be.
The post-debate polls show he is losing support both overall and in the battlegrounds. A cratering like that doesn’t happen because you had a bad night, or a cold, or were tired. It happens when an event starkly and unavoidably shows people what they already suspected. It happens when the event gives them proof.
Before the debate a majority of those polled said they no longer thought he had it in him physically or mentally to do the job of president anymore. After the debate that number reached 72%. You can’t un-ring that bell.
There’s no repairing this. His staff can’t spin or muscle their way out. He is neurologically compromised, we can all see it, it isn’t his fault. You have no governance in how you age and at what speed, or what illnesses or conditions arise. You only have governance in what you do about it.
Those who support the president offer suggestions on conference calls. “Just get him out there—long, live interviews, lots of news conferences, a big rally in the round with Q&A from the voters.”
They don’t know what they’re talking about. He can’t do what they want him to do. He can’t execute it. He tried to do it last week—the debate was, in effect, a live, high-stakes interview. He won’t be able to do it next week or next month either. Old age involves plateaus and plummets. It gets worse, not better.
The president’s staffers fantasize that they can plow ahead with teleprompter events—he looks stronger at the podium. But no one doubts he can stand and read. His staffers think they can smooth past things with supportive interviews with sympathetic journalists, but that won’t work either, not long term. Because everyone saw the debate, or, since, has seen pieces of it, and the image of a debilitated president has burned its way into the American brain and there’s no erasing it.
A big part of the president’s personal mythos, and it is shared by all of Biden-world, is that the guy’s a survivor, he always pulls through, you knock him down, he gets back up. An inner belief like that can get you far and gird you. But it can also harden into mere conceit and unrealism, and blind you to the real facts of current circumstances.
I don’t agree with the narrative that what was revealed in the debate was a sudden and dramatic decline. What he has been showing, for at least two years, is a steady and unstopping decline. In January 2022 we worried here about the president’s propensity for “unfinished sentences, non sequiturs; sometimes his thoughts seem like bumper cars crashing and forcing each other off course.” In April 2022 we wrote of a poll in New Hampshire that asked if Joe Biden was physically and mentally up to the job if there is a crisis. Fifty-four percent said, “not very/not at all.” In June 2022 we said there’s a broad sense it’s not going to get better: “He has poor judgment and he’s about to hit 80 and it’s not going to change.” Voters feel “unease.” In December 2022: Mr. Biden doesn’t think he’s “slipping with age,” but he’s wrong. “He’s showing age and it will only get worse, and he will become more ridiculous, when he’s deeper into his 80s.” Trusted Biden intimates must tell him to get out of the race. “You got rid of Donald Trump. You got us out of Afghanistan. You passed huge FDR-level bills that transformed the social safety net. . . . You did your job in history. You fulfilled your role. And now you should go out an inspiration.”
In September 2023 Mr. Biden had been busted in the press for telling tall tales that didn’t check out. We noted that while repeated lying is “a characterological fault, not knowing you’re lying might suggest a neurological one.” “The age problem will only get worse.” “In insisting on running he is making a historical mistake. . . . He isn’t up to it.”
What we saw in the debate isn’t new. That’s why voters won’t accept the idea that it was just a bad night. They think it’s been a bad and worsening two years.
It doesn’t feel right that the final decision will come down to one family’s psychodrama—that feels too small a thing for such big history. In any case it isn’t about one man’s personal needs, or his family’s enjoyment of importance and the blessings of proximity to power. It isn’t a party question or a White House question, it’s about America. Can America afford for another four years to have an obviously neurologically impaired president? No, it isn’t safe. It is on some level provocative. Weakness provokes. The president’s rationalizers point out that he’s fine from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. I am sure presidents Xi of China and Putin of Russia will only decide to take back Taiwan or move on Poland at lunch time EST, to keep things fair. Why wouldn’t they schedule their aggressions around the president’s needs?
The elected officeholders of the Democratic Party should take responsibility and press the president to leave. You can’t scream, “Democracy is on the line,” and put up a neurologically compromised candidate to fight for it. They haven’t moved for two reasons. One has to do with their own prospects: You don’t want to be the one who kills the king, you want to be the one who warmly mourns the king and takes his mantle after someone else kills him. The other is fear of who would replace him on the ticket, and how exactly that would happen.
These are understandable fears. But the answer isn’t to hide in a dumb fatalism, a listless acceptance of fate. It makes no sense to say, “Joe Biden is likely going to lose so we should do nothing because doing something is unpredictable.” Unpredictable is better than doomed.
This is a party afraid of itself, literally afraid of its own groups and component parts. They are afraid of their own delegates. Party professionals think letting the convention decide would reveal how fatally shattered and divided the party is—how wild it is. But that’s how the party looks now, with its leaders in Washington frozen and incapable and no one in charge.
What a tragedy this is. A president cratering his historical reputation, his wife and family ruining any affection history would have had for them when Donald Trump wins. They have no idea how they’re going to look.
wsj.com
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| To: Bill Wolf who wrote (12078) | 7/7/2024 9:26:54 AM | | From: Bill Wolf | | | | Opinion
Review & Outlook
The Almighty Calls for Biden
The Democratic Party establishment that covered for the President’s decline now wants him gone.
