Latest news with #Ruthless
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy Rails Against Men in Spandex
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, still grappling with a series of air traffic control outages that have disrupted U.S. airspace in recent weeks, took a detour Tuesday—into fashion policing. 'I don't think men in spandex look good at all, I'm sorry to the guys that bike' Duffy said on the conservative Ruthless podcast, wading into MAGA's favorite fixation: masculinity. 'Women in spandex—beautiful,' added the married father of nine, drawing raucous laughter from the show's all-male hosts. 'Men, not so much, right?' Duffy, a former Fox Business TV host, is the latest MAGA figure to lay down edicts on 'manliness.' In March, Fox News host Jesse Watters unveiled his five ' rules for men '—among them: no crossing your legs, no soup in public, and no straws (pursing your lips is apparently too 'effeminate'). Vice President J.D. Vance has also tried to join the conversation, lamenting in February that 'our culture sends a message to young men that you should suppress every masculine urge.' 'My message to young men is don't allow this broken culture to send you a message that you're a bad person because you're a man, because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends, or because you're competitive,' he said. When stocks plunged in April after President Donald Trump rolled out his 'Liberation Day' tariffs, The Free Press columnist Batya Ungar-Sargon argued that his trade war would ultimately alleviate America's 'crisis in masculinity' by reviving jobs that depend on 'brawn and physicality.' Duffy aired his spandex critique while talking with the Ruthless podcast hosts about his predecessor at the department, Pete Buttigieg—who famously rode his bike to work and whom Duffy has repeatedly tried to pin recent air traffic control meltdowns on. The Trump administration has proposed a multibillion-dollar overhaul of the country's troubled air traffic control system, calling for six new control centers and tech upgrades at all air traffic facilities nationwide. Duffy is also scrambling to address a nationwide staffing crisis at the Federal Aviation Agency, but progress has been hampered by Elon Musk the Trump administration's own deferred-resignation program, which has resulted in more than 1,200 employees exiting the agency.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Carlos Rincon to Launch Prestige International Pictures at Cannes, Partnering With Vital Pictures
Prestige International Pictures, a film sales, financing and production company, will be launching at the Marché du Film during the Cannes Film Festival. The company will be headed by sales industry veteran Carlos Rincon as the president and co-founder. Prestige will be announcing its Cannes slate in the coming days. Joining Rincon at Prestige as partners and co-founders are producers Chris Lemos, Luis Guerrero and William Knochel of Vital Pictures. More from Variety Variety's International Achievement in Film Honoree Tarak Ben Ammar Soars With Italy's Eagle Pictures Pacts and Local Hits Like 'Boy With Pink Trousers' Variety's International Achievement in Film Honoree Tarak Ben Ammar Sees His Studio de Paris Soundstages Fill With Global Hits How Variety's International Achievement in Film Honoree Tarak Ben Ammar Built a Film Business From Scratch and Plans to Boost Saudi Arabia Moviemaking Prestige describes itself as being a distribution company 'by filmmakers, for filmmakers' as the producing founders have 'lived through all the experiences and challenges that filmmakers face while seeking distribution for their film,' according to a statement. In addition to representing third-party content, Prestige will also represent Vital's slate of in-house titles. The company will be based on the West Coast (Los Angeles) and East Coast (Atlanta) to 'further enhance relationships with filmmakers on both coasts.' Previously, Rincon was a longtime acquisitions, sales and development executive at Premiere Entertainment Group, where he served as executive producer on several films including 'Ruthless,' starring Dermot Mulroney, and 'Shrapnel,' starring Jason Patric. Prior to joining PEG, Rincon was the head of acquisitions and U.S. sales at Spotlight Pictures. During his tenure with Spotlight, he acquired films that starred notable actors such as Dakota Johnson, Glen Powell, Jessica Chastain, Jean Reno, Rosamund Pike, Jason Schwartzman, Katie Holmes, William H. Macy and John Hurt, and also licensed Larry Clark's 'Marfa Girl,' which won best film at the 2012 Rome Film Festival. Lemos, Guerrero and Knochel founded Vital in 2019. Lemos' background includes working with industry titans such as Scott Rudin and Donald De Line and contributing to projects like 'The Italian Job' and 'Limitless.' Guerrero's career spans early roles at Scott Rudin Productions, Industry Entertainment and Maya Pictures, where he worked on the HBO film 'Walkout.' Knochel