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‘Weekend Update’ Mocks Trump’s X-Rated Microphone Motion, ‘Island of Garbage’ Backlash

The last “Weekend Update” segment before the 2024 election had plenty of fresh material to work with given the latest shocking incident from GOP candidate Donald Trump at one of his rallies. “Saturday Night Live” didn’t hold back in spoofing an hours-old controversy. Trump appeared to ahve simulated an oral sex motion with his microphone […]

Tim Kaine Makes Surprise Appearance in ‘SNL’ Sketch With John Mulaney; Sarah Sherman Plays Margaret Atwood

Tim Kaine, the Democratic Senator from Virginia and Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential running mate in 2016, made a surprise appearance on “Saturday Night Live” on the cusp of the 2024 presidential election. Kaine stumped “SNL” host John Mulaney in a quiz show sketch “What’s That Name: Election Edition,” when Mulaney’s character was challenged to identify […]

Kamala Harris Mocks Donald Trump on ‘SNL’ Appearance, Urges Americans to ‘Keep Kamala and Carry On-A-La’

Kamala Harris made a last-minute appearance on “Saturday Night Live” to inject a little humor into the last days of the presidential campaign. The current Vice President and presidential hopeful appeared during the Nov. 2 cold open, which began with a CNN parody, with Chloe Fineman portraying Kaitlan Collins. It cut to a Trump rally, […]

‘Days of Our Lives’ Legend Susan Seaforth Hayes to Pay On-Air Tribute to Late Husband and Co-Star: ‘He Deserved To Be Lifted Up’ [EXCLUSIVE]

Life imitated art in the most beautiful of ways when, in 1970, the characters of Julie Olson and Doug Williams met on “Days of Our Lives,” and their real-life counterparts, Susan Seaforth and Bill Hayes fell in love and lived happily ever after, in a marriage that last 50 years, until his death earlier this […]

Shailene Woodley Almost Turned Down ‘Big Little Lies,’ but Laura Dern Told Her ‘It’s a Massive Mistake’: ‘It Forever Changed My Life’

Shailene Woodley scored her first-ever Emmy nomination for playing Jane Chapman on the hit HBO series “Big Little Lies.” But, according to Woodley, she nearly turned down the role. In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Woodley expressed her excitement over the opportunity to work with Jean-Marc Vallée, calling him an “incredible artist and filmmaker.” However, […]

Filmmakers From the Arab World Adapt to Get Projects Off the Ground in Times of Conflict: ‘You Can’t Just Stop Telling Stories’

As conflicts escalate in the Middle East and North Africa, from Palestine to Yemen and Sudan, filmmakers have seen an increase in solidarity within the local creative community to find ways to continue to get films made in the region. Still, producers and directors struggle to navigate an increasingly tense and politicized international scene and […]

Harrison Ford Endorses Kamala Harris for President: ‘I’ve Got One Vote’ and ‘I’m Going to Use It to Move Forward’

Harrison Ford has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris days before the 2024 election. Ford appeared in a series of videos in partnership with the Harris-Walz campaign, released Saturday, saying in one video, “When dozens of former members of the Trump administration are sounding alarms, saying, ‘For God’s sake, don’t do this again,’ you have to […]

‘Ms. President,’ About Slovakia’s First Female Leader Zuzana Caputova, ‘Grey Zone’ Win at Ji.hlava Doc Festival

Marek Šulík’s “Ms. President” was named the winner of the Opus Bonum section at Ji.hlava Documentary Festival Saturday. The film, which also opened the festival, was one of the buzziest titles this year, provoking discussions about upcoming U.S. elections and zooming onto the fifth president of Slovakia, Zuzana Čaputová – the first woman ever to […]

 ‘The Footballest II,’ a Live Action Family Movie Adapting the Hit Children’s Book Saga, Pounced on by Filmax (EXCLUSIVE)

Looking to IP and the resilient market for live action family fare, Filmax has swooped on kids adventure caper “The Footballest II,” the second big-screen adaptation tapping into the children’s book saga created by Spain’s Roberto Santiago which has sold over 5 million copies worldwide. “The Footballest and the Mystery of the Pirate Treasure” will […]

Did Donald Trump Just Thank God for a Hurricane Costing Americans Jobs?

At a rally Saturday in Gastonia, North Carolina, Donald Trump thanked God for an October jobs report that showed a slow-down in job growth due in part to the recent hurricane that decimated the western part of the state.

“How good was that?” Trump asked the crowd. “To get those numbers four days before the vote was…” Trump said, trailing off. Then he paused and looked upward, presumably to God, who he told: “Thank you very much sir. Thank you.”

“He’d prefer to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that the US economy added just 12,000 jobs in October. Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su attributed the slow growth to “significant impacts from hurricanes and strike activity.” That’s a reference to Hurricanes Helene and Milton and an ongoing strike by Boeing machinists. Noting the unemployment rate remains at 4.1 percent and inflation is falling, Su said the jobs report “reflects an atypical month rather than a shift in the broader economic outlook.”

Trump’s jobs remarks were hardly the worst thing he said this weekend. He labeled journalists covering his rally “monsters,” mocked trans people, and called his opponent a product of political correctness and “stupid,” with a racist and sexist subtext hard to miss. He defended his racist Madison Square Garden rally. On Friday night in Milwaukee he inexplicably expressed frustration with audio issues by pretending to perform fellatio on a microphone stand.

