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There are two things we definitely know about the midterm elections in Arizona earlier this month:

1. Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake lost.

2. Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is refusing to admit she lost.

Last week, Lake — one of Donald Trump’s hand-picked candidates who sh*t the bed on November 8th, yet who also has a history of hating on Trump — headed down to Mar-a-Lago to seek counsel from the former president/election denier supreme and possibly get some pointers on how to continue to insist you won an election you lost with a straight face. On Monday, a newly energized Lake took to Twitter to restate her commitment to seeing the results of her totally legitimate election overturned.

As Mediaite reports, Lake posted a video in which she broke the news to the people of Arizona that, at least in her kooky mind, their state’s elections were “botched.”

Lake, who looks and sounds like an HSN host, got her lighting just right and probably put on some Enya before sitting in front of the camera and lamenting the fact that “Election day was 13 days ago, and Maricopa County is still counting ballots.” Lake then went on to state that, “Printer problems, tabulation errors, three-hour long lines and even longer, and confusing instructions given by election officials made this Election Day the most chaotic in Arizona’s history.”

“Half of the voting centers that opened for the first time on Election Day where the overwhelming majority of voters were voting for Kari Lake, were not operational or had significant failures,” Lake said (we’re guessing that bit of illeism was a Trump suggestion). “Would you get on an airplane if half of the engines didn’t work? Would our friends in the media be able to broadcast their nightly propaganda if only half of their studio equipment was working? The 2022 general election in Arizona was botched and broken beyond repair,” Lake said.

While Lake swore that, “This isn’t about Republicans or Democrats,” you had better believe it’s all about making sure she is handed the keys to the governor’s mansion. The one-time news anchor claimed that “tens of thousands of you have reached out pleading with me to fight this fight” (Hmmm…) and vowed that “Rest assured I will — because if we give up now, we will no longer have a country.”

Meanwhile, Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates (no, not that Bill Gates) has been forced into hiding in an undisclosed location because of threats against his life from election deniers egged on by the likes of Lake.

You can watch Lake’s full speech above, or read the text of it here.

(Via Mediaite)

Brent Faiyaz appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon yesterday (November 21) to bless audiences with a performance of “All Mine,” off his recently released record, Wasteland.

The scene opens with Faiyaz conducting his band as the string instruments set the sonic bar high. The second Faiyaz starts to sing, the audience cheers. From there, he gives a soulful take that equally matches the effort of the orchestra and instrumentalists behind him.

“We both still young, so what’s the rush? / The night is young and we not drunk enough / You come around if I don’t do too much / We had our downs but we had way more ups,” Faiyaz notes on the track.

Also impressive in this performance of “All Mine” is the stage lighting setup. Instead of opting to flood the fans in the crowd with over-the-top stage design, the simple yellow lights are timed to the beat. This finds them getting dimmed on the verses to match the energy of the song. Oh yeah, and there’s also fog — because that is always essential.

“I’m excited to visually bring these songs to life, these records to life,” Faiyaz previously told Insider about his visual visions. “I think that’s going to play a huge part in how people receive this music. It’s all about the message that you portray.”

Watch Faiyaz perform “All Mine” on Fallon above.

Love is a powerful thing, and recording artist August Alsina knows this all too well.

The past few years have been rough for the New Orleans native. Alsina has been engaged in an intense ongoing medical battle due to a hereditary autoimmune disease. He’s overcome heartache after finding himself in a public love affair with actress Jada Pinkett-Smith. Then he was physically assaulted by rapper Tory Lanez. The “No Love” singer is looking for serenity and he may have found it.

In the season final of VH1’s The Surreal Life, Alsina, gushes about finding love again. During his closing confessional, the singer shared his journey up until this point, stating, “I want to share that and really honor the person that I love and that loves me back and teaching me so much about love and healing,” adding, “I want to do that in front of the world because it defies all the constructs that one would say love is supposed to be or love should look like.”

The singer then invited a mystery man to join him in the taping stating, “And then what do you know? Love showed up, but in a new way.”

The man in question is recording artist LA Zu, or Zu for short. The two have a long standing history having had worked together on the track, “2 AM.”

Based on the outpouring of intimacy, viewers took to social media assuming the reality star was coming out as bisexual, while others dismissed any romantic undertones sharing a video in which Alsina clearly states that Zu was a “brother” to him.

Alsina hasn’t confirmed whether or not he is indeed bisexual. However, in a past interview with media personality Angela Yee, Alsina shared that he discovered he was demisexual after the breakup with Pinkett-Smith. Demisexuality falls on the asexual spectrum but isn’t exclusive to any one attraction label.

Viewers took to social media to embraces Alsina’s public declaration. While some fans congratulated him for supposedly “coming out” others saw it as embracing platonic love.

