The stupefying magic of 2016 is gone, gone, gone. Just like that lovin’ feeling. Donald Trump’s unstoppable juggernaut of seven years ago has fizzled down to an absurdity of closed door speeches to wealthy supporters, NFT superhero trading cards, endless jeremiads about stolen elections on his failing and ridiculously named social media platform “Truth” Social, and a blood-curdling number of civil litigations and criminal investigations. Trump has become a dangerous and embattled parody of himself — and it’s just not working anymore.

Back when Trump burst onto the scene it was just two days past his 69th birthday. On June 16th, 2015 he rode the escalator down to the lobby of his eponymous tower and took the world stage by hideous storm. He was at the height of his powers, and he rode his lies and unique candidacy into the White House, into a presidency that was so gawdawful the Republicans wished he’d been a Democrat.

In any case, in the course of the four spectacularly awful years of the Trump presidency, Republicans discovered something that I think truly shocked them. They could support Trump’s obvious lies and disastrous missteps and still get away with it. With Fox News carrying water for Trump and a staggeringly stupid constituency, the number of things Republicans could get away with surprised even them. Maybe it really was true: Trump could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes.

But the world is very different now. Slowly, stupidly, like a drunk emerging from a bad dream, Republicans are waking up to the possibility that they just might be able to win with someone else, someone like Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley or Mike Pompeo or Mike Pence. They’re also waking up to the fact that their “president” could actually go to jail. Even they know it would be tough for him to win a presidential election from the maximum security wing of ADX Florence.

What’s more, Trump isn’t a spring chicken anymore, to say the least. At 76 he’s old, tired, and losing his stamina. Decades of an execrable diet and no exercise and possible drug abuse have taken their inevitable toll. He’s really in no shape for another campaign. He’s become the political equivalent of a Weekend at Bernie’s or Dead Man Walking.

Early on Friday Trump promised to deliver a major political announcement later that night. He also promised to resume his Nuremberg-style rallies. Instead he spoke behind closed doors at Trump Doral, his resort in Miami, to a shady group called Judicial Watch. Trump was ostensibly there to (hilariously) promote “integrity, transparency and accountability in government and fidelity to the rule of law.” It was like Al Capone giving an impromptu talk on the importance of integrity in government.

But it’s still true that Trump remains the most popular potential candidate. It’s hardly surprising. One thing Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence share in common is a breathtaking lack of charisma. None of them have really been able to capture the public imagination. But the election is two years away and anything can happen between now and then.

In any case, I have a feeling that Donald Trump really is finished. I know I’ve said this before, but never before have so many forces been arrayed against him. And he just doesn’t look or sound equal to it any longer. Donald Trump’s enthusiasm deficit isn’t something he’s ever going to make up, particularly not with his endless legal troubles and his endless whining. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.

The post Donald Trump is out of gas appeared first on Palmer Report.

Twitter and YouTube censored a report critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in coordination with the government of India. Officials called for the Big Tech companies to take action against a BBC documentary exploring Modi’s role in a genocidal 2002 massacre in the Indian state of Gujarat, which the officials deemed a “propaganda piece.”

In a series of posts, Kanchan Gupta, senior adviser at the Indian government’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, denounced the BBC documentary as “hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage.” He said that both Twitter and YouTube had been ordered block links to the film, before adding that the platforms “have complied with the directions.” Gupta’s statements coincided with posts from Twitter users in India who claimed to have shared links to the documentary but whose posts were later removed and replaced with a legal notice.

“The government has sent hundreds of requests to different social media platforms, especially YouTube and Twitter, to take down the posts that share snippets or links to the documentary,” Indian journalist Raqib Hameed Naik told The Intercept. “And shamefully, the companies are complying with their demands and have taken down numerous videos and posts.”

“The government has sent hundreds of requests to different social media platforms, especially YouTube and Twitter, to take down the posts that share snippets or links to the documentary.”

This act of censorship — wiping away allegations of crimes against humanity committed by a foreign leader — sets a worrying tone for Twitter, especially in light of its new management.

Elon Musk’s self-identification as a “free-speech absolutist” has been a primary talking point for the billionaire as he has sought to explain why he took ownership of the platform last year. Much of his criticism of Twitter revolved around its decision to censor reporting around Hunter Biden, the son of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.

