Month: September 2021

Donald Trump Jr. tweets a lot. Often times he retweets himself. Sometimes there’s unhinged videos. It’s as though he’s making up for the absence of his father, who was kicked off Twitter nearly nine months back. Like his dad, some of what he tweets are provably false. It could get him in trouble some day. Except it already has: For the last two years, he’s tried to shoot down a defamation lawsuit. And a judge just declared that it can move forward.

According to The Washington Post, Jr. was sued by businessman-turned-attempted politician Don Blankenship, whom his father opposed, after he called him a “felon” during his failed 2018 senatorial campaign in West Virginia. He was referring to an accident at one of Blankenship’s mines, which resulted in him being charged with felonies. However, he wound up only being convicted on a misdemeanor. Blankenship attempted to explain this to Don Jr., but to no avail. Don Jr. left the false tweet up until at least June of that year. Blankenship lost his primary race.

Since then, Jr. has been trying to get the case dismissed — but also to no avail. In the judge’s ruling, he points out that Jr. “never retracted or corrected the false tweets, despite being informed of their falsity.”

If that sounds familiar, that’s because Don Jr. is currently doing the very same thing. Republicans recently seized upon an image of a man in silhouette dangling from a noose from a helicopter, claiming that it was a U.S. vehicle that was left behind, being flown by the Taliban. That was quickly debunked. But Don Jr. has continued to spread the lie. He’s even currently using the image as Twitter page banner.

As per the Blankenship lawsuit, Trump’s legal team has argued that news outlets also falsely reported that he was a felon. However, as The Post notes, there’s one key difference:

A key difference, though, as with much of the whataboutism over media fact-checking of the Trumps and their allies, is that many of the media outlets corrected the information. Trump Jr.’s M.O., by contrast, is to press forward even after his many false claims are debunked. The judge also goes further in this case in stating there is evidence Trump Jr. would have known the truth.

Whether or not Blankenship’s lawsuit is successful, it puts yet another legal hurdle in front of the Trump family. But at least the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.

(Via WaPo)

ESPN’s daily debate show First Take is going to look a little different going forward after its parting of ways with Max Kellerman. While Stephen A. Smith will stick around and Molly Qerim Rose will remain host, First Take is changing up its format, as a collection of folks will rotate in to debate Smith on a variety of subjects.

It had previously been reported that one of Smith’s longtime foils, Michael Irvin, will come on the show every Monday, presumably so the two can yell at each other about the Dallas Cowboys. That was confirmed in a release by ESPN on Thursday, which included a handful of other names that will appear on the show. Among them is former quarterback/tight end/outfielder and longtime ESPN personality Tim Tebow, who will appear on Fridays during the college football season.

The rest of the week, Smith and Qerim Rose will be joined by ESPN’s industry-leading roster of analysts and insiders across sports, including Paul Finebaum, Keyshawn Johnson, Mina Kimes, Kimberley A. Martin, Monica McNutt, Jessica Mendoza, Chiney Ogwumike, Dan Orlovsky, Kendrick Perkins, Marcus Spears, Brian Windhorst, Damien Woody and many more.

Each week will culminate on Friday with Heisman Trophy Winner and SEC Network analyst Tim Tebow and Smith debating all things college football heading into Saturdays throughout the season. In addition, First Take will also continue to regularly welcome signature celebrity guests from across sports and entertainment to the show.

Tebow has plenty of experience on TV, so he probably won’t be flummoxed by Smith all that much. But at the very least, he’s found something to do after his recent attempt to change positions and make it with the Jacksonville Jaguars came up a little short.

In an extremely erratic rant punctuated by numerous exclamation marks and without the courtesy of at least threading his thoughts, Donald Trump Jr. attempted to accuse Joe Biden of allegedly bribing Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani into claiming the military withdrawal is going well. While it’s hard to tell exactly what Don Jr. is talking about based on his scattershot assortment of tweets, he’s pulling from a New York Post report that claims Biden pressured Ghani into helping with the “perception” problem to “project a different picture” that things aren’t going well in the “fight against the Taliban.”

