Latest news with #Princeton-educated
Politico
2 days ago
- Politics
- Politico
Trump has Hegseth's back. Some of Hegseth's allies worry it won't last.
'Where's Pete?' he asked, according to a senior administration official who worked on the transition, recounting a now joked-about story. His advisers looked around confused. Pete, who? 'Pete Hegseth,' Trump said, referring to the Fox News star he'd admired over the years. 'I want Pete.' Trump has long admired the energy of the handsome, Princeton-educated Hegseth. During the GOP presidential primaries, when he felt 'Fox and Friends' wasn't giving him enough positive coverage, Hegseth's fawning commentary on the weekend version of 'Fox & Friends' buoyed his mood. A plus: The veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan emanates the 'warrior ethos' masculinity that Trump admires. The president saw him as the perfect messenger for an administration salivating to take a chainsaw to what MAGA viewed as the woke sensibilities of the armed forces. That desire ultimately won out even after Hegseth initially failed to disclose to the transition team that he'd paid a woman who alleged he sexually assaulted her as part of a settlement. (He has denied that accusation and was never charged.) And it stayed with Trump throughout the spring when Signalgate erupted. Notably, it was Michael Waltz who took the fall for adding a journalist to the chain. Trump, meanwhile, stood with Hegseth — even as many in the media speculated he was about to get canned. 'Keep fighting — I love what you're doing,' Trump told Hegseth during one meeting amid the controversy, a second White House official recounted. 'Whatever you need. You're a killer.' At the time, I asked one White House official why the administration stood by Hegseth despite the chaos. The answer was simple: Team Trump had put so much political capital in getting him confirmed that it would take a whole lot more dirt to send him packing. The reality is Trump doesn't give a fig about how Hegseth treats his staff, or whether there's an investigation into his use of Signal and classified documents, said one of the White House officials and three outside allies. 'He doesn't care about the palace intrigue stuff — he just doesn't,' said one top ally. 'It's not drama that impacts him or his agenda.' Nowadays, Trump's inner circle gives Hegseth props for the successful execution of Operation Midnight Hammer, the covert U.S. bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities and the military's joint-taskforce at the border. They credit him for historic recruitment and boosted morale with the troops who adore him. And they love that he's leading on Trump's desire to build a Golden Dome missile defense system to protect the U.S. Still, there's a dirty little secret that folks in the White House won't voice but their allies on the outside admit: No matter the drama, White House officials have to find a way to work with him because Trump has made clear that Hegseth is not going anywhere. 'The boss loves him — so it's like, 'We'll make it work,'' said one Trump ally close with the inner circle who has been aghast at the headlines. 'This is bullshit' The endless ability to forgive on Hegseth's behalf is particularly acute in the situation regarding the treatment of the fired employees, some who had known Hegseth for more than a decade and worked with him at a previous employer. Hegseth not only publicly harangued them as leakers but mused that his ex-buddies could be prosecuted by the Justice Department.
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump Fires Off Brutal Insult at Fed Chair for Defying Him
President Donald Trump called Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell a 'numbskull' for refusing the president's requests that he drop interest rates. Trump, who has often clashed with Powell during his second term, went on a long rant that saw him attack the Princeton-educated banker's intelligence and decision-making. At one point, Trump floated firing Powell if he doesn't acquiesce—a threat Trump has previously made but which the Supreme Court has signaled would be illegal. 'The fake news is saying, 'Oh, if you fired him, it would be so bad,'' Trump said while signing a bill at the White House Thursday. 'I don't know why it would be so bad, but I'm not going to fire him.' Trump's ire at Powell seemed to be reignited by positive May inflation numbers, showing just a slight increase—despite previous concerns that Trump's sweeping tariffs will send inflation surging. 'We have inflation under control perfectly,' Trump said. 'You probably saw the records. Everyone's on television saying, 'What's going on here? Trump was proven to be right.'' Moody's chief economist, Mark Zandi, told CNBC that it was a 'very good report,' but predicted that it was 'the calm before the inflation storm.' Trump, however, took it as a sign that Powell—whom he nominated to lead the Fed in 2017—ought to start doing his bidding. 'All he has to do is lower it,' the president said. 'Europe's done 10 lowerings. We've done none. And nobody understands it.' Powell has said that the Fed has not lowered rates out of concerns that doing so could spark inflation. Trump claimed that the U.S. would lose out on $600 billion a year 'because of one numbskull'—referring to Powell—if he refused to lower rates. Back in April, the president had railed against Powell, whom he branded a 'major loser,' for refusing to preemptively cut rates soon after Trump launched his most extreme tariff plan, which he later backed off from. Despite the persistent pressure from Trump, the Fed has said it 'will set monetary policy, as required by law, to support maximum employment and stable prices and will make those decisions based solely on careful, objective, and non-political analysis.' Powell's term at the Fed ends in 2026, and Trump's treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has emerged as a leading contender to succeed him.
