Very Stable Tech Geniuses Have a Night at the White House
Or, how to spend $1.5 trillion on presidential flattery. Plus: Not-so-beautiful jobs numbers. RFK's Senate meltdown. An interview with a Trump "traitor." News That Doesn't Suck. And the weekly quiz.
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This newsletter has some bright spots and a fun quiz waiting for you at the end. We're not serving up just doom and gloom today.
But first, this week I spoke with Miles Taylor about Trump's expanding revenge campaign against his critics. Taylor was chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security in Trump's first administration and wrote the famous "Anonymous" op-ed in the New York Times. He has been an outspoken Trump critic since leaving the administration. Trump has labeled him a traitor and ordered his administration to investigate him.
The toll has been severe. Taylor says his business partners "forced the dissolution of the company" after Trump's order, and he's installed ongoing security enhancements at his home due to threats. Taylor believes this is just the beginning of Trump's targeting of critics.
"I think they are going to continue because they want all sorts of different personas to fear this possibility," Taylor told me. He predicts journalists will be next: "I strongly suspect that the Trump Justice Department is already searching through journalist records and many of them are unaware of it."
Taylor also says Trump is building what amounts to a personal police force through ICE, which is "becoming the biggest law enforcement agency in America." The tools being used against immigrants, he warns, "can and will be used against Americans, domestic political enemies."
You can watch the full interview below. If you want to support Miles, you can find his newsletter at treason.io or support those targeted by presidential revenge at End Presidential Revenge.
In today’s newsletter, brace yourself for RFK Jr’s autism report. Very stable tech geniuses discover their love for Trump. Trump’s beautiful jobs numbers tell a surprise story. FEMA’s getting the Trump treatment. Trump’s cabinet hypocrisy. And some News That Doesn’t Suck from the world of AI.
Here Are Your Headlines
BREAKING: Remember RFK’s April claim he would figure out the cause of autism by September? According to the Wall Street Journal, RFK’s imminent report will argue one of the culprits is Tylenol (acetaminophen) taken during pregnancy. Scientists have been investigating the possibility Tylenol could affect fetal brain development for over a decade; in August, a review of 46 studies found that 27 reported a potential association between Tylenol use during pregnancy and neurodevelopmental disorders like autism. But the study’s authors specifically warned this did not prove a connection — correlation does not mean causation. Many other factors, like the fever that prompted Tylenol use, may have been at play. The authors suggested expectant moms take Tylenol as little as possible — which one OB-GYN noted is “exactly the current standard of care for Tylenol and … really so many things we may encounter in pregnancy counseling.” A senior member of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists today reaffirmed “there is no clear evidence that proves a direct relationship between the prudent use of acetaminophen during pregnancy and fetal developmental issues” and said “pregnant patients should not be frightened away from the many benefits of acetaminophen, which is safe and one of the few options pregnant people have for pain relief.” A 2024 study of almost 2.5 million children concluded “acetaminophen use during pregnancy was not associated with children’s risk of autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability.” According to the WSJ, RFK’s upcoming report will also suggest low levels of folate as a cause of autism, and claim taking folinic acid can decrease the symptoms of autism.
It’s a Big Club… Trump hosted more than 20 tech magnates at the White House Thursday. The attendees, several of whom publicly opposed Trump in the past, took turns lavishing praise on him. “Thank you for being such a pro-business, pro-innovation president,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who in 2016 warned Trump is “irresponsible in the way dictators are.” “It’s a very refreshing change,” Altman continued, that is “going to set us up for a long period of leading the world, and that wouldn’t be happening without your leadership.” Trump had praise of his own, saying it was “an honor” to be seated with people “leading a revolution in business and in genius and in every other word I think you could imagine.” Cleary humility wasn’t on the menu.
Big Money: Attendees also took turns boasting about how much money their companies will invest in the US: Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta pledged $600 billion through 2028; Google $250 billion through 2027; Apple $600 billion. “What about Microsoft?” Trump asked. “That’s a big number.” ($75-$80 billion.) Speaking of big numbers, the combined net worth at this dinner was something like $580 billion. That’s not including Trump himself, who may be worth anything from a few hundred million to several billion. Thanks to his crypto hauls, we may never know the real figure.
Why This Matters: In his first term, Trump was ostracized by Silicon Valley; this dinner is the clearest sign so far of Big Tech’s dramatic shift toward Trump. Tech leaders aren’t humiliating themselves by bending the knee to the president for free. What they want includes deregulation, and Trump seems happy to give it to them. On Wednesday a judge handed Alphabet, Google’s parent company, an effective slap on the wrist for illegally maintaining a search engine monopoly, rejecting most of the punishments sought by the DOJ. “You had a very good day yesterday,” Trump reminded Google CEO Sundar Pichai at the dinner. “Biden was the one who prosecuted that lawsuit,” Trump continued. “You know that, right?”