started in the indie film circuit before moving to network television with Disney/ABC in their production and finance departments. The Vital founders have played significant producer roles on films such as heist pic 'Armored' for Sony's Screen Gems, and 'Beyond the Lights' with director Gigi Prince-Bythewood for BET/Relativity, and, as a company, have produced theatrically-released social thriller 'Beneath Us' and WWI dramatic thriller 'The War Below,' among others. Current and upcoming projects include the stem-focused unscripted series 'Tech Toys Lab,' which premiered on Roku Kids earlier this year, featuring innovators including Tesla, Boston Dynamics and NASA, and 'Christmas Balloon,' a Christmas movie in collaboration with Mattel Films. 'After years of working across both production and distribution, we began to explore how we might better support our own films and also those of our fellow filmmakers,' said Lemos, Guerrero and Knochel. 'The idea of establishing a more creative focused approach to film sales had been taking shape for some time. When the opportunity to partner with Carlos arrived, it felt like the perfect moment to bring it all to life. His vision aligns with how we've always approached our work, focusing on meaningful relationships and long-term impact.' 'I'm excited to be teaming up with Chris, Luis and Will, as I've greatly admired their work for years,' added Rincon. 'We share the same passion and vision of being able to provide a successful pathway for filmmakers to hone their skills and develop high-concept projects while maintaining their artistic integrity.' Best of Variety Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week
Yahoo
23-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
2 months into Trump's second administration, the news industry faces challenges from all directions
NEW YORK (AP) — During the first Trump administration, the biggest concern for many journalists was labels. Would they, or their news outlet, be called 'fake news' or an 'enemy of the people' by a president and his supporters? They now face a more assertive President Donald Trump. In two months, a blitz of action by the nation's new administration — Trump, chapter two — has journalists on their heels. Lawsuits. A newly aggressive Federal Communications Commission. An effort to control the press corps that covers the president, prompting legal action by The Associated Press. A gutted Voice of America. Public data stripped from websites. And attacks, amplified anew. 'It's very clear what's happening. The Trump administration is on a campaign to do everything it can to diminish and obstruct journalism in the United States," said Bill Grueskin, a journalism professor at Columbia University. 'It's really nothing like we saw in 2017," he said. 'Not that there weren't efforts to discredit the press, and not that there weren't things that the press did to discredit themselves.' Trump supporters say an overdue course correction is in order Supporters of the president suggest that an overdue correction is in order to reflect new ways that Americans get information and to counter overreach by reporters. Polls have revealed continued public dissatisfaction with journalists — something that has been bedeviling the industry for years. Tension between presidents and the Fourth Estate is nothing new — an unsurprising clash between desires to control a message and to ask probing, sometimes impertinent questions. Despite the atmosphere, the Republican president talks to reporters much more often than many predecessors, including Democrat Joe Biden, who rarely gave interviews. An early signal that times had changed came when the White House invited newcomers to press briefings, including podcasters and friendly media outlets. The AP was blocked from covering pool events in a dispute over Trump's renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, setting off a flurry of First Amendment concerns among press advocates and leading the administration to assert that the White House, not the press, should determine who questions him. Two months before the administration took office, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who served under Republican President George W. Bush, had urged that changes be made. 'It's time to bring that (briefing) room in line with how readers and viewers consume the news in 2025,' Fleischer said in an interview. 