Elon's Trump Addiction, Cuban on a Red Recession & Bolton on Trump's phone habits

Bolton: Trump didn't trust email...

Welcome back to The Red Letter!

• Today I’m interviewing Mark Cuban for my podcast and my YouTube channel @tarapalmeri. This morning he blasted a prediction on Blueskyy that a recession will hit Trump’s rural voters. I plan to ask him about it and more but I want to open the line up to you to reply with questions for Cuban. Paid subscribers can send me a message on my Substack chat. The episode will drop on Monday so please subscribe here and here.

• If you have time this weekend, I highly recommend you watch my YouTube show (above) with my former Puck colleague, Teddy Schleifer, now a Times’ man, about the political evolution of Elon Musk — from humanitarian and climate advocate to DeSantis-stan to Trump-cautious to full on Trump addict. I think you’ll find the conversation illuminating. If you prefer to listen, here’s a link to the audio version.

It’s day five of Signal-gate and clearly the Trump administration is refusing to take accountability for what happened. Now, there are reports that morale is sinking at the Pentagon — with fighter pilots pissed off that a careless leak could have threatened their lives, according to the New York Times.

Meanwhile, there’s been buzz in Washington over whether Trump, himself, has been using Signal. He definitely uses his personal phone. I know, I called him a few months ago… he picked up and we chatted. But does he use the commercial app that his team uses to share sensitive information between themselves and reporters? I asked White House spokesperson Steven Cheung but have yet to hear back. I searched his number on Signal on Wednesday and didn’t find it. Of course, maybe someone at the White House beat me to it and scrubbed his number from the app.

On Thursday night, I called Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton to talk about about the fallout and whether Trump was concerned with communicating securely on his phone.

“I never exchanged a single e-mail with him,” said Bolton. “I don't think he used email. I don't think he trusted it, he didn't want