Guest List: Notably absent was Elon Musk, who claimed he’d been invited but couldn’t make it. Read a full list of the dinner guests here.
Noise: Trump sat Zuckerberg to his right; Melania was to his left, and next to her sat Bill Gates. About a dozen partners and political allies were also invited, including Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s “really wonderful MAGA girlfriend,” as Trump referred to Gerelyn Gilbert-Soto. (The day before the dinner, Gilbert-Soto tweeted that Burning Man, Halloween, Christmas, the US government and the whole “world is a spiritual battlefield built on pagan roots,” and we need God to “navigate through the deception.” Apparently divine navigation was on the fritz last night.) How detached from working Americans’ reality were these tech titans? Oracle SEO Safra Catz told Trump, “I think this is the most exciting time in America ever.”
About That: The US added just 22,000 jobs in August, a major slowdown and far short of the 75,000 economists had predicted. Unemployment reached 4.3%, the highest since 2021, after lockdown. Actually the economy has lost jobs — the first time in four years. Manufacturing jobs fell for the fourth month, totaling a loss of 78,000 jobs this year. Remember, Trump ran on promises of reinvigorating America’s manufacturing base. The bleak jobs report drove markets down. Analysts attribute the slowdown to the impact of tariffs, deportations, rising inflation, and economic uncertainty. The anemic numbers could help Trump in one regard: rising unemployment might push the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates this month. This is the first report since Trump fired the BLS commissioner — the person in charge of compiling jobs data — after accusing her of releasing “RIGGED” jobs numbers in July. Trump claimed “the real numbers” won’t come out until “a year from now.” Huh? Just an hour before the numbers were released, Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Commerce Secretary, predicted today’s jobs numbers would show an improvement because they’re no longer crunched by “holdovers from the Biden administration.” Oops.
Downsizing: A new report by the Government Accountability Office warned that Trump is gutting the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) just as disaster season heats up. FEMA staffing has decreased by about 10% over the last six months. Trump’s own former FEMA chief, who wanted to “reform” and “downsize” the agency, warned this week that following through with Trump’s proposal to eliminate the agency would put Americans at “extreme risk, unnecessarily.” What’s the goal here? Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose agency houses FEMA, recently said the federal government should become less involved with “long-term mitigation” and focus more on “disaster response.” In sum, it seems the administration wants to shift responsibility for preparedness and cleanup to individuals and local and state governments. This will likely disproportionately impact Trump voters; states with Republican governors have received 15% more aid money per person since 2011, compared to states with Democratic governors. But keep in mind, what Miles Taylor said (top of the newsletter.) In his first term Trump wanted to withhold disaster aid to places he felt were unsupportive. A weakened FEMA could make such political games even easier.
Mask Off: RFK Jr gave shocking and combative testimony before the Senate yesterday, sparring with both Democrats and Republicans unhappy with his chaotic leadership of the nation’s health agencies. During his Senate confirmation hearings, he at least pretended to be open to vaccines; no more. This week he told Senators he doesn’t know how many people died from COVID — “I don’t think anybody knows that,” he claimed. He said Trump deserved a Nobel for developing COVID vaccines, despite cancelling funding for further mRNA vaccine research. When senators criticized his decision to restrict the availability of COVID vaccines, he accused them of “making things up to scare people.” He defended his firing of several senior vaccine advisors and CDC officials as “absolutely necessary.” The question now is whether lawmakers will do anything about this.
Transparency Battle: The bill that would force the DOJ to release all Epstein files is stuck just two votes away from a majority in the House. Several previously supportive Republicans this week announced they wouldn’t back the measure; Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) dismissed it as “back-handed slap to the president.” Sounds similar to the White House’s warning that supporting the motion “would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration.”
Oops! A senior DOJ official was caught on hidden camera claiming the government will “redact every Republican or conservative person in those files” and “leave all the liberal, Democratic people in.” Joseph Schnitt, the acting deputy chief at the Office of Enforcement Operations, made the claim (and others) on a Hinge date; the secret video was released by James O’Keefe, a far-right political operative who’s previously done the same to Democrats. Schnitt’s defense? He was blustering to impress his date; all his claims were based on what’s in the news. The DOJ said his comments “have absolutely zero bearing with reality.”
Every Accusation a Confession: A new report by ProPublica found at least three of Trump’s cabinet members list multiple homes as their primary residence on their mortgages. This is same “offense” the Trump administration is using to accuse Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), New York Attorney General Letitia James, and (possibly former) Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook of fraud. And guess who else may have filed similarly “fraudulent” housing claims? The father and stepmother of Bill Pulte, Trump’s ally at the Federal Housing Finance Agency who’s behind the investigations of Schiff, James, and Cook.
Coalition of the Willing: France’s President Emmanuel Macron said this week that 26 countries “have formally committed” to providing Ukraine security guarantees after a ceasefire, including troops on the ground, to “prevent any new major aggression.” Putin warned any European troops in Ukraine would be “legitimate targets.”
Rising Tensions:
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