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Yahoo
Opening Arguments for the Trial Everyone Is Talking About Begins Tuesday
Los Angeles defense attorney Alan Jackson is expected to give a fiery opening argument Tuesday morning in the case of Karen Read, the one-time Massachusetts finance analyst charged with backing her SUV while drunk into her Boston police officer boyfriend during a 2022 blizzard. Jackson, along with fellow L.A. defense attorney Elizabeth Little, have maintained that John O'Keefe, a well-respected Boston cop whose body was found in a snowbank after a night of partying with Read and other law enforcement officers in the early morning hours of Jan. 29, 2002, was brutalized inside the Canton, Mass. home of Brian Albert, a now retired Boston police officer, a charge he and others assembled at the home steadfastly deny. This is Read's second trial. The first ended with a hung jury - with one of those jurors, a Boston lawyer, now working for Read's defense. Victoria Brophey George, a Princeton-educated lawyer from Boston who was an alternate when fellow jurors led the judge to declare a mistrial, will now be sitting with Read's high-profile Angeleno attorneys and hard-hitting former Boston city prosecutor, David selection in the case ended on April 15, after three weeks of voir dire. Eighteen people were selected to serve in the case, and after closing arguments, 12 will be selected to deliberate while the others will remain on as alternates. Read, 45, has been working on her defense full-time since her arrest on second-degree murder and other charges within hours of her boyfriend's body being found. She is now millions of dollars in debt she says in an HBO documentary, and "fighting for her life." The prosecution also has a new lead attorney, one added to the team from the private sector: Hank Brennan, a criminal defense lawyer who famously defended notorious Boston Irish mobster James "Whitey" Bulger, who was captured in Santa Monica in June 2011 after more than a decade on the lam, and murdered by a coterie of his enemies at a federal prison seven years later. From the time Read was taken into custody, the case exposed a myriad of problems in the investigation at the hands of Massachusetts State Police troopers who are assigned to the Norfolk County District Attorney's Office, currently run by Michael Morrissey. The troopers assigned to that unit investigate homicides alongside their local police counterparts Norfolk County, which is comprised of 27 insular cities and towns that make up what is known locally as the south shore of Boston. But retired Massachusetts State Police Lieutenant Bob Long, who now runs a vaunted private investigations agency, defended the work of his former colleagues in the state police, pointing to the blizzard conditions and the emotions at play when a fellow cop "is left to die." "She admitted at the crime scene that she thinks she hit him," Long told Los Angeles. "They were working from that premise in blizzard conditions." This story is developing. Stay up to date with developments at
The Independent
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Jon Hamm steals expensive stuff and likely viewers' hearts in Apple TV+'s 'Your Friends & Neighbors'
'Your Friends & Neighbors' begins with a once high-flying hedge fund manager waking up in someone else's luxurious house, next to a dead body and in a pool of blood. How he ended up there consumes the first season of this compelling Apple TV+ series, which stars Jon Hamm and takes a peek at the lives of the ultrarich in a leafy New York suburb. 'I was interested in writing about the status symbols, about the way wealth informs community,' says creator, showrunner and producer Jonathan Tropper. 'And then at the same time, what I really wanted to do is subvert it a little bit and talk about how impermanent it all is.' Like 'White Lotus' and 'Big Little Lies' before it, 'Your Friends & Neighbors' revolves around the woes of the wealthy and questions why we chase social status. 'Why is more always better?' asks Hamm. 'Is the only metric really the accumulation of these larger and larger piles of stuff, whether it's money or goods or houses or wives or what have you? We're kind of arrived at this time where this story is particularly resonant.' A cat burglar is born Hamm plays Princeton-educated hedge fund star Andrew Cooper, who finds himself divorced and unemployable. Drowning in debt, he turns to petty crime: Breaking into neighbors' homes to steal $350,000 watches, Hermès handbags and $32,000 bottles of chardonnay. He rationalizes the thefts are just a quick fix until he figures out a way to get his money faucet back on. Plus, he'd never be a suspect. 