The claim is built on a transcript of a phone call obtained by Reuters between Biden and Ghani. Importantly, the call in question took place before Ghani fled the country at the start of the withdrawal. Biden thought he was talking to an ally who would navigate a situation that didn’t involve the Taliban seizing control of the Afghan government in less than 24 hours. Not to mention, Biden was also operating under the auspices of the deal made by the Trump administration.

Naturally, that key information was missing as Don Jr. launched into his Twitter rant:

Seems like NOT a Perfect phone Call!!! Of course the impeachment hucksters are totally silent.

“Whether it’s true or not” sounds a lot like a president trying to get another president to lie to the world.

Media, Dems, RINO Republicans: Totally fine. Not even a little bit impeachable despite the BS we pulled 6 months ago which, even if true, was a tiny fraction of this!

Joe Biden offered US taxpayer funded aid to a foreign leader in exchange for his help in lying to the American people about the dire situation in Afghanistan — part of a scheme to use the presidency to protect Biden’s personal political interests. #QuidProJoe

Despite spreading his accusations across several tweets, Don Jr. was fact-checked in the replies and roasted for basically suggesting that his father committed treason during the infamous Ukraine call and is also responsible for the deal that led to the conditions in Afghanistan:

(Via Donald Trump Jr. on Twitter, New York Post)

Lil Skies remains a star three years after the stunning release of his hit debut mixtape Life Of A Dark Rose. The 23-year-old is just months removed from the January release of his second studio album Unbothered, which debuted at No. 50 on the Billboard 200, supporting it since with the release of a deluxe version with seven new songs, including the exuberant “Ice Water” featuring Trippie Redd.

Today, Lil Skies comes through for a bouncy UPROXX Sessions performance of that track sans Trippie (another Sessions alum), just a few months after his last appearance, when he dropped in to show off another deluxe edition track, “How You Feel.” While that performance was more laid-back, this time around he brings lots of energy, reflecting the celebratory vibe on “Ice Water.”

Check out Lil Skies’ bouncy performance of “Ice Water” for UPROXX Sessions above.

UPROXX Sessions is Uproxx’s performance show featuring the hottest up-and-coming acts you should keep an eye on. Featuring creative direction from LA promotion collective, Ham On Everything, and taking place on our “bathroom” set designed and painted by Julian Gross, UPROXX Sessions is a showcase of some of our favorite performers, who just might soon be yours, too.

Lil Skies is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

When Wahoo Seafood Grill owner Shawn Shepherd got a phone call from an employee about an extraordinarily large tip, his first instinct was to be suspicious. He advised his employee to check the customer’s ID and name on the back of the card, which checked out. Even after the point-of-sale transaction went through, Shepherd still checked the next day to make sure the money was still there.

It was. All $10,000 of it.

According to The Gainesville Sun, a man eating at the restaurant with his wife and child had gathered the staff of 10 who were working at the restaurant on August 17 and thanked them for their hard work. Then he paid his $144 bill and added $10,000 on top of it for the employees to split.

“Watching these guys get their check was almost as good as Christmas morning,” Shepherd told The Sun.

The restaurant shared a photo of the bill with the tip included, writing:

“On Tuesday night, a customer asked our entire restaurant staff to come to the dining area. He thanked them for showing up and working hard.

Then something incredible happened. He told them he was giving them $1,000 each.

Our staff couldn’t believe it.

Wahoo Seafood Grill’s owner, Shawn Shepherd said, ‘I’m not usually an emotional guy, but this really got me. I’m blown away. We’re ALL blown away by his generosity.

The last year and a half hasn’t been easy on this industry. We’re hurting and we’re exhausted, but this incredible act of kindness has restored our faith in humanity.’

Our whole staff would like to thank this generous customer from the bottom of our hearts. We are all going to pay it forward in our own ways. Even the smallest acts of kindness can have a giant ripple effect.

We’re just a local, veteran-owned seafood restaurant doing our best to weather this storm — and this is truly the last thing we expected to happen on a regular Tuesday night.

By sharing this, we hope you feel inspired to do something nice for someone today. Be the reason someone believes in the goodness of people.”

One of the employees who was called into work that night was a mom whose child has been in and out of the hospital. “It’s been absolutely a really stressful time for her,” Shepherd said, so the tip was an especially welcome surprise.

