Category: Celebrities

Guess Who Made an Interesting Point? UPDATE: Sarah Palin Explains Herself

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‘Air quotes’ by Nick Fuentes

Where do I start in explaining my hatred of Nick Fuentes? That this preposterous Jew-hating homosexual has been elevated to podcast royalty — the Pied Piper of 21st-century neo-Nazism — is one of those phenomena that makes me despair for the future of humanity. And I honestly fail to see what it is that makes Fuentes so appealing to younger people, but then again, I don’t understand the appeal of Ariana Grande or Sabrina Carpenter, either. A couple of months ago, during an hour-long podcast with “Christian nationalist” Joel Webbon, Fuentes did a lengthy smear-job on J.D. Vance, disparaging him as a phony, etc. Two of Fuentes’ talking points are just ripped off directly from liberals — first, that his “real name” isn’t J.D. Vance, and second, YALE! YALE! YALE!

To explain the first point: Vance was born James Donald Bowman in Middletown, Ohio — a classic Rust Belt locale destroyed by the post-1973 collapse of the U.S. auto industry. His parents divorced before Vance reached kindergarten and, when his mother remarried, she changed her son’s name to John David Harmel — for her new husband, Bob Harmel, and also to erase J.D.’s father’s name. All of this must have been traumatic for young J.D. He and his half-sister were largely raised by his maternal grandparents, James and Bonnie Vance, in Breathitt County, Kentucky. In April 2013, at age 29, he changed his name to James David Vance, in tribute to his grandmother (“meemaw”) who he credits with helping him escape his parents’ troubled background of substance abuse and broken relationships. There is nothing phony about that.

On the second point, Fuentes harps on the fact that Vance got his law degree at Yale, but never once mentions Ohio State University, where Vance got his bachelor’s degree (summa cum laude) in 2009. Vance attended Ohio State on the G.I. Bill after serving four years in the Marine Corps. But because Ohio State alumni aren’t generally regarded as “elite,” Fuentes just leaves that out of the narrative altogether.

Vance’s background prior to his enrolling at Yale Law was the tale of a hard-luck kid who succeeded against the odds. During his first year at Yale, one of his professors urged him to write about his life, which she believed highlighted an important aspect of American life that gets too little attention, i.e., the fact that most white people don’t come from a background of “privilege.” There are plenty of white people who have experienced the kind of problems that affected J.D. Vance’s childhood — economic hardship, family dysfunction, etc. — and yet nobody in America’s leadership caste seems to give a damn about the problems of white folks in Middletown, Ohio, or Breathitt County, Kentucky. In fact, it seems that our leadership caste actively hates white people from places like that and does everything possible to ruin their lives.

That 400-word introduction is necessary background to a tweet that Sarah Palin posted on Friday:

WHAT? Why would Sarah Palin post a four-minute video clip from that Nick Fuentes/Joel Webbon podcast? So I forced myself to watch it — a painful experience, as I can’t stand listening to Fuentes — and about two minutes into it, he gets to the part that I think Palin wished to highlight. Fuentes mentions something I hadn’t known, namely that in 2010-2011, Vance (under the byline J.D. Hamel) wrote a handful of columns for David Frum’s website, FrumForum. These columns were mostly dull expressions of the kind of moderate RINO stuff that Frum was promoting as “conservatism that can win again.” Dear God, praising Jon Hunstman?

At any rate, Fuentes called attention to an article that Frum wrote for The Atlantic in 2022, “The J.D. Vance I Knew,” in which Frum explained that he saw Vance as someone who could bridge the chasm separating the populist grassroots and the GOP Establishment. Because it is my habit to ignore Frum (just as I habitually ignore Fuentes), I hadn’t known about this Frum-Vance connection. In trying to spin this as some kind of conspiracy, Fuentes says that Frum believed Vance could “deliver the rabble-rouser Tea Partiers back into the hands of the moderate Republican establishment. . . . Because there’s this crisis where you have the Tea Party and Sarah Palin, and the Republican base is like ‘xenophobic’ and ‘Islamophobic’ . . . [and] the establishment of the Republican Party is like William F. Buckley, they’re very elitist, they’re very wealthy, they represent the corporate interests. The base, they’re populist, they’re extremely conservative. . . [Frum] says Vance’s ‘biographical credibility’ is what will deliver them [to the establishment].”