'They don't get their news from The Washington Post, The New York Times and the three networks anymore. They get their news from a myriad of sources.' In practice, some newcomers have refreshingly tried to shed light on issues important to conservatives, instead of hostile attempts to play 'gotcha' by the mainstream media, Fleischer said. There were also softballs, like when the Ruthless podcast asked press secretary Karoline Leavitt if reporters who questioned border policy were 'out of touch.' The conservative Real America's Voice network tried to knock Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy off stride by asking why he wasn't wearing a suit in the Oval Office. While the White House Correspondents' Association has protested the AP's treatment and efforts to upend tradition, it has been largely toothless. For more extensive discussions, the president and his team generally favor interviews with outlets that speak to his supporters, like Fox News. The Trump team's rapid response efforts to fight the 'fake media' The White House has also established a 'Rapid Response 47' account on X to disseminate its views and attack journalists or stories it objects to. The feed's stated goals are supporting the president and 'holding the Fake Media accountable.' Leavitt, 27, hasn't hesitated to go toe to toe with reporters, often with a smile, and Tik-Tok collects some of those moments. 'We know for a fact there have been lies that have been pushed by many legacy media outlets in this country about this president, and we will not accept that,' she said at her first press briefing. It stood in contrast to Trump's 2017 press secretary, Sean Spicer, who got into an angry confrontation with the press about the size of the president's inauguration crowd on his first day in the White House, and never truly recovered from it. Showing the spread of the administration's disciplined approach, the Defense Department also has a rapid response account that says it 'fights fake news.' The Pentagon has evicted several news organizations from long-held office space, leading some reporters to worry about access to fast, reliable information during a military crisis. 'Strategically, he likes to use the press as a pawn — it is one of the institutions that he can demonize to make himself look good,' said Ron Fournier, a former Washington bureau chief for the AP. Trump has active lawsuits going against news outlets that displease him, such as CBS News for the way '60 Minutes' edited an interview with 2024 election opponent, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, or The Des Moines Register, for what turned out to be an inaccurate pre-election poll of Iowa voters. The new FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, has signaled an activist stance, with investigations open against CBS for the '60 Minutes' case, ABC News for how it fact-checked the Trump-Harris debate and NBC on whether it violated federal 'equal time' provisions by bringing Harris onto 'Saturday Night Live.' Even with all the change, many newsrooms are confronting the challenge Fleischer welcomes a newly aggressive attitude toward the press. He believes many journalists were more activists than reporters during Trump's first term. He wondered why journalists were not more aggressive in determining whether Biden's advancing age made him fit for the presidency. 'I think that the press is either in denial, or they acknowledge that they have lost the trust of the people but they won't change or do anything about it,' he said. 'They just don't know how to do their jobs any differently.' Press advocates worry about the intimidation factor of lawsuits and investigations, particularly on smaller newsrooms. What stories will go unreported simply because it's not worth the potential hassle? 'It has a very corrosive effect over time,' Grueskin said. Worth watching, too, is a disconnect between newsrooms and the people who own them. Both the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post backed off endorsements of Harris last fall at the behest of the their owners, and Post owner Jeff Bezos attended Trump's inauguration. When the Post announced a reorganization earlier this month, Leavitt took a shot: 'It appears that the mainstream media, including the Post, is finally learning that having disdain for more than half the country who supports this president does not help you sell newspapers." Many newsrooms are notably not backing down from the challenge of covering the administration. '60 Minutes' has done several hard-hitting reports, the Atlantic has added staff and Wired is digging in to cover Elon Musk's cost-cutting. For their own industry, much of the news is grim. The future of Voice of America is in doubt, eliminating jobs and, its supporters fear, reducing the nation's influence overseas. Cost-cutters are eyeing government subscriptions for news outlets, eliminating an income source. On a broader scale, there are worries about attacks on journalists' legal protections against libel lawsuits. 'They're pulling at every thread they can find, no matter how tenuous, to try and undermine credible news organizations,' Grueskin said. It is well organized. It is coming from multiple directions. And it has been only two months. ___ Associated Press writer Ali Swenson contributed to this report. ___ David Bauder writes about media for The Associated Press. Follow him at and
Associated Press
23-03-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
2 months into Trump's second administration, the news industry faces challenges from all directions
