Latest news with #Kamala Harris
CBC
a day ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
'Go f--k yourself!': What Stephen Colbert and other late-night hosts had to say after Late Show cancellation
There was a show of late-night solidarity on Monday night, as The Late Show host Stephen Colbert's comrades rallied behind him after CBS said it was cancelling his program in 2026. Thursday's announcement was met with shock, as well as harsh criticism that it was indicative of the network and its parent company Paramount Global bowing to U.S. President Donald Trump, over his claims that its current affairs program 60 Minutes selectively edited an interview with his 2024 election rival Kamala Harris. Colbert has been highly critical of Trump for years, and panned the company for agreeing to a $16-million US settlement with the president earlier this month — which he said was paid to him today, though the money is to be allocated to his future presidential library. Both CBS and Colbert announced the news on Thursday, but Colbert took the opportunity in Monday night's opening monologue to question the motivation for the decision. He joked that "cancel culture had gone too far," but said he could now share his "unvarnished" opinions of Trump. "I don't care for him," Colbert joked about the president, who was a Late Show guest during his first election campaign in 2015, which was also Colbert's inaugural year on the program. The host addressed his own "blistering" critique of the settlement, which he had made on air days before the cancellation was announced. Though he didn't explicitly tie the two events together, he questioned how it could possibly be a "financial decision" when his program was the top rated in the late-night category. He recognized the network's potential constraints — especially following the multimillion-dollar payout — but also mentioned how Trump, in a post on Truth Social, celebrated the show's cancellation. "I absolutely love that Colbert got fired," Trump wrote. "His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the moron on NBC who ruined the once-great Tonight Show." Colbert's response to Trump on Monday night: "Go f--k yourself." WATCH | Colbert addresses CBS 'killing off' his show in opening monologue: Stewart savages CBS, Trump Aside from Colbert, The Daily Show 's Jon Stewart had the harshest comments for CBS. He admitted late-night TV was struggling: "We're all basically operating a Blockbuster kiosk inside of a Tower Records," he joked. But he said CBS "lost the benefit of the doubt" after the settlement, which others at the network and across the industry have criticized and tied to Paramount Global's pending merger with movie and TV studio Skydance. "Was this purely financial or maybe the path of least resistance to your $8-billion [US] merger?" said Stewart, adding that Paramount Global also owns the network he works for, Comedy Central. "But understand this. Truly, the shows that you now seek to cancel, censor and control — a not-insignificant portion of that $8-billion value came from those f--king shows," he said before leading a chorus of "go f--k yourself" aimed at companies, advertisers and law firms that "bend the knee" to Trump. WATCH | Questions swirl around cancellation of Late Show: Why CBS axed The Late Show: Ratings or politics? 4 days ago A little love from Letterman? Colbert first dipped his toes into the late-night waters alongside Stewart on The Daily Show from 1999 to 2005, before launching his own Comedy Central show, The Colbert Report, which ran for 10 years. He eventually landed his current gig after the original Late Show host, David Letterman, retired. Though Letterman has not made any official statement, he appeared to take a stance on Monday. A 20-minute video appeared on his YouTube channel, with a montage of clips featuring him mocking CBS on Late Show with David Letterman over the years. Letterman launched the venerable talk show in 1993, moving to CBS from NBC, where he had hosted Late Night with David Letterman, airing after The Tonight Show for 11 years. WATCH | Letterman mocks CBS over the years: Over at NBC, Jimmy Fallon joked Monday night that he was still the host of The Tonight Show, "at least for tonight." Fallon applauded Colbert's run as Late Show host, but took a lighter tone, joking that boycotts could cause CBS to lose millions of viewers, as well as "tens of hundreds watching on Paramount Plus." Host Jimmy Kimmel is currently on summer break from his show on ABC, although he reacted to the situation on Instagram last week, saying, "F--k you and all your Sheldons CBS," referencing the character Sheldon Cooper on the CBS sitcoms The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon. Colbert got no love, however, from one top-rated late-night (late-evening, really) host: Fox News Channel's Greg Gutfeld, whom Trump praised in his post celebrating the Colbert cancellation, and who hosts the show Gutfeld! Gutfeld dismissed claims that Colbert was being censored, saying CBS is "free to fire someone who's stinking up a market like they took a dump in the produce section." He also touted that his show draws higher ratings than Colbert's (though this could also be because his show airs about an hour and a half before the major late-night programs). It should come as little surprise that Gutfeld, a right-wing comedian and commentator, took swipes at Colbert, as Fox News Channel is generally favourable to Trump. But as Stewart noted in his rant, Trump is also suing Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp owns both Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, over the latter publication's story about a crude letter the president purportedly wrote in 2003 to the now-deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Kamala Harris mocked for post celebrating one-year anniversary of failed presidential campaign
