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      Facebook whistleblower accuses firm of serially misleading over safety

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      FacebookFacebook whistleblower accuses firm of serially misleading over safety Frances Haugen filed at least eight complaints against the company regarding its approach to safety Dan Milmo Global technology editorTue 5 Oct 2021 07.50 EDTLast modified on Tue 5 Oct 2021 10.23 EDTThe Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, who testifies at the US Congress on Tuesday, has filed at least eight complaints with the US financial watchdog accusing the social media company of serially misleading investors about its approach to safety and the size of its audience.The complaints, published online by the news programme 60 Minutes late on Monday, hours before Haugen’s testimony to US senators at 10am EDT (3pm BST), are based on tens of thousands of internal documents that Haugen copied shortly before she quit Facebook in May.The complaints and testimony from Haugen, who stepped forward on Sunday as the source of a damning series of revelations in the Wall Street Journal, are taking place against a backdrop of operational chaos for Facebook, whose platforms, including Instagram and WhatsApp, went offline around the world for nearly six hours on Monday.The first whistleblower complaint filed to the US Securities and Exchange Commission relates to the 6 January riots in Washington, when crowds of protesters stormed the Capitol, and alleges that Facebook knowingly chose to permit political misinformation and contests statements made by its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, to the contrary.“Our anonymous client is disclosing original evidence showing that Facebook … has, for years past and ongoing, violated US securities laws by making material misrepresentations and omissions in statements to investors and prospective investors,” the sweeping opening statement reads, “including, inter alia, through filings with the SEC, testimony to Congress, online statements and media stories.”The complaints against Facebook, which reflect a series of reports in the Wall Street Journal in recent weeks, also cover:
      The company’s approach to hate speech.
      Its approach to teenage mental health.
      Its monitoring of human trafficking.
      How the company’s algorithms promoted hate speech.
      Preferential disciplinary treatment for VIP users.
      Promoting ethnic violence.
      Failing to inform investors about a shrinking user base in certain demographics.
      The first complaint, regarding 6 January, contests testimony given to Congress in March by Facebook’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, in which he stated that: “We remove language that incites or facilitates violence, and we ban groups that proclaim a hateful and violent mission.”The complaint rebuts this, claiming that the company’s own records show it “knowingly chose to permit political misinformation and violent content/groups and failed to adopt or continue measures to combat these issues, including as related to the 2020 US election and the 6 January insurrection, in order to promote virality and growth on its platforms.”According to one internal Facebook document quoted in the complaints, the company admits: “For example, we estimate that we may action as little as 3-5% of hate [speech] and ~0.6% of V&V [violent and inciting content] on Facebook.”A complaint also alleges that Facebook misrepresented its “reach and frequency”, which are key metrics for the advertisers who provide the majority of Facebook’s revenue. That included concealing a decline in the key demographic of young users, the complaint stated. “During Covid, every cohort’s use of Facebook increased, except for those 23 and under, which continued to decline,” the complaint said.“For years, Facebook has misrepresented core metrics to investors and advertisers including the amount of content produced on its platforms and growth in individual users,” it said, adding this applied particularly in “high-value demographics” such as US teenagers.Facebook has been approached for comment.The human trafficking complaint alleges that Facebook and its photo-sharing app, Instagram, were aware in 2019 that the platforms were being used to “promote human trafficking and domestic servitude”. The hate speech complaint quotes another internal document that states: “We only take action against approximately 2% of the hate speech on the platform.” The teen health complaint focuses on the most damaging allegation from the WSJ series: that Instagram knew the app caused anxiety about body image among teenage girls.A complaint about Facebook’s approach to algorithms alleges that a tweak to the app’s News Feed product – a key part of users’ interaction with the app – led to the prioritisation of divisive content, while the complaint about ethnic violence contains an excerpt from an internal study that claims “in the Afghanistan market, the action rate for hate speech is worryingly low”.Facebook has issued a series of statements downplaying Haugen’s document leaks, saying: its Instagram research showed that many teens found the app helpful; it was investing heavily in security at the expense of its bottom line; polarisation had been growing in the US for decades before Facebook appeared; and the company had “made fighting misinformation and providing authoritative information a priority”.Responding to accusations that Facebook had misled the public and regulators, the company said: “We stand by our public statements and are ready to answer any questions regulators may have about our work.”TopicsFacebookSocial mediaUS CongressUS politicsDigital mediaSocial networkingnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      The US must avoid war with China over Taiwan at all costs | Daniel L Davis

