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• Iran's economy is in bad shape.
• Decades of sanctions have driven up inflation, government debt, and poverty rates.
• Iran's struggles could be a warning for Russia as the war in Ukraine drags on.

Escalating tensions between Iran and Israel have driven up commodity costs, reignited worries about a flare-up in inflation, and sparked renewed fears of wider conflict in the Middle East.

One factor that might avert a regional war is the dismal state of Iran's economy.

The country has borne the brunt of Western sanctions for decades, making it tough for Tehran to finance any war effort — and that could be a warning sign for Vladimir Putin as the war in Ukraine drags on.

Sanctions packages

The US first imposed sanctions on Iran after students seized the American embassy in Tehran in 1979, and has stepped up its efforts considerably more recently.

In 2018, Donald Trump decided to pull out of a nuclear agreement between the US and Iran. The then-president said he would put "maximum economic pressure" on Iran, setting the stage for sanctions packages that have pummelled the Iranian economy.

Most countries that buy Iranian oil are banned from trading with the US. Iran is the world's seventh-largest oil producer, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration, so the restrictions have chipped away at a major engine for growth.

Iran's economy fell into a deep, two-year recession shortly after sanctions were reinstated, although economic growth has rebounded into positive territory since then. According to World Bank projections, Iran's economy is expected to have expanded by 4.2% last year.

Rising inflation and mounting debt

Despite that recent rise in GDP, other issues are plaguing Iran's economy.

Sanctions and a tumbling currency, the rial, have pushed inflation close to 50% at times in recent years, with food disproportionately affected. The cost of lentils has soared 130% since the start of this year, IranWire reported, while beans are up 30%, and red meat prices have jumped 25% over the same period, per Iran International.

Even before those increases about half the population consumed less than the recommended 2,100 calories a day last year, according to the Iranian parliament's research center, IranWire reported.

That cost-of-living crisis has also driven poverty rates higher. About 9.5 million Iranians fell into poverty in the 2010s, according to World Bank data, with over a quarter of citizens living on the equivalent of $6.85 a day or less back in 2017.

Stripped of key oil revenues, the government has resorted to borrowing, tripling its debt as a percentage of GDP ratio over the past 15 years. The higher deficit would make it much tougher to raise defense spending if tensions with Israel spiraled into a wider conflict.

Warning for Russia

Iran's struggles over the past decade could be a warning sign for Russia, sanctioned by the West since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Russia's economy appears to have remained resilient, but forecasters warn that the outlook may worsen as the war with Ukraine drags on.

Moscow has struggled to contain a spike in basic foodstuffs this year, leading to Soviet-style queues at supermarkets. Think-tanks have warned that the Kremlin risks becoming reliant on China, North Korea, and even Iran for weapons because it's been cut off from foreign lenders.

If Iran's example is anything to go by, even tougher times may lie ahead.

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• Google employees who were fired for protesting the company's work with Israel have gone to the NLRB.
• About 50 employees were fired or placed on leave, the NLRB complaint said.
• Google previously said that the protesters' conduct was "unacceptable" and "extremely disruptive."

Google workers who were fired for protesting against the company's cloud contract with the Israeli government filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board on Monday.

An attorney for the workers said in the complaint that Google "retaliated against approximately 50 employees" by terminating them or putting them on administrative leave. Last month, Google said that it fired 28 employees for staging in-office protests in New York City and Sunnyvale, California.

Google's actions, the workers' attorney wrote, were "in response to their protected concert activity, namely, participation (or perceived participation) in a peaceful, non-disruptive protest that was directly and explicitly connected to their terms and conditions of work."

In a statement to Business Insider, a Google spokesperson said the behavior was "completely unacceptable."

"This is a very clear case of employees disrupting and occupying work spaces, and making other employees feel threatened and unsafe," the statement said. "We carefully confirmed and reconfirmed that every single person whose employment was terminated was directly and definitively involved in disruption inside our buildings."

Representatives for the NLRB didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

Google said in an internal memo on April 17 that the protesters had taken over office spaces and defaced company property.

"Behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it," the company wrote.

The workers had voiced their dissent against Project Nimbus, Google's $1.2 billion joint contract with Amazon to provide artificial intelligence and cloud computing services to Israel.

