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Elon Musk's wealth has crashed by over $160 billion from its peak as Tesla's problems pile up
Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Tesla shares have tumbled 62% from their peak as investors gear up for a growth slowdown.The stock drop has fueled an estimated $166 billion decline in Elon Musk's net worth.The Tesla CEO is now worth about $174 billion, down from $340 billion in November 2021.Tesla's mounting troubles have dealt a heavy blow to Elon Musk's net worth.
In November 2021, the Tesla CEO held the top spot on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and seemed untouchable with an estimated fortune of $340 billion. He was more than three times richer than Warren Buffett at that point.
However, Musk's net worth has plunged by about $166 billion since then to $174 billion at Wednesday's close. The key driver has been Tesla stock, which has tumbled from a split-adjusted peak of $415 in 2021 to $155 — a 62% decline.
The share-price slump has slashed Tesla's market capitalization from north of $1.2 trillion to below $490 billion. Musk's net worth has taken a big hit from the decline because his 13% stake in the automaker makes up a big chunk of his wealth.
Musk's start to this year has also been dismal relative to his peers in the 12-digit club. He topped the Bloomberg rich list with a $229 billion fortune in January, but his net worth has crashed by $55 billion, or 24%, since then.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO now ranks fourth in the wealth rankings, behind LVMH's Bernard Arnault, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg.
Moreover, Musk is the only one of the world's 13 richest people whose net worth has declined this year. He's lost more money on paper than anyone on the list has gained, including Zuckerberg who's up almost $50 billion.
Tesla's stock has tumbled in recent months due to mounting concerns about the company. Musk told employees over the weekend that more than 10% of the company's global workforce would be laid off, signaling demand for EVs is faltering.
The automaker delivered fewer cars than expected to customers last quarter, and has made price cuts that threaten to erode its profit margins.
Moreover, Musk is fending off fierce competition from Chinese rivals like Buffett-backed BYD, and has repeatedly underscored the painful impact of higher interest rates on customer demand.
Musk's fortune isn't completely tied to Tesla. He also owns an estimated 42% stake in SpaceX, the space exploration company valued at $180 billion in December, and a roughly 79% stake in X after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and rebranded it last year.
Google fired 28 employees for staging in-office protests against the company's contract with Israel
Justice Speaks
Nine Google employees were arrested after protesting the company's contract with Israel.The company fired 28 employees in California and New York.Another employee was fired last month for protesting the same contract in New York.A small group of Alphabet employees' long-simmering protests against the Google parent company's work with Israel ended with more than two dozen terminations on Wednesday.
Google fired 28 employees who participated in office protests in New York and California on Tuesday, the company said on Wednesday.
The employees occupied Google offices in Sunnyvale, California, and New York City. They were protesting Project Nimbus, Google's $1.2 billion joint contract with Amazon that provides services to Israel's government.
"Physically impeding other employees' work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and we will investigate and take action," a Google spokesperson said. "These employees were put on administrative leave, and their access to our systems was cut."
Nine workers were arrested after they refused to leave the offices. Five of the arrests were in Sunnyvale and four were in New York. Police in both locations confirmed the figures to BI.
A representative for the New York Police Department said the four people in New York were charged with criminal trespassing. A representative for the Sunnyvale police department said the arrested individuals received citations for trespassing. Charges have not yet been filed, the district attorney's office in Santa Clara County said on Wednesday.
Chris Rackow, Google's head of security, wrote in an internal memo on Wednesday that the protests were "extremely disruptive" and that they "made coworkers feel threatened."
The company had 182,502 employees as of December 31.
Protests against Project Nimbus
Small groups of Google employees have voiced dissent against Project Nimbus, a joint contract with Amazon that provides artificial intelligence and cloud computing services to Israel's government and military.
Last month, a Google employee protesting the contract was fired for disrupting a talk in New York by the company's head of Israel.
More than 100 people, including Google workers, protested the project outside the company's New York office in 2022. The protest came after the resignation of a Google employee who had spoken out against Project Nimbus.