By The Editorial Board
July 6, 2024 7:06 pm ET
Mr. President, the Almighty is on the line. Not the Deity you invoked Friday night in your interview on ABC. The Big Guy appears to be sitting out this presidential race. We mean the closest thing to the Almighty in American politics: the Democratic-media establishment. They want you gone, sir, and the question is when you admit it and oblige.
President Biden’s interview on Friday with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos was a portrait in defiance that won’t stem the establishment campaign unfolding against him. The media that covered for him has turned with a vengeance. The sleuths at the New York Times and Washington Post have suddenly discovered that the debate wasn’t merely a “bad night.” This week they tell us that there have been many such episodes of demonstrable cognitive decline. Who knew?
Well, the American people knew, since they are not oblivious to evidence they can see. They have said so in every poll for a year. Special counsel Robert Hur knew. (See our editorial, “A Tipping Point on Biden’s Decline,” Feb. 10, 2024.)
But the debate has forced the establishment to admit the truth they could no longer deny. The Times, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, CNN, Morning Joe, Politico, Axios, the Hollywood and Wall Street donors—the gang’s all here, moving in sync to cover their coverup tracks. Now that Mr. Biden looks like a loser to Donald Trump, Scranton Joe has got to go.
Elected Democrats have been more cautious, but those defections have also begun. First came the backbenchers in competitive seats, like Maine Rep. Jared Golden. Mark Warner, the Senator from suddenly competitive Virginia, is said to be rounding up colleagues to see if they can ease Mr. Biden out. The goal is to protect Democrats running for re-election in states where a Trump tide could engulf them.
The decisive moment will come when the Obama wing of the establishment turns. Barack Obama’s early post-debate backing—“Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know”—has become studied silence. His former adviser, David Axelrod, all but said on CNN Friday night, more in sorrow than anger, that the end is nigh for the President.
Mr. Biden may continue to resist, as he did on Friday night with Mr. Stephanopoulos. But the longer he does, the more brutal the establishment campaign will become. The President’s every word will be scrutinized for mistakes, his every step examined for signs of Parkinson’s or some other malady. The questions will be who knew what about his decline, and when?
CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, now wants Mr. Biden to take a cognitive test. Mr. Biden said Friday that his daily work is a cognitive test, which is the problem. Here’s how the President answered Mr. Stephanopoulos’s question Friday on his debate performance:
“Yeah, look. The whole way I prepared, nobody’s fault, mine. Nobody’s fault but mine. I, uh—I prepared what I usually would do sittin’ down as I did come back with foreign leaders or National Security Council for explicit detail. And I realized—’bout partway through that, you know, all—I get quoted the New York Times had me down, at 10 points before the debate, nine now, or whatever the hell it is. The fact of the matter is that, what I looked at is that he also lied 28 times. I couldn’t—I mean, the way the debate ran, not—my fault, no one else’s fault, no one else’s fault.”
It’s admirable that he didn’t blame his advisers, but Mr. Biden has a hard time finishing a sentence, much less completing an argument. When he loses his train of thought he deflects with the word “anyway.”
This is not a man who will be able to persuade Democrats that he can stand up to Mr. Trump’s assaults for the next four months—nor persuade the public that he can withstand the rigors of the office and deal with Vladimir Putin until he’s 86 years old.
Democrats know that as long as Mr. Biden remains in the race, the news cycle will be dominated by his infirmities. Even if Mr. Biden defies the establishment and marches to the nomination, Democratic divisions and unhappiness will be an almost daily story. Mr. Trump might help now and then by reminding voters why they dislike him. But there is, to reverse Mr. Biden’s formulation, no deus ex machina coming to save the President’s campaign.
***
The backroom conversations are already underway about what to do if, or more likely when, Mr. Biden bows out. The encomiums will be effusive. He will be praised as if he is George Washington at the Chicago convention.
The establishment consensus is already forming that the only alternative is Vice President Kamala Harris. There will be some grumbling that she also trails Mr. Trump in the polls, and she will have to defend inflation and other parts of Mr. Biden’s record. Democrats would do better to have an open contest and settle it at the convention, which would grip the world’s attention.
But the establishment in a party that reveres identity politics will fear taking the nomination away from a minority woman. That argument is for another day. For now the nation waits for Mr. Biden to take the Almighty’s call.
wsj.com |
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| To: Bill Wolf who wrote (12078) | 7/8/2024 6:00:37 PM | | From: Bill Wolf | | | | By The Editorial Board
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
For voters who held out hope that President Biden’s failure to communicate during last month’s debate was an aberration, the intervening days have offered little comfort.
Donald Trump’s candidacy for a second term poses a grave threat to American democracy. Mr. Biden, instead of campaigning vigorously to disprove doubts and demonstrate that he can beat Mr. Trump, has maintained a scripted and controlled schedule of public appearances. He has largely avoided taking questions from voters or journalists — the kinds of interactions that reveal his limitations and caused him so much trouble on the debate stage. And when he has cast aside his teleprompter, most notably during a 22-minute interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Friday, he has continued to appear as a man in decline.
