Category: News

Lindsey Graham’s loyalty to former president Donald J. Trump is like a pendulum, relentlessly swaying back and forth. In the lead-up to the 2016 election, the South Carolina senator was adamantly against him. Then he had one of his characteristic changes of heart. He was a close Trump ally throughout his presidency, even helping his failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Then, after the Jan. 6 riot, he was against him. Then he joined his side again.

Now Graham is taking issue with at least one thing Trump said. At his latest rally in Texas, Trump told the crowd (among many other weird things) that should he be re-elected in 2024, he’ll pardon his violent supporters who’ve been rounded up by the feds for storming the Capitol building. It was a strange thing to say, even for him, almost a tacit admission that he thinks what they did was good.

But Graham doesn’t think so. During an interview on CBS the morning after Trump’s rally, he was asked if he agreed with his promise to pardon people who violently stormed the Capitol.

“No,” Graham replied. “I don’t want to send any signal that it was OK to defile the Capitol. There are other groups with causes that may want to go down the violent path if these people get pardoned.”

When asked if it was “dangerous” to offer pardons for people who, among other things, injured dozens of police officers, he said, “Yeah,” then added, “I think it’s inappropriate. I don’t want to reinforce the defiling of the Capitol was OK. I don’t want to do anything that would make this more likely in the future.”

Graham tried to compare what Trump said at his rally to current vice president Kamala Harris promoting bail for those arrested during the George Floyd protests of 2020.

“I didn’t like that either,” Graham said. “So I don’t want to do anything from raising bail to pardoning people who take the law into their own hands because it will make violence more likely. I want to deter people who did what they did on Jan. 6. And those who did it, I hope they go to jail and get the book thrown at them because they deserve it.”

Will this enrage Trump? Probably. But the two will probably patch things up quickly.

You can watch Graham’s interview in the video above.

(Via Raw Story)

The Las Vegas Raiders will have all new leadership in 2022 after a 2021 that saw Jon Gruden resign in disgrace in the middle of the season and GM Mike Mayock get fired after a Wild Card round end to a tumultuous season.

With nine teams seeking out head coaches this offseason, the Raiders chose to move quickly and will look to a franchise many have turned to in the past for a new leadership model, hiring a new GM and head coach from the New England Patriots. Pats exec Dave Ziegler will be the next Raiders GM and he’ll bring with him offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels to be the new head coach, per multiple reports.

This will be McDaniels’ second stint as a head coach in the AFC West, as he was in Denver for just under two seasons, compiling an 11-17 record before being fired midway through the 2010 season. Now, 12 years later, the Raiders will hope that another decade under Bill Belichick (and a more established quarterback in place in Derek Carr) will yield better results for McDaniels as a head coach.

The hope from Las Vegas is that McDaniels can bring some stability and consistency to the offense, as Derek Carr enters his ninth season, coming off a prolific year with 4,804 passing yards and 23 touchdowns, but also 14 interceptions and Vegas’ red zone struggles were on full display in their Wild Card loss to Cincinnati.

The track record of former Patriots assistants as head coaches isn’t very strong and many teams have attempted to copy the “Patriot Way” to rather dismal results. Whether McDaniels and Ziegler can buck that trend and recognize the need to create something unique rather than trying to copy the blueprint from New England will be fascinating to watch, if nothing else.

50 Cent is thriving in the TV world. His series Power, which launched in 2014, has birthed a pair of successful spin-offs — Power Book II: Ghost and Power Book III: Raising Kanan — with a third, Power Book IV: Force, set to debut on February 6. (A fourth and final one, Power Book V: Influence, has yet to receive a release date). There’s also his series BMF. But some are waiting on him to finally deliver his long-awaited sixth album. The Queens native spoke about it recently, saying it will most likely be his last.

At the end of last year, 50 Cent shared a video of him performing with a caption that revealed his retirement plans. “Smile my next album might be my last,” he wrote. “I terrorized hip hop for 14 years,don’t believe me Nielsen, the numbers will never lie but i’m nobody’s favorite Smh.” A month later, during a recent appearance on The Talk, 50 was asked if that was still true.

“I probably think I’ll deliver one more full-length album, then the other things I do will be connected to film and television,” he replied according to HipHop-N-More. “I’m having so much success in this area that I have opportunities to keep releasing music through the projects that I’m bringing.”

As for what’s next, 50 Cent is set to join Tyler The Creator And Megan Thee Stallion as headliners for UK’s Parklife Festival, which goes down in June.

This weekend’s SNL was hosted by Willem Dafoe, one of the great character actors, who was recently seen in movies big (Spider-Man: No Way Home) and small (The Card Counter, The French Dispatch). The night was usurped not by a fellow performer but by a football legend: Peyton Manning, who swung by Weekend Update to, of course, confess his love for Emily in Paris. But while the former quarterback couldn’t stop talking about something frivolous, the segment’s anchors kept things topical.