Shepherd said the employees working that night had stuck with the business during the past 18 months of upheaval, so he was extra grateful to be able to distribute the generous tip to them.

Wahoo had closed temporarily in late March of 2020 and like thousands of other businesses hit hard by the pandemic, Shepherd had to figure out how to stay afloat and pay employees.

“I knew nothing about curbside, I knew nothing about delivery and take out. We weren’t prepared for that. We didn’t even have the containers to do it,” Shepherd told The Sun, noting that he lost $30,000 worth of food.

With the help of The Florida Restaurant Lodging Association and the Alachua County Chamber of Commerce, he was able to receive emergency funding to pay employees, but even after the restaurant reopened, business was abysmally slow.

“We had no business coming through the front door,” Shepherd said.

Shephard said he was indebted to the loyal Wahoo employees who have stuck with him and helped keep the restaurant afloat. How wonderful to see a customer share the same appreciation and use their resources to provide a little relief to people who have been through so much uncertainty.

On Wednesday, Texas rolled out nightmarish legislation that not only all but outlawed abortion, but also encouraged snitches to rat out those who get the procedure. First the very conservative Supreme Court did nothing to stop it; eventually they ruled 5-4 in favor of letting it remain. Panic set in. The Handmaid’s Tale comparisons ran rampant. It’s unclear what one can do to stop it. But TikTok users had one idea: Cripple it with Shrek porn.

As per Raw Story, the anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life set up a website in advance of the newly instated law, which bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, before most women realize they’re pregnant. The site allows people to leave anonymous tips about those seeking abortions. Even before September 1, people had already figured a way to spam it.

The site allows tipsters to drop images along with detailed snitching, and it was shared by both anti-abortion crusaders…and by young anti-anti-abortion crusaders, who spread it around Reddit, Twitter, and TikTok. One person dropped a video on the latter showing what he did: He wrote, “My wife aborted our baby 4 weeks into her pregnancy without consulting me.” Then he peppered that with no less than 11 images of Shrek porn.

@williamshaughn_

##abortionispoggers ##prochoice ##abortion ##abortionisahumanright

♬ original sound – williamshaughn_

And so, just a day after the draconian law went into action, a site for doxxing was overrun by social media yuksters-cum-activists.

The anti-abortion site wasn’t only clogged with porn featuring a giant green ogre voiced by Mike Myers. Selena Gomez stans also sprung into action.

There was also furry porn.

And can’t-unsee Ted Cruz images.

Things got so bad for the people at Texas Right to Live that they started blocking people.

This is hardly the first time that Good Trouble activists have spammed far right snitch services with jokey misinformation. Soon after the 2020 election, hotlines were set up for people to report all the voter fraud that wasn’t happening. So people started leaving cartoonishly false reports, including the creator of Gravity Falls, who kept leaving prank messages about the Hamburglar. So history repeats itself, but in a good way.

(Via Raw Story)

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There Was No Abundant Intentionality In Making The Pod

Miles Gray from The Daily Zeitgeist and 420 Day Fiance joins Matt and Vince to break down The Sopranos season five episode nine, “Unidentified Black Males.”

A lot happens in the episode. Finn learns too much about what his new construction site friends are really like, Tony deals with the fallout from Tony B.’s extracurricular activities, Carmella asks for a divorce, and everyone somehow finds a way to pin the blame on some Black guys. The episode is probably best remembered as the one where Vito is [REDACTED FOR 20-YEAR-OLD SPOILERS], but every storyline has at least one surprise, a laugh-out-loud joke, and some stellar performances.

The stress of holding on to Vito’s secret makes Finn think about leaving town, igniting a fight with Meadow that Matt, Vince, and Miles agree is too relatable. The ones where you’ve fought your way to the logical conclusion of a relationship, but you’re too young to know you can just be alone and be fine, so you double down on commitment like Finn’s hasty proposal that seems more motivated by the idea of going to bed than love. If you’re reading this, you and your boo are in college, and it’s not working, just break up. It will be fine. If you feel sad, listen to this week’s Bada-B stories.

