Latest news with #scandals
Fox News
2 days ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Brian Kilmeade: These stories are 'hogging up the stage'
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade gives his take on President Donald Trump's successes and the 'scandals' that are 'hogging the spotlight' on 'One Nation.'
Irish Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
Epstein saga has exposed cracks in Maga movement which could fatally undermine Donald Trump
The second Trump administration has featured many scandals: his shameless corruption, his pardoning of the January 6th insurrectionists, his pushing a Bill that strips millions from healthcare to give more money to those who need it the least, his backing for the Israeli genocide of Palestinians and Israel's other reckless wars in the Middle East. All these things seem more important than whether his justice department relents and releases its files on the Jeffrey Epstein case. Yet, this is the one scandal from which Trump can't seem to escape, and the one that might prove the most damaging for him politically. No one is more aware of this than Trump himself. It is a sign of his desperation to move on from the Epstein story that on Wednesday – at a bizarre press conference with the president of the Philippines looking on – he ranted about Barack Obama's supposed corruption. READ MORE He claimed that Obama was guilty of 'treason' and that he tried to 'lead a coup' with faked intelligence about Russian interference in the election. It was a transparent effort to change the story. The embattled Trump even admitted as much: 'It's time to go after people.' In the past, he has had a brilliant knack for deflecting negative attention from himself to others. During the 2016 campaign, it seemed like he was finished when the Access Hollywood tapes emerged which captured him bragging about groping women. But before the next presidential debate, he assembled a press conference of several women who claimed to be victims of sexual harassment by Bill Clinton . It worked then; it allowed enough voters to come to the cynical conclusion that all politicians are equally corrupt. The tactic is unlikely to work this time. Attacking Obama is something of a reflex for Trump, who rose to prominence promoting the 'birther' conspiracy theory that Obama was born outside the US. Trump's run for the presidency was, people close to him has said, partly a desire for vengeance against Obama after the then-president mercilessly mocked him at the fateful 2011 White House correspondents' dinner (Obama's quips included: 'No one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald. And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter–— like, did we fake the Moon landing'). But Obama is arguably the politician that the public would least expect to have anything to do with a sexual predator like Epstein. Bill Clinton was in fact friends with Epstein, but his presidency ended so long ago that attacking him just doesn't have much purchase any more. [ White House claims 'fake news' over reports Donald Trump named in Epstein files Opens in new window ] Donald Trump, Melania Knauss (later, Melania Trump), Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club in 2000. Photograph: Davidoff Studios/ Getty Images This time, Trump hasn't been able to shift the narrative. That is partly because, as Ciarán O'Connor wrote this week , once the flames of conspiracy theories have been fanned, they are difficult to extinguish. But it is also because it goes to the same open secret that was at the centre of the Access Hollywood scandal: Trump's serial pattern of sexual abuse makes the notion that he has something to hide more plausible. To paraphrase congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who would have thought that electing a sexual offender would have complicated the release of the Epstein files? In 2023, a civil court ruled that Trump had sexually abused E Jean Carroll. By one count, at least 18 women have accused Trump of sexual assault or sexual harassment. The controversy over the release of the Epstein files has also resurfaced, leading to renewed attention on Trump's once close relationship with him. Epstein's brother has suggested that Trump was once Jeffrey Epstein's 'best friend'. The Wall Street Journal published a card that it claimed Trump sent Epstein on his 50th birthday with a lewd drawing of a woman and a reference to a 'wonderful secret'. Trump is suing the Wall Street Journal for $10 billion over the report, which he vehemently denies. It's possible that there is nothing in the Epstein files that reveals damaging information about Trump. But that is now almost beside the point. The political significance of the Epstein controversy is that it has hurt Trump's standing among his own base, which was already upset about his breaking America First principles by joining Israel's war against Iran. Though Trump has been unpopular with many