August Alsina has not publicly stated whether or not he is bisexual but we’re just happy to see that he’s happy.

There are two things we definitely know about the midterm elections in Arizona earlier this month:

1. Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake lost.

2. Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is refusing to admit she lost.

Last week, Lake — one of Donald Trump’s hand-picked candidates who sh*t the bed on November 8th, yet who also has a history of hating on Trump — headed down to Mar-a-Lago to seek counsel from the former president/election denier supreme and possibly get some pointers on how to continue to insist you won an election you lost with a straight face. On Monday, a newly energized Lake took to Twitter to restate her commitment to seeing the results of her totally legitimate election overturned.

As Mediaite reports, Lake posted a video in which she broke the news to the people of Arizona that, at least in her kooky mind, their state’s elections were “botched.”

Lake, who looks and sounds like an HSN host, got her lighting just right and probably put on some Enya before sitting in front of the camera and lamenting the fact that “Election day was 13 days ago, and Maricopa County is still counting ballots.” Lake then went on to state that, “Printer problems, tabulation errors, three-hour long lines and even longer, and confusing instructions given by election officials made this Election Day the most chaotic in Arizona’s history.”

“Half of the voting centers that opened for the first time on Election Day where the overwhelming majority of voters were voting for Kari Lake, were not operational or had significant failures,” Lake said (we’re guessing that bit of illeism was a Trump suggestion). “Would you get on an airplane if half of the engines didn’t work? Would our friends in the media be able to broadcast their nightly propaganda if only half of their studio equipment was working? The 2022 general election in Arizona was botched and broken beyond repair,” Lake said.

While Lake swore that, “This isn’t about Republicans or Democrats,” you had better believe it’s all about making sure she is handed the keys to the governor’s mansion. The one-time news anchor claimed that “tens of thousands of you have reached out pleading with me to fight this fight” (Hmmm…) and vowed that “Rest assured I will — because if we give up now, we will no longer have a country.”

Meanwhile, Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates (no, not that Bill Gates) has been forced into hiding in an undisclosed location because of threats against his life from election deniers egged on by the likes of Lake.

You can watch Lake’s full speech above, or read the text of it here.

(Via Mediaite)

After months of dragging it out, Donald Trump has finally officially made the wholly expected announcement that he’ll be running for president yet again in 2024. While the world has changed a lot since Trump announced his candidacy for the 2016 presidential election — mostly because of the chaos wreaked by Trump himself — something just seems very different about Trump this time around. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s still trying to sell us on the same old Big Lie he has been telling for years, or perhaps it’s that his run might be specifically timed to try and avoid being indicted on any number of alleged crimes. And, as Seth Meyers pointed out, it’s not just Democrats or non-MAGAs who are noticing.

“As we told you last week, Trump’s announcement speech was so boring even Fox News cut away from it before it was over,” Meyers said on Monday night. “Then on Friday, just to add insult to injury, the same thing happened to Trump again. Except this time, it was on C-SPAN.”

Last week, Mar-a-Lago hosted The America First Experience and Gala, a two-day event organized by a pro-Trump think tank, which sounds a bit like an oxymoron. On Friday, the former president took over the podium in an ill-fitting tuxedo that made him look as if he was cosplaying what David Byrne would look like as a croupier. (Or, according to Meyers, “the piano player at a Long Island steakhouse.”) When Trump began prattling on and comparing the death tolls of the war in Afghanistan to a regular weekend in the city of Chicago, even the programmers at C-SPAN decided this sh*t was mind-numbingly dull. As the network cut away from the speech, a narrator intoned that “former president Trump has moved on to other topics. We’ll take this opportunity to move on with our program schedule.” To Meyers, it was an epic “Ya Burnt!” moment.

“Even C-SPAN cut away,” marveled Meyers. “This is the network famous for showing wide shots of empty chairs! And even they were like, ‘This sh*t is boring!’ You know how bad your speech has to be for C-SPAN to cut away from it? You know what their program schedule was that they had to get back to? An old man silently doing the crossword by himself for six hours and then falling asleep.”

You can watch the full clip above, beginning around the 8:50 mark.

Love is a powerful thing, and recording artist August Alsina knows this all too well.

The past few years have been rough for the New Orleans native. Alsina has been engaged in an intense ongoing medical battle due to a hereditary autoimmune disease. He’s overcome heartache after finding himself in a public love affair with actress Jada Pinkett-Smith. Then he was physically assaulted by rapper Tory Lanez. The “No Love” singer is looking for serenity and he may have found it.

In the season final of VH1’s The Surreal Life, Alsina, gushes about finding love again. During his closing confessional, the singer shared his journey up until this point, stating, “I want to share that and really honor the person that I love and that loves me back and teaching me so much about love and healing,” adding, “I want to do that in front of the world because it defies all the constructs that one would say love is supposed to be or love should look like.”