The tech group No Tech for Apartheid said it organized Tuesday's protest as part of its campaign asking Amazon and Google to scrap Project Nimbus. No Tech for Apartheid says the tech companies' contract enables the Israeli government to surveil and displace Palestinians. The contract — the details of which became public in 2021 — drew additional scrutiny after Hamas launched a series of terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7, killing 1,200. Israel responded to the attacks with a months-long offensive that has killed over 30,000 Palestinians.
A Google representative told BI the company supports governments in countries it operates in with cloud computing services.
"We have been very clear that the Nimbus contract is for workloads running on our commercial cloud by Israeli government ministries, who agree to comply with our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy," a Google spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said the work is not directed at highly sensitive or classified military projects relevant to weapons or intelligence services.
Protestors complied with arrests
Sunnyvale Police Department Captain Dzanh Le told BI there were between 80 to 90 protesters outside the building in Sunnyvale on Tuesday, with a few occupying a room in Google's complex. Bloomberg reported that some protesters congregated near the office of Google's cloud CEO.
Protestors outside Google's office in Sunnyvale, California.Justice Speaks
Le said the police department received a call from Google around 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday saying the protesters refused to leave. The protesters refused again when the police came and were then arrested on suspicion of criminal trespassing. Le said the protesters complied with the arrest.
One of the employees arrested in Google's New York City headquarters, 23-year-old Hasan Ibraheem, told BI the protest started around noon Tuesday when a group of employees sat in the office with a banner and started giving speeches and reciting chants.
Ibraheem said the group was asked to leave multiple times throughout the day but continued the chants and speeches every 15 to 20 minutes, until about 6 p.m. By 6:45 p.m., he said the remaining group was informed that they no longer had access to the building and couldn't work.
The police arrived around 9:30 p.m. and arrested the remaining four Googlers, Ibraheem said. The workers were released from the station at 2 a.m., he said.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.
Are you a Googler? We want to hear from you. Email the reporter using a non-work device at aaltchek@insider.com
Red Lobster, home of the endless shrimp, mulls bankruptcy after spoiling its customers with all-you-can-eat lobster: report
Richard Levine/Corbis via Getty Images
It may be the end of the line for the seafood chain Red Lobster, per Bloomberg.The restaurant is mulling bankruptcy and has sought legal advice, Bloomberg reported.Red Lobster saw an operating loss of $11 million in the third quarter of 2023 and $12.5 million in the fourth quarter.Seafood chain Red Lobster is considering filing for bankruptcy, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.
Declaring bankruptcy would allow Red Lobster to keep their business going while it pares down its debts and expenses, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. According to the outlet, Red Lobster is being advised by the law firm King & Spalding.
Red Lobster and King & Spalding did not respond to Bloomberg's requests for comment.
The news comes after Red Lobster's attempts to draw in more customers with its signature all-you-can-eat deals backfired.
The seafood restaurant is best known for its "Ultimate Endless Shrimp" deal, which has been running for more than 18 years. For $20, customers could gorge themselves with as much shrimp as they wanted.
Last summer, Red Lobster decided to offer the promotion every day instead of once a week.
But while the promotion brought in the crowds, Red Lobster said it had wildly underestimated the overwhelming response to this "very cheap" deal. The resulting operating losses would eventually cause Red Lobster to raise prices to $22 and then $25.
Ludovic Garnier, the chief financial officer of Thai Union Group — a Red Lobster investor — said in an earnings call in November that the promotion was "one of the key reasons for the losses we generated in Q3 2023."
Red Lobster incurred an operating loss of $11 million that quarter. It then reported a $12.5 million operating loss in the fourth quarter of 2023.
To be sure, restaurants like Red Lobster do run the risk of losing money on their all-you-can-eat deals if their customers are intent on getting their money's worth.
Back in August, a woman went viral on TikTok after she posted a video of herself dining at Golden Corral for 12 hours straight. The TikTok user said she paid $12 for a breakfast set but stayed on for lunch and dinner as well.
