WSJ What’s News - President Trump Was Told in May That His Name Is Among Many in the Epstein Files

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

P.M. Edition for July 23. Attorney General Pam Bondi also told the president that the Justice Department had decided to not release more Jeffrey Epstein documents because of the presence of child pornography and to protect victims. Plus, as President Trump hails the trade deal the U.S. struck with Japan, American automakers have criticized it. WSJ autos reporter Ryan Felton discusses their reasoning, and why the companies’ stocks are rallying anyway. And as the Trump administration pledges to stimulate the use of artificial intelligence in the U.S., companies are already scrambling over the rising popularity of AI search. We hear from WSJ marketing reporter Patrick Coffee about what marketers are doing about it. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Justice Department told President Trump in May that his name was among many in the Epstein files. Plus, as Trump announces moves to stimulate AI use in the U.S., brands that have built their business around Google are worried over the rise of AI search. When you go through LLMs like ChatGPT, you get one answer. There may be links within, but we have to ask how many people actually click on those links. And that's opposed to the traditional 10 blue links Google results. And U.S. automakers are not happy about the trade deal with Japan.

Why then are their stocks rallying? It's Wednesday, July 23rd. I'm Alex Osela for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. We've got a new exclusive related to the Epstein files. According to senior administration officials, in May, Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy informed President Donald Trump at a meeting in the White House that his name was in documents related to Jeffrey Epstein.

Many other high-profile figures were also named, Trump was told. Being mentioned in the records isn't a sign of wrongdoing. The officials said it was a routine briefing that covered a number of topics and that Trump's appearance in the documents wasn't the focus. The officials also told Trump that senior Justice Department officials didn't plan to release any more documents related to the investigation of the convicted sex offender because the material contained child pornography and victims' personal information. Trump said at the meeting he would defer to the Justice Department's decision to not release any further files. Trump said last week in response to a journalist's question that Bondi hadn't told him that his name was in the files.

White House Communications Director Stephen Chung said, quote, this is another fake news story, just like the previous story by the Wall Street Journal. In a statement to the Journal on Friday, Bondi and the Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch said nothing in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution. The National Association of Realtors U.S. home prices rose to a new high in June as sales fell to a nine-month low. The National Association of Realtors said today that the national median existing home price last month rose to $435,300, a record in data going

back to 1999 and a 2% increase from a year earlier. Prices aren't adjusted for inflation. The June numbers cap off a less than stellar spring for the housing market. WSJ reporter Nicole Friedman is here to tell us more. Nicole, what do these numbers show us about the possibility of the housing market recovering this year? It's not looking great. The spring is the most important season for the housing market, and it's been a slow

spring. There was a lot of hope coming into 2025 from real estate agents, mortgage lenders, that this year would be a recovery year. They hoped that mortgage rates would fall and that that would bring buyers into the market and that this spring would be much stronger and that's not what we saw. And so it's not looking good for the rest of the year. The housing market tends to be slower in the summer and fall because people are on vacation, kids go back to school. There could definitely be a pickup in the second half of the year if mortgage rates come down.

But if things stay as they are, it's looking like another slow year following a slow 2023 and a slow 2024. How does this most recent data play into the Fed's calculation about interest rates at its meeting later this month? The Fed is watching all the economic data and especially is focused on inflation. And home prices aren't directly part of the inflation calculation, but they do pay attention

to rents. And so if people who would otherwise want to buy a home are pushed into the rental market, that can push rents higher if there's more people looking to rent because it's not such a good market to buy. And so definitely overall housing supply and demand, and particularly what's happening with rents, is something that the Fed will be looking at closely. That was WSJ Reporter Nicole Friedman. Thanks, Nicole. Thank you for having me.

News Corp, owner of the journal, also operates Realtor.com under license from NAR. President Trump in a social media post yesterday evening hailed the trade deal with Japan as the largest trade deal in history. As we mentioned in our morning show, the trade agreement sets the so-called reciprocal tariffs on Japanese goods at 15%.

But U.S. automakers are not happy with the trade agreement. The head of the American Automotive Policy Council, a body that represents General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, the transatlantic parent of Jeep and Chrysler, called the agreement quote, a bad deal. Ryan Felton is a Wall Street Journal reporter covering the auto industry. Ryan, why do American automakers not like this deal? The simplest point is that they make a not insignificant number of cars in Canada and Mexico, which as of now, you need to pay a 25% tariff to import those cars into the US. And under the new deal reached with Japan,

companies making cars there can bring them over to the US and pay a 15% tariff. So these companies in Detroit have invested resources to build their production facilities and supply chains in and around the US and North America. And their point of view is that they're unfairly being required to pay more, despite having spent all that money on those investments. On the news of the deal with Japan, shares of Ford, GM, and Stellantis were actually higher today.

