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Over the years, Donald Trump has been known as Scooby Coup, Dolt 45, Tangerine Palpatine, Drinks with Two Hands, Vanity Manatee, Penis Pumpkinhead, Hair Farce One, The Big Lie-bowski, King Baby Coward, Old Wack Donald, Ole Yeller, and Jackass O’Lantern — and those are just Stephen Colbert’s nicknames for the former-president.

Joe Biden added another one to the pile on Wednesday, although unlike “Mar-a-Lardo,” it’s a nickname that Trump will probably love.

While speaking at the the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers International convention, Biden said, “Look at my predecessor, the great MAGA king — the deficit increased every single year he was president.” That moniker — “the great MAGA king” — was supposed to be an insult, the way Trump has referred to the current-president as “Sleepy Joe” and “Corrupt Joe.” But as noted by conservative CNN political commenter Alyssa Farah Griffin, “This can’t possibly be the best Democrats can do. A) Trump will LOVE the name B) democrats running on the deficit is… something else & won’t work.”

Even Democrats aren’t sure of what Biden is attempting here. “I get that Democrats likely got some new polling from the consultants showing that ‘MAGA’ isn’t popular with voters, but not sure it achieves what we hope to frame Trump as an all-powerful king when that’s… also kind of how he talks about himself?” strategist Max Burns tweeted.

He should have borrowed a nickname from Veep, like One Erection.

(Via Raw Story and Politico)

On Monday night, Seth Meyers officially declared Rudy Giuliani “The Weirdest Man in the History of Politics.” On Wednesday night, the Late Night host came pretty close to bestowing the title of “The Dumbest Man in the History of Politics” on Donald Trump, which is saying a lot considering the competition. (Hey there, Madison Cawthorn!) But as Meyers explained, Trump’s idiocy knows no bounds:

Every time you think you heard the dumbest thing Donald Trump said or did as president, he somehow finds a way to shock you. I didn’t even know I still had the capacity to be shocked by Trump… [Yet] I was still shocked yesterday when Rolling Stone reported that Trump kept asking his advisors if China was shooting us with a ‘hurricane gun.’

According to Rolling Stone, near the beginning of Trump’s time in office, he had a pressing question for his national security aides and administration officials: Does China have the secret technology—a weapon, even—to create large, man-made hurricanes and then launch them at the United States? And if so, would this constitute an act of war by a foreign power and could the U.S. retaliate militarily?

Can someone say “itchy finger”? (Which might be only a slightly better band name than “hurricane gun.”)

Clearly, Trump was spoiling for a fight from the get-go, as Rolling Stone reported that he asked about this several times—a fact that was corroborated by two military officials and a third individual who was briefed on the whole hurricane gun thing.

“And this was at the beginning of his presidency,” Meyers reminded viewers. “And somehow his presidency still had a middle and an end. Can you imagine if you went to Starbucks and ordered and the barista said, ‘Uh-huh. Now, what exactly is coffee?’ And then you went back four years later and that barista was the manager?!”

“Also, Trump is so f**king crazy that he doesn’t just ask, ‘Does China have a hurricane gun?,’He’s got a bunch of follow-ups assuming the answer is going to be yes! How does he even get to the follow-ups?!”

The answer to that question might be too painful to even think about—especially as the former president continues to tease a possible run in 2024—but that didn’t stop Meyers from playing it out, and somehow imagining Trump asking these questions as if he was wearing a smoking jacket and making deductions Sherlock Holmes-style (you’ll just have to watch that for yourself).

You can watch the full clip above.

Bill Gates is a highly intelligent man to be sure (well, except for that whole hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein business), but Candace Owens has it in her head that the Microsoft co-founder is some sort of Scooby-Doo villain. Granted, this is a woman who lost her sh*t on national television over Minnie Mouse wearing a pantsuit and may have truly believed that there was a groundswell of people proposing she be named a Supreme Court justice.

On Wednesday, as Mediaite reported, the controversial political commentator jumped on the bandwagon of country music singer John Rich (always a reliable source of political information) by suggesting that Gates is to blame for America’s current baby formula shortage.

Even worse? At the same time, she also suggested that Gates was responsible for unleashing COVID onto the world just so that he could also finance the vaccine to help prevent it—all in the name of the almighty dollar, and in less than 50 words.