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      OpinionUS politicsThe US must avoid war with China over Taiwan at all costsLt Col Daniel L Davis (ret)The prevailing mood among Washington insiders is to fight if China attempts to conquer Taiwan. That would be a mistake Tue 5 Oct 2021 06.18 EDTLast modified on Tue 5 Oct 2021 09.55 EDTSince last Friday, the People’s Republic of China has launched a total of 155 warplanes – the most ever over four consecutive days – into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone; Ned Price said the state department was “very concerned”. There have been more than 500 such flights through nine months this year, as opposed to 300 all of last year.Before war comes to the Indo-Pacific and Washington faces pressure to fight a potentially existential war, American policymakers must face the cold, hard reality that fighting China over Taiwan risks an almost-certain military defeat – and gambles we won’t stumble into a nuclear war.Bluntly put, America should refuse to be drawn into a no-win war with Beijing. It needs to be said up front: there would be no palatable choice for Washington if China finally makes good on its decades-long threat to take Taiwan by force. Either choose a bad, bitter-tasting outcome or a self-destructive one in which our existence is put at risk.The prevailing mood in Washington among officials and opinion leaders is to fight if China attempts to conquer Taiwan by force. In a speech at the Center for Strategic Studies last Friday, the deputy secretary of defense, Kathleen Hicks, said that if Beijing invades Taiwan, “we have a significant amount of capability forward in the region to tamp down any such potential”.Either Hicks is unaware of how little wartime capacity we actually have forward deployed in the Indo-Pacific or she’s unaware of how significant China’s capacity is off its shores, but whichever the case, we are in no way guaranteed to “tamp down” a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.Earlier this year, Senator Rick Scott and Representative Guy Reschenthaler introduced the Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act which, Representative Reschenthaler said, would authorize “the president to use military force to defend Taiwan against a direct attack”. In the event of an actual attack, there would be enormous pressure to fast-track such a bill to authorize Biden to act. We must resist this temptation.As I have previously detailed, there is no rational scenario in which the United States could end up in a better, more secure place after a war with China. The best that could be hoped for would be a pyrrhic victory in which we are saddled with becoming the permanent defense force for Taiwan (costing us hundreds of billions a year and the equally permanent requirement to be ready for the inevitable Chinese counter-attack).The most likely outcome would be a conventional defeat of our forces in which China ultimately succeeds, despite our intervention – at the cost of large numbers of our jets being shot down, ships being sunk, and thousands of our service personnel killed. But the worst case is a conventional war spirals out of control and escalates into a nuclear exchange.That leaves as the best option something most Americans find unsatisfying: refuse to engage in direct combat against China on behalf of Taiwan. Doing so will allow the United States to emerge on the other side of a China/Taiwan war with our global military and economic power intact.That’s not to suggest we stand passively aside and let China run over Taiwan with impunity. The most effective course of action for Washington would be to condemn China in the strongest possible terms, lead a global movement that will enact crippling sanctions against Beijing, and make them an international pariah. China’s pain wouldn’t be limited to economics, however.It would take Beijing decades to overcome the losses incurred from a war to take Taiwan, even if Beijing triumphs. The United States and our western allies, on the other hand, would remain at full military power, dominate the international business markets, and have the moral high ground to keep China hemmed in like nothing that presently exists. Xi would be seen as an unquestioned aggressor, even by other Asian regimes, and the fallout against China could knock them back decades. Our security would be vastly improved from what it is today – and incalculably higher than if we foolishly tried to fight a war with China.Publicly, Washington should continue to embrace strategic ambiguity but privately convey to Taiwanese leaders that we will not fight a war with China. That would greatly incentivize Taipei to make whatever political moves and engage in any negotiation necessary to ensure the perpetuation of the status quo. The blunt, hard reality is that a Taiwan maintaining the status quo is far better than a smoldering wreck of an island conquered by Beijing.The only way the US could have our security harmed would be to allow ourselves to be drawn into a war we’re likely to lose over an issue peripheral to US security. In the event China takes Taiwan by force, Washington should stay out of the fray and lead a global effort to ostracize China, helping ensure our security will be strengthened for a generation to come.
