Moments later, Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who sits between Booker and Harris, passed by. “Wish they were somewhere else?” he said with a grin, playing along with my question, before offering a serious reply. “They have been focused totally on the trial,” he said. “I can tell you that all we’ve discussed is the trial, and they’ve both taken notes and they’re both fully and completely attentive to what’s going on.”“I’m sure it’s mixed feelings,” Bennet told me with a rueful smile when I caught up with him in the basement of the Capitol Thursday night to ask how he thought Booker and Harris were faring. As for himself, he’s headed to New Hampshire tomorrow to continue fulfilling his promise to hold 50 town-hall meetings, even if his message of commonsense moderation has failed to catch on with fired-up primary voters. He also insisted that his forced attendance at the trial—he frequently stands up to stretch—hasn’t been disappointing.I stood with Bennet as he wolfed down a roast-beef sandwich in a hallway during a quick dinner break. “I think the House managers have presented such a compelling case. I think our democracy is at real risk,” he added, bemoaning McConnell’s refusal to allow a hearing on Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, and his restrictive rules for the impeachment trial. “If this becomes a permanent state of affairs, this is what ancient observers said would be the end of the republic. We are at risk of having a set of rules that won’t allow the American people to see what the facts are.”Booker’s and Harris’s primary-season comedown is nothing, of course, compared with the fate suffered by sitting senators such as George McGovern, John Kerry, and John McCain, who won their parties’ nomination only to lose the biggest prize in the general election, and returned to Capitol Hill as one humble face among 100. After his losing campaigns for president, Senator Bob Dole liked to joke that he’d slept like a baby: “Every two hours I woke up and cried.”In 1980, Ted Kennedy returned to the Senate after his failed primary challenge to Jimmy Carter. But he was a senior member and chair of the Judiciary Committee, and slipped right back into place, his former aide Bill Carrick recalls. A bigger blow was the Democrats’ loss of the Senate to the GOP in Ronald Reagan’s victory that fall. “Being in the minority for the first time, now that is a transition,” Carrick says. “Of course, he then became the de facto leader of the Reagan opposition in the ’80s.”But dropping out before a single vote was cast still stings, and Booker’s and Harris’s body language in the chamber has seemed to reflect that this week. Booker tends to take notes on his lap, Harris on her desk. Booker rests his chin in his hand; Harris folds her arms across her chest. That’s about the extent of the allowable variations in posture.

“Patriotism is love of country, and you cannot love your country unless you love your fellow countrymen and women,” he told an Iowa audience last month. Republican or Democrat — we are brothers and sisters under the skin.The second is the dogged but radical hopefulness that he inherited from the black church. Booker uses religious categories more naturally than any other candidate: grace, faith, sacrificial love, the command to love your neighbor as yourself, the awareness that love has a redemptive power to cast out fear. The gospels are pretty clear that the correct response to hate is love. “Love means that I see you, I see your worth, I see your dignity,” Booker said at that rally last month. “Your destiny is my destiny.”The third emotion is simple gratitude. Booker had to overcome challenges in life, and he has seen many more, but his family story is a success story. The church raised money for his grandmother to go to school. His parents worked at IBM. He was elected class president in high school before going off to Stanford and Yale Law. Others see America’s institutions as systems of oppression, but Booker calls the founders “imperfect geniuses.” America needs reform, but our inheritance is a precious one.The knife fight view is correct if you believe that war is our permanent state — if you believe that our evolutionary roots sentence us to inevitable tribal conflict and the only choice is conquer or be conquered.But I’d say that Booker has a fuller and more realistic view of our situation. Fanaticism is not the normal human state. Fanaticism is a disease that grows out of existential anxiety. It grows when people fear that they are being delegitimized. It grows when people are isolated and insulated from one another. It grows when you have leaders, like our president, who reduce everything to us/them stereotypes and so poison the public mind.

The CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google faced tough questions and, at times, hostile criticism about their business practices during a House antitrust hearing. The session highlighted how four of America’s five most valuable companies are under scrutiny from both sides of the aisle. Photo: U.S. House Judiciary Committee/Reuters (Originally Published July 30, 2020) By,and Sept. 15, 2020 7:17 pm ET WASHINGTON—The Federal Trade Commission is gearing up to file a possible antitrust lawsuit against Facebook Inc. by year-end, according to people familiar with the matter, in a case that would challenge the company’s dominant position in social media. The case preparations come after the FTC has spent more than a year investigating concerns that Facebook has been using its powerful market position to stifle competition, part of a broader effort by U.S. antitrust authorities to examine the conduct of a handful of dominant tech... To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In Continue reading your article with a WSJ membership View Membership Options

When it comes to Donald Trump’s attacks on migrants, his administration’s latest policies prove that there are no limits. What started with a Trump Tower claim in June 2015 that Mexican rapists were streaming across the border has morphed into a wholesale attack on people fleeing for their lives. At every step, the administration has turned to imprisonment as its favored means of punishing migrants who are already here and convincing others to stay away.Immigration and Customs Enforcement already holds more people in its facilities than ever before. Its cousin agency within the US Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, routinely claims to be overcapacity. Widely shared photographs of families caged under overpasses make those claims more than credible.Trump officials repeatedly say that they need more detention beds, but the most recent round of immigration policies promises to throw more people into the nation’s overflowing immigration prison system. Last week, the Trump administration announced that it would expand a fast-track deportation procedure long in place along the border but limited to people with less than 14 days in the country, to the nation’s interior. Through this watered-down legal process, officially called expedited removal, migrants are funneled through the immigration system without ever stepping foot inside a courtroom. In the cold tone of bureaucratic regulations, “such alien is not entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge”. Instead of a neutral third party, front-line law enforcement officers from DHS decide who to detain and deport.All of these people will be taken into Ice’s bloated immigration prison system. There they are likely to remain until they are forcibly removed from the United States. In the 1996 law creating the expedited removal procedure, Congress declared that detention was required. There was a narrow exception for asylum seekers. Under a Bush-era legal decision, migrants who successfully navigated the beginning stages of the asylum process could ask a judge for release. They were never guaranteed to get out, but they could at least plead their case for escape from this detention and removal vortex.Under Trump, it’s easier to get detained and harder to get out. His administration has shown a remarkable willingness to lock up asylum applicants, claiming that they are more likely to be scamming the United States than making a last-ditch plea for survival. In April, Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, ordered immigration judges to stop releasing migrants even if they have a credible fear of being persecuted in their home countries. The attorney general wrote the Bush-era decision “was wrongly decided”. A federal court has temporarily blocked Barr’s order from fully going into effect, requiring immigration officials to allow migrants to ask for release. The Trump administration is appealing, claiming: “No single district judge has legitimate authority to impose his or her open borders views on the country.”As Trump officials fight migrants’ attempts to get out of immigration prisons, the human toll of incarceration rises. Steel doors clank behind visitors and inmates wear color-coded uniforms: red for high-risk detainees, blue for low-risk, and orange for everyone in the middle. Sometimes the colors change, but the risk calculation is always the same. No matter why they are there, in the eyes of prison officials, imprisoned migrants are always a risk.Advocates are likely to go to court soon to stop Trump’s plan to expand fast-track deportations. When they do, it will be up to courts to decide whether the latest twist in the government’s prolonged campaign to lock up and deport more migrants will be allowed to proceed. If it does, the inevitable end will be more suffering. César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández is an associate professor of law at the University of Denver and author of Migrating to Prison: America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants, scheduled for release in December by The New Press