Protesters claimed that the contract — the details of which became public in 2021 — would allow the Israeli government to surveil and displace Palestinians.

But Google told BI last month that the company's work was not directed at highly sensitive or classified military projects relevant to weapons or intelligence services.

"We have been very clear that the Nimbus contract is for workloads running on our commercial cloud by Israeli government ministries, who agree to comply with our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy," a spokesperson for Google told BI.

The ongoing dispute between Google and some of its employees highlights companies' tricky balance between their business interests and their workers' desire for self-expression.

In December, The Washington Post reported that around 1,700 Amazon employees had signed a petition against Project Nimbus.

Signatories argued that Amazon's cloud technology was going to be used by the Israelis to "repress Palestinian activists and impose a brutal siege on Gaza."

When asked about the petition, Amazon spokesperson Rob Munoz told The Post that the tech giant "is focused on making the benefits of our world-leading cloud technology available to all our customers, wherever they are located."

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• Elon Musk and David Sacks hosted an elite dinner for billionaires that got political, Puck reported.
• Musk has been flexing his political influence but has yet to endorse a presidential candidate.
• In recent years, Musk has lambasted policies by Democratic politicians and endorsed Republicans.

Elon Musk, at an exclusive April dinner, commiserated with a group of billionaires about their distrust in Democratic politicians like Joe Biden, according to a new report by Puck.

The outlet reported that Musk and venture capitalist David Sacks hosted the private event at Sacks' $23 million estate in the Hollywood Hills. In attendance were Republican donor Peter Thiel, former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, and investment banker Steven Mnuchin, who previously served as secretary of the treasury under Donald Trump.

According to Puck, the attendees were part of a "burgeoning anti-Biden brain trust, united by a shared sense of grievance," with the evening's conversation centered around fundraising to defeat Democratic politicians and Musk's concerns about America's migrant crisis.

While Musk has increasingly criticized Biden's policies publicly — especially regarding illegal immigration, which Musk said helped Biden win the presidency, per the Houston Chronicle — the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX hasn't officially endorsed any political candidate for the coming election.

A representative for financier Michael Milken confirmed to Business Insider that he attended a dinner hosted by Musk and Sacks earlier this month but noted his presence was not a political gesture. Any discussion of politics at the dinner, Milken's representative said, did not revolve around the endorsement of any particular party or candidate.

Milken, in 1990, pleaded guilty to six racketeering and securities fraud charges related to an insider trading scheme. He was released from prison after two years and was pardoned by then-President Donald Trump 30 years later, in 2020.

Representatives for Musk, Sacks, and other dinner attendees identified by Puck did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

While the dinner wasn't explicitly pro-Trump, Musk has, in recent weeks, told associates he plans to wade deeper into his growing role as a political influencer and is weighing whether to endorse Trump in this year's election or just make a public statement against Biden, Puck reported.

Though he is hardly a prolific donor as far as billionaires go, Musk's history of political contributions leans Republican. OpenSecrets noted that Musk donated $688,350 to federal candidates and party committees between 2004 and 2020, with 50.1% going to Republican causes. The top recipient of Musk's donations was the National Republican Congressional Committee, which received $246,800 from him since 2004, the campaign finance watchdog reported.

"In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party," Musk wrote in a tweet in May 2022. He then bashed the Democratic Party, adding: "But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican."

Since then, his rhetoric online has increasingly mirrored extreme right-wing talking points, accusing The New York Times of going "full woke," and saying everyone should "move on" from focusing on racism.

He has also urged "independent-minded voters" to vote Republican to curb a Democratic majority.

In March, Musk met with Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, and said he was "leaning away" from Biden in an interview with former CNN anchor Don Lemon.

"While I'll voice my opinion, I think I don't want to put a thumb on the scale monetarily that is significant," Musk told Lemon about his political contributions. "I may, in the final stretch, endorse a candidate, but I don't know yet."

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• US consumers are tightening their purchases, Amazon and Starbucks executives said Tuesday.
• Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said their customers were trading down and looking for deals.
• Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan said the coffee chain's customers were growing more cautious.

US consumers are becoming more prudent with their spending, executives at Amazon and Starbucks said on Tuesday.