      Daniel L Davis is a senior fellow for defense priorities and a former lieutenant colonel in the US army who deployed into combat zones four times. He is the author of The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionChinaForeign policyTaiwancommentReuse this content More

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      Why Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto is having a moment

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      Pass notesCommunismWhy Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto is having a momentThe Canadian musician Grimes tweeted an image of herself with the 1848 document last week – just after her reported split from the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. She isn’t the only one reading it right now Mon 4 Oct 2021 13.24 EDTLast modified on Mon 4 Oct 2021 14.45 EDTName: The Communist Manifesto.Age: 173 years.Remind me what it is again. A pamphlet first published by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848. I thought Marxism was dead … at least it seemed that way at the Labour party conference last week. Not so! It’s never been hotter!Really? Yes! Even Grimes has been spotted reading a copy.The Canadian musician? Real name Claire Boucher? The one who had a baby with Elon Musk? The very same. In her first public appearance since her reported split with Musk – the richest man in the world, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX – she was photographed wearing a fantasy-themed outfit on a street corner in that hotbed of communism, Los Angeles.Is she a Marxist? No. The whole thing was staged; she tweeted that she had done the stunt to spark ridiculous headlines.Even more ridiculous headlines than calling your child X Æ A-Xii? One assumes so, yes.Is it a case of her hilariously trolling her definitely-not-a-communist ex? Perhaps, although she did write on Instagram: “I’m still living with E and I am not a communist (although there are some very smart ideas in this book …)”.Remind me, what are those smart ideas? That human history was based on class struggles between the oppressors and the oppressed. And – to put it very simply – this was not good.Sounds a lot like my life in 2021. Quite, which is why it is having a bit of a moment. It is still one of the most influential political documents ever written, and its ideas do have a habit of popping up in times of economic and social crisis.Because it shows us how many of the problems in the world can be attributed to capitalist production, greed and property? Exactly. Check out the Pandora papers if you need more evidence. Or people hogging petrol.What does it say is the answer to all this then? Revolution, of course. And the elimination of social classes as well as the means to appropriate private property. Is this why young people keep saying: “Eat the rich”? Well, yes, huge numbers of young people are turning their backs on capitalism. Well, that’s because they can’t afford to get a toe on the property ladder. Whatever the reason, the Communist Manifesto is strangely popular right now. Last year, it was translated into Somali for the first time and there’s even a site where you can teach your parrot to recite it. Do say: “Workers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.”Don’t say: “My Tesla shares are doing well.”TopicsCommunismPass notesGrimesUS politicsKarl MarxfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      Facebook ‘tearing our societies apart’: key excerpts from a whistleblower

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      FacebookFacebook ‘tearing our societies apart’: key excerpts from a whistleblower Frances Haugen tells US news show why she decided to reveal inside story about social networking firm Dan Milmo Global technology editorMon 4 Oct 2021 08.33 EDTLast modified on Mon 4 Oct 2021 10.30 EDTFrances Haugen’s interview with the US news programme 60 Minutes contained a litany of damning statements about Facebook. Haugen, a former Facebook employee who had joined the company to help it combat misinformation, told the CBS show the tech firm prioritised profit over safety and was “tearing our societies apart”.Haugen will testify in Washington on Tuesday, as political pressure builds on Facebook. Here are some of the key excerpts from Haugen’s interview.Choosing profit over the public goodHaugen’s most cutting words echoed what is becoming a regular refrain from politicians on both sides of the Atlantic: that Facebook puts profit above the wellbeing of its users and the public. “The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimise for its own interests, like making more money.”She also accused Facebook of endangering public safety by reversing changes to its algorithm once the 2020 presidential election was over, allowing misinformation to spread on the platform again. “And as soon as the election was over, they turned them [the safety systems] back off or they changed the settings back to what they were before, to prioritise growth over safety. And that really feels like a betrayal of democracy to me.”Facebook’s approach to safety compared with othersIn a 15-year career as a tech professional, Haugen, 37, has worked for companies including Google and Pinterest but she said Facebook had the worst approach to restricting harmful content. She said: “I’ve seen a bunch of social networks and it was substantially worse at Facebook than anything I’d seen before.” Referring to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, she said: “I have a lot of empathy for Mark. And Mark has never set out to make a hateful platform. But he has