ByteDance, the company behind the massively popular TikTok app, is currently planning to launch a music streaming subscription service in emerging markets.
ByteDance, the company behind the hugely popular TikTok app, is reportedly preparing to launch a streaming music service.
According to anonymous sources who talked to Bloomberg, ByteDance’s music streaming app would be a paid subscription service akin to Spotify and Apple Music. However, instead of a wide rollout, the China-based tech company would focus on launching in “emerging markets” in the fall.
With about 217 million monthly worldwide and 100 million paid subscribers, Spotify is the clear leader when it comes to music streaming. However, as the report points out, emerging markets in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East only make up around 10 percent of Spotify’s customer base.
ByteDance has already struck deals for music rights from two of India’s largest labels, T-Series and Times Music, according to the report. If T-Series sounds familiar, that’s because the label’s YouTube channel has been embroiled in a back-and-forth race with internet personality PewDiePie to become the platform’s most subscribed channel for nearly a year now.
TikTok, as well as Douyin, the Chinese version of the app, are already the most popular applications in the App Store with more than 500 million downloads. ByteDance is clearly looking to branch out into other tech niches and take advantage of the cross-marketing potential. Just earlier this week, ByteDance launched a new messaging app called Flipchat.
Thanks to TikTok, ByteDance already has a foot in the door when it comes to the music industry. Lip sync videos and short clips featuring the latest hits have made the app extremely successful. The current top charting song worldwide, “Old Town Road,” first gained popularity on the app.
While ByteDance hasn’t yet negotiated music rights deals with the industry’s top labels, a new streaming service will likely be welcomed with open arms — provided the terms are right. A report earlier this year found that Universal, Sony, and Warner make an estimated $19 million per day from music streaming.
Some of the people who were once Facebook’s most powerful executives and allies are publicly breaking up with the social network.
When Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes dropped a New York Times op-ed calling for the breakup of Facebook, it prompted a terse response from the company. But though Hughes might be the most prominent Facebook alum to criticize the company, he is far from alone.
Over the last couple years, numerous former Facebook execs and other insiders have publicly criticized the social network and its leadership. And while that criticism may be hard for the company to swallow — Facebook would likely point out that these men have all become very, very wealthy thanks to their roles at the company — it’s worth considering how unusual it is to air this kind of criticism publicly.
Here’s a look some of the most prominent Facebook insiders who have changed their minds about the company.
Chris Hughes
Chris Hughes (right) was with Mark Zuckerberg during Facebook’s dorm-room beginnings.
Image: Rick Friedman / Corbis via Getty Images
Who he is: Hughes helped found Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg while the two were students at Harvard. He was the company’s firs spokesperson, and later worked on the product team. He left the company in 2007.
What he’s said: In a searing op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” Hughes argued that the social network has gotten too big and powerful for its founder to control. “Mark Zuckerberg cannot fix Facebook, but our government can,” he wrote. He urged the FTC to intervene and separate Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram into separate entities to encourage more competition, and to “create guidelines for acceptable speech on social media.”
Zuckerberg’s one-time classmate had some particularly harsh criticism for the CEO. “Mark is a good, kind person,” he wrote. “But I’m angry that his focus on growth led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks. I’m disappointed in myself and the early Facebook team for not thinking more about how the News Feed algorithm could change our culture, influence elections and empower nationalist leaders. And I’m worried that Mark has surrounded himself with a team that reinforces his beliefs instead of challenging them. Mark’s power is unprecedented and un-American.”
Brian Acton
Who he is: The cofounder of WhatsApp, known as a staunch privacy advocate. He left Facebook in 2017.
What he’s said: Six months after leaving Facebook (and walking away from nearly a billion of dollars of unvested Facebook stock), Acton infamously tweeted #deletefacebook. Later, in a stunning interview with Forbes, the WhatsApp founder took things even farther, calling himself a “sellout.” “I sold my users’ privacy to a larger benefit. I made a choice and a compromise. And I live with that every day,” he said.
Since leaving Facebook, Acton has given $50 million of his personal fortune to the Signal Foundation, the organization responsible for the private messaging app Signal.
Sean Parker
Alas, no word on what Snoop thinks of #deleteFacebook.
Image: Kevin Mazur / WireImage
Who he is: Parker was Facebook’s founding president, famously portrayed by Justin Timberlake in The Social Network.
