Zero­Hedge News

• Watch Live: DeSan­tis’ Last Stand In Sec­ond GOP Pri­mary Debate (Ex-​Trump)
  Watch Live: DeSan­tis’ Last Stand In Sec­ond GOP Pri­mary Debate (Ex-​Trump)

  Ding, Ding, Round Two!

  But once again, there’s no real con­tender as for­mer Pres­i­dent Trump heads to Detroit, skip­ping the sec­ond Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee debate tonight at the Ronald Rea­gan Pres­i­den­tial Library in Simi Val­ley, California.

  You can’t really blame him, given his posi­tion in the polls is still dom­i­nant, but one thing is for sure, tonight is make-​or-​break for any hopefuls…

  Every­one from debate No. 1 qual­i­fied for debate No. 2 except for­mer Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

  Those who tuned into the first debate may have noticed some major top­ics and ques­tions were miss­ing or min­i­mized — every­thing from elec­tion integrity, a huge con­cern for many Repub­li­cans after the 2020 elec­tion, to the fate of Jef­frey Epstein, which Tucker Carl­son tack­led dur­ing an inter­view with for­mer Pres­i­dent Trump that ran at the same time as the debate.

  Nathan Worces­ter, writ­ing for The Epoch Times, lays out some more things to look out for at the show­down in Simi Valley.

  Trump, Trump, and More Trump

  A tran­script of the first debate shows the word “Trump” was spo­ken more than 25 times.

  Pres­i­dent Trump will likely remain a sig­nif­i­cant focus of the con­ver­sa­tion on Sept. 27. As he faces mul­ti­ple indict­ments while cam­paign­ing for his pre­vi­ous office, the real estate devel­oper turned politi­cian is still the main char­ac­ter in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics and cer­tainly in the Repub­li­can Party.

  “He has a huge lead. As the debates have gone on, his lead has only increased. While there were some stand­out per­for­mances in Mil­wau­kee, nobody really made a dent in that,” Mr. Kall said.

  “They can’t just attack each other and hope to do well. They really have to take the fight to Don­ald Trump,“he added.

  “There’s def­i­nitely a split in the Repub­li­can Party — those who want to move into the pop­ulist direc­tion and those who want to stay with the 2000s or even ear­lier type of Repub­li­can­ism, like Nikki Haley or Mike Pence.

  “That’s going to be some­thing for Repub­li­can pri­mary vot­ers to decide at the bal­lots,” Ms. Krieger said.

  Mr. Ramaswamy and Gov. DeSan­tis are closer to the pop­ulist camp. A strong attack on Pres­i­dent Trump from either one would be noteworthy.

  More For­eign Pol­icy Clashes

  Dur­ing the first debate, some of the biggest argu­ments erupted over for­eign policy.

  That’s unsur­pris­ing. In a party reshaped by Pres­i­dent Trump and, before him, the likes of Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan, hawk­ish­ness has given ground to what some call non-​interventionism and what oth­ers call isolationism.

  As the clos­est equiv­a­lent to Pres­i­dent Trump in Mil­wau­kee, Mr. Ramaswamy sparred with Ms. Haley and Mr. Christie as well as for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Pence.

  Mr. Pence described Mr. Ramaswamy’s vision of ced­ing parts of Ukraine to Rus­sia to sever it from Bei­jing as a “give­away… to Putin.”

  Ms. Haley, who served as the United States ambas­sador to the United Nations dur­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, argued with Mr. Ramaswamy over Rus­sia, China, Tai­wan, and Israel.

  Count on for­eign pol­icy remain­ing a hot topic at the Rea­gan Library. After all, the pres­i­dent has con­sid­er­able power over for­eign pol­icy, as out­lined in Arti­cle II of the Con­sti­tu­tion, and Amer­i­can for­eign pol­icy deci­sions res­onate across the coun­try and the planet.

  The ‘Lap­top from Hell’

  Spe­cial coun­sel David Weiss’s inves­ti­ga­tion of Hunter Biden, Pres­i­dent Biden’s son, didn’t come up as part of the mod­er­a­tors’ ques­tions in Milwaukee.

