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, predictably, with a re-enactment of this week’s dueling town halls. Viewers toggle between the two—“trying to decide,” in the show’s parlance, “between a Hallmark movie and an alien autopsy.” Plenty of familiar faces re-appeared: Jim […]
Kamala Harris
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The malfunctioning mics ensured that the Senate Judiciary Committee fell awkwardly silent at times during the third day of Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearing. Outside the room, however, the din of politics surrounding the nomination kept getting louder. With the Senate’s ultimate confirmation of Barrett largely a foregone conclusion, both parties set about making the hearings work for them in the final weeks before the 2020 election. Those respective playbooks became clear not long after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death in September, which opened up the seat that Barrett has been nominated to fill. But by Wednesday, with her confirmation hearings […]
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld described two Democratic female senators on Wednesday as “mean girls” who came across as “petty” during their questioning of Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett, claiming they are likely “jealous” that Barrett “happens to be smarter and more successful than they are.” During Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary confirmation hearing, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA)—who is also currently the Democratic vice presidential nominee—subjected Barrett to tough questioning, such as whether or not she believes climate change is a threat. Discussing the day’s proceedings on Fox News panel show The Five, Gutfeld weighed in […]
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 evening. “In 2013, Senate Republicans were so desperate to stop its success that they shut down the entire government four weeks after President Trump was elected. Washington Republicans spent nearly a year trying to repeal […]
Amy Coney Barrett’s beet pink dress spoke before she did: it looked sensible, practical, and stoically feminine, an image she aims to project. It was a pretty dress, maybe even stylish by DC’s standards. A flat bow rested on her right shoulder, just underneath a string of pearls. The justice picked a very nice outfit for her first confirmation hearing. Too bad it was curated for such an ugly, rotten process. The dress stood out in a room full of anodyne blue and black suits; it spoke of soft prettiness when the proceedings are about the very opposite. Her outfit radiates […]
She made a brief appearance during last weekend’s season premiere cold open, but with the vice presidential debate just a few days ago, this week was Maya Rudolph’s time to shine as Kamala Harris. “And now, the thing that will change everyone’s minds,” the announcer said at the top of the sketch before introducing Kate McKinnon as USA Today’s Susan Page, who explained the “buffet-style sneeze guards” between the candidates by saying that one of the two candidates “works for patient zero.” Within moments, Harris was shutting down Beck Bennett’s Pence with a barrage of “I’m speaking” and telling viewers about […]
Fox News Media announced Thursday that Trump campaign adviser Harlan Z. Hill, a self-described Washington public relations and political consultant, is no longer welcome on their air after he tweeted that Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris “comes off as an insufferable lying bitch.” “We have no intention of booking him as a guest on any of our platforms,” a Fox News Media spokesperson said in a statement to The Daily Beast, the morning after Hill—a frequent Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network guest over the past five years—unleashed his misogynistic attack on the Black California senator during her debate […]
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. Towards the end of the interview, the president aimed his fury at Sen. Kamala Harris, calling her a “monster.” “This monster that was on stage with Mike Pence, who destroyed her last night by the […]
We all had a good laugh about the audacious fly that crawled around on Mike Pence’s sensible haircut during Wednesday night’s debate—but were we actually seeing a demonic manifestation before our very eyes? Of course we weren’t. But, in what may or may not have been an attempt at a joke, the veteran Republican and anti-Trump strategist Steve Schmidt said that there was something of the occult about the scene. Appearing on MSNBC’s post-game show after Pence’s debate against Sen. Kamala Harris, Schmidt couldn’t resist discussing the true star of the show: the vice president’s small insect friend. He started off […]
I got a tension headache from watching the vice presidential debate. I recognized the source instantly, because it felt exactly like the throbbing pain I’ve felt every time I’ve had a man shout me down, cut me off and interrupt me during what’s supposed to be a public conversation. And I honestly cannot imagine that millions of women didn’t also instantly recognize the same feeling after watching Mike Pence’s performance on the debate stage. People spend a lot of time emphasizing the supposed odd-couple pairing of Vice President Pence and the president—contrasting the corrupt evangelicism of the former with the corrupt […]
