MAGA folks' maniacal reaction to Tom Hanks proves they are his 'SNL' character
The most zealous supporters of President Donald Trump practically broke the internet with maniacal rants protesting actor Tom Hanks' comic portrayal of a guy named 'Doug' wearing a Make America Great Again (MAGA) hat during the 50th anniversary show of 'Saturday Night Live.'
Strangely (or maybe not), these same people did not go nuts or flood the internet with protests when Trump and co-President Elon Musk fired several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees, many with training in FAA radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance, at a time when airplane safety is a growing concern.
But watching Hanks speak with a Southern accent in a skit about 'Black Jeopardy!' really, really irked them.
Unlike when Trump and Musk laid off vital employees of the Veterans Health Administration, which U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., called 'attempting to balance the budget on the backs of veterans.'
That didn't trouble them in the least.
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Opinion:Trump abdicated power to Musk. And now a 25-year-old may get access to your tax return.
Tom Hanks makes MAGA furious, but not this
Not like Hanks cutting it up with "SNL" cast member Kenan Thompson, which made them absolutely furious.
Then again, these same MAGA faithful expressed no outrage whatsoever when Musk tried to give his bro gang of hackers access to Americans' most private financial information, including Social Security benefits, VA benefits and much more.
But they went positively ballistic over Hanks reprising a role in a sketch first performed nine years ago.
Not a peep from them, on the other hand, when hundreds of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health were let go.
All of which puts Americans at risk.
Opinion:Musk is the little devil on Trump's shoulder daring him to break the law
MAGA Republicans are completely unbothered by Elon Musk
Hanks backing away from a Black man's handshake during a comedy TV sketch, though, had them foaming at the mouth.
Yet when Trump gave enormous power to Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, an unofficial government agency with no congressional approval, they didn't blink.
But Hanks wearing a denim jacket over an American eagle T-shirt. Terrible! Outrageous!
It didn't bother them at all, however, when Musk – a self-proclaimed champion of free speech – said, ''60 Minutes' are the biggest liars in the world! They deserve a long prison sentence.'
Maybe MAGA is worse than that 'SNL' character
Musk was upset about a segment the program did on killing the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides disaster relief to impoverished countries, particularly those working on democratic reforms.
During the program, it was said about Musk: 'The world's richest man cut off aid for the world's poorest people.'
The fact that MAGA is angrier and more upset at Hanks than they are with the world's richest man cutting off aid to the world's poorest people might prove that Trump supporters outraged by Hanks' MAGA portrayal could have a point.
It could be they're not exactly versions of the Hanks character.
It could be they're worse.
EJ Montini is a columnist at the Arizona Republic, where this column originally appeared. Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com
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Hamilton Spectator
20 minutes ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Buy Canadian moment creates opportunity for Roots and its domestic leather business
TORONTO - Rifling through the Roots Corp. product archives on a recent Thursday morning, CEO Meghan Roach is surrounded by the kind of heritage 'most consumer brands would die to have.' In every direction she turns are racks of leather jackets spanning the company's 52 years. Some are replicas of custom pieces gifted to Toronto Raptors players for their 2019 championship win, the cast of Saturday Night Live for its fiftieth anniversary or the Jamaican bobsled team that inspired the 'Cool Runnings' film. Others are even more rare: a forest green jacket stitched with a floral and friendship bracelet motif for pop star Taylor Swift, and one adorned with snazzy sunglasses and piano key pockets that marked Elton John's retirement from touring, the lining of which features 56 years of albums. What they have in common is an origin story that began with the building Roach is standing in — the Roots leather factory in north Toronto. Chances are, if you bought a leather bag or jacket from the retailer, they came from the Caledonia Road site, which has given Roots bragging rights in an era where everyone wants to buy Canadian. 'Every time I bring someone through the factory, they kind of look at me and say, 'I just didn't realize you did this here,'' Roach said of the facility where dozens of workers cut leather, stitch it together, emboss it and ultimately, handcraft up to 8,000 pieces monthly. The Canadian operation is a rarity these days, after clothing manufacturing largely migrated overseas in the sixties, when brands wanted to reduce costs and offload repetitive and sometimes time-consuming tasks. Roots has not been entirely immune to the allure of international production. It sources some of its clothing in Asia and Europe, but designs everything in Canada, which remains the heart of its leather business. Domestic production has been 'very challenging,' Roach said. Canadian suppliers have been dwindling, so the company has had to look to Italy and France to source leather and even farther afield for zippers. For a time, it had a Canadian company helping it with piping on bags, but they went out of business, so Roots bought its machinery and trained staff to use it. The decision was a point of pride long before shoppers started letting patriotism rule their pocketbooks this year in hopes of countering U.S. President Donald Trump and his tariff whims. The moment has shoppers rallying around any company with a shred of Canadiana so Roach is determined not to let it slip away without customers learning more about the brand's, well, roots. Founders Michael Budman