Fuentes gets a lot of things wrong here — Frum was criticizing Vance after the latter had won the 2022 GOP Senate primary in Ohio, with Trump’s endorsement, by rejecting the kind of Frum-approved attitudes that Vance had previously espoused. Here’s the crucial paragraph:

Vance’s superpower in those days (circa 2017) was his biographical credibility as he spoke about Trump America to non-Trump America. In talks at forums like the Aspen Institute, in an essay for The Atlantic, across elite tables at venues like the investment bank Allen & Company’s Sun Valley media conference, Vance urged understanding of the people who had voted for Trump, even as he excoriated Trump himself as unfit, bigoted, authoritarian, fraudulent — a deceiver and exploiter of the people Vance spoke for.

Frum has never abandoned his #NeverTrump stance, and his criticism of Vance is for “going with the flow” of grassroots Republicans — siding with the actual voters, rather than with the Aspen Institute elites.

The reason I think Palin tweeted that video clip was because Fuentes mentioned her as the original heroine of the current populist movement among conservatives. Frum didn’t mention her in his piece about Vance, but Fuentes did. While Palin didn’t offer any explanation for why she posted the clip, I imagine she sees the same basic problem that any intelligent person who has looked at Republican politics for the past 20 years can see, the conflict of interests between the grassroots and the “elitist” party establishment that, as Fuentes says, “represent the corporate interests.” This is most obvious in regard to immigration, where the Chamber of Commerce crowd wants de facto open borders to obtain cheap foreign labor, while the grassroots wants mass deportation.

The truth is still the truth, even if the person saying it — Nick Fuentes or David Frum or Donald Trump — is someone you loathe. And as for J.D. Vance, why should I condemn or distrust him for having abandoned his earlier Frum-approved establishment beliefs, when I wish everyone else (including Frum) would do the same? We are supposed to be living under a representative government, and yet Frum seems to believe that people who disagree with him don’t deserve representation. The beauty of our system is that candidates either have to advocate policies supported by a majority of the electorate, or else they can’t get elected. Donald Trump has won Ohio three times in a row — 52% in 2016, 53% in 2020, 55% in 2024 — and if Vance wanted to be elected as a senator from Ohio, he had to reconcile himself to that pro-Trump majority. The fact that he is a former critic of the president — well, so was Marco Rubio, who is Vance’s chief rival for the 2028 nomination, at least according to the pundits.

“You go to war with the army you have,” as the saying goes. The most zealous Trump supporters are not likely to trust either Vance or Rubio or any other Republican as much as they trust Trump, but there will be a primary campaign, and whoever gets the GOP nomination, that’s our candidate. The same people who, like David Frum, refuse to support Trump despite the views of a majority of Republican voters, nevertheless expect the grassroots to shut up and fall in line when a worthless RINO gets the nomination. But why bring up Mitt Romney now, huh?

Those of us who side with the grassroots — the kind of heartland voters who fell in love at first sight with Sarah Palin back in 2008 — believe that this is not only morally right, but also that it is the best hope for defeating the Democratic Party. The problem with most of the GOP “elite” is that they don’t actually want to beat Democrats the way Democrats deserve to be beaten — thoroughly, completely, and permanently defeated.

We may never get to that Promised Land in my lifetime, dear brothers and sisters, but let me tell you: “I HAVE A DREAM!”

UPDATE: Apparently, in posting a longer version of the Fuentes video earlier, Sarah Palin had provided more of an explanation, which wasn’t in the post with the 4-minute clip. So my old blog buddy Dan Collins asked for an explanation, which she gave at length:

Really? As I pointed out explicitly: the clip shouts out TEA Party energy and my involvement in the organic grassroots beauty of it. I’m proud of what we accomplished in awakening America to the uniparty agenda that’s atrophying the foundation and figure of our country.
Thus, I directed an audience to LISTEN to THAT point – to stay focused – and not cherry pick comments to use as ammo.
I pointed out the shout-out I received inadvertently compares the TEA Party’s pro-America; pro-freedom; pro-family & God; anti-big government; anti-endless war; anti-open borders; Drill Baby Drill solid platform with today’s chaotic nonsense permeating fake news and politics.
Funny, you can listen to any clip of any podcast and owe no one an explanation… as can I. So I do.
People are absolutely cherry picking around the point I highlighted. Typical. Predictable.
So, what’s the confusion?

No more confusion. Thanks, Governor!