"Customers in the US are being very thoughtful about their spend. They look for deals, they trade down and look for lower ASP (average sale price) products," Amazon's chief financial officer, Brian Olsavsky, told journalists ahead of the company's earnings call.

Customers are buying "a lot more consumables and everyday essentials," which tend to be cheaper, Olsavsky said.

Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan made a similar observation during his company's earnings call.

"We continue to feel the impact of a more cautious consumer, particularly with our more occasional customer and a deteriorating economic outlook has weighed on customer traffic and impact sales broadly across the industry," Narasimhan said.

The CEO said that Starbucks' performance this quarter "did not meet our expectations." Sales declined 3% in the US year-on-year.

Olsavsky and Narasimhan's remarks underscore the challenges facing US consumers — and the companies that sell to them — as shoppers attempt to stretch their dollars amid persistent inflation.

"From being a point of strength during 2023, it appears that lower- and middle-income households' spending growth has been softening," Bank of America economists wrote in a report published on March 11.

In July, McDonald's CFO Ian Borden told investors that customers were trying to save money by "trading down" to its value menu items and "buying a little less."

"A challenging macro environment including rising interest rates and elevated costs continues to create volatile consumer confidence levels and put pressure on consumer spending," Borden said then.

Representatives for Amazon and Starbucks didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

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• New York Police Department officers in riot gear entered Columbia University's Hamilton Hall.
• Dozens of protesters were taken by police into busses in zip ties, The New York Times reported.
• This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

New York Police Department officers in riot gear entered Columbia University's Hamilton Hall, which had been occupied by protesters for roughly 20 hours, according to multiple news reports.

According to The New York Times, the NYPD entered the building using a makeshift bridge that allowed them to climb into the second-story window.

Dozens of protesters were taken by police into busses in zip ties, The Times reported.

Videos from student groups on the scene show protesters being pushed off campus by police.

Student groups had been on campus for days, setting up tents and camping out at the Ivy League University to protest Israel's war on Gaza. Demands for the protest included that the university cut financial ties to Israel.

Columbia University, the NYPD, and Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a statement to the Times, Columbia said in part: "We regret that protesters have chosen to escalate the situation through their actions," adding, "We made the decision, early in the morning, that this was a law enforcement matter, and that the NYPD were best positioned to determine and execute an appropriate response."

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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• Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said training AI could one day cost $100 billion.
• Amodei told CNBC that he isn't worried about the commoditization of large language AI models.
• The number of companies able to afford to develop new models will remain slim, he said.

The large language model market may be heating up, but the CEO of AI powerhouse Anthropic isn't all that worried about competition, predicting the price tag of training such models could eventually balloon to $100 billion.

Anthropic CEO and cofounder Dario Amodei discussed the future of Anthropic, its chatbot "Claude," and the billion-dollar AI industry in a wide-ranging interview with CNBC last week.

"The number of players" that have the financial capability to train professional-level AI models at top scale, Amodei said, "is going to be relatively small to start with."

Amodei and his sister, Daniela Amodei, cofounded Anthropic in 2021, quickly drawing major backers, including Amazon. The e-commerce company poured $1.25 billion into Anthropic last year and pledged an additional $2.75 billion in March, cementing a powerful partnership that grants Amazon a minority ownership stake in Anthropic and allows Anthropic access to Amazon's cloud servers and chips.

The company's Claude rivals similar models like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google Gemini. Meanwhile, Amazon is working on its own AI "Olympus," while Elon Musk open-sourced his "Grok" model last month.

But even as model development booms, Amodei brushed off concerns of rapid commoditization, pointing to the astronomical price of creating and training large language models. Amodei told CNBC that current models already cost a company $100 million to develop — and that price will only increase as the technology advances.

"I think we're going to see models trained in the next year are going to be about $1 billion," Amodei told the outlet. "And then 2025, 2026, we're going to go to $5 billion or $10 billion. And I think there's a chance it may go beyond that to $100 billion."

The number of companies financially able to train models at that cost will remain slim, he said.

Diversity in development techniques may also help stave off commoditization, Amodei told CNBC, comparing the various different models to differences in human beings.

"We as humans, we all have — our brains are all basically designed the same, but we're very different from one another, and I think models will be the same," he said.