and Don Green were raised in Michigan but met at Camp Tamakwa in Ontario's Algonquin Park in 1963 and 10 years later, decided to head north of the border to start Roots. Initially, they specialized in negative-heel shoes, which reduced pressure on backs, but when the footwear sold out in less than a month and spawned a waiting list, Budman and Green dreamt bigger. They started pumping out varsity jackets, leather bags ideal for weekend getaways and salt-and-pepper sweats. Eventually, they became a Canadian staple with stores dotting the country, a discount airline shuttling people from coast to coast, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck starring in ads and a coveted contract to outfit the nation's Olympic team. Nowadays, the stores remain but the airline has folded, the business no longer sells shoes, ads aren't quite so star-studded and Lululemon Athletica Inc. outfits Team Canada. Budman and Green? They sold a majority stake in Roots in 2015 to Searchlight Capital Partners L.P., a firm split between Toronto, New York, Miami and London. Roach worked at the firm before joining Roots. When she took the top job in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2020, she was inheriting a brand Canadians adored but that needed to get some of its groove back. 'Because it's 50 years old, you have to be really careful in terms of how you modernize it,' she said. 'You can't just wake up one day and change everything, so we've been slowly over the last five or six years, making small tweaks and changes.' Having heard from customers who wanted less dominant logos on their clothes and softer fabrics across more products, Roach introduced new lines with minimal branding and expanded the brand's use of comfier materials. She sold the items in stores slowly being revamped to have a brighter and lighter feel that is less reminiscent of a cabin and more like a burst of freshness from the great outdoors. She also decided Roots needed to do a better job of telling its story, so it invested more heavily in digital marketing and brought on brand ambassadors. Some of those efforts are working because Roots appears to have stronger margins and renewed consumer interest, said Liza Amlani, principal of Retail Strategy Group in an email. But she still feels the brand has work to do because 'not all stores are consistent in the customer experience and many are packed to the brim with product' that needs to keep evolving if Roots wants to hang onto customers long after the buy Canadian bubble bursts. These days they're marketing a Canada collection of red-and-white apparel, T-shirts dedicated to local waterways like Okanagan Lake and leather goods like an emoji bag charm with maple leaves for eyes. Roach insists the unabashedly Canadian items aren't a sign that other markets aren't still a priority. When she joined Roots, she relaunched the brand in China and began plotting to expand its presence even further into the U.S., where it has two stores. That plan is still on the table, even now that Trump has chosen Canada as one of his top tariff targets, because she says, 'there's a huge amount of potential there once we get through the current volatility.' 'The thing about being with a brand that's been around for 50 years is you have to look past the short-term nature ... like not what's happening next month or next year but what's going to happen over the next 10 to 15 years,' she said after strolling the leather factory. 'You're thinking what do I have to do and invest in and what are the green shoots I have to build today for this business to be successful more over a longer period of time?' This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 16, 2025. Companies in this story: (TSX:ROOT)
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘President Trump is right': Pardon hopefuls play up connections to Trump
President Donald Trump has railed against the judicial system for years. And prospective pardonees, in turn, are modeling themselves after Trump to increase their chances of winning his favor. The bulk of the over 1,500 clemencies the president has issued in his second term have been granted to celebrities, politicians, Trump donors and loyalists — including those convicted in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot — many of whom have used their platforms to make the case that the judicial system was manipulated against them for political reasons, just like the president himself. After Trump pardoned his longtime supporter and former Virginia sheriff, Scott Jenkins, of conspiracy to commit bribery at the end of May, the Department of Justice pardon attorney, Ed Martin, took to X to make clear the administration's priorities: 'No MAGA left behind.' That spirit appears to have pervaded the administration's pardons process — or at least, the perception of it has. Some people in search of clemency, like former New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democrat, have appeared to be angling for a pardon by hooking into Trump's argument about judicial weaponization, arguing that they, too, are victims of the system. Menendez has penned multiple lengthy tracts on X about his victimhood from the weaponization of the Justice Department, and made a thinly veiled plea for clemency in a post shortly after he was sentenced to 11 years in prison at the end of January. 'President Trump is right. This process is political and has been corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores integrity to the system,' Menendez wrote at the time, tagging the president's official account. The New Jersey Democrat has yet to receive Trump's blessing. A lawyer for Menendez did not respond to a request for comment. Menendez isn't the only Democrat who has seemingly cozied up to the president to clinch a pardon. New York Mayor Eric Adams appeared to pounce on the suggestion that Trump was open to granting him a pardon in his now-dismissed federal corruption case earlier this year, even showing up at the president's inauguration after repeatedly saying he was unlikely to attend the event. Adams' decision to pass on New York's Martin Luther King Jr. Day events to show face at Trump's inauguration rankled Black political and religious leaders in his home state, who said the choice indicated the mayor was more interested in a pardon than his constituents. His case was ultimately dismissed — over the objection of attorneys working on it — after Adams signaled he would assist the Trump administration on immigration and national security measures. White House deputy press secretary Harrison Fields maintained that the president is wielding his pardon powers 'to right many wrongs,' adding that Trump's actions fall 'within his constitutional authority.' 