Elon Musk Almost Hired Rudy Giuliani Until He Met Him in Person

Elon Musk had wanted to recruit Rudy Giuliani in the early 2000s to help turn PayPal into a bank, but the outgoing New York mayor was too skeezy even for Musk, according to a new biography of the Tesla founder.

Musk co-founded PayPal in 2000. He originally wanted to name the company X and dreamed it would disrupt the finance sector (sound familiar?). Walter Isaacson’s new biography, Elon Musk, which was released Tuesday, reports that Musk and investor Michael Moritz flew to New York soon after to see if they could recruit Giuliani to act as their political fixer and banking policy adviser.

When Musk and Moritz met with Giuliani, “it was like walking into a mob scene,” Moritz says in Isaacson’s biography. Giuliani “was surrounded by goonish confidantes. He didn’t have any idea whatsoever about Silicon Valley, but he and his henchmen were eager to line their pockets.”

“They asked for 10% of the company, and that was the end of the meeting. ‘This guy occupies a different planet,’ Musk told Moritz.”

Giuliani went on to become known as “America’s mayor” after shepherding New York City through the wake of the 9/11 attacks. He then unsuccessfully ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and eventually became Donald Trump’s personal attorney. While he initially amassed millions as a lawyer, consultant, and public speaker, his finances have been struggling of late.

Trump has refused to pay Giuliani’s legal fees, forcing Giuliani to fly to Mar-a-Lago and beg for Trump to pay up. Giuliani is also struggling to pay his own legal bills as he battles an indictment in Georgia for trying to overturn the 2020 election results.

BP CEO Bernard Looney has resigned. On Tuesday afternoon, the Financial Times reported that his departure was the result of his failure to disclose the “extent” of his “past personal relationships with colleagues,” per BP. “He did not provide details of all relationships and accepts he was obligated to make more complete disclosure,” the company said, noting that that it was conducting an ongoing investigation into his conduct following multiple “allegations.” Looney, 53, who has worked at BP since 1991, was brought on as CEO in 2020 as a fresh face to pivot the company formerly known as British Petroleum toward the future. He made $12 million last year, which is more than double what he took home in 2021.

Details about Looney’s departure are still scant. But in a less than auspicious coincidence, the news came on the same day that International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol announced that, for the first time ever, the agency projects peak demand for coal, oil, and gas to arrive before the end of this decade. He called it the “beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era.” In 2018, two years before Looney took office, fossil fuel pollution was found to be responsible for one in five deaths worldwide.

Under Looney’s watch—during which time there has been a drumbeat of catastrophic, climate change–fueled storms, floods, and heat waves—BP first made and then broke its much-hyped plans to scale back oil and gas production and double down on lower-carbon ventures like electric vehicle transport, wind, and solar. Like its competitors, the company saw record profits from oil and gas extraction in 2022. That made it less attractive to spend big on less profitable low-carbon businesses.

Earlier this year, BP, which has been linked to the 1953 coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, announced that it would look to cut fossil fuel production by 25 percent against 2019 levels by 2030—not by 40 percent as it had pledged earlier. BP’s spending on low-carbon ventures, it should be said, has always been small. The U.K.-based think tank Common Wealth found that, in 2022, BP spent 14 times as much on shareholder payouts (including both dividends and share buybacks) as it did on “low carbon” ventures.

BP is not Beyond Petroleum, as it once tried to brand itself. It is decidedly, though, Beyond Looney.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden on Tuesday, and Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman is calling it out for the deeply unserious move that it is. 

When asked for a response to the news, Fetterman feigned shock and distress.

 “Oh my God, really?” he asked, his voice squeaking upward in pitch as he grabbed his head in his hands.

“Oh my gosh, you know, oh—it’s devastating!” Fetterman went on, before breaking into laughter.

“OooOooo don’t do it! Please, don’t do it!” he moaned, clutching at his heart as his aide pulled him away. “Oh no, oh no!”

Fetterman’s response says all we need to know about how the Democrats feel about this impeachment inquiry: It’s one big joke.

The House speaker has launched this inquiry, despite having no evidence of wrongdoing by the president and despite criticism from members of his own party. On Sunday, Republican Representative Ken Buck slammed the entire impeachment inquiry. 

“The time for impeachment is the time when there’s evidence linking President Biden—if there’s evidence—linking President Biden to a high crime or misdemeanor,” Buck said. “That doesn’t exist right now.” 