Amodei said some AI models may specialize in topics like law or national security, while others could gain expertise in biochemistry.

"I think that force is going to lead to different model providers specializing in different things, even as the base model they made is the same," he added.

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• The employees behind Tesla's Supercharging stations are being laid off, BI previously reported.
• Musk said following the cuts that Tesla will keep growing its charger network "at a slower pace."
• Tesla will now focus on "100% uptime and expansion of existing locations," Musk said.

Shortly after news broke that Tesla would be laying off another round of employees, including the team behind the company's Supercharging network, CEO Elon Musk took to social media to reassure owners and investors that the charging stations aren't going anywhere.

"Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger network, just at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100% uptime and expansion of existing locations," Musk wrote in a post on X.

Despite Musk's assurances, Tesla has already begun pulling out of leases for upcoming stations in New York, EV news outlet Electrek reported.

The company currently operates 57,579 Superchargers at 6,249 locations globally, the outlet reported.

Even the most die-hard Tesla fans were disheartened by the news. Commenters on Musk's post were quick to call his announcement "kinda lame" and urged him to reconsider, arguing that a large charging network is key to promoting widespread adoption of electric vehicles nationwide.

"This is a goddamn disaster. Superchargers need to be Tesla's second top growing sector outside of FSD," Troy Meekhof, who runs the site The Cybertruck Guy, which covers the Cybertruck and other EVs, wrote in response to Musk's post. "You're opening up the network to practically every EV driver on the continent without building with urgency? I'm honestly floored at this decision."

Meekhof told Business Insider that, as an owner of two Tesla vehicles, he's very familiar with Superchargers and called them "damn near magical," saying they work every time without fail and the stations he visits are rarely full. However, he said, entire sections of the country and his home state of Michigan are completely off-limits to him and his vehicles "simply because of the lack of charging options."

"I'm generally apt to trust Musk's maniacal whims because they're indicative of a more complex longer-term plan, but destroying the division responsible for what I believe is their single greatest achievement in North America is simultaneously shocking and bewildering," Meekhof told BI, adding he's "certainly looking forward to seeing what this broader plan is, but at face value, I'm alarmed."

The latest round of Tesla layoffs, announced by Musk via email late Monday, include Rebecca Tinucci, senior director of the company's Supercharger group, and Daniel Ho, head of new products, BI previously reported. While some employees may be reassigned, the Supercharging team, about 500 employees strong, will be dissolved.

The cuts come after Tesla's lukewarm earnings report last week, which included an 8.7% year-over-year revenue drop in Q1, its earnings per share missing consensus forecasts, and the company's free cash flow dropping 674% year-over-year to negative $2.5 billion.

Representatives for Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

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• Starbucks reported disappointing sales Tuesday in both US and international segments.
• One thing that's not helping: the peak demand in the mornings is too high.
• The company said a mid-teens percent of mobile customers abandon their carts due to long wait times.

Starbucks is having a rough year so far.

The Seattle-based coffee giant posted worse-than-expected sales figures for its second fiscal quarter as visits from "occasional customers" declined, the company said Tuesday.

But while visits from loyal customers remain strong, CEO Laxman Narasimhan highlighted a curiously Starbucksian problem that any occasional or loyal customer has likely encountered: demand is too high during the peak morning rush.

Narasimhan said on the company's earnings call that nearly two-thirds of Starbucks' morning business in the US is from rewards members using the mobile app, which has yielded a remarkable insight.

"We saw a mid-teens percent order incompletion rate within the order channel this past quarter," he said. "In other words, customers using Mobile Order-Pay put items into their carts and sometimes chose not to complete the order, citing long wait times and product unavailability."

That works out to more than one in eight mobile order customers opting not to buy a menu item they were otherwise interested in — a hefty chunk of cash left on the table for Starbucks.

Even as Narasimhan assured investors that his team is working diligently on improving performance in the morning rush, he also said the company is ferreting out untapped demand at all hours of the day.

"Last quarter, we mentioned we were conducting a pilot program to serve customers overnight between 5 p.m. and 5 a.m. when our stores are traditionally closed," he said. "During this pilot test, we doubled our business. Building off that success, we are aggressively pursuing options to build a $2 billion business over the next five years."

