Axios AM

June 10, 2024
Hello, Monday! Smart Brevity™ count: 1,383 words ... 5 mins. Thanks to Noah Bressner for orchestrating. Copy edited by Bryan McBournie.
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🤯 1 big thing: The summer of never-before
Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios
Never before has a former president been sentenced for a crime.
- Never before has a felon accepted the nomination of a major party.
Never before has a man as old as former President Trump, who turns 78 on Friday, accepted the nomination of a major party. (President Biden was 77 in 2020.)
- Trump will set that record at the Republican convention in July — then be beaten five weeks later by President Biden, 81, at the Democratic convention.
Never before has a general-election presidential debate been held before fall.
- Never before has a wartime Israeli leader addressed Congress.
Why it matters: All that — and so much more — will happen during this summer of never-before.
Check out the crazy 30-day stretch of news in this historic, hysteric summer:
- 📺 June 27: Biden-Trump debate on CNN.
- 🇫🇷 June 30: French snap elections, which could shift the government to the right. Second and final round: July 7.
- 🇬🇧 July 4: Britain holds elections that will shift power to the left, while the U.S. celebrates independence from Britain.
- ⚖️ July 11: Trump is sentenced.
- 🧀 July 15: Republican National Convention opens in Milwaukee.
- 🇮🇱 July 24: Netanyahu addresses joint session of Congress.
- 🥇 July 26: Olympics open in Paris.
The Democratic convention begins in Chicago on Aug. 19 — 70 days from today.
2. 🗳️ Europe swings right
Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
BERLIN — Europe's far right gained historic ground in continent-wide elections yesterday, with devastating losses forcing French President Emmanuel Macron to concede that the threat from nationalists can no longer be ignored, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.
- The center held in some countries. But a surge by the extremist right has pro-democracy parties on notice.
Why it matters: As in the U.S., immigration, inflation and threats to democracy dominated the campaign, which was plagued by spurts of political violence in the final weeks before the election.
🖼️ The big picture: This year's European Parliament elections — in which 370 million people were eligible to vote across 27 countries — were ground zero for the wave of anti-incumbent fervor sweeping the globe.
- Conservative and hard-right parties gained ground at the expense of Macron-aligned liberal and Green parties — with the latter suffering from backlash to the EU's aggressive climate transition plans.
- Extremist-right parties such as Germany's AfD continue to make significant inroads with young voters, according to exit polls, a trend that has alarmed pro-democracy activists.

🇫🇷 In France, Macron stunned Europe last night by announcing he would hold new legislative elections later this month — three years early, and in the middle of preparations for the Paris Olympics.
- "The rise of nationalists and demagogues is a danger for our nation and for Europe," Macron said. "After this day, I cannot go on as though nothing has happened."
🇩🇪 In Germany, the EU's biggest and most important country, the far-right AfD party finished second to the conservatives — but ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats.
🇮🇹 In Italy, right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni solidified her cult of personality with a comfortable victory that will make her one of the EU's most powerful leaders — and a potential conservative king-maker.
🇳🇱 In the Netherlands, anti-Islam campaigner Geert Wilders came in close second to a progressive coalition after pulling off a shock victory in November's national elections.
3. 💵 Poll: Economy trumps conviction

Just 28% of likely voters say former President Trump's conviction will be a major factor in their vote, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll out yesterday.
- The biggest factors are the economy and inflation.
Why it matters: It's the latest sign that Trump's historic conviction earlier this month might not profoundly change the presidential election, Axios' Erin Doherty writes.
- Some polls have shown a slight move in former President Biden's direction.
🔎 Between the lines: Biden has struggled to turn positive economic metrics into political wins, and many voters say they trust Trump more to handle the economy.
- The CBS/YouGov poll found that more voters think they'll be financially better off if Trump wins (42%) than if Biden does (16%).
🐊 What's next: Former President Trump will hold a video conference interview from Mar-a-Lago today with a New York probation officer as part of the pre-sentencing process, NBC reported and Axios confirms.
- Mitch Landrieu — former Biden infrastructure czar, now national co-chair of his campaign — told Jen Psaki on MSNBC: "A guy that wants to be president of the United States first has to go sit down with his probation officer. That is just an astounding statement that sometimes people walk by."
4. 🎈 New debt warning

In another election-year warning, the International Monetary Fund said it's concerned about America's ballooning national debt.
- "For the U.S., we see ample ground for them to reduce the size of their fiscal deficits," the IMF's second-in-command, Gita Gopinath, told the Financial Times ($).
Why it matters: There's no appetite from either President Biden or Donald Trump to bring down the deficit — historically a pillar of mainstream Republican (and moderate Democratic) politics.
- Trump wants to make his 2017 tax cuts permanent if he's elected.
- Biden has failed to bring deficits under control despite claiming historic reductions.
5. 🇮🇱 Netanyahu rival quits

Centrist Israeli minister Benny Gantz announced in a speech yesterday that his party is withdrawing from the emergency government formed after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas, Axios' Barak Ravid writes.
- Why it matters: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition won't fall apart. But it will likely be destabilized.
Gantz — who was once the IDF's top general — said Netanyahu's promise of total victory against Hamas was empty and that Israelis deserve "a real victory" that "puts the release of the hostages above political survival."
- He's seen by the Biden administration and many other Western and Arab governments as a moderate.
The departure is likely to increase U.S. and international pressure on Netanyahu.
6. 🤖 Nvidia collides with history


The fat profit margins that fueled Nvidia's phenomenal stock price runup stem from marketplace bottlenecks that are bound to ease, Axios' Scott Rosenberg writes.
- Why it matters: Nvidia is the AI revolution's bellwether investment. Whenever it starts going down instead of up, the entire AI market is likely to retrench.
🦾 The company's strength lies in its chokehold over the most powerful chips needed to train and run today's advanced AI services.
- Giants Google and Microsoft — and startups OpenAI, Anthropic and Elon Musk's xAI — are all stockpiling those processors and bidding up their prices. So Nvidia can command enormous margins.
That won't last forever. The company's many competitors — including Intel, Qualcomm and Apple — have ramped up their efforts at AI chipmaking.
- The best case for Nvidia and its competitors is that AI demand will keep growing at a mad pace, and all these firms will get to slice up an ever-bigger pie. But there's no guarantee of that.
Flashback: Something like that happened 25 years ago. Cisco, which sold the routers every company needed to get online, was the Nvidia of the '90s internet boom.
- Its stock price chart in the late '90s looks very similar to Nvidia's today.
🍎 What's next: Apple is expected to detail its AI strategy — including a revamped Siri — tomorrow at the company's annual Worldwide Developers Conference. (Watch here: Keynote starts 10 a.m. PT ... 1 p.m. ET.)
7. 👀 Kristof backs Trump (-ish)

N.Y. Times columnist Nick Kristof endorses President Biden's Trump-like decision to curb access to asylum:
"Are we, the people of an immigrant nation, pulling up the ladder after we have boarded? Yes, to some degree. But the reality is that we can't absorb everyone who wants in, and it's better that the ladder be raised in an orderly way by reasonable people."
Kristof writes: "Given the choices, I trust Biden more than Trump to adopt tougher policies that are still" humane.
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8. 🏔️ 1 for the road: Mountain pass mudslide

A "catastrophic landslide" shut down a well-traveled mountain pass in Wyoming that links the tourist destinations of Jackson and Grand Teton National Park with eastern Idaho.
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