allowed choices to be made where the side-effects of those choices are that hateful, polarising content gets more distribution and more reach.”Instagram and mental healthThe document leak that had the greatest impact was a series of research slides that showed Facebook’s Instagram app was damaging the mental health and wellbeing of some teenage users, with 30% of teenage girls feeling that it made dissatisfaction with their body worse.She said: “And what’s super tragic is Facebook’s own research says, as these young women begin to consume this eating disorder content, they get more and more depressed. And it actually makes them use the app more. And so, they end up in this feedback cycle where they hate their bodies more and more. Facebook’s own research says it is not just that Instagram is dangerous for teenagers, that it harms teenagers, it’s that it is distinctly worse than other forms of social media.”Facebook has described the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on the slides as a “mischaracterisation” of its research.Why Haugen leaked the documentsHaugen said “person after person” had attempted to tackle Facebook’s problems but had been ground down. “Imagine you know what’s going on inside of Facebook and you know no one on the outside knows. I knew what my future looked like if I continued to stay inside of Facebook, which is person after person after person has tackled this inside of Facebook and ground themselves to the ground.”Having joined the company in 2019, Haugen said she decided to act this year and started copying tens of thousands of documents from Facebook’s internal system, which she believed show that Facebook is not, despite public comments to the contrary, making significant progress in combating online hate and misinformation . “At some point in 2021, I realised, ‘OK, I’m gonna have to do this in a systemic way, and I have to get out enough that no one can question that this is real.’”Facebook and violenceHaugen said the company had contributed to ethnic violence, a reference to Burma. In 2018, following the massacre of Rohingya Muslims by the military, Facebook admitted that its platform had been used to “foment division and incite offline violence” relating to the country. Speaking on 60 Minutes, Haugen said: “When we live in an information environment that is full of angry, hateful, polarising content it erodes our civic trust, it erodes our faith in each other, it erodes our ability to want to care for each other. The version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world.”Facebook and the Washington riotThe 6 January riot, when crowds of rightwing protesters stormed the Capitol, came after Facebook disbanded the Civic Integrity team of which Haugen was a member. The team, which focused on issues linked to elections around the world, was dispersed to other Facebook units following the US presidential election. “They told us: ‘We’re dissolving Civic Integrity.’ Like, they basically said: ‘Oh good, we made it through the election. There wasn’t riots. We can get rid of Civic Integrity now.’ Fast-forward a couple months, we got the insurrection. And when they got rid of Civic Integrity, it was the moment where I was like, ‘I don’t trust that they’re willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous.’”The 2018 algorithm changeFacebook changed the algorithm on its news feed – Facebook’s central feature, which supplies users with a customised feed of content such as friends’ photos and news stories – to prioritise content that increased user engagement. Haugen said this made divisive content more prominent.“One of the consequences of how Facebook is picking out that content today is it is optimising for content that gets engagement, or reaction. But its own research is showing that content that is hateful, that is divisive, that is polarising – it’s easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions.” She added: “Facebook has realised that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they’ll click on less ads, they’ll make less money.”Haugen said European political parties contacted Facebook to say that the news feed change was forcing them to take more extreme political positions in order to win users’ attention. Describing polititicians’ concerns, she said: “You are forcing us to take positions that we don’t like, that we know are bad for society. We know if we don’t take those positions, we won’t win in the marketplace of social media.”In a statement to 60 Minutes, Facebook said: “Every day our teams have to balance protecting the right of billions of people to express themselves openly with the need to keep our platform a safe and positive place. We continue to make significant improvements to tackle the spread of misinformation and harmful content. To suggest we encourage bad content and do nothing is just not true. If any research had identified an exact solution to these complex challenges, the tech industry, governments, and society would have solved them a long time ago.”TopicsFacebookSocial networkingUS Capitol attackInstagramMental healthSocial mediaYoung peoplenewsReuse this content More

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      Trump seeking to elevate Republicans who refuse to accept Biden victory