What he’s said: Parker told Axios he considers himself “something of a conscientious objector” to the social network. And the billionaire former Facebook executive candidly described how Facebook was designed to be addictive from the very beginning.
“The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’ … God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.”
Roger McNamee
Who he is: An early investor in Facebook, McNamee famously advised Zuckerberg against taking Yahoo’s $1 billion acquisition offer. The advice helped earn McNamee a reputation as Zuckerberg’s “mentor.”
What he’s said: McNamee became a vocal critic of Facebook following the 2016 election. He claims he was one of the first to raise the alarm about potential election interference to Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, but that his concerns were ignored. He’s said that Zuckerberg’s vision of a “privacy-focused” Facebook is little more than a PR stunt and that the company’s leadership is not able to address criticism.
“The people at Facebook live in their own bubble,” he wrote in a piece in Time earlier this year. “Zuck has always believed that connecting everyone on earth was a mission so important that it justified any action necessary to accomplish it. Convinced of the nobility of their mission, Zuck and his employees seem to listen to criticism without changing their behavior. They respond to nearly every problem with the same approach that created the problem in the first place: more AI, more code, more short-term fixes.”
Chamath Palihapitiya
Palihapitiya says he has mostly quit using Facebook years after running the company’s first growth team.
Image: Mike Windle / Getty Images for Vanity Fair
Who he is: Palihapitiya joined Facebook in 2007 and oversaw the company first growth team. He left in 2011 and founded a venture capital firm.
What he’s said: In a sobering talk at Stanford’s business school, Palihapitiya said he feels “tremendous guilt” over his involvement with Facebook. “We have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we have created are destroying how society works.”
Justin Rosenstein
The inventor of the like button now worries about social media addiction.
Image: asana
Who he is: One of Facebook’s earliest engineers, Rosenstein is known as one of the creators of Facebook’s iconic “like” button. He later cofounded Asana with Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz.
What he’s said: Rosenstein said he’s concerned about the addictive, time-sucking nature of social media. So much so that he told The Guardian in 2017 that he had his assistant block social media apps from his phone. “It is very common for humans to develop things with the best of intentions and for them to have unintended, negative consequences,” he said.
The first official trailer for the Downton Abbey movie contains almost nothing in the way of story (a royal luncheon!) but that’s not what we’re going back for, is it? All we care about is seeing the upstairs and downstairs of Downton – the wealthy Grantham family and their loyal help – go about their lives as “modern folk” in 1927.
The King and Queen are apparently visiting Downton Abbey, a momentous occasion for its residents and the kind of high stakes status quo drama they live for. Beyond that, the trailer is just essential footage of characters everyone came to love; from Mary, (with a new haircut – what will Edith say!), to Mr. Carson making a triumphant return to his old place of employ.
There’s talk of leaving the grand old house (isn’t there always?), but the film may finally nudge our modern folk to let go of their estate and into the modern era. In the meantime, we’ve got enough Downton clichés to get us through the summer.
In case you haven’t heard, a bunch of people are running for president.
There are already more than 20 candidates campaigning for the 2020 election, which means the American people have a lot of policy positions to research, a lot of campaigns to follow, and of course, a lot of merch to consider purchasing.
In hopes that everyone is far too busy reading up on the candidates and the issues they stand for to check out each online merch store, I’ve taken the liberty of doing it for you.
Though there’s certainly more to an election than merch, a candidate’s online shop can be very telling. Some candidates offer merch for babies and pets, despite them being unable to vote, which is kind. Others feature hideous color schemes and ridiculous puns on their sites.
From mortifying accessories to shirts so good you’ll want to order them in bulk, here’s a look at all the merch on the 2020 campaign trail so far.
The most embarrassing merch
To kick things off let’s get the most mortifying merch out of the way. Candidates, if you’re reading this list I’m not saying all of your merch is bad, but I will admit certain items had me shaking my head at my screen wondering if you even really WANT to be president.
John Delaney
First up? John Delaney, who perhaps has the most absurd merch in this race aside from Donald Trump. Behind the buff exterior of this dude running for president lies a man shamelessly obsessed with puns. Did you see it coming? I sure didn’t. Delaney’s entire store is full of forcibly cheesy merch descriptions and unique Delaney “accessories,” like stress grips, playing cards, and an ERASER. Ugh.