Amazon says its AI voice assistant Alexa can now guess what you might be thinking of – or what you’ve forgotten.At an event in Seattle on Thursday, the technology company unveiled a new feature called Alexa Hunches that aims to replicate human curiosity and insight using artificial intelligence.“We’ve reached a point with deep neural networks and machine learning that we can actually program intuition,” said Daniel Rausch, the vice-president in charge of Alexa’s smart home features.Once it is activated later this year, Alexa Hunches will observe its owners’ interactions with connected smart home devices like locks, lights and electricity outlets. When Alexa believes it has detected a regular pattern, such as turning off a television set before bed, the voice assistant will remind owners if they forget to do it, and offer to fix the problem.“Alexa can have hunches about smart devices that you typically leave on or off, whether that’s leaving a porch light on or locking the back door,” says Rausch.A common criticism of today’s so-called smart home systems is that they are actually pretty dumb. Many require technical expertise to set up and program, are prone to annoying glitches, and some can enable corporate surveillance. Amazon is trying to make Alexa a user-friendly gateway to simplify and secure the process – and at the same time bring the entire smart home ecosystem under its own umbrella.David Limp, Amazon’s senior vice-president in charge of its Alexa service, said a new technology called Wi-Fi Simple Set-up would make new smart home devices as easy to configure as simply plugging them in. The company was also touting a cheap new wireless chipset, costing under $10, that other electronics and appliance manufacturers could build into almost any product to add Alexa voice control.Limp unveiled an Amazon-branded budget microwave oven, costing $60, with Alexa built in, and said that dozens of other companies would soon be making everything from smart fridges, rice cookers and coffee makers to Alexa-powered televisions, speakers and more. “We imagine a future with thousands of these devices in your home,” said Limp. And beyond: Amazon also launched a small Echo Auto device that can sit on your car’s dashboard and add voice-controlled navigation and entertainment.Limp did not say how many Amazon Echo devices it had sold since introducing them in 2014, but he did say that Alexa now has tens of millions of users worldwide.The next step for Alexa, said Toni Reid, the Amazon vice-president in charge of the Alexa “experience”, was to make the AI assistant feel more human. “Features like Hunches both lengthen and deepen customer interactions,” she told the Guardian. She said that Alexa is getting better at sustaining longer conversations, and can do things such as responding to whispered commands by whispering itself. Alexa will also soon get a “Guard Mode” to warn owners if it hears something suspicious while they are away from home, such as the sound of breaking glass or a smoke alarm.With Alexa Hunches, the Amazon team says it will try not to make Alexa’s suggestions too annoying. “Hunches are great at the right time and in the right context but you might not want them when you’re in a hurry,” said Reid. Alexa will typically take a few weeks to learn its owners’ habits using their smart home devices. Using AI technology in the cloud, Alexa builds up a picture of its owners’ routines, paying attention to the time of day, weather patterns and even the changing of the seasons.Alexa Hunches will be personalised to individuals, says Reid, although it will start by looking at key times of day, such as sunrise and sunset, when people often interact with their smart home devices. Although the Hunches technology will only work with connected home gadgets for now, Reid said that Amazon would build on the technology as time goes on. That could mean Alexa suggesting your favourite music or radio shows without being asked, and ultimately (and profitably) recommending regularly purchased items for your shopping list.Limp made no mention of privacy during the Alexa launch, although Amazon says it encrypts users’ sensitive data. The company made headlines in May when Alexa accidentally sent a couple’s conversation to one of their contacts.“I’m wary of the drive to adopt more opaque systems that have the potential to impact people’s real-world lives in ways that can be problematic,” said Daniel Kahn Gillmor of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “A well-trained model for the kinds of use cases proposed is basically a summary of a person’s typical habits. I’d like to know what steps is Amazon taking to protect their users’ habits from leaking or exposing their behavior to others. And what if a Hunch goes wrong, for example failing to remind you to lock the door and you get robbed? What sort of liability should Amazon hold?”Alexa Hunches will be turned on by default, although anyone creeped out by a disembodied voice recommending that they lock all their doors will be able to turn the feature off with a simple voice command.

The US House antitrust subcommittee will soon hear testimony from the CEOs of the world’s four biggest tech companies: Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Apple’s Tim Cook.It may be the greatest concentration of wealth on a single video call the world has yet seen. The four men were worth a combined $265.8 billion on July 23—more than Finland’s GDP, or the market cap of Disney’s entire business. They’ll answer questions about whether their companies have grown too large or whether their business practices stifle competition. The hearing was originally scheduled for July 27, then pushed back to July 29.Even among tech titans, wealth inequality is rampant. Pichai and Cook’s combined net worth is a rounding error in their colleagues’ fortunes. More than two thirds of the money belongs to Bezos. Nearly all of the remaining third belongs to Mark Zuckerberg.These numbers are a rough estimate: Bezos’s wealth rises and falls by the billions every day, depending on Amazon’s stock price. And while Forbes clocks fluctuations in Bezos and Zuckerberg’s fortunes in real time, we relied on 2019 estimates published in The Street for Pichai and Cook.On the other side of the screen, the lawmakers who will be grilling the tech titans are worth $47.1 million collectively, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.Nearly half of that belongs to Jim Sensenbrenner, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin. (His great-great grandfather invented the Kotex sanitary napkin and later became the president of Kimberly-Clark.)Collectively, the subcommittee’s 15 members hold .02% as much wealth as the four CEOs do. But for a few hours, they’ll grill the executives for all they’re worth. The hearing, which will inform lawmakers’ attempts to regulate or even break up the CEOs’ businesses, could have real implications for the future of their fortunes.