While Musk has been glad to stand up to suppression of speech against conservatives in the United States — something that he has described as nothing less than “a battle for the future of civilization” — he appears to be failing at the far graver challenge of standing up to the authoritarian demands of foreign governments. (Twitter’s communications effort is now helmed by Musk, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

Pushing back against censorship of the BBC documentary, members of Parliament from the opposition All India Trinamool Congress party Mahua Moitra and Derek O’Brien defiantly posted links to it online.

“Sorry, Haven’t been elected to represent world’s largest democracy to accept censorship,” Moitra posted. “Here’s the link. Watch it while you can.” Moitra’s post is still up, but the link to the documentary no longer works. Moitra had posted a link to the Internet Archive, presumably hoping to get around the block of the BBC, but the Internet Archive subsequently took the link down. She has since posted the audio version on Telegram.

O’Brien’s post was itself taken down.

CENSORSHIP@Twitter @TwitterIndia HAS TAKEN DOWN MY TWEET of the #BBCDocumentary, it received lakhs of views

The 1 hr @BBC docu exposes how PM @narendramodi HATES MINORITIES

Here’s?the mail I recieved. Also see flimsy reason given. Oppn will continue to fight the good fight pic.twitter.com/8lfR0XPViJ

— Derek O’Brien | ????? ?’???????? (@derekobrienmp) January 21, 2023

Twitter even blocked Indian audiences from seeing two posts by actor John Cusack linking to the documentary. (They remain visible to American audiences.) Cusack said he “pushed out the links and got immediate blowback.” He told The Intercept, “I received two notices that I’m banned in India.” The actor wrote a book, “Things That Can and Cannot Be Said,” with celebrated Indian scholar Arundhati Roy, a fierce critic of the Modi government.

The Gujarat riots, as the violence is sometimes known, occurred in 2002, when Modi was the chief minister of the state. A group of militants aligned with the Hindu nationalist movement, which encompasses Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, launched a violent campaign against local Muslims. Modi, who has been accused of personally encouraging the violence, reportedly told police forces to stand down in the face of the ongoing violence, which killed about 1,000 people.

“The documentary has unnerved Mr. Modi as he continues to evade accountability for his complicity in the violence,” Naik, the journalist, said. “He sees the documentary as a threat to his image internationally and has launched an unprecedented crackdown in India.”

Modi’s government in India regularly applied pressure to Twitter in an attempt to bend the social media platform to its will. At one point, the government threatened to arrest Twitter staff in the country over their refusal to ban accounts run by critics.

When Musk took over, Twitter had just a 20 percent compliance rate when it came to Indian government takedown requests. When the billionaire took the company private, some 90 percent of Twitter India’s 200 staffers were laid off. Now, the Indian government’s pressure on Twitter appears to be gaining traction.

A key difference may be Musk’s other business entanglements. Musk himself has his own business interests in India, where Tesla has been lobbying, so far without luck, to win tax breaks to enter the Indian market.

Whatever the reason for the apparent change, Twitter’s moves at the behest of Modi’s government bode ill for Musk’s claims to be running the company with an aim of protecting free speech. While Musk has felt fine wading into U.S. culture wars on behalf of conservatives, he has been far more reticent to take a stand about the far direr threats to free speech from autocratic governments.

One of the initial strengths of Twitter, and social media broadly, was the threat it posed to autocratic governments, as witnessed by its use during the 2009 protests in Iran and later the Arab Spring. Dictators across the region railed at the company for allowing what they considered to be forbidden speech.

Musk, however, has said he defers to local laws on speech issues. “Like I said, my preference is to hew close to the laws of countries in which Twitter operates,” Musk tweeted last year. “If the citizens want something banned, then pass a law to do so, otherwise it should be allowed.”

Google, which owns YouTube, has also come under intense pressure from the Indian government. The company’s public transparency reports show the Indian government has been a prodigious source of content takedowns, sending over 15,000 censorship demands since 2011, compared to under 5,000 from Germany and nearly 11,000 from the U.S. in the same time frame.

