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  • Ashlyn Harris still rattled by ‘biggest lie’ from painful Ali Krieger split

    Ashlyn Harris still rattled by ‘biggest lie’ from painful Ali Krieger split

    Former USWNT goalie Ashlyn Harris moved on after her and Ali Krieger’s split last October — their divorce proceedings are ongoing — but she still isn’t happy she was labeled a cheater in the public eye.

    During an appearance on the latest installment of the “Naked Sports with Cari Champion” podcast, Harris explained that it was her decision to end their near four-year marriage after more than a decade together because she didn’t feel loved or wanted by Krieger.

    “[The biggest lie about the breakup is] that I’m constantly pegged as a cheater, which that is so far from the truth and she knows it,” Harris, who’s currently dating actress Sophia Bush, said. “And it torched me.

    “… She was in so much pain and rightfully so and I want to make room for her experience. I really thought she never thought I would leave. I don’t think she ever took me seriously.”

    Harris said she and Krieger — who share custody of their two children, Sloane, 3, and Ocean, 2 — were living separately last summer before their divorce was made public in October 2023.

    Harris and Bush went public with their relationship earlier this year, although they were believed to have started dating months before then.

    “I had my own apartment and people were starting to recognize me, so I was like we have to come out with a joint statement, people know I live here,” Harris said. “But I think once it all blew up and it affected her last season [Krieger retired in March]. She was pissed and she was angry, and rightfully so.”

    Ashley Harris opened up about her and Ali Krieger’s divorce on the “Naked Sports with Cari Champion” podcast. Instagram/Cari Champion

    Harris filed for divorce on Sept. 19, 2023, citing the marriage is “irretrievably broken,” according to court documents obtained by Page Six. 

    The next month, Krieger posted about being in “my Beyonce Lemonade era,” which was a reference to the singer’s infidelity-themed album.

    Harris explained that “the reality” of the situation was that she and Krieger had nothing in common after they stopped playing together.

    “I just felt like I wasn’t a priority,” she said. “I didn’t feel that sense of connection whether emotional or physical. It was soccer, job, kids and somewhere down the line it was like, ‘OK, what about me?’ I decided to leave my marriage after almost four years and a decade of being together. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. And I think people miss that. People think only one person was in pain or people think you have to choose a side that you know, you have to punish this person because the idea you had through social media didn’t manage your expectations however you haven’t lived my experience.

    Ashlyn Harris (left) and teammate Ali Krieger pose with the World Cup after the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup France final match between the Netherlands and the United States at Stade de Lyon on July 7, 2019 in Lyon, France. Getty Images
    Ali Krieger #11 of NJ/NY Gotham FC and Ashlyn Harris with their kids after the Mothers Day National Women’s Soccer League match against Orlando Pride at Red Bull Arena on May 14, 2023. Getty Images

    “I wanted someone to love me so bad, I caved every bit of who I was inside to try to be more lovable … I just wanted to be enough … I wanted to be able to walk through the door someone miss me, want me and need me in a way that wasn’t so business. On the field everyone thought I was this way, but at home I felt like I was living with a stranger and I just had to take my power back. And unfortunately, people were hurt in that process.”

    Harris and Krieger were on two World Cup-winning USWNT teams together in 2015 and 2019 — and they dated for nearly a decade before tying the knot on Dec. 28, 2019, in Miami.

    Harris retired from professional soccer in November 2022, and Krieger called it a career at the end of the 2023 NWSL season.

    Ashlyn Harris and Sophia Bush at the L’Oreal Paris’ Women Of Worth Celebration 2024 held at NeueHouse Hollywood on November 21, 2024 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California on Nov. 22, 2024. Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/MEGA

    “Everyone has an experience, however only one experience played out in the media, which was quite difficult … I was looking over the edge,” Harris said. “It was the first time I was like someone needs to take this nine millimeter and get it the f–k away from me.

    “I was at probably the lowest … Honestly, I was like, I can’t survive this. Meanwhile, I was being torched while I was trying to raise two kids and go through this process and make sure that my storm didn’t become theirs.”

    Harris explained she didn’t feel loved or wanted by Krieger, who wouldn’t “touch me” or be intimate together.

    Ashlyn Harris and Sophia Bush arrive for the 2024 Glamour Women Of The Year event at Of The Year at Times Square EDITION Hotel on October 8, 2024 in New York City. GC Images

    A year prior to their split, Harris recalled making “one last attempt” to save their marriage.

    “I started trying all these things — let’s do an open marriage,” she said. “That’s not even me dude. A year before we officially called it quits, that was my last attempt. If I’m not getting what I want and we want to keep this together, which is also the strains the public eye places on you. You feel like you can’t make the brave and hard decisions because you know the impact and wave that will come and that was my biggest fear.”

    Bush filed for divorce from Grant Hughes in August 2023 after just 13 months of marriage. 

    Krieger said in July she was dating someone new.