Listen, the former VP’s logo is not great. We all know it. But I vowed to remain unbiased and wasn’t about to let my annoyance with the incomplete “E” in JOE impact my merch judging. I found Biden’s shop to be almost completely tolerable. However, the corny “Cup O’ Joe” mug and the “Totes for Joe” tote bag are impossible to ignore. Joe? More like no.
Like Biden, Swalwell — who occasionally looks like Dennis Quaid in some of the videos on his website — almost escaped the bad merch list. But the man simply had to offer campaign-themed shoelaces featuring the hashtag #SWALWELLING, though, and for that I must call him out.
I mean, the current president has 14 freaking pages of merch, ranging from apparel and hats, to signs and gifts.Some items — such as mugs, stickers, and shirts adorned with his own tweets, and several pieces of “No Collusion” and “Witch Hunt” merch — are especially unhinged, even for Trump. Here’s a peek at the embarrassing shop.
Williamson went for an unconventional pink, purple, white, and blue color scheme in her merch, which I will admit was refreshing. Her font choice and the decision to print her name on a single mug seven times in a row, on the other hand, are ridiculously overwhelming. My eyes!
Apologies to the “Yang Gang” but as an English major I simply am not here to rep MATH. Yang’s merch also kind of gives the impression he loves math more than America, so it’s a pass for me.
This section is reserved for those candidates with fairly conventional merch. Some of the stuff is absolutely fine. There’s apparel you could stand to be seen in, and decals you genuinely wouldn’t mind putting on your car. The merch is simply nothing to get abnormally excited over.
Cory Booker
Booker isn’t currently selling anything embarrassing, and his blue, red, white, and black theme is a nice change of pace from traditional patriotic colors. But I will say there are not many options in his shop, which makes things kind of dull.
Gillibrand has a similar color scheme of pink, black, blue, and white going on in her store, and while she does have some basic “Gillibrand 2020” options, she switches things up a little with some funkier shirt designs. Overall, OK.
Bennet’s keeping things safe with some of the blandest, most boring merch around. He might not be drawing any gazes, but he’s also not annoying anyone with his basic shirts and totes, which I guess is one approach.
Honestly? Castro has some pretty fun stuff in his online store. Nothing’s too out of the ordinary, though, so I’m putting him here. No offense, the 2020 merch bar is simply set very high.
I won’t lie, Kamala has some nice merch. Good color scheme, good button design, and an entire Pride line, too! No complaints here, some merch is just better.
I’m honestly a little surprised Bernie didn’t take bigger risks with his merch. A few odes to college and medicare for all, but only two “Feel the Bern” options? Playin’ it safe, dude.
Moulton appears to be another basic boy. Nothing wrong with that, but nothing exceptionally right with it either. This is the presidency we’re talking about! You don’t have to make shoelaces or anything, but try to distinguish yourself a little bit, eh?
Ryan’s merch? Also fine, but definitely lacks originality and screams, “I am an American man running for President of America and here is some red, white, and blue to prove it.”
Purple mountains majesty combined with white and blue make for lovely logos. Hickenlooper’s merch is pleasing to the eye, and almost makes up for his long last name! He also offers a beanie, which is good.
More than 20 people are currently running for president, but according to my calculations, only three have gone above and beyond the call of merch duty. Here is the holy merch trinity of 2020 — “The Big Three” as This Is Us would call them.
Beto O’Rourke
The second you open Beto O’Rourke’s all-black online store, you can’t help but feel a cool vibe. O’Rourke took a risk when he chose not to include any nod to traditional patriotic reds or blues in his campaign theme, but he somehow made a line of badass merch from his Whataburger-inspired logo. Plus, Beyoncé would not have been caught dead in his merch if it wasn’t good.
I’m fairly certain Buttigieg has given more thought to his marketing (and South Bend-inspired color scheme) than anyone else in the race.Hisstore is full of modern styles and fonts, he just released a glorious line of Pride gear, and he lets everyone know once and for all how to pronounce his name with bold “BOOT EDGE EDGE” apparel. You can’t even get mad at the slightly corny shirt that includes Buttigieg’s dogs, Buddy and Truman, or the “Chasten for First Gentleman” shirt, because they’re both genuinely funny and the dogs and Chasten are all extremely lovable.