These accusations all stemmed from a CNBC article which noted that Gates is an investor in BIOMILQ, a startup that is attempting to address the nutritional needs of infants in the lab in order to help reduce the carbon footprint that the baby formula industry leaves behind it.

“Right now, by the estimations we have been able to make, at least 10 percent of the dairy market globally ends up in infant formula,” Michelle Egger, a food scientist and founder of BIOMILQ, told CNBC. “That means per-infant-fed formula in the U.S., 5,700 metric tons of CO2 are produced, and 4,300 gallons of freshwater are consumed each year to feed a child. Parents want to do what’s best for their kids but shouldn’t have to decide between feeding their children and protecting the planet.”

As Mediaite notes, TIME laid out a number of reasons for the current baby formula shortage—not the least of which was the closing of a Michigan factory by Abbott, the maker of Similac, and one of the nation’s biggest producers of baby formula. The industry has also been disrupted by the same national and global supply chain issues that are affecting many industries and products, not to mention COVID-related staff shortages and demand spikes.

But don’t tell that to Owens. To her, Gates’ only concern is chasing every last dollar—despite the fact that Gates is as well-known for his charitable endeavors as he is his technical innovations. Over the course of his career, Gates has donated more than $50 billion to charitable endeavors and, alongside his ex-wife Melinda Gates and fellow billionaire Warren Buffet, has pledged to leave the bulk of his fortune to charity. (Each of he and Melinda’s three children will reportedly inherit $10 million apiece—and not a penny more.)

(Via Mediaite)

The first reviews for Top Gun: Maverick are coming in hot, and the consensus is as subtle as a ’80s power ballad: The sequel rocks. Coupled with significant praise for Tom Cruise‘s dedication to flying around in actual fighter jets instead of using CGI trickery, Top Gun: Maverick is being hailed as a thrilling throwback to the summer blockbusters you grew up with. However, the film surprisingly weaves in an emotional thorough-line between Cruise’s Maverick and the stars’ own status as “The Last Movie Star.”

Strap in and check out what some of the early reviews are saying about the pure adrenaline spectacle that only Cruise can deliver:

Mike Ryan, Uproxx:

I will dispel any mystery about my feelings toward this movie by saying I didn’t just like Top Gun: Maverick, but it’s now just one of my favorite movies. (TO the point I spent money on a poster. I never do that for new movies.) Not “of the year,” but ever. It’s literally one of the best theatrical experiences I’ve ever had.

Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly:

Imagine a world where motorcyclists scoff at helmets, all bars burst into jukebox singalongs, and the U.S. military is simply an unblemished agent for good. A few decades ago you didn’t have to, because you lived in it; Top Gun: Maverick can because it never left.

David Ehrlich, IndieWire:

Watching Cruise pilot a fighter jet 200 feet above the floor of Death Valley, corkscrew another one through Washington’s Cascade Mountains, and give one of the most vulnerable performances of his career while sustaining so many G-forces that you can practically see him going Clear in real-time, you realize — more lucidly than ever before — that this wild-eyed lunatic makes movies like his life depends on it. Because it does, and not for the first time.

Peter Debruge, Variety:

One could argue that our new, post-Cold War world didn’t need a “Top Gun” sequel. (Tom Cruise himself once insisted as much.) But one would be wrong to do so. Building on the three-parts-steel-to-one-part-corn equation that director Tony Scott so effectively set 36 years earlier, the new film more than merits its existence, mirroring Cruise’s character, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, in pushing the limits of what the machine could do — the machine in this case being cinema, which takes to the skies as no blockbuster has before.

Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times:

Jets still scream and muscles still gleam in the ridiculous and often ridiculously entertaining “Top Gun: Maverick,” though in several respects, the movie evinces — and rewards — an unusual investment of brainpower. I’d go further and say that it offers its own decisive reversal of Maverick’s dubious logic: It has plenty on its mind, and it’s gloriously alive.

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter:

The sequel follows the original beat for beat, to a degree that’s almost comical. And yet, as formulaic as it is, there’s no denying that it delivers in terms of both nostalgia and reinvention. Mainstream audiences will be happily airborne, especially the countless dads who loved Top Gun and will eagerly want to share this fresh shot of adrenaline with their sons.

