WSJ What’s News - Donald Trump Woos the Crypto Crowd

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

P.M. Edition for Sept. 20. The WSJ’s Ben Foldy explains why crypto investors are throwing their support behind Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. And we are exclusively reporting that chip maker Qualcomm has made a takeover approach to rival Intel. Plus, Microsoft is giving Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, a jump-start. WSJ energy reporter Jennifer Hiller explains the software company’s plan for the nuclear plant. Tracie Hunte hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And could Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump become the crypto candidate? For the first time, the crypto community sees a candidate who is saying the things that they want to hear in the language that they want to hear it. Plus, it was a site of the worst nuclear accident in American history. But now Three Mile Island is getting a new start. It's Friday, September 20th. I'm Tracy Hunt for The Wall Street Journal. This is a PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move

the world today. Let's start with some news just in. We're exclusively reporting that Qualcomm has made a takeover approach to Intel in recent days. That's according to people familiar with the matter. A deal for Intel, which as of early today had a market value of roughly $87 billion, would be massive and comes as the chipmaker has been suffering through one of the most significant crises in its five-decade history. But the people have cautioned that a deal is far from

certain. Qualcomm is a leading supplier of chips for smartphones, including ones that manage communications between phones and cell towers. And Motel 6, one of America's most recognizable lodging brands, has a new owner. India-based hotel giant Oyo has agreed to buy it from its owner, the New York investment firm Blackstone, for $525 million. The sale is expected to close in the fourth quarter. The Federal Trade Commission is suing the drug middlemen that health plans use to keep a lid on drug spending, accusing the firms of inflating the price of insulin. Named in the suit are United Health Group's OpnymRx and CVS Health's CVS Caremark and

Express Scripts. CVS Caremark blames insulin makers for high prices, OptumRx said it aggressively negotiated with drug makers, and Express Scripts said the FTC would drive drug prices higher if the agency succeeds in its lawsuit. U.S. stock indexes wobbled today but notched gains for the week. The S&P 500 and NASDAQ Composite ended down less than 0.5 percent, while the Dow industrials edged slightly higher. Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear power accident in the U.S., is getting a new start.

Constellation Energy and Microsoft announced an agreement today to revive the Pennsylvania plant's undamaged reactor and sell the power to Microsoft. The software company needs a source of clean, round-the-clock energy to run its data centers for AI. Constellation expects to spend around $1.6 billion to restart the reactor by early 2028, and the company said Microsoft has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement. Wall Street Journal energy reporter Jennifer Hiller says the deal is an indication of the broader change in how people view nuclear power.

In the last few years there's just been a bit of a rethink that's been going on about how people view nuclear power. A few years ago we were seeing a lot of nuclear plants just shut down and shut down early and now we just have a fundamentally different electricity marketplace where demand is rising for things like data centers or fleets of electric vehicles or building heat or switching industrial processes over to electricity. So there's just more demand for power and particularly more demand for the kind of power that nuclear provides. more demand for the kind of power that nuclear provides. In other news, Israel says it killed a top Hezbollah commander in a new round of airstrikes

in Lebanon today. The Israeli military says the strike killed Ibrahim Aqeel, along with 10 other senior commanders in a residential area in Beirut's southern suburbs. Hezbollah has not confirmed Akhil's death. Lebanon's health ministry reported at least 12 dead and 66 wounded. The attack is a significant blow to Hezbollah after a week of airstrikes across southern Lebanon and covert operations that cause electronic devices carried by thousands of the militant group's members to explode virtually simultaneously.

Coming up, crypto investors are increasingly backing Donald Trump. That's after the break. I'm not going back to university to be your friend. I'm going so I can get Uber One for students. It saves you on Uber and Uber Eats. I'm there for zero dollar delivery fee on cheeseburgers, up to 5% off smoothies and 5% Uber cash back on rides. Just to be clear, I'm there for savings, not whatever you think university is for.

Get Uber One for Students, a membership to save on Uber and Uber Eats. With deals this good, everyone wants to be a student. Join for just $4.99 a month. Savings may vary. Eligibility and member terms apply. Donald Trump this week pivoted to embrace a niche constituency. The former president on Monday helped launch a new crypto business with his family. On Wednesday, he bought a round of burgers for denizens of a Bitcoin-themed dive bar in New York. And he's already been adding pledges to block a Federal Reserve-backed digital currency and establish a strategic national Bitcoin stockpile to

his stump speeches. All of this has won him the fervent support from a growing subset of single-issue voters, crypto investors. Ben Foldy is a finance reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and he joins us now. Ben, what's behind this pivot, and is it feeling mutual on the part of these crypto investors? Yeah, so former President Trump's gradual embrace of the cryptocurrency world has kind of been taking place over the last couple months, but really kind of kicked into top gear this week.

