I need some help here, folks, because I don’t understand how people defend the president of the United States blatantly, repeatedly lying to their faces. Yes, I know all politicians lie, but not like this. Not repeating the same easily disprovable lie over and over and over again.

This isn’t the first time, of course. Maybe I’m just extra irritated by it this time because, you know, global pandemic. But seriously, how do people defend this? How are we supposed to trust or respect someone who repeats the same lies incessantly?

Let’s look at just this one:

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In a press briefing on April 24, 2020, President Trump said that the U.S. had conducted 5.1 million tests, claiming, “That’s more than all countries combined.” Then he repeated, “All countries combined.”

Remarks: Donald Trump Signs Coronavirus Stimulus Bill at The White House – April 24, 2020

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That wasn’t true. In fact on April 24, we hadn’t even performed more than just the next three countries combined.

Here’s proof. You can view testing by country on the Our World in Data website, so I plugged in Russia, Germany, Italy, and the U.S. for the week of his claim. (Germany only updates their testing total once a week, so the two charts show April 19 and April 26.)

ourworldindata.org

As you can add, just these three countries had a greater combined testing total than we did. And there are dozens upon dozens of other countries doing testing, several with more than a million tests done. So no, not more than all countries combined. Not even close.

ourworldindata.org

But that hasn’t stopped the president from repeating this same big, egregious lie over and over again over the past two weeks.

He wrote ithe same claim on Twitter the next day—using the word “major” this time, which is still totally false.

He repeated the lie again in a briefing on April 27, where he said, “We are the best in the world on testing. We’ve tested much more than anybody else, times two — or every country combined. We’ve tested more than every country combined.“

Still wasn’t even close to true.

In a video posted to the White House Twitter page on April 29, Trump again said, “We’ve tested more than all countries put together.”

Not true then, either.

But he keeps repeating it no matter how many times people point out that it’s false.

Yesterday on Twitter, for instance:

And again, this morning:

Donald J. Trump/Twitter

It’s blatantly, verifiably not true. It has always been not true. It hasn’t been true in total testing numbers, and it hasn’t been true per capita. Not even close.

There’s no way the president doesn’t know this. (If he doesn’t, that’s a whole other problem.) So what I want to know is, how do the president’s supporters handle the fact that he is repeatedly lying to their faces about something so easily disproven?

In response to other lies, I’ve heard some say, “Well, all politicians stretch the truth.” That’s true. But this lie isn’t stretching the truth, it’s completely demolishing it. And isn’t the big selling point of Trump that he isn’t a politician and he “tells it like it is”? Because this isn’t telling it like it is. This is lying. Repeatedly. About something that is easily proven to be a lie.

Who does that? And who accepts and defends it? I know there are like 482,000 issues we could discuss when it comes to this presidency, but the repeated, blatant, and obvious lies should concern every single person on this planet. I’ve seen presidents twist the truth, but I’ve never seen a president do this. Heck, I’ve never even seen another human being do this.

It’s bizarre, folks. This man is attempting to create his own alternate reality, and he’s doing it from the most powerful position on the planet. He has codes to our nuclear arsenal, for goodness sake. How does anyone reconcile this in their head?

Fact checkers have found that Trump averages 15 untrue statements per day. But as exhausting as it is, I think focusing on this singular lie is valuable. It’s easy to brush off accusations of constant lying, as some falsehoods people can justify as a slip of the tongue or spin as a misunderstanding. But when a bold-faced lie gets repeated many, many times, that’s not a mistake.

This lie about testing more than all other countries combined is indefensible. I want to hear someone defend the president of the United States blatantly lying over and over to our faces. Is honesty not important? Does it not matter if we can’t trust the president to present basic, factual information?

Please, defend this. I need to see how this works, because I genuinely don’t understand.

The Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments in a consolidation of two cases on Wednesday: Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania and Trump v. Pennsylvania. The hearings were held via teleconference due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The case is centered around the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) requirement that employee health plans include free birth control coverage for women.

After the ACA was passed, exceptions were made for religious organizations that do not wish to provide birth control to employees via insurance.

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Recently, under the guise of religious freedom, the Trump Administration has attempted to expand on those exceptions by allowing employers to exempt themselves from the requirement. The allowed employers ranging from colleges to public companies to prevent their female employees from getting free birth control.

The states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey challenged the exemptions and won a nationwide injunction. Now, the case is being heard by the Supreme Court with Solicitor General Noel Francisco representing the Trump Administration.

Eighty-seven-year-old liberal minority judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg heard the arguments via telephone in her hospital bed at Johns Hopkins University. Although she was admitted Tuesday for a gall bladder condition, she still had the strength to fight back against Francisco.