If you’re thinking about breaking up with the pod, instead double down and write a five-star review on Apple Podcasts

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Email us at [email protected]; leave us a voicemail at 415-275-0030

Support the Pod: become a patron at patreon.com/Frotcast and get more bonus content than you could ever want, AND if you sign up for the Pod Yourself a Shoutout tier, you can bask in the glory of hearing your name on the podcast like this week’s newest members: Telly and The Canuck

-Description by Brent Flyberg.

Lil Nas X’s album Montero is on the way, and if there’s anybody in music who knows how to hilarious drum up attention online, it’s Nas. His latest stunt is particularly good: To promote the album, he has shared a “maternity” photoshoot for the album with which he is currently “pregnant.”

Despite how it may seem, this isn’t a reaction to Drake’s maternal Certified Lover Boy cover art, but just a fortuitous coincidence. Nas told People that when he saw Drake’s cover, he thought, “There’s no way the universe is lining up this perfect for this to happen,” Nas thought.

Nas actually came up with the maternity shoot idea after hearing Megan Thee Stallion’s verse on his song “Dolla Sign Slime” for the first time, saying, “I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is amazing,’ so I immediately called my stylist. She was like, ‘Wow, this all comes together. Your album. Your baby.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, this is my baby, huh?’ As a joke, she was like, ‘Yeah, you should do a pregnancy shoot.’ I was like, ‘You know what? That’s actually brilliant.’ So now we have this entire thing coming out, and it’s going to be amazing.”

Along with the maternity photos, Nas even had an ultrasound mocked up:

Elsewhere during the piece, he spoke about what fans can expect from the album: “You’re getting a lot of stories about me. You’re getting a lot of stories about my past and where I want to be in my love life. But they’re also a bop. I feel like I finally found a great balance between being as real as possible within my music and making a hit song.”

Check out the People feature here.

Montero is out 9/17 via Columbia Records. Pre-save it here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Okay, what do we have here? A lot, for one, and most of it good. We’ve got Steve Martin and Martin Short teaming up again, for what feels like the 30th time, in a project that lets them play directly to their strengths. That’s never bad. We’ve got Selena Gomez in the crew, working with and alongside the two comedy icons, serving the dual purpose of creating a generational divide that can be mined for laughs and making me ask myself if Three Amigos would have been a better movie if Selena Gomez had a time machine and replaced Chevy Chase. I haven’t solved that last one yet, mostly because now my brain is cranking away on how funny it would be if Selena Gomez had a time machine that she used exclusively to steal Chevy Chase’s career out from under him. Selena Gomez in Caddyshack. Selena Gomez in Fletch. It’s all a fun little brain exercise that we do not have time for right now (STOP THINKING ABOUT SELENA GOMEZ IN CHRISTMAS VACATION), because right now we need to talk about the new Hulu series Only Murders in the Building, which, through its first chunk of episodes, is shaping up to be an absolute blast.

Some plot-related business, without giving too much away. All three of them live in the same aging fancy apartment building in Manhattan, and all three of them are obsessive fans of true-crime podcasts, especially one specific fictional program that is dropping weekly episodes as this show begins. The fire alarm goes off in their building one night, and when they all return, blammo, there’s a dead body in the building, an alleged suicide that the three of them refuse to accept as such for a handful of reasons, the primary one at first being “because podcasts.” Guess if they decide to start their own investigation. Guess if they decide to podcast about it themselves. I suspect you’ve landed on the correct answers here.

And buddy, it is a hoot, this haphazard homicide investigation these three goofs engage in. Remember how I said way back in the first paragraph that everyone is playing to their strengths? Well, check this out. Martin Short plays a theatrical director named Oliver and, yes, this description cuts both ways as he is a director of theatrical productions and a director with a wildly theatrical personality. There are so many scarves involved here. Martin Short rarely gives you anything less than the Full Martin Short, but he is somehow exceeding even that so far. Look at a king work.

Steve Martin, too. Steve Martin has been around for so long doing so many things — stand-up, movies, banjo-playing — that it can be a little too easy to take him for granted at this point. Please do not do that. Please do not ever do that. Steve Martin has been doing all that for as long as he has because he’s insanely good at all of it, and he dials up another winner here. He plays an actor named Charles who starred in a long-running television cop show called Brazzos as, you guessed it, a cop named Brazzos. This allows him to dig deep into the old Steve Martin back of tricks. He plays the character as pretentious and frustrated and sad, but almost always for laughs. He is very good, especially when we start getting to the podcast business. Look at this king work, too.