Colin Jost kicked things off by outlining President Joe Biden’s many, many headaches, among them a dodgy economy and a possible war between Russia and Ukraine (parodied in the show’s Cold Open). “Stocks are plummeting and there’s a threat of a land war in Europe, so it looks like Democrats were right: Joe Biden is the next FDR,” he cracked.

There’s also the pushback Biden is receiving from Republicans over who he’ll choose to replace departing Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer on the bench. “President Biden promised to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, but I hope it’s not because he wants to sniff a new type of hair,” Michael Che said as a picture appeared showing Biden’s many touchy-feely pictures with women.

But it wasn’t all Biden jokes. They also bashed the other side. When Jost talked about Ukraine officials trying to calm the public’s nerves over a potential invasion by claiming “panic is the sister of failure,” Jost said, “I thought Ivanka was the sister of failure.”

Then there’s Glen Youngkin, the newly sworn-in governor of Virginia, who set up a hotline for parents to rat out teachers they think are teaching Critical Race Theory, which isn’t taught in public schools anyway. “You know you’re racist when you call the cops about a Black character in a book,” he said. He then did a mock phone call. “Yeah, hi, I’d like to report a suspicious Black man rafting with a young white hostage,” he said over an image showing the cover of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

There were also digs at Mitch McConnell, Peloton, Melania, and McDonald’s weird menu hacks, including the terrifying new “Land, Air & Sea” sandwich. You can watch Weekend Update jokes in the videos above and below.

Janet Jackson’s self-titled documentary aired this weekend, and one of the issues addressed was her notorious 2004 Super Bowl Halftime Show with Justin Timberlake. During their performance, a wardrobe malfunction caused Janet’s breast to be exposed, sparking backlash as well as an FCC investigation. Janet specifically addressed how Justin, who’s often been criticized for how he handled the incident, responded to the controversy.

“We talked once, and he said, ‘I don’t know if I should come out and make a statement,’” Janet recalled. “I said, ‘Listen, I don’t want any drama for you. They’re aiming all of this at me.’ So I just said if I were you, I wouldn’t say anything.” She also took a moment to deny rumors that suggested there’s been tension between her and Justin since the Super Bowl incident.

“Honestly, this whole thing was blown way out of proportion,” she says. “Of course, it was an accident. That should not have happened, but everyone is looking for someone to blame, and that’s got to stop.” Janet added, “Justin and I are very good friends, and we will always be very good friends. We spoke just a few days ago, and he and I have moved on, and it’s time for everyone else to do the same.”

Elsewhere in the documentary, Janet reveals that she turned down an offer from Justin’s team to perform with him during his 2018 Super Bowl Halftime Show. “When I think about it, would it be nice to be able to perform? Yes,” Janet said. “Our family, we love entertaining. But on the flip side of it, it’s stretching out the past, reliving something that happened over 10 years ago.”

The Los Angeles Lakers got one game of having all three of their stars back on the court together before seeing another go down. After beating the Nets in Brooklyn in Anthony Davis’ return to action, the Lakers have dropped two in a row to the Sixers and Hornets, both of which they played without the services of LeBron James.

James has been dealing with knee soreness, a rather vague designation, but something the Lakers wanted to be cautious with. After two games missed, James’ knee was apparently not doing any better and the Lakers had him get an MRI done to ensure there was no structural damage. On Sunday, coach Frank Vogel delivered the results of that MRI, saying it showed “general swelling,” but that the continued swelling issue would keep James out until it subsides and that the star had flown back to L.A. with the team still with one game left on their road trip in Atlanta on Sunday.

James is in the midst of one of the best offensive seasons of his career, averaging 29.1 points along with 7.7 rebounds and 6.3 assists per game on 52.2/35.2/75.9 shooting splits — his highest scoring average since 2009-10 in Cleveland. He has been tasked with an immense scoring and creation burden with the combination of Lakers injuries and general roster construction issues, and James shrugged off questions about whether he was worried about his increased workload recently.

The Lakers will remain cautious with James’ injury, and if there’s some good news it is that they won’t play again until Wednesday after they conclude their road trip in Atlanta on Sunday afternoon. Whether James’ knee responds well enough to treatment to get him back this week or not remains to be seen, but every game without LeBron is an uphill battle for this Lakers team.

On Saturday, while the Northeast was buried under snow, a tired-looking former president was in Texas babbling to a large crowd about his problems. Just over a year ago, Donald Trump’s one-term presidency came to a disgraceful end, with him whipping-up an already rowdy crowd, their heads filled with lies about voter fraud, who then stormed the Capitol building, leading to five deaths. Those who breached the barriers have been rounded up by the feds, some because they actually called lost and found. But, Trump said, if he’s re-elected they’ll be back on the streets.

Trump didn’t formally announce he was running a third time for the job that effectively landed him in all manner of legal and financial peril, but he did claim that the violent people who injured dozens of police officers and threatened to hang his vice president were being treated “so unfairly” and that it’s a “disgrace.” And he may do something about it…in a few years.

“If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly. We will treat them fairly,” Trump told the crowd. “And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons. Because they are being treated so unfairly.”

