As President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani attempts to alter the course of the election through the leaking of materials allegedly from the computer of Hunter Biden, fellow Republicans—including some in the president’s orbit—are holding their breath. Some of Trump’s staunchest allies conceded recently that they are reluctant to attack former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter over the more salacious content purportedly […]
Donald J. Trump
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MIAMI — For nearly an hour on Monday, Alan Herrera stood in a line to cast his early vote for Joe Biden in the heart of one of Donald Trump’s Latino strongholds. The 33-year-old Honduran American slowly inched closer to the entrance of the John F. Kennedy Library in Hialeah, a predominantly Cuban American city in the coveted swing state of Florida where the president and […]
In the two-and-a-half days immediately following the New York Post’s hit job on Hunter Biden, Fox News reportedly dedicated three times as much airtime to the former vice president’s son as it did to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, at least one prominent Fox host seems to be realizing that it’s not working. During a preview segment for the final debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, […]
If The View were a horror movie—and sometimes it’s not that far off—Joy Behar would be the final girl. The comic, who looks better than any 78-year-old has any right to, is the only original panelist left on the daytime talk show, which is currently in its 24th season. When I reach Behar by phone, there’s audible commotion in the background. After telling the background noisemakers, […]
With less than three weeks before Election Day and the coronavirus pandemic still raging, Donald Trump wants voters to consider some very important things. Like did Osama bin Laden survive the 2011 Navy SEAL raid on his compound by using a body double, and did former Vice President Joe Biden then order the murder of Navy SEALs to cover that fact up? Did Biden then order […]
Huntergate was meant to be the WikiLeaks 2.0. Trumpworld hoped the story of the contents of Hunter’s laptop would mimic the trajectory of the story about the contents of Anthony Weiner’s laptop. It was literally a reprise of October 2020. Rudy Giuliani hoped another laptop might save the self-devouring Ouroboros snake of fuckery that is the Trump campaign. Hunter Biden, of course, had a drug problem. […]
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer accused President Donald Trump on Sunday of “inciting” domestic terrorism by repeatedly attacking her at his rallies, calling the “Lock her up!” chants the president has encouraged even in the wake of a kidnapping plot against her “disturbing.” During a rally in Michigan on Saturday, the president appeared to dismiss what cops and the FBI have called a violent, militia-infused scheme to […]
After running a cold open that mocked NBC’s controversial Trump town hall, Saturday Night Live also dedicated a portion of this week’s “Weekend Update” segment to flame the network. After Colin Jost roasted the president for hosting more “coronavirus giveaways across the country,” Michael Che went in on his home network for giving the president a platform. “What can I say?” Che said. “We have a […]
NBC stirred plenty of controversy this week by granting Donald Trump his own town hall in the same time slot as Joe Biden’s broadcast—but the decision seems even more cynical than some critics alleged when you realize how much Saturday Night Live maestro Lorne Michaels and his merry band of comedians must have been drooling at the prospect. Saturday night’s cold open kicked off the show, […]
President Donald Trump, staring down a double-digit polling deficit with less than three weeks before Election Day, has resorted to trying to make one of his vintage conspiracy theories a hit in syndication: the idea that former Vice President Joe Biden is in a steep stage of cognitive decline and is only kept lucid by a mysterious cocktail of prescription drugs. “We can’t have a leader […]
On Friday night, Real Time host Bill Maher weighed in on Trump’s unhinged, sweaty, hour-long ragefest on NBC Thursday with Savannah Guthrie, wherein the president defended the batshit-insane conspiracy theory QAnon, which claims that the Democrats and Hollywood are killing and raping babies (and extracting their fear for medicine), as well as his decision to retweet another wacky conspiracy theory about the bin Laden raid. “The […]
At first glance, the small group assembled outside Pornhub’s L.A. office might have looked like employees. They surrounded the building in black T-shirts with white script, framed by the adult site’s signature orange box. Instead of the standard logo, however, the tees read “Traffickinghub.” The sparse and socially distant protest, which happens every week, had been organized by the West Coast arm of Knock Out Abuse, […]