But the reaction to the jobs report was revealing in the gusto with which Trump embraced bad news for Americans as good for him. To be fair, he did describe the numbers as “bad news” during his Friday address. But in North Carolina on Saturday, he celebrated the political benefit he claimed to be getting from the new report—without mentioning the hurricane economists say helped slow hiring by causing catastrophic flooding and hundreds of deaths, including more than 100 in the state he spoke in.

“I mean, how good is that if you happen to be running against the people that did that?” Trump, referring to the jobs report.

This wasn’t the only time he seemed to be rejoicing in doom. Elsewhere in the speech, Trump celebrated, as he generally does at his rallies, an increase in border crossings that followed his exit from office. He has consistently made few bones about his belief that problems at the border are good for him. Early this year, Trump successfully lobbied to jettison a bipartisan bill aimed at toughening security on the Mexican border. Trump’s push was widely understood as an effort to stop Congress from trying to solve a problem that he wanted to use to attack Democrats. Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who was a key author of the bill, has said that critics of the measures argued: “We don’t want President Trump to lose that issue.”

Vice President Kamala Harris has faulted Trump’s opposition to the measure, calling it evidence that “he’d prefer to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”

Nothing in Trump’s remarks Saturday refuted that criticism.

Donald Trump Slams Julia Roberts for Narrating Ad Urging Wives to Vote for Kamala Harris: ‘She’s Going to Look Back at That and She’s Going to Cringe’

Donald Trump criticized Julia Roberts on “Fox & Friends” Saturday for narrating a Harris-Walz campaign ad that reminds women that their vote is their choice, regardless of how their husbands or anyone else may be voting. “I’m so disappointed at Julia Roberts. She’s going to look back on that and she’s going to cringe. ‘Did […]

Trump Threatens to “Get the News Shaped Up”

Donald Trump is amplifying attacks on the media in the final days of the campaign, broadly threatening retaliation against the industry for coverage critical of him.

“To make America great you really have to get the news shaped up,” Trump told Fox News Saturday morning.

During a rally in North Carolina later that day, Trump called journalists covering the event “monsters,” and “horrible, horrible, dishonest people.”

During the Fox News interview, Trump attacked several outlets. He called ABC News “corrupt,” renewing his gripe that the network’s David Muir during a September debate had correctly noted that that FBI data shows violent crime declining, contradicting Trump’s erroneous claims that it was “through the roof.”

Trump called journalists covering the event “monsters,” and “horrible, horrible, dishonest people.”

Trump isn’t just going after the media with words. On Thursday, the former president sued CBS News for $10 billion, alleging that the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris “amounts to a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 US Presidential Election.” The lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of Texas where the sole judge is Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee known for partisan pro-GOP rulings. Even so, the suit has little chance of success. TV networks routinely edit interviews (including those featuring Trump, who backed out of appearing on “60 Minutes” last month.) My colleague Pema Levy wrote more about this lawsuit and its chances for success here.

Trump’s suit is “without merit” a CBS spokesperson said last week. “The interview was not doctored; and 60 Minutes did not hide any part of the vice president’s answer to the question at issue…60 Minutes fairly presented the interview to inform the viewing audience, and not to mislead it.”

Trump has also said that CBS should lose its license to broadcast news due to the Harris interview. That’s one of many such threats. CNN recently noted that Trump in the last two years has called for every major American TV news network, including Fox News, to be punished for coverage he deemed unfair. Trump has also vowed that if he wins back the White House, he plans to seize greater control of independent regulatory agencies, including the FCC.

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The pattern is clear: Trump’s extreme rhetoric is deliberate.

As president, Trump tried to punish media outlets that criticized him. His administration tried to block AT&T acquisition of CNN’s parent company and to deny a cloud computing contract for Amazon, which was founded by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos.

Trump has also threatened to jail journalists who report information he contends has national security implications. (Trump himself, of course, has been indicted for illegally retaining highly sensitive national security documents he removed from the White House.) In 2022, NPR recently noted, Trump repeatedly said the prospect of prison rape would cause reporters to disclose sources. “When this person realizes that he is going to be the bride of another prisoner shortly, he will say, ‘I’d very much like to tell you exactly who that was,'” Trump said at a Texas event.

All these statements amount to an ongoing threat that, if elected, Trump will use his power to curb speech critical of him. That’s a direct challenge to the First Amendment, and hence not likely to fully succeed, even among increasingly partisan judges.

But Trump could still made life difficult for media outlets, and his threats already appear to have had a chilling effect. Amid attacks from Trump and his allies over his philanthropic efforts to help register voters in 2020, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg has tried to extract himself from politics, including by limiting what the company deems political content on its platforms. The Washington Post editorial page’s scuttling of an endorsement of Harris has been widely read as an attempt by Bezos to avoid angering Trump, though Bezos disputes that. The Los Angeles Times also drew fire for declining to endorse a candidate this year.

The Post‘s move didn’t appease Trump. The former president ripped the paper during his Fox call-in Saturday, even suggesting the 250,000 lost subscriptions and high-profile resignations the paper suffered due to the non-endorsement was connected to his gripes with the paper. Why is the Post facing these problems? According to Trump, it’s “because they don’t have credibility.”

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