But losses from the shrimp-fest didn't faze Red Lobster. The company launched another all-you-can-eat deal in February — the "Endless Lobster Experience."
This time round, Red Lobster was careful to include multiple caveats in its promotion.
For instance, the complimentary deal was only available to 150 winning customers nationwide. Also, customers could only eat up to 12 1¼-pound live Maine lobsters, followed by servings of Maine lobster tails or Caribbean Rock lobster tails. And they had to scarf them down in the restaurant's two-hour time limit.
Red Lobster's struggles underscore the challenges faced by the food and beverage industry when trying to draw in customers amid rampant inflation.
In July, McDonald's CFO Ian Borden told investors that their customers were ordering less and switching to value menu items to save money.
The drop in consumer spending, Borden said, was because of a "challenging macro environment including rising interest rates and elevated costs."
Representatives for Red Lobster and King & Spalding did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.
New Cisco Hypershield aims to ‘completely reimagine’ security in the AI age
Olivia Munn says she 'absolutely broke down' when she saw her body after a double mastectomy
Gregg DeGuire/WWD via Getty Images
Olivia Munn, 43, reflects on her emotional experience after undergoing a double mastectomy due to breast cancer."I saw myself for the first time and I was in shock," Munn told People.Cases of breast cancer among people under 50 years old are on the rise.Olivia Munn, 43, remembers the shock she experienced when she saw her body for the first time after a double mastectomy.
The "X-Men: Apocalypse" actor — who was diagnosed with breast cancer in April 2023 — spoke to People about her medical journey over the past months.
Munn said she underwent four surgeries, including a 10-hour double mastectomy, as part of her treatment plan.
"I really tried to be prepared, but the truth is that nothing could prepare me for what I would feel like, what it would look like, how I would handle it emotionally. It was a lot tougher than I expected," Munn said.
Post-op, she wasn't able to process what she had lost due to the bandages and the pain, Munn said. It wasn't until a week after her surgery that she finally saw her body properly at the doctor's.
"I saw myself for the first time and I was in shock. It was incredibly hard," Munn said. "And the doctor was telling me how fantastic it looked, which made it even harder because 'fantastic' is top. You don't get better than fantastic, so I thought, 'This doesn't get better.'"
She added that she took in what the doctor said without emotion but couldn't keep it together when she got home.
"When I got home, I undressed and looked in the mirror again, and that's when I just absolutely broke down," she said. "I just thought, 'Oh my gosh, this is what I look like, and I don't want to look at myself right now.'"
Although things look better now that she's had reconstruction surgery, Munn says she knows "it's not the same."
"But that's OK because I'm here," Munn added. "I'm extremely happy that I had the option to have a double mastectomy. I'm extremely happy that I got the opportunity to fight."
Munn isn't the only celebrity who has spoken out about getting a mastectomy.
In 2012, Sharon Osbourne revealed to Hello magazine that she underwent a double mastectomy when she realized she carried a gene that made her predisposed to breast cancer.
"I've had cancer before, and I didn't want to live under that cloud. I decided to just take everything off, and had a double mastectomy," Osbourne, who battled colon cancer in 2002, said.
Angelina Jolie said in a 2013 opinion piece in The New York Times that she decided to get a preventive double mastectomy when she found out she, too, carried a gene that increased her risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer.
"I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to have a mastectomy was not easy. But it is one I am very happy that I made. My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don't need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer," Jolie wrote.
In the US, about 240,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed in women each year and about 2,100 in men, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Although most breast cancers are usually found in women who are 50 or older, cases among younger people are on the rise.
NASA's chief says China is being 'very, very secretive' and pretending its space projects aren't linked to the military
Saul Loeb-Pool/Getty Images
NASA chief Bill Nelson accused China on Wednesday of secretly working on military projects in space.Nelson told lawmakers that NASA believes Beijing is masking these projects as civilian efforts.Nelson often warns of dire consequences if China reaches the moon first. The US aims to do so by 2026.National Aeronautics and Space Administration head Bill Nelson warned on Wednesday that China is passing off military endeavors in space as civilian projects, reiterating that the US is in a "race" with Beijing to reach the moon in the 21st century.