An honest question: If Donald Trump were trying to lose the presidency, what would he have done differently? Not much, if you ask me. No, I’m not suggesting Trump wants to lose so he can be a martyr and quit having to do any real work. This theory, which I see as the triumph of hope over optimism, continues to persist (at some points, the hope […]
Rudy Giuliani thinks it’s hilarious. He says the questions mounting around him—including those about whether his efforts to dump Hunter Biden’s documents and photos are part of some foreign election-interference operation—are “a bunch of bullshit.” He’s unconcerned about intelligence assessments that one of his former associates was a Russian agent, a proposition that he gave more or less even odds. In fact, Giuliani said, he has […]
Former National Security Adviser John Bolton repeatedly told his staff to actively remove themselves from conversations and meetings with Rudy Giuliani after Bolton received warnings from intelligence officials that the president’s personal lawyer was propagating conspiracy theories that aligned with a Russian operation to undermine the 2020 presidential election. Bolton even warned his subordinates to avoid meetings in which Giuliani or his agenda might be raised. […]
As Savannah Guthrie grilled Donald Trump on QAnon at Trump’s town hall event, he did his usual lying and dodging and then whined to Guthrie about Antifa and asked her: “Why aren’t you asking Joe Biden questions about, why doesn’t he condemn Antifa?” Let’s settle this. Joe Biden does not have to denounce Antifa. He’s done so, anyway, but even if he hadn’t, he has utterly […]
Americans saw two men last night in the closing days of their respective pursuits of the highest office in the land, and their split-screen town halls clarified and catalyzed an understanding of this race in a way that their one debate so far did not. It was one more sign of a Trump campaign in total collapse; broke, broken, and unmoored. As Donald Trump was eviscerated […]
When the New York Post this week began publishing a series of stories on Hunter Biden, conservatives supporting President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign were openly ecstatic. But veterans of cycles past urged caution, not just because the reports were opaquely sourced and—it appeared—dubiously obtained, but because if history is any guide, they’re not guaranteed to move votes. “The nature of the news environment has just crowded […]
It was another balancing act for Joe Biden tonight, and if Donald Trump hadn’t killed our outrage receptors, many of us would probably find the confusion truly alarming. Even if you’re convinced that Biden is, by far, the lesser of two evils, it’s still worth taking a minute to stop to consider what we might be getting ourselves into with Biden and the Democrats. It ain’t […]
Dealt dreadfully lousy cards—that is, widespread and justified criticism of NBCUniversal and its traumatized news division for hastily gifting Donald Trump an hour of free airtime at the same moment that Joe Biden was doing his previously scheduled town hall over on ABC—Today show co-host Savannah Guthrie did not fold. Quite the contrary, she managed to burnish her journalistic reputation, if not that of her employer, […]
On Thursday night, Jimmy Kimmel escalated his feud with NBC over their questionable decision to give in to President Trump’s demands and air a town hall with him at the same time as Joe Biden’s over on ABC. Given that Trump’s interview would also air on MSNBC and CNBC, the ratings-obsessed commander-in-chief would surely garner bigger ratings and also siphon viewers from his opponent. “Presidential debate […]
“With three weeks to go until Election Day, and millions of votes already cast, coronavirus remains the top issue for America,” Trevor Noah said on Thursday’s episode of The Daily Show. “And any normal president would be laser-focused on getting corona under control, helping businesses stay afloat, keeping schools open. But Donald Trump is not a normal president.” Instead, Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani are […]
On one channel, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. On the other, a rerun of Celebrity Deathmatch. Or, at least, that’s how it felt. After more than a week of inter-campaign sniping, furious Twitter denouncements, fretful consultations with public health experts, and a last-minute surprise scheduling coup, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden squared off on dueling town hall stages—one on NBC, the other on ABC. […]
GREENSBORO, N.C.—When he arrived at the polls to vote for the first time on Thursday, Ricardo Lopez-Salazar was on edge. “On the way over here I was kind of nervous,” Lopez-Salazar, an 18-year old student at Guilford Technical Community College, told The Daily Beast. Soon enough, a Republican poll observer stared directly at him, just days after Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to show up early […]
C-SPAN has suspended longtime political editor and senior executive producer Steve Scully indefinitely for lying that his Twitter feed was hijacked last week. “I falsely claimed that my Twitter account had been hacked. These were both errors in judgement for which I am totally responsible for. I ask for [my colleagues’] forgiveness as I try to move forward in a moment of reflection and disappointment in […]