The president, elected in 2020 as an antidote to Mr. Trump’s malfeasance and mendacity, is now trying to defy reality. For more than a year, voters have made it unquestionably clear in surveys and interviews that they harbor significant doubts about Mr. Biden’s physical and mental fitness for office. Mr. Biden has disregarded the concerns of those voters — his fellow citizens — and put the country at significant risk by continuing to insist that he is the best Democrat to defeat Mr. Trump.
Since his feeble debate performance, multiple polls have shown that both Mr. Biden’s approval rating and his chance of beating Mr. Trump have markedly dropped from their already shaky levels. In response, he has adopted a favorite theme of the floundering politician, insisting that the polls are wrong in showing that his presidency is historically unpopular. Even if the polls were off by historic amounts, they would still show overwhelming skepticism about his fitness. The latest Times/Siena poll showed that 74 percent of voters think that Mr. Biden is too old to serve, an increase of five percentage points since the debate and not a figure that can be attributed to some kind of error or bias.
He has denied that age is diminishing his abilities, not even bringing up the subject in a lengthy letter to congressional Democrats issued on Monday. In that letter, he insisted that he is the candidate best equipped to defeat Mr. Trump in November — thereby dismissing the potential candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris or any other younger, more vigorous Democrat, and in effect asking the American people to trust him instead of their own lying eyes.
It’s not enough to blame the press, the donors, the pundits or the other elite groups for trying to push him out, as he did in the letter. In fact, to use his own words, “the voters — and the voters alone — decide the nominee of the Democratic Party.” But Democratic leaders shouldn’t rely solely on the judgment of the few voters who turned out in this year’s coronation primaries. They should listen instead to the much larger group of voters who have been telling every pollster in America their concerns for a long time. Mr. Biden has to pay attention to the will of the broader electorate that will determine the outcome in November.
At times, Mr. Biden has seemed to hover on the verge of self-awareness, as when he reportedly told Democratic governors last week that he needs to sleep more, work less and avoid public events after 8 p.m. But he has resisted the obvious conclusion that a man who needs to clock out at 8 should not attempt to perform simultaneously two of the world’s most difficult and all-consuming jobs — serving as president and running for president.
From the grass roots to the highest levels of the party, Democrats who want to defeat Mr. Trump in November should speak plainly to Mr. Biden. They need to tell him that his defiance threatens to hand victory to Mr. Trump. They need to tell him that he is embarrassing himself and endangering his legacy. He needs to hear, plain and clear, that he is no longer an effective spokesman for his own priorities.
The party needs a candidate who can stand up to Mr. Trump. It needs a nominee who can present Americans with a compelling alternative to Mr. Trump’s bleak vision for America.
Elected Democratic leaders have personal experience of Mr. Biden’s decline. Representative Don Beyer of Virginia reportedly told colleagues on Sunday that the president “really has trouble putting two sentences together” — an account reminiscent of the special counsel Robert Hur’s description of Mr. Biden early this year as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
But since the debate, most elected Democrats have resisted taking a public stand, instead waiting quietly and hopefully for Mr. Biden to arrive at the necessary conclusion. Mr. Beyer’s office issued a statement after his comments were reported insisting that he still supports Mr. Biden. Others have voiced concerns without their names attached, perhaps hoping their anxiety would trickle back to the president.
But a whisper campaign is inadequate to this moment, because the moment is urgent. The longer Mr. Biden continues his grasp on the nomination, the harder it will be to replace him, as he certainly knows. The country has already seen what happens to a party that binds itself to the ambitions of one individual, and it did not turn out well for Republicans, who have lost their way.
For those at the helm of the Democratic Party — including the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer; the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries; and even the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi — the time has arrived to speak forcefully to the president and the public about the need for a new candidate, before time runs out for other candidates to make their case to the party’s convention delegates.
These Democratic leaders know that the presidency is not a day job, and Mr. Biden needs to hear from them and others that the security of and stakes for America are too high to continue to move forward with Mr. Biden as the nominee.
If their reticence up to now was partly a show of respect and partly a calculation that Mr. Biden would be more receptive to private counsel than to public criticism, it is increasingly clear that the president is unwilling to accept the reality of his situation. He is engaging in a staring contest with Democratic leaders, and he appears to be winning. The only way to persuade Mr. Biden to accept the need for new leadership is to demonstrate that the party is no longer following him.
Mr. Biden and his defenders say that voters should focus on his accomplishments during his three and a half years as president. It is an impressive record. But the classic Wall Street warning applies to politicians, too: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. The question confronting voters is not whether Mr. Biden has been an effective president, but whether he can beat Mr. Trump in November and govern effectively thereafter.
Mr. Biden also argued in his Monday letter that the focus on his own abilities was distracting Democrats from the work of defeating Mr. Trump. But it is precisely because of the importance of defeating Mr. Trump that Americans are preoccupied with Mr. Biden’s decline.