Americans for most of the last decade, his political strength has been the unshakeable support of his base, which has allowed him to dominate the Republican Party. [ Bill Clinton reportedly sent Jeffrey Epstein note for birthday album Opens in new window ] This time, Trump hasn't been able to shift the narrative. Photograph: Anna Moneymaker/ Getty Images As he himself once boasted, 'I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters.' But it is symptomatic of his hubris that he promoted the conspiracy theory about Epstein, someone who was once a close associate. Under pressure from a disaffected Maga base, a significant number of Republican legislators broke with Trump for the first time in this second term. Rather than face a vote on whether to release the Epstein files that he was certain to lose, House Speaker Mike Johnson simply declared that they would break for summer early, even though that meant abandoning parts of the Republican agenda. But significantly, three Republicans on the ten-member House Committee on Oversight joined Democrats to subpoena the justice department for its Epstein files. Republicans Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Brian Jack of Georgia sided with Democrats. Democrats certainly don't consider the Epstein case to be the most significant issue facing the US – but they smell a rare political opportunity to exploit cracks in the Maga movement. They recognise that Trump is in a lose-lose situation. It seems unlikely he will release any information too damaging about himself. Yet, if he refuses to release files or releases them but there's nothing significant in them, many – and not only conspiracy theorists – will wonder if key information is being withheld. It's certainly possible that the Epstein controversy will blow over. Come September, when the US legislature reconvenes, we may all be talking about something else: a national or world crisis, quite possibly one of Trump's own making. And yet the cracks it has revealed in MAGA are potentially disastrous for Trump's power, dampening enthusiasm for Republican candidates at the next election, and undermining his tight control of the Republican Party.
Fox News
19-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
BROADCAST BIAS: Networks snooze as top Biden aides take the Fifth on Biden-decline scandal
The evening news shows on the broadcast networks these days aren't always fixated on politics. They often lead their half-hours with frightening weather footage, and turn to Washington about 10 minutes later. But ABC, CBS and NBC can still determine what political scandals should be considered important, and what scandals should be buried and not acknowledged as scandals. The networks blatantly demonstrate their partisanship by treating Republican scandals as urgent matters loaded with historical weight, and dismissing Democrat scandals as either nonexistent or as desperately partisan misinformation. When Democrat and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stacked a "special committee" on the January 6 riot with only two personally picked Republicans who would obey all of her commands, that was "historic" and nonpartisan. All of its hearings were aired live on the broadcast networks every minute, even in prime time. When Republican House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer investigates anything about former President Joe Biden and the Democrats, these networks act like all of their Capitol Hill reporters were laid off. One major scandal of historical import is Biden's mental decline throughout his presidency, and especially at the end, as Democrats refused to consider any primary opponents, trying to push him into another four incapable years. In May, an online national I&I/TIPP Poll found 58% of those surveyed were in favor of hearings (or even criminal proceedings) on the Biden-decline scandal, and only 30% picked "do nothing, it's just politics as usual." All of the so-called scandal cops at the networks are in the minority. The networks failed to move on Monday morning when The New York Times published an eye-opening front-page story. The headline was bland – "Biden Says Autopen Clemencies Were All His" – but within, you could see that Biden was letting his staff make decisions for him. NBC offered 34 seconds on Monday night. The others did not. Early on Monday, published a ludicrous article with the Democrat spin that Rep. Comer has used digital signatures in committee correspondence – as if that's anything like a president being unaware if he pardoned a cocaine dealer. That story was so lame that NBC didn't even put it on "Today" or "Nightly News." It was just MSNBC bait. On Wednesday, Comer's committee dragged in subpoenaed top Jill Biden aide Anthony Bernal. He's a major figure in "Original Sin," the Alex Thompson-Jake Tapper book on hiding Biden's cognitive decline. "Biden's aides would say that she was one of the most powerful First Ladies in history, and