Sunday’s Emmys will be the most chaotic in history. That might be just what the 72-year-old award show needs to stave off irrelevance.Due to the pandemic, the Emmys will be virtual this year. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel will “host” the event, which honors the best TV shows and actors of the last year, at 8pm ET on ABC Sept. 20 from an empty Staples Center in Los Angeles. All of the nominees, presenters, and performers will be scattered around the world, broadcasting from their homes. They were each sent a package with a laptop, microphone, ring light, and high resolution camera to shoot themselves during the show—essentially serving as their own directors for the night.“Every week, these folks come into our houses. Now we get to go to their houses and see what they are doing,” Emmys co-executive producer Reginald Hudlin said Sept. 16 on a call with reporters. Hudlin, who directed the 1990 film House Party and was once the president of entertainment for BET, is co-producing his first Emmys. (He previously co-produced the Oscars in 2016.)The at-home Emmys should provide a fun new wrinkle for viewers compared to the stale broadcasts of normal years. Nominees will accept awards from their couches in designer pajamas. They could involve their kids or pets. They could be asleep when the camera cuts to them. Anything can happen.Because of the unpredictable nature of the show—and the logistical nightmare of coordinating hundreds of live feeds from nearly a dozen different countries—the producers expect there to be issues. That’s also part of the fun.“It’s not going to work properly all the time. It’s just not, and we’ve just got to embrace that,” co-executive producer Ian Stewart said.Whatever happens, it’s clear the night has to be different from previous ceremonies. US TV ratings for the Emmys plummeted last year to an all-time low of 6.9 million viewers. The combination of cord-cutting and a tedious format has left the Emmys in a precarious position. Without some new energy, what was once one of the most-watched entertainment events of the year could eventually fall into obscurity.The producers are well aware of the trend line. They think being forced to change things up will inject enthusiasm into what they admit is a historically repetitive night.“I call it ‘award fatigue,'” Stewart said. “It’s another award and another award and another award. Someone walks out with a mic, a nomination, bang, a winner, etc. So what we tried to do is go, ‘Why don’t we break all of that up? Why don’t we try to do this stuff really differently?'”Because of the technological limitations, there won’t be a Red Carpet. Instead, the producers hope the home fashion and decor will make up for it. They also promise to experiment with how awards are presented.Ultimately, though, they don’t really know what’s going to happen—and that’s the point.“[Actors] will be sitting alone at home, eating a can of beans. I don’t know,” Hudlin said. “We are going to find out on Sunday when we turn on all of those cameras.”

The special counsel investigating claims of Russian political meddling in the US has filed new charges against two former aides to Donald Trump.Robert Mueller indicted Mr Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and business associate Rick Gates on multiple counts of tax and bank fraud.Both were charged in October with conspiracy to launder money.But there are no criminal allegations of collusion with Russia, the justice department investigation's main thrust.A spokesman for Mr Manafort said he was innocent of the latest charges. Mr Gates' lawyer is yet to respond to requests for comment, Reuters reports.What does the special counsel do?Mr Manafort resigned as chairman of the Trump campaign in August 2016 after being accused over his dealings with pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. The seasoned political operative has worked on several Republican presidential campaigns, beginning with Gerald Ford's in 1976.Thursday's 32-count indictment alleges that the pair conspired to hide more than $30m (£22m) in Mr Manafort's personal income from tax officials.It also claims that Mr Gates concealed more than $3m of his own income.The money "flowed through" a $75m offshore account controlled by them, according to the indictment filed by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia.It is also alleged the two defendants filed tax returns to the US authorities from 2010-14 that they knew to be factually incorrect.Mr Gates is accused of using his share of the cash to pay for "personal expenses, including his mortgage, children's tuition" and re-decorating his Virginia home.Earlier on Thursday a court denied Mr Manafort's request to modify the terms of his house arrest.The judge ruled that Mr Manafort's pledge to use his properties in Virginia and New York as bail collateral was "unsatisfactory".The special counsel had opposed the bail application. Mr Mueller's team argued the Manafort properties were related to "additional criminal conduct" and could be confiscated in the event of foreclosure. Trump Russia affair: Key questions answered Who's who in Russia scandal? The Trump-Russia saga in 200 words Nineteen people, including four former Trump advisers, have been indicted by the special counsel.But as President Trump has repeatedly pointed out, the ongoing inquiry has filed no charge that any of his associates colluded with an alleged Kremlin plot to influence the result of the 2016 presidential election.Mr Manafort and Mr Gates pleaded not guilty last October to 12 counts including money laundering and conspiracy against the US, relating to the pair's Ukrainian business dealings. Michael Flynn, a former US national security adviser, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI over meetings he had with the Russian Ambassador, Sergei Kislyak.George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign adviser, admitted lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians. Last week, 13 Russians were charged with tampering in the 2016 US election and a California man, Richard Pinedo, admitted an identity theft charge.This week a London-based lawyer, Alex van der Zwaan, pleaded guilty in court to making false statements when questioned about his work for Ukraine's Ministry of Justice.

closeVideoSen. Cory Booker on Trump impeachment inquiry: This is not a gleeful moment, this is very sadNew Jersey Democrat Sen. Cory Booker says Speaker Nancy Pelosi's formal impeachment inquiry is not about politics, it's about patriotism.BEDFORD, NH – Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker slammed President Trump on Thursday, calling President Trump’s urging the Ukraine leader to investigate the Biden family “despicable behavior.”The Democrat from New Jersey also termed “the revelations” from the whistleblower in the Ukraine controversy “explosive.”But Booker emphasized that even though “we are in a constitutionally challenging moment” with an impeachment inquiry in Congress underway, he didn’t believe the White House race would become all about the Trump presidency.Booker spoke with reporters following a campaign event in the first-in-the-nation presidential primary state of New Hampshire soon after an unclassified version of the complaint by an intelligence community whistleblower was released by the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday morning.The unidentified whistleblower claimed that White House officials who listened to the call in July between the president and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky were "deeply disturbed" by Trump's requests that Zelensky investigate unsubstantiated allegations against Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.Biden’s son, Hunter, served on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company owned by one of the country’s oligarchs while Biden served in then-President Obama’s administration. The then-vice president pushed in 2016 for the dismissal of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was looking into corruption at that company. The prosecutor – who also had been widely accused of overlooking corruption in his own office – later was dismissed.The president on Thursday called the whistleblower report “another fake news story” and “another witch hunt” by the Democrats.Booker claimed that the president was using “the highest office in the land.. for his own personal political agenda” and emphasized that “we are seeing evidence of that in this whistleblower report.”And he spotlighted that “clearly there's more work to be done. There needs to be a thorough investigation.”An optimistic Booker predicted that the Republican-controlled Senate “will investigate as well…there’s already been shown some good bipartisan efforts to get to the truth.”Slamming congressional Democrats, Trump on Thursday charged “they’re going to tie up our country. We can’t talk about gun regulation. We can’t talk about anything. Frankly they’re so tied up. They so screwed up. Nothing gets done.” Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey headlines the 'Politics and Eggs' speaking series, in Bedford, NH on Sept. 26, 2019 But Booker – while acknowledging that “there’s gonna be a lot of wind sucked off the sails” – added, “do not underestimate the ability for us to get things done in Washington when…we start to build relationships to get things done.”Booker, emphasizing that the presidential election needed to be more than just about Trump, told Fox News “Americans are far more sophisticated… the United States is in peril, because of corruption. But we can also deal with other issues.”Fox News' Peter Doocy contributed to this reportTara Prindiville contributed to this report.