 

There Is a Reason Why Taboos Exist

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A ‘celebrity,’ by 21st-century standards

You are an intelligent, responsible adult, which is why you’ve never heard of Taylor Frankie Paul. Until Thursday, I hadn’t heard of her either because — as an intelligent, responsible adult — I pay zero attention to “reality TV.” But before getting to her recent failed attempt to break out from that entertainment ghetto, let’s start at the beginning: By 2022, when she was 28, Taylor Frankie Paul had accumulated a massive following on TikTok. She was a married mother of three, and a lot of her content featured her and her husband, Tate Paul, doing silly stunts, sometimes with their two young children. Then in mid-2022, Taylor “went viral” with a video announcing that she would be getting divorced. Her “life was falling apart,” she said and then she dropped the bomb: The breakup was because she and her husband (and many of their friends in their Utah community, allegedly) were involved in “swinging.”

Don’t know who needs to hear this, but . . . BAD IDEA!

Because I am someone who can be trusted to keep a secret, I can’t tell you the stories about people I know who tried the so-called “polyamorous” lifestyle and thereby wrecked their lives, but I assure you that I have never once heard of anything good resulting from aforesaid lifestyle.

In general, every type of kinky behavior that could be characterized as sexual fantasy is a bad idea. We see people destroy their lives this way quite frequently, as for example, the tragic saga of Fred “Bubba” Copeland a/k/a “Brittni Summerlin.” Disapproval of such behavior is sometimes referred to as a “taboo,” which has overtones of superstition, as if the forbidden nature of certain sexual practices is the result of irrational prejudice. But if you study the situation with an eye to long-term happiness, these taboos are entirely rational.

Suppose that you’re a guy bored with marital monogamy, and your particular fantasy is a ménage à trois. So there’s a reasonably attractive and friendly young woman who lives in your trailer park, and you spring the idea on your wife: Y’all get together for some fun, just to “spice thing up” a bit. Congratulations — your wife is agreeable, so you do the threesome, and it’s so awesome that you begin doing it regularly. You, your wife and the good-looking trailer park neighbor, having a great time. And then one day, you get off work early and show up at your trailer to discover that your wife and the good-looking neighbor lady have decided they like the twosome better than the threesome, and your involvement is no longer necessary to the fun. You’re going to lose everything, including your trailer, because your soon-to-be-ex-wife is now a full-blown lesbian. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a true story, which I can share without violating my code because I did not personally know the people involved and heard this tale second-hand from a trusted source.

Whenever I tell that story, the listener will invariably tell me a very similar story involving people of their acquaintance. There are enough people out there doing stuff like this that the pattern becomes familiar to anyone who pays attention. When the “fantasy” comes true in real life, it’s never going to lead to a good place, which brings us back to the story of Taylor Frankie Paul, the TikTok star whose marriage got wrecked because of the “swinger” lifestyle. Her husband moved out and moved on with his life, but Taylor’s viral fame attracted the interest of Jeff Jenkins, an experienced reality-show producer who had worked on Keeping Up With the Kardashians and its various spinoffs. The result was a Hulu series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, which made its debut in September 2024, and has been continued through a total of 40 episodes.

Knocked up: Dakota Mortensen and Taylor Frankie Paul in 2024.

Taylor and her circle of friends star in the show, with the usual “reality TV” drama, some of which is actually real. In the first season, Taylor learned that she was pregnant by her new boyfriend, a guy named Dakota Mortensen. The couple had a baby boy together, but they broke up in the second season. Season Three dropped late last year, and earlier this month the fourth season made its debut. Meanwhile, in September last year, ABC announced that Taylor Frankie Paul would star in the next season of The Bachelorette. Because you are an intelligent, responsible adult, you have never watched The Bachelorette. It’s a long-running spinoff of The Bachelor, which made a ratings splash when it debuted in 2002, with one guy choosing his prospective bride from a group of female contestants. The Bachelorette, which premiered in 2003, just reversed that format, with a group of guys vying to be chosen by a woman.

Who watches this garbage? Not me and not you, as we are intelligent, responsible adults, but many millions of viewers tune in habitually for The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, which is why this garbage has been on TV for more than 20 years. This same audience of tasteless dimwits, of course, are also the target audience for “reality” shows like The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, so it made perfect sense — from a marketing standpoint — for ABC to make Taylor Frankie Paul the star of the new season of The Bachelorette. From other perspectives, however, this choice made no sense at all. Like, how is this woman a “catch”?