Fox News correspondent-at-large Geraldo Rivera apparently didn’t get the memo on Wednesday night that guests on Sean Hannity’s show weren’t supposed to praise Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ debate performance. While the other cable news networks criticized a “limp and lame” Vice President Mike Pence for repeatedly interrupting Harris during the debate, Hannity—a close confidant and adviser to President Donald Trump—and his other pro-Trump guests predictably gushed over the veep’s performance. After saying Harris was “caught lying red-handed” about big issues such as race relations and court-packing, Hannity turned to frequent guest Leo Terrell—a one-time liberal pundit turned full-on Trump booster […]
On Wednesday night, after Kamala Harris swatted a fly-infested Mike Pence in the first and only vice presidential debate, Maya Rudolph appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon to discuss her SNL version of the California senator and returning to Studio 8H to film the late-night sketch show for the first time since the start of the pandemic. “It was nuts. You and I were there for the first show after September 11th, and when anthrax was in the building—that was another doozy, that was crazy—and I feel like there was a reminiscent feeling,” Rudolph told Fallon. “You were in […]
When President Barack Obama bombed the first presidential debate of his 2012 re-election campaign, then-Vice President Joe Biden was tasked with triage: righting a campaign that appeared on the verge of sinking. On Wednesday night, with President Donald Trump’s illness and hospitalization with COVID-19 cementing public skepticism of his administration’s handling of the pandemic, Vice President Mike Pence faced a similar, though even more daunting challenge. But while he successfully played the same role he has filled for the past four years—that of the Trump translator, sanitizing or spinning the more unseemly things espoused by his boss—there was one thing even […]
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 president who is a businessman, a job creator, who has paid tens of millions of dollars in taxes, payroll taxes, property taxes. He’s created tens of thousands of American jobs,” said Pence. “The president said […]
Vice President Mike Pence lives in an America most of us have never known. It’s a fringe conservative’s dreamscape, where impulsive, half-baked decision making is met with fawning and flattery. Far from the world I grew up in, Pence’s insulated bible-scape is populated by stadiums of devoted followers, courts stacked with judicial enablers, and staff who indulge every foolish instinct. But on Wednesday evening, Pence will step onto a debate stage in Utah where Kamala Harris will force him to defend a record notorious for its shamelessness in prying dignity, justice, and decency from millions — not just those he’s misled […]
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 years ago,” SNL stuck with the plan so they could highlight their new mega-guest star in the form of Jim Carrey as former Vice President Joe Biden. “Good evening, I’m your moderator Chris Wallace and […]
Kamala Harris did not step off of her private plane on her way to visiting the scene of a devastating California wildfire so much as she bounced. The Vice Presidential nominee did so in Timberland boots, drawing a wave of online cheers and boos, in what might be the first true sartorial scandal of the Biden/Harris campaign. On one side came the praise, heaped on by liberals who are already pushing hard for a Democrat victory in November. “THE TIMBS THO,” Meena Harris, Kamala’s niece wrote on Instagram. The nominee—or perhaps just her campaign—had turned her into a GIF. Was it […]
Dan Forest stood on stage presiding in front of the crowd that had come to see Donald Trump in North Carolina Tuesday, a potential public health nightmare of not enough masks and too many people, and declared: “This looks like freedom.” But before he could even start rattling off all the things he’d do as governor to people who weren’t there to hear him speak, the state’s Republican lieutenant governor chose to indulge once again in a baseless, strange, and shocking idea about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s future. “We all know that Sleepy Joe’s not gonna make it. Not very long […]
As more than a million viewers tuned in to see ‘90s icons Brandy and Monica, singers of the hit song “The Boy is Mine,” in the same room for the first time in nearly a decade last week, a familiar face suddenly popped up on the screen between them: Senator and vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Wearing a Howard University shirt, Harris made a plug to get registered to vote—and social media was on fire with comments about it. An R&B battle is a rare place for a national candidate to make an appearance, but Harris makes cultural history in many […]
President Donald Trump tore into Kamala Harris during a New Hampshire campaign rally on Friday night where he deployed his favorite 2016 talking points before hurling insults at his opponents and suggesting the California senator is not the kind of woman who should make history as the first female president. That honor should be reserved for his own daughter, Ivanka Trump, he said. “I want to see the first woman president also, but I don’t want to see the first woman president get into the position the way [Harris] would do it, and she’s not competent, she’s not competent,” he said, […]
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) arrived in person on Thursday ready to deliver arguably her most forceful—and strategic—admonishment of President Donald Trump in the general election. After briefly addressing the natural disasters imperiling the country, wildfires in California and Hurricane Laura in Louisiana and Texas, Harris set her sights on the human-generated horrors gripping the nation. “On the eve of the 57th March on Washington, I will speak about the recent events in Kenosha, Wisconsin,” Harris said, starting out a powerful 20-minute speech. “Jacob Blake shot seven times in the back in broad daylight in front of his three young sons. Seven […]