"China has made extraordinary strides, especially in the last 10 years, but they are very, very secretive," Nelson told members of the House Appropriations Committee at a 2024 budget hearing.
"We believe that a lot of their, so-called civilian space programs is a military program," Nelson continued. "And I think, in effect, we are in a race."
Nelson made these remarks as he pitched a $25.4 billion budget for his agency to lawmakers, just under 0.4% of the total $6.5 trillion US government budget for 2024.
For years, he and other NASA officials have highlighted concerns that China may seek to bully out other countries in space — particularly on the moon — if it establishes dominance there.
"My concern would be if China got there first and suddenly said: 'Okay, this is our territory, you stay out,'" Nelson said.
The NASA chief alluded to the Spratly Islands, an archipelago in the South China Sea claimed by several nations. China has attempted to exert sovereignty over the islands, claiming all territory within a "nine-dash line" that spans most of the sea.
The US aims to land astronauts on the moon by September 2026 under its Artemis missions, pushing the deadline back from 2025 due to delays. Most of its allies with ambitions in space have signed an international agreement, the Artemis Accords, that outlines principles for space exploration, such as publicly sharing collected information.
China and Russia have not signed the accords, but are signatories to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which bars installing weapons and military bases in space.
The combination of the Shenzhou-18 crewed spaceship and a Long March-2F carrier rocket is transferred to the launching area at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on April 17, 2024 in Alxa League, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China.VCG/Getty Images
Beijing has said that it hopes to complete its first crewed mission to the moon by 2030, making it the second country in the world to land a person there. It also plans to establish a base on lunar soil in the next five years.
But speaking to lawmakers on Wednesday, Nelson said that China might accelerate its plans to close the four-year gap between its moon landing and NASA's.
"Their latest date that they have said that they're going to land is 2030, but that keeps moving up," Nelson said. "And so I think it's incumbent on us to get there first and to utilize our research efforts for peaceful purposes."
"Their science is good, their engineering is good, and the proof's in the pudding, they now have a space station up there," Nelson added.
Meanwhile, China has repeatedly denied that it intends to establish any military presence in outer space. "Space war can not be won and must never be fought," its ambassador to the UN said in 2021.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
Jamie Dimon says the future of the world depends on whether the US can sort out its relationship with China
Win McNamee via Getty Images; Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images
JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon is once again advocating for the US and China to make nice."It's the thread from Ukraine, oil and gas, food, migration, all our relationships," Dimon said.He added that he thinks the US needs "great American leadership" to stabilize its relationship with China.How the US handles its shaky relationship with China will affect the future of the world, says JPMorgan chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon.
"It's the thread from Ukraine, oil and gas, food, migration, all our relationships, the most important one being China," Dimon told Bloomberg's Emily Chang in an interview that aired Wednesday. "That is the most important for the future of the world."
"And obviously Ukraine is affecting it. In fact, it's very hard to see really positive outcomes with China until the Ukraine war is resolved," Dimon said, referencing the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
Dimon offered his assessment of China in a wide-ranging interview with Chang, where he talked about his career and the impact of AI on jobs.
In May, Dimon also advocated for more engagement between the US and China. Speaking at the JPMorgan Global China Summit in Shanghai, he said he found it heartening that US leaders were talking about derisking.
"You're not going to fix these things if you are just sitting across the Pacific yelling at each other. So I'm hoping we have real engagement," Dimon said, per Reuters.
Dimon's fresh remarks on China come as the world's second-largest economy finds itself in a fraught relationship with the US. And in January, CIA chief William J. Burns said China is a far bigger threat to the US than Russia.
"While Russia may pose the most immediate challenge, China is the bigger long-term threat," Burns wrote in a Foreign Affairs op-ed on January 30.