  Mr. Christie and Mr. DeSan­tis did men­tion his legal issues at the first debate.

  Although Hunter Biden has been under inves­ti­ga­tion for years, no charges were filed until whistle­blow­ers with the IRS tes­ti­fied that mul­ti­ple U.S. attor­neys declined to let Mr. Weiss bring charges.

  Now, an FBI agent has come for­ward and con­firmed their accounts dur­ing a closed-​door inter­view with mem­bers of Congress.

  “I remem­ber learn­ing at some point in the inves­ti­ga­tion that Mr. Weiss would have to go through his other processes because the U.S. Attorney’s Offices had, I guess, in that sense, using that ter­mi­nol­ogy, wasn’t going to part­ner,” the agent said, as recorded in a tran­script The Epoch Times has obtained and reviewed.

  Hunter Biden is also suing for­mer Trump aide Gar­rett Ziegler in con­nec­tion with the lap­top linked to him in the runup to the 2020 elec­tion, dubbed “the lap­top from hell.”

  As Newt Gin­girch writes at The New York Sun, over­all debate per­for­mance is not all that mat­ters. In this kind of wide-​open envi­ron­ment — with seven can­di­dates maneu­ver­ing to become the Trump alter­na­tive — can­di­dates have two sim­ple goals.

  First, do not get too eager and screw up. One big mis­take could lead peo­ple to write you off as unable to beat Mr. Trump or lead the country.

  Sec­ond, find no more than three break­through moments in which your ideas, lan­guage, deliv­ery, intel­li­gence, courage, and authen­tic­ity vividly come through. Net­works will specif­i­cally hunt for these moments to high­light repeat­edly. And they will go viral on social media.

  Ambas­sador (and for­mer Gov­er­nor) Haley came close to break­ing through after the first debate. Many polls showed that peo­ple felt she was the most effec­tive and force­ful debater. Her focus on Vice Pres­i­dent Har­ris worked to her advantage.

  Ms. Haley’s range of expe­ri­ence in for­eign pol­icy and national secu­rity was impressive.

  Her tough­ness about bal­anc­ing the bud­get and lessons she learned as a reform gov­er­nor of South Car­olina com­mu­ni­cated an impor­tant authen­tic­ity. She may be the best posi­tioned to break out.

  Mr. Ramaswamy impressed in the first debate.

  As a remark­ably suc­cess­ful 38-​year-​old entre­pre­neur, he has a lot going for him. How­ever, many peo­ple refuse to con­sider him because they don’t believe he has enough expe­ri­ence to be Pres­i­dent. If he can per­form well enough to over­come those con­cerns, he could take off and have an excit­ing run.

  Mr. Desan­tis may be fac­ing his last chance to prove he is a contender.

  He has been an excel­lent gov­er­nor of Florida. It has been per­plex­ing to watch him decay under the dual assaults of the Trump team and the left-​wing press. This may be his last oppor­tu­nity to res­ur­rect his can­di­dacy and con­vince peo­ple — espe­cially major donors — to give him a sec­ond look.

  Gin­grich closes by sug­gest­ing that “it will be an inter­est­ing and impor­tant debate. It is worth your time to watch and think about it.”

  The two-​hour event will be mod­er­ated by Fox News’ Dana Perino and Stu­art Var­ney as well as Univision’s Ilia Calderon.

  The debate is being hosted on Fox News and Fox Busi­ness, acces­si­ble online only via login. Click the image below to link to the live Rum­ble feed (not embeddable)…

  Tyler Dur­den Wed, 09/​27/​2023 — 20:40
• Musk Says COVID Shot “Almost Sent Me To Hos­pi­tal”, Says He’d Go To Prison Before Fir­ing Work­ers For Refus­ing Jab
  Musk Says COVID Shot “Almost Sent Me To Hos­pi­tal”, Says He’d Go To Prison Before Fir­ing Work­ers For Refus­ing Jab

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (empha­sis ours),

  Elon Musk on Tues­day revealed that he took mul­ti­ple COVID-​19 vac­cines so that he could travel dur­ing the period of intense pan­demic restric­tions and that after tak­ing his third shot, he nearly ended up hospitalized.