The impeachment inquiry could also spell trouble for the 18 Republicans representing districts Biden won in 2020.

When Fetterman was asked about McCarthy’s plans for the impeachment inquiry last week, he responded: “Go ahead. Do it, I dare you.”

“It would just be a big circle jerk on the fringe right,” Fetterman added.

A group of voters in Minnesota filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to remove Donald Trump from their state’s presidential ballot, the second such suit against the former president in less than a week.

The voters filed the petition with the Minnesota Supreme Court, arguing that Trump should be disqualified under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. That section of the Constitution states that anyone who has taken an oath of office to the United States and then “engages in insurrection or rebellion” against the country is banned from holding public office again.

Trump has been indicted twice, once federally in Washington and again at the state level in Georgia, for trying to overturn the election. While he has yet to be tried in either case, the lawsuit argues that “during his 2020 re-election campaign, and after the results made clear that he had lost the election, Trump inflamed his supporters with claims that the 2020 presidential election had been rigged.”

“None of this conduct was undertaken in performance of Trump’s official duties, in his official capacity, or under color of his office,” the suit states. “Rather, Trump engaged in insurrection solely in his personal or campaign capacity.”

This is the second lawsuit to remove Trump from a state ballot that has been filed in less than a week. Last Wednesday, a group of Colorado voters represented by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, filed a petition to remove Trump from the Colorado ballot. The voters are either Republican or unaffiliated.

Colorado’s Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold would be responsible for declaring Trump ineligible for the ballot. Although she is named as the defendant in the suit, she appeared to welcome it because it could clarify the law.

“I look forward to the Colorado Court’s substantive resolution of the issues, and am hopeful that this case will provide guidance to election officials on Trump’s eligibility as a candidate for office,” she said in a statement.

Election officials in multiple states are looking into whether Trump is even eligible to run next fall. A survey conducted by The Messenger of all 50 secretaries of state found that six are already looking into legal arguments to keep Trump off the ballot.

As Matt Ford pointed out in The New Republic last week, there is the potential for this to wreak havoc on the election if Trump is disqualified during or even after primary season. But “the rest of the American political system should start thinking about the possibility that Trump, the leading GOP contender for next fall’s presidential election, might not end up on the ballot at all.”

A MAGA Republican candidate for mayor of Franklin, Tennessee, used other people’s social media posts to pretend they were her supporters, a new investigation has revealed.

The city of Franklin votes for mayor on October 24. Gabrielle Hanson, an alderman, is running against incumbent Mayor Ken Moore. Both of them are Republicans.

Hanson posted two photos to her campaign’s social media accounts last month, one of a large crowd at an event she described as a “meet and greet” and another of a group of women in a restaurant. Both photos show racially diverse groups of people.

But neither photo is from a campaign event. In fact, neither photo was even taken this year, NewsChannel5 reported Tuesday.

Both photos were taken in Chicago in 2016. The photo of the crowd has since been deleted, but the picture of the group of women is still up on Hanson’s Facebook page (with a new caption). NewsChannel5 tracked down some of the women in the photo, and all of them were outraged that Hanson had used the image without their permission.

One woman, speaking anonymously, said she was “appalled, absolutely appalled.”

Another woman, identified as April, said she does not support Hanson. “I actually do not know who that is,” she told NewsChannel5.

April explained the women in the photo had been chosen for an ad campaign with the clothing brand The Limited, and they had all gone to brunch afterward. Some of the women said Hanson may have been part of the campaign too, but she wasn’t at the brunch.

Hanson, however, doubled down on her claim in a phone interview with NewsChannel5. She refused to answer any of reporter Phil Williams’s questions, instead insisting that the women were her supporters or friends who live all over the country and threatening Williams with legal action.

But the women in the photo maintained that Hanson is lying.

“I am appalled at the misuse of this photograph and the inaccurate representation of what is happening in it,” a third woman, speaking anonymously, said in a statement to NewsChannel5.

“Such blatant falsehoods being published exemplify the character of a candidate. As I’ve learned more about Gabrielle Hanson and her views, such an egregious attempt to show diverse female support is disgusting.”

Hanson voted in June to block Franklin’s Pride celebrations. She tried to pressure sponsors to stop funding a Juneteenth celebration, and she opposed building remembrance monuments at spots where lynchings occurred.

Republicans are turning on Ken Buck, the Colorado representative who is one of the most outspoken GOP critics of the plan to launch an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will reportedly tell fellow Republicans this week that he will open the inquiry. Buck has been vocal in his opposition to the plan, accusing McCarthy of using impeachment talk to distract from government spending bills.

