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, […]
Kamala Harris
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]