Every scheme used to come with a cover story. Now it comes with a record, and the record usually belongs to the schemer.
Kept carefully, it’s leverage. Kept carelessly, it’s Exhibit A.
Kimberly Guilfoyle ⬇
Days before her confirmation hearing in July 2025, the future U.S. ambassador to Greece allegedly asked a Trump donor to wire $100,000 straight to her American Express bill. "It won’t show up anywhere," she allegedly assured him.
After those messages showed up in The Wall Street Journal, Guilfoyle was asked to resign.
Eric Deters ⬆
The source of those messages, which Guilfoyle disputes, is a Kentucky donor. He says he paid her $300,000 in speaking fees over the years, plus $200,000 to Donald Trump Jr. and $100,000 to Eric Trump, and had "not received one favor."
Guilfoyle forgot the first rule of customer service: never leave an unhappy customer holding the receipts.
Mel Gunewardena ⬇
The senior adviser to the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission reportedly had staff withdraw an insider-trading referral on oil bets placed 15 minutes before President Trump reversed course on Iran strikes, according to Bloomberg.
Nothing says fighting market manipulation like manipulating the manipulation investigation.
Sam Altman ⬇
OpenAI told investors its annualized revenue was about $50 billion. That’s $20 billion short of the figure making the rounds last month. Analysts pointed to an accounting glitch, but AI stocks still sank, leaving no one convinced that ChatGPT can be trusted with basic math.
Duane 'Keffe D' Davis ⬇
The former Crips leader was sentenced Tuesday to 40 years to life for orchestrating the 1996 killing of Tupac Shakur. With the physical evidence long lost, the case rested largely on his 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend. Crime may not pay, but true crime sends a bill.
Jeffrey Maier ⬇
In 1996, the 12-year-old reached over the right-field wall and turned a Derek Jeter fly ball into a home run on the Yankees’ way to a World Series title. In this year’s American League Division Series, when another fan reached over the left-field wall and erased Anthony Volpe’s game-tying homer, the baseball gods proved they never forget.
Originally a staple of Newsweek's print edition, Conventional Wisdom used arrows to track whose stock was rising or falling in the political circus. We're reviving it in the digital age because the problem it lampooned—hyperbole and partisan certainty masquerading as insight—has only intensified.
CW assigns arrows—up, down, or sideways—to the figures and forces shaping current events. The arrows don't predict the future or claim special insight. They capture the prevailing winds of the moment, uncluttered by tribal howling. In an era when partisan media reinforces rather than questions assumptions, CW operates from the center—skeptical of left and right alike, committed to puncturing inflated reputations and recognizing overlooked truths.
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