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, “Keep it down!” she returns to our call. “It’s just one of those days,” she says resignedly. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Behar’s been taping episodes of The View from her New York home. I’m being […]
Mike Pence
28 posts
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 […]
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden wanted to talk about the economy in must-win Michigan. Instead, he started with an announcement about the status of his health. “I got two COVID tests this morning,” said Biden, who was wearing a mask while speaking outdoors in Grand Rapids on Friday afternoon. “One in Delaware and one by the former White House doc who came up, and everything’s cleared.” “We wanted to make sure everything was cleared before I came,” he said. Biden’s speech was the first time the public had heard from him in person and at length since President Donald Trump announced, […]
President Donald Trump announced Monday that his administration would hand out 100 million coronavirus tests to states across the country, free of charge, for community distribution but stressed state leaders should use the additional resources to reopen schools. The administration plans to ship the Abbott BinaxNOW point of care tests in batches and will distribute them on a per capita basis, according to officials working with the White House coronavirus task force. It’s unclear which states will receive the tests first In a private call on Monday morning, Vice President Mike Pence pleaded with governors directly, saying that while they are […]
The Republican convention kicked off in Charlotte, North Carolina on Monday and has been a combination of virtual recordings and live segments, while the party’s nominee and current US President Donald Trump is scheduled to give a speech on the final day of the event. After being re-nominated by the Republican Party as Donald Trump’s running mate, US Vice President Mike Pence stated at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday that people “won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America”. Laura Wilson, Political Analyst and Political Science Professor at the University of Indianapolis Sputnik: Vice President Mike Pence took centre stage […]
MSNBC anchor Hallie Jackson repeatedly grilled the vice president’s chief of staff Marc Short on Thursday over the lack of masks at Mike Pence’s Republican National Convention speech, prompting the top aide to accuse Jackson of “mask shaming” veterans. Shortly after Pence’s Wednesday night RNC address at Fort McHenry, it was reported that there were no requirement for attendees to have been tested for the coronavirus. The crowd, which totaled 135 people and featured a number of elderly veterans, was largely devoid of face masks and didn’t appear to practice social distancing. While interviewing Short about the veep’s speech, Jackson brought […]
At 9:30 p.m., as hundreds of protesters marched down Kenosha’s streets to protest a police shooting that left 29-year-old Jacob Blake paralyzed, National Association of Police Organizations President Michael McHale took to the stage at the Republican convention to chide Democrats for disrespecting America’s police officers. “Chaos results when elected officials in cities like Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago, and New York make the conscious and very public decision not to support law enforcement,” McHale told millions of Americans who have watched as scenes of police violence consume our daily lives. “The violence we are seeing… isn’t happening by chance; it’s the direct […]
Eight years ago, Bill Clinton earned the title “explainer-in-chief” when his speech at the Democratic National Convention made a very persuasive case for reelecting Barack Obama. Mike Pence earned that title this year, after Bubba was all but sidelined by his party, in his renomination acceptance speech Wednesday night that connected all the dots and laid out the brick-by-brick argument for why Donald Trump deserves four more years. Pence addressed the elephants in the room: Hurricane Laura, currently a Category 4 storm, is bearing down on Louisiana and Texas, and Kenosha, Wisconsin, is a tinderbox in the aftermath of still another […]
A large crowd assembled to watch Vice President Mike Pence deliver his Republican National Convention speech at Maryland’s Fort McHenry on Wednesday night. There wasn’t a mask in sight. “As we did last night in the Rose Garden, it’s worth pointing out, anybody around the president and the first lady gets tested, the COVID-19 test,” Fox News’ Bret Baier told viewers after Pence had finished speaking. “We assume everybody in this area did. We don’t have that nailed down, but we assume that’s the case.” Turns out, that assumption was incorrect. On CNN, Wolf Blitzer said, “It’s so sad and potentially […]
On Wednesday night, as police described a 17-year-old out-of-state militant who shot and killed two protesters as “involved in the use of firearms to resolve whatever conflict was in place,” as a preventable pandemic’s death toll inched toward 200,000 Americans, as California burned and as a category 4 hurricane barreled toward the US, I thought about optimism. Wednesday’s was the third night of what GOP officials and sycophants promised would be an optimistic response to the “doom and gloom” of last week’s Democratic convention. But things are pretty widely acknowledged to be bad, no matter how many wrinkled flags are displayed […]
As the Democratic National Convention came to a rousing close and the Republicans geared up to start their four-day affair next week, Vice President Mike Pence went on a whopping five morning shows on Friday to help make the case for another four years of Trump. On Fox & Friends, Pence fielded softball questions about Goodyear tires and Star Wars metaphors. And on CNN’s New Day, he was left squirming about Trump’s disturbing embrace of QAnon. The vice president dramatically shook his head as CNN’s John Berman reported the fact that the FBI has labeled that conspiracy-theory cult a domestic terror […]