as a result he became one of the most influential people in the White House," wrote Thompson and Tapper. They touted Bernal as the "loyalty police" and one of the "protectors of the myth." Bernal is still loyal: he took the Fifth Amendment. "Well, unfortunately, that was quick," said Comer after the deposition ended. "I believe the American people are concerned. They're concerned that there were people making decisions in the White House that were not only unelected but no one to this day knows who they were." ABC, CBS and NBC failed to devote one second to this story. If it pleases President Donald Trump, it's not getting touched. Taxpayer-funded PBS and NPR had no segment. (Fun fact: neither did Jake Tapper on his CNN show that day.) These networks didn't offer that judgment when Trump aides took the Fifth before the Pelosi-picked panel on January 6. That showed rotten contempt for the public! Bernal was not alone: on July 9, Biden's personal doctor Kevin O'Connor repeatedly took the Fifth. In that case, "NBC Nightly News" offered a story. The other networks did nothing. This week, the broadcast networks properly devoted stories to Trump's new diagnosis of a "chronic veinous insufficiency," but that is a routine diagnosis for older people. It in no way compromises his capacity to be president, unlike Biden's growing enfeeblement. In May, an online national I&I/TIPP Poll found 58% of those surveyed were in favor of hearings (or even criminal proceedings) on the Biden-decline scandal, and only 30% picked "do nothing, it's just politics as usual." Of course, there was a Trump scandal to push at these networks this week: a fight between Trump supporters over what would be released by the Justice Department about the late child-sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Among them, the Big Three evening newscasts devoted 20 minutes and eight seconds to Trump's Epstein problems from Monday through Thursday, more than half of it (11 minutes, 43 seconds) on ABC. ABC's Rachel Scott performed the classic spin at the end of her story on Thursday: "And as much as the president wants to turn the page, behind the scenes, this is consuming a lot of time at the White House. His advisers [are] meeting about this, trying to figure a way to move past it, but many Republicans [are] making it clear this is not going away." Scandals are "not going away" when the liberal networks want to inflict headaches on the Republicans. With Democrat scandals, they can't "go away" when they never arrived.
Yahoo
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Kanye West Reportedly 'Under Huge Financial Pressure' As Insiders Claim 'Crisis Is Worse' Than Suspected
Kanye West is reportedly facing a financial "crisis" as his star power continues to take a hit amid his various scandals. Following his controversial support for Hitler, the "Donda" rapper, who has been banned from performing in major European cities, as well as other locations across the UK and the US, is now said to be scrambling for shows to perform. Kanye West also reportedly lost a staggering $3 million overnight, yet pays his wife, Bianca Censori, "hundreds of thousands" of dollars to make her controversial stunts in public with barely-there clothes. West is reportedly experiencing a crisis in his career following his controversial social media remarks and vocal support for fascism, as a new report claims he is "under huge financial pressure' The "Vultures 1" rapper is scheduled to perform at the Rubicon festival in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, next week. With a 26,000-capacity venue, he likely wouldn't have considered such a gig in the past. However, West seems not to have a choice as he has been told to "stay away" from Germany, France, the U.K., Spain, Italy, Scandinavia, and Australia due to his pro-Nazi views. Reports suggest both Wembley Stadium and the London Stadium in the UK blacklisted him even before he released his "Heil Hitler" song in May, leaving him to scramble for bookings around the globe. "He's getting his team to phone around desperately asking for gigs, and he is said to be asking for $7 million a night. No one will touch him with a barge pole," a source told the Daily Mail. "Wembley and London Stadium both said: 'No chance, we don't need the protests,' and that was before the single came out.'" The source added, "It's the same story everywhere they have asked. He is banned pretty much everywhere in Europe – either the venues won't touch him or he isn't able to travel there as he cannot get a visa." It remains to be seen how the rapper will benefit from his current business ventures amid his career trajectory. According to the news outlet, his Slovakian show comes with a capacity of 26,000 fans, but even if seats sell for $200, it's very hard to see how the gig can pay the outrageous $7 million appearance fee he's asking for. Music industry insiders said that "the economics make no sense" as the venue cannot