President Donald Trump continued his attacks on Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Thursday, calling the Democratic lawmaker a “dictator” as authorities announced charges against a 14th suspect in the thwarted plot to kidnap her and violently overthrow the government. “Michigan, she has to open up. [Whitmer] wants to be a dictator in Michigan and the people can’t stand her,” Trump said Thursday in a FOX Business […]
Whoopi Goldberg just came out and said it Thursday morning. She does not believe President Donald Trump ever tested positive for COVID-19. During a discussion on The View about the president resuming his large campaign rallies as coronavirus cases continue to rise across the country, Goldberg said: “You know what? The more he talks, the less I think he had it, personally. That’s just me, that’s […]
Elizabeth Marvel is as tickled by the lame joke as everyone seems to be while making it. The stage and screen actor, best known for roles on Homeland and House of Cards, stars in Hulu’s Helstrom, the latest TV series tie-in to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), based on characters from Marvel Comics. She’s Elizabeth Marvel, about to star in Marvel’s Helstrom. Marvel and Marvel. Get […]
President Trump’s influential supporter Rupert Murdoch is telling close associates he believes Joe Biden will win the election in a landslide. The Australian-born billionaire is disgusted by Trump’s handling of COVID-19, remarking that the president is his own worst enemy, that he is not listening to advice about how best to handle the pandemic, and that he’s creating a never-ending crisis for his administration, according to […]
It’s always confusing when Black celebrities gather around to pontificate about what needs to be done for Black America, like rapper Ice Cube, CNN pundit Van Jones, and others did on Jada Pinkett Smith’s Red Table Talk this week. In the U.S., we’re supposed to be interested in political and historical analyses by crafty capitalists rather than by those who are currently living under the failed […]
During his late-night monologue on ABC Wednesday night, Jimmy Kimmel waded into the brewing controversy over dueling town hall events happening Thursday on both his network and NBC. “You know, there was supposed to be a debate tomorrow night, but since Trump would not agree to the virtual format that they wanted to have because he tested positive for the coronavirus, he backed out altogether,” the […]
Rudy Giuliani’s latest effort to push more dirt on the Bidens weeks before the 2020 presidential election had some important backers—chief among them, the president of the United States. In recent weeks, Donald Trump was made aware of an alleged secret trove of material about Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings and private life, and was keen on getting it out into the public domain as soon as […]
Pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly on Tuesday halted one of two trials of a major new novel coronavirus therapy after independent safety monitors observed an unspecified problem with the testing. The Data Safety Monitoring Board froze trials of the Indiana company’s monoclonal antibody drug bamlanivimab, which was being administered in combination with the antiviral drug remdesivir. The board didn’t freeze separate trials testing bamlanivimab on its own, […]
Not this time. In 2016, many mainstream media outlets let themselves be used by Donald Trump and his henchmen (Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, etc.) to amplify nutso Hillary conspiracy stories. It helped put Trump in the White House, where he has violated the Constitution and his oath of office and common-sense decency pretty much every day of his presidency. So far this time around, […]
President Donald Trump backed a budding conspiracy theory on Tuesday that four Americans were killed in the 2012 Benghazi attack to cover up the blood-sacrifice of Navy SEALs and the “fact” that Osama Bin Laden is still alive, marking what is perhaps the president’s strangest brush yet with far-right conspiracy theories. Trump’s promotion of the new Benghazi conspiracy theory, which is fast gaining traction on the […]
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) used her first allotted questioning time during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court to zero-in on the Democratic ticket’s closing campaign message: an unambiguous defense of the Affordable Care Act. “Over the last nine years, Republicans in Congress have tried 70 times—70 times—to repeal or roll back the ACA,” Harris said on Tuesday […]
Donald Trump may be feuding with Dr. Anthony Fauci. But at least, as Trevor Noah put it Tuesday night, the president did get “a very real endorsement from another top scientist” this week. The Daily Show host was referring to Eric Trump, who appeared on ABC News’ This Week on Sunday and boasted about the “vaccine” that supposedly saved his father’s life. “It goes to speak […]
Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia’s wife has tested positive for COVID-19—becoming at least the 13th person who attended a largely mask-free White House Rose Garden event to contract the coronavirus. Trish Scalia was seated next to Kellyanne Conway and right behind Melania Trump at the Sept. 26 ceremony to announce President Donald Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. Conway and the first […]
The Department of Justice has filed a complaint against Melania Trump’s former best friend for not submitting a draft of her tell-all book to the federal government for pre-publication review. Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, the planner of President Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration, penned Melania and Me about the sudden souring of her relationship with the first lady. The look into Melania’s inner circle painted an unflattering portrait […]
President Donald Trump’s official super PAC is shopping around opposition research to members of the media on The Lincoln Project, a political group founded by NeverTrump Republicans who have run millions of dollars in ads this year attacking Trump and vulnerable Senate Republicans. America First Action, an ostensibly independent outfit supporting the president’s reelection, recently circulated a memo to “interested parties” breaking down the Lincoln Project’s […]
SEOUL—Let the missiles fall where they may, President Trump is still smitten by North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Trump, who famously said he and Kim “fell in love” in their summit in Singapore in June 2018, proclaimed Kim “100 percent sharp” at a campaign rally in Florida this week. It was part of a dig against the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, saying “We have someone running […]
It’s bad enough that we have to deal with one Donald Trump here in the U.S. of A. What’s worse, Mehdi Hasan explains on the latest episode of The New Abnormal, is that Trump has become a template for a whole planet full of bad-faith actors and wannabe strongmen. Before he became the host of his own TV show in America, Hasan interviewed all sorts of […]
As the only major late-night host to air a new show Monday night, Jimmy Kimmel had one of the more laughable Trump stories in recent memory all to himself. Noting that today is both Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Columbus Day, the host said, “Our president, though, is a big supporter of Columbus Day. He and Christopher Columbus actually have a lot in common. They both spread […]
Beset by controversy and lagging in the polls, President Donald Trump this week was handed what his allies described as a gift: an opportunity to recede from the national spotlight while his party scored a win that would rearrange the tectonic plates of government. Trump promptly squandered the opportunity. For weeks, operatives from both political parties have picked up on a defining phenomenon of the presidential […]
The nation’s top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci demanded that the Trump campaign refrain from using him in future campaign ads, saying Monday that it would be “outrageous” and “terrible” if he was featured in another commercial and it could “come back to backfire” on Team Trump. Asked by The Daily Beast if his comments were a thinly-veiled threat to leave his post if he […]
As President Donald Trump received treatment for the coronavirus at Walter Reed Medical Center last week, he and his aides worked on the stagecraft for his big return home. It needed to be showy and it would require television networks to have their cameras pointed at the White House during the beginning of their primetime shows. Disembarking from Marine One, Trump walked across the lawn, climbed […]
This is a preview of Right Richter, our newsletter about the extreme right wing. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox, sign up for it here. It’s hard to stress how much effort the pro-Trump media has devoted over the last year-and-half to John Durham. The top federal prosecutor in Connecticut with a bushy, meme-ready goatee, Durham was appointed by Bill Barr in May 2019 […]
Donald Trump is a uniter—just not in the way he had hoped. His presidency has brought American Jews and Muslims together to defeat him in 2020. It has also increased each respective community’s support for fellow minority groups. Those are the findings of a new report by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), a nonpartisan organization created in 2002 that focuses on issues impacting […]
Rep. Val Demings (D-FL) helped get Trump impeached, but now there’s a new battle: his SCOTUS pick. She worked within the government’s Internal Affairs department and became one of the impeachment managers in Trump’s case after 27 years as an Orlando police officer. And impeached he was. So on this members-only bonus episode of The New Abnormal, co-host Molly Jong-Fast asks for her thoughts on Trump’s […]
During last week’s season premiere on Saturday Night Live, host Chris Rock reacted to the news that Donald Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus by saying, “My heart goes out to COVID.” One week later, the president has seemingly recovered from the virus and is already back to delivering speeches to packed crowds. “Weekend Update” co-anchor Michael Che had trouble hiding his disappointment on this […]