Warren varies her slogans and color schemes, and even has some fun items like a bandanna for those who want to show her dog some support, a beer glass that encourages responsible drinking, and an iconic apron. Step up, everyone else.
Sadly, Steve Bullock, Wayne Messam, Bill Weld, Mike Gravel, and the recently announcedBill de Blasio are currently lacking in the merch department. Gravel appears to be selling his book on his website, but his lack of merch is understandable since it’s noted he’s running as a way to get in on the debate rather than to win. As for the others listed above, their online stores are either non-existent or very, very inaccessible.
Merch is not everything, and should never out-weigh a person’s policies when deciding which candidate to vote for. But it’s also is a great opportunity for candidates to showcase their tastes and a more personal side of themselves, so it’s nice to see those who put in some extra effort.
One of the biggest twists of Season 8 is that one of the most oft-debated prophecies, Azor Ahai, a.k.a. the Prince Who Was Promised, seemingly turned out to be irrelevant. But after the finale, fans aren’t so sure anymore.
Sure, the prophecy didn’t exactly play out like we or the characters on the show might’ve expected. But as we mentioned last week before episode 6 aired, there was already talk among theorizers about how Jon could still be the Prince Who Was Promised through a reinterpretation of the prophecy.
One redditor made the very well-thought out argument for how practically every aspect of the Azor Ahai prophecy played out in the finale. All we have to do is recontextualize it around the idea that the “darkness” Azor Ahai saves the world from isn’t the White Walkers, but rather the potential reign of terror from Mad Queen Daenerys going on to conquer the entire world.
The TL; DR basically comes down to: Jon tried three times to make a “sword” (or, in other words, to bring about a victory) to end the darkness. First it was the White Walkers, but still another threat persisted. So then he moved onto Cersei, and still another threat persisted.
We all kind of expected this moment, but never like this.
Image: hbo
Finally, like Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa, Jon realized that in order to truly beat back the darkness, he’d need to kill the woman he loved — Daenerys. After plunging his sword into her heart, he at last defeated the “monster” of the Iron Throne, bringing forth an era of peace and ending the years of war and darkness we watched take place on the show.
Still others see Drogon as “Lightbringer,” the legendary fiery sword that Azor Ahai was supposed to forge. Certainly, Drogon is a fiery weapon that ultimately melted the Iron Throne, making the “darkness” (represented through Daenerys) of corrupt power flee before him.
What’s so great about George R. R. Martin’s prophecies is that there are endless ways to interpret them. That makes it so they simultaneously never come true or arguably always come true.
For the next two weeks, package deliveries in the Southwest could get to your doorstep by way of robo-truck.
Starting Tuesday, self-driving truck company TuSimple is taking on a U.S. Postal Service (USPS) route between the national postal service’s Phoenix and Dallas distribution centers – that’s more than 1,000 miles the mail trailers cover throughout Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
Several autonomous trucks will run for 22 hours, including night driving, with a safety engineer and driver on board for five round-trip delivery hauls. These types of routes (long-haul with quick turnaround) usually require a two-member driving team since it goes overnight.
TuSimple is a Chinese startup that started testing in Arizona a few years ago and is slated to have 50 autonomous trucks in its fleet by next month. Now it hopes to show with the USPS pilot that its robo-trucks can handle these labor-intensive routes. Then USPS (or other trucking partners) can keep shorter, closer-to-home routes for human drivers. Those routes tend to be more complicated and require more nuance.
U.S. Postal Service truck routes will be taken over by self-driving trucks in a two-week pilot.
Image: Dünzl/ullstein bild via Getty Images
USPS could cut down costs if it can deploy trucks for longer hours, especially on routes that are normally human intensive. Studies point to a possible truck driver shortage in coming years with an aging workforce, especially for long-haul trips.
Last week, TuSimple swatted away rumors that e-commerce giant Amazon was looking to acquire the self-driving delivery company. Chinese media had reported possible negotiations. An Amazon spokesperson emailed Mashable that the company doesn’t comment on rumors or speculation.
Meanwhile in Sweden, driverless truck deliveries from Einride started last week on public roads there — with a very futuristic look.
That’s not just a suggestion when it comes to new Chevy Traverse, Malibu, and Colorado models arriving this summer.
