Axios AM

March 05, 2024
🗳️ Welcome to Super Tuesday! Smart Brevity™ count: 1,278 words ... 5 mins. Thanks to Noah Bressner for orchestrating. Copy edited by Bryan McBournie.
🎙️ Join Axios tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. ET for a virtual event on clean-energy growth. Guests include Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) and John Podesta, President Biden's special climate envoy. Watch the livestream here.
1 big thing: Biden wants to go for Trump's jugular

President Biden is privately pushing for a much more aggressive approach to 2024: Go for Donald Trump's jugular.
- Why it matters: Biden is convinced he'll rattle Trump if he taunts him daily, Axios' Hans Nichols and Alex Thompson report.
Biden has told friends he thinks Trump is wobbly, both intellectually and emotionally, and will explode if Biden mercilessly gigs and goads him — "go haywire in public," as one adviser put it.
- Other sources tell us Biden is looking for a fight.
- Biden's instincts tell him to let it fly when warning about the consequences of Trump winning the presidency again. Biden told The New Yorker that Trump would refuse to admit losing, again.
👓 Between the lines: The "trigger Trump" approach would be a departure from a traditional Rose Garden re-election campaign.
- Instead of focusing on jobs and the economy — areas in which polls suggest Americans aren't giving Biden much credit — Biden would be making the contest as much about Trump as his own accomplishments.
- One potential upside: It would help assuage concerns about Biden's age by showing that at 81, he can still throw a Scranton punch.
State of play: It's unclear whether Biden will flash his new fighting spirit at the State of the Union address on Thursday. But his feistiness has been apparent in recent weeks.
- "Loser" has become a favorite Biden taunt of Trump lately.
In a rare, lengthy interview with The New Yorker published yesterday, Biden said: "I'm the only one who has ever beat him. And I'll beat him again."
- "Trump lost 60 court cases — 60," Biden said recently, referring to the legal challenges on Trump's behalf that alleged fraud in the 2020 election. (It was 63, actually.) "The legal path just took him back to the truth — that I won the election, and he was a loser."
🔭 Zoom out: In a speech at Valley Forge, Pa., before the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, Biden attacked Trump in terms that were clearly personal — and nearly profane.
- He suggested Trump was a "sick [blank]" before catching himself.

Biden advisers have some evidence that Biden already is getting under Trump's skin.
- After Biden's appearance last week on "Late Night with Seth Meyers," Trump posted a video complaining about the show, calling the president a "basket case."
2. 💰 Musk double-header
Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo: Liesa Johannssen-Koppitz/Bloomberg via Getty Images
1. Four former senior Twitter executives, including former CEO Parag Agrawal, sued Elon Musk for more than $128 million in unpaid severance.
- The former executives claim Musk fired them after taking over the company now known as X "without reason, then made up fake cause and appointed employees of his various companies to uphold his decision."
2. Musk lost the title of world's richest person to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Musk had unseated Bezos in late '21.
- Tesla stock tumbled more than 7% after sales of its cars fell in China.
3. 📉 Exclusive: Public trust in AI sinks
Illustration: Natalie Peeples/Axios
Trust in AI technology and the companies that develop it is dropping, in both the U.S. and around the world, Axios' Ina Fried writes from new Edelman data.
- Why it matters: Eight years ago, technology was the most trusted industry in 90% of the countries Edelman studies. Today, it's the most trusted in only half.
🔢 By the numbers: Globally, trust in AI companies has dropped to 53%, down from 61% five years ago.
- In the U.S., trust has dropped 15 points (from 50% to 35%).
🌐 Between the lines: People in developing countries are more likely to embrace AI.
- Acceptance outpaces resistance by a wide margin in the developing markets of Saudi Arabia, India, China, Kenya, Nigeria and Thailand.
4. 🧮 Super Tuesday cheat sheet
Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
Super Tuesday brings presidential nominating contests in 16 states + American Samoa — making today the year's biggest voting day besides the general election on Nov. 5.
- The soonest Donald Trump could amass enough delegates to clinch the GOP nomination is March 12 — a week from today, when Georgia is among the states voting. Trump's campaign expects he'll clinch that day.
Here's tonight's timeline, via AP:
- 6 p.m. ET: Results expected in Iowa.
- 7 p.m. ET: Polls close in Vermont, Virginia. Caucuses convene in Alaska (Republicans only).
- 7:30 p.m. ET: Polls close in North Carolina.
- 8 p.m. ET: Polls close in Alabama, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Most polls close in Texas.
- 8:30 p.m. ET: Polls close in Arkansas.
- 9 p.m. ET: Polls close in Colorado, Minnesota. Last polls close in Texas. Caucuses convene in Utah (Republicans only).
- 10 p.m. ET: Polls close in Utah (Democrats only).
- 11 p.m. ET: Polls close in California. Voting expected to end in Utah (Republicans only).
- Midnight ET: Voting ends in Alaska (Republicans only).
📺 At 10 p.m. ET, ABC, CBS and NBC will carry hour-long Super Tuesday special reports.
- Get wonky: Today's delegate math.
5. UN: Rape likely during Hamas attack

A team of UN experts reported there are "reasonable grounds to believe" sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred at several locations during the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas militants, Reuters reports.
- "The mission team found clear and convincing information that some hostages taken to Gaza have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence and has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing," the 23-page report said.
Zoom in: The team visited Israel to gather, analyze and verify information on sexual violence linked to the attacks.
- "At the Nova music festival and its surroundings, there are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple incidents of sexual violence took place with victims being subjected to rape and/or gang rape and then killed or killed while being raped," the report says.
Hamas has repeatedly rejected accusations of sexual violence.
6. 💬 Quote du jour: Cuban backs Biden

Billionaire Mark Cuban on President Biden's age after a White House roundtable about drug prices (via Bloomberg):
"If they were having his last wake, and it was him versus Trump, and he was being given last rites, I would still vote for Joe Biden."
Between the lines: Cuban, founder of prescription drug startup Cost Plus Drugs, said he's backing Nikki Haley in the Texas GOP primary today as a "protest vote against Trump."
- Keep reading (gift link).
7. 🎬 Raging Oscars battle: Streamers vs. studios

Streamers are encroaching on Oscar ballots despite the expected coronation of "Oppenheimer" at Sunday's Academy Awards, Axios' Sara Fischer and Tim Baysinger write.
- Why it matters: Tech firms have modernized the movie industry with major investments in streaming technology and huge budgets for award-grade programming.
🥊 Reality check: History shows nominations don't always equate to wins.
- Aside from Apple's best picture win for "Coda" in 2022, tech giants haven't fully upended traditional media companies from a creative perspective.
👀 What to watch: Universal's "Oppenheimer" is the film to beat.
- The best chances for "Barbie" are for original song, and costume design.
8. 🤌 1 fun thing: $82K "Sopranos" booth

The iconic diner booth where the last scene of "The Sopranos" was filmed sold for $82,600 after a bidding war on eBay last night.
- Holsten's — a New Jersey ice cream parlor — said its furniture is 60+ years old and no longer structurally sound.
The winner gets the table, both benches and the divider wall with a plaque.
- The jukebox wasn't included.
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