The president is better! Or maybe not. Who knows? Spoiler: Trump’s first on-camera interview since his abrupt return to the White House, with Tucker Carlson, did nothing to answer any of those questions, though we did get to see Trump lie and present half-truths himself. It was one week ago that President Superspreader got into a helicopter on the south lawn in front of the White […]
Candace Owens’ BLEXIT Foundation—founded to give people the false impression that Black voters are abandoning the Democratic party en masse for Republicanism—reportedly put together Saturday’s campaign event thinly disguised as an official government function, where Donald Trump spoke to a pro-police Black and Latinx audience from the Truman Balcony during what was in effect his first in-person rally since his trip to Walter Reed. Two thousand […]
With coronavirus running through his body in competition with a heavy steroidal dose, President Trump is frustrated that a country where over 210,000 people have died from the virus seems uninterested in the “hoax” of Russiagate. Trump spent part of his week demanding the latest version of his Russia counter-narrative—that the intelligence officials teamed up with Democrats to invent Russian collusion in 2016—be used to prosecute […]
Donald Trump hosted hundreds of people outside the White House on Saturday for his first in-person event since contracting COVID-19—but his administration wouldn’t say whether he’s still infected with the virus. “We gotta vote these people into oblivion,” Trump told the crowd of supporters in a brief 18 minute speech from a White House balcony. The in-person event marked Trump’s return to the campaign spotlight after […]
The experimental novel coronavirus drug Donald Trump took last week is not, as the president claims, a cure for COVID-19. The monoclonal antibody cocktail, under development by New York pharma Regeneron, seems promising, experts and health officials say. But it and a similar antibody cocktail from Indiana firm Eli Lilly—also touted by the president—are still in trials. It’s too soon to say exactly what they do […]
When Kimberly Guilfoyle tested positive for COVID-19 before Donald Trump’s July Mount Rushmore speech, it seemed like the result came back just in the nick of time. She and her boyfriend, who happens to be the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., skipped the rally and were said to have avoided contact with the president. But the duo had already made a lasting impression in the northern […]
Donald Trump is headed toward a massive defeat—at least, if any of the polls (or our eyes) are to be believed. What is more, there’s a decent chance a massive blue wave could do the unthinkable, sweeping even “safe” Republicans like South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham out to sea. If that happens, there will be a window of time, however fleeting, for sane Republicans to try […]
On Friday night, Bill Maher kicked off the latest edition of his HBO show Real Time by addressing how President Trump got COVID-19—after doing pretty much everything in his power to get it. “I’m telling you, this getting COVID thing, not good for him,” said Maher. “The way he handled it, I think the final blow is that, you know what, we’ve seen that he gets […]
C-SPAN’s longtime host Steve Scully, scheduled to moderate next week’s presidential town-hall debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden that may or may not happen, received a robust vote of confidence Friday from Chris Wallace and a host of prominent Republicans the morning after a post from his Twitter account prompted a political media uproar. Fox News Sunday host Wallace, who moderated last week’s presidential debate, […]
“Man, woman, person, camera, TV.” The last time President Donald Trump appeared on TV with Dr. Marc Siegel, he managed to impress the Fox News medical contributor by successfully listing off those five words in the same order, twice in a row. Now, with many unanswered questions swirling about his health following an abrupt hospitalization for COVID-19 just one week ago, Trump has turned again to […]
Hitting the closing stretch of the election, and trailing by a substantial margin in the polls, Donald Trump is placing his political hopes on winning over voters with cold hard cash. Over the past month, the president and his team have coalesced around a series of policies that would result in billions of dollars being allocated to critical constituencies right as voting begins: a proposal to […]
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace said on Friday that he sees no issue with the Commission on Presidential Debates making the second debate virtual amid President Donald Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis, saying the president’s own behavior brings up “serious questions. Early on Thursday morning, the CPD announced that due to concerns over the president’s ongoing battle with COVID-19, they would have the candidates debate from remote locations […]