China is also set to become a focal point for US foreign policy, no matter who wins the presidential elections this year. Both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have talked about how they would confront and handle China if elected in 2024.
On Wednesday, Biden called for higher tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum during a rally in Pennsylvania.
"They've got a population that is more people in retirement than working. They're not importing anything," Biden said. "They're xenophobic. Nobody else coming in. They've got real problems."
But while Dimon did single out China as a significant risk to the world, he told Chang that he is optimistic that the US could manage them.
"It'll be okay, but we need really good American leadership to do that," Dimon said.
"And don't worry, they're not a 10 foot giant, they have a lot of issues. America's got a lot of strains. I like the fact the American government's talking to them constantly now," he added.
How Africa's first caviar won over Michelin-starred restaurants in Europe
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the amount of feed Acipenser produces each month. It is about 60 metric tons per month, not kilograms. Business Insider also misstated that Acipenser released male Sturgeon into Lake Mantasoa. This has been removed.
I always planned to retire at 65 — until I started thinking differently about what it means to retire
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The author, Jennifer Sisson.Jennifer Sisson
My husband and I always saved slowly, planning to retire at 65. Then, FIRE taught us that retirement doesn't have to be triggered by an age, but by a sum. Now, we're saving $1.2 million and investing in real estate to retire early.My husband and I started our retirement savings like most people do: we contributed to our 401(k)s at work.
We didn't know what we were doing at the time — we just knew we needed to be investing so we'd have a nest egg in our golden years. We started with target date funds and then "graduated" to a broad mix of mutual funds. We also started contributing to a Roth IRA on the side.
We were feeling very proud of ourselves. Our retirement plans grew slowly as we got our 4% company match, and we contributed a little extra when money allowed. If we continued to truck along at the same rate, we'd have enough for a comfy retirement around age 65. That was as far as our frame of reference allowed us to see at the time.
Then I discovered the FIRE (financial independence, retire early) movement.
Down the FIRE rabbit hole
Several books and podcasts introduced me to this new concept: Retirement wasn't an age but a number — an amount of money large enough that you could live on the interest it produced without touching the principal. With this lump sum as a money-generating machine, we could be financially independent, no longer need a job, and be ready to retire. And if my husband and I could get to that number faster, we could quit working sooner.
My husband and I made a tentative goal of $1.2 million. According to the oft-cited Trinity Study (which is essentially canon scripture in the FIRE movement), you can withdraw 4% of a stock portfolio each year and not eat into the principal. Stocks tend to appreciate more than this (around 7%), but the so-called 4% rule keeps withdrawals low enough to account for bull market years when your portfolio is down.
This rule helped us reverse-engineer how big our nest egg needed to be. We're pretty frugal folks, so we figured we could live on around $48,000 in retirement, which is 4% of $1.2 million. We were ignited by our new focus, but $1.2 million was a very distant goal. We earned enough for our needs, but we didn't have the latitude to ramp up our 9-to-5 income to save more aggressively than we already were. So, we started brainstorming other ways to hit our goal sooner.
A shift from stocks to real estate
We hadn't dabbled in the FIRE community long before we came across real estate investing as an avenue to hit our retirement number earlier. We had an interest in owning rentals even before we discovered FIRE. After some back-of-the-napkin math, we realized that this could be the shortcut we were looking for.
With rental properties, we realized we didn't need the whole $1.2 million sitting in a retirement account; we just needed $48,000 a year (or $4,000 a month) in cash flow. If we could make $200 in monthly profit per rental unit, we were 20 doors away from retiring.
Another alluring aspect of real estate was that elements of the investment were under our direct control. With stocks, we bought and crossed our fingers, hoping they'd go up over time. With a rental, we could renovate the house to make its value go up. Plus, nicer units would command higher rents.
What's more, we could take out mortgages to help purchase properties, whereas we had to rely solely on our own money for saving in our 401(k). That leverage could help us acquire more assets than we could on our own. After we retired, we'd also have our pick of the properties to live in, should we ever need to.