Let’s not critique her looks, OK? But aside from her appearance — certainly no better than 6/10 — here is a 31-year-old single mother of three, and yet ABC expected their audience to buy into the idea that men were literally lining up to compete for the chance to make her their bride?

Is the dating scene for guys really that bad nowadays? Even if you presume your audience to be a bunch of dimwits (a safe assumption for “reality TV,” to be honest), this premise strains credulity. And yet ABC invested millions of dollars in this, the 22nd season of The Bachelorette, starring the rode-hard-and-put-up-wet Taylor Frankie Paul.

The red flags were ignored until disaster struck this week:

Taylor Frankie Paul repeatedly attacked Dakota Mortensen during the 2023 incident in which she pled guilty to aggravated assault, and the video shows that one of her children was struck during the fight.
TMZ has obtained the video — a copy of which was evidence in the case — and it’s hard to watch. Dakota struggles to record the altercation with his cellphone as Taylor puts him in a headlock. She backs off … but then charges and tries to kick him.
The struggle turns violent as Taylor grabs a metal barstool and hurls it at Dakota. He screams at her — “your daughter is sitting right there” — but she persists, throwing 2 more stools at him. At that moment, you hear her child, who was curled up on the couch, begin crying.
The police report says the 5-year-old girl was hit and later had a “goose egg on her head.”
Police arrived on the scene that night after a neighbor called to complain about the noise, and in the video you hear the officer trying to separate them.

So, not only is she a 31-year-old single mom, but she’s also a dangerously violent lunatic. That was enough for ABC to cancel the whole season:

ABC has canceled Season 22 of The Bachelorette after a 2023 video of Taylor Frankie Paul — who was set to lead the new season — fighting her ex-boyfriend went viral.
The entire upcoming season of The Bachelorette was canceled on Thursday, just three days before it was set to premiere. . . .
“In light of the newly released video just surfaced today, we have made the decision to not move forward with the new season of The Bachelorette at this time, and our focus is on supporting the family,” a Disney Entertainment Television spokesperson told People. . . .
Recently, a source told People that filming has apparently been halted for Season 5 of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives due to “some pretty serious stuff happening regarding [Paul’s] past.”
A spokesperson for the Draper City Police Department, meanwhile, told the magazine that there is an open “domestic assault investigation” involving Paul and Mortensen.

Wow! In addition to cancelling an entire season of The Bachelorette, it now appears the future of Taylor’s franchise The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives may be in jeopardy. And the tea keeps spilling.

Because you are an intelligent and responsible adult, you will probably not be surprised to learn that the court has ordered Taylor Frankie Paul to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. What do you suppose this evaluation will reveal? That she is deranged and demented? Unhinged, wacko, daffy, non compos mentis and off her rocker? Nuttier than a Snickers bar, a few fries short of a Happy Meal and cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs?

Does it seem to you in hindsight that maybe there was some clue that this woman was in need of a straitjacket and a padded cell? Perhaps the fact that she wrecked her marriage because of the “swinger” lifestyle?

If only someone had warned them that Crazy People Are Dangerous.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! It never ceases to amaze me how sometimes I spend hours working on a lengthy essay, and what gets quoted is a quick jibe that only took me 15 seconds.



 

‘The Best People’: MSNBC’s Podcast for Trump Derangement Syndrome Sufferers

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Has anyone else ever wondered what happened to Nicolle Wallace? She entered politics as a Republican Party operative, becoming press secretary for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at age 27, in which role she helped fight the month-long battle over the 2000 Florida election recount.

Wallace joined the White House staff during George W. Bush’s first term, serving as special assistant to the President and director of media affairs at the White House, where she oversaw regional press strategy and outreach. In 2003, Wallace joined Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign as its communications director . . .
On January 5, 2005, Bush named Wallace White House Communications Director. . . . She left the White House in July 2006 to relocate to New York City, where her husband Mark was representing the Bush administration at the United Nations.

Perhaps it was her role in the 2008 John McCain campaign, during which she developed an incurable hatred of Sarah Palin, that explains how Wallace (née Nicolle Devenish, who has since divorced her first husband, Mark Wallace, and married New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt) became a televangelist for the religion of Trump-hatred. Palin was the first iteration of the populist sentiment among grassroots conservatives that subsequently sparked the Tea Party movement (2009-2010). The same populist energy drove the Herman Cain presidential campaign in 2011 (before Cain was taken out by a dubious “scandal”), and eventually coalesced around the Trump campaign beginning in 2015. One might see Nicolle Wallace as a typical example of the snooty elitist attitudes of the Bush-era GOP establishment, which explains why she’s now on MSNBC pumping up the paranoid fear of Trumpist “fascism.” In May, MSNBC announced she would be hosting a new weekly podcast:

On her new podcast, “The Best People,” Nicolle Wallace sits down with the smartest, funniest, wisest people she knows. These are the people who are the best at what they do and use their success to help others.