During a meeting with governors on Monday, the White House Coronavirus Task Force trotted out decreased COVID-19 case counts in Arizona as proof that masks and social distancing work, encouraging other states to impose similar measures as a way to contain and prevent surges. “Masks, closing indoor bars, decreasing indoor dining capacity to 25 percent, continued social distancing and personal hygiene messaging, according to the model, dramatically decrease the rate of community spread,” Vice President Mike Pence, chair of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said in the meeting, according to a recording obtained by The Daily Beast. Pence said that […]
The White House is now requiring hospitals around the country to change how they report data on COVID-19 patients in a move that effectively bypasses the nation’s largest public health agency. In a letter from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the agency mandated that hospitals send information on their COVID-19 patients directly to a database managed by HHS rather than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The order outlining the alteration claims it will help federal agencies move from manual data entry to automated, which would streamline the collection and dissemination of coronavirus data for multiple […]
If and when Donald Trump leaves office, whether now or the day after the election, it should be by resignation. We cannot and should not wait until Inauguration Day, January 20, 2021, for him to vacate the White House. His departure has become a matter of national emergency, national safety, and now national security. The polls show Trump losing by large margins to Joe Biden if the election were held today. His nearly catastrophic handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in tens of thousands of unnecessary infections and deaths. And things are getting worse following the premature reopening of states, […]
Of course Reverend Troy Perry is a preacher. He sounds like one. His voice booms smoothly. His Southern accent remains in place, despite years of Californian living. More than one sentence ends with a “And I will tell you…” On July 27th, Perry will celebrate his 80th birthday, and there’s a long, dramatic life to look back on which at its heart is about how one gay man who cherished his belief and faith in God did not believe—as he was constantly told—that God did not love him because he was gay. And to prove it, he created a church all […]
In lieu of mocking President Donald Trump’s embarrassing rally attendance in Tulsa or continuing his war on the “racist” Fox News troll Tucker Carlson, John Oliver kicked off the latest edition of Last Week Tonight by addressing the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the nation. The numbers are at record highs nationwide, including in red states like Arizona, Florida, and Texas that were quick to flout social-distancing rules and reopen. “The U.S. is now setting records for daily new cases as the virus surges around the country, which makes it both startling—and frankly, infuriating—that on Friday, the vice president made this declaration,” offered […]
Vice President Mike Pence defended President Donald Trump’s drive to hold rallies with sparse public health measures Friday, even as officials and health experts are sounding alarm bells that a resurgent coronavirus is causing problems in states across the country. “Well, the freedom of speech, the right to peaceably assemble is enshrined in the Constitution of the United States and we have an election coming up this fall,” Pence said when asked how the administration could justify the events. “And President Trump and I believe that taking proper steps, we’ve created screening at recent events and giving people the very best […]
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 […]
During this week leading up to President Donald Trump’s big campaign rally in Tulsa, Vice President Mike Pence not only lied to reporters about the COVID-19 situation on the ground in Oklahoma, he also urged governors to spread those lies to the residents of their states. “Trump is, in his own way, breathtakingly dumb,” Seth Meyers said Wednesday night. “But the rest of his administration is just as committed to this coronavirus cover-up as he is, even if they manage to be a little more subtle about it.” That brought the Late Night host to Pence, who told governors this week […]
Last week, Jimmy Kimmel apologized for airing a deceptive clip that appeared to show Vice President Mike Pence delivering empty boxes to a nursing home. The vice president’s office apparently demanded an “on-air” apology as well. They got a lot more than that Monday night. “The trouble started because at one point in the video, after awkwardly lugging heavy boxes to the door, Mike Pence finds some empty boxes in the back of the van,” Kimmel explained. It turns out Pence was “joking” when he asked if he could just carry the empty boxes for the photo op. “How anyone can […]
Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday refuted reports that he is in self-isolation away from the White House after his press secretary tested positive for the coronavirus, according to a statement from his office. “Vice President Pence will continue to follow the advice of the White House Medical Unit and is not in quarantine,” reads a statement from Devin O’Malley, his spokesperson. “Additionally, Vice President Pence has tested negative every single day and plans to be at the White House tomorrow.” The vice president didn’t attend a meeting on Saturday with President Donald Trump and top military officials, according to Bloomberg […]
ABC late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel on Friday half-heartedly apologized for a deceptively edited clip of Vice President Mike Pence supposedly admitting to carrying empty boxes of personal protective equipment to a nursing home in Virginia as part of a publicity stunt. During his Thursday night broadcast, Kimmel mocked the vice president over the press event which showed a maskless Pence helping other workers deliver PPE from FEMA to the front of the facility. “Here he is, with no mask on, wheeling boxes of PPEs into a health-care center, and doing his best to lift them,” Kimmel said, narrating over […]