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  • Ping! Harris and Trump are blowing up your phones with political texts in campaign’s last days

    Ping! Harris and Trump are blowing up your phones with political texts in campaign’s last days

    WASHINGTON — For the millions of Americans on the radar of the Kamala Harris and Donald Trump campaigns and those of their allies, the apocalypse is only a text message away.

    The very future of the republic is at stake, some of the texts say and many others imply. But you — yes, YOU, Sally, Jose or insert-your-first-name here — can save it. For as little as $7.

    Texting is a cheap and easy way to reach potential voters and donors, without all the rules meant to keep traditional paid broadcast advertising a bit honest. Both sides are working the texting pipeline aggressively. In the last days of the campaign, the pinging of phones can be relentless.

    “All day, every day,” Robyn Beyah said of the torrent as she stood in line to get into a Kamala Harris rally outside Atlanta last week. “They have my number. We’re practically besties.”

    Beyah is cool with that. She considers the text bombing “harmless” because it’s for a candidate she believes in. She even invites the Harris campaign to “harass me with text messages.” Not all voters are so charitable.

    “To be honest with you, at this point, I’ve tuned it out of my brain,” said Ebenezer Eyasu of Stone Mountain, Georgia, standing in the same Harris rally line. He said the dozen or so texts he gets each day have become “background noise.”

    Sarah Wiggins, a 26-year-old graphic designer from Kennesaw, Georgia, who supports Harris, prefers face to face persuasion. “I feel like it’s all about people around you,” she said. “Word of mouth is underrated.” As for the texts, “I just delete, to be honest. I don’t want to read it.”

    Many Trump supporters also get pestered. Several at his rally in Tempe, Arizona, last week professed low-grade aggravation about that.

    “They’re more of an annoyance than anything else,” said Morse Lawrence, 57, a physician assistant from Mesa, Arizona. “I get bombarded by text messages outside of political things as well. People wanting to buy my house, people wanting to sell me insurance, it’s all of it.”

    He figures it’s an effective marketing strategy for campaigns even if the great majority of recipients don’t bite. “You go fishing and you catch two fish, you’ve got a meal for the day.”

    Jennifer Warnke, 57, of St. John’s, Arizona, also at the Trump rally, expressed mixed feelings about what’s happening on her phone.

    “They’re at least reaching out, because for years nobody ever called me,” she said. “I’ve been a registered Republican all my life and nobody ever called.”

    She added: “It’s annoying, but it’s almost over.”

    Trump’s campaign, although uniquely fixated on selling hats via text, shares certain traits with the Democrats.

    Both sides traffic in dire warnings should the other side win. Both cook up phony deadlines to get you to hurry up with your money. Both play on the fantasy that luminaries — whether Harris, Trump, George Clooney, Nancy Pelosi or Donald Trump Jr. — are texting you personally, instead of the machinery that really is.

    Texts under the name of Trump Jr. come with a twist, if a transparent one: “Please don’t give $5 to help dad before his critical deadline. I’m serious. Don’t. … Let me explain.”

    The explanation is a link to a page asking for lots more than $5. You can choose $20.24 if you are a basic Trump supporter in 2024 or $47 if you think the 45th president was the greatest ever and want to make him the 47th.

    Trump himself seems to be heavily into merch. “I’m shipping you a Gold MAGA Hat!” say texts in his name. “Should I sign it?”

    Tap through and you see the MAGA hat with gold lettering will cost you $50. But there’s more.

    “Here’s my offer to you,” the digital Trump says. “If you place your order before the midnight deadline, I may add my signature and a quick personal note right on the brim!” May — or may not.

    Thirteen days from Election Day, as she prepared to take the stage for a CNN town hall, Harris took a moment to confide in a Virginian she doesn’t know at all. At least that’s the scene sketched by a text in her name.

    “Hi Chris, it’s Kamala Harris,” says the message. “It would mean the world to me if you added another donation to our campaign before my town hall on CNN tonight. Donald Trump and his allies are currently outspending us across the battleground states.”

    A donation of $40 is suggested. No hat is offered. Despite the message’s angst over cash, Harris’ campaign and affiliated Democratic groups have raised over $1 billion in mere months and kept a large financial advantage over Trump in the campaign’s last leg.

    Ping: “It’s Elizabeth Warren. ”

    Ping: “From Trump: I JUST LEFT MCDONALD’S.”

    Ping: “We’ve asked NINE TIMES if you support Kamala Harris … but you never completed the poll.”

    Ping: “I just got off the debate stage.” — signed by Harris running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

    Ping: “This is a BIG F#@%ING DEAL.” — in the name of Democratic strategist James Carville.

    Ping: “It’s Nancy Pelosi. I need you to see this.”

    Ping: “But you haven’t stepped up to defend our Senate majority!?! Rush $7 now.”

    Ping: “I have a McGift for you! It’s President Trump. Want to take a look?”