Former Vice President Kamala Harris was mocked on Monday for commemorating the one-year anniversary of the start of her failed presidential campaign. One year ago Monday, then-President Joe Biden announced via social media that he would be dropping out of the presidential race. He shortly thereafter endorsed Harris, who went on to become the Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election. Harris celebrated the anniversary by writing a post on X with photos from her past campaign. "One year ago today, I began my campaign for President of the United States. Over the 107 days of our race, I had the opportunity and honor to travel our nation and meet with Americans who were fighting for a better future. And today, millions of Americans continue to stand up for our values, our ideals, and our democracy. Their courage and resolve inspires me. Whether you are attending a protest, calling your representatives, or building community, I want to say: Thank you. We are in this fight together," Harris wrote. Actor Jeff Daniels Laments Kamala Harris' Loss, Suggests She Would Have Governed Like Abraham Lincoln Many social media users were not as impressed, with some pointing out that she neglected to reference Biden in the photos or the post. Read On The Fox News App "You didn't get a single primary vote. How very democratic," Twitchy's Amy Curtis wrote. RNC Research, managed by the Republican National Committee, posted, "Becoming the presidential nominee without getting a single vote is not the flex you think it is." Washington Free Beacon investigative reporter Chuck Ross joked, "lol. complete Joe Biden erasure." Political commentator Link Lauren agreed, "No mention of Biden again. Really trying to erase her association with him. She was there in lockstep with that failing administration. I don't have amnesia." Democratic Party Catapulted Into 'New Phase Of A Cold War' In One-year Wake Of Biden's Unprecedented Dropout "I wonder what caused that campaign to begin on July 21," National Review senior writer Dan McLaughlin remarked. "'One year ago today, I began my campaign for President of the United States.' Oh wow, I remember that. What did Drew Barrymore call you? Momala? Oooh, and Beyonce endorsed you, right? How did you work out? Did you win?" author John Hawkins joked. "Your failure and reputation were complete," columnist Kurt Schlichter wrote. Fox News Digital reached out to Harris' team for comment. FEC filings showed the Harris campaign spent more than $1 billion in three months, including spending on celebrity influencers, radical activist groups and private jets. She lost to President Donald Trump in article source: Kamala Harris mocked for post celebrating one-year anniversary of failed presidential campaign
Fox News
2 days ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Kamala Harris mocked for post celebrating one-year anniversary of failed presidential campaign
Former Vice President Kamala Harris was mocked on Monday for commemorating the one-year anniversary of the start of her failed presidential campaign. One year ago Monday, then-President Joe Biden announced via social media that he would be dropping out of the presidential race. He shortly thereafter endorsed Harris, who went on to become the Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election. Harris celebrated the anniversary by writing a post on X with photos from her past campaign. "One year ago today, I began my campaign for President of the United States. Over the 107 days of our race, I had the opportunity and honor to travel our nation and meet with Americans who were fighting for a better future. And today, millions of Americans continue to stand up for our values, our ideals, and our democracy. Their courage and resolve inspires me. Whether you are attending a protest, calling your representatives, or building community, I want to say: Thank you. We are in this fight together," Harris wrote. Many social media users were not as impressed, with some pointing out that she neglected to reference Biden in the photos or the post. "You didn't get a single primary vote. How very democratic," Twitchy's Amy Curtis wrote. RNC Research, managed by the Republican National Committee, posted, "Becoming the presidential nominee without getting a single vote is not the flex you think it is." Washington Free Beacon investigative reporter Chuck Ross joked, "lol. complete Joe Biden erasure." Political commentator Link Lauren agreed, "No mention of Biden again. Really trying to erase her association with him. She was there in lockstep with that failing administration. I don't have amnesia." "I wonder what caused that campaign to begin on July 21," National Review senior writer Dan McLaughlin remarked. "'One year ago today, I began my campaign for President of the United States.' Oh wow, I remember that. What did Drew Barrymore call you? Momala? Oooh, and Beyonce endorsed you, right? How did you work out? Did you win?" author John Hawkins joked. "Your failure and reputation were complete," columnist Kurt Schlichter wrote. Fox News Digital reached out to Harris' team for comment. FEC filings showed the Harris campaign spent more than $1 billion in three months, including spending on celebrity influencers, radical activist groups and private jets. She lost to President Donald Trump in November.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Are non-voters the key to Democrats winning in 2028?
