Walmart+ will finally launch in September. Can it compete with Amazon Prime?

The Walmart+ membership program launches September 15. Can it offer an alternative to Amazon Prime? | Walmart

One Walmart executive says the new program is “the ultimate life hack”

Walmart’s much-anticipated membership program, Walmart+, will finally launch nationwide September 15, the company announced today, about six months after the Covid-19 pandemic pushed the retailer to delay its original timing. The brick-and-mortar retail giant needs the program to be successful to stop top-spending customers from fleeing to Amazon Prime.

Walmart+ will cost $98 a year, or $12.95 a month, and focus mainly on unlimited delivery of groceries and other general merchandise from Walmart stores that will be delivered as soon as the same day they are ordered. Members also get fuel discounts at Walmart gas stations and those of partners, as well as access to “Scan & Go” technology which allows shoppers to use smartphones to scan goods at Walmart stores and exit without stopping to pay a cashier. The company says it will add more perks in the future. Recode previously reported these may include a branded credit card, early availability on product deals, and potentially access to a popular streaming video service.

Walmart wants the membership program to be “the ultimate life hack” for customers, Walmart Chief Customer Officer Janey Whiteside told Recode in an interview on Monday, arguing that its perks will save customers both time and money.

At the same time, Walmart+ will undoubtedly attract comparisons to Amazon’s Prime program, the ultra popular delivery and entertainment membership program that boasts more than 150 million members worldwide and has developed into a retail industry wrecking ball since its launch in 2005. Amazon Prime includes express delivery of millions of products (including groceries), video streaming of a large library of TV shows and movies, music streaming, and other perks. It now costs $119 a year, and Prime customers spend more and shop more frequently than non-Prime members.

And, most importantly for Walmart, more than half of Walmart’s top-spending families are now Prime members, as Recode previously reported. Which begs the question: Will they really subscribe to both membership programs?

When asked about comparisons to Prime on Monday, Whiteside told Recode that “we didn’t necessarily launch Walmart+ to compete with anything else.” And that answer makes sense; the head-to-head comparison between the services does not look great for Walmart when considering online customers who value the widest selection of goods or the longest list of perks.

In addition to the unlimited delivery perk — which is basically just a rebrand of Walmart’s existing Delivery Unlimited membership — Walmart+ only features two other benefits at launch. One is fuel discounts of up to 5 cents per gallon at Walmart, Murphy USA, and Murphy Express gas stations (Sam’s Club gas stations are slated to be included soon). The other perk is access to Walmart’s “Scan & Go” technology for in-store shopping, which allows shoppers to scan items with their phone, scan their phone at a self-checkout kiosk, and walk out of the store without stopping to pay. Walmart briefly tested, but discontinued the tool, two years ago. Walmart’s bet is that the mix of online, in-store, and on-the-go perks, like fuel discounts, will carry unique appeal. Whiteside said that “deepening a relationship further will mean we will get an even greater share of wallet from those customers.” Of course, some Walmart shoppers will also value the $21 difference between the annual fee of Walmart+ and Amazon Prime.

Amazon has made moves in recent years for Prime to appeal to households with less disposable income that historically have favored shopping at Walmart. Amazon added a monthly payment option for Prime fees in 2016, a 45 percent Prime fee discount for those on government assistance in 2017, and most recently, ways for Prime customers to pay for orders with cash. By early 2017, Amazon Prime membership growth was strongest in the US for households making less than $50,000 a year, according to a study by Robert W. Baird & Co.

The success of Walmart+ will likely hinge on how many customers are attracted to the core grocery delivery component of it. While Walmart’s overall grocery business is larger than Amazon’s and its prices are often cheaper, one fear is that top Walmart customers could eventually turn to Amazon for groceries as they get sucked further into the Prime suite of perks. Sources previously told Recode that some Walmart execs believe that top-spending Walmart families that subscribe to Amazon Prime will still be attracted to Walmart+ because its fresh grocery prices are often lower than those Amazon offers.

In the past, some Walmart executives have opposed a paid membership program, seeing Walmart’s competitive advantage as giving shoppers everyday low prices without the need to splurge on a membership fee. Whiteside promised that the low prices will remain even for those who don’t splurge for the bonus services.

“In no way does this membership program take anything away from customer who don’t choose to, or can’t afford to, engage with this,” he said.

On the company’s earnings call earlier this month, CEO Doug McMillon stressed the flexibility of Walmart’s customer offerings.