Which brings us to Selena Gomez. Selena Gomez is so good in Only Murders in the Building. This should not be a huge surprise, probably, because Selena Gomez has been doing this quite literally for almost her entire life. But still. Watching her out there going toe-to-toe with living legends like Short and Martin who have a decades-long history of working together… it’s really something. Her character is named Mabel and has secrets. She has a lot of secrets, ones that are being left out morsel-by-morsel as the show leads us down its increasingly twisty path. It’s good. She’s good. And she swears a lot, which is enjoyable for me for reasons I have not fully put my finger on yet.

What it all leads to is a fun little satire of the entire true-crime industrial complex, told within a true-crime story. There are nods galore to the genre, quite literally starting with the theme song and score, which open with these bouncy little tinkling keyboards that sound kind of a lot like the music from the first go-round of Serial. There are celebrity cameos — so many celebrity cameos — littered throughout, with everyone from Tina Fey to freaking Sting popping up in the first three episodes. Where do you even go from a Sting cameo in your first three episodes? I’m legitimately asking. Beyoncé? Obama? The ghost of Prince?

It’s a fair question, and one I look forward to investigating as the season goes on. Or at least once I stop thinking about the thing where Prince once appeared as himself in an episode of New Girl, which I suspect will happen just in time for this show to drop its fourth episode next Tuesday. That’s another cool thing that’s happening here. After dropping the first three episodes this week, the show is switching to a weekly format the rest of the way through. I like that more shows are doing that again, in part because it leads to more discussion and buzz between episodes and in part because it allows me to do things like yell at you to get caught up in time for us to all talk about the next episode. Watch this show. Come hang out. We’ll have fun.

I don’t know where any of this is headed, exactly. Shows like this that introduce a twisty plot early on can ride it through to success or fizzle out halfway through by tying themselves into knots. What I do know, though, is that this sucker is off to a blast of a start. It toes that line between parody and self-seriousness as well as any show I’ve seen this year. It’s playful and heartfelt and dark and light and a few dozen other things all at once. There are a slew of suspects and incompetent amateur investigators and cats and flashbacks. There is also, to my great pleasure, a tough-talking detective who shows up early on and grumbles lines like this one.

It’s a good show. And a manageable one to keep up with, what with the aforementioned weekly release. And it makes for a good family viewing, as long as you have the kind of family where Selena Gomez saying the eff word a lot is kosher. It’s fun to watch and fun to discuss and really just a bunch of fun, in general. You could do a heck of a lot worse with 30 minutes or so a week. And you might never look at Sting the same way after seeing him as a dog-hating version of himself. I did not expect to type that last sentence in a television review, ever, but here we all are. The world is full of surprises.

Representative Lauren Boebert has entered the chat to share her thoughts on how President Joe Biden has handled the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and we’ve all learned a very important fact about the conservative gun fanatic: she has a terrible memory.

Boebert took to social media, firing off a series of tweets calling for Biden’s impeachment over phone calls with Afghanistan government leaders and dragging the administration to effectively “negotiating with terrorists.” And look, we get it, EVERYONE has opinions on what our country could’ve done better when it comes to our presence in the Middle East, but if you’re going to unleash some faux outrage for political clout, at least read your own receipts first.

Boebert tweeted some apparent praise for how the Taliban was handling “building back” the country literally a month ago.

Now, after Biden’s strategy to pull forces from Afghanistan has left a power vacuum that looks to be filling up with Taliban leadership, she’s suddenly not so keen on the idea of organization.

Naturally, folks were more than happy to remind her of her own strongly-held views on the subject — which seemed to have drastically changed within the span of just a couple of weeks — and of the actions of her political idol, Donald Trump. It was Trump who famously (or infamously, we guess?) entertained the idea of inviting Taliban leaders to Camp David and who agreed to the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners, many high-ranking individuals within the organization who have gone on to lead the current takeover in Afghanistan.

Ahhh, the internet, where every dumb, revealing tirade you tweet eventually comes back to bite you in the butt. Gotta love it.