possibly recoup its costs unless it's getting a share of the higher-value resale tickets. Things could worsen for West as more than 3,500 people have signed a petition asking the Mayor of Bratislava to bar the rapper from performing, calling it "an insult to historical memory, a glorification of wartime violence and debasement of all victims of the Nazi regime." The petition, which is endorsed by representatives from organizations such as Peace for Ukraine and Cities for Democracy, accuses West of "repeatedly and openly adhering to symbols and an ideology connected with the darkest period of modern global history." The rapper was further described as "one of the world's most famous antisemites" and says it is "unacceptable that Bratislava should be the only city in Europe" to host a performance by West. It stressed that he be allowed to perform, it could attract "radical and extremist groups from Slovakia and abroad." Despite his financial issues, West reportedly still pays his wife, Bianca Censori, "hundreds of thousands" of dollars to put on her controversial outfits, which he often chooses. The couple is known to be quite carefree when it comes to spending, as they rarely stay in the country, often residing in five-star hotels together and apart, despite having a home in Beverly Hills. According to the Daily Mail, insiders claim that West lost more than $3 million overnight in May as his other sources of income closed one after another. The "Carnival" rapper has since seen his billionaire net worth fall to a $400 million evaluation by Forbes following his controversial antisemitic rants in 2022. At the time, West's Yeezy brand lost its lucrative clothing deal with Adidas, as brands like Balenciaga, The Gap, and Spotify also severed ties with him. A source told the news outlet that West is still living like a billionaire, but the money has stopped coming in, adding that he was "badly hurt by the end of the Adidas deal." It's hard to see a silver lining in the situation as the father-of-four is not only losing out on money but also his relationships. West and his publicist, Milo Yiannopoulos, have since gone their separate ways, which has now been followed by his long-time manager, John Monopoly, who has dropped the rapper. Amid reports that he and Censori went through a divorce scare, West also faces several potentially costly lawsuits from former employees bordering on sexual harassment, as well as claims of unfair treatment. He might also never get the chance to fly to Australia to see his wife's family again, as the country's Home Affairs Minister, Tony Burke, announced last week that the rapper is now banned from Australia due to his controversial views.
Washington Post
04-07-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
How bad corporate culture fuels scandal-making behavior
When I was a student at the University of Michigan in the early 2000s, I attended a talk by legendary General Electric CEO Jack Welch soon after he retired. He was lauded by many as the best CEO of the 20th century, and professors treated him like a visiting head of state. My fellow students, however, were less deferential. One asked why GE refused to clean up the hundreds of tons of toxic PCBs it had dumped for decades into the Hudson River. Welch bristled, dismissed the scientific consensus of PCBs causing cancer, and scolded the audience to appreciate GE's partial restoration of the damaged ecosystem. What stood out to me wasn't just Welch's evasiveness or arrogance — it was that he presented this as common business sense: Corporations are in business for their shareholders — responsibility to the communities they pollute is a secondary consideration, no matter how serious the offense. In 'The Dark Pattern: The Hidden Dynamics of Corporate Scandals,' Guido Palazzo and Ulrich Hoffrage show how such ideas get entrenched and reinforced within corporations, blinding them to their ethical failings. Scandals, the authors argue, aren't rooted in bad people, but result from corporate processes that make unethical behavior feel normal, even necessary. The downfalls of companies like Enron, Theranos and Purdue Pharma were not primarily due to the manipulations of Jeffrey Skilling, Elizabeth Holmes or Richard Sackler, but a function of the systems they oversaw. The authors, professors at the University of Lausanne, in Switzerland, point out that blaming corporate malfeasance on individual 'bad apples' is a comforting lie to distract from deeper problems that cannot be easily addressed by a few firings. They write that at Wells Fargo, one of the companies they use as a case study, more than 100,000 employees engaged in fraudulent activity. In the case of GE, one assumes that hundreds, maybe even thousands, of employees knew about the company polluting the Hudson but said nothing. Palazzo and Hoffrage argue that scandals usually start with the slow, invisible accumulation of unethical decisions until the entire system eventually