Last month four Seattle city councilmembers proposed a new corporate tax that aims to build more affordable housing and expand services for the homeless. In response, Amazon announced this week that it will halt construction on a new building and consider subleasing to others a second building, pending the council's vote on the proposal. Together, the two buildings could have hosted at least 7,000 Amazon employees.It's the latest sign of a strained relationship between Seattle and Amazon, which employs around 45,000 people in the city. The company announced last year that it will open a second headquarters elsewhere, dubbed HQ2, that could eventually host 50,000 employees.Amazon, the second most valuable company in the world, netted $3 billion last year. Seattle's proposed "head tax" would impose an approximately $500-per-employee fee on companies with annual revenue in the city of $20 million or more, costing Amazon about $22.5 million per year based on its 45,000 employees there. That’s less than 1 percent of its annual profit. In 2021, the tax would change from a head tax to a 0.7 percent payroll tax, which the Seattle Times estimates would cost Amazon $39 million a year, or slightly more than 1 percent of last year’s profit, assuming the company employs 50,000 people in Seattle by then.1Companies threatening to leave a city, lay off workers, or slow hiring, in response to political decisions is nothing new. But it's unusual for a company to make such threats over such a relatively small tax increase says Greg LeRoy, the executive director of the corporate accountability group Good Jobs First, which opposes tax breaks for companies.Halting construction and delaying bringing new employees on imposes costs for Amazon. "I'd be very surprised to see a spreadsheet that indicated a fee that size did anything to change the calculus of whether to locate these specific jobs that were supposed to be there for business reasons," LeRoy says. LeRoy says companies in Amazon's position often get what they want in negotiations with lawmakers.Amazon confirmed it has postponed plans for the two buildings pending Seattle’s decision on the tax plan, but did not answer other questions.Amazon’s pushback against Seattle could be a cautionary tale for the 20 finalists wooing HQ2. But corporate location consultant John Boyd says that’s not likely; the cities still in the running have historically been willing to offer companies tax incentives to relocate, Boyd says.In that environment, Boyd is surprised that Seattle is pursuing the new tax. "The HQ2 announcement should have been a wake-up call," Boyd says. He notes that the competition for jobs is fierce. "We call economic development the new war between states," he says.Amazon's move puts Seattle's city council in a bind. On one hand, voters want a solution to the city's growing homelessness problem. The city's unsheltered population grew by 44 percent over the past two years to 5,500, according to a recent US Department of Housing and Urban Development report. That gives Seattle the third largest homeless population in the country.But voters also worry that antagonizing Amazon will cost them jobs. Protestors shouted down supporters of the head tax at a town hall meeting following Amazon's announcement Wednesday.The Seattle Times editorial board argued last month that the city already taxes companies heavily, and is flush from existing taxes, pointing out that the city's budget has grown by 17.4 percent since 2015. The board says the city should be able to address the homelessness problem with its existing revenue.

You could see it in their eyes as they testified before Congress. Jeff Bezos staring at Tim Cook. Cook staring at Sundar Pichai. Pichai staring at Mark Zuckerberg. Zuck going off script to throw everyone else under the bus. They were all thinking the same exact thing: I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you.The bear, in this case, is Washington: a disorganized mess of partisans and publicity-seekers temporarily united in opposition to Silicon Valley. Republicans, convinced that conservative voices are being suppressed on social media, want a pound of flesh. Democrats want justice. For the Big Four, there’s no safe harbor from the antitrust storm.The hearing itself was more circus than bread, but America’s new Rockefellers have reason to worry. Assuming the polls hold, when Joe Biden wins in November, he’ll owe a debt of gratitude to the left wing of the Democratic Party. Unlike in 2016, when Bernie Sanders supporters sat on their hands and paved the way for Donald Trump, every major progressive has embraced Biden’s candidacy. Biden’s going to owe a lot of people who want to see Silicon Valley cut down to size.Sure, I may be bad, but I’m not as bad as the next guy.”The tech giants know this. Someone’s going down. Their real fight isn’t with Congress or the Department of Justice or regulators from any particular agency. The real fight is to make another company the more appealing target.Testifying via webcam, each CEO had his precanned lines about how they’re patriots (Zuckerberg) or the embodiment of the American dream (Bezos) or a humble phone manufacturer who really shouldn’t be here (Cook). “Just as America’s technology leadership is not inevitable, Google’s continued success is not guaranteed,” Pichai argued, cleverly tying America’s fate to his own. “Google operates in highly competitive and dynamic global markets.”The point wasn’t to convince Congress that they’re angels. Facebook failed to prevent Russian interference in our elections and turned American politics into an algorithmic rage machine. Amazon’s market position is so dominant that it can erase billions of dollars in value just by looking at a competitor. Apple, which takes a cut of practically every dollar that flows through its ecosystem, is approaching a $2 trillion market cap. Google has been fined three times by the EU for anticompetitive behavior.The point was this: “Sure, I may be bad, but I’m not as bad as the next guy.”The truth is, Biden won’t have the political capital to prosecute more than one of these companies. If and when the next administration looks to make an example of a major tech company, it will have to consider a number of factors: who’s the least popular, who has the worst case in court, whose downfall would best help consumers—and who can hurt them politically.Here’s a quick primer on the strengths and weaknesses of each, in order of least to most vulnerable:AppleIn reality, most people don’t use Apple products. They’re too expensive. Experts estimate that over 85% of the global population uses Android. But people with influence love Apple. Reporters, staffers, lawmakers, regulators, pundits, lobbyists, think tankers, and everyone else wading through the swamp are all Apple devotees. As a result, making the case politically against Apple has an implicitly higher bar than against the other big tech companies. Yes, the app store is monopolistic, and yes, it’s suspicious that your phone and laptop always seem to break the minute a new model becomes available. But Tim Cook is impossible to dislike, and his consistent advocacy on behalf of user privacy has won him plaudits across the political spectrum.AmazonPeople may not like Amazon as a company, but they love Amazon’s services and products. Amazon’s stock is up nearly 25% since the pandemic began. And Bezos himself is a master of soft power, wielding the Washington Post in one hand and HQ2s in the other. There’s nobody in Washington who doesn’t secretly wish to be invited to the parties at his Kalorama mansion. It’s not hard to envision the Justice Department forcing Amazon to spin AWS, or to separate its marketplace and third-party sellers, but if you’re looking for an easy scapegoat, Amazon probably isn’t it. GoogleOnce upon a time, Google could smile, say “Don’t be evil,” and all was forgiven. Those days are long gone. Attorneys general from 48 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia are investigating Google for anticompetitive behavior. There’s no Google product that’s truly exciting or beloved. There’s just the search engine, and it’s been around for so long that it might as well be a phone company or local gas utility. Unplugging Google from its digital ad server, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, might be tricky, but YouTube could be spun off without too much fuss.FacebookAnd here’s the weakest link. Zuckerberg is unlikeable and untrustworthy. His second-in-command, Sheryl Sandberg, fell from favor years ago. And Facebook’s underlying value proposition is far more dubious than its peers. Amazon gets you toothpaste overnight. Apple makes cool phones. Google lets you find anything in seconds. But Facebook? Sure, you can keep tabs on your best friend from third grade or see photos of your great aunt’s cat. But you’re also constantly wading into pools of anger and hate. The whole experience can feel icky.Most important, the remedy for Facebook’s anticompetitive behavior is easy: Just turn Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook proper into three separate companies. That’s a solution that even octogenarian elected officials can understand. It will be good press for the government, day after day, news cycle after cycle. It’s a good fight to have.Critically, Zuckerberg has already given Washington an opening with his flawed defense of Facebook’s 2012 acquisition of Instagram, a competitor he had sought, in his own words, to neutralize. “Mr. Zuckerberg, you are making my point,” replied Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler.Representative David Cicilline, who chairs the antitrust subcommittee, said afterward that Zuckerberg “acknowledged in this hearing that his acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram were part of a plan to both buy a competitor and also maintain his money, power, or his dominance. That’s classic monopoly behavior.”Look for Apple, Amazon, and Google to reach the same conclusion and start positioning Zuckerberg as the fall guy. They’ll leak rumors of new FTC activity. Their lobbyists will quietly press Biden appointees to go after Facebook. They’ll do everything they can to shape consensus that Facebook’s the one—and in Washington, the more something becomes consensus, the more it becomes reality.Bradley Tusk is a venture capitalist, writer, philanthropist, and political strategist.