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is dropping a new general election advertisement on Monday, strategically timed to counter the Republican National Convention’s highly anticipated kickoff, where President Donald Trump will be the main focus. The 60-second spot, titled, “Heal America” is one part of a larger $26 million investment on television, radio, and digital formats that the Biden campaign has booked to run during the GOP’s week of party festivities, according to information shared exclusively with The Daily Beast. The fully-narrated ad, solemn in tone, focuses on the standard themes Biden has long used to show chief differences between his bid […]
Barack Obama likes to talk about the bending arc of history. His own story is a testament to it. Not just the well-known biographical portions, but the political parts as well. In 2004, as an unknown state Senator from Illinois, he delivered the keynote address at the Democratic convention that is remembered for its lofty oratory and themes of unappreciated national unity. As president for eight years, he re-committed to that ethos by vowing repeatedly that the “fever” of Republican opposition would eventually “break.” On Wednesday night, he addressed the Democrats’ convention once again, this time as a party luminary and […]
Wednesday was a night of reminding the American people what the Democratic Party stands for—and what Donald Trump doesn’t. Since the president of the United States stands for nothing except himself, and earlier in the day endorsed QAnon because they like him, it was not so hard for Democrats to remind the American people that they actually want to do things for the country besides jail children and let the blue states die. It was a night of Democrats making the case for immigrant’s rights, gun safety, action on climate change, and fighting domestic violence. Not every one of these convention […]
Just after Joe Biden announced Kamala Harris as his 2020 running mate, Sarah Palin wrote a surprisingly gracious note of advice to the California senator on her Instagram page. What a difference a week and Fox News makes. Appearing with Tucker Carlson ahead of Harris’ big speech on night three of the Democratic National Convention, Palin predicted that “the media” would treat the Democratic ticket like “delicate pieces of China” compared to the way she was treated in 2008 when she was running with John McCain on the Republican ticket. “Looking back, is there anything you could have done to get […]
For months now, President Donald Trump has been trying to tie Joe Biden to the amorphous protest movement known as antifa—short for “anti-fascist.” Now, he’s calling the former vice president and his running mate “fascist.” Speaking to supporters on a tarmac in Mankato, Minnesota on Monday, just a few hours before the virtual Democratic National Convention was set to begin, President Trump appeared to be reading off of a TelePrompter when he said that the Biden-Harris administration would “replace American freedom with left-wing fascism.” “Left-wing, we’re going left-wing all the way,” Trump continued, now ad-libbing. “Fascists! They are fascists! Some of […]
Conservative talk-radio star Rush Limbaugh added to his long history of vile, sexist attacks on prominent women by promoting right-wing stories that described Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris as a “hoe” and “mattress,” accusing Harris of “using sex to get ahead.” During Friday’s broadcast of his top-rated radio program, Limbaugh latched onto a couple of stories revolving around the sexist smear that Harris owes her political career to her brief romantic relationship with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown in the mid-1990s. Noting that the NBA recently dismissed a photographer from its restart-season bubble after he posted a meme of Harris […]
On Sunday night, John Oliver returned to the Last Week Tonight desk after a few weeks off to tackle the biggest news of late. “The big news was Kamala Harris being announced as Biden’s running mate—a decision that sent conservatives scrambling for attack strategies, from claiming it’s an ‘extreme, far-left’ ticket—which it absolutely isn’t—to a baseless accusation that she may not meet the citizenship requirements to hold the office despite being very much born in the United States,” said Oliver. “It’s a depressing resurgence of birtherism, so of course Trump jumped all over it.” Yes, in a press conference this week […]
The moment Joe Biden announced Kamala Harris as his running mate, great minds in Washington, D.C., went scrambling into action. It’s no easy task demeaning a prominent elected official and decorated prosecutor with one pithy nickname. But this country has a not-so-secret weapon in the Oval Office: one of its finest insult comedians. The Daily Beast has obtained evidence of Trump’s midnight oil brainstorming, providing a rare glimpse inside the thought process that guides such critical decisions (instead of, say, the pandemic, the economy or our country’s race problems). Source link
Even by the preposterous standards of 2020, the road to the Democratic National Convention has been an unpredictable one. In 12 short months, the Democratic Party’s vision for quadrennial confab has changed from a coronation for one of dozens of potential nominees to an almost entirely virtual affair, with speakers beamed in from around the nation, turning the traditional week-long political schmooze-fest into perhaps the most ambitious Zoom meeting in history. But beyond the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, which has shrunk the scale of the convention from the typical 10-hour speech-a-thon with $500,000 “Platinum” boxes and rock concerts into a […]