collapses under its own weight. The book's opening three chapters unpack the key factors that lead to 'the dark pattern' — which the authors define as a corporate culture of ethical blindness and moral disengagement. Among those problems they count rigid ideology, toxic leadership, manipulative language, unrealistic goals and destructive incentives. The book is scientifically grounded, drawing from research on moral disengagement, groupthink and cognitive framing. While the first part of the book equips readers with a new way of thinking about scandals, chapters four through 10 are the real payoff. Each reexamines a well-known scandal, including Theranos (fraudulent blood testing), Uber (predatory market entry), Wells Fargo (widespread fake accounts), France Télécom (employee suicides), Boeing (737 Max crashes), Volkswagen (diesel emissions fraud) and Foxconn (factory worker suicides). Through these examples, Palazzo and Hoffrage show how the cultures that had developed at these companies rendered moral reflection not just difficult but also, in many cases, irrelevant. In their telling, the banality of corporate evil plays out in optimized KPIs, spreadsheets, dashboards and memos. Unethical actions often result not from malice but self-deception and broadly diffused responsibility. It's the everyday workplace routines. It's social pressure from above and below. It's the refrain that 'everyone around me is doing it, too.' Palazzo and Hoffrage's storytelling is brisk and often harrowing. Following privatization, the management of France Télécom (now Orange) wanted to reduce staff by 22,000. But French law made layoffs difficult, so the company relied on forced geographic transfers, unwanted job reassignments and de-skilling to pressure employees to leave 'voluntarily.' These abusive practices contributed to dozens of employee suicides. Workers faced unbearable psychological stress, and cited humiliation and purposelessness in their suicide notes. While I found Palazzo and Hoffrage's perspective on scandals compelling, they focus on corporate culture in a way that tends to obscure the influence of today's economic realities. In almost all of their examples, there is a common engine behind the dark pattern: neoliberal-style capitalism that prioritizes market efficiency, deregulation and shareholder primacy above all else. When the purpose of business is to maximize profit regardless of social cost, ethical shortcuts become market advantages. Palazzo and Hoffrage do acknowledge this, and even end the book with a condemnation of a 'rigid shareholder value ideology.' But in service of creating a generalizable model of scandal, they leave our current economic system largely unexamined. This is a missed opportunity to consider solutions to the public policy and investment practices that enable the dark pattern to continually emerge. Further, while the authors' perspective is a necessary correction to our overemphasis on 'bad apples,' admittedly in some cases individuals behind scandals may warrant closer study. Toxic leadership is, in fact, one of the key factors they identify as leading to ethical blindness. Early in the book, one entertaining passage reexamines Hans Christian Andersen's fable 'The Emperor's New Clothes.' Famously, everyone sees that the emperor is naked, yet no one dares speak up for fear of appearing incompetent or disloyal. The illusion only cracks when a small child, bewildered by the adults around him calls attention to it. But the tailors who initiated the scheme succeed in bamboozling the king and his court because they know which vulnerabilities to exploit: vanity, authoritarian rule, social pressures for conformity. Thus, it's worth considering how con artists can successfully pull the strings of the dark pattern. For instance, McKinsey's involvement in advising Purdue Pharma on 'turbocharging' OxyContin sales seems to follow a similar pattern where the consultants were able to strategically deploy manipulative language as well as unrealistic goals and incentives to propel unethical sales practices. In spite of their penetrating critique, the authors end with cautious optimism. But their prescriptions for avoiding ethical blindness feel modest compared to the scale of the diagnosis. Ultimately, though, the power of the book lies in its insistence that wrongdoing is rarely monstrous. It is mundane, routine, unfolding every day inside cubicles and offices that are recognizable to many of us. Palazzo and Hoffrage have presented a deep understanding of the systems that inevitably lead to misconduct. In doing so, they reframe our most urgent corporate scandals not as outliers, but as warnings from the future we are already living in. Christopher Marquis is the Sinyi Professor at the University of Cambridge and author of 'The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Costs.' The Hidden Dynamics of Corporate Scandals By Guido Palazzo and Ulrich Hoffrage Venture. 323 pp. $30