There’s plenty of reasons to worry in Wisconsin these days. While the crucial swing state maintains its standing as a national hotspot for the coronavirus and spiking cases and hospitalizations have alarmed health experts and local officials, Republicans there are continuing to attack Democratic Gov. Tony Evers over the emergency authority he’s relying on to try and combat the virus. “I don’t care if (the governor’s) […]
Donald Trump insured that the fly, not Mike Pence or that “monster,” Kamala Harris, who womansplained to the vice president, would be the story coming out of the vice presidential debate by calling into Fox News before the sun was barely up. He delivered a message to that pesky Commission on Presidential Debates to take its virtual debate scheduled for Thursday and shove it. There’s no […]
During a Thursday night interview in which he repeatedly stopped to cough and catch his breath, President Donald Trump wouldn’t reveal whether he’s been tested since he was diagnosed with the coronavirus but did say he hopes to hold a campaign rally in Florida this Saturday night. Prior to Trump’s call with Fox News host Sean Hannity, the president’s doctor—who admitted he lied to the public […]
With just a few more weeks to go until Election Day, Jordan Klepper is still putting his life on the line to make fun of Trump supporters at the president’s increasingly irresponsible rallies. After checking out one of Trump’s infamous boat parades over the summer, the Daily Show correspondent strapped on his mask and headed to Pennsylvania where he trolled the parking lot outside Harrisburg International […]
Former high-dollar Trump fundraiser Elliott Broidy is facing a federal criminal charge over an alleged scheme to influence the Trump administration on behalf of a Malaysian businessman at the center of a massive international money laundering conspiracy. In a criminal information filing filed in federal court in Washington on Tuesday, the Justice Department accuses Broidy of accepting millions of dollars to press the administration to abandon […]
Terrorists, dictators, mass shooters, gang members, deadly natural disasters, and… Kamala Harris. These are the things President Donald Trump considers “monsters.” In his first live TV appearance since his COVID-19 hospitalization, Trump on Thursday raged for nearly an hour on Fox Business Network, declaring his refusal to do a virtual debate with Joe Biden and suggesting Gold Star families may have given him the deadly virus. […]
The infectious President Donald Trump has announced that he has absolutely no intention of taking part in a virtual debate with Joe Biden, just minutes after the Commission on Presidential Debates confirmed the pre-election event would take place remotely to keep everyone safe. In his first live interview since he was hospitalized for three days with COVID-19, Trump told the Fox Business Network Thursday morning: “I’m […]
President Trump and his allies have responded to recent revelations of his miniscule federal income tax bills by saying they’re overheated fake news. But on the debate stage Wednesday night, Vice President Mike Pence went a step further—saying the story served to highlight that Trump, unlike Democratic nominee Joe Biden, has been a true American job creator, not a career politician. “The American people have a […]
There has been one gnawing question that the White House has refused to answer ever since President Donald Trump publicly announced he tested positive for coronavirus last Friday, was hospitalized for three days due to his worsening condition, and returned home this week despite his doctors acknowledging he is “not entirely out of the woods yet”: When was the last time the president tested negative for […]
President Donald Trump claimed he’s “learned” more from the “real school” of contracting the coronavirus than he ever could have from “‘let’s read the book’ school.” But despite one spokesperson attacking Joe Biden for not having the “firsthand experience” of an infection, another adviser is now insisting that the campaign is “not changing course.” Confronted by Fox News anchor Sandra Smith with a CNN poll that […]
Asked in a recent interview how things were going as Election Day draws near, a state elections director paused, searching for the right words. “I feel like I’ve got democracy in a boat,” the director told The Daily Beast, “and my staff is bailing water out while people are drilling holes in it.” That official, who spoke anonymously to discuss the situation candidly, sums up how […]
On Tuesday night, The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah took a break from clowning on first lady Melania Trump’s hatred of the White House Christmas to address the more serious news wafting from its walls: President Trump’s made-for-TV return to the White House, even though he is still battling the novel coronavirus (and surely contagious). Trump made a big show of his premature return from Walter Reed […]