These reports show a varying level of compliance on Google’s part: Between January and June 2022, Google censored nearly 9 percent of items submitted by the Indian government but almost 44 percent during that span in 2020. YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Akshay Marathe, a former spokesperson for the opposition party in control of the Delhi and Punjab government, told The Intercept that the social media takedown requests were part of a broader program of suppression. Modi “quite brazenly used India’s law enforcement apparatus to jail political opponents, journalists, and activists on a regular basis,” Marathe said. “His directive to Twitter to take down all links of the documentary (and Twitter’s shocking compliance after Elon’s commitment to free speech) also follows on the heels of the Modi government’s announcement that it will soon implement a regulatory regime in which it will have the right to determine what is fake news and order Big Tech platforms to delete the content.”

The post Elon Musk Caves to Pressure From India to Remove BBC Doc Critical of Modi appeared first on The Intercept.

Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) said on Tuesday it would invest more than $3.6 billion to expand its Nevada manufacturing complex with two new factories, including the first facility to mass produce its long-delayed Semi electric truck.

The other factory will make new battery cells, called 4680, and have the capacity to make enough batteries for 2 million light-duty vehicles annually. Together, the plants will employ about 3,000 people.

The Elon Musk-led company’s existing complex in the city of Sparks makes lithium-ion batteries, vehicle parts and other products such as Powerwall, a power backup system for consumers.

Unveiled in 2017, the Semi was initially expected to go into production in 2019 but its first delivery was delayed to December, when Musk handed a vehicle to PepsiCo (PEP.O). The move marked Tesla’s first foray into the trucking business.

The 18-wheeler truck has a range of 500 miles on a single charge and can carry 81,000 pounds including the cargo. It may qualify for tax credits of $40,000 offered for clean commercial vehicles under the Inflation Reduction Act, which was signed into law in August.

Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm said in November that Tesla might produce 100 Semis in 2022, but the company did not disclose any figure in its fourth-quarter production report.

The EV maker aims to produce 50,000 of the trucks in 2024, Musk had said on a post-earnings call in October.

PepsiCo plans to roll out 100 Semis in 2023. Other customers for the truck include Brewer Anheuser-Busch (ABI.BR), United Parcel Service Inc (UPS.N) and Walmart Inc (WMT.N).

The Semi will face competition from Daimler’s (MBGn.DE) Freightliner, Volvo (VOLVb.ST) and Nikola Corp (NKLA.O), which have also rolled out their own battery-powered trucks.

Rupert Murdoch reversed course on Tuesday and withdrew a proposal to re-unite News Corp (NWSA.O) and Fox Corp as the company is also exploring a sale of its stake in Move Inc., which operates the Realtor.com website, according to a regulatory filing and sources familiar with the process.

Several top shareholders had publicly said they opposed the proposed plan, and on Tuesday News Corp said in a statement that the combination was “not optimal for shareholders of News Corp and Fox at this time.”

The deal would have reunited the media empire Murdoch split nearly a decade ago.

No offer was exchanged between News Corp and Fox Corp before merger deliberations were abandoned, according to sources familiar with the process, who said pushback from News Corp shareholders played a role in those plans being scrapped.

Murdoch proposed reuniting his media empire last fall, arguing that together the publishing and entertainment companies he split apart in 2013 would give the combined company greater scale in news, live sports and information, sources said.

Several people close to the Murdochs viewed the effort to reunite the media companies as driven by the 91-year-old Murdoch’s succession planning to consolidate power behind his son and Fox head Lachlan Murdoch, a notion the company described as “absurd” in November.

Some of News Corp’s larger shareholders, including Independent Franchise Partners and T. Rowe Price (TROW.O) balked at the idea.

Activist investment firm Irenic Capital, which was among the first to say that the proposed reunion would likely undervalue News Corp, on Tuesday applauded the decision to not move forward.

“This is the right decision,” Irenic’s chief investment officer Adam Katz said. “Looking ahead, News Corp has an opportunity to create substantial value for its owners.”

In a letter to News Corp employees on Tuesday, News Corp Chief Executive Robert Thomson said, “In my note to you in October, I said the Special Committee assessment would have no impact on our current operations; that was indeed the case, and remains so following today’s announcement.”

Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) forecast cloud revenue for the current quarter at just below Wall Street expectations, dampening some enthusiasm for its beat on quarterly profit earlier on Tuesday.

Shares initially rose sharply in after-hours trading but lost steam after the company’s cloud forecast.

Microsoft said its third-quarter intelligent cloud revenue would be $21.7 billion to $22 billion, while analysts forecast $22.14 billion.

In the second quarter, Microsoft’s cloud services business helped offset a slump in the personal computer market. Those results will likely allay fears of a meltdown in the tech industry which has laid off tens of thousands of employees this year in anticipation of an economic downturn.