Republicans have begun to speak out against Buck, and there is even an effort to find a candidate who can launch a primary challenge against Buck, CNN reported Tuesday.

“Everyone on Capitol Hill knows that Ken Buck has given up on his work with the Freedom Caucus, the Foreign Affairs Committee, and the Judiciary Committee so that he can try out for jobs with TV networks or the Biden administration,” a Republican source familiar with the internal discussions, speaking anonymously, told CNN. “He’s totally abandoned all principles to try and make a name for himself. It’s sad that such a formerly great member would do so.”

A Republican lawmaker, also speaking anonymously, said, “We call him ‘Buckle.’”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has made several pointed digs at Buck in recent days, after he called out her impeachment enthusiasm.

“Marjorie filed articles of impeachment on President Biden before he was sworn into office … so the idea that she is now the expert on impeachment or that she is someone who should set the timing on impeachment is absurd,” Buck told MSNBC on Sunday.

Greene hit back, tweeting, “When is Ken Buck going to announce he’s a Democrat? The amount of shilling for Joe Biden is astounding.”

Separately, she told CNN, “I really don’t see how we can have a member on Judiciary that is flat out refusing to impeach.… It seems like, can he even be trusted to do his job at this point?”

Despite the heat coming his way, Buck seems unwilling to bend. And he’s not alone: Some moderate Republicans also oppose launching an impeachment inquiry. Given the razor-thin majority that Republicans hold in the House, it’s unclear if McCarthy’s bid will work.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday launched an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, despite having zero evidence of wrongdoing by the president and not enough support from his own party.

The GOP has insisted for months that Biden is guilty of corruption and influence peddling overseas, although they have yet to provide any actual proof. McCarthy ordered House Republicans to proceed with the inquiry, despite promising less than two weeks ago that he would not open the probe without a vote.

McCarthy has previously said that an impeachment inquiry will help Republicans access more information and witnesses, which will supposedly lead them to evidence of Biden’s crimes. This is, of course, a bass-ackward way of going about things. As CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Representative Nancy Mace Monday night, “Isn’t it supposed to be the evidence that leads you to pursue an impeachment inquiry?”

McCarthy opted to order the inquiry because he doesn’t have the united support of his party. The move is incredibly hypocritical, as he had criticized then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi for impeaching Donald Trump the first time without first holding a vote. The House voted to formalize the impeachment a month later. It is unlikely that would happen this time around, since multiple Republicans are not on board with McCarthy’s plan.

House Republicans, led by the Oversight Committee, have conducted a months-long investigation into Biden. In that time, 60 administration officials have testified at committee hearings, and another eight have sat for transcribed interviews.

High-level officials in the FBI and Secret Service have briefed committee members. The Treasury provided more than 2,000 pages of suspicious activity reports to the committee, and the FBI even gave Oversight the now-infamous FD-1023 form, despite serious misgivings about security issues.

Even Oversight Chair James Comer has admitted that he’s been able to access everything he wanted. “Every subpoena that I’ve signed as chairman of the House Oversight Committee over the last five months, we’ve gotten 100% of what we’ve requested,” he told Fox Business in June. “Whether it’s with the FBI or with banks or with Treasury.”

In comparison, Donald Trump swore in 2019 that he would be “fighting all the subpoenas” for investigations into his actions. His administration refused to provide information for more than 100 congressional investigations, and Trump even sued his own accounting firm to try to block it from giving his tax records to Congress.

Republicans seem to have exhausted all other means of uncovering Biden’s supposed wrongdoing and are now launching a desperate final bid. But if they’ve come this far and still found nothing, that would seem to imply that there is nothing to be found.

This article has been updated.

Representative Matt Gaetz appears to be launching a weird bid to whip up Democratic votes to remove Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House.

The House returns from recess on Tuesday, and one of the first orders of business will be to pass an appropriations bill. Some of the farthest-right representatives are threatening to block the bill—and risk shutting down the government—unless some of their demands are met. These demands include opening an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

Gaetz tweeted last week that he wanted single-subject appropriations bills instead of one big spending package, a subpoena for first son Hunter Biden to testify before Congress, and impeachment proceedings against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell then accused Gaetz of folding “like a cheap card table” to McCarthy and never following through on his threats to hold the speaker accountable.