For teenage drivers, the car won’t shift out of park for 20 seconds if the ignition is on and the driver doesn’t have their seat belt buckled.
For the belt-less driver attempting to drive off, an alert comes on with a message that says “Buckle seat belt to shift.” The radio volume is also lowered until the driver is buckled up. The feature, called “Buckle to Drive,” is enabled when the car’s in “Teen Driver” mode. This new mode modifies other driver settings, like limiting the maximum speed to 85 mph and popping up a speed warning if the young driver goes faster than 40 to 75 mph.
Parents can program the teen’s key fob to enable the modified driver settings, so it’ll automatically turn on once the teen gets behind the wheel.
You can’t drive without your seat belt.
Image: John F. Martin for Chevrolet
Chevrolet safety engineer Tricia Morrow said the feature “gives peace of mind” when you’re not in the car with a new driver. She would know, given that she has a 15-year-old with a learner’s permit. Also, statistically teens are less likely to use a seat belt. Only 59 percent of teens in the U.S. self-report wearing a seat belt while driving – that’s low. Eventually, Chevy could expand the feature to other drivers, but this seemed like the most effective place to start, Morrow said.
During testing of the latest feature, the 20-second hold and warnings increased seat belt use by 16 percent, Morrow said. And it’s not just the drivers, “when the driver is in control and puts their seat belt on, it influences everyone else in the vehicle,” she said.
Based on Chevy research, more than 70 percent of drivers try to shift the car to drive within 20 seconds of getting in to the car, so the safety team wanted seat belts on within that initial time period.
Volvo, the Chinese-owned Swedish car company, announced similar safety features in its upcoming cars for all drivers – some of which seem even more extreme than keeping a teen from driving without a seat belt. Take capping the top speed to 112 mph or the car pulling itself over if it detects a distracted driver. But it’s all in the name of safety.
The first thing you notice during a marathon spree of watching Robert Mueller testify before Congress is his voice. This is not because his voice is striking—although it is, in a way, a crisp and direct tenor—but because you’re hearing it at all.
For two years, the special counsel running the Russia probe, the man at the center of the most talked-about and speculated-upon American investigation in decades, has said not a word in a public forum. His team’s official pronouncements came via indictments and courtroomarguments, as well as a couple of on-the-record statements pushing back against media reports or other critics. Neither Mueller nor any of his prosecutors gave an interview, and Mueller himself was spied only occasionally, at the airport or walking down a Washington, D.C. street, or dining with his wife at his go-to casual restaurant, never speaking to the public.
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That’s likely going to change soon: Mueller has been called before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, who want to grill him on the findings from his lengthy investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and potential obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump. Democrats and the special counsel’s representatives have been haggling for weeks to set a date to commence the blockbuster hearings, and the expectation is that he will appear by next month.
So what can we expect? It’s impossible to know how Mueller will respond to questions Democratic and GOP lawmakers are teeing up for him. But when it comes to the character at the center of the drama, there’s actually some evidence for how it’s going to go. Over his most recent 12 years in public life, as the FBI director under two presidential administrations, Mueller testified more than 50 times before Congress. He was hauled before a joint House-Senate panel to talk about intelligence gathering and counterterrorism surrounding the events of Sept. 11, 2001; he presented plans after the terrorist attacks for a sweeping FBI reorganization; and a dozen years later, during his 2013 retirement hearings, discussed everything from the Boston Marathon bombings to a suite of controversial government surveillance programs. They’re all archived on C-SPAN—more than 140 hours of video footage starring the man Americans have been waiting to hear from.
I watched more than 20 hours of that footage, a representative sample of big and small hearings on a range of issues spanning the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, before both friendly and hostile lawmakers.
When you watch the clips, the images feel immediately familiar: Cable news has been showing the same Mueller footage on a loop since his appointment in May 2017. But it’s always with the sound turned off. That’s a mistake. Listening to Mueller speak helps pierce some of the mythology that’s seemed to only grow in the absence of any news conferences or public speaking appearances while he’s been the special counsel. What do they show us? And what does Congress need to know as it goes toe-to-toe with one of the most respected, bulldog law-enforcement officials in the nation?
Mueller has worked complex issues before. A lot.
The Russia investigation feels totally unique, and in some ways it is. But there’s a reason then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein picked Mueller for the job in the first place: He’s a specialist in high-level, complex investigations.