Since Bernie Sanders's first presidential campaign, the electoral theory of the American left has rested upon the idea that a sizable bloc of Americans – alienated from the traditional politics of left and right – have withdrawn from politics entirely. They stand closer to the Democrats on many issues, but, seeing little by way of material benefit from the party's soaring rhetoric of 'defending democracy', they have opted out of the political process. And, as the theory goes, a bold, populist candidate – someone like Sanders himself – could bring this silent constituency back into the fold. If that logic once explained how Sanders might have won, it might now explain why Kamala Harris lost. And, as new troves of post-election data surface, the debate over whether Democrats might have avoided last year's defeat by mobilizing non-voters has become one of the party's hottest factional disputes. Among those strategizing within the Democratic party, one's confidence in voter activation is often a proxy for their broader politics. Those who believe Harris's campaign failed to activate non-voters typically argue her platform lacked the populist edge needed to mobilize disaffected Americans. Their critics tend to believe the problem ran in the opposite direction: the electorate had moved right and the Democrats' failure lay in their inability to meet it there. Detractors of the activation theory point to a 26 June Pew Research report – which found Donald Trump leading Harris by three points among non-voters – as decisive proof that non-participants lean Republican. The catch, though, is that the survey concluded less than two weeks after Trump's victory. Polling taken in the aftermath of a race is notoriously vulnerable to distortion, and the bandwagon effect can temporarily inflate a victorious candidate's popularity. That effect is especially pronounced among disengaged or loosely affiliated voters. That number almost certainly marks the high-water line of Trump's support among non-voters. Another oft-cited figure from the New York Times/Siena College, which the Democratic strategist and data scientist David Shor referenced during his own interview with the Times's Ezra Klein, found Trump leading by 14 points among 2020 non-voters. But it uses survey data collected before Biden dropped out of the race. Then there is Shor's own post-election poll, conducted through his polling firm Blue Rose Research, which found Trump leading by 11 points among non-voters – though the underlying data remains private and the methodology undisclosed. The Cooperative Election Study (CES) – a late-November survey of more than 50,000 voters – offers one of the few high-quality, public windows on 2024. An analysis of the CES data by political scientists Jake Grumbach, Adam Bonica and their colleagues found that a plurality of non-voters identified themselves as most closely aligned with the Democratic party – and an absolute majority of registered voters who declined to cast a ballot in 2024 considered themselves Democrats. The non-electorate certainly wasn't blue enough to have swung the race, but by no means as red as the activation theory's opponents claim. What's even clearer is the geography of turnout. Voter participation dropped especially sharply in Democratic strongholds – particularly urban counties in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. By contrast, turnout in Republican areas held steady or even increased modestly. In other words, the Democratic campaign had more to gain from energizing its own base than from chasing centrist swing voters. Harris wouldn't have prevailed under conditions of 100% turnout. (Grumbach, Bonica, etc don't claim as such.) But a more focused strategy – mobilizing the Democratic base, speaking directly to material concerns, and resisting the pull toward bland centrism – might have narrowed the margin significantly. Ironically, the aforementioned Pew report concludes the same. 'As in prior elections, a change in voters' partisan allegiances – switching from the Democratic to the Republican candidate or vice versa – proved to be a less important factor in Trump's victory than differential partisan turnout,' write the authors. 'Republican-leaning eligible voters simply were more likely to turn out than Democratic-leaning eligible voters in 2024.' Even so, the CES data may disappoint progressives, if not for the reasons their critics imagine. An analysis of the CES from the Center for Working Class Politics's Jared Abbott and Dustin Guastella found that Democrats who stayed home in 2024 were, on average, less ideologically liberal on hot-button social questions – more skeptical of an assault-rifle ban, receptive to a border wall, less concerned with climate change, and cooler to the language of structural racism – than the Democrats who showed up. Yet, as Abbott and Guastella found, those same non-voters were more economically populist: disproportionately working-class and non-college, while eager for bigger public investment programs, a higher corporate tax rate, and a stronger social safety net. The Democratic non-electorate doesn't clearly align with progressive orthodoxy. Equally clear, though, is that a blanket lurch toward cultural moderation, absent populist economics, would do little to fire up non-voters who already share many progressive economic instincts. Making decisive claims about non-voters is necessarily difficult. By definition, they are the least likely to respond to pollsters, and their political preferences are often tentative or inconsistent. Yet certain commentators' eagerness to cast non-voters as Trump supporters reveals more about elite assumptions than about public sentiment. There's been a rush to cast non-voters as conservatives, not because the evidence demands it, but because the alternative – that Democrats need to speak more directly to the working class – remains uncomfortable for the party establishment. There is no way around the fact that in 2024, those Americans didn't hear anything worth voting for. Alex Bronzini-Vender is a writer living in New York
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Are non-voters the key to Democrats winning in 2028?
