Fourteen months ago, the sentence “the Secretary of State has just learned he was fired via Twitter” probably seemed farfetched—maybe just slightly less ludicrous than the suggestion, by the president’s chief of staff, that the Cabinet official was warned of his imminent dismissal while on the can. But in Donald Trump’s world, where we all now reside, that‘s a totally normal set of events that actually happened. And now, we’ve learned that the situation was even more batshit behind the scenes, with the president apparently coming this close to making the sort of personnel decision that would’ve made tasking Ivanka with running the C.D.C. during an outbreak of the bubonic plague seem reasonable. Politico reports that before he decided he couldn’t take one more second working in the Trump administration, Gary Cohn was under strong consideration for the C.I.A. director job left vacant by Mike Pompeo, who’s set to replace Rex Tillerson at State. Yes, that Gary Cohn.

As National Economic Council director, ol’ Gar was more qualified than anyone working for Team Trump by a factor of 1,000. However, though he is many things—a former Goldman Sachs president, a shrewd trader, a guy who stands up for what he believes in (no indiscriminate tariffs!)—he also has zero background in national security. Appointing him to lead the Central Intelligence Agency would be like hiring me, your humble Levin Report auteur, to perform brain surgery. Of course, to Trump, this made Cohn the perfect man for the job, by the same logic—you have no background for a job that requires a high level of expertise? You’re hired!—that probably informed decisions like the one to name Betsy “What are these things you call ‘books’?” DeVos education secretary and to reportedly consider firing scandal magnet David Shulkin at Veterans Affairs and replacing him with Rick “Where am I? Who am I?” Perry. According to reporters Eliana Johnson, Ben White, and Andrew Restuccia, Trump “informally offered Cohn the position, telling him he thought he’d be a good fit for the job, and Cohn agreed to take it.”

In the end, of course, the president decided to name Pompeo’s deputy, Torture Queen Gina Haspel, to the C.I.A. role instead, and Cohn decided to run as far away as physically possible from Idiot Island. And while it’s unclear why Trump changed his mind—it’s possible this was just another instance of him letting words tumble from his mouth at random and not actually ever intending to make good on what he said or, more likely, he was smitten by her role running one of the agency’s most brutal “black sites,”—the real kicker is that we probably would have slept better with the wholly unqualified Cohn at the helm:

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Markets drop on the news Mark Zuckerberg is an unrepentant a-hole

The sell-off seemingly had a little something to do with this:

Lawmakers and regulators across the U.S. and Europe are calling for investigations into Facebook amid revelations that personal data from 50 million of the social media giant’s users was secretly harvested by a data analytics firm that worked on the Trump campaign.

The public outcry over the data breach, which includes demands that Facebook founder and C.E.O. Mark Zuckerberg testify before Congress, could spark new calls for the government to monitor privacy rules and political advertising on the social media network. The company’s shares, meanwhile, are in free fall, with the company losing $40 billion in market value since Friday and wiping away billions of dollars of Zuckerberg’s personal fortune. . . . The political and financial blows to the company began after The New York Times and the U.K.’s Observer published blockbuster reports over the weekend showing that the analytics firm Cambridge Analytica secretly obtained the personal data of millions of Facebook users. In 2014, the firm worked with Aleksandr Kogan, a scholar at Cambridge University, to administer a personality test through a Facebook app in which users agreed to allow their personal information to be collected.

But it turned out that this app didn’t just scrape the personal data of the roughly 270,000 users who agreed to take the personality quiz. It also scraped info from the friends of people who took it. That, in turn, meant tens of millions of Facebook users had their data collected without their permission or knowledge.

Cambridge Analytica, of course, is the firm funded in part by hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer that was hired by the Trump campaign in 2016, and which used the data it collected from Facebook, according to the Times, for “developing techniques that underpinned its work” for the campaign. And speaking of the data miners . . .

In an undercover investigation by Channel 4 News, the company’s chief executive Alexander Nix said the British firm secretly campaigns in elections across the world. This includes operating through a web of shadowy front companies, or by using sub-contractors.

In one exchange, when asked about digging up material on political opponents, Mr Nix said they could “send some girls around to the candidate’s house,” adding that Ukrainian girls “are very beautiful, I find that works very well.”

In another he said: “We’ll offer a large amount of money to the candidate, to finance his campaign in exchange for land for instance, we’ll have the whole thing recorded, we’ll blank out the face of our guy and we post it on the Internet.”