Ginsberg has a long history of advocating for gender equality and women’s reproductive rights.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg destroys Trump Solicitor General over contraception exception

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During the oral arguments, Ginsberg made the point that providing exceptions went against the original aims of the law.

“What the government has done in expanding this exemption is to toss to the wind entirely Congress’ instruction that women need and shall have seamless, no-cost comprehensive coverage,” Ginsburg told Solicitor General Noel Francisco.

“They can get contraception coverage by paying out of their own pocket which is exactly what Congress did not want to happen,” she added.

The justice also pointed out that far too often the freedom of religious people takes precedence over the rights of those who want freedom from religion.

The justice said that a “major trend in religious freedom is to give everything to one side and nothing to the other side.”

She then referenced Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.where the SCOTUS found that private corporations could be exempt from the birth control mandate.

“You have just tossed entirely to the wind what Congress thought was essential. That is that women be provided these services with no hassle, no cost to them,” she said.

via Wake Forest University / Flickr

She also made the point that women’s lives shouldn’t be controlled by the religious views of their employers.

“Instead, you are shifting the cost of the employer’s religious beliefs to the employees who do not share those religious beliefs,” she added. “The women end up getting nothing. They are required to do just what Congress didn’t want.”

Francisco then argued that churches could not have an exception to the contraception rule if it was available to for-profit businesses as well. Ginsberg countered by saying the Constitution has always treated churches differently.

“The church has enjoyed traditionally an exception from the very first case… the church itself is different from these organizations that employ a lot of people who do not share the employer’s faith.”

A decision in the case is expected sometime this summer.

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We’re probably not getting another batch of Black Mirror any time soon — life right now is already depressing enough as is! — but at least we’ll be getting another anthology show to fill its place. As per Deadline, FX has ordered a two-part pilot for an as-yet-untitled program from The Office alum B.J. Novak. And it already has a killer cast.

That cast, by the way, includes, in the first episode, Lucas Hedges, Kaitlyn Dever, O’Shea Jackson, comic George Wallace, and Ed Asner. The second, meanwhile, boasts Jon Bernthal, Boyd Holbrook, Amy Landecker, and Beau Bridges.

What will they be doing? Who knows! Not only is there no title yet but no details beyond Novak and cast have been made public, with Deadline only claiming that it “uses the boldest issues of our times as a jumping off point to tell singular, character-driven stories about the world we live in today.”

That’s a lot to live up to, but remember: Novak isn’t just Ryan Howard, nor even merely one part of the Inglourious Basterds. He was a The Office writer as well, his name credited on such classics as “Diversity Day,” “Sexual Harassment,” “Threat Level Midnight,” and many more, on top of writing and directing select episodes of The Mindy Project for fellow alum Mindy Kaling. Presumably there will be some jokes amidst the bold issues.

(Via Deadline)

Welcome to this week’s Wednesday Night Wars open discussion thread. This week we’ve got the in-ring debut of Matt Hardy on AEW Dynamite in a tag team match with Kenny Omega against Chris Jericho and Sammy Guevara (Le Sex Gods), going up against an episode of NXT featuring an NXT Championship match, an NXT Women’s Championship match, and probably more random parking lot kidnappings.

On tonight’s cards:

AEW Dynamite

• Kenny Omega and Matt Hardy vs. Le Sex Gods (Chris Jericho and Sammy Guevara)
• AEW World Champion Kenny Omega vs. Frankie Kazarian
• Cody Rhodes vs. Joey Janela
• Lance Archer murdering QT Marshall (please send flowers)
• the return of MJF

NXT

• NXT Championship Match: Adam Cole (c) vs. Velveteen Dream
• NXT Women’s Championship Match: Charlotte Flair (c) vs. Io Shirai
• Dominik Dijakovic vs. Johnny Gargano
• the in-ring debut of Karrion Kross, with Scarlett
• Finn Bálor “seeing justice” against his mystery attacker

As always, +1 your favorite comments from tonight’s open thread and if we get enough comments, we’ll include 10 of the best in tomorrow’s Best and Worst of NXT and AEW reports. Make sure you flip the comments by selecting “newest” in the drop down menu under discussion, and enjoy the show!

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With the success of The Last Dance, ESPN has made some additions to its upcoming broadcast schedule to try and capitalize on the interest in their documentary on Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.

In the four weeks following The Last Dance, ESPN will move up the premiere dates of three other documentaries on Lance Armstrong (a two-part doc), Bruce Lee, and the 1998 home run chase between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire. Those will continue to fill the Sunday night airspace on ESPN, as they hope to continue drawing audiences with in-depth looks at iconic figures in the world of sports.