“We’re going to have multiple ways to serve them, and those families will decide in that moment how they want to shop,” McMillon said. “And sometimes they’ll be in the store, and sometimes they’ll do pickup, and sometimes they’ll do delivery, and many of them will buy a membership, and when they do they’ll get benefits from that.”

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Trump alleges Biden controlled by people in ‘dark shadows’

President Donald Trump alleged unnamed people in “dark shadows” are controlling Democratic nominee Joe Biden in an interview with Laura Ingraham that aired Monday night on Fox News.

In discussing what he characterized as anarchists and thugs terrorizing American cities, Trump said, “People that you've never heard of, people that are in the dark shadows” are pulling the strings of the Democratic nominee.

Ingraham asked the president to elaborate, saying, “That sounds like a conspiracy theory.“

Trump specified: “There are people that are on the streets, there are people that are controlling the streets.”

The president then offered further description of what he characterized as secret plotters, without providing specifics that could allow for the verification of the story.

“We had somebody get on a plane from a certain city this weekend. And in the plane, it was almost completely loaded with thugs, wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms, with gear and this and that,“ Trump told the Fox News host.

He added: “A lot of the people were on the plane to do big damage.”

Ingraham asked him for further detail. Saying it was under investigation, Trump replied, “I’ll tell you sometime.”

Trump also offered theories about unrest in some American cities, alleging, for instance, that “Portland has been burning for many years, for decades it's been burning" and repeatedly asserting that protesters there wanted to kill Mayor Ted Wheeler.

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Alabama’s Nick Saban leads players, coaches in BLM march

The group march was in protest of police brutality against Black men and women.

University of Alabama student-athletes took part in a “March for Change” in Tuscaloosa on Monday, led by football coach Nick Saban. 

The event was in protest of police brutality against Black men and women, and occurred a week after the Wisconsin police shooting of Jacob Blake.

Saban, the Crimson Tide footballers, coaches, staffers and other athletes, marched on campus from the Mal M. Moore Athletic Facility to Foster Auditorium, where segregationist Gov. George Wallace blocked two Black students from entering in 1963, per WVTM.com.

Read More: Nuggets’ Jamal Murray gets emotional over BLM after 50-point game

Similar marches have been held at schools such as Oklahoma, Kansas, Duke, Baylor, Mississippi and Mississippi State.

#BREAKING: Nick Saban leads #Bama football players, coaches on march on campus for social justice @whnt pic.twitter.com/FbB6yqxq0I

— Shevaun Bryan (@finessebryan) August 31, 2020

“For certain, we can’t let this momentum die,” Crimson Tide tailback Najee Harris said. “This has to be an ongoing movement until change happens.

He added, “We must do more as a team and as individuals to keep this movement going.”

During the demonstration, Harris wore a T-shirt with the message “Defend Black Lives.”

Several players held signs with messages about “Black Lives Matter” and one sign read “Until Black Lives Matter” on the front and “All lives can’t matter” on the back.

“Sports has always created a platform for social change,” Saban said. “For each of us involved in sports, I think we have a responsibility and obligation to do that in a responsible way and use our platform in a positive way to try to create social change in positive ways. Through this process, I’ve learned a lot from our players. I don’t get to see the world through the same lens that a lot of players do, that they live the world in,” he continued.

“Today, I’m like a proud parent,” Saban said outside Foster Hall after leading the march. “I’m proud of our team. I’m proud of our messengers and I’m proud of our message.”

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The clash over Kenosha: Biden flips script on Trump as campaign heats up

Hours apart and on different stages, Joe Biden and Donald Trump leveled scathing criticisms at one another Monday over their handling of the violent protests raging in two U.S. cities.

The crux of their clash: Whose leadership poses the most dangerous threat to the country?

With the conventions over and the final post-Labor Day leg of the race a week away, the day marked the start of a more urgent phase of the campaign. On display was a stark contrast between two visions of how to confront an inflection point on race and the power of law enforcement.

Biden went first. In a major speech in Pittsburgh, he offered a sweeping indictment of Trump’s America, highlighting failures in his handling of the coronavirus and portraying the president as so desperate to hold on to power that he is resorting to fear and hatred as a campaign strategy.

“He keeps telling us if he were president you would feel safe. Well he is president, whether he knows it or not,” Biden said. “Does anyone think there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is reelected?”