Microsoft said Azure cloud product revenue rose 31% in the quarter, in line with estimates compiled by Visible Alpha, while its broader Intelligent Cloud division posted revenue of $21.5 billion, versus a Wall Street consensus of $21.4 billion compiled by Refinitiv.

Azure could get a boost from cloud spending from the growth of artificial intelligence. “There’s a variety of ways that we can bring that technology either in specific offerings or to improve existing offerings,” said Brett Iversen, Microsoft’s head of investor relations, referring to OpenAI, in which the company is investing heavily.

OpenAI is behind the chatbot sensation ChatGPT which can spit out a love story in the style of Shakespeare or other prose with a text command. That model has been built with computing time on Azure as well.

“Given the challenges of the current macroeconomic environment and the concerns that things could have been much worse, I think you have to consider these Microsoft earnings a reasonably positive sign for tech overall,” said Bob O’Donnell of TECHnalysis Research.

Still, Microsoft has also joined other big tech companies in turning to layoffs to ride out harder times, announcing last week it was cutting over 10,000 jobs.

Azure has also steadily grabbed market share from leader Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Azure ended 2022 with 30% share in the cloud computing market, up from 20% in 2018, according to estimates from BofA Global Research. AWS dropped to 55% from 71% during the same period.

Azure growth has slowed steadily from around 50% a little over a year ago, but investors had feared worse. Shares of Amazon rose 3.25% after the Microsoft results.

Microsoft’s revenue rose 2% to $52.7 billion in the three months ended Dec. 31, compared with the average analyst estimate of $52.94 billion, according to Refinitiv IBES.

Second-quarter net income fell 12% to $16.4 billion, but adjusted income of $2.32 per share topped Wall Street’s consensus estimate of $2.29, according to Refinitiv calculations.

Sales at Microsoft’s More Personal Computing segment, which includes Windows, devices and search revenue, declined 19% to $14.2 billion as the PC market continued to shrink. Revenue in the Productivity and Business Processes segment rose 7% to $17.0 billion.

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Travelers reached the airport in Mexico’s tourist hot spot of Cancun without problem on Tuesday after a protest by local taxi drivers against ride-share app Uber left many stranded the day before.

Angry taxi drivers on Monday blocked the main road between Cancun’s airport and central tourist zone, forcing tourists to trek on foot or ride on police trucks to catch their flights.

Two airport representatives said there were no blockades or confrontations related to the taxis on Tuesday.

Taxi unions were angered by a court ruling this month that Uber Technologies Inc (UBER.N) drivers were exempt from having to obtain a permit, called a medallion, to operate, as taxi drivers are required to do. This effectively ended a years-long taxi monopoly in the region.

Videos on social media showed taxi drivers harassing Uber drivers and their clients in recent days, with local media reporting several arrests of taxi drivers.

The events prompted an official alert from the U.S. State Department on Monday for the state of Quintana Roo, where Cancun and other tourist hot spots are located.

“Disputes between these services and local taxi unions have occasionally turned violent,” the alert said.

A spokesperson for Uber Mexico said that the court’s decision “affirmed a basic and undeniable fact” that Uber trips are not public transportation.

“They’re private trips and, as such, driver partners do not need a concession (a medallion) to use the app,” the spokesperson said.

Cancun’s largest taxi union did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Donald Trump speaking at the NRA convention in Houston, TX, on May 27, 2022. New York Attorney General Letitia James, right, speaks in Washington, DC on Nov. 12, 2019.

Left, Brandon Bell/Getty Images. Right, Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• Trump on Tuesday withdrew his last appeal of New York’s three-year probe of the Trump Organization.
• The withdrawal clears the way for an October trial in Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million fraud lawsuit.
• Trump had claimed James’ probe of his real-estate business was fueled by political “animus.”

Donald Trump is set to face trial in October after he dropped his last legal challenge to New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million fraud suit against his real-estate business on Tuesday. 

The decision to drop that final challenge — a federal appeal he’d filed with the Second Circuit in Manhattan —  was made Tuesday for “strategic” reasons, a lawyer for Trump said.

“This appeal was voluntarily withdrawn for strategic purposes,” said the lawyer, Alina Habba. 