The bottom-line impact of these strategy shifts will take more time to be seen however, and the company cut its revenue forecasts in half.

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• Influencer marketing is booming, and brands spend billions to promote products with a personal touch.
• But the industry is unregulated and has problems for brands, audiences, and influencers alike.
• Influencer ads can be fraudulent, discriminatory, and unethical, and audiences have no way to push back.

It seemed like a marketer's perfect plan to get products into the hands of their target audience: pay an internet icon or local influencer to promote them to their loyal fans.

And for the better part of the last two decades, it worked like a charm.

But these days, the industry of influencer marketing is completely off the rails. According to analysts and experts who spoke to Business Insider, influencer brand deals and advertisements are rife with unethical business practices thanks in part to limited regulation of a practice that is rapidly growing year over year.

Since 2016, the dollars driving the influencer marketing industry have ballooned from $1.6 billion a year to an estimated $21.1 billion in 2023, according to Influencer Marketing Hub. The outlet estimates the industry will reach an estimated $24 billion by the end of 2024.

Researcher Emily Hund, author of the book, "The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media," in a recent article for Harvard Business Review, made the case for new regulatory guardrails to be applied to the industry, arguing marketers and regulators often turn a blind eye to bad behavior from brands and influencers alike, which can range from discrimination and unfair business practices to outright fraud.

"While the industry has developed into a sophisticated, albeit chaotic, space, it has done so largely outside the confines of regulatory or professional oversight," Hund wrote. "Its lack of boundaries opens the door for multidirectional exploitation. Marketers, brands, influencers, and platform companies all have opportunities to exploit one another to varying degrees of harm."

It's rough for brands

David Camp, the cofounder of the marketing company Metaforce, told Business Insider that while there's nothing new about influencer marketing — it's just a revamped version of the classic celebrity endorsement, shrunk down for small-time personalities with niche audiences — the industry faces more than its fair share of fraud, misrepresentation, and just plain unreliability.

Fake influencers can defraud brands by purchasing followers or manipulating their metrics to give the appearance of more engagement than they actually receive, driving up their asking price for partnerships and ad deals. The practice costs businesses about 15% of their ad spending, totaling more than $1.3 billion in 2019, CBS News reported.

"Those kinds of negative impacts are more likely in this domain because most of these online influencers do their own thing, and they're basically hustlers," Camp said. "They're trying to build an audience so that they can monetize it, and they're not typically represented by very polished spokespeople and agents that rep them to marketers and agencies, whereas in the traditional celebrity-influencer space, there's a whole coterie of people who are associated with evaluating potential spokespeople and influencers and vetting them and then negotiating with them."

In a traditional celebrity endorsement, the people promoting brands' products are well-known, well-represented, and deliver a predictable result for the businesses who hire them — the audience of loyal followers shells out big bucks for the products that've been endorsed. Think Michael Jordan for Nike, George Foreman for the Salton Electric Grill, or Brooke Shields for Calvin Klein. With influencer marketing, that isn't always the case.

For brands, this means their investment in influencers can end up wasted — or, worse, the social media personalities could use an inopportune moment like the California wildfires in 2018 to promote themselves or a brand, potentially damaging reputations all around.

It's not great for consumers

Despite the money flying around, the FTC only provides basic guidelines about disclosure requirements for influencer marketing to protect consumers of their content.

But only the biggest names seem to get caught when they mislead their audiences — and generally only when they run afoul of rules on disclosing their paid partnerships, which Camp noted is the only rule he's aware of regulating digital media sponsorships and paid advertisements.

In 2022, the SEC settled with Kim Kardashian for $1.25 million after she failed to disclose a $250,000 payment she received to promote EthereumMax crypto tokens on her Instagram.

Similarly, influencer Chiara Ferragni was fined $1 million in January following what Italian officials described as a misleading charity campaign in which she encouraged her followers to purchase a cake, with the proceeds going to a hospital donation, but never fulfilled the promise.

Lindsay Lohan, DJ Khaled, and Naomi Campbell have all also been subject to federal investigations for failing to disclose paid partnerships, Hund noted in her HBR article. The celebrities received warning letters from the FTC, requiring them to provide the agency with information about their relationships with the brands they stealthily promoted, according to the nonprofit Consumer Reports.