Mr. Trump was the worst president in modern American history. He is a felon convicted of breaking the law as part of his campaign to win the 2016 election. Four years later, after his multiple attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election failed, he incited an attack on Congress aimed to keep himself in power. During the current campaign, he has promised an even more unrestrained version of himself if re-elected, even refusing to disavow violence on his behalf.
If elected, he has promised to turn the federal bureaucracy and even the Justice Department into weapons of his will to hurt his perceived political enemies. (With the aid of the three justices he appointed, the Supreme Court just made it possible for him to break the law in doing so with no fear of criminal prosecution.) And he has made clear that he will surround himself with people who support his plans. He will work to further restrict the reproductive rights of women. He will roll back environmental rules, allowing companies to pollute the water and the air. His belligerent, erratic, go-it-alone approach to foreign policy will undermine the nation’s interests and its security, encouraging Vladimir Putin and other authoritarians around the globe.
By departing the race, Mr. Biden can focus public attention on Mr. Trump’s capacity to perform the job of president. Mr. Trump, of course, should also withdraw from this race, not least because of his own cognitive deficiencies and incessant lying. He, too, is not the man he was four years ago. He also makes fewer public appearances and refuses to answer questions about his health. His habitual mendacity now frequently wanders into nonsensical incoherence. He would be the oldest person ever to be inaugurated as president — older than Mr. Biden was in 2021.
Mr. Trump is manifestly unfit to serve as president, (AMEN BROTHER!) and there is reason to believe a majority of the American people still can be rallied against his candidacy. But Democrats will struggle to press that case with voters so long as their own standard-bearer is a man who also appears unfit to serve as president for the next four years, albeit for very different reasons.
The 2024 presidential election is not a contest between two men, or even between two political parties. It is a battle for who we are as a nation.
President Biden clearly understands the stakes. But he seems to have lost track of his own role in this national drama. As the situation has become more dire, he has come to regard himself as indispensable. He does not seem to understand that he is now the problem — and that the best hope for Democrats to retain the White House is for him to step aside.
nytimes.com
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| From: Bill Wolf | 7/11/2024 11:34:26 AM | | | | | | What Biden’s Exit Could Do for Democrats
They want a new candidate to battle Trump in November. It isn’t too late.
By Karl Rove
July 10, 2024 at 5:24 pm ET
President Biden insists he’s staying in the White House race. If that doesn’t change, it’ll be because of his selfishness and congressional Democrats’ pusillanimity. Both have kept Mr. Biden’s deeply flawed candidacy afloat.
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi has gently raised the issue, but until Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries inform Mr. Biden that for the sake of party and country it’s time to pack up, he’s not going. So far, Messrs. Schumer and Jeffries haven’t found the courage to tell their increasingly infirm and isolated standard-bearer the truth. If he loses in November—which is likely—they’ll bear much of the blame.
Some Democratic senators and representatives have expressed deep concerns about Mr. Biden’s ability to win after his catastrophic debate performance. Many more have remained publicly silent, despite knowing the debate confirmed voters’ fears that Mr. Biden lacks the mental acuity and stamina to be president. The president told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos last week that his debate disaster provided “no indication of any serious condition.” Voters know better.
Mr. Biden insisted that “the Lord Almighty’s not comin’ down” to force his withdrawal. But he’s mistaken to say he’s the person most qualified to beat Mr. Trump. He may be the only Democrat likely to lose to him.
It’s delusional for Mr. Biden to believe he’s winning the race. But since the president is getting political advice from his son Hunter, it’s clear he doesn’t have a rational decision-making process. Bottom line: No presidential candidate whose party is as severely divided, dispirited and unenthusiastic as Democrats are today has ever won.
Rather than accept the national consensus that the president isn’t up to the job, Team Biden is trying to push past this moment. But teleprompter speeches before small crowds, call-ins to friendly radio and television hosts, and a handful of awkward public appearances in the next few weeks won’t turn this around—especially since Mr. Biden continues stumbling even in the most controlled settings.
One group is very enthusiastic about Mr. Biden’s insistence on staying in the race: Team Trump. That campaign team understands that Mr. Biden’s debate performance now makes it difficult for Mr. Trump to blow the race. As long as the former president sounds sensible, avoids recording devices on golf courses and stays away from Truth Social late at night, he has the upper hand.
What if Mr. Biden decides to withdraw? That would upend everything.
Contrary to what Mr. Biden’s supporters say, the convention to replace him need not degenerate into a brawl. Hopefuls might slip opposition research to journalists to discredit or weaken their competitors, but that’s as far as the mudslinging is likely to go. Any Democrat who ran would understand that public nastiness is a sure path to defeat and perhaps even to future irrelevance. Outwardly, each would accentuate the positive by arguing he or she is the best Democrat to beat Mr. Trump.
All but 43 of the 3,939 convention delegates were slated by the Biden campaign. The Chicago gathering won’t be a bunch of Bernie Bros or “Squad” members; instead, it’ll be mostly normal Democrats who want to win the election. If no candidate gets a first-ballot majority when the regular delegates vote, then 739 Democratic so-called superdelegates can vote. Talk about a crew of practical politicos focused on victory. And we’ll be glued to our screens the entire convention.