'I figured, 'What's the worst that can happen?'' he thinks. 'It's the old story about what happens when you go bankrupt. It happens very slowly and then all of a sudden,' says Hamm. 'Coop's at the all-of-a-sudden part.' Tropper says his show is exploring the notion of entitlement and how self-worth can be wrapped up in what people own. He's also showing how close to disaster we all really are. 'We're all handed a script: Do well in school, go to these colleges, get these jobs, and you'll be set. And you can do all that and excel and get it all right and the system may still spit you out. That's really what this show is about. It's about this man who is in a simmering rage that the system he bought into spit him out.' There's a perverse delight in watching Hamm's Cooper saunter into mansions when he knows the owners are away and make off with luxury goods, becoming a sort of down-on-his-luck burglar sticking it to the rich. Quiet desperation Cooper becomes acutely aware that life in this well-to-do suburb is fueled by conspicuous consumerism and country club boasting. 'It's not like I'd never noticed," he says as the narrator. "But I guess now I was seeing it differently.' Among the things he sees are the ways people have monetized the emptiness some men feel when they reach the top of the mountain — career, marriage, kids and prestige — and yet feel unfulfilled. 'Scotch, cigars, smoked meats, custom golf clubs, high-end escorts — entire industries built to cash in on the quiet desperation of rich, middle-aged men,' Cooper notes. Cooper soon grapples with the underworld to fence his stolen merchandise while also hooking up with a divorcee (Olivia Munn) and scheming to get his old job back. His kids resent him and his unstable sister needs him. Munn says its great to see Hamm tap into one of his most loved roles — Don Draper in 'Mad Men,' a complex character with a flawed personal life. 'In this case, he's this like finance bro, for whom everything has come so easily. And he's sort of despicable, but you kind of feel sorry for him at the same time, somehow,' she says. 'It's really fun to go on the spiral with him.' The origin of 'Your Friends & Neighbors' Tropper came up with the premise after living for many years in New York's Westchester County, in which communities like Scarsdale and Larchmont are among the nation's wealthiest. Tropper was in a community adjacent to the kind of super wealthy one depicted in the series and watched the financial upswings where 'people started to make stupid amounts of money.' 'I was a novelist. I was just feeling that it can't possibly be sustainable,' he says. 'As a non-finance person living amongst financial people, I had an insider's access, but an outsider's point of view.' He'd drive down the pristine blocks and wonder what troubles were going on behind the closed doors of the mega-mansions: 'What you realize is a lot of these are built on foundations of rot.' Getting his man Tropper pitched the series to Hamm and didn't write the show until the actor was on board. In his head, Cooper was always played by Jon Hamm. 'He's an actor who really walks the line perfectly between comedy and drama. And, as a result, he can behave badly and you will still sympathize with him,' says Tropper. 'Hamm is a classically handsome man who people still find relatable. And maybe that's because everyone's delusional, or maybe it's because he has a certain quality that he exudes that still makes him an Everyman, even though he's an Everyman who looks like Jon Hamm." Hamm, who was a fan of Tropper's novels and TV shows that include 'Banshee,' 'Warrior' and the science fiction drama "See," calls the writer a gifted storyteller and jumped aboard. 'He pitched this idea to me, which I thought had a lot of potential, not just to be an entertaining vehicle but to think about where are we as a culture and society,' says Hamm. What's next? Season two of 'Your Friends & Neighbors' was greenlit even before the first episode premiered. Tropper doesn't know how far the series will go but it can't stand still. 'I don't believe we do five seasons of a man robbing houses,' he says. 'Once we've got the viewer buying into this neighborhood, in this world, Coop's survival tactics will change. 'I think the important thing with his journey is that he will never trust the system again. So we watch him struggle between wanting to keep up this lifestyle but rejecting the traditional ways of achieving it,' he adds. 'I think we'll continue to be able to explore this community in this neighborhood and the wealth divide in our country.'