NEW YORK (AP) — During the first Trump administration, the biggest concern for many journalists was labels. Would they, or their news outlet, be called 'fake news' or an 'enemy of the people' by a president and his supporters? They now face a more assertive President Donald Trump. In two months, a blitz of action by the nation's new administration — Trump, chapter two — has journalists on their heels. Lawsuits. A newly aggressive Federal Communications Commission. An effort to control the press corps that covers the president, prompting legal action by The Associated Press. A gutted Voice of America. Public data stripped from websites. And attacks, amplified anew. 'It's very clear what's happening. The Trump administration is on a campaign to do everything it can to diminish and obstruct journalism in the United States,' said Bill Grueskin, a journalism professor at Columbia University. 'It's really nothing like we saw in 2017,' he said. 'Not that there weren't efforts to discredit the press, and not that there weren't things that the press did to discredit themselves.' Trump supporters say an overdue course correction is in order Supporters of the president suggest that an overdue correction is in order to reflect new ways that Americans get information and to counter overreach by reporters. Polls have revealed continued public dissatisfaction with journalists — something that has been bedeviling the industry for years. Tension between presidents and the Fourth Estate is nothing new — an unsurprising clash between desires to control a message and to ask probing, sometimes impertinent questions. Despite the atmosphere, the Republican president talks to reporters much more often than many predecessors, including Democrat Joe Biden, who rarely gave interviews. An early signal that times had changed came when the White House invited newcomers to press briefings, including podcasters and friendly media outlets. The AP was blocked from covering pool events in a dispute over Trump's renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, setting off a flurry of First Amendment concerns among press advocates and leading the administration to assert that the White House, not the press, should determine who questions him. Two months before the administration took office, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who served under Republican President George W. Bush, had urged that changes be made. 'It's time to bring that (briefing) room in line with how readers and viewers consume the news in 2025,' Fleischer said in an interview. 'They don't get their news from The Washington Post, The New York Times and the three networks anymore. They get their news from a myriad of sources.' In practice, some newcomers have refreshingly tried to shed light on issues important to conservatives, instead of hostile attempts to play 'gotcha' by the mainstream media, Fleischer said. There were also softballs, like when the Ruthless podcast asked press secretary Karoline Leavitt if reporters who questioned border policy were 'out of touch.' The conservative Real America's Voice network tried to knock Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy off stride by asking why he wasn't wearing a suit in the Oval Office. While the White House Correspondents' Association has protested the AP's treatment and efforts to upend tradition, it has been largely toothless. For more extensive discussions, the president and his team generally favor interviews with outlets that speak to his supporters, like Fox News. The Trump team's rapid response efforts to fight the 'fake media' The White House has also established a 'Rapid Response 47' account on X to disseminate its views and attack journalists or stories it objects to. The feed's stated goals are supporting the president and 'holding the Fake Media accountable.' Leavitt, 27, hasn't hesitated to go toe to toe with reporters, often with a smile, and Tik-Tok collects some of those moments. 'We know for a fact there have been lies that have been pushed by many legacy media outlets in this country about this president, and we will not accept that,' she said at her first press briefing. It stood in contrast to Trump's 2017 press secretary, Sean Spicer, who got into an angry confrontation with the press about the size of the president's inauguration crowd on his first day in the White House, and never truly recovered from it. Showing the spread of the administration's disciplined approach, the Defense Department also has a rapid response account that says it 'fights fake news.' The Pentagon has evicted several news organizations from long-held office space, leading some reporters to worry about access to fast, reliable information during a military crisis. 