But he also spoke at a Bitcoin conference in late July in Nashville. A number of big crypto investors have already kind of publicly pledged either political support or also financial support. What's interesting is that you're seeing this rise of a new single issue voter in how government treats the cryptocurrency industry. And it's not necessarily a partisan issue. But what Trump has done is, I guess, adopted a niche of voters for whom crypto is really like a lifestyle almost.

It's an ideology and it's a culture. And Trump, in the past couple of weeks and months, has really started kind of taking on that cultural messaging. These political issues that I would hazard to say that most voters don't have an opinion on. Do you back the Federal Reserve in establishing a central bank digital currency? Like, that's just not an issue for most American voters. But for crypto people, it's a big issue. And so I think for the first time, the crypto community sees a candidate who is saying the

things that they want to hear in the language that they want to hear it, and is really kind of making a pointed effort to adopt them as his own and vice versa. They have now adopted him as their candidate. Is there any indication that that support could actually lead to more votes? I think the crypto community is ready to vote for Trump. The question then becomes how big is the crypto community? That's a little harder to suss out. But American elections are famously marginal, right, at the state level.

So are there 8 million crypto voters that will sway the election? Probably not. Are there enough crypto voters in these kind of margins that they could have an impact? It's not outside the realm of possibility. Ben Foldy is a finance reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much, Ben. Thanks for having me. For our multi-part series, Chasing the Vote, Wall Street Journal political reporter Jimmy Villekind went to Georgia Georgia where Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is a subject of a criminal case for his actions after the 2020 election. Trump has pleaded not guilty but top Democrats consider his candidacy as a threat to democracy. Republicans also think

democracy is on the line but from a very different perspective. So Jimmy, how are voters being swayed by these arguments? Democrats seem to hear this notion of democracy on the line, and they think about Donald Trump's conduct while in office, and particularly older Democrats seem to be responding to this argument. On the Republican side, I found that voters are much more focused on securing the southern border

and looking at current economic conditions as they formulate their vote. Several Republicans told me that they consider democracy on the line being nothing more than a democratic mantra and that they haven't been concerned by Trump's actions or to the extent that they had concerns, they feel as though Democrats' actions are just as bad or sort of in the same bucket.

Are the charges Trump's facing in Georgia affecting his chances in the state? The prosecution and the alleged acts that occurred in the state of Georgia have put this front and center for voters in that state more than perhaps it would resonate or be top of mind for people who live in other states. The other aspect of the battle over democracy in Georgia has been changes to the state's voting laws, many of which were enacted by Republicans after the 2020 election. So those debates and the effects of those new statutes is something that's a little bit more tangible to voters

and has made this talk of democracy being on the line resonate in the state more so than other places that I have visited in my reporting. Jimmy Villekind is a political reporter for The Wall Street Journal. You can hear our multi-part series, Chasing the Vote this Sunday in the What's News podcast feed. Thank you, Jimmy. Thanks, Tracy. And finally, as kids go back to school this fall, did you notice anything different in their classrooms?

It seems that many of them have been given a major glow up by teachers who brought in things like bespoke furniture, plants, and color-coded cubbies, all in order to create a cozy and soothing environment. Our style news reporter, Javi Lever, looks into this new trend in classroom aesthetics. Teachers have always taken time and energy to decorate the classroom, but now we're seeing teachers decorate their classroom to look like an architectural digest photo shoot. This is mostly happening with Gen Z teachers. So a fresh wave of young professionals who have just gotten out of college,

they're kind of used to decorating their dorm room or filming videos for TikTok. So they are used to an extremely curated aesthetic. So they're now seeing their classroom as the next decorating frontier. I've also heard from administrators who say that they aren't behind this trend. First of all, a lot of teachers are spending their own money to decorate. And second of all, some teachers feel that it is taking away from the students voice. The teachers that are doing the standby, they say they're in the classroom for hours and hours a day. Why shouldn't it look nice?

And what did the ultimate judge, the kids, think about it? Well, Javi says that the teachers she's spoken with told her that their students love coming into a unique or interestingly decorated room. And that's What's News for this week. Tomorrow you can look out for our weekly markets wrap up, what's news and markets. Then on Sunday, as we discussed earlier, we'll have a second episode of our multi part series chasing the vote with Jimmy Bealkind reporting from the battleground state of Georgia. And we'll be back with our regular show on Monday morning. Today's show was produced by

Anthony Bansi and Pierre Bienneme with supervising producer Michael Cosmitis. Additional support this week from Trina Menino. Michael LaValle wrote our theme music. Aisha Al-Muslim is our development producer. Scott Saloway and Chris Dinsley are our deputy editors. And Philana Patterson is The Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. I'm Tracy Hunt. Thanks for listening.