    Despite the sucker-born-every-minute undertone of some of the presidential campaign texts, experts say you can be reasonably confident that donations to the official candidate campaigns or the main party organizations will be used for your intended purpose.

    But many more groups are pitching for your election-season cash, not all of them are legit and sorting that out takes work. Some voter-mobilization groups that claim to be funded by the left, for example, may be mischief-makers from the right, or just out to collect personal information on you.

    This month, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin wrote to the U.S. and state attorneys general to report that thousands of fraudulent text messages from an anonymous source were sent to young people threatening $10,000 fines or prison time if they vote in a state where they are not eligible to cast ballots.

    The scam was meant to intimidate students from out of state who are legally entitled to vote in Wisconsin if they are attending college there, or to vote back at home instead, the letter said.

    Last weekend, thousands of Pennsylvania voters received a text message that falsely claimed they had already voted in the election, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Monday. It was from AllVote, which election officials have repeatedly flagged as a scam, the paper said. The group said the false claim was the result of a typo.

    Experts say to read the fine print at the bottom of any fundraising link you open. It must outline the name of the group and where the money will go.

    From there, people can go to sites such as OpenSecrets or the Federal Election Commission to see breakdowns of revenue and spending by groups that are registered political action committees. High overhead and low or no spending on ads or canvassing are red flags.

    For all those traps, Beverly Payne of Cumming, Georgia, who has already voted for Harris and volunteers for her, welcomes the pings.

    “I get texts every 30 minutes and I answer every single one of them,” Payne said. One favorite was about an ice cream flavor rolled out for Harris by Ben & Jerry’s, Kamala’s Coconut Jubilee layered with caramel and topped with red, white and blue star sprinkles. “I had to donate to that,” she said.

    “It’s our culture now, we’re all addicted,” Payne said of texts and Harris’ use of them. “Maybe that’s why she has a billion dollars.”

    ___

    Amy reported from Atlanta, Cooper from Tempe, Arizona. Associated Press writer Brian Slodysko contributed to this report.

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  • AP sources: Chinese hackers targeted phones of Trump, Vance, people associated with Harris campaign

    AP sources: Chinese hackers targeted phones of Trump, Vance, people associated with Harris campaign

    WASHINGTON — Chinese hackers targeted cellphones used by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, his running mate, JD Vance, and people associated with the Democratic campaign of Kamala Harris, people familiar with the matter said Friday.

    It was not immediately clear what data, if any, may have been accessed. U.S. officials are continuing to investigate, according to the people, who were not authorized to publicly discuss the ongoing inquiry and spoke on the condition of anonymity to The Associated Press.

    An FBI statement did not confirm that Trump and Vance were among the potential targets but said it was investigating “unauthorized access to commercial telecommunications infrastructure by actors affiliated with the People’s Republic of China.”

    “Agencies across the U.S. Government are collaborating to aggressively mitigate this threat and are coordinating with our industry partners to strengthen cyber defenses across the commercial communications sector,” the FBI said.

    U.S. officials believe the campaigns were among numerous targets of a larger cyberespionage operation launched by China, the people said. It was not immediately clear what information China may have hoped to glean, though Beijing has for years engaged in vast hacking campaigns aimed at collecting the private data of Americans and government workers, spying on technology and corporate secrets from major American companies and targeting U.S. infrastructure.

    News that high-profile political candidates were targeted comes as U.S. officials remain on high alert for foreign interference in the final stretch of the presidential campaign. Iranian hackers have been blamed for targeting Trump campaign officials and the Justice Department has exposed vast disinformation campaigns orchestrated by Russia, which is said to favor Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris.

    China, by contrast, is believed by U.S. intelligence officials to be taking a neutral stance in the race and is instead focused on down-ballot races, targeted candidates from both parties based on their stance on issues of key importance to Beijing, including support for Taiwan.

    The New York Times first reported that Trump and Vance had been targeted and said the campaign was alerted by U.S. officials this week. Three people confirmed the news to the AP, including one who said that people associated with the Harris campaign were also targeted.

    A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said they were not familiar with the specifics and could not comment, but contended that China is routinely victimized by cyberattacks and opposes the activity.

    “The presidential elections are the United States’ domestic affairs. China has no intention and will not interfere in the U.S. election. We hope that the U.S. side will not make accusations against China in the election,” the statement said.

    Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung did not offer any details about the Chinese operation but issued a statement accusing the Harris campaign of having emboldened foreign adversaries, including China and Iran.

    The FBI has repeatedly warned over the last year about Chinese hacking operations, with Director Chris Wray telling Congress in January that investigators had disrupted a state-sponsored group known as Volt Typhoon. That operation targeted U.S.-based small office and home routers owned by private citizens and companies. Their ultimate targets included water treatment plants, the electrical grid and transportation systems across the U.S.