Birtherism is back, this time aimed squarely at Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris. And the people charged with speaking for President Donald Trump on cable news are having a lot of trouble defending his inability to outright condemn the racist attacks on his rival. It was the very first question that Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace had for senior Trump campaign adviser Steve Cortes. “Does the Trump campaign, does President Trump acknowledge that Kamala Harris is eligible to be the next vice president of the United States?” he asked. “Yes, he made this very clear in his press conference […]
Thirty-six years after Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman named to a major party ticket, we have a chance as a country to get it right, not just the outcome but the process itself. California Senator Kamala Harris is not a surprise out-of-the-box pick like Ferraro, a congresswoman from Queens. And there’s no expectation that it’s all on her—the way it was for Ferraro—to shake up the campaign and bring Joe Biden across the finish line. The former vice president is doing fine in the polls, thank you. Harris is an added benefit, not the Hail Mary pass Ferraro was when […]
President Donald Trump on Saturday refused to acknowledge that Kamala Harris is eligible to serve on the Democratic ticket and claimed he “just doesn’t know” if there is truth to the bogus conspiracy theory questioning whether she truly counts as a natural born citizen. “So, I have nothing to do with that,” Trump said when asked by a reporter if Harris is eligible to run for VP. “I read something about it and I will say that he [the author] is a brilliant lawyer … So I know nothing about it but it’s not something that bothers me,” he said, referring […]
Just when we thought MAGA-istas couldn’t go any lower, they grab shovels and dig a basement. Even by recent standards, many political observers expected the home stretch of this year’s presidential campaign to be quite ugly. But already, we’re witnessing a campaign of a different sort that—because it’s based on racism and nativism—will likely be even uglier. Welcome to the campaign to “other” Kamala Harris. The verb—formerly known as an adjective—describes the action of attempting to depict someone as not being from around here, being different or foreign or unrelatable. That last one is key. The objective of othering isn’t just […]
Sometimes, Kamala Harris wears pantsuits. Sometimes, Kamala Harris wears Converse. Sometimes, Kamala Harris wears pearls. And on Pride, Kamala Harris wears a bedazzled denim jacket. That’s not an excerpt from a sexist children’s book; it’s just an observation. Harris, the first woman of color to join a major party’s national ticket, owns a professional wardrobe fit for a longtime politician. Like most of her fellow male senators, Harris favors black or navy suits. Unlike them, Harris’ fairly standard outfits must mean something in the fashion world, just because she is a woman. “Does Kamala Harris’s Style Reflect Anything About Her Politics?” […]
Before 9/11, I was white—meaning, among other things, that I had the privilege of sitting out a presidential election to wait for the “perfect” candidate who fulfilled my demands for progressive purity. But being Muslim and of Arab heritage, my world changed in the years after 9/11 as I was transformed by society from white to a minority. Consequently, I learned firsthand the pain of being defined by the worst in my community and having politicians then openly use that grotesque caricature to demonize us. And no one has been more vile on this front than Donald Trump, who made ginning […]
What a disappointment Kamala Harris is, not to the progressives who are falling in line if not in love, but to Donald Trump, who has no strong women around him and knows little about the type, except that he can’t really stand them. As late as Sunday night returning from his two hundredth and something golfing day, Trump believed the veep choice would be Spyin’ Susan Rice, or Kuba Kommunist Karen Bass, easy for him to reduce to avatars of the radical left out to destroy the suburbs, defund the police, raise taxes, turn cities into killing fields, and put kale […]
Editors and executives at Newsweek, a formerly prestigious and popular magazine that in recent years has suffered from self-inflicted wounds and even a criminal investigation of its business practices, are once again digging themselves out of a public relations hole. Newsweek Editor-in-Chief Nancy Cooper and the magazine’s recently-hired opinion editor, Trump-backing conservative activist and attorney Josh Hammer, apologized on Friday after nearly a week of defending a right-wing law professor’s op-ed questioning Sen. Kamala Harris’ U.S. citizenship and her eligibility to be Joe Biden’s running mate. “This op-ed is being used by some as a tool to perpetuate racism and xenophobia. […]
Trevor Noah is feeling pretty good about Joe Biden’s decision to go with Kamala Harris as his running mate. “Say what you want about Joe, but the man went Black and he is not going back,” the Daily Show host joked. He then explained how “impressed” he was with the former vice president’s choice despite the fact that Harris “destroyed” him at their first debate last year. “In fact, part of me thinks he only picked her so that she can just never dust his ass in public again,” Noah continued. “This isn’t a VP pick, this is an insurance policy.” […]