After days of Trump contending that Biden was a tool of a radical movement sowing discord in American cities, Biden tried to put the president on his heels. Biden called on Trump to denounce all forms of violence and accused him of fanning unrest with streams of tweets, including some that seemed to support confrontations in the streets.

“The road back begins now, in this campaign. You know me. You know my heart, and you know my story, my family’s story,” Biden said in the speech, which was carried live on several cable networks. “Ask yourself: Do I look to you like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Really?"

He added, "I want a safe America — safe from Covid, safe from crime and looting, safe from racially motivated violence, safe from bad cops. And, let’s be crystal clear: Safe from four more years of Donald Trump.”

Biden spoke on the eve of Trump’s Tuesday trip to Kenosha, Wis., the site of deadly clashes and destruction after the shooting of Jacob Blake last week. The president is planning to meet with law enforcement officials, ignoring Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' plea to stay away, lest Trump ratchet up tensions further.

Trump has claimed credit for bringing calm to Kenosha, even though it was Evers who initially deployed the National Guard. Some local Democrats, however, have complained that Biden took too long to denounce the violence. They fear that Trump's law-and-order message might sway swing voters who want an end to the mayhem.

But Trump seemed to cede whatever ground he might have gained when he turned to social media and not only refused to condemn violence from some of his own supporters, but retweeted a video of his supporters attacking protesters. His spokesperson later said he hadn’t watched it.

Biden, in his speech, dared the president to reject violence perpetrated by his own supporters. Yet hours later at a White House briefing, Trump refused to do so, even when he was asked about his supporters shooting pepper spray and paint balls at protesters.

Biden's Monday speech took on Trump directly in a way the Democrat had not during his convention speech two weeks ago, when he did not utter the president's name. The Democrat called out Trump by name, insisting the president owned the violence in Kenosha, Portland and other American cities, after four years of fanning racial tensions. In doing so, he also defended the Obama administration's record on crime.

After months of test-driving ways to brand Biden, Trump and his allies have settled on painting him as an unwitting instrument of socialists and left-wing radicals. They say Biden is too oblivious to understand he’s being exploited, and too weak to buck their orthodoxy in the rare times when he does.

But each time Trump has tried to tag Biden, the Democrat emerged with the upper hand and his lead in polls has grown.

The run-ins follow a familiar pattern. Trump bet that Biden could not defy growing calls from the left to defund the police. In response, Biden said he not only opposes defunding police but wants to spend more on law enforcement. Trump said Biden supports banning hydraulic fracturing. Biden said unequivocally he does not.

And Trump has repeatedly returned to the idea that Biden would refuse to condemn rioting so as not to offend liberal voters. But Biden has repeatedly denounced the people rioting, looting and setting fires to property.

“None of this is protesting — it’s lawlessness, plain and simple,” Biden said Monday.

When Trump took the podium at the White House later, he tried to blame Biden and his party for the violence wracking cities. But Trump refused to condemn all of the actors contributing to the chaos, including right-wing supporters of his campaign. He said the men wielding paintball guns were using the substance as “a defensive mechanism."

“Paint is not bullets,” he said.

But when asked about Kyle Rittenhouse — the 17-year old charged with five felonies after shooting three people last week in Kenosha, two fatally — Trump said Rittenhouse was attacked so violently that he could have been killed.

“You saw the same tape as I saw and he was trying to get away,” Trump said. “It's under investigation, but I guess he was in very big trouble. He probably would've been killed.”

Rittenhouse has been charged as an adult with two counts of first degree homicide and one count of attempted homicide.

Trump also said he declined to meet with the family of Blake because he was uncomfortable with their request to have lawyers present.

Trump has been highly critical of Biden for having not yet visited Wisconsin. Amid the pandemic, Biden moved his acceptance speech from Milwaukee to Wilmington, Delaware, citing safety concerns.

“Joe Biden has refused to travel to Wisconsin for over 670 days, so it should not come as a surprise that he is refusing to visit the Badger State and address the ongoing riots and violence," said Trump campaign spokesperson Samantha Zager. "Despite claiming he would actually start campaigning for president, it’s clear Biden prefers to hide from his failed record and the Democrat failures to protect our cities."

Biden is preparing for a more robust travel schedule after Labor Day but might visit Wisconsin later this week, according to the campaign.

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Belarus opposition leader: Dozens disappeared after protests

They are Europe's "disappeared."

Dozens of people arrested while protesting the Belarus presidential election have vanished and remain unaccounted for — and the EU should not forget them, opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said Monday.