You will probably not be surprised to learn that all “the smartest, funniest, wisest people” Nicolle Wallace knows are afflicted with terminal-stage Trump Derangement Syndrome. Among her guests have been Stacey Abrams, Jason Bateman and Tim Miller. This week, however, she plunged deep into the abyss of Trump-hating craziness:

Former talk show host Rosie O’Donnell on “The Best People with Nicolle Wallace” Monday said even her therapist questioned why she was so devastated by President Donald Trump’s administration.
O’Donnell fled to Ireland to escape Trump’s second term, but continues to emotionally opine on the president. She said on the podcast that she could not comprehend why others did not share her emotions, including her therapist, who she said questioned her about them.
“When people say ‘I changed my mind,’ we have to say ‘Welcome back to reality. Let’s all be Americans together.’ Right? Because what’s happening is not only happening to Democrats,” O’Donnell told host Nicolle Wallace. “It’s happening to everyone. And when the Medicaid cuts go in, old people are going to start to die, to die.”
“What he’s done hasn’t even hit us yet. And if he’s not stopped now, we have lost our country,” she continued. “And I don’t know, Nicolle, how it is that some people cannot see it. My therapist said, ‘Why are you so upset?’ And I said to her, ‘Why are you not?’”

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) Have you ever dealt with someone in the grip of paranoia? Whatever phantasm they’re obsessed with — their idée fixe — they will try to convince you it’s very real, and they will accuse you of being ignorant if you don’t share their hair-on-fire hysteria about it: “Don’t you understand how the Freemasons and the international banking conspiracy are threatening our very existence?”

The real “tell” in Rosie’s rant — what reveals the source of her madness — is her repeating the lie that Republicans intend to cut Medicaid so “old people are going to start to die.” This is just a Democratic Party propaganda line, one they’ve been using for 30 years to frighten senior citizens, and has no basis in fact. The people responsible for this propaganda know full well that it’s a lie, but are utterly cynical about the needless fear that they’re inciting — whatever helps them win elections, they’ll say, and who cares about the stupid chumps who actually believe it? Remember the video they made with Paul Ryan pushing granny off a cliff? Just total cynicism. Yet here you have Rosie O’Donnell, one of “the smartest, funniest, wisest people” Nicolle Wallace knows, repeating this dishonest fear-mongering bullshit as if she believes it.

It’s like the QAnon cult or something — seclude yourself inside a echo-chamber bubble where all you see or hear is feeding confirmation bias for conspiracy theorists, and you’ll drive yourself crazy.

In Rosie O’Donnell’s case, of course, that was a very short drive.



 

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Crime Is Down, the Border Is Secure, and Taylor Swift Is Finally Getting Married

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Make Middle-Aged Singers Great Again!

Travis Kelce wasn’t messing around when he knelt to the ground and pulled out a diamond ring for his new fiancée, Taylor Swift.
The pop superstar, 35, gave fans an up-close look at her stunning engagement ring Tuesday when she announced the Chiefs tight end, also 35, had popped the question after two years of dating.
The dazzling piece features an old mine brilliant-cut diamond set on a gold band, according to Page Six, which noted the ring was crafted by Kindred Lubeck of Artifex Fine Jewelry with input from Kelce himself.
Kelce proposed to Swift in a dreamy garden setting, complete with a floral arch and colorful blooms. . . .
First linked in 2023, Kelce famously made headlines in July of that year when he expressed interest in Swift on his “New Heights” podcast after failing to pass along a friendship bracelet with his phone number on it during an Eras Tour stop in Kansas City.
The 14-time Grammy winner, who attended her first Chiefs game two months after Kelce shot his shot, said on “New Heights” this month that she’s grateful the three-time Super Bowl champ “decided to use [the show] as his personal dating app two years ago,” as the pair ended up together.