Vice President Kamala Harris would be the favorite but hardly the sure thing. Her 2020 bid revealed that she’s a weak candidate. Her unfavorable numbers are worse than Mr. Biden’s and Mr. Trump’s. And she’s in charge of border policy: How has that worked out? If there’s a new nominee, that person could keep Ms. Harris as vice president to avoid ditching the first black and Asian-American female veep.
It’s true Mr. Biden’s war chest can’t be transferred to any candidate except Ms. Harris—and only after he’s nominated and then withdraws. But it can be transferred to a super PAC supporting the Democratic nominee.
Money may not matter as much for a new face. Remember this winter when polls pitted Republican Nikki Haley against Mr. Biden in a hypothetical matchup? She led him in December by 6 percentage points in a Fox poll and in January by 8 points in a YouGov-CBS News poll and 13 points in a CNN survey. If Democrats picked Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, they could find themselves similarly ahead. Americans want new faces.
Mr. Biden’s fundraising email on Monday said that “this election is bigger than me or you.” If he really believes that, the president should exit the race.
Mr. Rove helped organize the political-action committee American Crossroads and is author of “The Triumph of William McKinley” (Simon & Schuster, 2015).
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| From: Bill Wolf | 7/18/2024 8:21:12 AM | | | | | | Business | Schumpeter
Tech bros love J.D. Vance. Many CEOs are scared stiff
Donald Trump’s running-mate has a deep-rooted resentment of big business
Jul 17th 2024
J.D. Vance’s life is full of twists and turns. His memoir from 2016, “Hillbilly Elegy”, chronicles how a boy from a drug-afflicted home in the Ohio rustbelt, who almost flunked high school, made it to Yale Law School. As a bestselling author, celebrated by liberals for his unflinching portrayal of left-behind people and places, he turned staunchly anti-establishment, attacking what he saw as business elites benefiting from moving factories abroad and paying low wages at home. As a venture capitalist, he was mentored in Silicon Valley by Peter Thiel, a conservative contrarian who then backed him for the Senate. Now he crusades against the very tech giants that, like Meta, owner of Facebook, made Mr Thiel billions as an early investor. He was once a “never-Trumper”. Now he is Donald Trump’s vice-presidential running-mate.
economist.com |
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| From: Bill Wolf | 7/24/2024 8:51:06 AM | | | | | | The moral bankruptcy of Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz
Two of Silicon Valley’s famous venture capitalists made a case for backing Trump: that their ability to make money is the only value that matters.
By Elizabeth Lopatto, a reporter who writes about tech, money, and human behavior. She joined The Verge in 2014 as science editor. Previously, she was a reporter at Bloomberg.
Last week, the founders of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz declared their allegiance to Donald Trump in their customary fashion: talking about money on a podcast.
“Sorry, Mom,” Ben Horowitz says in an episode of The Ben & Marc Show. “I know you’re going to be mad at me for this. But, like, we have to do it.”
Marc Andreessen and Horowitz insist they voted for Democrats until now. They are friends with liberals. They claim to be nervous about the social blowback they will receive for this, especially because of the historically progressive nature of the tech industry and the Bay Area.
.
.
.
.
So this VC cabal is trading against the basic principles of America — not merely against personal freedom, but democracy itself — in the hopes of profit. It’s not the first time tech has made the trade against freedom; IBM made it during the Holocaust.
In venture capital, you are what you fund. Andreessen and Horowitz understand this, even embody it. But they aren’t just funding the issues they discuss on their podcast; they are funding Trump and Vance. That means those donations are anti-abortion, anti-immigration, and possibly even anti-democracy because that is what the Trump / Vance ticket stands for. These are not subsidiary issues: these are now what two of Silicon Valley’s most prominent figures now stand for, too. Is that a good investment?
theverge.com
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| From: Bill Wolf | 7/24/2024 5:41:40 PM | | | | | | The Secret Battle for the Future of the Murdoch Empire
Rupert Murdoch, the patriarch, has moved to change the family’s irrevocable trust to preserve his media businesses as a conservative force. Several of his children are fighting back.
July 24, 2024Updated 5:22 p.m. ET
Rupert Murdoch is locked in a secret legal battle against three of his children over the future of the family’s media empire, as he moves to preserve it as a conservative political force after his death, according to a sealed court document obtained by The New York Times.
Mr. Murdoch, 93, set the drama in motion late last year, when he made a surprise move to change the terms of the Murdochs’ irrevocable family trust to ensure that his eldest son and chosen successor, Lachlan, would remain in charge of his vast collection of television networks and newspapers.
The trust currently hands control of the family business to the four oldest children when Mr. Murdoch dies. But he is arguing in court that only by empowering Lachlan to run the company without interference from his more politically moderate siblings can he preserve its conservative editorial bent, and thus protect its commercial value for all his heirs.
Those three siblings — James, Elisabeth and Prudence — were caught completely off-guard by their father’s effort to rewrite what was supposed to be an inviolable trust and have united to stop him. Remarkably, the ensuing battle has been playing out entirely out of public view.