In a statement, a Cambridge Analytica spokesman told Channel 4: “We entirely refute any allegation that Cambridge Analytica or any of its affiliates use entrapment, bribes, or so-called ‘honey-traps’ for any purpose whatsoever . . . We routinely undertake conversations with prospective clients to try to tease out any unethical or illegal intentions . . .”

For its part, Wall Street is apparently worried the allegations that Facebook basically puts a sign on its user data that says “Come and get it!” will affect future earnings, hence the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite suffering their worst day since February’s correction. “The Facebook stuff is extraordinarily important for the overall market,” Michael Purves, Weeden & Co.’s chief global strategist, told Bloomberg. “If the regulatory clouds come on Facebook, certainly Google and Amazon will face increasing questions about their ability to generate outsized earnings growth if the regulators are going to be beating them.”

In other tech news . . .

Uber has pumped the breaks on its self-driving car tests, which is probably a good idea in light of this:

A woman in Tempe, Ariz., has died after being hit by a self-driving car operated by Uber, in what appears to be the first known death of a pedestrian struck by an autonomous vehicle on a public road.

The Uber vehicle was in autonomous mode with a human safety driver at the wheel when it struck the woman, who was crossing the street outside of a crosswalk, the Tempe police said in a statement. . . .

The fatal crash will most likely raise questions about regulations for self-driving cars. Testing of self-driving cars is already underway for vehicles that have a human driver ready to take over if something goes wrong, but states are starting to allow companies to test cars without a person in the driver’s seat. This month, California said that, in April, it would start allowing companies to test autonomous vehicles without anyone behind the wheel.

According to New York Magazine, after a man died in self-driving Tesla, Anthony Levandowski, the then-head of Uber’s driverless car unit, allegedly told engineers they weren’t being aggressive enough, saying, “I’m pissed we didn’t have the first death.” (Levandowski has denied this.)

Bonus Watch ‘18: Bank of America Whistleblowers

The Securities and Exchange Commission confirmed that it’s been a very good year for whistleblowers uncovering wrongdoing at Bank of America, with the regulator doling out its biggest-ever award of $83 million to three unnamed individuals who helped the S.E.C. reach a $415 million settlement with the bank in 2016 over accusations it “misused customer cash and securities to generate profits, putting billions of dollars of customer assets at risk over a roughly six-year period.” Don’t spend it all in one place!

Point72 Asset Management president is gonna take off now for no reason in particular

To hear founder Steve Cohen tell it, Doug Haynes is leaving the firm he joined just a few years prior because, having crossed off all the items on his to-do list, his work at the Stamford-based hedge fund is now done. In a memo to employees on Friday, Cohen wrote that after helming Point72 during the “family office” era, and helping raised $3 billion from new investors, he and Doug “have taken stock and agreed that this is a natural point to make way for a new, different type of leader.” And there is definitely no way at all his departure has anything to do with this:

[A lawsuit by associate director Lauren Bonner] . . . accused Haynes of having the word “pussy” scrawled on a white board in his office and leaving it there for weeks. The suit, filed in federal court in New York in February, also alleged that the firm paid women less money than male counterparts for doing similar jobs. Point72 denied the claims, and asked a judge to seal her complaint and force the claims to be heard in arbitration.

In a statement, Point72 said: “Steve Cohen wants to make sure that his firm is living up to its stated values and fostering a respectful workplace.”

Elsewhere!

Goldman Warns Returns Are Dropping Fast (Bloomberg)

Trump Accidentally Helps Free Trade in Latin America (N.Y.T.)

From a $126 Million Bonus to Jail: The Fall of a Star Trader (N.Y.T.)

Ex-Bear Stearns C.E.O. Is Off Wall Street but Still Mixing It Up at the Bridge Table (W.S.J.)

Roger McNamee: Users are recognizing Facebook is “not the fun and games, innocent place they thought it was” (CNBC)

Large U.S. retailers urge Trump not to hit China with tariffs (Reuters)

For Bankers Transplanted by Brexit, a Guide to Living in Frankfurt (N.Y.T.)

Why Trump Slayed His Own Masters of the Universe (Politico)

D.C. lawmaker says recent snowfall caused by “Rothschilds controlling the climate” (Washington Post)

Police raid illegal gambling room disguised as Zumba studio (UPI)