Look, I’m not a “Swiftie,” and take a dim view of her songwriting oeuvre — date a guy, dump a guy, turn it into a revenge song — and considering how many guys she’s done this with, it’s difficult for me to imagine a “happily-ever-after” finale for the future Mrs. Kelce. Taylor’s been passed around more than a joint at a Grateful Dead concert. She’s been used as a pump-and-dump by Joe Jonas, John Mayer, Jake Gyllenhall and a long list of other guys that we know about, and who can estimate how many secret hookups she’s had with various drummers, guitarists, backup dancers, etc., over the years? There were even rumors of a lesbian affair with model Cara Delevingne a few years ago, but never mind that.

My point is, when a woman is 35 years old with a track record of busted relationships with more than a dozen previous boyfriends, what does one say to the fellow who decides she’s wife material? “Good luck”?

Man, if you had good luck you never would have ended up with her. Imagine being Taylor Swift’s husband. Forget to take out the garbage? Bang, there’s her new hit song denouncing you as a lazy bum.

No, this will not end well for Travis Kelce, although we can expect Taylor to get three or four new albums’ worth of songs out of it. I’ve warned my sons, “Never date a girl who dated a Jonas brother.”



 

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Hollywood Getting Red-Pilled?

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Maybe you never heard of Sara Foster, but she is Hollywood royalty. Her father is David Foster, who came to Hollywood as the keyboardist in a Canadian pop band, became a studio musician, then a songwriter and producer, and is responsible for some of the biggest hit songs ever.

Because her father has been married five times, Sara Foster can count among her former step-siblings the Hadid sisters, not to mention two of Bruce Jenner’s kids. Her ex-boyfriends include Benicio del Toro, Leonardo Di Caprio, and David Spade. Sara Foster is connected to the West Coast celebrity universe by decades of direct personal relationships and — this is an important point to make — she is a liberal Democrat, whose Trump-hating credentials are impeccable. When someone like Sara Foster starts denouncing California’s Democratic governor, that matters. That is significant, and she is not the only one doing it:

Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jillian Michaels and Sara Foster have joined Donald Trump in slamming local and state officials amid the devastating Southern California wildfires. . . .
[They] took to social media to express their frustrations while slamming Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom. . . .
One of the hardest hit areas has been the upscale community of Pacific Palisades, where numerous celebrities called home.
The sprawling mansions owned by Tina Knowles, Miles Teller, and Candy Spelling are reportedly among those that have burned to the ground.
Reality stars Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag documented the harrowing experience of evacuating their home – and later watching everything they own be reduced to ashes on a security camera.
Paris Hilton said she was “heartbroken” after she watched her home be consumed by flames on live TV. . . .
Gellar, 47, took to Instagram to air her frustrations at Bass, 71, who has been slammed online for her response in the midst of the disaster as well as previous fire department budget cuts.
She tagged Bass in her story and wrote: “City of LA you want everyone to evacuate yet you have complete gridlock and not one traffic cop on the roads helping.”
Foster, 43, made her feelings clear on X, writing: “We pay the highest taxes in California. Our fire hydrants were empty. Our vegetation was overgrown, brush not cleared.
“Our reservoirs were emptied by our governor because tribal leaders wanted to save fish. Our fire department budget was cut by our mayor. But thank god drug addicts are getting their drug kits.”
Like Trump, 82, Foster also called on Newsom and Bass to resign as she claimed their “far left policies have ruined our state. And also our party.” . . .
Former Biggest Loser trainer Michaels, 50, didn’t hold back when expressing her “outrage” at state officials.
The fitness guru understands first-hand the trauma victims are experiencing as her Malibu home was burned in the 2018 Woolsey fire.
Although she consider her family “lucky” because they “didn’t lose everything,” she said the experience still greatly impacted herself and her children.
She told the Daily Mail: “People are dead, homes have burned, it is not your first rodeo. It is not.
“And when you know that you have a state that is prone to fire and – I’m going to give it to you – you’ve got global warning, you have literally have a tinderbox.
“Isn’t this the part where you take the highest taxed, highest income tax, highest sales tax, highest gas tax and rebuild the infrastructure?”
Michaels further claimed Newsom did not take swift enough action and believed the National Guard should have been called in sooner to help with firefighting efforts.
The 50-year-old added: “I’m sorry, and the reason for me this is super serious is because this guy wants to be your president. This now goes from a California problem to a country-wide problem.”