Last month, the Nevada probate commissioner found that Mr. Murdoch could amend the trust if he is able to show he is acting in good faith and for the sole benefit of his heirs, according to a copy of his 48-page decision.
A trial to determine whether Mr. Murdoch is in fact acting in good faith is expected to start in September. Hanging in the balance will be the future of one of the most politically influential media companies in the English-speaking world.
Representatives for the two sides declined to comment. Both have hired high-powered litigators. The three Murdoch siblings are represented by Gary A. Bornstein, the co-head of litigation at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Mr. Murdoch is represented by Adam Streisand, a trial lawyer at Sheppard Mullin who has been involved in estate disputes concerning Michael Jackson and Britney Spears.
Few media stories have been watched as closely as the succession battle over the Murdoch empire, both because of the irresistibly Shakespearean nature of the drama, and because of the empire’s outsize political influence. Mr. Murdoch’s decision in 2018 to formally designate Lachlan as his heir put to rest years of speculation over his wishes for the company.
What it did not do, though, was ensure that Mr. Murdoch’s wishes would survive him: The existing trust gives all four of his oldest children an equal voice in the company’s future.
The Murdoch family has been divided before. James and Elisabeth at one point competed with each other and Lachlan to eventually take over the company, and at various times they have clashed with one another and their father. James, who once helped run the company with Lachlan, left it in 2019 and now oversees an investment fund. Elisabeth runs a successful movie studio, Sister, and has for years sought to position herself as the “Switzerland” of the family, maintaining good relations with all. Prudence, Murdoch’s oldest child and the only one from his first marriage, has been the least involved in the family business and has remained the most private of the children.
But given Mr. Murdoch’s advanced age, this battle has all of the makings of a final fight for control of his sprawling media conglomerates, which own Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and major newspapers and television outlets in Australia and Britain. It has already driven a new wedge into the famously fractured family.
Politics, and power, are at the root of the struggle. Since Mr. Murdoch designed the trust nearly 25 years ago, the family’s political views have diverged sharply. During Donald J. Trump’s rise, Mr. Murdoch and Lachlan became more closely aligned, pushing the company’s most influential outlet, Fox News, further to the right, making the other three children increasingly uncomfortable.
 
James Murdoch and his wife Kathryn, Prudence Murdoch, and Keith Tyson and Elisabeth Murdoch.Credit...Danny Moloshok/Reuters; PA Images/Alamy; Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images
Mr. Murdoch has called his effort to change the trust Project Harmony because he hoped that it might head off a looming family struggle when he dies, according to a person with knowledge of the family. But it has had the opposite effect.
After filing his petition to amend the trust, Mr. Murdoch met separately with Elisabeth and Prudence in London, hoping to win their support, this person said. Instead, they were furious. Elisabeth responded to the possibility with a string of expletives.
Days later, on Dec. 6, Mr. Murdoch’s representatives went ahead with the motion to make the changes at a hastily called special meeting of the trust in Reno, Nev. The representatives for the three children sought to adjourn the meeting and block the proposed changes but failed, according to the court decision.
The fight has left Mr. Murdoch estranged from three of his children in his twilight years. None of them attended his wedding to Elena Zhukova, his fifth wife, in California last month. (Lachlan did.)
In a handout image provided by News Corp, Rupert Murdoch and Elena Zhukova at their June 2024 wedding ceremony at his vineyard estate in Bel Air, Calif.Credit...News Corp., via Associated Press
Though the trust is irrevocable, it contains a narrow provision allowing for changes done in good faith and with the sole purpose of benefiting all of its members. Mr. Murdoch’s lawyers have argued that he is trying to protect James, Elisabeth and Prudence by ensuring that they won’t be able to moderate Fox’s politics or disrupt its operations with constant fights over leadership.
According to the court’s decision, Mr. Murdoch was concerned that the “lack of consensus” among his children “would impact the strategic direction at both companies including a potential reorientation of editorial policy and content.” It states that his intention was to “consolidate decision-making power in Lachlan’s hands and give him permanent, exclusive control” over the company.
The document makes it clear that Mr. Murdoch’s actions have pushed Elisabeth, Prudence and James into a joint posture against him. The siblings share the single legal counsel and are fighting to retain their voice in the company’s future, arguing that their father is trying to disenfranchise them. They say Mr. Murdoch’s move violates the spirit of the initial trust, enshrined in its “equal governance provision,” and that it was not done in good faith.
This will be one of the main issues in the trial. As the Nevada probate commissioner, Edmund Gorman Jr., wrote in his decision: “A rational fact finder could find that the determination that the Amendment was in the best interests of the beneficiaries was made with ‘[d]ishonesty of belief, purpose, or motive,’ i.e., in bad faith.”
The action is taking place in a Reno probate court, which is devoted to dealing with family trusts and estates. Nevada is a popular state for dynastic family trusts because of its favorable probate laws and privacy protections. The decision obtained by The Times contains a review of the facts by a probate commissioner whose role is to adjudicate cases before sending any unresolved issues to a judge for trial, as he did here.