  Mr. Musk made the remarks in a post on X that was part of a thread he started as a response to a warn­ing by Euro­pean Union (EU) offi­cials that X has fallen squarely into the bloc’s cen­sor­ship crosshairs for being found to be the top pur­veyor of so-​called mis­in­for­ma­tion and disinformation.

  “Have you heard dis infor­ma­tion?” Mr. Musk cap­tioned his orig­i­nal post, in a play on words that accom­pa­nied a video com­pi­la­tion of COVID-​19 vac­cine news head­lines that began with bold ini­tial claims early in the pan­demic that the vac­cines are “100 per­cent effec­tive” before steadily drop­ping lower and lower.

  My con­cern was more the out­ra­geous demand that peo­ple *must* take the vac­cine and mul­ti­ple boost­ers to do any­thing at all. That was messed up.
  
  Until the Supreme Court inval­i­dated Biden’s exec order, SpaceX and many other com­pa­nies would have been forced to fire any­one who…

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Sep­tem­ber 26, 2023

  “The mRNA COVID-​19 vac­cine was only 47% effec­tive after 5 months?” reads one of the later head­lines, fol­lowed by even more neg­a­tive head­lines like “Swe­den, Den­mark Halt Moderna’s Covid Shot for Younger Peo­ple” and, finally, ones high­light­ing vaccine-​maker prof­itabil­ity amid calls for seem­ingly end­less boosters.

  ‘Messed Up’

  Mr. Musk’s meme on wan­ing vac­cine effi­cacy drew a num­ber of com­ments, includ­ing one by polit­i­cal jour­nal­ist Ed Krassen­stein, who raised objections.

  “I think effi­cacy changes are a result of new strains and the vac­cine immu­nity wear­ing off. It’s stu­pid any­one ever claimed it was 100% effec­tive. No vac­cine is 100% full-​proof,” he wrote.

  Mr. Musk replied by say­ing that he’s not against vac­cines in prin­ci­ple, but that he opposes man­dates forc­ing peo­ple to get the shot.

  “My con­cern was more the out­ra­geous demand that peo­ple *must* take the vac­cine and mul­ti­ple boost­ers to do any­thing at all. That was messed up,” Mr. Musk wrote.

  He added that, until the U.S. Supreme Court inval­i­dated Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s exec­u­tive order impos­ing a vaccine-​or-​test man­date for large com­pa­nies, his com­pany SpaceX “and many other other com­pa­nies would have been forced to fire any­one who refused to get vaccinated!”

  “We would not have done so. I would rather go to prison than fire good peo­ple who didn’t want to be jabbed,” Mr. Musk continued.

  Mr. Musk also revealed that he got COVID-​19 and expe­ri­enced “mild cold symp­toms” but took vac­cines repeat­edly for travel.

  “The third shot almost sent me to hos­pi­tal,” Mr. Musk said.

  “How many other peo­ple out there have symp­toms that are actu­ally from the vac­cine or Covid treat­ment, rather than Covid itself?” he asked.

  There’s a grow­ing body of data sug­gest­ing that COVID-​19 vac­cine side effects are more seri­ous than pre­vi­ously claimed.

  Mr. Musk qual­i­fied his remarks by say­ing he’s not against vac­cines as a mat­ter of principle.

  “It’s not like I don’t believe in vac­cines — I do. How­ever, the cure can­not be poten­tially worse than the dis­ease,” he said.

  “Pub­lic debate over effi­cacy should not be shut down,” Mr. Musk continued.

  Mr. Musk added that he believes “there is also great poten­tial for cur­ing many dis­eases using syn­thetic mRNA, so let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.”

  The X chief’s post gar­nered a series of reac­tions, includ­ing a humor­ous one by the Joe Biden Press Release (Par­ody) account, which fea­tures a photo of a smil­ing Pres­i­dent Joe Biden say­ing: “I promise you’ll be safe after the 42^nd booster.”

  “Just be sure to triple mask, Elon,” the account added.

  Mean­while, in Brus­sels, EU offi­cials took Mr. Musk and X into their cen­sor­ship crosshairs.