Todd Gilchrist, The AV Club:

Top Gun: Maverick exceeds the original technically, while circumventing naked jingoism in an era when depictions of the military can (or maybe should) no longer be unambiguously celebratory. Joe Kosinski (Tron: Legacy) matches his well-established architectural precision with suitably nostalgic but never pandering emotionality, while Cruise commands the screen in a performance that leverages his multimillion-dollar star wattage to brighten the entire film.

Pete Hammond, Deadline:

Some wonder if Tom Cruise and the producers of Top Gun: Maverick waited too long to do a sequel. After all, it has been 36 years since Top Gun hit screens in 1986. Well, wonder no more. Not only is the timing right and execution of this long-gestating follow-up splendid, but it also actually tops the original in every way imaginable, from an all-knowing performance for the ages from Cruise to its highly emotional storyline, “take my breath away” aerial sequences and just about anything else you want from a studio blockbuster.

Top Gun: Maverick flies into theaters on May 27.

Back in 2013, a delightful musical set went down at Comic-Con, where George R.R. Martin smashed a guitar right in front of Neil Gaiman. That soon led to an onstage reiteration of what The Sandman author and “werefish” inventor declared in 2009 while defending Martin to a fan who felt that the Game of Thrones author simply took too long to write thousands of intricately layered pages of fiction. In the words of Gaiman, “George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.” He had followed up with this: “People are not machines. Writers and artists aren’t machines.”

Gaiman had stressed, back in the day, how “I keep trying to come up with a better way to put it” and “this may not be palatable” in terms of how he was describing the situation, and all of it is very funny. That leads to a similar situation happening this week, where Gaiman answered to a fan who inquired about the release date of Good Omens 2 (the series adaptation starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant) on Amazon. Neil answered with a tweet, obviously in written form, and with a tone that some people appear to have misinterpreted: “No. And if you ask again like that we may not release it at all.”

Defenders of artists can often be a bit, well, passionate. And as it turns out, Neil felt the need (after undoubtedly seeing some replies to the original fan’s tweet) to ask his followers to be kind. “I thought it was funny, and hoped my reply was funny,” he further explained. “WE WILL RELEASE GOOD OMENS 2, WHEN IT IS DONE. We only stopped shooting in March. There is much to be done.”

Not incidentally, George R.R. Martin recently trolled the heck out of his own fans over the (non-)arrival date of Winds of Winter, which he previously promised would arrive in July 2020. A year prior, he had even declared, “[Y]ou have here my formal written permission to imprison me in a small cabin on White Island, overlooking that lake of sulfuric acid, until I’m done.”

The lesson here? Not only are artists not robots, but they have wicked senses of humor. And if you’re really jonesing for Good Omens 2, rest assured (via Gaiman) that it will arrive. In the meantime, there’s plenty of other glorious, new, and funny TV to watch while you wait. (Fill up those queues, you won’t be sorry.)

J. Cole has added yet another bullet point to his “man of the people” resume. This past Wednesday the rapper was spotted at Rowan University in New Jersey, supporting his longtime fan Cierra Bosarge as she graduated from college. Naturally, several other graduates and attendees posted him all over social media.

Cole and Bosarge’s story dates back to 2013 when she called into a radio station requesting he wish her a happy birthday. He gave her a call months later and invited her to meet him in person, upon which she gave him a letter she wrote him detailing the hardships in her life, having two parents who were hooked on drugs and in and out of prison. Due to them being unable to attend her high school graduation, she asked the rapper if he would, to which Cole agreed only if she attended a four-year college. Cierra kept her promise and The Off-Season rapper kept his.

Even Ibrahim Hamad, Cole’s manager and a Dreamville co-founder, had to join in on the celebration, quote-tweeting her with his own congratulatory message. Cole has long spoken about the importance of education, as he attended St. Johns University in New York himself before taking off as an artist. Though going further into academia wasn’t his destined path, he continues to emphasize it to the world.

Kanye West has of course had a longstanding interest in fashion, which he has used to help define Kim Kardashian’s style. In fact, on a new episode of The Kardashians, Kardashian says in November 2021, she started dressing herself for the first time in a decade. She chose her own outfit for a 2021 event, which did not get positive feedback from Ye.

As Yahoo! reports, on the episode, Kardashian spoke about how she was “so nervous” to pick her look for WSJ Magazine‘s 2021 Innovator Awards but went with a faux leather look from her Skims x Fendi collection.

Kardashian said, “[Kanye] called me afterwards. He told me my career’s over and then he showed me a picture of Marge Simpson wearing something similar.”