Trump’s federal appeal had sought to revive a December 2021 federal lawsuit that he’d hoped would end what he described as James’ politically biased attack on the Trump Organization.

A federal judge in Albany, US District Judge Brenda Sannes, had tossed that suit in May after lawyers for the attorney general’s office argued that evidence of fraud at Trump’s business was overwhelming.

Tuesday’s move is the latest legal retreat for Trump, who has fought for nearly three years to stop James’ efforts against the Trump Organization through a series of lawsuits and appeals filed in civil and federal courts in New York and Florida.

All Trump’s attempts to stop the proceedings have now been rejected by judges or abandoned by Trump himself.

The appeal Trump dropped on Tuesday was the only action remaining that could have delayed or halted James’ four-month-old lawsuit alleging Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars over 10 years. 

On Friday, Trump dropped another November lawsuit against James that was filed in Florida and sought to dismiss her suit.

Trump gave no reason for that withdrawal. But it came one day after the same Florida judge fined Trump $1 million over his “frivolous” lawsuit alleging that Hillary Clinton and some 30 other Democrats had conspired against him.

The lawsuits Trump filed against Clinton and James “had all the telltale signs of being both vexatious and frivolous,” US District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks warned Trump on Thursday.

“I am pleased that Donald Trump has withdrawn both of his pending actions against my office,” James said Tuesday.

“As we have shown all along, we have a legitimate legal case against him and his organization, and we cannot be bullied or dissuaded from pursuing it.”

A decade of lying about his worth saved Trump hundreds of millions of dollars in his dealings with lenders, insurance firms, and tax authorities, James alleges in her lawsuit, which names Trump, his business, and his three eldest children as defendants.

The Manhattan DA had separately tried the Trump Organization criminally, and a Manhattan jury found the company guilty of a payroll tax-fraud scheme in December.

James’ office is seeking steep financial penalties and to permanently ban Trump and his three oldest children from doing business in New York, where the Trump Organization is headquartered and where the bulk of its assets are kept.

Trump has a Thursday deadline to file an answer to James’ lawsuit. Trump’s appeal of a $110,000 contempt fine set by the judge presiding over the lawsuit in May is still pending but would not delay an October trial. 

 

Ukrainian paratroopers train in the Zhytomyr region in September 2014.

SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images

• Shortly after Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2014, US and NATO troops began training Ukrainians.
• As part of that, US trainers set up a version of US Army Special Forces’ “Q course” for Ukraine.
• “Q course” assesses Green Beret candidates and teaches them the basics of their profession.

In 2014, Russia seized Crimea and large swaths of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, setting off a long-running conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed fighters in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Eight years later, that low-intensity conflict escalated into a full-scale war, after Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his troops into Ukraine in late February 2022 to topple the government and install a new one under Moscow’s influence.

During the intervening eight years, the US and its NATO allies were instrumental in helping Ukraine prepare to fight off that invasion, providing security assistance, intelligence, and military training.

In September, the leaders of US Special Operations Command Europe described how the Ukrainian military adjusted and evolved after the initial Russian invasion and how US special operators borrowed a unique part of US Army Green Beret training to prepare their Ukrainian counterparts to fight Russia.

Ukraine’s ‘Q’ course

Candidates during US Army Special Forces Assessment and Selection at Camp Mackall in North Carolina in March 2020.

US Army/K. Kassens

Following Russia’s 2014 invasion, the US military created the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine, which brought conventional and special-operations troops from across NATO to train Ukraine’s military in modern war-fighting methods.

That training created a corps of professional troops with which Ukraine is now beating back the Russians. Although there was some staff-level training on how to fight a large conventional conflict, most of the training concerned tactical-level operations, including small-arms proficiency, marksmanship, close-quarters combat, and patrolling.

“I think one of the key programs we created was a Q course, a force-generation model for Ukrainian [special-operations forces] much like US Army Special Forces and their Q course,” Navy Command Master Chief Peter Musselman, the senior enlisted leader at Special Operations Command Europe, said during a New America event in September.

US Army officers train Ukrainian troops during a combat exercise at a base in Yavoriv, Ukraine in October 2017.

Gaelle Girbes/Getty Images

The “Q course,” officially called the US Army Special Forces Qualification Course, assesses and teaches Green Beret candidates the basics of their profession. Special Operations Command Europe — working through the US Army’s 10th Special Forces Group, which is responsible for Europe — developed the course for their Ukrainian troops.