“You know, ladies and gentlemen, when Donald Trump first contracted the coronavirus, I thought that maybe, just maybe, he would emerge from this experience with a shred of humility,” Stephen Colbert said at the top of his Late Show monologue Tuesday night. “Because honestly, nothing would disarm his critics more than if he stood up and told the world, ‘I was wrong. I have learned my […]
Moments after Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said next week’s debate should be canceled if President Donald Trump still has coronavirus, Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume dismissed that idea out of hand, saying the debate needs to occur even if Trump shows up infected. With the president still recovering from his COVID-19 diagnosis that resulted in a three-day hospital stay in Walter Reed, Biden […]
Health experts working with President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force are accusing White House officials of ignoring the guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as they try to stop the spread of the coronavirus within their complex. Over the last several days, Trump administration officials have attempted to quickly pull together a plan to mitigate the burgeoning outbreak in the White […]
The next time you’re in the presence of someone who tries to tell you that Donald Trump is a political genius, I’d like you to grab the nearest copy of Men’s Hairstyles magazine and whack them upside the head. Maybe not too many people are saying that these days, as he’s clearly in the early stages of a ’roid-driven meltdown. But people have remarked many times […]
Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller became the latest White House staffer to test positive for COVID-19 late Tuesday. Miller said he tested positive after repeatedly testing negative, raising concerns there may be many more within the president’s orbit unknowingly carrying the virus even as they report testing negative. “Over the last 5 days I have been working remotely and self-isolating, testing negative every day through yesterday,” […]
America’s 19th-richest family, the Sackler clan, made unfathomable riches by flooding the globe with OxyContin, sparking an opioid-addiction crisis that has killed hundreds of thousands of people. They now look set to keep the vast majority of their estimated $13 billion fortune if a controversial settlement, supported by the judge presiding over a key bankruptcy trial, is accepted by a Trump White House reportedly keen to […]
George Takei remembers his lowest point vividly. It came on November 11, 2017. The Star Trek actor was in Tokyo, Japan, for a gala screening of Allegiance, his Broadway passion project about Japanese internment, when his phone began buzzing like crazy. “It was right after our screening and we were celebrating, and then… we heard,” he recalls to The Daily Beast. “It was horrible.” The Hollywood […]
Seth Meyers wasn’t the first late-night host to cover the massive coronavirus outbreak at the White House. But he may have had the most to say about it. The Late Night host dedicated his “A Closer Look” segment Monday night to everything that happened since President Donald Trump announced he had tested positive for COVID-19 early Friday morning. And he began with the president’s assurance that […]
Having left Walter Reed hospital after a three-day stint recovering from the coronavirus, President Donald Trump began, what aides and confidants say is, a new phase of the presidential campaign: an effort to turn his illness into an electoral asset. The president’s stint in the Military Medical Center may have raised serious questions about his political future and his physical status, with doctors giving him a […]
Three days after being flown to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center because of the severity of his COVID-19 infection, President Donald Trump announced that he will leave the hospital—and urged people not to fear the virus that has already killed more than 200,000 Americans. “I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M.,” Trump tweeted on Monday afternoon. “Feeling really […]
If you were wondering how the Trump campaign might try to spin the president’s COVID-19 diagnosis into a positive for his re-election effort, the first hints started to emerge during a Monday morning Fox News appearance by Director of Communications Erin Perrine. Asked by Fox anchor Sandra Smith if President Trump will “change his messaging” and stop “downplaying” the coronavirus moving forward now that he has […]
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany has tested positive for COVID-19, just days after the president and a slew of Republican officials revealed a similar diagnosis. McEnany announced her diagnosis on Monday, stating she has tested positive “while experiencing no symptoms.” Reporters note that on Sunday she talked to the press without wearing a mask. “No reporters, producers, or members of the press are listed as […]
“It has been a genuinely extraordinary week for the White House,” said John Oliver at the top of Sunday night’s Last Week Tonight. There’s been so much chaos this past week that the HBO host said they didn’t have time to even address the $750 Trump paid in income tax for two years (as revealed by The New York Times), Melania Trump “essentially saying ‘fuck Christmas’” […]