"Because she is one of the highest-profile celebrities in the world, Kardashian was an easy 'get' for regulators," Hund wrote. "But far too much sponsored content and far too many influencers exist for government agencies to effectively oversee them all."

Not to mention instances of influencers tricking their audiences into buying branded products with overly positive reviews of companies they're paid by, despite quality issues or even labor abuses.

It's inconsistent for influencers

It's not all easy for the influencers, either. Black and Hispanic content creators face a 35% pay gap compared to white creators, per NBC News, There are also reports of fake talent-management firms requesting $299 "deposits" as part of a scam to fool wannabe influencers.

"Creators bear the brunt of the industry's pervasive uncertainty: They must spend a significant amount of time navigating changing content norms, new platforms and tools, uneven contracts, high expectations for audience engagement, and the blowback that can come with being a public figure with few professional protections," Hund wrote for HBR.

Some influencers faced racial discrimination during an in-person brand-sponsored trip, Business Insider previously reported. And Dylan Mulvaney, an influencer who partnered with brands like Nike and Bud Light, faced a barrage of anti-trans hate and harassment after she posted sponsored content for the companies on her social media pages.

Her partnership with the brands became the reason right-wing figures like Ben Shapiro and Donald Trump Jr. called for a boycott of Bud Light, and she said the resulting threats were so bad she traveled out of the country to escape the backlash.

No end to the mess in sight

Despite the industry's known problems, Camp noted that in some cases, influencer marketing is still perceived to be more desirable because there's a level of authenticity when someone you follow and trust is pitching a product versus just an anonymous ad.

While the FTC's guidelines on disclosures offer some guardrails for the industry, regulators have not focused much attention on the issue.

And there are no signs of slowing the ethical conflicts, especially in the digital marketing and advertising world, where Camp says "there's lots of smoke and mirrors, and it's hard to sometimes understand what you're actually looking at."

"Obviously, some influencers are more high-minded about the brands that they choose to associate with, but for those that are looking to just make money off of their eyeballs, they usually are hustling any which way they can," Camp told BI. "Anyone with an internet connection and an idea can write about their idea and aggregate eyeballs, so there's a lot of shit floating around in that space because there's really no filter, there's no barrier — so there's a very small percentage of cream that rises to that top."

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• "I have a blockbuster Trump story," a lawyer for ex-Playboy Bunny Karen McDougal teased in a text.
• "I will get you more than ANYONE," the National Enquirer's editor answered, adding, "You know why."
• Prosecutors say the ensuing text chain ensnares Trump in a conspiracy to alter the 2016 election.

There were veiled threats, laughable delay tactics, million-dollar demands.

And behind the scenes through it all, prosecutors allege, stood Donald Trump — a presidential candidate eager to quash the sordid tales of a porn star and Playboy Bunny on the brink of the 2016 election, but unwilling to part with a penny of his own to do so.

For nearly four hours on Tuesday, jurors in the Manhattan hush-money trial were led through long scrolls of text messages from the five months leading to Trump's election.

Their guide to these sometimes ribald texts was one of their authors, key prosecution witness Keith Davidson, an LA-based lawyer who repped ex-Bunny Karen McDougal and porn star Stormy Daniels.

Both women claim they had affairs with Trump during the early months of his marriage to Melania Trump.

As Trump listened from the defense table, Davidson described the frantic attempts to bury both women's stories by selling them to the National Enquirer.

Trump's then-attorney and "fixer," Michael Cohen, was the hyperactive front man for these two so-called "catch-and-kill" schemes, Davidson said.

But Trump was calling the shots, his testimony suggested.

"He was highly excitable — sort of a pants-on-fire kind of guy," Davidson said of Cohen.

Jurors smiled as the lawyer continued describing Cohen.

"Frequently, I'd be on the phone with him, and he'd take another call, and he'd be talking out of two ears," Davidson remembered on the witness stand.

"Sort of like that movie, 'Up,' where the dog says, 'Squirrel! Squirrel!'" he added to some laughter from the jury.