With this in mind, we started purchasing rentals. We've acquired two so far. One surpassed our expectations. We ran it as a profitable Airbnb for a while before converting it to a hands-off long-term rental.
The other was a bit of a bust — a rehab that took longer and cost more than anticipated. The cash flow came short of our goal of $200 per door, but the success of our first property has offset the shortcomings of the second.
A balanced approach
While building up our real estate portfolio, we've continued to save in our 401(k) and Roth IRA accounts. There are no guarantees in investing, and we didn't want all of our proverbial eggs in the real estate basket. If my husband or I become unable to fix up houses or the housing market experiences another 2008-style crash, we want our stock portfolio as a backup plan.
And retiring on time isn't a bad backup plan.
Finding a financial advisor doesn't have to be hard. SmartAsset's free tool matches you with up to three fiduciary financial advisors that serve your area in minutes. Each advisor has been vetted by SmartAsset and is held to a fiduciary standard to act in your best interests. Start your search now.
This article was originally published in August 2023.
A beheading meme and 'Mark Ruffalo, naked' — how 'anti-Trump' posts got 5 New Yorkers booted from the hush-money trial
Pool/Getty Images
Five potential jurors were challenged on Tuesday for what the defense called 'anti-Trump' posts. Trump listened as the posts were described, including an AI video titled "I Am Dumb As Fuck Trump."None of the 5 made the jury, especially one who had posted "Lock him up" on Facebook in 2017.One was a beheading meme. One was an AI clip titled "Dumb As Fuck Trump." Another was a 2016 get-out-the-vote video featuring Mark Ruffalo promising "to do a nude scene" in his next movie.
So far, five potential hush-money jurors have been shown the door at Donald Trump's hush-money trial after his lawyers complained about these and other "anti-Trump" social media posts.
Many of the posts were quite comical when described in open court. There was even humor in what was not described.
"I don't think that is necessary," New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan deadpanned when defense lawyer Todd Blanche offered to hit play on the "Dumb As Fuck Trump" video.
Trump, who'd been dozing off at the defense table earlier in the day, was often the only one not laughing.
In fact, he was scolded by the judge for being audibly angry after he was forced to watch a prospective juror's video of New Yorkers dancing in the street when he lost the 2020 presidential election.
Seven jurors — four men and three women — have been chosen. Jury selection continues Thursday.
Here, in chronological order, is what happened in court Tuesday as the defense challenged the social media histories of 5 prospective jurors.
1. Dancing in the streets
"So I hear what sounds like a cowbell," noted Merchan, the judge, as he listened to a video posted to Facebook four years ago by a high school teacher and mother of two.
She was the first of the prospective jurors who were challenged by Trump's defense team on Tuesday over their "anti-Trump" social media.
Her Facebook video showed Manhattanites laughing, cheering, and dancing in the streets after Joe Biden's 2020 presidential victory.
Trump had to sit at the defense table and watch as the video was played in court, cowbells and all.
The prospective juror, identified only as "B-133," had clearly "attended an "anti-Trump rally," defense lawyer Susan Necheles protested.
"This is not a rally," countered prosecutor Joshua Steinglass.
"It seemed like a celebratory moment in New York City," the high school teacher stammered when she was called into court to explain the video.
"I mean, I think that was it, I think," she added.
Watching New Yorkers cheer in the streets over his defeat appears to have angered Trump.
"So, Mr. Blanche," the judge told Trump's lawyer, after the prospective juror left the courtroom.
"While the juror was at the podium, maybe 12 feet from your client, your client was audibly uttering something — I don't know exactly what he was uttering," the judge warned.
"I won't tolerate that. I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom. I want to make that crystal clear."
2. "Get him out and lock him up"
Then there were the social media posts of the juror they called "B-38," a middle-aged man from Midtown who works as a creative director for Lands' End.
"Good news," he'd posted on Facebook in 2017, soon after Trump took office. "Trump lost his court battle and his unlawful travel ban."