The trust holds the family’s shares in Mr. Murdoch’s empire, which is now mainly divided between two companies: Fox, which includes Fox News and the Fox broadcast network, and News Corp, which holds his major newspapers.
All six of Mr. Murdoch’s children have an equal share of the trust’s equity. That includes Chloe and Grace, the two younger children he had with his third wife, Wendi Deng. But those two have no voting rights.
As of now, the voting rights are shared among Mr. Murdoch and his four oldest children through their own handpicked representatives on the trust’s board. But Mr. Murdoch has the ultimate control and cannot be outvoted. After he dies, Lachlan, James, Elisabeth and Prudence each get a single vote. As Mr. Murdoch put it in an interview with Charlie Rose in 2006: “If I go under a bus tomorrow, it will be the four of them who will have to decide which of the ones should lead them.”
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Rupert Murdoch with his sons Lachlan, left, and James, in 2016.Credit...Leon Neal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The probate commissioner’s review of the facts shows that Mr. Murdoch is moving to expand Lachlan’s voting power to secure a majority and ensure that he cannot be challenged. The changes would not affect anyone’s ownership stake in the company.
To bolster his argument that he’s making the change in order to benefit all of his heirs, Mr. Murdoch has moved to replace two of his longtime executives as his personal representatives on the trust with two people with more independence. One is William P. Barr, an attorney general under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Trump, who was also a guest at Mr. Murdoch’s most recent wedding.
The court document shows that Mr. Barr is leading Mr. Murdoch’s effort to rewrite the trust. It quotes Mr. Barr’s statement to the court when he introduced Mr. Murdoch’s move at the special meeting of the trust on Dec. 6. Mr. Murdoch, he said, “knew the companies and the environment better than anyone else and believed that Lachlan was in the best position to carry on that successful strategy.”
The basic contours of the trust date back to Murdoch’s divorce from his second wife, Anna Mann, mother to James, Elisabeth and Lachlan, whom Mr. Murdoch divorced before marrying Ms. Deng in 1999.
Concerned about the destructive potential of a dynastic succession fight, Ms. Mann insisted that the divorce settlement give the four children equal control over the empire, people close to the family have said. As part of their agreement, Mr. Murdoch locked this provision in place permanently through an irrevocable trust.
But Mr. Murdoch came to see that provision as untenable after he placed Lachlan in charge of Fox and News Corp in 2019. A primary source of the problem was his younger son, James, who had been passed over in favor of Lachlan. In recent years, people close to James and his wife Kathryn have said that after Mr. Murdoch’s death they would consider joining with Elisabeth and Prudence to wrest control from Lachlan and tame the companies’ wilder right wing instincts.
James and Lachlan shared operating responsibility for the companies from 2015 to 2019, a relationship that frayed during the Trump administration, as the two split over Fox’s fawning treatment of Mr. Trump. Lachlan and his father dismissed James’s concerns, pointing to the network’s record ratings. James left the business following Lachlan’s ascension to chairman and chief executive in 2019, and stepped down from the News Corp board in 2020, citing “disagreements over certain editorial content published by the company’s news outlets.”
James and his wife, Kathryn, a longtime climate change activist, remain occasional, and cautious, public critics of the family empire. After wildfires ravaged Australia in early 2020 they shared their “frustration with some of the News Corp and Fox coverage” of climate change in a statement to The Daily Beast, noting “the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia.” After the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol in Washington, James indirectly criticized Fox News, saying that unnamed “outlets that propagate lies to their audience” had “unleashed insidious and uncontrollable forces that will be with us for years.”
In the spring of 2019, Mr. Murdoch’s children — including the two children he had with Ms. Deng — received payouts of roughly $2 billion each from Murdoch’s sale of his movie studios and other assets to the Walt Disney Company. James and Kathryn announced at the time that they would devote part of that fortune to causes like climate change and combating “high-tech illiberalism.”
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Rupert Murdoch with, from left, Chloe Murdoch, Grace Murdoch and Wendi Deng Murdoch in 2019.Credit...Christopher Smith/Invision, via Associated Press
According to several of his associates, Mr. Murdoch has come to resent James’s criticisms and complaints, given that the family empire, which Mr. Murdoch built almost single-handedly, has made James and his siblings multibillionaires. The court document indicates that Mr. Murdoch’s representatives have referred to him in their own communications as the “troublesome beneficiary.”
James had differed with his father and brother over Fox News, arguing its play to Mr. Trump for short-term ratings gains would undercut its parent company’s long-term prospects, a fight he lost before parting ways with them.
Since leaving the company, James has been managing his own portfolio of investments, with a controlling interest in the company that runs Art Basel and major stakes in media companies in India.
It has always been unclear how serious James was about trying to make any move against Lachlan, or if he would have the backing of his sisters for such an effort. The fact that they have come together to preserve the trust suggests that he and his sisters are now solidly aligned against Lachlan, and that they may well try to oust him, or at least try to influence the direction of the company, after their father’s death.
Whether they will have the legal power to do so will soon be determined in a courtroom in Reno.
Benjamin Mullin contributed reporting.
