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RFK Jr. Officially Endorses Trump In A Desperate Bid for a Job - The Monday AM Quickie 8/26/24

By Jacob Silverman —

In a completely foreseeable outcome, this year's DNC seemed to have been a Covid super-spreader event. -Jacob

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THE BIG NEWS

RFK Jr. Officially Endorses Trump In A Desperate Bid for a Job

After telegraphing to the media that this whole becoming president thing might not be working out, independent presidential candidate and road-kill enthusiast Robert F. Kennedy Jr. finally suspended his campaign on Friday and endorsed Donald Trump. Kennedy seems to be pursuing a strategic retreat from the race, removing his name from contested battleground states only. "Our polling consistently showed that by staying on the ballot in battleground states, I would most likely hand the election to the Democrats, with whom I disagree on most existential issues," said Kennedy.

Kennedy later claimed that Trump had offered him a job working on "health care and food and drug policy," according to the Times. He said he thought that Trump was telling the truth – unlike during his first presidential run, when Trump promised RFK Jr. a role on a vaccine safety commission and then of coursed never delivered. Apparently wish-casting himself into a presidential appointment, Kennedy yesterday shared a photo of himself shaking hands with Trump, headlined by the acronym MAHA – Make America Healthy Again. It's not happening, but it doesn't mean he won't embarrass himself trying.

Did you hear the one about RFK Jr. cutting off the head of a dead whale and strapping it to the roof of the family car for a five-hour drive? No? Not your thing?

Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram, a relatively unmoderated messaging app that's as popular with terrorists and cybercriminals as it is with the intelligence agencies who monitor them, was arrested in France yesterday. The warrant alleges that Telegram "has been used for money laundering, drug trafficking and other offenses," according to the AP. That's almost certainly true in a literal sense, but the French government's decision to arrest Durov raises the issues of content moderation and tech regulation to something far more dramatic. Telegram has hundreds of millions of users worldwide – it's much more than a dark web-type cesspool (though it's that, too). How liable is a company, or an executive, for the way their digital platform is used? Should Mark Zuckerberg be prosecuted for the many acts of child exploitation facilitated by Instagram? (Maybe!)

On social media, Elon Musk and his sycophants immediately cast Durov as a free speech martyr and a sign of the decline and fall of the West. Durov himself is a somewhat mercurial figure – a citizen of France and Russia who fled the latter to move his almost-anything-goes messaging service to the UAE. He's the type of quasi-stateless tech billionaire who has a handful of different passports, crisscrosses the world by private jet, has at least one major failed crypto project under his belt, and thinks his sperm is special.

Vance Unconvincingly Says He Thinks Trump Would Veto a Federal Abortion Ban

In an interview on Sunday, JD Vance said that he thought Trump would veto a federal abortion ban were one to cross his desk in a future presidential administration. "He said that explicitly that he would," claimed Vance. The patently unbelievable comment is part of an equally desperate attempt by Trump to convince voters that he's not so bad on reproductive rights and other social and health issues. "My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights," Trump wrote on Truth Social. It's a bizarre promise from a guy who simultaneously is proud of overturning Roe v. Wade, but Trump makes similar cottage cheese-brained claims about pollution ("we had such clean air!") and a host of other issues he clearly cares nothing about.

QUICKEST QUICKIES

  • MPox Vaccines Unavailable Where They're Needed Most Because of a byzantine approval system from the WHO, aid organizations can't distribute MPox vaccines in Congo, the epicenter of a potential pandemic. The first 10,000 doses may finally arrive this week, although it's a fraction of what's required to stem wider spread. via NYT and The Guardian.
  • A Little Known Software Maker Might Be Raising Rents For Millions of People The Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against RealPage, a company that makes software used by landlords. The DoJ and eight states claim that RealPage's pricing algorithm is at the heart of a price-fixing conspiracy that's caused millions of Americans to pay higher rents. via NYT.
  • New Study Quantifies The Efficacy Of Teacher Strikes A new study examining 772 teacher strikes during a 16-year period showed that strikes by teachers generally led to better pay, more infrastructure investment, and better working conditions. They also found that teacher strikes are often short and don't affect students' academic development. via Vox.
  • We Got a Judge to Unseal a List of X's Shareholders As Corey generously mentioned in Friday's newsletter, a federal judge approved a motion I filed, with the help of a pro bono legal organization, to unseal a list of X's shareholders. Over the weekend, I wrote about the list and its implications, with more to come. via Your Humble Newsletter Correspondent.

SOME NUMBER

51

That's how many home runs New York Yankees captain and all-around human specimen Aaron Judge has hit this season, putting him on pace to pass his own league record of 62. While the AM Quickie is (despite my best efforts) not a sports newsletter, I urge upon you some Aaron Judge highlights or perhaps a trip to an afternoon game at the local minor league park. Summer is fading, folks.

ON THE SHOW TODAY

8/26: Happy Monday! Emma speaks with Andrew Chow, technology correspondent at Time Magazine, to discuss his recent book Cryptomania: Hype, Hope, and the Fall of FTX's Billion-Dollar Fintech Empire.

DON'T MISS MR CLIPS‌

Republican Weirdo Invasion Of DNC Backfires Big Time

The Republican influencer corps overflows with volatile, unsettling guys yucking it up on camera.

JD Vance STRUGGLES Ordering A Donut

Is this man properly socialized?

PARTING WORDS

"[Iran] is willing to expend every Arab life, every Palestinian life, every Lebanese life, in pursuit of its objective of destroying Israel. I think that the narrative that you constantly hear about turning down the temperature, escalation management, the reluctance, really, to confront Iran directly and impose costs on Iran, that actually gives Iran license to escalate on their own terms, with impunity."

-- Decorated general and former Trump national security advisor HR McMaster, speaking to CBS News. McMaster, who now sits on at least nine corporate boards, offered some of the mildest criticism you'll ever hear of Trump (he's easily flattered!) while sharing some psychotic warmongering rhetoric that's all too common in the Beltway. Peace is a dirty word.

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