While we don’t know what specific The Simpsons image West sent to Kardashian, one Twitter user shared what looks like a good candidate:

Kardashian also noted, “I got to a point where I would ask [Kanye] for advice for everything down to what I wear. Even now I’m having panic attacks, like, what do I wear?”

She also said elsewhere in the episode, “That’s his love language, is clothes. I always just trusted in him, but it’s not just about clothes. That was, like, the last thing we had really in common. I’m trying to figure out, like, who am I in the fashion world? Who am I by myself? I was always, like, The Kardashians with my sisters and then I was, like, Kimye. Like, who is Kim K? That is the jump. How do I get there without Kanye?”

Before we get into Top Gun: Maverick, I will dispel any mystery about my feelings toward this movie by saying I didn’t just like Top Gun: Maverick, but it’s now just one of my favorite movies. (TO the point I spent money on a poster. I never do that for new movies.) Not “of the year,” but ever. It’s literally one of the best theatrical experiences I’ve ever had. Put it this way: I saw Top Gun: Maverick at a press screening in a large theater with about 15 other people where everyone was pretty spread out because there was so much extra space. These are usually quiet affairs, no matter the movie. (Press screenings can get animated if they are crowded. When it’s just a few people, they are not.) I honestly can’t recall another instance, under these conditions, where people at this type of screening were applauding and cheering. But that’s what happened. This movie is infectious. It’s the definition of a crowd-pleaser. Honestly, Top Gun: Maverick kicked my ass. What a movie.

Is the original Top Gun good? Look, I was 12 years old when that movie came out and it’s ingrained into my being. I, personally, think it’s awesome. Tony Scott created a vibe with that movie that is inherently its own thing. Criticisms of Top Gun aren’t necessarily wrong, they just don’t really matter. Top Gun is Top Gun. There’s really no other movie quite like it and there really couldn’t be. Top Gun kind of exists in a bubble that made Tom Cruise into a huge star and it became the biggest movie of 1986. Top Gun isn’t just part of popular culture, it is popular culture. (Strangely, Crocodile Dundee was second. 1986 was kind of a weird year.) Having said all that, if Top Gun: Maverick relied mostly on imagery – where the first movie thrived in the 1980s – it would be laughable today. Tom Cruise isn’t a cool young kid anymore. Top Gun: Maverick knows that and is a better movie than Top Gun.

When the film opens, Pete Mitchell, call sign Maverick (Cruise), now (only) a Captain, is a Navy test pilot assigned to a remote outpost where his job is to fly planes as fast as they can go. When an international crisis emerges (it’s unclear who the offending country is supposed to be, only referred to as “the enemy”), an old friend of Maverick’s (and ours) requests him personally to train a new group of hotshot pilots who will carry out a strike against this enemy. That’s right, Maverick … is going back to Top Gun. (Over the course of the film Maverick is introduced to other winners of Top Gun and Maverick is quick to point out that he finished second.)

When Maverick gets to San Diego, there are a few problems. One is the presence of an old flame named Penny (Jennifer Connelly) who owns the local watering hole where the pilots hang out. The other is one of Maverick’s trainees is Bradley Bradshow (Miles Teller), call sign Rooster, the son of Maverick’s old buddy Goose. (Teller is surprisingly good, in that I never could picture him as the son of Goose, but he pulls it off.) Rooster does not like Maverick for the obvious reasons, but it goes deeper than that in that Maverick made sure Rooster was initially denied from the Navel Academy as a favor to Goose’s widow (Meg Ryan in the original movie, the character does not appear in this sequel) in an effort to stop him from suffering the same fate. Another pilot, the best in the class (just ask him), Hangman (Glen Powell), quickly figures out the relationship between Maverick and Rooster and points out that, you know, maybe this is a problem? (By the way, Powell plays the cocky Hangman perfectly, with shades of Val Kilmer’s Iceman in that, yeah, he can be a jerk, but he’s also not wrong. This will be a big movie for Glen Powell.) Oh, also, Maverick’s new boss, Cyclone (Jon Hamm) hates him. And makes it clear that if Maverick didn’t have friends high up the ladder, he wouldn’t be at Top Gun again. These two butt heads.