Jim Rutenberg is a writer at large for The Times and The New York Times Magazine and writes most often about media and politics. More about Jim Rutenberg
Jonathan Mahler, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, has been writing for the magazine since 2001. More about Jonathan Mahler
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| From: Bill Wolf | 7/29/2024 8:06:21 AM | | | | | | North Korean officials looking for medicines for Kim's obesity-related health problems, Seoul says
HYUNG-JIN KIM
Mon, July 29, 2024 at 7:06 AM EDT
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has regained weight and is suffering from obesity-related health problems including high blood pressure and diabetes, and his officials are looking for new medicines abroad to treat them, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers on Monday.
The 40-year-old Kim, known for heavy drinking and smoking, comes from a family with a history of heart problems. Both his father and grandfather, who ruled North Korea before his 2011 inheritance of power, died of heart issues.
Some observers said Kim, who is about 170 centimeters (5 feet, 8 inches) tall and previously weighed 140 kilograms (308 pounds), appeared to have lost a large amount of weight in 2021, likely from changing his diet. But recent state media footage show he has regained the weight.
On Monday, the National Intelligence Service, South Korea’s main spy agency, told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing that Kim weighs about 140 kilograms (308 pounds) again and belongs to a high-risk group for certain diseases, according to Lee Seong Kweun, one of the lawmakers who attended the meeting.
Lee said the NIS told lawmakers that Kim has shown symptoms of high blood pressure and diabetes since his early 30s and that he will likely eventually suffer from heart disease if he fails to improve his health.
Another lawmaker, Park Sunwon, said the NIS believes Kim’s obesity is linked to his drinking, smoking and stress.
Park and Lee quoted the NIS as saying it obtained intelligence that North Korean officials have been trying to get new medicines abroad for high blood pressure and diabetes for Kim.
North Korea is one of the most secretive countries in the world, and there are virtually no ways for outsiders to know Kim's exact health conditions. The NIS also has a spotty record in confirming developments in North Korea.
Kim's health is the focus of keen attention outside North Korea since he hasn't formally anointed a successor who would take charge of the country's advancing nuclear arsenal targeting the United States and its allies if he was incapacitated.
The NIS, in its Monday briefing, maintained its assessment that Kim's preteen daughter, reportedly named Kim Ju Ae, appears to be bolstering her status as her father's likely heir apparent. But the NIS said it still cannot rule out the possibility that she could be replaced by one of her siblings because she hasn't been officially designated as her father's successor.
Intense speculation about Kim Ju Ae, who is about 10 years old, flared as she has accompanied her father on a slew of high-profile public events starting in late 2022. State media called her Kim Jong Un's “most beloved” or “respected” child and churned out footage and photos proving her rising political standing and closeness with her father.
The NIS told lawmakers that at least 60% of Kim Ju Ae's public activities have involved attending military events with her father.
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| To: Bill Wolf who wrote (12085) | 7/29/2024 8:08:15 AM | | From: Bill Wolf | | | | What happens if Rupert Murdoch wins?If Lachlan Murdoch comes out on top in the (latest) succession fight over the media empire built by his father, Rupert, what would it mean for the family’s companies?
The Times’s Edmund Lee, who has covered the Murdochs for years, set down his copy of “King Lear" to examine Lachlan’s record for clues about what he might do next.
Murdoch wants to alter the family trust to hand majority control of his companies to his elder son. Under the terms of the so-called irrevocable trust, his four oldest children — Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan and James — would have equal control of the empire after Murdoch dies.
Prudence, James and Elisabeth are fighting to prevent any change.
Lachlan’s career is mixed. He left the family company amid a bitter dispute with his father in 2005 and started his own investment firm. A bet on a radio network worked out. A big investment in a TV network did not.
Lachlan returned to the fold about a decade later and became his family’s heir apparent, taking over as chair of News Corp and executive chair and C.E.O. of Fox when his father retired last September. (Murdoch became chairman emeritus of both companies.)
Lachlan’s big deals haven’t worked out. Last year, Lachlan failed to reunite the two parts of his media empire after investors balked at his first big attempted deal since taking charge.
He also didn’t manage to pull off the sale of a real estate listings business.
The Murdoch empire still faces serious structural problems. When your business relies primarily on newspaper and cable subscriptions, chances are you’re seeing fewer dollars come into the register:
- News Corp, which publishes The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, as well as influential titles in Britain and Australia, cut 5 percent of its work force last year. But The Journal is a bright spot, with digital subscriptions having grown an average of 17 percent a year since 2019.
- Fox has been steadier. N.F.L. games on its broadcast network are consistent money makers and viewership is solid at Fox News. Even so, investors expect total revenue to be essentially flat on average over the next few years.
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What will Lachlan do if he wins control? He could try again to reunite Fox and News Corp, but may have to win over investors via moves including selling off weaker businesses like the newspapers (except for The Journal).
If Murdoch’s fight to protect Lachlan fails, his oldest son is sure to face angry siblings who could unite to demand sweeping changes across both of the family’s companies after Murdoch dies — including who runs them. |
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