So what are investors expecting to come out of this? It sets a sort of baseline of what to expect for potential deals that are still being negotiated. If Japan gets 15 percent, then I think logically you would think, okay, then other countries could get 15 percent. What's underpinning this rally today is the hopes that a deal is reached with the European Union, which is still ongoing and that deals with Canada and Mexico will result in something similar. But in the meantime, it does add a lot of pressure on negotiators to get something in line with what Japan has reached. That was WSJ Reporter Ryan Felton. Thank you, Ryan.

Thank you so much. US stocks rose today in response to signs of a potential trade deal between the US and the European Union and the news earlier of the US-Japan deal. Major indexes were higher. The Dow was the biggest gainer, adding about 1.1%. The S&P 500 climbed 0.8% to a third straight record. The NASDAQ added 0.6%, also hitting a record and closing above 21,000 for the first time.

And reporting after the bell, Tesla said its net income plunged 16 percent in the second quarter, marking the second quarter of steep declines. The company said its declines in revenue and profitability were due to the drop in sales and a reduction in regulatory credits. And Google's parent company Alphabet reported a 14% jump in year-over-year revenue, driven by growth in its cloud division that was tempered by heavy spending on artificial intelligence. Coming up, what the popularity of AI chatbots means for the ecosystem built around Google Search. But the popularity of AI chatbots means for the ecosystem built around Google search.

That's after the break. The Trump administration said it would slash red tape and take steps to boost exports for U.S. technology companies in a bid to accelerate the nation's use of artificial intelligence. In his Action Plan for AI issued today, the administration laid out moves that it said would make it easier for tech companies to build the data centers needed to train AI models and get the power they need for those centers. The moves are likely to benefit companies like Microsoft, which has data centers across the US and is working to build more. President Trump is expected to sign executive orders at a tech industry event in Washington later today, putting the plan into effect. One place where AI is already being put to use?

Searching for answers online. Though about 94% of US search traffic still goes to traditional search engines like Google and Bing, search via AI powered chatbots is growing fast. According to Dados, which is part of marketing software company SEMrush, the percentage of traffic that went to browser-based AI search has more than doubled since June, 2024,

when it was about two and a half percent. I'm joined now by Patrick Coffey, who covers marketing for the journal. Patrick, there's this entire ecosystem of companies that's been built around directing web traffic from search engine results to other sites like news publishers or product pages. What does this shift towards chat bots mean for those companies? Nothing good, really.

Basically advertisers over decades have spent tens of millions of dollars of making sure that their brands or their home pages, et cetera, show up atop Google search results. And the same for publishers. And now that's all been thrown into doubt. Walk us through some of the mechanics. I mean, when you query ChatGPT, doesn't it respond with some links at some point? It does, but as one of the executives that I spoke to said to me, the vast majority of AI searches

are what they call informational. Help me solve this problem, help me answer this question. How do I do this? As opposed to more traditional searches where you'll search for a phrase or you'll search for a shoe brand or something like that and so the results are also different. One of the key differences for publishers and advertisers for example is that when you go through LLMs like chat should be T

you get one answer. There may be links within but we have to ask how many people actually click on those links. And that's opposed to the traditional 10 blue links Google results. What can marketers do about that? A lot of what they're trying to do is to optimize their websites for the crawlers that feed these LLMs. But they're also thinking about getting editorial placements, like doing better PR, making sure that the ways that they're described are as close as possible to the ways that they want consumers to think about their brands. But it's also things like changing the language on their websites, changing the language in their product descriptions to make it more conversational, because we find that LLMs tend to prefer that.

That was WSJ reporter Patrick Coffey. News Corp, owner of the Wall Street Journal, has a content licensing partnership with Open AI and a commercial agreement to supply content on Google platforms. In other news, in a Boise, Idaho courtroom today, Brian Coburger was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences without parole for the 2022 murders of four University of Idaho students and an additional 10 years for a burglary charge. Friends and family of the victims gave emotional testimony about the impact of the murders. When the judge asked Coburger whether he wished to make a statement before he was formally sentenced, Koberger declined.

And that's what's news for this Wednesday afternoon. Today's show was produced by Pierre Bienamé with supervising producer Michael Kazimides. I'm Alex Oseloff for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.