My goodness there’s something to be said about a simple plot. Almost every “blockbuster” movie today is convoluted. There are so many people involved, so many opinions from so many parties, it feels like a lot of movies just throw the kitchen sink of plot details at an audience hoping something sticks. Top Gun: Maverick is the opposite. It truly feels like the brain trust of Cruise, director Joseph Kosinski, and co-writer Christopher McQuarrie kept it between themselves how this movie would operate. (Having Cruise’s influence in that regard certainly helps.) But the plot of Top Gun: Maverick is literally: Here’s the mission, now we will spend the whole movie training for the mission, then at the end we will do the mission. The team train for this mission so many times, with so many unbelievable aerial stunts, by the end there is absolutely no confusion what the final mission entails. At no time will you be thinking, wait, what’s going on? And it all just looks so sharp. There are no moments when I was thinking this looks like a CGI cartoon, like so many “blockbuster” movies do today. It all looks so real my stomach was in knots the whole time. Again, this is how it’s done.

Also, it’s hard not to notice that the third act of Top Gun: Maverick has a lot to owe the original Star Wars. The team is basically trying to blow up a Death Star (the base they are attacking is underground, between two mountains, and it involves a trench run and hitting a small target on the base that will start a chain reaction. If I’m not making myself clear, I am very much in favor of all this. There are more comparisons, but we would be getting into spoilers. It would be like if Star Wars were about Red Leader and the whole movie was about all the X-Wing pilots training for the attack on the Death Star. That’s basically the plot of Top Gun: Maverick. And you know what, it’s awesome.

It’s been 36 years since Top Gun. Top Gun: Maverick feels like a movie that is looking back on its younger self, noticing how brash and cocky it is. There’s some regret in those eyes about some of the choices made. But, also, yeah, that movie was also pretty cool. What if we take what we know now, and use that reflection on the past to make something even better? But, also, keep a good helping of all that cool? That’s Top Gun: Maverick. A movie that totally didn’t need to exist, but my goodness I’m glad it does. This is how “blockbuster” movies should be done.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

The low point of Game of Thrones is generally considered to be not the series finale, but “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken,” the season five episode where Ramsay rapes Sansa after she’s forced to marry him. As Joanna Robinson wrote for Vanity Fair, “I’d never advocate that Game of Thrones (or any work of fiction) shy away from edgy plots out of fear of pushback or controversy. But edgy plots should always accomplish something above pure titillation or shock value and what, exactly, was accomplished here?”

At the time, Sophie Turner, who played Sansa, described the scene as “super, super traumatic” and while she “love[d] doing those scenes,” it was “just really kind of horrible for everyone to be on set and watch.” Sansa’s trauma stayed with Turner, who told Jessica Chastain in a conversation for The Cut that she “developed a coping mechanism of just having the most fun in between takes, so I wouldn’t get traumatized.”

She continued:

“I’m sure I’ll exhibit some symptoms of trauma down the road. At that age, I don’t think I could comprehend a lot of the scene matter. And the first few years, I had my mom with me because she was chaperoning me, so she would be very helpful and give me snacks. I don’t know what it is, but I feel like a 10-year-old in a school play again when someone that I know comes and sees me on set. I feel so embarrassed.”

Turner went from playing arguably the most abused Game of Thrones character to the least-liked X-Men movie to an HBO Max series about a husband who’s accused of murdering his wife. Someone cast her in a buddy comedy with Channing Tatum, stat.

(Via The Cut)

There are so many things that can happen at a concert, but one fan’s don’t typically expect to see is a new life being ushered into the world. That’s precisely what happened last weekend, though, when Metallica played at Estádio Couto Pereira in Curitiba, Brazil on May 7. Joice M. Figueiró, who was 39 weeks pregnant at the time, gave birth at the venue’s outpatient clinic as the band performed, appropriately enough, “Enter Sandman.”

In an Instagram post about the news, Figueiró wrote (translated to English), “At every show I go to, something has to happen, but this time I think I’ve outdone myself. I bought this ticket three years ago and I never imagined something like this would happen.”

Now, the band has caught wind of the news, so James Hetfield took some time to call Figueiró and congratulate her on the new bundle of joy.

On her Instagram Story on Tuesday (May 10), Figueiró shared a brief video of her phone call with Hetfield, who starts, “This is James from Metallica. Congratulations, you guys.” An excited Figueiró responds, “Oh my God. Hi. I cry.” Figueiró noted the call lasted for seven minutes.

In honor of the new baby, check out the Rockabye Baby! lullaby rendition of “Enter Sandman” below.