'President Trump doesn't need lectures from Democrats about his use of pardons,' Fields said in a statement, bashing Joe Biden's pardons of his son and Anthony Fauci, among others. 'President Trump is using his pardon and commutation powers to right many wrongs, acting reasonably and responsibly within his constitutional authority.' Others, like reality TV couple Julie and Todd Chrisley, have had better luck than Menendez. In a case that garnered national attention, Trump at the end of May pardoned the longtime reality stars, who had been convicted of bank and wire fraud in 2022 and sentenced to seven and 12 years in prison. The pardons came after a relentless messaging campaign by their daughter, Savannah, who publicly supported Trump throughout his 2024 presidential campaign and made an appearance at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to speak about the justice system that she said was targeting both her family and Trump. 'We have a two-faced justice system. Just look at what they're doing to President Trump,' she said at the 2024 convention. "All while, let's face it, Hunter Biden is roaming around free and attending classified meetings." After their May 28 pardon, the Chrisleys held a press conference where they thanked the president and his administration — and previewed their new TV series. Virginia Tech political science professor Karen Hult, who specializes in the powers of the presidency and the executive branch, said that while issuing pardons in arenas of personal interest to the president isn't necessarily unusual — see Jimmy Carter's pardon of people who evaded the Vietnam War draft — repeatedly circumventing the Justice Department's pardons process, as Trump has done, is a less-than-common occurrence. 'Mr. Trump, especially in his second term, seems to be especially distinctive in really not wanting to use advice from anybody else, but certainly not from career civil servants, especially in the Justice Department,' Hult said, noting that, for the first time in modern history, the president replaced the head of the DOJ's pardon office with a political appointee. Trump's selection of Martin, whose short-lived stint as the U.S. Attorney for D.C. ended after his nomination for the full-time job failed, put a vocal MAGA figure in the traditionally nonpolitical office. Martin has been a staunch defender of people connected with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and fired dozens of prosecutors who pursued riot-related cases during his time as U.S. attorney. In response to a question about the nature of the pardon process and the perception of partisanship surrounding the system, a DOJ spokesperson said the office of the pardon attorney 'administers the executive process, reviews applications for executive clemency submitted to the Department of Justice, and makes recommendations to grant or deny those applications based on the Justice Manual,' adding that 'the Department is committed to timely and carefully reviewing all applications and making recommendations to the President and Pardon Czar that are consistent, unbiased, and uphold the rule of law.' A senior administration official, granted anonymity to speak freely about the pardons process, pushed back on claims that the administration was circumventing the traditional pardons process. The official maintained that the DOJ, Martin and pardon czar Alice Marie Johnson — who herself was the recipient of a 2020 pardon from Trump before he selected her for the role in his second term — review each pardon case individually before making their recommendations to the president. But not everyone is so eager to be spared. Pam Hemphill, who earned the online moniker 'MAGA Granny' for her role in the Capitol riot, was one of the Jan. 6 rioters pardoned by the president on his first day in office. But Hemphill, who has since apologized for the part she played in that day's violence and has spoken out against the president, rejected Trump's pardon, saying she doesn't want to play into Trump's hands. 'I cannot have this happen, because then I'm part of Trump's narrative that the DOJ is weaponized,' Hemphill said in an interview. According to Hemphill, Trump's lengthy list of pardons is part of his broader mission to build a narrative around the existence of the 'deep state' and argue that the DOJ was 'weaponized against him' under the Biden administration. But not all of those pardoned by Trump have obvious ties to the president. Two clemency recipients, Tanner Mansell and John Moore Jr., were pardoned of a 2022 theft conviction after freeing what they believed at the time to be illegally captured sharks from a line off the coast of Florida. Mansell said in an interview he's not sure why the president chose him as a pardon recipient. He said he has never promoted the president online — in fact the professional shark diver avoids publicly talking about politics in order to maintain a neutral business profile that doesn't alienate potential customers. According to Mansell, his legal team did not apply for a pardon. 'I'd love to ask him, like, 'Hey, did you do this because you like sharks?'' Mansell said of the president, adding that it's 'anybody's guess' what actually prompted Trump to pardon him. But whatever the reason, Mansell said he hoped the pardon wasn't 'politically driven.' 'I hope to believe that it wasn't just politically driven on his part,' he said. 'I hope to believe that, you know, he read Cato's article and he saw the injustice in the situation and did it because it was the right thing to do.'
Tom's Guide
5 hours ago
- Tom's Guide
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