The singer then invited a mystery man to join him in the taping stating, “And then what do you know? Love showed up, but in a new way.”

The man in question is recording artist LA Zu, or Zu for short. The two have a long standing history having had worked together on the track, “2 AM.”

Based on the outpouring of intimacy, viewers took to social media assuming the reality star was coming out as bisexual, while others dismissed any romantic undertones sharing a video in which Alsina clearly states that Zu was a “brother” to him.

Alsina hasn’t confirmed whether or not he is indeed bisexual. However, in a past interview with media personality Angela Yee, Alsina shared that he discovered he was demisexual after the breakup with Pinkett-Smith. Demisexuality falls on the asexual spectrum but isn’t exclusive to any one attraction label.

Viewers took to social media to embraces Alsina’s public declaration. While some fans congratulated him for supposedly “coming out” others saw it as embracing platonic love.

August Alsina has not publicly stated whether or not he is bisexual but we’re just happy to see that he’s happy.

After missing two games with a hamstring injury, Deebo Samuel returned in Week 10 with a relatively light workload against the Chargers, with six touches for 51 yards in a 22-16 win. It was the first game with both Samuel and Christian McCaffrey on the field together and, with Samuel still getting back into game shape, the Niners leaned more heavily on their new acquisition.

However, on Monday night in Mexico City, Samuel returned to form with 10 touches (seven catches and three carries) for 94 yards and one touchdown on a sensational 39-yard run in the third quarter that signaled the start of the Niners rout.

Prior to this week, we got a chance to speak with Samuel on behalf of Snickers’ Rookie Mistake campaign, and the 49ers star explained that he and McCaffrey just needed some time to get comfortable together, being that they share some of the same space on the field, but once they did it’d be “special.” That was on display on Monday night and the Cardinals defense eventually became unraveled as they tried to handle all of the weapons the Niners have, from Samuel to McCaffrey to Kittle to Aiyuk.

There’s no secret that San Francisco’s goal is to win a Super Bowl this year, and Samuel said the biggest lesson from the Niners’ recent close calls has been that one mistake can make the difference come playoff time. With as much talent as they now possess offensively, they can apply so much pressure to defenses that, as they showed on Monday, they can be patient and wait for the opposing defense to be the one to make those mistakes this year.

With the attention Samuel, McCaffrey, and Kittle command, San Francisco can exploit one-on-ones in other places, particularly in red zone situations, with Aiyuk being the beneficiary of that on Monday night.

The discipline required to keep this Niners team in front of you for 60 minutes is something few teams possess, and provided Jimmy Garoppolo continues to make the right reads, San Francisco is going to be one of the favorites in the NFC when you couple the explosive potential of this offense with a sensational defense.

After months of dragging it out, Donald Trump has finally officially made the wholly expected announcement that he’ll be running for president yet again in 2024. While the world has changed a lot since Trump announced his candidacy for the 2016 presidential election — mostly because of the chaos wreaked by Trump himself — something just seems very different about Trump this time around. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s still trying to sell us on the same old Big Lie he has been telling for years, or perhaps it’s that his run might be specifically timed to try and avoid being indicted on any number of alleged crimes. And, as Seth Meyers pointed out, it’s not just Democrats or non-MAGAs who are noticing.

“As we told you last week, Trump’s announcement speech was so boring even Fox News cut away from it before it was over,” Meyers said on Monday night. “Then on Friday, just to add insult to injury, the same thing happened to Trump again. Except this time, it was on C-SPAN.”

Last week, Mar-a-Lago hosted The America First Experience and Gala, a two-day event organized by a pro-Trump think tank, which sounds a bit like an oxymoron. On Friday, the former president took over the podium in an ill-fitting tuxedo that made him look as if he was cosplaying what David Byrne would look like as a croupier. (Or, according to Meyers, “the piano player at a Long Island steakhouse.”) When Trump began prattling on and comparing the death tolls of the war in Afghanistan to a regular weekend in the city of Chicago, even the programmers at C-SPAN decided this sh*t was mind-numbingly dull. As the network cut away from the speech, a narrator intoned that “former president Trump has moved on to other topics. We’ll take this opportunity to move on with our program schedule.” To Meyers, it was an epic “Ya Burnt!” moment.

“Even C-SPAN cut away,” marveled Meyers. “This is the network famous for showing wide shots of empty chairs! And even they were like, ‘This sh*t is boring!’ You know how bad your speech has to be for C-SPAN to cut away from it? You know what their program schedule was that they had to get back to? An old man silently doing the crossword by himself for six hours and then falling asleep.”

You can watch the full clip above, beginning around the 8:50 mark.