In another post from around that time, he'd posted, "Get him out and lock him up" and "Watch out for stupid tweets by DJT."
"We cannot have a juror like that on the jury, your honor," Blanche told the judge, reasonably enough.
Called before the judge, the prospective juror admitted, "I had strong feelings at the time."
"This is a person who has expressed, at least at one time, it was several years ago, the desire that Donald Trump be locked up," the judge later explained of his decision to boot B-38 from the jury pool.
"Everyone knows that if Mr. Trump is found guilty in this case, he faces a potential jail sentence, which would be 'lock up.'"
3. "And to get Mark Ruffalo naked"
Eight years ago, celebrities, including Robert Downey Jr., Neil Patrick Harris, and Ruffalo, banded together for a video titled "The Avengers unite against Donald Trump… and to get Mark Ruffalo naked."
Ruffalo very reluctantly promises in the clip to "do a nude scene" in his next movie if people get out and vote.
"They should just vote 'cuz it matters, you know? Don't you think?" the star sheepishly asks, clearly taken by surprise by this commitment he'd been cornered into making.
When it was released in 2016, the clip was shared on the Facebook account of the husband of prospective juror B-330.
Not the prospective juror's own Facebook, mind you. It was shared on the account of the prospective juror's husband.
The husband also posted a meme in 2016 showing Trump and then-President Barack Obama side by side. It was captioned, "I don't think this is what they meant by 'orange is the new black.'"
And finally, the husband had posted, again in 2016, "just a meme of a character holding President Trump's head in their hands," Blanche complained. The head, he said, was severed.
"I guess it is a character from the Simpsons," the judge offered, querulously.
"Yes, your honor," Blanche answered.
"What is the name of this character?" the judge asked.
"I do not know," Blanche answered.
"I do not know either," the judge said.
Steinglass, the prosecutor, complained that the posts were from 2016, and had not been posted by the prospective juror herself, a young woman who works for the city's Economic Development Corporation.
They were clearly "political humor," he added.
The judge, too, was not impressed.
"Honestly," he told the defense, "if this is the worst thing that you were able to find about this juror — that her husband posted this humor, albeit not very good humor, from eight years ago — then it gives me confidence that this juror can be fair and impartial."
4. "I Am Dumb As Fuck Trump"
Just last month — but well before he could have imagined being a juror in the hush money case — a middle-aged employee of the city's Shakespeare & Co. bookstore added some pro-Biden posts to his Facebook account.
They included some Biden-Harris campaign promotions and a news story, headlined, "Trump indicted in documents case."
They also included what Blanche complainingly described as "a one minute and 30-second video, titled "I Am Dumb Fuck Trump."
"This is a parody video," Blanche huffed of the AI-generated clip, "that mocks President Trump the whole time."
When the lawyer offered, "We can play it for your honor," the judge declined.
"I honestly don't remember" the bookseller said, when Blanche asked if he'd watched the video before posting it. "I thought it would be funny. I don't recall watching it."
"Do you have a highly unfavorable overall impression of Donald Trump," Steinglass, the prosecutor, asked.
"I would have to say that politically, yes, I do," the prospective juror answered.
The judge let the defense boot the bookseller for cause.
5. "Boys request to return to cave"
The final prospective juror questioned on their social media posts was a retired grandmother from Manhattan's Lower East Side.
Back in 2018, the bespectacled grandmother of four and former transit employee had posted a meme about the soccer team that was rescued from a cave in Thailand.
"Trump invites Thai boys to White House," the meme read. "Boys request to return to cave."
"Republicans projected to pick up 70 seats in prison," read another meme, taken from the humor newsletter the Borowitz Report, that the same woman also posted at around that time.
"This was from six years ago," the judge complained, when shown the post.
Called before the judge, the grandmother said that after 2018, she stopped posting "anything to do with politics."
"It got too vitriolic for people, people that I've known for years," she explained.
"So yeah, I may have posted this, but I learned a good lesson from it," she added, to laughter and smiles in the courtroom — just not from Trump.
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