  ‘We Will Be Watching’

  A senior Euro­pean Union offi­cial on Sept. 26 accused X of being the top pur­veyor of dis­in­for­ma­tion and issued a veiled threat, prompt­ing Mr. Musk to push back by post­ing the meme high­light­ing wan­ing vac­cine effec­tive­ness and spark­ing online debate.

  At a press con­fer­ence on Tues­day, the EU’s top com­mis­sar on dis­in­for­ma­tion — Euro­pean Com­mis­sion (EC) Vice Pres­i­dent Vera Jourova—sin­gled out X as being “the plat­form with the largest ratio of mis– or dis­in­for­ma­tion posts.”

  Unlike com­peti­tors like Face­book and Google, Mr. Musk’s X has refused to par­tic­i­pate in the Euro­pean Union’s (EU) vol­un­tary anti-​disinformation effort called the 2022 Code of Prac­tice on Disinformation.

  While the code is sup­pos­edly non­bind­ing, com­pa­nies that take part can ease some of their com­pli­ance require­ments under the EU’s Dig­i­tal Ser­vices Act, which kicked in at the end of August and is manda­tory for the biggest tech plat­forms with over 45 mil­lion users in the EU — includ­ing X.

  After ear­lier rep­ri­mand­ing Mr. Musk and X for lack­ing the appetite to self-​censor and not tak­ing the EU’s fight against “dis­in­for­ma­tion” seri­ously, the EU ramped up its rhetoric on Sept. 26, the day that social media com­pa­nies like Face­book and Google — but not X — pub­lished reports on com­pli­ance with the bloc’s new “dis­in­for­ma­tion” code.

  “Mr. Musk knows that he is not off the hook by leav­ing the code of prac­tice because now we have the Dig­i­tal Ser­vices Act fully enforced,” Ms. Jourova said. “So my mes­sage for Twit­ter is you have to com­ply with the hard law and we will be watch­ing what you are doing.”

  While X quite the vol­un­tary code in May, it counts as a “very large online plat­form” under the manda­tory Dig­i­tal Ser­vices Act (DSA) and so is sub­ject to stricter con­tent rules.

  Ms. Jourova reminded Mr. Musk of the fact that the EU has enforce­ment tools to pres­sure the plat­form into com­pli­ance with its con­tent laws.

  She made the remarks while pro­vid­ing an update on the 27-​nation EU’s 2022 Code of Prac­tice on Dis­in­for­ma­tion, which com­pa­nies like Google, Tik­Tok, and Face­book par­ent Meta signed up for — but which Mr. Musk’s X has snubbed.

  Some exam­ples from the reports include Google indi­cat­ing that it pre­vented around $33 mil­lion in adver­tis­ing dol­lars from going to “dis­in­for­ma­tion actors” and Meta slapped over 40 mil­lion pieces of con­tent with factcheck­ing labels.

  The new Dig­i­tal Ser­vices Act rules apply to 19 “very large” dig­i­tal plat­forms (such as social media net­works, web­sites, and online retail­ers) with at least 45 mil­lion active users in the EU.

  The 19 plat­forms that fall under the umbrella of the new rules are: Alibaba AliEx­press, Ama­zon Store, Apple App­Store, Bing, Book​ing​.com, Face­book, Insta­gram, Google Maps, Google Play, Google Search, Google Shop­ping, LinkedIn, Pin­ter­est, Snapchat, Tik­Tok, X, Wikipedia, YouTube, and Zalando.

  Tyler Dur­den Wed, 09/​27/​2023 — 20:20
• Mit­subishi Is Pulling Out Of China’s Auto Mar­ket
  Mit­subishi Is Pulling Out Of China’s Auto Mar­ket

  We have been writ­ing over the last few months about increased com­pe­ti­tion in China’s EV mar­ket and (most recently) about intense EU scrutiny over Chi­nese sub­si­dies, which the EU claims is muck­ing up its elec­tric vehi­cle mar­ket by dri­ving prices lower.