As Black Panther: Wakanda Forever continues to dominate the box office, star Letitia Wright is no longer remaining silent about the anti-vaccine controversy that created doubts about her presence in the film. In December 2020, Wright shared and then deleted a video that equated the vaccine with the Biblical “Mark of the Beast,” and she was accused of anti-trans remarks. After taking down her social media accounts, Wright has not touched the subject even after a subsequent report in The Hollywood Reporter accused her of spreading anti-vax views on the set of the Black Panther sequel.

That has now changed. In a new report on “How Personal Baggage Will Impact Oscar Chances,” Wright is named alongside Will Smith, Brad Pitt, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Casey Affleck, and Mel Gibson. Via THR:

Then there’s Letitia Wright, the lead actress in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which Disney released Nov. 11. While hers is far from the magnitude of baggage held by Smith or Pitt, she did endure a fair share of bad publicity when she retweeted an anti-vax conspiracy video in December 2020 and then reportedly promoted anti-vax views on the set of the film. (She denies the latter.) Backlash became so strong that some fans on social media called for the role to be recast.

While writer Scott Feinberg acknowledges that Wright’s anti-COVID views aren’t severe, and she’ll most likely experience the “least resistance” going into the Oscars, Wright did not appreciate being included next to men accused of violent and/or sexual assault.

In a new Instagram Story, she unloaded on both Feinberg and The Hollywood Reporter for having a vendetta against her. She also denied its previous reporting that she was spouting anti-vaccine views on set, which producer Nate Moore and co-star Winston Duke have also denied in interviews.

You can read Wright’s full statement below:

I had to unblock @hollywoodreporter just to post this. Scott Feinberg and all at this publication. You’re all incredibly disrespectful. How dare you. You mentioned my name alongside men who have been accused of abuse & sexual misconduct. This is vile behaviour. At this point a personal vendetta towards me. I’ve done nothing wrong but respectfully refused to do interviews with this publication. Stop your nonsense. I apologised TWO years ago. Remained silent on the topic. You lied and said I continued talking about it with my cast & crew on my set. THIS WAS NOT TRUE. ASK MY PRODUCER AND DIRECTOR. The film is successful. Your agenda towards me is now even more clear. I won’t remain silent. Stop your disgusting behavior.

@scott_feinberg This personal agenda with your friends at @hollywoodreporter is disgusting. I’ve remained silent as the world told me to kill myself two years ago for a I posted and apologised for. I kept my head down and focused on my craft. And now I’m at the other side of it. Here you are, as a so called journalist we are meant to trust, putting my name into this nasty article for what? You lack substance, you clearly have nothing to report. The movie is beautiful, impactful & breaking box office. I worked my ass off with my cast and crew to dedicate it to my Brother. How dare you. Did my performance rattle you that much? It was that excellent huh? I’m still here, still making impact, still creating projects that touch peoples hearts and it’s not going to stop. Get a life, like for real.

(Via Letitia Wright on Instagram, The Hollywood Reporter)

After missing two games with a hamstring injury, Deebo Samuel returned in Week 10 with a relatively light workload against the Chargers, with six touches for 51 yards in a 22-16 win. It was the first game with both Samuel and Christian McCaffrey on the field together and, with Samuel still getting back into game shape, the Niners leaned more heavily on their new acquisition.

However, on Monday night in Mexico City, Samuel returned to form with 10 touches (seven catches and three carries) for 94 yards and one touchdown on a sensational 39-yard run in the third quarter that signaled the start of the Niners rout.

Prior to this week, we got a chance to speak with Samuel on behalf of Snickers’ Rookie Mistake campaign, and the 49ers star explained that he and McCaffrey just needed some time to get comfortable together, being that they share some of the same space on the field, but once they did it’d be “special.” That was on display on Monday night and the Cardinals defense eventually became unraveled as they tried to handle all of the weapons the Niners have, from Samuel to McCaffrey to Kittle to Aiyuk.

There’s no secret that San Francisco’s goal is to win a Super Bowl this year, and Samuel said the biggest lesson from the Niners’ recent close calls has been that one mistake can make the difference come playoff time. With as much talent as they now possess offensively, they can apply so much pressure to defenses that, as they showed on Monday, they can be patient and wait for the opposing defense to be the one to make those mistakes this year.

With the attention Samuel, McCaffrey, and Kittle command, San Francisco can exploit one-on-ones in other places, particularly in red zone situations, with Aiyuk being the beneficiary of that on Monday night.

The discipline required to keep this Niners team in front of you for 60 minutes is something few teams possess, and provided Jimmy Garoppolo continues to make the right reads, San Francisco is going to be one of the favorites in the NFC when you couple the explosive potential of this offense with a sensational defense.