“The Q course puts unique pressure on teams and individuals. Aside from the world-class training, it truly helps to identify and select the best of the best,” John Black, a retired Army Green Beret warrant officer, told Insider.

Lasting anywhere from 56 to 95 weeks, depending on the Green Beret’s military occupational specialty, Q Course includes unconventional warfare, small unit tactics, and Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training. It culminates with Robin Sage, a large-scale realistic exercise that puts all the skills into action.

The elements of Q Course that the Ukrainians have incorporated into their selection and assessment process allow the instructors to choose the best troops. For students who go through the training, the course offers them the opportunity to perform their best under stress and pressure, Black said.

A Special Forces candidate crosses a water obstacle during Robin Sage in central North Carolina in July 2019.

US Army/K. Kassens

“Being able to closely look at the individuals going through the course, then identify and select the best from that pool, is incredible. This is why the Ukrainian [special-operations force] is as strong as they are and able to handle their current conflict,” Black added.

The relationships that US troops built with their Ukrainian counterparts during that period are now making it much easier to advise and assist the Ukrainians on the ground.

US Air Force Maj. Gen. Steven Edwards, commander of Special Operations Command Europe, said the Ukrainians have been “very successful” in fighting the Russians and that their success is “truly a testament to the quality of training” provided by NATO special operators.

Remote train and assist

Ukrainian troops during a training session at their base in Slavyansk in September 2014.

ANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP via Getty Images

Ukrainian special operators have been put their training to use by ambushing Russian armored columns, conducting long-range reconnaissance, and by generally augmenting Ukraine’s conventional forces on the frontline. But the war has affected the level of interaction that US and Ukrainian operators have been able to have since 2014.

Musselman, a Navy SEAL, said American special operators have had to advise their Ukrainian counterparts from a distance since Russia launched its renewed attack.

“Where previously we were able to interact with our Ukrainian partners on a daily basis, we now find ourselves having to communicate via remote devices, telephones, computers,” Musselman said. “So that adds another level of complexity.”

Edwards acknowledged that some NATO militaries still have special operators in Ukraine, though strictly in an advisory role, and that US special operators “rely heavily on them” to understand the situation on the ground.

US Special Operations Command doesn’t have an official presence in Ukraine and has adopted a “remote advise and assist” role there, but it is safe to assume that US special operators have some sort of footprint in the country — likely through US intelligence agencies — to help Ukrainians with their training and logistical challenges.

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate. He is working toward a master’s degree in strategy and cybersecurity at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies.

Kim Kardashian’s Skims campaign includes two stars from “The White Lotus.”

Jordan Strauss/Associated Press

• Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand, Skims, launched a campaign with stars of “The White Lotus.”
• Engagement on the post has outpaced the typical response from fans.
• A marketing professor outlined why the campaign works and what entrepreneurs can learn from it.

About six weeks after season two of “The White Lotus” concluded, the fan-favorite actors Simona Tabasco and Beatrice Grannò were featured in a lingerie campaign for Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand, Skims.

On Monday, Kardashian shared images and a video on Instagram of the women, who played Lucia and Mia on the show, for her company’s Valentine’s Day collection. The duo, who starred alongside powerhouse actors like Jennifer Coolidge and Aubrey Plaza in the Emmy-winning series, quickly became beloved characters among viewers, including Kardashian.

“I watched The White Lotus and had to have my girls!” Kardashian wrote in the caption of the Instagram post kicking off the campaign.

A post shared by Kim Kardashian (@kimkardashian)

Skims’ inaugural Instagram post for the campaign garnered more than 41,000 likes, while other posts on Skims’ Instagram profile have typically gotten 2,000 to 6,000 likes. The campaign TikTok video has more than 981,000 views, compared with the brand’s usual range of 30,000 to 70,000 views.

“Part of what the Skims brand represents is real, everyday women using this product to uplift themselves,” said Jared Watson, an assistant professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “Now more than ever, what’s aspirational to many is not necessarily perfection.”

Watson added that with this campaign, Skims is leveraging characters who are both relatable and aspirational to evoke that perception of the products.

Here’s why the latest Skims campaign works and what other business owners can learn for their brand marketing, according to Watson.

Relatability and emotion contributed to the campaign’s virality

A post shared by SKIMS (@skims)

Watson said the relationships we build with onscreen talent are what makes campaigns like Kardashian’s so effective.