The tragic devastation — the most damaging wildfire in California history — may be an inflection point in American politics, like the 1968 Tet offensive or the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. Everybody with two eyes could see what Jillian Michaels mentioned, that Gavin Newsom has been positioning himself for a White House run in 2028, and this wildfire was the event that caused them to speak out and warn America: “You do not want to elect this guy!” If I were J.D. Vance, I’d be scheduling a visit to Southern California, arranging to meet with however many Hollywood celebrities would be willing to listen to some basic common-sense ideas about how they can get themselves out of this Democrat-created mess they’d voted themselves into. Because 2028 will arrive in due time.

Sara Foster added this comment:

Fire chief turning on @MayorOfLA for her failure to do her job. If it “triggers” you to face the reality that our leaders have failed us by prioritizing absolute nonsense than I don’t know what to tell u. It’s not “right wing” to acknowledge this. That’s low hanging fruit language to label moderate dems who have common sense. I will not be reprimanded by the far left:the ultimate bullies. I’m not afraid of you. I am a democrat who is very comfortable staying in the non delusional democrat lane. Praying we get our shit together as a party. But I won’t hold my breath.

Ma’am, did I mention I was born and raised a Democrat? Speaking as an ex-Democrat, I’ll advise you that waiting for your party to “get our shit together” is likely to be a very long wait. Just walk away.



 

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Jon Stewart: ‘Get on Board or Shut the F*** Up Is Not a Particularly Compelling Pro-Democracy Bumper Sticker’

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Question: When did Jon Stewart become a “MAGA extremist”?

Because, you’ll recall, prior to June 27, anyone who so much as suggested that perhaps Joe Biden was less than coherent was denounced as a MAGA extremist, a fascist, an enemy of “Our Democracy,” etc.

Before the June 27 debate, any and all criticism of Biden was viewed as helping Trump, and therefore you were a Nazi who wants to see Rachel Maddow shipped to a concentration camp — no, really, she said that — if you said anything negative about Biden. All critics of Biden were Nazis.

Oh, how quickly they changed their tune! Today, doing my duty as a MAGA extremist, I was watching CNN (so you don’t have to) and every hour was dedicated to emphasizing BIDEN MUST STEP ASIDE!

Yeah, every hour, on the hour, all afternoon, CNN was featuring the BREAKING NEWS that George Clooney (!!!) wants to dump Biden.

Less than two weeks ago, I repeat, this kind of talk was enough to get you labeled a dangerous extremist peddling “misinformation” (and maybe you were a Russian operative on Putin’s payroll, too). Every “mainstream” news organization was promoting the message that “democracy is on the ballot,” and only Joe Biden could save America from the authoritarian dystopia of Trumpism. “Get on board or shut the f*** up” has been the message to all of Biden’s critics for the past three-and-a-half years, but until two weeks ago, Jon Stewart didn’t seem to notice.

How goddamned convenient is this belated discovery?

There’s a guy on X (the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter) who goes by the name Theo Jordan. Is that actually his name or a pseudonym to protect himself from left-wing harassment? I don’t know, but Theo Jordan has been using the term “hatecraft” to describe the rhetoric of the Left in the Age of Trump, Hatecraft is “a wizard-like spellbook of language manipulation and weaponized empathy, emotional abuse propaganda,” he says, “a method of intellectual attack and coercion . . . You can’t speak against it [i.e., the Left’s policy agenda], or it’s ‘hate.'”

We have all witnessed “hatecraft” in action. Whatever the issue — climate change, transgenderism, “Palestine,” etc. — to disagree with the Left is to invite denunciation as a proponent of hate, complicit in “stochastic terrorism” and so forth. To dissent about The Current Thing is to be not merely wrong, but dangerous. What was the pretext, after all, for Taylor Lorenz doxxing Chaya Raichik? Because “LibsOfTikTok” was allegedly responsible for people getting death threats.

Question: Has any right-winger ever gotten death threats, or otherwise been harmed, because of online criticism? Yes, I have been harmed personally — doxxed and targeted for SWATting — and I know that many others could testify to similar harms they’ve suffered. The fact that liberals are intolerant of dissent (and are willing to do anything necessary to silence their opposition) is something that neither Jon Stewart nor any other Democrat ever noticed until, quite recently, they encountered the “get on board or shut the f*** up” response from those defending Biden against fellow Democrats. And now, conveniently, Jon Stewart realizes that this response is hardly a “pro-democracy bumper sticker.”