On Sunday night, Desus & Mero, the most underrated late-night hosts in the game, opened their show with a round of laughter. “Trump got that ‘rona!” exclaimed The Kid Mero. The duo then filled their audience in on how President Trump and first lady Melania Trump came down with the novel coronavirus this week—and this after The New York Times revealed that Trump was not only […]
After teasing a “little surprise visit” via video on Twitter, President Trump left the hospital on Sunday afternoon to wave to supporters from the back seat of an SUV. “It’s been a very interesting journey. I learned a lot about COVID,” Trump, who is still suffering from the coronavirus, said in the video. “I learned it by really going to school, this is the real school, […]
After months of downplaying the danger of COVID-19, President Trump and the first lady tested positive, and on Friday the president was taken to the Walter Reed Medical Center “for the next few days” as “a precautionary measure.” On Saturday, a series of confusing and conflicting updates, on and off the record, about the president’s condition landed on top of the confusion spread by the president […]
White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah faced some unexpectedly tough questions about President Donald Trump’s medical condition during an interview on Fox News Sunday afternoon. And in the process, she admitted that the president’s physician Dr. Sean Conley deliberately misled the American people to make his patient feel better. Fox anchor Trace Gallagher highlighted the “confusion” and “mixed messaging coming from the White House and coming […]
President Donald Trump’s head physician admitted to reporters on Sunday morning that he’d kept the knowledge that the president had been administered supplemental oxygen from the public in order to reflect an “upbeat attitude” of Trump’s health as doctors continue to treat his infection with the novel coronavirus. “I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude that the team, the president over the course of his […]
Despite the president currently being hospitalized for COVID-19, Trump senior campaign adviser Jason Miller continued to mock Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for regularly wearing face masks, claiming the former vice president uses masks as a “prop.” Interviewing Miller on ABC’s This Week, anchor George Stephanopoulos brought President Donald Trump ridiculing Biden for his mask-wearing during Tuesday’s presidential debate, wondering aloud if that has backfired on […]
Even if Donald Trump gets voted out of office in November (and actually leaves), Trump-appointed judges with lifetime seats on the federal bench have already dramatically changed the face of our courts in Donald Trump’s image on a whole range of issues. The effects of the relentless push by Senate Leader Mitch McConnell to pack the courts with Trump’s picks is being directly felt in rulings […]
President Trump was being treated in the hospital for COVID-19 on Saturday, and at least nine of his party’s top officials had contracted the virus—but it made no difference to many GOP officials and campaign aides who continued to flout social distancing guidelines and host maskless, indoor events. On Saturday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who tested positive for COVID-19 late Friday night, doubled down on his […]
Saturday Night Live was presumably ready to kick off its 46th season with a big Trump vs. Biden debate sketch cold open. Then came the October surprise. Yes, SNL made its triumphant return to Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center this weekend amidst the still-raging coronavirus pandemic after airing a series of entirely virtual shows this past spring. And even though the debate feels like a “hundred […]
President Donald Trump may be in the hospital with COVID-19. But that didn’t mean Saturday Night Live pulled any punches against him in the show’s big Season 46 premiere. After Jim Carrey’s Joe Biden paused the cold open debate sketch to celebrate the “science and karma” that led to this moment, host Chris Rock opened his monologue by addressing the “elephant in the room.” “President Trump’s […]
With President Trump in Walter Reed Army Hospital, the public was inevitably going to worry, wonder, and speculate about his current and longer-term health. But his doctors are making a bad situation much worse with a cascade of confusing statements, half-truths, and rosy assessments at a time when transparency is vital. At best, his team is inviting confusion and fear after getting caught up in a […]
As concerns for his health flew into overdrive on Saturday following mixed messages from the White House, President Trump released a four-minute video from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center promising to “be back soon” and saying he is “starting to feel good.” The video marked Trump’s lengthiest public appearance since his diagnosis, which he announced in the early hours of Friday morning. Looking paler than […]