Category: News

For the last year and a half, Donald Trump has been one of the sorest losers in history. The former president has spent his post-office life baldly claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him, and much of his base gone with him in this delusion. But every now and then he accidentally tells the truth about how badly he got trounced.

During an appearance on CNN, Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former aide to Trump, recounted a story from November of 2020, shortly after the election was called for Joe Biden. Trump was watching his successor on TV with Griffin in the room, and at one point he “blurted out” a most curious phrase: “Can you believe I lost to this guy?”

That said, Griffin doesn’t think this tale — an anecdote, provided without audio — is the smoking gun some would prefer it was.
“I’m not of the mind that this is going to take down Donald Trump in a legal sort of way,” Griffin admitted. “But I do think it’s going to inform the public about a man who lost and couldn’t do what we’ve done for the entirety of our history, which is allow a peaceful transition of power.”

The revelation comes in the midst of the hearings for the Jan. 6 House select committee, which kicked off with NFL-level ratings. One of the hearings was largely devoted to the large number of aides and allies who believe the fact that he lost re-election and tried to tell him as such. That includes his oldest daughter Ivanka, whose testimony did not make her daddy happy. The next hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, June 21.

(Via CNN)

In 2018, Pete Davidson made a joke about Dan Crenshaw’s eyepatch. Conservatives were outraged and demanded that the (since departed) SNL stand-out apologize to the SEAL-turned-Texas representative. He did, on live television. Jump four years, and conservatives themselves are making fun of the fact that Crenshaw lost an eye in an IED explosion while defending the nation. But people haven’t forgotten about Pete.

It all started in May, when Tucker Carlson, angry that Crenshaw was calling out colleagues for not voting for a Ukraine aid package, came up with a sub-Trumpian insult: He called him “Eyepatch McCain.”

This weekend, some on the far right repeated that line to Crenshaw’s face. As per Mediaite, the lawmaker was attending the Republican Party of Texas convention when he was violently confronted by a group of far right wackjobs. Some of them identified as Proud Boys. One was Alex Stein, a far right social media activist, who filmed himself repeatedly repeating Carlson’s taunt, yelling “Eyepatch McCain” and calling him a “globalist.” He and the other activists were then escorted out of the building.

One witness said the activists “got physical with multiple people” and that Crenshaw’s campaign manager was “assaulted by being pushed aggressively into a pillar.”

As news of the incident became public, thought about Davidson, who made a silly joke for which he formally apologized, even inviting Crenshaw on SNL so he could do it in person, in front of the world.

As for Crenshaw himself, he later commented on the incident, tweeting, “This is what happens when angry little boys like @alexstein99 don’t grow up and can’t get girlfriends…”

Crenshaw has a habit of breaking with the increasingly extremist wing of his party, though he’s still a guy who posted a bizarre video of him threatening to beat up leftist protesters.

(Via Mediaite)

Lil Nas X has a new song, “Late To The Party” with YoungBoy Never Broke Again, on the way, which means the rapper is shifting into promotional mode. This is great news because as Nas has proven time and time again in recent years, when it comes to drawing attention to himself and his work, there’s nobody better than he is. So, naturally, Nas has come up with yet another hilarious way to get the word out about “Late To The Party”: Fake brand partnerships featuring offbeat promotions.

The first was with Grindr and as part of it, in exchange for pre-saving the song, the dating app is supposedly offering “free c*ck,’ per Nas’ Twitter.

The next one is a team-up with the meme “homophobic dog,” offering a chance to meet the pooch. Nas also wrote, “Do it now for a chance to see him live! calling you the famous word as seen on auntie diaries by kendrick lamar! hurry!”

The final one, as of now, is Nas and McDonald’s offering free Brazilian butt lift (a “free fat ass,” as the image states) to the first million people who pre-save the song.

In another post Nas ended up deleting, a fake partnership with Chick-fil-A promised a “free meal on Sundays” when you pre-save the song, the joke of course being that the restaurant has had multiple LGBTQ+-related controversies and is closed on Sundays.

While listeners won’t actually be able to take advantage of any of these promotions, Nas’ entertaining antics have probably earned him a pre-save anyway.

Far as screen pairs go, Martin Lawrence is better known for teaming up with Will Smith, who’s, well, a bit preoccupied these days. But he’s also shared the screen with another legendary entertainer: Eddie Murphy. Lawrence had a small role in the 1992 Murphy vehicle Boomerang, but they were co-leads seven years later, in the prison comedy Life. What’s more, their kids are dating. And if it gets even more serious, Lawrence knows who’s going to pay for the wedding.