Gaetz hit back Sunday evening. “Hi, Eric,” he said on Twitter. “If I make a motion to remove Kevin, how [many] democrat votes can I count on?”

Gaetz then appeared to try to goad Swalwell into a response, pointing out that he had co-sponsored a bill with progressive Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to ban members of Congress from owning stocks.

The Florida Republican was one of the last holdouts during the interminable rounds of votes for House speaker in January. Gaetz finally switched his vote to “present,” handing the gavel to McCarthy.

But Gaetz and other members of the far-right Freedom Caucus had won multiple concessions from McCarthy in the process, including restoring the motion to vacate. This rule would allow any single member of the House to call for a vote to remove McCarthy. Freedom Caucus members have previously hinted they would make such a motion, but they have yet to make good on that threat.

President Joe Biden is marking the  9/11 anniversary in Alaska—and Republicans are fomenting an entire news cycle over it.

Biden, who is en route to Washington from his trip to India and Vietnam, will attend a ceremony on a military base in Anchorage, Alaska, on Monday, where he is expected to deliver remarks to more than 1,000 service members. Vice President Kamala Harris attended the commemoration ceremony at the National September 11 Memorial Plaza in New York.

Right-wing media outlets have chosen to commemorate the worst terrorist attacks on American soil by inciting faux outrage over Biden’s absence from the ceremony in New York City.

On Monday morning, Fox & Friends aired a map showing exactly how far away Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska is from each of the 9/11 crash sites, highlighted op-eds railing against Biden’s absence, and invited comments chastising Biden from people who lost loved ones in the attacks.

Fox & Friends anchor Ainsley Earhardt claimed that “every president since 9/11 has been at one of these sites,” and that Biden’s trip to Alaska constitutes a “huge break from tradition.”

While Biden will be the first president to commemorate the 9/11 attacks from the West Coast, Earhardt’s claim is patently false.

Biden is not the first president to mark the anniversary of 9/11 from somewhere other than Ground Zero, or one of the other sites that were attacked. Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both commemorated the day from the White House lawn at different times. In 2021, Trump went to New York City but opted out of the official Ground Zero ceremony.

Fox also reached out to Republican presidential candidates to gain their insights on the president’s scheduling.

Republican candidate Nikki Haley said that she believed Biden should “absolutely” have attended the ceremonies in New York City. Former Vice President Mike Pence also weighed in on the imagined controversy. “I would urge President Biden, as I would any president, to honor the memory of heroes forged that day,” Pence said, ignoring that Biden did exactly that.

For right-wing media, it seems, none of the outrage is actually real, just a way to score some cheap political points and try to remain relevant to the scores of still mourning Americans looking for someone to blame.

Republican Representative Ken Buck slammed his colleague Marjorie Taylor Greene for urging Congress to open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.

The GOP has insisted for months that Biden is guilty of corruption and influence peddling overseas, despite producing no actual evidence. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has indicated he intends to open an impeachment inquiry into the president when the House returns this week. Theoretically, doing so will help Republicans access more information and witnesses, which will supposedly lead them to the truth.

Greene has threatened to hold up government funding unless the House votes to open the impeachment inquiry, although she walked back her enthusiasm a little over the weekend. In a lengthy tweet, she insisted that “our country deserves for Congress to vote for an impeachment inquiry for very important reasons, not a rush impeachment vote.”

When asked Sunday about Greene’s marginally more reserved stance, Buck said, “Well, Marjorie filed articles of impeachment on President Biden before he was sworn into office … so the idea that she is now the expert on impeachment or that she is someone who should set the timing on impeachment is absurd.”

“The time for impeachment is the time when there’s evidence linking President Biden—if there’s evidence—linking President Biden to a high crime or misdemeanor,” Buck said. “That doesn’t exist right now.”

Buck has been vocal in his opposition to both impeaching Biden and to Greene. He slammed McCarthy in July for using talk of an impeachment inquiry to distract from government spending.

“This is impeachment theater,” the Colorado Republican told CNN’s Dana Bash. “What [McCarthy’s] doing is he’s saying, ‘There’s a shiny object over here, and we’re really going to focus on that. We just need to get all these things done so that we can focus on the shiny object.’”

Buck also gave some of the most critical statements about Greene after she was booted from the far-right House Freedom Caucus in early July. Buck, who is still a caucus member, said Green “consistently attacked other members of the Freedom Caucus in an irresponsible way, and as a result of that she was kicked out of the Freedom Caucus.”

“She should not be a member,” he told NBC.