    Last month, Wray said that the FBI had interrupted a separate Chinese government campaign, called Typhoon Flax, that targeted universities, government agencies and other organizations and that installed malicious software on more than 200,000 consumer devices, including cameras, video recorders and home and office routers.

    The Wall Street Journal reported this month that Chinese hackers had burrowed inside the networks of U.S. broadband providers and had potentially accessed systems that law enforcement officials use for wiretapping requests.

    ____

    Michelle L. Price in New York and Jill Colvin in Austin, Texas contributed to this report.

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  • Harris is turning to video games and sports betting to try and win back some of the ‘bro’ vote from Trump

    Harris is turning to video games and sports betting to try and win back some of the ‘bro’ vote from Trump

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    Kamala Harris is placing ads on video game and sports betting sites in an effort to win back the male vote – often referred to as the “bro” vote – from Donald Trump.

    Harris is placing ads on DraftKings, a sports betting company, and Yahoo Sports, NBC News reports. Her campaign is now the first to advertise on DraftKings, the outlet added. She will also place ads on video game sites IGN and Fandom.

    Some of these ads will be 30-second spots featuring celebrities such as NBA legend Magic Johnson and actor Ben Stiller.

    “Let’s break down Kamala’s economic plan. She has a plan to cut taxes for over 100 million Americans,” Johnson says in one of the ads. “Now let’s look at the other guy. He’s a failed businessman, plain and simple.”

    “You know this election is a lot like dodgeball. Kamala Harris is the average Joe underdog and … Ha No, this isn’t a time for jokes,” Stiller says in another ad. “You know what? It’s way too important. Donald Trump wants to terminate the Constitution. Project 2025 will give him nearly unlimited power. We can’t let him get anywhere near the White House. So, vote for Kamala Harris.”

    Ben Stiller stars in an ad for Harris that will be featured on sites typically popular with men
    Ben Stiller stars in an ad for Harris that will be featured on sites typically popular with men (Kamala Harris for President)

    This push comes as Trump leads Harris in polls among men. The gender divide between Trump and Harris voters is generally significant, according to national polls, with women leaning left and men leaning right.

    In most swing states, there’s a noticeable gender divide, especially in Georgia, where Harris enjoys a 12-point lead among women, while Trump has a 14-point lead among men, according to a previous analysis from The Independent.

    However, in the swing state of Arizona, there is not a significant distinction between how men and women are voting.

    As Harris places these ads, Trump has been targeting 18- to 29-year-old men by dedicating time to YouTubers such as Logan Paul and podcasters like Theo Von, The New York Times reported earlier this year.

    The former president sat down with Paul in June for his Impaulsive podcast, which garnered six million views. During that appearance, Trump gifted Paul with T-shirts featuring his Fulton County, Georgia, mugshot.

    The Trump campaign has also worked with the Nelk Boys, known for their YouTube pranks and the Full Send political podcast, during which they often host Trump-world guests. Trump appeared on the podcast in April, and his running mate JD Vance sat down with them in August.

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  • Harris, Trump could give America’s 250th birthday different vibes

    Harris, Trump could give America’s 250th birthday different vibes

    The next president probably will play a similar high-profile role during equally tumultuous times as America celebrates its 250th birthday on July 4, 2026. On top of that, Kamala Harris or Donald Trump — both big sports fans — will be in office as the United States hosts the 2026 men’s World Cup (along with Canada and Mexico) and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

    The unprecedented trio of major events in one four-year term offers whoever wins the Nov. 5 election the ability to shape the image they project to the country and the world during a time when American history and sports have become cultural flashpoints. And particularly with the so-called semiquincentennial celebration, those images could vary widely depending on whether Harris or Trump is in office.

    “It’s a gigantic difference of how US history will be perceived on the 250th anniversary depending on who’s president,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “Trump has a very Mount Rushmore approach to things, great men chiseled in stone or marble…. Harris will be more multicultural and inclusive.”

    As part of America’s bicentennial celebration, President Gerald Ford delivered a speech marking the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord in Concord, Mass., on April 19, 1975.Charles Dixon/Globe Staff

    Ford used the bicentennial to try to unify the nation after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal that elevated him to the Oval Office after President Richard Nixon was forced to resign, Brinkley said.

    “One hopes that we can pull together as a country and not be divided in a cultural war,” Brinkley said of America’s 250th anniversary.

    The president ostensibly has a limited role in those upcoming major events, as they all are run by organizations outside the direct influence of the White House. One, the nonpartisan US Semiquincentennial Commission created by Congress in 2016, has already started a series of events in conjunction with state and local organizations, including the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party last December.

    This summer, the commission named former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and former first ladies Laura Bush and Michelle Obama as honorary national co-chairpersons.

    “We anticipate that the future president will be very much engaged,” said commission chair Rosie Rios, who served as US treasurer during the Obama administration.

    America’s 250th anniversary is on Trump’s radar.