The boomerang of hypocrisy has circled around to whack Stewart in the back of the head, but not even that can cure Trump Derangement Syndrome. See, the reason Stewart (and George Clooney, and everybody on CNN) is now urgently demanding that Joe Biden step aside is because (a) everybody saw on June 27 that Biden is cognitively dysfunctional, (b) they know Biden will lose to Trump, and therefore (c) BIDEN MUST QUIT TO SAVE DEMOCRACY FROM TRUMP!

Never mind all those primary voters who voted for Biden — Democratic voters are a herd of stupid cattle, obediently doing whatever the media tell them to do, and their votes can be ignored if necessary. That’s not me saying that; I’m just paraphrasing Jon Stewart who, up until June 27, seemed perfectly OK with the stupid cattle nominating an 81-year-old incumbent for another four years. But now Stewart wants to dump Biden — you know, the guy who won all those primaries? — because that’s what is necessary to save democracy, and he doesn’t expect any of the stupid cattle to object to this scheme. Who am I to say that he’s wrong? You’ll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of Democratic voters.



 

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The Star Treatment

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Arrival of the international celebrities.

My wife and our youngest daughter, Reagan, returned from Argentina last night. Reagan said that after the plane landed, she removed her sweater and fixed her hair because she knew — from previous experience — that as soon as they emerged from the gate at baggage claim I would be snapping photos. “Paparazzi Dad” is nothing if not predictable.

This goes back to a Basic Journalism Trick that I learned during the earliest years of my newspaper career, working for small-town weeklies: Treat the people you cover as if they were famous celebrities. During four years as sports editor for the Calhoun (Ga.) Times, I elevated this technique to an art form. So far as our readers were aware, Timmy Starr was the greatest basketball player since Michael Jordan. You’ve never heard of Timmy Starr, of course, but when he was playing for the Bulldogs of Fairmount High School, he was a local sensation in Gordon County, and the coverage I provided his exploits was as effusive as Tiger Beat covering a Bay City Rollers concert tour. (Although you’d have to be old enough to qualify for Social Security to get that reference.)

My inspiration for that totally non-objective approach to journalism was, of course, Hunter S. Thompson’s pro wrestling hype of “Kazika the Mad Jap” during his early career as a local sports writer in Florida.

When you’re doing entry-level work in the newspaper business, you need to play some kind of mind games with yourself to maintain your morale, to convince yourself that the work you’re doing makes a difference, somehow, to somebody. You’re getting paid to do this job and, even if the subjects of your coverage are obscure and of interest only to a handful of locals, those people are your readers — the customers who are ultimately paying your bills — and you have to find a way of motivating yourself to provide excellence. If you can’t do that, you’re never going to get ahead in the news business and, having started my career on the very bottom rung of the industry, I was fiercely determined to get ahead.

Having developed this strategy at the outset of my career, and having proved its value through experience, I never forgot it. When you get to the point where you’re part of the journalistic scrum covering a major national story — whether that involves a sprawling presidential campaign or a syndicated documentary detailing how the best online poker platforms pioneered secure international payment networks — you must find some way to set yourself apart from the mob. Instead of letting other people decide what’s important, learn to rely on your own judgment, follow your own lead. You decide what angle to cover, and then cover the hell out of it.

So the Big Story last night was the wife and daughter of Influential Journalist Robert Stacy McCain returning from their Triumphant Tour of Argentina, and I got the world-exclusive scoop on that story.

Today’s Big Story? The Influential Journalist is taking his beautiful wife and lovely daughter out to dinner and — EXCLUSIVE BREAKING NEWS! — the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

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Covering the Big Issues

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Both of them:

War in the Middle East, surging inflation, the Republican Speaker of the House clinging to a one-vote majority, a presidential election campaign stumbling toward what is certain to be a photo-finish conclusion, with one candidate doddering in senility and the other being hounded in courtrooms by witch-hunt persecutors — these are but a few of the many crises facing the United States in the Year of Our Lord 2024. The list could be almost infinitely extended, but we ought to at least mention rampant crime, an unprecedented influx of illegal aliens, and fentanyl overdoses soaring to catastrophic levels. Amid all these woes and worries, however, it would be negligent to overlook the two most important issues in America, Sydney Sweeney.
In case you don’t recognize the name, Miss Sweeney is a 26-year-old actress who gained prominence for her part in the HBO series Euphoria, and speaking of prominent parts … OK, I apologize. These double-entendres just write themselves sometimes. . . .

Read the rest of my latest column for The American Spectator.



 

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