Mueller took over as FBI director one week before 9/11, and his first months on the job were dominated by an examination of the missed warning signs that led to the terrorist attacks. He spearheaded the bureau’s reorganization from a straight-up law enforcement agency to a national security organization. And he implemented controversial intelligence-gathering and surveillance policies in the face of serious civil liberties concerns.
He’s also dealt with complicated matters involving Russia. Mueller spoke during his Senate confirmation hearing in 2001 about helping the FBI redeem its reputation after several “serious and highly publicized problems” that included agent Robert Hanssen being outed as a Soviet and Russian mole. A decade later in June 2011, Mueller testified about the persistent threat of Russian espionage, noting the arrest the previous summer of 10 Russian spies who’d been living for years as sleeper agents in the U.S.
That fall, when asked which nation states are the “biggest actors” in espionage against the U.S, Mueller replied, “It’d be hard to pick out some. I think it’s been raised in other hearings, but you have countries such as Russia and China, others, Iran perhaps.”
He’s also cautious when it comes to investigations, relying on his past experience as a federal prosecutor in Boston, Washington and San Francisco and leading the Justice Department’s criminal division. Answering a question in 2001 from then-Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) about how he goes about not infringing on anyone’s First Amendment rights when conducting politically sensitive probes, Mueller said he thinks of investigations very conservatively—not as gotcha campaigns, but as “a series of steps” to determine “whether or not you’ve got sufficient reason to go forward to the next step.”
Mueller has thought about targeting presidents before.
With the Bill Clinton impeachment saga not very far back in the rearview mirror, senators in 2001 pressed Mueller in his nomination hearing to talk about how he’d handle a high-level criminal probe in which the chief executive himself was the target. “Would you, as FBI director, exercise the authority to withhold information from the president on national security matters, because the president was the subject of a criminal investigation?” asked then-Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican at the time.
“There may be an occasion where it’s possible, yes,” Mueller replied.
And then there’s this remarkable exchange from the same hearing with then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who asked Mueller whether he’d be willing to use the independence that comes with a 10-year term leading the FBI to go around the Justice Department brass “if something serious occurs and there has been a threat to the orderly operation of justice.”
“I do not exclude the possibility that the circumstances would be such that I would feel it necessary to circumvent the ordinary course of proceedings by, which would be to go to the attorney general first before I made perhaps a disclosure to Congress,” Mueller answered. “But I am not precluding the possibility that given the necessary independence of the bureau in investigation, that there might not come a time where one seeks an alternative where one believes that political pressure is being brought to bear on the investigative process.
“That may be somewhere else in the executive, beyond the attorney general,” Mueller added. “It may be Congress, but I would look and explore every option if I believed that the FBI was being pressured for political reasons. And if that were the situation as described here, I would explore other alternatives or a variety of alternatives in order to make certain that justice was done.”
Watching that response—cautiously worded as it is—is striking in light of more recent events: Mueller’s appointment happened only after Sessions himself, as Trump’s attorney general, had to recuse himself from Russia-related matters because of political conflicts.
He’s well-mannered and disciplined, but can’t quite fix his tie.
Mueller attended boarding school with John Kerry, and later served four years in Vietnam with the Marine Corps, and both kinds of training come across in his physical presence. He’s quite polite, and typically makes direct eye contact with his questioners. He thanks staffers who bring him a glass of water.
He can also be funny and, despite the seriousness of a job that required chasing down terrorists and all manner of bad guys, Mueller does crack a smile. “I’m sitting here, that’s all I can say,” Mueller said to laughter during his late July 2001 Senate confirmation hearing when asked how he did after taking a polygraph required for FBI managers.
Mueller’s preferred wardrobe—dark suit, red or blue tie and always a white shirt—has been closely scrutinized, even admired in the two years since he took the special counsel job. He frequently wears his watch like a military man, with the face on the inside of his wrist. He rarely diverges from that signature put-together look, but in almost every appearance I watched, his tie is slightly askew, with a noticeable cockeyed tilt to the left.
Mueller does not suffer fools gladly.