In an interview with POLITICO, Tikhanovskaya, who fled to neighboring Lithuania in fear for her own safety, described her missing supporters as political prisoners made to disappear by the regime of strongman Alexander Lukashenko, who is still clinging to power despite continuing widespread protests and labor strikes over the disputed August 9 election.

"What I want to tell is that a lot of people in Belarus now are political prisoners," Tikhanovskaya said, speaking by videoconference. "They just are in jail without any court, and they are in there only for their, I don't know, for their wish to talk about what's going on in Belarus, about their desire to live in a free country.

"After the demonstrations," she said in halting but clear English, "we still don't know where about 70 people are and they are miss[ing] and it's a very big problem for us because it shouldn't be in a European country in the 21st century that people are miss[ing] and authorities don't do anything just to find them.

"Everybody has seen all the violence that our authorities have committed, our police committed toward all these peaceful people," Tikhanovskaya said. "And not one criminal case was organized to investigate this, you know these crimes, as if it's normal. No, it's not normal and cases should be opened against every policeman that beat these people."

Tikhanovskaya spoke to POLITICO a day after tens of thousands of people again took to the streets in Minsk, and Lukashenko deployed large contingents of riot police, and cordoned off key buildings, including the residence of the embattled leader who was celebrating his 66th birthday.

She expressed confidence that the protests, along with labor strikes, would continue until Lukashenko relinquished power, and she suggested that his opponents were prepared for a long struggle that could take on new forms.

"Strikes are extremely important and also strikes can have different forms," she said. "There are many ways, and it is not only through demonstrations.

"I know that this will not stop," she added. "You should understand ... we woke up ... we will not accept him anymore."

In the interview, Tikhanovskaya restated her commitment to leading the country only to new, free elections, and said she had no plan to serve long-term as president. She said that the release of political prisoners, including her husband Sergei Tikhanovsky, as well as the replacement of the country's entire central election commission remained top preconditions for a new vote.

She acknowledged that she is now a "national leader" and "I can consider myself to be a national elected president," but she said, "I don't feel myself comfortable in this position.

"I understand that people voted for me," she said. "But they voted for me not as president, they voted for me as a person who will lead the country to new elections.

"I am not going to be involved in new elections and I don't have a right to participate in them because I promised my people that I will not take part," she said. "My mission will be over ... when we will organize these elections."

She added that it would be up to her husband to decide if he still wanted to run for president after being released from prison and she said she was not sure that he had full information about the recent developments in the country given his incarceration.

Throughout the interview, Tikhanovskaya sought to portray the protests as a domestic political issue without a larger geopolitical narrative pitting Russia and former Soviet territories against the West, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and others have tried to assert.

She also expressed relatively little concern about Russian intervention and seemed to go out of her way to avoid provoking the Kremlin, even refraining from criticizing the Russian government over the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption protester who has become a nemesis of President Vladimir Putin.

"Of course we are against any such cases, any violence, any poisoning of people, it shouldn't be solved like this, it's absolutely inhuman," she said of Navalny, who is currently receiving medical treatment in Germany. "But I can't, you know, talk about this, because there should be real investigation in this case. And I can't blame anybody without investigation."

Tikhanovskaya said it was up to foreign political leaders levying sanctions against Belarus, including EU leaders, to decide if Lukashenko should personally face sanctions. And she paused for a long while when asked if Lukashenko should be brought to justice before an international tribunal in The Hague.

"You know, I think I am not ready to answer this question openly because I think that at the moment at least, at the moment, it's the responsibility of the Belarusian people to stand for their freedom, for their rights. And you know I have to think over your question, because I never thought about this problem from this point of view. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm, I will think it over."

She said the decision by Lukashenko's regime to strip the credentials of many foreign journalists was indicative of the government's effort to hide evidence of police violence and other abuses. And she said opposition forces would remain peaceful and were willing to negotiate with anyone in a position to bring about a new round of free, fair elections.

She also defended her decision to leave for Lithuania, saying it was necessary not only for her personal safety but has allowed her to communicate with international leaders and publicize the plight of her supporters. Still, despite expressing gratitude for the support of outside powers, she urged that Belarus be allowed to stand on its own.

"We are peaceful people and we don't want anything except to solve this problem," she said. "We want these people to go away and to build our country with a new president. It's not about geopolitics. It's our internal affair and we ask for respect of our sovereignty. We ask every country — but in case we need any kind of help in these negotiations, in case we need mediators, we ask to just be ready to help us."

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