    In a video last year, he unveiled his own plans for what he called “a most spectacular birthday party,” harkening back to the grandiose July Fourth celebrations when he was in office that included a 2019 speech at the Lincoln Memorial amid tanks and military flyovers.

    If elected, Trump promised to convene a White House task force to coordinate with state and local governments on a year of festivities leading up to July 4, 2026. He also said he wanted to create a “Great American State Fair” in Iowa to “showcase the glory of every state in the union,” host a sporting contest for high school athletes called Patriot Games, and sign an executive order to create a “National Garden of American Heroes,” which he proposed in his first term.

    “As we chart a course toward the next 250 years, let us come together and rededicate ourselves as one nation, under God,” Trump said.

    Trump campaign spokespeople did not respond to email requests for comment.

    Matthew Spalding, who was executive director of “The President’s Advisory 1776 Commission” that Trump created in late 2020 to restore “patriotic education” after the racial justice protests, said Harris and Trump have different perspectives on the nation’s founding that will affect what they emphasize in 2026.

    “If Harris wins the election, her administration will embrace the revolutionary side of the American Revolution in order to replace 1776 with a progressive agenda of identity politics,” Spalding, a constitutional government professor at Hillsdale College, said in a written statement. “If Trump wins, we will see a celebration of the Americanism side of the American Revolution and of a nation that, despite its flaws and imperfections, has done more than any other to advance the principles of 1776.”

    Harris hasn’t spoken publicly about the 250th anniversary and her campaign declined email requests for comment.

    But Libby Schaaf, a former mayor of Oakland, Calif., and a longtime friend, agreed Harris’s approach would be much different than Trump’s.

    “I think President Harris would infuse the celebration with joy and reverence. Trump would infuse it with bombastic superiority,” Schaaf said. “Freedom has been her calling card. It’s been her kind of highest value in this campaign and what better way to put that fully on parade than America’s own birthday party.”

    She predicted that Harris would respect the extensive planning underway. John Garrison Marks, director of research and strategic initiatives at the American Association for State and Local History, agreed.

    “If Harris wins, I think we can probably expect a continuation of the work that the commission is already doing, especially its emphasis on creating the largest and most inclusive commemoration in American history,” Marks said. “Now, if Trump wins, I don’t think he will completely upend all the work that the commission has done to this point, but he may lean more into the celebratory aspect of the commemoration.”

    Marks expects Trump would focus on one big event, like his Independence Day commemorations in Washington in 2019 and at Mount Rushmore in 2020.

    President Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and daughter Chelsea were surrounded by the victorious USA Women’s World Cup soccer team on July 1, 1999, at Jack Kent Stadium in Landover, Md. The US team defeated Germany, 3-2, in their quarterfinal match. AP Photo/Greg Gibson

    The World Cup in 2026, with a match scheduled for July Fourth in Philadelphia, will amplify the attention on the United States during its historic anniversary. And two years later, the next president will have the honor of formally opening the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

    Aside from attending some World Cup matches or Olympic events, as previous presidents have when the events have been held here, there would be no other official role for Harris or Trump.

    But Trump has inserted himself into sports controversies in the past. When he was president, Trump publicly feuded with some high-profile professional athletes when players kneeled during the national anthem to protest America’s racial disparities.

    Just this summer, Trump falsely claimed two female gold medal boxers at the Paris Olympics were men after public scrutiny regarding their gender. And he called the opening ceremony of those games “a disgrace” because of a scene involving drag performers that conservatives claim mocked The Last Supper. The ceremony’s artistic designer said it was an interpretation of a scene involving the Greek god Dionysus.

    “We won’t be having a Last Supper as portrayed the way they portrayed it the other night,” Trump said on Fox News of the LA Olympics opening ceremony.

    President Ronald Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan enjoyed the Opening Ceremonies of the 23rd Olympiad from their press box view in the Los Angeles Coliseum on July 28, 1984. UNCREDITED/Associated Press

    Public criticism like that from Trump is unlikely to affect those major global sporting events, said Dan Lebowitz, executive director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University.

    “I think the world already has an opinion of Trump. They’ve gone through a presidency of his. However he chooses to embrace the Olympics, I don’t think is going to change the messaging of the larger games,” he said. “In my mind, the games are bigger than that. The World Cup is bigger than that.”

    Jim Puzzanghera can be reached at jim.puzzanghera@globe.com. Follow him @JimPuzzanghera.



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  • Musk deletes post about Harris and Biden assassination after widespread criticism

    Musk deletes post about Harris and Biden assassination after widespread criticism

    Elon Musk has deleted a post on his social media platform X in which he said “no one is even trying to assassinate” President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the wake of an apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump while he was playing golf.

    Musk, who has nearly 200 million followers on the social media site he bought for $44 billion in 2022, has increasingly embraced conservative ideologies in recent years and endorsed Trump for president.

    While he has removed posts in the past, Musk has also kept up and even doubled down on other such inflammatory comments. Last week, he made a joke about impregnating Taylor Swift after the singer posted an endorsement for Harris.