Lawrence was on Jimmy Kimmel Live Friday, when the idea of him and Murphy becoming in-laws came up. When asked what will happen if his daughter Jasmin gets engaged to Murphy’s son Eric, Lawrence responded, “Imma try to get Eddie to pay for it.”

Kimmel also asked if the two could produce “some kind of comedy super-baby,” but Lawrence demurred, saying they give them their privacy. “We kind of just stay out of their business and let them do their own thing and respect their thing,” he explained.

Lawrence was on the late night show in part because of the BET reunion special for his old sitcom Martin, which aired on Fox in the mid-’90s. The show has been back in the conversation, even inspiring a collaboration with the Pistons last year.

Meanwhile, Jasmin and Eric first announced they were dating a year ago in an Instagram post.

You can watch Lawrence’s Jimmy Kimmel Live appearance in the video above.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

Clipse, the duo of brothers Pusha T and No Malice, enjoyed its initial run from 1992 to 2010. While the pair took some time apart in the years following, they’ve staged a bit of a reunion in recent years, which kicked off when they featured on Kanye West’s 2019 song “Use This Gospel.” They’ve since hopped on other tracks together, but before this weekend, there had not yet been a live reunion on stage.

That was actually supposed to happen at Pharrell’s Something In The Water festival in 2020, which was ultimately canceled in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The fest also didn’t go on in 2021 but it did finally return this weekend. While Clipse wasn’t listed on the festival lineup, they did actually stage their reunion this time around, as part of the Pharrell & Phriends set. For their time on stage (about 18 minutes), they did “Mr. Me Too,” Birdman’s “What Happened To That Boy,” “Cot Damn,” and wrapped up with “Grindin’.”

Even before this, 2022 has been a good year for Clipse. In 1999, the pair was ready to release their debut album, Exclusive Audio Footage, but it was ultimately shelved by the label. This year, though, the LP finally hit streaming services. On top of that, Pusha landed his first No. 1 album with It’s Almost Dry.

Watch the Clipse performance above.

On Saturday, Joe Biden did something no one else has ever done before: He fell off a bicycle. It happens! Anyone who gets on a bike is going to wipe out at some point. But Biden happens to be the president of the United States and the fall happened to occur right in front of a press pool, meaning there was clear video of the incident. So of course there was a lot of dragging and chuckling and what have you about a guy who’s already very gaffe-prone. Naturally his former presidential rival, the guy he beat, got in on the fun.

Unable to post on his favorite social media site, which banned him almost a year and a half ago, Donald Trump took to his own flailing service, which he only started using recently. He posted a doctored videos of one that begins with him hitting a golf ball then cuts to the video of Biden tumbling off his bike. A golf ball was inserted into the latter clip, striking Biden on the head, with wacky sound effects.

Trump has long had a habit of posting doctored photos and videos made by others without crediting them. Insider believes it could have been made from someone on Twitter, who no doubt has mixed feelings about their work being lifted wholesale by Trump.

Biden’s fall happened while he was stationary, and he quickly got back up, telling the press corp, “I’m good,” explaining that his foot got caught in one of the clipless pedals, which, name be damned, feature shoes that clip into the pedals, making it easier to wipe out. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is a guy who walks weird, eats crap, and has been known to wear pants that look like they were put on backwards.

(Via Insider)

Christian Lee Hutson has built up some acclaim for himself in recent years, starting most notably with his 2020 album Beginners, his first released on Anti-. In April, he followed that album up with Quitters. Hutson got a good look this weekend on CBS Saturday Morning as part of “Saturday Sessions,” as Hutson performed a trio of songs: “Rubberneckers,” “Lose This Number,” and “Just Like Heaven.”

For the former two songs, Hutson was actually joined by Phoebe Bridgers, who produced Hutson’s two latest albums. As for “Just Like Heaven,” that was actually a cover of the classic song by The Cure and Hutson performed that one by himself, playing acoustic guitar and singing.

Hutson previously said of “Rubberneckers,” “[Los Angeles is] such a heartbreaking place. You can see someone who’s fallen on their face anywhere. If I walk out the door I’d probably find some in a matter of minutes. It’s a place of failure, and everyone who has had success here — however you define that — is also someone who fell on their face 15 times or more before they figured out what they were doing or what not to do, just testing the fences.”