  Now, one Japan­ese automaker is back­ing out of China alto­gether. Mit­subishi “has started final with­drawal talks with China’s Guangzhou Auto­mo­bile Group”, its joint ven­ture part­ner in China, accord­ing to Nikkei. The com­pany has been suf­fer­ing from “slug­gish sales”, the report says, not­ing that other Japan­ese automak­ers are also reassess­ing their via­bil­ity in the Asian country.

  GAC Mit­subishi Motors has shut­tered its man­u­fac­tur­ing oper­a­tions in Hunan province indef­i­nitely, mark­ing the end of Mitsubishi’s sole fac­tory in China. GAC, which holds a 50% share in the joint ven­ture, plans to repur­pose the Hunan facil­ity for elec­tric vehi­cle (EV) pro­duc­tion while aim­ing to retain some level of its work­force, the report says.

  Mit­subishi Motors and Mit­subishi Corp., own­ing 30% and 20% stakes respec­tively, will pull their invest­ments, although GAC Mit­subishi will con­tinue to exist as a busi­ness entity.

  Nikkei notes that in 2022, Mitsubishi’s car sales in China plum­meted by 60% to 38,550 vehi­cles. An attempt to revive sales with the launch of the hybrid Out­lander SUV last autumn failed to meet expec­ta­tions. Mit­subishi now plans to real­lo­cate resources to South­east Asia and Ocea­nia, areas respon­si­ble for about one-​third of the company’s con­sol­i­dated sales.

  Mean­while, the elec­tric vehi­cle mar­ket in China is boom­ing, with a report from the China Asso­ci­a­tion of Auto­mo­bile Man­u­fac­tur­ers indi­cat­ing an 80% surge in EV sales in 2022 to 5.36 mil­lion units. Mit­subishi has lagged in this seg­ment, rely­ing on GAC for EV sup­plies in China.

  Com­pe­ti­tion from Chi­nese auto man­u­fac­tur­ers is also inten­si­fy­ing. Data from research firm MarkLines shows that Chi­nese brands cap­tured 50.7% of the pas­sen­ger car mar­ket in 2022, an increase of 5.2 per­cent­age points from the pre­vi­ous year. Japan­ese com­pa­nies accounted for 18.3% of the mar­ket, a decline of 2.8 per­cent­age points.

  Nis­san Motor’s pres­i­dent and CEO, Makoto Uchida, recently expressed con­cern over the chal­leng­ing mar­ket con­di­tions, cit­ing unsus­tain­able dis­count­ing prac­tices and hint­ing at a poten­tial reeval­u­a­tion of Nissan’s joint ven­tures in China, accord­ing to the report.

  Mit­subishi has had a long his­tory in China, dat­ing back to the 1970s when it began export­ing com­mer­cial vehi­cles. It formed a joint ven­ture with Soueast Motor that lasted from 2006 until 2021. GAC Mit­subishi Motors was estab­lished in 2012 and reached its zenith in 2018 with 140,000 vehi­cles sold.

  It isn’t just Japan­ese automak­ers that the heat is get­ting turned up on in China. Recall yes­ter­day we wrote that Tesla was part and par­cel with the ongo­ing EU inves­ti­ga­tion into Chi­nese subsidies.

  EU exec­u­tive vice-​president Valdis Dom­brovskis said this week that there was “suf­fi­cient prima facie evi­dence” to sup­port the probe, FT reported on Tues­day morn­ing. We had pre­vi­ously writ­ten about the EU’s inves­ti­ga­tion and Beijing’s response via The Global Times.

  In an inter­view this week, respond­ing specif­i­cally to whether or not Tesla would be included in the inves­ti­ga­tion, Dom­brovskis said: “Strictly speak­ing, it’s not lim­ited only to Chi­nese brand elec­tri­cal vehi­cles, it can be also other pro­duc­ers’ vehi­cles if they are receiv­ing production-​side subsidies.”

  He said he was “con­stantly pressed by his Chi­nese coun­ter­parts about the probe” after a five day trip to China, FT wrote.

  “The EU is now prob­a­bly the largest mar­ket which is open for Chi­nese pro­duc­ers,” he com­mented, defend­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion. He said that the EU was “open to com­pe­ti­tion” but that it “needs to be fair”.

  Tyler Dur­den Wed, 09/​27/​2023 — 20:00