Donald Trump’s presidency may be resting on the whims of the 100 members of the U.S. Senate, but the White House isn’t sweating it. Despite a whirlwind few days, in which it was revealed that President Trump’s former National Security Adviser John Bolton had copped to there being a quid pro quo to dig up dirt on his domestic political opponents, Republican congressional sources say the White House has remained relatively hands-off in trying to keep the party in line. With lawmakers considering whether to call additional witnesses—including Bolton—there has been modest directive offered by White House aides about how to handle such a situation beyond talking points that could be deployed. The president has made his wishes known through his favorite medium—Twitter—and his legal team has argued against additional witnesses before the chamber. Additional signals have been public and not particular subtle, such as when Trump thanked senators attending a Wednesday trade deal signing. "Maybe,” the president joked, “I’m being just nice to them because I want their vote.”But beyond that, aides say, the White House has not felt compelled to use all the carrots and sticks at its disposal. “I don’t think there has been much lobbying or heavy lifting and there has certainly been no efforts to quote, unquote, keep people in line,” said one senior Republican Senate aide. The White House has shown, in the past, that it is willing to aggressively lobby the Hill on matters directly tied to the president’s agenda. That they’ve adopted a different approach to this critical juncture of impeachment illustrates the hold that Trump believes he has over his party and a strategic assessment that—in certain cases—such outreach may prove unnecessary or counterproductive. It’s a strategy that the president’s team has been practicing for weeks, as The Washington Post reported. And it’s one they continue to believe will result in acquittal. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), a confidant of the president’s and a lead defender of his during the impeachment trial, said Wednesday that Trump has had little contact with the Republicans who are weighing the fate of his presidency—a stark departure from the House process, when the White House was actively wooing GOP lawmakers with presidential face-time and other perks to shore up their standing. “It’s a different process, obviously,” Meadows told The Daily Beast. “You have a trial going on now, on the House side it was an investigation.”A senior member of the Senate GOP, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), said a hands-off approach was probably the right way to go. “There are plenty of opportunities for members to reach out if they wanted to, if they had advice or thoughts, and I imagine some of that's happened just during the time the President's team has been here,” he said. Even Senate Democrats that the White House is hoping to lure to make an acquittal vote bipartisan say they’ve heard little, if anything at all, from the president. ”He hasn't heard from the president or anyone else,” said a spokesman for Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who on Wednesday showed he’d be amenable to some Republican demands by expressing support for calling Hunter Biden as a witness. “He hasn't talked to the president in a while.” People familiar with Team Trump’s strategy say that White House officials have opted away from a heavy-handed approach not simply because they are confident that Republicans already know how Trump would react if they did not vote to acquit. There is also a belief that some Republican lawmakers would prefer to have a bit of distance from the president, if only to keep up the appearance of impartiality; and there’s fear that any effort to push GOP fence-sitters like Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Mitt Romney (R-UT) on the constructs of the trial would have the opposite effect. Asked if a personal pitch from Trump to these senators could backfire, Meadows demurred. But he did say, “I don’t see that as something that he would do, and I don’t see if it’s something that he’s even contemplating.”Mainly, however, there is an expectation inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) can do much of the heavy lifting without the president’s help. “The thinking is to let Cocaine Mitch do his thing and get his people in line,” said a source close to the White House, using a nickname coined by a former opponent of McConnell that the senior senator from Kentucky has since adopted. All of which is not to say the White House has done nothing. Tony Sayegh, a senior communications official in the Trump White House, has helmed a weekly Senate GOP communicators meeting on Capitol Hill on Mondays. And following The New York Times’ reporting on Bolton’s forthcoming book, the president’s team sprung into action to say all was well.“The facts remain unchanged,” Sayegh told the gathering in his Monday meeting, according to a source who was in the room—a line that Senate Republicans dutifully repeated later in the day and week, much to the pleasure of Trump’s senior staffers in the West Wing.By mid-Monday, the Trump White House had blasted out a list of talking points to surrogates and media allies decrying the Bolton-related “Leaks,” according to a message obtained by The Daily Beast. In its messaging, Team Trump encouraged surrogates to compare the ongoing situation to what occurred during the confirmation hearings for Trump’s Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of attempted rape, and in doing so again stresses that the juicy tell-all changes nothing in Democrats’ favor.“These selective leaks do not change the actual evidence and are being done purely to influence the Senate, the same playbook we saw during the Kavanaugh hearings,” reads one of the talkers.Despite the Bolton bombshells, the GOP line on witnesses has held. However, with the unpublished manuscript still looming and new information coming out every day, Trump and his allies are not out of the woods yet. The latest example of such came Wednesday morning when House Foreign Relations Chairman Eliot Engel (D-NY) released a statement about a call he’d had with Bolton on Sept. 19. “Ambassador Bolton suggested to me—unprompted—that the committee look into the recall of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch,” Engel’s statement read. “He strongly implied that something improper had occurred around her removal as our top diplomat in Kyiv.”Engel had kept the conversation private because he and Bolton have a longstanding relationship. Indeed, the only reason he chose to come forward now, a Democratic aide said, was Trump’s repeated assertion that Bolton never spoke out following his departure from the White House—an assertion Engel believed to be wrong. He did not speak to Bolton before releasing the statement.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is considering filing an antitrust lawsuit against Facebook by the end of the year, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday night.The case would be the culmination of a more than yearlong investigation by the regulator body into concerns that the social media platform has been stifling competition.People familiar with the matter told the Journal that no final decision has been made over whether to file a suit.Spokespeople for the FTC and Facebook declined to comment on the Journal's report.Mark ZuckerbergMark Elliot ZuckerbergHillicon Valley: Productivity, fatigue, cybersecurity emerge as top concerns amid pandemic | Facebook critics launch alternative oversight board | Google to temporarily bar election ads after polls close Conservative groups seek to block Facebook election grants in four swing states: report Facebook critics launch alternative oversight board MORE reportedly testified before the FTC in August, signaling that the investigation may be reaching its final stages.The FTC has already conducted one probe into Facebook, which ended in a $5 billion settlement.That investigation was launched in March 2018 after reports that data from tens of millions of Facebook users was shared with Cambridge Analytica. The probe had focused on whether the social media giant violated a 2011 consent agreement with the FTC requiring greater privacy protections and transparency for users.The current investigation reportedly is focused on Facebook's past acquisitions, including WhatsApp and Instagram.Facebook has pointed out that both were approved by the regulatory body at the time.--Updated at 10:15am