Since Bernie Sanders's first presidential campaign, the electoral theory of the American left has rested upon the idea that a sizable bloc of Americans – alienated from the traditional politics of left and right – have withdrawn from politics entirely. They stand closer to the Democrats on many issues, but, seeing little by way of material benefit from the party's soaring rhetoric of 'defending democracy', they have opted out of the political process. And, as the theory goes, a bold, populist candidate – someone like Sanders himself – could bring this silent constituency back into the fold. If that logic once explained how Sanders might have won, it might now explain why Kamala Harris lost. And, as new troves of post-election data surface, the debate over whether Democrats might have avoided last year's defeat by mobilizing non-voters has become one of the party's hottest factional disputes. Among those strategizing within the Democratic party, one's confidence in voter activation is often a proxy for their broader politics. Those who believe Harris's campaign failed to activate non-voters typically argue her platform lacked the populist edge needed to mobilize disaffected Americans. Their critics tend to believe the problem ran in the opposite direction: the electorate had moved right and the Democrats' failure lay in their inability to meet it there. Detractors of the activation theory point to a 26 June Pew Research report – which found Donald Trump leading Harris by three points among non-voters – as decisive proof that non-participants lean Republican. The catch, though, is that the survey concluded less than two weeks after Trump's victory. Polling taken in the aftermath of a race is notoriously vulnerable to distortion, and the bandwagon effect can temporarily inflate a victorious candidate's popularity. That effect is especially pronounced among disengaged or loosely affiliated voters. That number almost certainly marks the high-water line of Trump's support among non-voters. Another oft-cited figure from the New York Times/Siena College, which the Democratic strategist and data scientist David Shor referenced during his own interview with the Times's Ezra Klein, found Trump leading by 14 points among 2020 non-voters. But it uses survey data collected before Biden dropped out of the race. Then there is Shor's own post-election poll, conducted through his polling firm Blue Rose Research, which found Trump leading by 11 points among non-voters – though the underlying data remains private and the methodology undisclosed. The Cooperative Election Study (CES) – a late-November survey of more than 50,000 voters – offers one of the few high-quality, public windows on 2024. An analysis of the CES data by political scientists Jake Grumbach, Adam Bonica and their colleagues found that a plurality of non-voters identified themselves as most closely aligned with the Democratic party – and an absolute majority of registered voters who declined to cast a ballot in 2024 considered themselves Democrats. The non-electorate certainly wasn't blue enough to have swung the race, but by no means as red as the activation theory's opponents claim. What's even clearer is the geography of turnout. Voter participation dropped especially sharply in Democratic strongholds – particularly urban counties in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. By contrast, turnout in Republican areas held steady or even increased modestly. In other words, the Democratic campaign had more to gain from energizing its own base than from chasing centrist swing voters. Harris wouldn't have prevailed under conditions of 100% turnout. (Grumbach, Bonica, etc don't claim as such.) But a more focused strategy – mobilizing the Democratic base, speaking directly to material concerns, and resisting the pull toward bland centrism – might have narrowed the margin significantly. Ironically, the aforementioned Pew report concludes the same. 'As in prior elections, a change in voters' partisan allegiances – switching from the Democratic to the Republican candidate or vice versa – proved to be a less important factor in Trump's victory than differential partisan turnout,' write the authors. 'Republican-leaning eligible voters simply were more likely to turn out than Democratic-leaning eligible voters in 2024.' Even so, the CES data may disappoint progressives, if not for the reasons their critics imagine. An analysis of the CES from the Center for Working Class Politics's Jared Abbott and Dustin Guastella found that Democrats who stayed home in 2024 were, on average, less ideologically liberal on hot-button social questions – more skeptical of an assault-rifle ban, receptive to a border wall, less concerned with climate change, and cooler to the language of structural racism – than the Democrats who showed up. Yet, as Abbott and Guastella found, those same non-voters were more economically populist: disproportionately working-class and non-college, while eager for bigger public investment programs, a higher corporate tax rate, and a stronger social safety net. The Democratic non-electorate doesn't clearly align with progressive orthodoxy. Equally clear, though, is that a blanket lurch toward cultural moderation, absent populist economics, would do little to fire up non-voters who already share many progressive economic instincts. Making decisive claims about non-voters is necessarily difficult. By definition, they are the least likely to respond to pollsters, and their political preferences are often tentative or inconsistent. Yet certain commentators' eagerness to cast non-voters as Trump supporters reveals more about elite assumptions than about public sentiment. There's been a rush to cast non-voters as conservatives, not because the evidence demands it, but because the alternative – that Democrats need to speak more directly to the working class – remains uncomfortable for the party establishment. There is no way around the fact that in 2024, those Americans didn't hear anything worth voting for. Alex Bronzini-Vender is a writer living in New York