Cohen was a proxy for Trump, Davidson stressed Tuesday, making an important point for the prosecution.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has alleged that Cohen opened his own wallet to pay the $130,000 hush money payment that silenced Daniels 11 days before the 2016 election — but did so only for Trump's benefit.

Trump is charged with falsifying business documents to disguise as "legal fees" what were actually monthly reimbursement checks he paid to Cohen throughout 2017, his first year in office.

"Every single time I talked to Michael Cohen, he leaned on his close affiliation with Donald Trump," Davidson testified.

"It was part of his identity," the lawyer told jurors of Cohen. "He let me know it at every opportunity he could that he was working for Donald Trump."

Trump was so integral to the deals that his frugality nearly quashed the Daniels catch-and-kill effort, according to a series of texts between Davidson and the National Enquirer's then-editor-in-chief, Dylan Howard.

Trump was perilously "tight" when it came to paying hush money, the two men agreed in their texts.

"I can't believe Cohen let this go. It's going to be a shit show" if Daniels takes her story elsewhere, the Enquirer editor complained in an October 18, 2016 text shown to jurors on overhead screens.

"I bet," Daniels' lawyer texted back in agreement.

"All because trump[sic] is tight," the Enquirer editor texted back.

When Daniels' lawyer responded "Yup," the Enquirer editor responded, "I reckon that trump[sic] impersonator I hired has more cash."

"Lol," Daniels lawyer responded.

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass, who was conducting Davidson's direct examination, appeared eager to forge this link between Trump and the scheme to silence Daniels.

He asked his witness what he thought the Enquirer editor meant by calling Trump "tight."

"That Trump is frugal," Davidson answered.

"That they had this deal sort of on a silver platter," Davidson continued. "And the only reason it didn't 'fund' is that he didn't want to spend money."

Cohen's stall tactics on Trump's behalf were so obvious as to be laughable, the lawyer also testified.

At one point, Cohen blamed Yom Kippur for the delay in getting the $130,000 together, Davidson testified.

At another point, Cohen claimed the Trump Organization computer systems were, "quote, all fucked up," Davidson told the jury.

"He stated you can't believe what we're going through," Davidson testified, continuing to describe Cohen's stalling on the $130,000.

"The Secret Service is here, and there are so many firewalls," Davidson said Cohen stalled at another point.

"I never got your emails!" Cohen claimed at another point, the lawyer said.

"I called him and said, Michael, this is a very bad situation," he said he told Cohen.

"And then he said, 'God damn it, what do you expect me to do? My guy is in four, five different states'" campaigning, he said Cohen told him.

"I thought he was trying to kick the can down the road until after the election," Davidson added.

Jurors were told just that in opening statements.

Trump had hoped to forestall paying Daniels until the election, Steinglass had said in openings, after which it wouldn't matter if she told her story at all.

Meanwhile, Trump has fought the charges by distancing himself and his campaign from the payments to Cohen, which he's argued actually were legal fees.

Davidson on Tuesday led jurors through a half-year's worth of texts with the Enquirer editor.

"I have a blockbuster Trump story," he teased the editor in the June 7, 2016 text — the first the jurors saw on Tuesday.

That was the story of his client Karen McDougal, the former Playboy Bunny — and 1998 Playmate of the year — who says she had a ten-month affair with Trump that began in 2006.

"I will get you more than ANYONE," the eager National Enquirer editor answered less than a minute later, adding, "You know why…"

The "why" was Trump, according to the prosecution theory.

At one point, the two texting men — Enquirer editor Howard, and McDougal attorney Davidson — bartered over the former Bunny's story of a 10-month affair with Trump.

"Get me a price on McDougal," the editor texted on July 23, 2016.

"How about 1m now," her lawyer responded, asking $1 million for the story. "And 75k per year for the next 2 years as a fitness correspondent."

The editor looked askance at that high a figure.

"I'll take it to them," he responded. "But thinking it's more hundreds than millions."

Ultimately the Enquirer paid $150,000 to catch and kill McDougal's story, prosecutors say.

Trump has consistently denied sexual encounters with Daniels and McDougal.

The now-GOP-frontrunner has also denied that the money he paid Cohen throughout 2017 was for anything other than legitimate legal fees.

Davidson's testimony is scheduled to continue Thursday morning.

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