Former Vice President Joe Biden is expected to make his highly anticipated running-mate pick any day now. But before he does, The Daily Show made the case for one more out-of-left-field candidate. “All of those candidates are definitely qualified to be Biden’s VP,” Trevor Noah said Monday night of the presumed shortlist. “But when making his choice, Biden has to consider all of their potential landmines for him.” Susan Rice? “Benghazi baggage.” Kamala Harris? “Strict prosecutor.” Elizabeth Warren? “Could turn off moderates.” Gretchen Whitmer? “Is white.” The host joked that Biden’s decision is “like The Bachelor, but here there’s a chance […]
Shortly after the infamous Billy Bush tape became public in October 2016, the story goes, officials with the Republican National Committee approached Donald Trump to inform him of a sobering reality: He would not become president. In reality, recalled Sean Spicer, the then-communications director for the RNC, things went a bit differently. Yes, then-RNC Chairman Reince Priebus told Trump he believed that, as things stood, he would lose to Hillary Clinton. But they didn’t declare the door closed. Instead, they presented slides on the difficult path forward along with a synopsis of what Trump would have to do to change his […]
Before the first votes were even cast in the primaries, the dream ticket for many Democrats was Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The fiery senator from California would diversify and energize Biden’s last hurrah, carrying the torch for a new generation. Then came her ill-fated broadside against Biden over busing and a campaign rife with in-fighting before she exited the field with mixed reviews. Yet here she is, atop the field of contenders, the most likely choice for vice president—but with some static. “A lot of people are looking to shove that knife in her back,” says a Democrat affiliated with […]
Fox News star Tucker Carlson—currently facing outrage from network colleagues over his racist rhetoric—upped the ante on Monday night, claiming it was “probably illegal” for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to prioritize Black women in his running mate search while calling those candidates unqualified. Carlson, whose former head writer was recently outed as an outspoken racist, kicked off Monday night’s broadcast of his hit primetime show by singling out the women of color whom Biden is reportedly considering as the vice-presidential nominee. “We’ve taken a closer look at three potential candidates. All of them are said to be on Joe […]
What is the sound of one hand clapping? What would happen if I hired two private detectives to follow each other? The first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club. The first rule of becoming the president, if you’re a woman, is you absolutely cannot want to be the president. CNBC reported that some “allies” of Joe Biden are “waging a shadow campaign” against veepstakes frontrunner Kamala Harris, on the grounds that she’s “too ambitious” to be the vice president because what she really wants is to be the president. That report came days after former Sen. […]
On Thursday night’s episode of Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live, Sen. Kamala Harris shocked viewers and host Andy Cohen by revealing she already thought of a slogan: “I’ll give you my opinion, but my beliefs are not up for debate.” OK, the current frontrunner to be Joe Biden’s democratic running mate wasn’t exactly talking about a vice-presidential campaign. She was taking part in the Bravo talk show’s long-held tradition of debuting her own Real Housewives tagline—delivered with gusto and to applause from Cohen and the night’s other guest, actress and activist Laverne Cox. (Hillary Clinton’s recent shot at a tagline: “I’m […]
Two months into her first term as a member of Congress, Florida Democrat and former police chief Rep. Val Demings was asked on national television whether “all lives matter.” “When we hire law enforcement to do the job, we need to let them do their job, sit back, and not let, when a group of society feels like they’re being mistreated, let them go in there and tear up a city or town,” declared Randy, a Virginia Democrat who called in to Demings’ inaugural appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal with more of a comment than a question. “Because once you do […]
Meghan McCain asked Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) what she may have thought was going to be a “gotcha” question Monday morning on The View. Harris wasn’t having it. “Many activists right now are calling for a defunding of the police,” McCain said when it was her turn to question the senator, citing the Minneapolis City Council vote that would go even further in dismantling that city’s police department. “I want to know from you, do you support defunding and removing the police from American communities, and if not, why do you think there is such a hard time being differentiated right […]
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) ponders the moment she endorsed presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden a lot. “I think about it every day,” she told a group of teachers in Colorado gathered virtually on Saturday afternoon. “I couldn’t think of a more joyful way to end [my campaign].” Klobuchar, a Minnesota senator and one of the contenders thought to be in the running to be Biden’s vice president, was addressing over 100 attendees present for a campaign-sponsored writing workshop, where organizers and residents learned the mechanics of writing letters to the editor in local newspapers. At nearly every juncture of the election, […]