In the more immediate, ESPN has added the 1998 NBA All-Star Game to its lineup for tonight — Wednesday, May 6 — offering fans a chance to watch the game that led Episode 5 of The Last Dance and features Kobe Bryant’s first All-Star appearance and Michael Jordan’s last as a member of the Bulls. That will be shown at 9:30 p.m. ET, following a re-air of Game 2 from the 2011 NBA Finals between the Mavs and Heat. They will also show the 98 All-Star Game again on Sunday at 5 p.m. ET in the lead up to this week’s episodes of The Last Dance.

The other retro NBA offerings from ESPN and ABC this week include a trio of Cavs-Warriors Finals games, starting with Game 6 of the 2015 NBA Finals at 2 p.m. ET this Saturday on ABC, followed by Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals at 8 p.m. Saturday night. Sunday, ABC will show Game 5 of the 2017 NBA Finals at 3 p.m. ET>

In an unprecedented move, Comedy Central has announced that it will binge-release the first season of its upcoming series Robbie from stand-up comedian Rory Scovel.

According to the network, the season premiere of the scripted comedy show will air on Comedy Central at its scheduled time after The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. But after that, the entire first season will be available on Comedy Central’s website, YouTube channel, and streaming apps, which is a first for the comedy network.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Robbie is a half-hour scripted series starring Rory Scovel (I Feel Pretty, Rory Scovel Tries Stand Up For The First Time). Rory plays a small town youth league basketball coach living in his father’s shadow, until he realizes he has a son of his own who can lead him to greatness. Robbie is written by Rory Scovel and Anthony King (Broad City, Silicon Valley). Co-starring with Rory are Beau Bridges, who plays his father, Sasheer Zamata and Mary Holland. Scovel, King, and Scott Moran are executive producers. Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, Betsy Koch and Owen Burke are executive producers for Gary Sanchez Productions.

The binge-release is a bold strategy for Comedy Central during a time when a cloud of uncertainty hangs over the future of TV productions. While showrunners are contemplating everything from trick camera angles to sequestering cast and crews in “drama camp”-type productions, the trend is to ration episodes for broadcast, not drop them all at once. But with most Americans trapped at home, you can’t go wrong with delivering them a steady stream of entertainment that could easily turn them into loyal viewers.

Just as movie studios are pivoting to a new normal in these pandemic days, who’s to say television can’t experience its own paradigm shift as the world navigates the days ahead.

What We Do in the Shadows (FX, 10:00 p.m.) — Colin Robinson gets promoted at work and that confidence, coupled with his growing abilities, upsets the power dynamic in the house.

Riverdale (CW, 8:00 p.m.) — Jughead must submit a story as part of his college application process so he weaves a dark tale about a high school gang’s plan for revenge against their principal that hits a little too close to home.

Survivor (CBS, 8:00 p.m.) — A crucial immunity challenge leaves the remaining seven players making moves to ensure they reach the finals.

The Masked Singer (Fox, 8:00 p.m.) — The final five singers compete in the quarter-finals tonight.

American Housewife (ABC, 9:00 p.m.) — The family enjoys an all-expenses-paid trip to California thanks to Anna-Kat’s win with The Wildflower Girls but Katie’s determined that the vacation be less business and more birthday celebration.

Motherland: Fort Salem (Freeform, 9:00 p.m.) — Tally questions who she can trust as secrets come to light during the witches’ final training exercise at Citydrop.

Single Parents (ABC, 9:30 p.m.) — Will tries to distract himself from thinking about Angie by smothering Douglas with attention while Angie faces her growing feelings for Derek in a surprising way.

SEAL Team (CBS, 10:00 p.m.) — Davis suspects the terrorist leader they’re after has ties to Jason while the team heads out for a time-sensitive mission.

Lil Xan says he’s finally following through on the suggestion he made two years ago to change his stage name. Xan shared a post on his Instagram today explaining that he’s in the process of officially changing his brand to Diego — his real first name.

He previously said, “I thought about changing my name to Diego,” as a reaction to the anti-opiate backlash sweeping hip-hop in the wake of the overdose deaths of Lil Peep and Mac Miller. However, back then he determined, “For right now, we gon’ stay Lil Xan. Later down the road, I’ll change it to Diego.”

It looks like “later down the road” has arrived. In the post announcing the name change, the newly-christened Diego reasoned that he was “leaving the old in the past” and also updated his profile picture while he was at it, because “so many people got butt hurt that I picked a Lil Uzi Vert edit.” He concluded, “I’m restarting and reinventing myself.”

A reinvention may be just what he needed to course correct his listing career, which stalled after a strong start thanks in part to the anti-drug sentiment against him that he just couldn’t spin away. Diego also faced a backlash from old school rap fans after he called Tupac’s music “boring.” After entering rehab and taking a break from rap, it seems the now 23-year-old rapper has a fresh perspective and possibly a second shot at hip-hop stardom.

Check out Diego’s name change announcement from Instagram above