'Strategically, he likes to use the press as a pawn — it is one of the institutions that he can demonize to make himself look good,' said Ron Fournier, a former Washington bureau chief for the AP. Trump has active lawsuits going against news outlets that displease him, such as CBS News for the way '60 Minutes' edited an interview with 2024 election opponent, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, or The Des Moines Register, for what turned out to be an inaccurate pre-election poll of Iowa voters. The new FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, has signaled an activist stance, with investigations open against CBS for the '60 Minutes' case, ABC News for how it fact-checked the Trump-Harris debate and NBC on whether it violated federal 'equal time' provisions by bringing Harris onto 'Saturday Night Live.' Even with all the change, many newsrooms are confronting the challenge Fleischer welcomes a newly aggressive attitude toward the press. He believes many journalists were more activists than reporters during Trump's first term. He wondered why journalists were not more aggressive in determining whether Biden's advancing age made him fit for the presidency. 'I think that the press is either in denial, or they acknowledge that they have lost the trust of the people but they won't change or do anything about it,' he said. 'They just don't know how to do their jobs any differently.' Press advocates worry about the intimidation factor of lawsuits and investigations, particularly on smaller newsrooms. What stories will go unreported simply because it's not worth the potential hassle? 'It has a very corrosive effect over time,' Grueskin said. Worth watching, too, is a disconnect between newsrooms and the people who own them. Both the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post backed off endorsements of Harris last fall at the behest of the their owners, and Post owner Jeff Bezos attended Trump's inauguration. When the Post announced a reorganization earlier this month, Leavitt took a shot: 'It appears that the mainstream media, including the Post, is finally learning that having disdain for more than half the country who supports this president does not help you sell newspapers.' Many newsrooms are notably not backing down from the challenge of covering the administration. '60 Minutes' has done several hard-hitting reports, the Atlantic has added staff and Wired is digging in to cover Elon Musk's cost-cutting. For their own industry, much of the news is grim. The future of Voice of America is in doubt, eliminating jobs and, its supporters fear, reducing the nation's influence overseas. Cost-cutters are eyeing government subscriptions for news outlets, eliminating an income source. On a broader scale, there are worries about attacks on journalists' legal protections against libel lawsuits. 'They're pulling at every thread they can find, no matter how tenuous, to try and undermine credible news organizations,' Grueskin said. It is well organized. It is coming from multiple directions. And it has been only two months. ___ ___
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Karoline Leavitt calls reporters ‘a**holes' on podcast, revealing her disdain for journalists
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared to mock journalists and inquiries that cited 'experts' in a recent interview, referring to some 'liberal' reporters as 'a**holes.' During an appearance on the Ruthless podcast, Leavitt described how she and White House communications director Steven Cheung approach email requests from journalists. 'It's my favorite thing,' she said. 'They email: 'Caroline, ethical experts, yes… We write back which experts? And then they send the names, and we Google them, and they're like Democrat donors funded by George Soros. 'So you're like, we copy and paste their Wikipedia like 'these experts, a**hole?' This is not a real story. These are not real stories.' Leavitt added that reference to unspecified experts was 'the tell of any liberal reporter.' She then laughed and nodded in agreement as podcast host Josh Holmes described such inquiries as using 'weasel words.' The Independent has contacted the White House for comment on Leavitt's choice of words during the podcast interview. In her first White House briefing, Leavitt vowed to open the room to less traditional 'voices,' adding that a special seat in the front row would be known as the 'new media' seat. 'We welcome independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers, and content creators to apply for credentials to cover this White House," she said. Since then, she has welcomed reporters from less traditional outlets, including the Ruthless podcast, far-right news site Brietbart, and The Daily Wire – the network set up by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. Her apparent disdain echoes that of president Donald Trump and Elon Musk and their demonization of the so-called 'legacy media.' The Associated Press—a long-trusted source of accurate information—recently filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration after being iced out of press briefings for refusing to adjust its style guide to align with the president.