When the House Judiciary’s antitrust subcommittee hosted the Big Tech CEOs earlier this week, the hearing veered off into chaos several times. Each time it was caused by the hysterics of the GOP’s resident attack dog, Jim Jordan of Ohio.Jordan had no obvious understanding of, or interest in, tech antitrust issues, but used his time to harangue the CEOs about their companies’ alleged censorship of conservative viewpoints (an old saw that shows up every time Congress talks to tech)—particularly Google.While questioning Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Jordan accused Google of siding with the World Health Organization over the American people, of backing Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, and generally stifling conservatives’ access to information online.It was a surprising stance from the congressman, given that Google gave $10,000 to his reelection campaign in 2020, and has been funding him every cycle going back to 2012, according to Federal Election Commission filings. In this hearing, the attack dog truly bit the hand that was feeding him.Despite this, Jordan demanded a commitment from Pichai that Google would not “configure its search engine” to back Joe Biden in the election, and that Google would not use its search engine to silence conservatives.The real fireworks started when Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA), who spoke just after Jordan, said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to redirect your attention to antitrust law rather than fringe conspiracy theories.” Then Jordan exploded, demanding to address the jab from his colleague. He yelled, he waved his arms, he refused to put his mask back on and be quiet. (Google, by the way, contributed just $2,000 to Scanlon’s reelection campaign.)Google’s contributions to Jordan’s reelection campaign are also noteworthy because of recent news about the congressman. Jordan has been accused of turning a blind eye to the sexual abuse of student wrestlers during his time as an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The allegations have earned Jordan his oft-used “Gym Jordan” moniker on social media.Google didn’t immediately respond to the question of whether or not it intended to continue funding Jordan.The antitrust subcommittee has been investigating the big tech companies for more than a year now, as have the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. But that hasn’t stopped some tech companies from continuing to give to the campaigns of congresspeople, including some on the antitrust subcommittee. The following chart shows the donations the big five tech companies have made to the 2020 reelection campaigns for each member of the House antitrust subcommittee.For the 2020 election, Google donated to committee vice chair Joe Neguse (D-CO), Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Ken Buck (R-CO), W. Gregory Steube (R-FL), Hank Johnson (D-GA), and Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA). Ranking Republican member Jim Sensenbrenner is retiring from Congress, but Google donated to each of his congressional campaigns dating back to 2008. None of this money stopped Google from having to face hard questions about its monopoly power during Wednesday’s hearing.Google isn’t the only big tech company donating to congresspeople on the subcommittee. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook have all made campaign contributions to at least one subcommittee member for the 2020 election cycle. Both Google and Microsoft have donated to seven different congresspeople who’ve been actively investigating anti-competitive practices.Campaign donations are just part of a multi-pronged strategy big tech companies use to influence policy in the Capital. They also fund think tanks, some of which devise policy proposals for better ways to regulate competitive markets. Even though the antitrust committee members may end up writing new laws that directly affect the businesses of big tech companies, there’s nothing illegal about the campaign contributions. It’s how the system works.For the tech companies, the dollar amounts of the campaign donations are small potatoes considering how much they make every quarter. There’s a symbolic value to them. The donations don’t buy easy treatment from lawmakers, and they don’t prevent the adoption of broadly supported regulations, but they can cause the voices of the donors to be heard more clearly in the midst of the debate.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook has barely shaken off a record $5 billion fine by U.S. regulators over its privacy practices but it already faces new investigations — not to mention ongoing ones — into potential antitrust violations and other issues.Regulators in Europe and the U.S. took notice. Facebook now faces the prospect of not only billions of dollars in additional fines, but also new restrictions.Here are some of the ongoing investigations and potential legal threats involving Facebook.U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENTThe U.S. Department of Justice has opened a sweeping antitrust investigation of major technology companies, a list widely believed to include Facebook. The department is looking into whether their online platforms have hurt competition, suppressed innovation or otherwise harmed consumers.U.S. FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSIONThough the privacy matter is settled, Facebook has disclosed that the FTC is investigating the company separately for antitrust issues. Facebook said it was informed of the investigation in June.IRISH DATA PROTECTION COMMISSIONIreland's data regulator launched an investigation of Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica data leak last year. At issue is whether the company complied with strict European data regulations that went into effect in May 2018. Under the new rules, companies could be hit with fines equal to 4% of annual global revenue for the most serious violations.U.S. CONGRESSIn June, the House Judiciary Committee announced "a top-to-bottom review of the market power held by giant tech platforms." Targets include Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple.

