It’s Clear Who’s Ultimately to Blame for the Nvidia Scandal. And It Isn’t Jensen Huang.

The Slatest Another day, another reminder that it’s important to have a competent president. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Joel Saget/Getty Images and Alex Wong/Getty Images. This story is adapted from the Slatest newsletter. You can sign up here to get it in your inbox every day. It’s not every day that one of the president’s Cabinet secretaries goes on national television to blame one of his colleagues for a ballooning public scandal. Welcome to Donald Trump’s White House in the aftermath of Jensen Huang’s downfall. To refresh: Huang, the longtime CEO of the tech behemoth Nvidia, resigned yesterday after revelations that he’d had multiple extramarital affairs—including one with a suspected Chinese spy. Huang’s implosion is a problem for the administration because he’s a prominent Trump ally whose indiscretions appear to have let Beijing get its hands on Nvidia’s advanced semiconductor chips, boosting America’s chief rival in the race to build powerful artificial intelligence systems. Now the finger-pointing inside the administration over who’s to blame is spilling into public view. Let’s get into it. I seem to remember you writing about this already. What’s changed? Good memory. Besides Huang’s resignation, the biggest new development has been the administration’s increasingly frantic scramble to find a fall guy. On Wednesday, Axios reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had confronted Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick last week over the latter’s failure to block Nvidia from selling to Megaspeed, the Singapore-based company that Huang’s paramour reportedly used to funnel chips to China. (Lutnick’s department is supposed to ensure that overseas companies getting Nvidia chips aren’t a threat to U.S. national security.) Bessent and other top Trump officials believe Lutnick repeatedly stonewalled their efforts to cut off Megaspeed, including before the Huang scandal broke. Why Lutnick would do that isn’t totally clear, but it may have something to do with the millions of dollars’ worth of Nvidia stock that his sons’ company recently jettisoned. On Friday, Bessent took those tensions public. “Commerce,” he said when asked about the scandal on CNBC, “has the pen, and you will have to ask them about their internal processes.” Now even some congressional Republicans are demanding that Lutnick testify about what went wrong, and the president is reportedly considering firing him. Anything else I should know about Lutnick? This isn’t the first time he has caused trouble for the administration. As the Atlantic reported last year, Lutnick has publicly misrepresented trade deals, complicated negotiations with U.S. allies, and clashed with other Trump aides. Nor is l’affaire Huang the extent of the commerce secretary’s apparent missteps over Nvidia chips. According to the New York Times, Lutnick’s department has permitted chip sales to other suspicious firms with ties to China’s government, too. Through it all, though, Lutnick’s long friendship with the president has been enough to save him. So far I’m hearing some not-great things about one of Trump’s deputies. But how does the president himself figure into this? At the risk of paraphrasing a different presidential scandal, one major outstanding question is what Trump knew and when he knew it. Trump, who counts Huang as an ally and reportedly urged him this week to ride out the scandal, has claimed he didn’t know much about any Chinese espionage targeting the former CEO. But as the Times has reported, top U.S. officials first told Trump about it last year—after which he failed to stop Nvidia from selling chips to Megaspeed and appears not to have told Huang that he’d been consorting with a spy. So what should I make of all this?? For all his underlings’ attempts to assign blame, the reality is that the president owns this mess more than anyone. It obviously isn’t Trump’s fault that Huang decided to cheat on his wife, nor that he apparently did so with a foreign agent. But Trump has repeatedly argued that the U.S.–China battle for A.I. supremacy is existential—even as his inattention appears to have let China continue to access sensitive technology for months. And even if Lutnick did engage in the stalling tactics Bessent alleges, a president with his finger on the pulse and in full command of his administration should have been able to stop him—and would certainly have punished him for endangering U.S. national security by now. As it is, this president seems more interested in the I-beams going into his ballroom. Tolga Akdoğan We’re wrapping another big week of news on a day that many Americans consider unlucky. Thankfully, my colleagues have compiled some great reads to help you make it through Friday the 13th unscathed—and get your weekend off to a more auspicious start. Today’s traditions: Getting a tattoo has become a spooky Friday the 13th tradition. Shirin Ali talked to a tattoo artist about how the industry capitalized on this unofficial holiday. Superstitions of days gone by: In 1907, a researcher asked college students to record all the superstitions they knew, and then compiled their answers into a book. The result is a fascinating collection of American folk beliefs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Make sure to be careful when carrying any gardening tools—and keep your eyes peeled for a white horse! Scenes from Friday the 13th: In the slasher franchise, hockey mask–wearing serial killer Jason Voorhees just won’t stay dead. Instead, he keeps coming back to life after meeting his demise in all manner of grisly ways. Slate rounded up all of Jason’s zany reanimations, which include a lightning strike, an encounter with a meddling psychic girl, and more. Your favorite good-luck charms: People turn all sorts of objects into talismans. There are the classic four-leaf clovers and horseshoes, but also things like a special pair of underwear or a favorite baseball card. Mark Menjivar’s book The Luck Archive explores the everyday items that people consider lucky. On that superstitious note, time for me to take my leave. Enjoy the weekend, and see you back here on Monday!