Trump’s promise comes amidst the ever-escalating investigation into that fateful day by the House select committee, who have issued scores of subpoenas, some of which have been ignored by people who may wind up serving time.

Speaking of, another Trump headache is the investigation by both the New York State attorney general’s office and the Manhattan district attorney into the Trump organization’s financial history. NY State A.G. Letitia James has already uncovered “significant evidence” of fraud. At his rally, he didn’t cal the “prosecutors by name,” but he did call them “racist” against white people (James is Black).

So Trump, who’s tried to distance himself from the violent supporters he wants to pardon, called on his base to get even madder. “If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere,” he thundered.

In other words, the Jan. 6 insurrection was good and there will be another, even bigger one if he’s prosecuted for the crimes he may have committed.

There was a lot more than that. He did some old fashioned projection by calling out the “Biden crime family.” He told his largely unvaxxed supporters to defy the mandates keeping them and others from dying preventable deaths. He once again bragged about passing a simple dementia test. He even claimed that a New York Times reporter admitted to him that there was election fraud, which totally happened. In other words, a fine Saturday night out for Trumpists.

(Via CNN)

In less than a month, Kanye West will release his eleventh album, Donda 2, the sequel to the chart-topper he dropped back in August. The rapper announced a release date of February 22, which he somewhat explained on Instagram, and revealed that Future would executive produce. It also appears that West plans to hold a tour, with some sources (according to Complex) saying that he plans to bring his talents to Australia in March. But the nation’s prime minister has other ideas..

During a recent news conference, Prime Minister Scott Morrison left West with an ultimatum: get vaxxed or be banned from the country. “The rules are you have to be fully vaccinated,” Morrison said during the conference, according to The Independent. “They apply to everybody, as people have seen most recently,” alluding to the deportation of tennis star Novak Djokovic, who was kicked out of the country prior to the Australian Open for being unvaccinated. “It doesn’t matter who you are, they are the rules,” Morrison added. “Follow the rules, you can come. You don’t follow the rules, you can’t.”

It’s yet to be confirmed that Kanye will even head to Australia. During an appearance on the podcast Drink Champs in November, West revealed that he’d receive one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, but he did not share any plans to get the second. “I traveled to Paris, like, a couple weeks ago and I had to go through Lisbon because you can go through Lisbon without being vaccinated,” he said. “I only have one of the shots, so I’m half-ccinated.”

On top of everything else making the world an awful, anxious place, Russia wants to invade Ukraine. The ever-aggressive nation is once again on a disinformation campaign, with some help from the Trump family, of course. And in SNL’s latest cold open, the Biden administration tried to make sense of it.

James Austin Johnson, who handles both the show’s Biden and Trump impersonations (and who excels at both), was on Biden duty this week. His take on the current president is a baffled and mildly frustrated commander-in-chief who struggles to apply old school techniques to a rapidly changing world. As such he didn’t really know what to make of such Russian disinformation social media posts as Ukrainian border encroaching on Russian troops, Russian Forces Surrounding Ukraine Just to Give It Big Hug, Ukrainian President Horny for Drama, and Wants War: Slap Me Harder, Daddy.

All Johnson’s Biden could say was, “I’m going to break my New Year’s resolution and say it: Malarkey!”

Russia, of course, was also aiming to dupe gullible Americans, with posts like Neil Young To Remove Music From Spotify Unless Ukraine Surrenders. There was even on with Pete Davidson’s Aaron Rodgers.

You can watch the sketch in the video above.

Peyton Manning has two Super Bowl wins under his belt. He was an MVP five times. He was quarterback for two great teams. He’s an NFL god who handles live TV technical issues well. And on the latest SNL, he outed himself as a massive fan of Emily in Paris.

Weekend Update invited the former quarterback on, ostensibly to talk about this weekend’s playoff games and the rumors that Tom Brady may or not be retiring. But Manning didn’t want to talk about that. When co-anchor Coin Jost asked for his take on recent games, he first tried to bluff through it. Soon he admitted that he “had an hour to kill before the first game, so just for fun, I put on the first episode of Emily in Paris Season 2, and I watched the entire season straight through.”

And from then on out, Peyton Manning couldn’t stop gushing about Darren Star’s Golden Globe nominated rom-com program starring Phil Collins’ daughter.

“Oh my god, Colin,” Peyton Manning said. “This show has everything: romance, adventure, sensuality, culture, a fresh take on feminism — finally — not to mention a culinary tapestry so rich, I could only describe it as ‘food porn.’”

Jost inevitably asked Manning about Tom Brady’s rumored retirement. But Manning punted. “Yeah, I’m not sure it’s true. I think it’s probably just speculation. But if it were me, I probably would retire, too, if it gave me more time to watch Emily in Paris,” Manning said. “I really think for Tom right now, it’s just a tough decision between balancing his career and relationships, sort of like Emily.”

Manning continued to sing the praises of the Netflix hit, but when Jost asked if he thought Season 2 was an improvement on the first, Manning was flabbergasted: “Wait, there’s a Season 1?”

You can watch the sketch in the video above.