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      The fight to voteDonald TrumpTrump seeking to elevate Republicans who refuse to accept Biden victory Ex-president has endorsed Republican secretary of state candidates who would wield enormous power over elections The fight to vote is supported byAbout this contentSam Levine in New YorkMon 4 Oct 2021 04.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 4 Oct 2021 04.01 EDTSign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterDonald Trump and allies are seeding one of their most dangerous efforts to undermine US elections to date, seeking to elevate candidates who refuse to accept Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 to crucial offices where they could do significant damage in overturning the 2024 elections.The former president has endorsed several Republican candidates running to be the secretary of state, the chief election official, in their respective states. If elected, these candidates would wield enormous power over elections, and could both implement policies that would make it harder for Americans to cast a ballot and block the official certification of election results afterwards. Ten of the 15 candidates running for secretary of state in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada have either said the 2020 results were stolen or that they need to be further investigated, Reuters reported earlier this month.The endorsements from the former president underscore the enormous power that secretaries of state have over election rules and procedures, both before and after the election. One of the main reasons Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election failed in many places were election officials, including Republican and Democratic secretaries of state, who refused to go along with his effort. If those officials are voted out of office next year, it would be a serious blow to the guardrails of US democracy.“It is really troubling that Trump’s grip on the base of the Republican party may lead to the election of people who say that they believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump,” Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine, wrote in an email. “That’s demonstrably false, but it does undermine the integrity of any elections that these people would be involved in running should they be elected.”The candidates are seeking votes from a Republican electorate that continues to embrace the false belief that the 2020 election was stolen. Seventy-eight per cent of Republicans believe Biden did not win the election, according to a recent CNN poll. More than half of Republicans believe there is solid evidence Biden did not win, the poll found, even though no evidence exists.Earlier this year, Trump endorsed Jody Hice, a Republican congressman in Georgia running to oust Brad Raffensperger, the current GOP secretary of state who rebuffed Trump’s efforts to get the election overturned. Hice, who appeared at a rally with Trump last weekend, objected to the counting of Georgia’s electoral votes and said he was not convinced Biden won Georgia, even though several recounts affirmed Biden’s victory there. Hice posted a photo on the morning of 6 January describing the day as “our 1776 moment”.Trump has also endorsed Mark Finchem, an Arizona state representative he described as a “true warrior”. Finchem was at the Capitol on 6 January, and though he has said he did not enter the building, records show he was in contact with organizers of the “Stop the Steal” rally. “When you steal something, that’s not really a win; that’s a fraud,” Finchem said at a 5 January pre-rally. Finchem was also one of the most-vocal supporters of a shoddy, Republican-backed review of the 2020 election in Arizona’s largest county, celebrated by Trump, that failed to turn up substantial evidence of fraud.In Michigan, Trump has endorsed Kristina Kamaro, who as a poll watcher in Detroit in 2020 and made unsubstantiated claims of fraud. More than 250 local audits and a Republican-led legislative inquiry have affirmed Biden’s win in Michigan.“Donald Trump has made it his mission to sow doubt in our democracy. His endorsement of Secretaries of State who believe and spread the Big Lie is the next step in the effort to tip the scales in future elections,” said Jena Griswold, Colorado’s top election official and the chair of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State. “More than ever we need election administrators who will respect the will of voters no matter the outcome of an election – our democracy is on the ballot in 2022.”TopicsDonald TrumpThe fight to voteUS elections 2024US politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      I’ll Take Your Questions Now review: Stephanie Grisham’s tawdry Trump tell-all

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      BooksI’ll Take Your Questions Now review: Stephanie Grisham’s tawdry Trump tell-allThe press secretary who wouldn’t brief the press wants to talk. Like all else to do with Donald and Melania, truth is a casualty Lloyd GreenSun 3 Oct 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 3 Oct 2021 02.02 EDTIn 2015, Donald Trump boasted that his administration would be filled with only “the best and most serious people … top-of-the-line professionals”.Stephanie Grisham: Trump turncoat who may be most damaging yetRead moreMeet Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s third press secretary and sixth communications director, Melania Trump’s first spokeswoman and second chief of staff. All that in less than four years.Before Trump, Grisham reportedly lost one job for padding expense reports and another over plagiarism and was twice cited for driving under the influence. As White House press secretary, she never delivered a formal briefing. Instead, she ladled out interviews to Fox News and OAN.Grisham even went so far as to issue a statement proclaiming that John Kelly, a retired four-star general and past chief of