Mueller can also get testy, and clearly doesn’t like to be interrupted when he’s answering a question. And he won’t hesitate to correct members of Congress, as evidenced by a heated exchange in 2013 with Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), who pressed repeatedly why the FBI had not checked out a tip that the brothers responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing frequented a local mosque. “Your facts are not altogether … ” Mueller said as the two men talked over each other, before the FBI director added a moment later that his agents had been there and spoken to “imams several months beforehand.”
As Gohmert pressed on, Mueller drew a line. “I’ve answered the question, sir,” he said.
Mueller can also be frank. He’ll admit it when he doesn’t know an answer. And he’ll be brutally honest too, even when the response he’s giving doesn’t sound very politically appealing.
“Well, it depends on your definition of accountable, but I would say, I would say that I have not held somebody accountable in the sense of either disciplining or firing somebody,” Mueller told then-Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) during a marathon joint bicameral hearing in 2002 over five hours long examining the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
None of that may prepare us for this week’s hearings.
Mueller is a famously by-the-book operator, and many congressional insiders expect him to stick to the script from his investigation and not elaborate much beyond the 400-plus pages in his report.
But Mueller also has access to information that even Congress hasn’t seen, and that means he could really make news at any moment. So his upcoming hearings likely won’t follow the usual playbook.
“This will be a very different hearing from how Congress typically works,” said Ted Kalo, the former Democratic general counsel to the House Judiciary Committee. While members generally have a good idea what a witness’ answers will be to their questions, all bets are off for the special counsel. “Here, no one knows what will happen from minute to minute in terms of Mueller’s answers,” Kalo said.
“He’s going to bring the report to life,” added Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, when I asked what he was expecting from a Mueller hearing.
Some even say Mueller’s appearances, carried wall-to-wall live on the television networks, have the potential to open up new lines of inquiry, and perhaps even pave the way for impeachment.
“Oftentimes, public hearings can change minds,” said Greg Brower, former head of the FBI congressional affairs office. “I know this is a long shot given the current reality, but there’s even some Republicans on the Hill, if they heard Bob Mueller testify and explain the details, they too might decide that impeachment is in order.”
He knows a lot of the players already.
There’s a lot of churn on Capitol Hill, but 14 of the members who questioned Mueller on the House Judiciary Committee during his visit in June 2013 are still around. There, he faced Rep. Jerry Nadler, now the chairman, who wondered aloud whether he was getting bad information from Mueller about a post-9/11 surveillance program that Edward Snowden had just revealed details about a week earlier in a leak to The Guardian.
Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), then a freshman, is now the Judiciary panel’s ranking member. (Back on that occasion, the two men ended up in agreement on the need to update federal surveillance laws.)
Another senior Democrat on the panel, California Rep. Zoe Lofgren, pressed for details during that 2013 hearing about how the FBI in its pursuit of classified information leakers differentiates between journalists who publish sensitive material and their sources.
“We quite obviously don’t consider that category that you listed as criminals in any way, shape or form,” Mueller replied in reference to reporters and editors, adding: “If you go to court on this, you have to show that this particular set of materials that were leaked went to a particular person for publication, but the focus is on the person who is doing the leaking.”
Rep. Jim Jordan, now a senior GOP Judiciary member, faced off against Mueller in 2013, grilling the departing director for not knowing who at the FBI was leading an investigation into the IRS singling out conservative Tea Party groups for additional scrutiny. “This is the most important issue in front of the country the last six weeks, you don’t know who’s heading up the case? Who the lead investigator is?” Jordan complained.
“At this junction, no, I do not know who the … ” Mueller replied, before Jordan cut him off.
When I caught up with Jordan recently to ask about Mueller’s upcoming return to Congress, the Ohio Republican said his memory remained fresh of that six-year-old exchange.
“It wasn’t an impressive performance by Mr. Mueller,” he said. “I do remember that.”
This post contains spoilers, spoilers, and more spoilers. Get away!
Brienne of Tarth put pen to paper in the final ever episode of Game of Thrones to make sure history would remember Jaime Lannister’s legacy.
It was, I’m sure, intended to be a rather touching moment. But the internet, as usual, had other ideas.
Stephen Colbert, meanwhile, decided to have a go at guessing what Brienne might have written about Jaime: “In addition, I was aware that when we had our little tryst, Jaime had also slept with his sister and, yes, incest is a red flag, but what can I say?”
I’m guessing Brienne didn’t mention the incest thing.
Daily Trends Hunter 