Enlarge this image Supporters and opponents of a tax face off at Seattle City Hall on Tuesday. Ted S. Warren/AP hide caption toggle caption Ted S. Warren/AP Supporters and opponents of a tax face off at Seattle City Hall on Tuesday. Ted S. Warren/AP In a victory for Amazon, the Seattle City Council voted to repeal a tax on the city's biggest businesses Tuesday, a measure designed to fund efforts to combat Seattle's large homeless population.In a meeting punctured with shouting from activists, council members voted 7-2 to repeal the so-called "head tax," which would have raised about $47 million per year to fund affordable housing projects and to help the city's homeless population.It was a sharp reversal from just last month, when the council voted unanimously to pass the tax and the city's mayor signed it into law.Amazon, Starbucks and other companies then funded a campaign against the tax and to put it on a referendum to voters in November.Council member Lisa Herbold said the groups opposing the tax had "unlimited resources" and that her vote to repeal was "counter to my values as a person."However, a campaign from business groups including the Chamber of Commerce had convinced most Seattle residents to oppose the tax and "we don't have the time and we don't have the resources necessary to change enough minds," Herbold said. Politics Alexa, Tell Me A National Security Secret: Amazon's Reach Goes Beyond The Post Office "This is not a winnable battle at this time," she added.Seattle's government said the tax would only affect about 3 percent of the city's employers — those grossing at least $20 million each year. About 585 employers would have paid about $275 per employee per year, according to the city council.Amazon has about 45,000 employees in Seattle and is the city's largest private employer. It would have paid about $12 million per year. Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos was named the world's richest man by Forbes in March, with a worth of $112 billion. The company said the vote "to repeal the tax on job creation is the right decision for the region's economic prosperity." Amazon, Starbucks and investment company Vulcan each paid $25,000 toward the referendum effort, KUOW reports. The No Tax on Jobs campaign raised $350,000. After the session to consider repealing the law was announced a day earlier, Seattle's Chamber of Commerce said it was a "breath of fresh air." The Chamber echoed language from Amazon that it was a "tax on jobs." "From day one, the Seattle Metro Chamber has been clear that a tax on jobs is not the way to address the regional homelessness crisis," President and CEO Marilyn Strickland said in a statement Monday.The law passed in May was itself a watered-down version of the original plan, to tax companies $500 per employee. Amazon temporarily halted construction of a tower in downtown Seattle in opposition.Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said she would sign the repeal into law. "Instead of engaging in a prolonged, expensive political fight, the City and I will continue to move forward on building real partnerships that align our strategies from business, advocates, philanthropy," she said in a statement. Business D.C. Un-United: Amazon's Second HQ Pits City Vs. Its Suburbs Council members Teresa Mosqueda and Kshama Sawant both voted against the repeal. Sawant called it a "cowardly betrayal of the needs of working people," saying it was "capitulation and it's a betrayal."Critics of the tax reportedly saw the city's homeless problem growing, despite large amounts of spending by the city already. Seattle spent $68 million on fighting homelessness in 2017, according to The Associated Press.The city council said 8,522 people were counted as "experiencing homelessness" in Seattle in 2017. Including nearby areas, that number went up to 12,000 during a one-night count in January, the AP says, which is up 4 percent from the year before. The wire service says 169 homeless people died in 2017.KUOW reports that the characterization of the tax as "extra money for homelessness ... wasn't necessarily an accurate representation." "It's possible the money wouldn't have been extra: It could have plugged a future hole in the budget instead. Seattle had already been spending money from its construction boom on homelessness. With a depleted general fund projected to sink into the red, the city needed to find money just to stay afloat." "I'm very supportive of the homeless," small business owner Claudia Campanile told the station. "But I am not supportive of the constituency getting taxed with no representation and no clear game plan of what they're going to do with the funds." The mayor seemed to address that concern in her statement Tuesday, saying, "people deserve to know how their money is being spent and what is working. The City has worked towards increased accountability and transparency with taxpayer dollars expected to be spent on the homelessness crisis."Cities across the country are competing to host Amazon's proposed second headquarters. The company says it would create 50,000 jobs and would invest $5 billion in the city it chooses — leading some competing for the headquarters to promise billions in tax breaks for the corporate behemoth.