“Parasocial relationships are one-way relationships we form with people on television or on the internet where it feels like we know them,” he said. “That’s what Skims is doing fantastically here. For fans of ‘The White Lotus,’ we feel this source of pride, like ‘here’s our friend getting a platform.'”

Watson speculated that most of the campaign’s value would be in the form of a new or strengthened affinity for the Skims brand from customers. He added that while it’s too early to tell whether the campaign is a financial success for Skims, it’s likely to increase traffic to the brand.

Fans of “The White Lotus” are likely checking in on their favorite stars on social media, which could lead them to engage with the Skims campaign to feel even more connected, he said.

Joining cultural conversations can help businesses of all sizes

To be sure, Kardashian, who has an estimated net worth of $1.8 billion, has the social and financial capital to convince major players to join her ad campaigns; for instance, the former Victoria’s Secret supermodels Tyra Banks, Heidi Klum, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Candice Swanepoel modeled for Skims last year.

But business owners with smaller budgets can find other ways to engage in cultural conversations to support their marketing, Watson said.

For example, pizza chain &pizza sends out marketing text messages pegged to pop-culture headlines that also correspond to sales promotions, he added. Small-business owners can mirror this strategy for events like the Super Bowl or a highly-anticipated episode of television to attract customers.   

What’s more, sharing timely posts on social media that are related to these moments is another way to organically draw more social engagement to your brand’s page.

“You’re not going to be able to emulate the reach of Kim Kardashian overnight,” he said. “But you are able to contribute to these pop-culture conversations.”

Yale Law School promised student activists last week that it would bar press from a panel on free speech featuring Kristen Waggoner, the conservative lawyer whose last talk at the law school ended in a police escort. The group hosting the event, Yale Law School’s chapter of the Federalist Society, agreed to those ground rules, students said.

On Tuesday, the school kept its word, barring the Washington Free Beacon from covering the event. Administrators stated that media were also forbidden from lingering in the hallways outside the event, in keeping with the law school’s published media policy, and asked that all attendees show a Yale Law School ID.

Whatever policies are on the books, this appears to be the first time many of them were enforced—and certainly the first time they were enforced so aggressively. Clustered outside and speaking on the condition of anonymity, students and professors alike said they had never seen such a forceful and well-coordinated attempt to control access to an event.

The spectacle suggests that last year’s meltdown, in which student protesters drowned out a panel on free speech featuring Waggoner and Monica Miller, an attorney with the American Humanist Association, still haunts the law school, which has been seeking to rehabilitate its reputation in the wake of the fallout. Fourteen federal judges announced this fall that they would no longer hire clerks from Yale Law, saying the incident—and the school’s failure to discipline those involved in it—demonstrated an unacceptable hostility to conservative views.

The event on Tuesday appears to have gone without a hitch. Nadine Strossen, the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union, joined Waggoner, the president of the Alliance Defending Freedom, for what was by all accounts a cordial, well-mannered discussion of First Amendment law. Students exiting the event said there were no ear-shattering chants, no profanity-laden signs, and no ad hominem questions.

“There was not even a peaceful protest,” Strossen told the Free Beacon.

It was a sharp contrast to last March, when protesters chanted, heckled, banged on doors, and cursed out attendees. The fracas was so intense that Waggoner, who has argued a slew of religious liberty cases before the Supreme Court, had to be escorted out of the building by the police.

In an apparent bid to avoid more controversy, the law school told student activists last week that “no press” signs would be “prominently displayed” and administrators would “enforce this.” It also said—to the activists’ chagrin—that it would not commit to making a public statement of support in the event that attendees were “doxxed,” saying that doing so might only draw more media attention.

Strossen on Monday criticized the school’s decision to ban press and undergraduates from the event. That move was “sadly ironic” for an event about free speech, Strossen said, calling it “unjustifiable.”

Robert Capodilupo, the president of the law school’s Federalist Society chapter, declined to comment on the press ban. But like Strossen, he noted the marked improvement over last year, saying it “was great to see so many students engage with our speakers and their arguments in good faith.”

For Waggoner, the placid proceedings justify some measure of optimism.

“While only time will tell if the Yale administration is committed to long-term meaningful change,” she said, “our hope is that this event begins a new era of tolerance for ideological diversity on campus.”

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