Watch Hutson and Bridgers perform the aforementioned songs on CBS Saturday Morning above.

Having a celebrity check out your business can be exciting, as was the case recently for Atlanta barbershop Diamond Cuts. It seems they bent over backwards to take care of Quavo when he recently came in for a cut, so much so that a barber actually kicked his current client out of his chair.

A video, filmed by the barber, shows Quavo and a couple of associates walking in. All the while, the barber tells his current client, “Hey! Lance! You got to go, Lance. You got to go, Lance [laughs].” The video is captioned, “What would you do if QUAVO Huncho walked into your barbershop? Get yo ass up, Lance, n do that dance.”

While it might seem rude of the barber to kick the original client out of the chair, it appears the two have a personal relationship beyond the barbershop and that they had an understanding about how this sort of situation would go down. In a comment on the post, Lance wrote (as XXL points out), “On the real me & Sef rock with each other not just as a barber/client. He always look out & I do the same. Like he said, he had already communicated with me.”

Still, the barber’s actions got some mixed reviews in the comments. One person wrote, “If there was communication and the customer is aware and understands..awesome sauce.” Another chimed in, “Unless he’s paying for my cut and double for his, i made a reservation like everyone else. Barber should honor who’s in the chair.”

Drake dominated the music news cycle on Friday with the surprise release of Honestly, Nevermind, but last week was actually pretty stacked for new music releases beyond that. Westside Boogie, for example, turned in the excellent new album More Black Superheroes, one of the week’s best hip-hop albums. On Friday, Boogie popped into SiriusXM’s Sway In The Morning show to promote the album and the program also got a call from his Shady Records boss, Eminem himself.

On the program, Em spoke about how rapping is “therapeutic” for him and how that connects to More Black Superheroes. He said:

“I think that’s one of the great things about rap music is that, you know, you can put so much of your life in it, you know what I mean? […] It’s therapeutic and that’s how it’s always been for me.

But with this album, with this new Boogie album — the title, everything, is f*ckin… everything’s great. And it’s like, watching him just keep getting better and better and better is incredible, too. And he’s got so much of his life weaved in this album. You know what I’m saying? Like, I think that it’s therapeutic.”

Listen to the interview below.

Heat wasn’t a monster hit when it arrived in the fall of 1995, but over the last 27 years it’s become one of the most beloved films for each of its legendary leads. Michael Mann’s epic crime film was the second to star both Al Pacino and Robert De Niro (after The Godfather Part II), but the first in which they actually got to share scenes. Now it’s got a new 4K restoration, as well as a forthcoming novel, Heat 2, which is both a sequel and a prequel, showing the younger years of its main characters. And if someone makes a movie out of that one, Pacino knows who should play him.

Pacino and De Niro — as well as producer Art Linson — were present at a premiere screening of the new restoration at this year’s Tribeca Festival. During the pre-film Q&A, moderator Bilge Ebiri (of Vulture) asked the burning question: Who could dare play the younger Vincent Hanna, Pacino’s sometimes unhinged LAPD lieutenant that loves big (or at least great) butts and he cannot lie?

“Timothée Chalamet,” Pacino exclaimed. “I mean, he’s a wonderful actor. Great looks.”

They also discussed the famous mid-film diner scene, in which Hanna and De Niro’s thieving Neil McCauley take a break from cat-and-mouse shenanigans and have a strangely therapeutic (though still tense) chat. They revealed it wasn’t as planned out as one might think.

“Al and I didn’t rehearse the scene,” De Niro told the crowd. “We just thought it was better just to do it.”

“I’ve often said to people who have asked me about working with him, ‘You can do anything with Bob.’ No matter what you do, he’s going to hear it, react to it and connect to it,” Pacino said. “That’s a real luxury to be with someone like that. Because no matter what you do, he picks up on it. He’s always there, at the ready.”

Pacino added, “I guess it’s somewhat like tennis. On your films, you gotta keep hitting the ball over the net, and it gets to the other person. It’s all a smooth rhythm that you get if you listen.”

Heat 2, which shows both the aftermath of the first film and the events leading up to it, will hit shelves on August 9, the same day as the original film’s 4K Blu-ray. Should a film version get greenlit, at least producers have one role cast.

(Via Variety)