In the coming days, the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee will bring the CEOs of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple to Washington and ask them about their anticompetitive business practices. Except for Apple, there’s only one answer: We are guilty. Though anticompetitive practices were prohibited more than a century ago, deregulation has prevailed since Ronald Reagan took office in 1981. Believing the market would always allocate resources optimally, the federal government stopped playing its traditional role as capitalism’s umpire. The Reagan Revolution unleashed economic growth that led to a long period of prosperity and a concentration of economic power. Over the past 20 years, the rich got much richer, while half of the country struggled with static incomes. Nowhere is this lawlessness more rampant today than among large tech companies, who’ve used their power to crush competitors, suppliers, business partners, and even customers.WIRED OPINIONABOUTRoger McNamee (@Moonalice) is the author of the New York Times best seller Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe. He spent 34 years as a technology investor and was an early investor in Facebook and an adviser to Mark Zuckerberg.Now the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed intolerable flaws in the status quo across the economy, including poor pay and protection for the most essential and dangerous jobs, an inability to increase personal protective equipment manufacturing and testing capacity, and a health care system that continues to struggle to adapt. Worst of all, internet platform monopolies sabotaged the nation’s pandemic response by amplifying disinformation.Economic policy and the concentrated power that resulted from it are partially to blame for our failure to contain the pandemic. We need new policy that encourages competition, innovation, and adaptability, with less focus on shareholders. The hearing is an early test of Congress’ readiness to join its constituents in demanding a new vision for America.Google, Facebook, and Amazon have exploited their popularity as a shield from regulators, but that may be ending. The harm they cause to suppliers, competitors, and advertisers, the threat they pose to the economy and consumer welfare, can no longer be excused. Having four CEOs testify together ensures the hearing will accomplish little of substance. Each CEO should be subject to his own multiday hearing. Still, the hearing can increase awareness of harmful business practices.Among Google’s many monopolies, those of ad tech infrastructure and web browsers do particular harm. Google is rapidly displacing the open web with a closed environment of its own making, undermining news and many other industries that depend on advertising and web traffic.Facebook has exploited its market power to crush partners and would-be competitors, limiting innovation and leaving our democracy vulnerable to extremism.Amazon’s dominance of online commerce has created convenience for customers, but at great cost to other forms of retail, suppliers, and employees, who have no power to fight back.The issues with Apple are different and, in my view, not comparable. Apple’s anticompetitive behavior in the AppStore does not threaten the economy or society, and its approach to privacy and consumer protection, especially compared with Amazon, Facebook, and Google, is exemplary.History shows that eliminating monopolies and encouraging competition is good for the economy. Consumers and investors benefit. This has been the case in tech since 1956, when the Justice Department Consent Decree with AT&T limited the monopoly to regulated telecom markets, creating the computer industry as we know it. Subsequent antitrust interventions played a role in enabling separate industries for software, personal computers, data networking, mobile communications, and the internet.The nation’s antitrust laws were created in response to the anticompetitive business practices of monopolies in oil, railroads, steel, banking, and other industries. No one denied that Standard Oil and the other “trusts” created value that benefited society. The issue was whether monopolies were the best way to grow an economy. Trustbusters argued that monopoly, which had historically been a tool of autocratic governments, undermined democracy by concentrating economic power. The Sherman (1890), Clayton (1914), and Federal Trade (1914) Acts created rules to govern business practices that broke up monopolies and ushered in a long period when corporations were required to respect the interests of consumers, suppliers, and communities.In the 1970s, solicitor general Robert Bork popularized an alternative theory of antitrust that eliminated all considerations except for one: consumer prices. So long as prices didn’t go up, there’d be no violation, irrespective of other harms. The Reagan administration embraced Bork’s interpretation, triggering a 40-year trend of consolidation that concentrated economic power. This has reduced consumer choice, undermined the balance between employers and workers, and left the economy unable to respond to a shock like the pandemic. Brittle supply chains and short-term thinking boosted stock prices, but they are also partially responsible for the country’s unique inability to control the spread of Covid-19.

The View’s Meghan McCain on Thursday warned her co-hosts not to dismiss Trump impeachment legal team member Alan Dershowitz so much—following the widespread mockery he’s received over his recent arguments— insisting his reputation is nothing to laugh at since he once “helped a serial killer get off.”During the impeachment trial’s Q&A session on Wednesday, Dershowitz essentially argued a president could engage in corrupt acts—like, say, a quid pro quo with Ukraine—if he believes it “will help him get elected in the public interest.”“Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest, and mostly you’re right,” Dershowitz argued. “Your election is in the public interest, and if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”On Thursday’s edition of The View, the majority of the table roundly dismissed the famed attorney’s argument, mockingly wondering if Dershowitz was asserting that Trump could “nuke the Ukraine to make Putin happy” if the president could claim it was in the “public interest.”Co-host Sunny Hostin, a lawyer herself, took issue with Dershowitz’s “disingenuous argument” excusing corruption.“So the way I think about it is, let’s say you kill someone, let’s say you murder someone and that someone happens to also be a really bad person, so you’re like, you know, helping the world in a sense because you’ve taken this bad person out of the world,” Hostin stated. “But you still killed someone, so you’re still guilty of a crime, right?”After Hostin added that he made an argument “any first-year law student would shoot down” and the other hosts wondered aloud what happened to Dershowitz over the years, McCain jumped in to offer a defense of the famed attorney.“I’m not a lawyer, I don’t know,” the conservative host said. “I will say that Alan Dershowitz helped a serial killer get off, O.J. Simpson, so he must be a pretty good lawyer because he did a really good job with that.”“I think O.J. Simpson is guilty so he must be a pretty good lawyer so we’re laughing at him all the time and I don’t think, like. that’s a person to be laughed at,” McCain concluded.While Simpson was eventually acquitted of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, he has never been accused of being a “serial killer.” McCain’s interesting defense of Dershowitz comes a day after the retired Harvard Law professor appeared on The View for a rambling, off-the-rails interview that featured the hosts and audience loudly groaning at his positions.

Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade rallied to the defense of former National Security Adviser John Bolton on Thursday, saying he didn’t “like the idea” of people calling his former Fox News colleague a liar.Following revelations that Bolton’s upcoming book claims that President Donald Trump told him about a Ukrainian quid pro quo, the president’s supporters—including many Fox personalities who worked with Bolton—have opened fire on the hawkish ex-White House aide.During Thursday's broadcast of the president's favorite morning show, the Fox & Friends crew dutifully promoted Trump’s Wednesday night “Game Over” tweet in which he shared a video clip of Bolton referencing the infamous July 25 call with the Ukrainian president, claiming it contradicts Bolton’s book.“It’s where John Bolton actually talks about the phone call,” co-host Steve Doocy said. “But it also talks—apparently he says there was no quid pro quo. And he talks about how the United States would like to get rid of corruption and things like that. Nonetheless, the president said ‘game over’ after he saw this video.”After playing the video of the then-national security adviser’s August interview, which has Bolton describing Trump and the Ukrainian leader as having “warm and cordial calls,” co-host Ainsley Earhardt declared, “That’s interesting. Completely contradicts his forthcoming book!”Kilmeade, however, stood up for the former longtime Fox News contributor while reminding his co-hosts that Bolton used to be a regular fixture on their show.“So John Bolton had a different take there,” Kilmeade stated. “I don’t like the idea of people making John Bolton out to be a liar.”“He has sat on this couch before. He’s not a liar. They have a differing of opinion. But, questioning his credibility, I don’t think,” he continued, prompting Earhardt to interject.“You’re saying maybe The New York Times, maybe whoever reported that, read the book and got something out of it that John Bolton didn’t say,” she wondered.“I would say that,” Kilmeade concluded. “He could answer a question but not answer a question completely and not be a liar.”Kilmeade, meanwhile, was one of the first people Bolton contacted last September after Trump announced he’d fired the former Fox contributor as national security adviser. Bolton texted Kilmeade while he was on-air to claim, “Let’s be clear. I resigned.”While Kilmeade seemingly feels a bit uncomfortable with smears against his ex-colleague, other pro-Trump Fox Newsers have no such qualms. Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs, who celebrated when Bolton was first hired by Trump, has trashed Bolton as a “tool for radical” Democrats while labeling him a “turncoat.” And Fox News contributor Dan Bongino’s flip-flop on Bolton was even more overt, as he went from praising Bolton’s loyalty to describing him as a “snake.”