    Early Monday, after taking down the post about the apparent Trump assassination, the 53-year-old billionaire wrote on the platform: “Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on X.”

    The original post was in response to DogeDesigner, one of the 700 accounts that Musk follows, who asked: “Why they want to kill Donald Trump?”

    Musk’s reply was quickly condemned by many X users, and “DeportElonMusk” began trending on X on Monday morning.

    “Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about,” said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates in response to Musk’s post. “This rhetoric is irresponsible.”

    The Tesla CEO has previously posted conspiracy theories and feuded with world leaders and politicians. X is currently banned in Brazil amid a dustup between Musk and a Brazilian Supreme Court judge over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation.

    He’s also received criticism in the past for what critics said were posts encouraging violence.

    Last month, for instance, the British government called on Musk to act responsibly after he used X to unleash a barrage of posts that officials said risked inflaming violent unrest gripping the country.

    Musk said when he bought the platform then known as Twitter that protecting free speech — not money — was his motivation because, as he put it, “having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.”

    Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute, noted that Musk has long been trying to “push the boundaries of free speech, in part by engaging in impulsive, unfiltered comments on a range of political topics.”

    ——

    Associated Press Writer Chris Megerian contributed to this story from Washington.

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  • Which candidate is better for tech innovation? Venture capitalists divided on Harris or Trump

    Which candidate is better for tech innovation? Venture capitalists divided on Harris or Trump

    LOS ANGELES — Being a venture capitalist carries a lot of prestige in Silicon Valley. Those who choose which startups to fund see themselves as fostering the next big waves of technology.

    So when some of the industry’s biggest names endorsed former President Donald Trump and the onetime VC he picked for a running mate, JD Vance, people took notice.

    Then hundreds of other VCs — some high profile, others lesser-known — threw their weight behind Vice President Kamala Harris, drawing battle lines over which presidential candidate will be better for tech innovation and the conditions startups need to thrive. For years, many of Silicon Valley’s political discussions took place behind closed doors. Now, those casual debates have gone public — on podcasts, social media and online manifestos.

    Venture capitalist and Harris backer Stephen DeBerry says some of his best friends support Trump. Though centered in a part of Northern California known for liberal politics, the investors who help finance the tech industry have long been a more politically divided bunch.

    “We ski together. Our families are together. We’re super tight,” said DeBerry, who runs the Bronze Venture Fund. “This is not about not being able to talk to each other. I love these guys — they’re almost all guys. They’re dear friends. We just have a difference of perspective on policy issues.”

    It remains to be seen if the more than 700 venture capitalists who’ve voiced support for a movement called “VCs for Kamala” will match the pledges of Trump’s well-heeled supporters such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. But the effort marks “the first time I’ve seen a galvanized group of folks from our industry coming together and coalescing around our shared values,” DeBerry said.

    “There are a lot of practical reasons for VCs to support Trump,” including policies that could drive corporate profits and stock market values and favor wealthy benefactors, said David Cowan, an investor at Bessemer Venture Partners. But Cowan said he is supporting Harris as a VC with a “long-term investment horizon” because a “Trump world reeling from rampant income inequality, raging wars and global warming is not an attractive environment” for funding healthy businesses.

    Several prominent VCs have voiced their support for Trump on Musk’s social platform X. Public records show some of them have donated to a new, pro-Trump super PAC called America PAC, whose donors include powerful tech industry conservatives with ties to SpaceX and Paypal and who run in Musk’s social circle. Also driving support is Trump’s embrace of cryptocurrency and promise to end an enforcement crackdown on the industry.

    Although some Biden policies have alienated parts of the investment sector concerned about tax policy, antitrust scrutiny or overregulation, Harris’ bid for the presidency has reenergized interest from VCs who until recently sat on the sidelines. Some of that excitement is due to existing relationships with Silicon Valley that are borne out of Harris’ career in the San Francisco area and her time as California’s attorney general.

    “We buy risk, right? And we’re trying to buy the right type of risk,” Leslie Feinzaig, founder of “VCs for Kamala” said in an interview. “It’s really hard for these companies that are trying to build products and scale to do so in an unpredictable institutional environment.”

    The schism in tech has left some firms split in their allegiances. Although venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, founders of the firm that is their namesake, endorsed Trump, one of their firm’s general partners, John O’Farrell, pledged his support for Harris. O’Farrell declined further comment.

    Doug Leone, the former managing partner of Sequoia Capital, endorsed Trump in June, expressing concern on X “about the general direction of our country, the state of our broken immigration system, the ballooning deficit, and the foreign policy missteps, among other issues.” But Leone’s longtime business partner at Sequoia, Michael Moritz, wrote in the Financial Times that tech leaders supporting Trump “are making a big mistake.”

    Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia, posted on X that he donated $300,000 to Trump’s campaign after supporting Hilary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Federal Election Commission records show that Maguire donated $500,000 to America PAC in June; Leone donated $1 million.

    “The area where I disagree with Republicans the most is on women’s rights. And I’m sure I’ll disagree with some of Trump’s policies in the future,” Maguire wrote. “But in general I think he was surprisingly prescient.”

    Feinzaig, managing director at venture firm Graham & Walker, said that she launched “VCs for Kamala” because she felt frustrated that “the loudest voices” were starting to “sound like they were speaking for the entire industry.”

    Much of the VC discourse about elections is in response to a July podcast and manifesto in which Andreessen and Horowitz backed Trump and outlined their vision of a “Little Tech Agenda” that they said contrasted with the policies sought by Big Tech.

    They accused the U.S. government of increasing hostility toward startups and the VCs who fund them, citing Biden’s proposed higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations and regulations they said could hobble emerging industries involving blockchain and artificial intelligence.

    Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio who spent time in San Francisco working at Thiel’s investment firm, voiced a similar perspective about “little tech” more than a month before he was chosen as Trump’s running mate.

    “The donors who were really involved in Silicon Valley in a pro-Trump way, they’re not big tech, right? They’re little tech. They’re starting innovative companies. They don’t want the government to destroy their ability to innovate,” Vance said in an interview on Fox News in June.

    Days earlier, Vance had joined Trump at a San Francisco fundraiser at the home of venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks, a longtime conservative. Vance said Trump spoke to about 100 attendees that included “some of the leading innovators in AI.”

    DeBerry said he doesn’t disagree with everything Andreesen Horowitz founders espouse, particularly their wariness about powerful companies controlling the agencies that regulate them. But he objects to their “little tech” framing, especially coming from a multibillion-dollar investment firm that he says is hardly the voice of the little guy. For DeBerry, whose firm focuses on social impact, the choice is not between big and little tech but “chaos and stability,” with Harris representing stability.

    Complicating the allegiances is that a tough approach to breaking up the monopoly power of big corporations no longer falls along partisan lines. Vance has spoken favorably of Lina Khan, who Biden picked to lead the Federal Trade Commission and has taken on several tech giants. Meanwhile, some of the most influential VCs backing Harris — such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; and Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, an early investor in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI — have sharply criticized Khan’s approach.

    U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat whose California district encompasses part of Silicon Valley, said Trump supporters are a vocal minority reflecting a “third or less” of the region’s tech community. But while the White House has appealed to tech entrepreneurs with its investments in clean energy, electric vehicles and semiconductors, Khanna said Democrats must do a better job of showing that they understand the appeal of digital assets.

    “I do think that the perceived lack of embrace of Bitcoin and the blockchain has hurt the Democratic Party among the young generation and among young entrepreneurs,” Khanna said.

    Naseem Sayani, a general partner at Emmeline Ventures, said Andreessen and Horowitz’s support of Trump became a lightning rod for those in tech who do not back the Republican nominee. Sayani signed onto “VCs for Kamala,” she said, because she wanted the types of businesses that she helps fund to know that the investor community is not monolithic.

    “We’re not single-profile founders anymore,” she said. “There’s women, there’s people of color, there’s all the intersections. How can they feel comfortable building businesses when the environment they’re in doesn’t actually support their existence in some ways?”

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  • FACT FOCUS: Posts falsely claim video shows Harris promising to censor X and owner Elon Musk

    FACT FOCUS: Posts falsely claim video shows Harris promising to censor X and owner Elon Musk

    After a nationwide suspension of billionaire Elon Musk’s X platform in Brazil, social media users — including former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are misrepresenting a years-old video of Vice President Kamala Harris to falsely claim that the Democratic presidential nominee has threatened to censor both X and Musk.

    Here’s a closer look at the facts.

    CLAIM: A video clip portrays Harris as saying that she will shut down X if she wins the 2024 presidential election and that Musk has “lost his privileges.”

    THE FACTS: That’s false. Harris was referring to Trump long before Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it as X.

    The clip is from 2019 and shows Harris speaking with CNN host Jake Tapper after a Democratic primary debate, discussing whether then-President Donald Trump’s profile should be removed from the platform, called Twitter at the time, and how there needs to be increased accountability for social media companies.

    Kennedy, who on Aug. 23 suspended his presidential bid and endorsed Trump, used the clip in an X post as alleged proof that Harris was talking about Musk, stating: “Can someone please explain to her that freedom of speech is a RIGHT, not a ‘privilege’?” He also provided his own interpretation of Harris’ comments on social media sites in general as follows: “If they don’t police content to conform to government-approved narratives, they will be shut down.”

    The post had been liked and shared approximately 200,300 times as of Tuesday.

    Another popular X post that shared the video simply reads: “Kamala will shut down X if she wins.” It has been liked and shared approximately 105,000 times. Other social media users claimed that Harris was speaking in support of a Brazilian Supreme Court justice who made the decision last week to block X.