Associated Press
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Jon Hamm steals expensive stuff and likely viewers' hearts in Apple TV+'s ‘Your Friends & Neighbors'
NEW YORK (AP) — 'Your Friends & Neighbors' begins with a once high-flying hedge fund manager waking up in someone else's luxurious house, next to a dead body and in a pool of blood. How he ended up there consumes the first season of this compelling Apple TV+ series, which stars Jon Hamm and takes a peek at the lives of the ultrarich in a leafy New York suburb. 'I was interested in writing about the status symbols, about the way wealth informs community,' says creator, showrunner and producer Jonathan Tropper. 'And then at the same time, what I really wanted to do is subvert it a little bit and talk about how impermanent it all is.' Like 'White Lotus' and 'Big Little Lies' before it, 'Your Friends & Neighbors' revolves around the woes of the wealthy and questions why we chase social status. 'Why is more always better?' asks Hamm. 'Is the only metric really the accumulation of these larger and larger piles of stuff, whether it's money or goods or houses or wives or what have you? We're kind of arrived at this time where this story is particularly resonant.' A cat burglar is born Hamm plays Princeton-educated hedge fund star Andrew Cooper, who finds himself divorced and unemployable. Drowning in debt, he turns to petty crime: Breaking into neighbors' homes to steal $350,000 watches, Hermès handbags and $32,000 bottles of chardonnay. He rationalizes the thefts are just a quick fix until he figures out a way to get his money faucet back on. Plus, he'd never be a suspect. 'I figured, 'What's the worst that can happen?'' he thinks. 'It's the old story about what happens when you go bankrupt. It happens very slowly and then all of a sudden,' says Hamm. 'Coop's at the all-of-a-sudden part.' Tropper says his show is exploring the notion of entitlement and how self-worth can be wrapped up in what people own. He's also showing how close to disaster we all really are. 'We're all handed a script: Do well in school, go to these colleges, get these jobs, and you'll be set. And you can do all that and excel and get it all right and the system may still spit you out. That's really what this show is about. It's about this man who is in a simmering rage that the system he bought into spit him out.' There's a perverse delight in watching Hamm's Cooper saunter into mansions when he knows the owners are away and make off with luxury goods, becoming a sort of down-on-his-luck burglar sticking it to the rich. Quiet desperation Cooper becomes acutely aware that life in this well-to-do suburb is fueled by conspicuous consumerism and country club boasting. 'It's not like I'd never noticed,' he says as the narrator. 'But I guess now I was seeing it differently.' Among the things he sees are the ways people have monetized the emptiness some men feel when they reach the top of the mountain — career, marriage, kids and prestige — and yet feel unfulfilled. 'Scotch, cigars, smoked meats, custom golf clubs, high-end escorts — entire industries built to cash in on the quiet desperation of rich, middle-aged men,' Cooper notes. Cooper soon grapples with the underworld to fence his stolen merchandise while also hooking up with a divorcee (Olivia Munn) and scheming to get his old job back. His kids resent him and his unstable sister needs him. Munn says its great to see Hamm tap into one of his most loved roles — Don Draper in 'Mad Men,' a complex character with a flawed personal life. 'In this case, he's this like finance bro, for whom everything has come so easily. And he's sort of despicable, but you kind of feel sorry for him at the same time, somehow,' she says. 'It's really fun to go on the spiral with him.' The origin of 'Your Friends & Neighbors' Tropper came up with the premise after living for many years in New York's Westchester County, in which communities like Scarsdale and Larchmont are among the nation's wealthiest. Tropper was in a community adjacent to the kind of super wealthy one depicted in the series and watched the financial upswings where 'people started to make stupid amounts of money.' 'I was a novelist. I was just feeling that it can't possibly be sustainable,' he says. 'As a non-finance person living amongst financial people, I had an insider's access, but an outsider's point of view.' He'd drive down the pristine blocks and wonder what troubles were going on behind the closed doors of the mega-mansions: 'What you realize is a lot of these are built on foundations of rot.' Getting his man Tropper pitched the series to Hamm and didn't write the show until the actor was on board. In his head, Cooper was always played by Jon Hamm. 'He's an actor who really walks the line perfectly between comedy and drama. And, as a result, he can behave badly and you will still sympathize with him,' says Tropper. 'Hamm is a classically handsome man who people still find relatable. And maybe that's because everyone's delusional, or maybe it's because he has a certain quality that he exudes that still makes him an Everyman, even though he's an Everyman who looks like Jon Hamm.' Hamm, who was a fan of Tropper's novels and TV shows that include 'Banshee,' 'Warrior' and the science fiction drama 'See,' calls the writer a gifted storyteller and jumped aboard. 'He pitched this idea to me, which I thought had a lot of potential, not just to be an entertaining vehicle but to think about where are we as a culture and society,' says Hamm. What's next? Season two of 'Your Friends & Neighbors' was greenlit even before the first episode premiered. Tropper doesn't know how far the series will go but it can't stand still. 'I don't believe we do five seasons of a man robbing houses,' he says. 'Once we've got the viewer buying into this neighborhood, in this world, Coop's survival tactics will change. 'I think the important thing with his journey is that he will never trust the system again. So we watch him struggle between wanting to keep up this lifestyle but rejecting the traditional ways of achieving it,' he adds.