staff, “was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president”. As Grisham recounts, MSNBC said that statement, which she says was dictated by Trump, had “a decidedly North Korean tone”. It had a point.Finally, on 6 January 2021, Grisham resigned. The insurrectionists who attacked the US Capitol had claimed an unintended scalp. On the page, Grisham lets it be known that the election was not stolen, that she urged the first lady to denounce the storming of the Capitol, and that Melania demurred because she was more concerned with setting up a photo shoot for a rug. That, Grisham writes, was when she decided enough was finally enough.Like most things Trump, reality is a casualty. Text messages obtained by Politico indicate that Grisham was fine with challenging election results – until she wasn’t.Grisham follows into print Michael Cohen, Trump’s ex-lawyer; Omarosa, former Apprentice contestant and Trump White House refugee; Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, former friend and aide to Melania and rival to Grisham; and Stormy Daniels, adult film star and alleged recipient of $130,000 in Trump hush-money.To know Trump is to blab. As Grisham frames things, working near and for the first couple was akin to being in a “Hunger Games-style environment” and Melania morphed into a modern-day Marie Antoinette: “Dismissive. Defeated. Detached.”Grisham’s book is salacious and score-settling – but not entertaining. Yes, Grisham discusses the state of Trump’s “junk” and shares the first couple’s reactions when Daniels immortalized “Mushroom Mario”. Even so, her tone is mirthless.“Not in two million years had I ever thought I’d have a conversation with the president of the United States about his penis,” she writes. Perhaps she forgot Bill Clinton.She also portrays Rudy Giuliani as off-putting and not-quite-right. The New York mayor turned Trump lawyer “gave off weird vibes when he was around the president”, she writes. Being in a meeting with Giuliani was tantamount to “being cross-examined about it later by some committee”. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, criminally charged Giuliani associates, would surely agree.Grisham has other targets. Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, is presented as a treacherous boot-licker, instrumental in driving Grisham from her job as White House press secretary and back to the sole employ of Melania. Lindsey Graham was a two-faced leech, “Senator Freeloader” as the author has it. Both Meadows and Graham, she writes, helped undercut Mick Mulvaney as chief of staff.Where are they now? Giuliani is suspended from the bar and reportedly in prosecutors’ crosshairs. Meadows is facing a congressional subpoena over his role on 6 January. Graham is in Trump’s doghouse again.The spotlight on Melania is unsparing. Grisham says the first lady was unofficially called “Rapunzel” by the Secret Service, for her reluctance to leave her personal quarters. Unlike Michelle Obama and Laura Bush, Melania seldom ventured near her East Wing office. Some agents sought to be assigned to Melania, Grisham says, because her “limited movements and travel meant that they could spend more time at home with their families”. But Melania did care deeply about the White House Easter egg roll. We all have our priorities.In Grisham’s telling, Melania was taken aback by racial animus voiced in Charlottesville in August 2017 by white supremacists, and deplored racism herself. Intentionally or otherwise, Grisham omits the fact her former boss was a “birther” who helped her husband stoke the lie that Barack Obama was born in Kenya.Yet Grisham reserves her harshest takes for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the “interns”, as Grisham says they came to be known. As she saw it, the pair repeatedly conflated being born on third base with wisdom, aesthetic grace with entitlement to whatever they wanted.Grisham describes how the pair attempted to shoehorn themselves into a meeting with the Queen, how Jared offered opinions on the Mexican border and on combating Covid. Grisham appears to relish recounting Kushner’s difficulties in obtaining a security clearance and the fact he needed Trump to get it done.Still, Kushner was de facto chief of staff and no one who crossed him could hope to survive. Sure, Steve Bannon eked out a last-minute pardon, just like Charlie Kushner, Jared’s dad. But Bannon was gone from the White House in months.Wildland review: Evan Osnos on the America Trump exploitedRead moreGrisham has written a tell-all but it is also an exercise in self-pity. She tags an unnamed boyfriend for assorted bad behavior. She suspects there was another woman and regrets her choice of men. The profile matches that of Max Miller, a White House staffer now Trump’s pick for an Ohio congressional seat.Miller reportedly pushed Grisham against a wall and slapped her, allegations he denies. In 2007, he was charged with assault, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and fleeing from the cops. He pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor charges before the case was dismissed.Trump reportedly assaulted his first wife, Ivana, and faces a defamation lawsuit in connection with the alleged sexual assault of the writer E Jean Carroll. He too denies all allegations. So it goes.Grisham laments the state of the Republican party, lauds Liz Cheney and argues that the GOP is “not one man”. Reasonable people can differ. A recent poll shows most Republicans want Trump to continue as their leader.
      I’ll Take Your Questions Now is published by Harper Collins
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