    In extended footage of the interview, part of CNN’s post-debate analysis on Oct. 15, 2019, Tapper asked Harris: “So, one of the topics that you chose to talk a lot about, especially confronting Sen. Warren on, was your push, your call, for Twitter to suspend the account of President Trump. Why was that important?”

    Tapper was referring to the moment in the debate when Harris criticized then-fellow Democratic candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren for not urging such a suspension. Twitter did eventually ban Trump’s account in January 2021, citing “the risk of further incitement of violence” after the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, with multiple other social media platforms kicking him off around the same time. Musk restored Trump’s account in November 2022 after he bought the platform.

    Harris responded during the interview that Trump had “proven himself to be willing to obstruct justice” and that what he says on Twitter “impacts people’s perceptions about what they should and should not do.”

    She continued: “And as far as I’m concerned, and I think most people would say, including members of Congress who he has threatened, that he has lost his privileges and it should be taken down.”

    Harris did not call for the platform as a whole to be shut down. Rather, she advocated for increased accountability.

    “The bottom line is that you can’t say that you have one rule for Facebook and you have a different rule for Twitter,” she stated. “The same rule has to apply, which is that there has to be a responsibility that is placed on these social media sites to understand their power. They are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation, and that has to stop.”

    The exchange is reflected in CNN’s transcript of the coverage.

    The Harris campaign directed an Associated Press inquiry about the false claims to a Democratic National Committee spokesperson, who declined to comment. Representatives for Trump and Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.

    Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered X blocked last Friday for refusing to name a local legal representative, as required by law. His decision was unanimously upheld by a court panel on Monday. X had removed its legal representative from Brazil on the grounds that de Moraes had threatened her with arrest. The platform will stay suspended until it complies with de Moraes’ order and pays outstanding fines.

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    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

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  • Who Is Adam Thielen’s Wife? Meet Caitlin Thielen, Former Soccer Star Who Criticized Kamala Harris’ Running Mate

    Who Is Adam Thielen’s Wife? Meet Caitlin Thielen, Former Soccer Star Who Criticized Kamala Harris’ Running Mate

    Behind every NFL player, there’s a woman ready to push him for the best. And it looks like Adam Thielen’s wife, Caitlin Thielen, is a real mastermind behind his football career. Well, we know much about Thielen, but how much do we know about his lovely wife?

    Caitlin Thielen came to this world on 27th September 1991 in Appleton, Minnesota. While we don’t know much about her parents, it looks like she was a high school student at Woodbury High School. She completed her school education and ended her educational career at Minnesota State University. Besides being focused on her well-known blog “Life with Mrs. T,” where she writes on health, fashion, and fitness, Caitlin was also a soccer player during her school days. And that’s not the only connection the blogger has with her school. She met the love of her life at Woodbury High School. And how so?

    Well, Adam Thielen was also one of the best footballers in that school. While both were elite athletes in their school, it was rare to see them enjoying time together The lovebirds carried on with their relationship during university, before Adam Thielen decided to progress with the NFL. And soon the blissful year (2015) came, as they brought a much-awaited conclusion to their dating years with marriage. The couple was blessed with three adorable children between 2016 and 2021. First, their son Asher, followed by their second son Hudson, and finally, a sweet girl named Cora Jean Thielen in 2021.

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    Well, Caitlin never fails to share the sweet photos of her young ones on IG. And that’s evident from her post from July, where she can be seen enjoying time with her kids, “Hard to beat a MN summer.. especially with great friends!” Apart from her being a caring mother, it looks like she also takes a deep interest in politics. Adam’s wife has recently shown her disapproval towards Kamala Harris, who picked Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, as her vice presidential running mate for the upcoming elections. She further expressed her take by tweeting, “Oh man.. bad bad news. He has run Minneapolis into the ground.”

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    While she is open about her support in political matters, Caitlin Thielen is also a strong supporter of her husband.

    Caitlin Thielen never fails to support Adam Thielen

    In 2023, the ex-Vikings star was released after he completed 9 seasons with his team. In addition, the Vikings saw his inclusion in two second-team All-Pro nods and 1 Pro Bowl appearance while he played with them. Even though Thielen didn’t express his feelings much on social media, it was Caitlin Thelen who decided to express her dissatisfaction with the Vikings’ decision.

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    “If you don’t give someone a chance and opportunities, how do you prove your worth!” is what Adam’s love wrote on her IG. She further tried her best to motivate her husband to move on for the future, “Onto better things! All love,” wrote Caitlin. Furthermore, she was also seen clapping for her husband when the Minnesota Vikings made a monstrous comeback against the Colts in 2022. Her emotions were visible to all as she had tears in her eyes while she captured the WR in her camera.

    Now Adam has joined the Carolina Panthers to begin his new journey as a footballer. With all the support from his wife, will he be able to give his best in the upcoming season?

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