Latest news with #TrumpShow
Ya Libnan
3 days ago
- Politics
- Ya Libnan
Buckle Up, America: Trump and Musk's Divorce Could Give Birth to the Third Party the Country Needs
By Vlad Green, Op-Ed If you think presidential politics couldn't get any weirder, buckle up. The Republican Party now faces a messy, high-profile breakup between Donald Trump and Elon Musk—and it's more than just an ego clash. It's the political equivalent of a reality TV episode that ends with someone's makeup smeared and a chair flying across the room. For a while, it looked like Musk and the GOP were best buddies. Musk's tech billionaire status and army of social media followers gave Republicans an instant upgrade in coolness. But after Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' fiasco (which might as well have been sponsored by a late-night infomercial) and Musk's subsequent meltdown—where he supported calls for Trump's impeachment—the bromance fizzled faster than a bottle of Diet Coke left in the sun. Now, Musk is talking about starting his own political party—presumably one where everyone drives electric cars, tweets at warp speed, and tries to colonize Mars before breakfast. On his platform X, he even polled his followers on whether America needs a new political party to represent the '80% in the middle.' And, surprise, 80% agreed—because online polls never lie, right? Let's be honest: both parties could use a wake-up call. The GOP is stuck in a never-ending rerun of the Trump Show—complete with impeachment threats, Twitter feuds, and enough drama to fill a daytime soap opera. Meanwhile, Democrats, while busy arguing over which way to lean on every issue under the sun, have managed to convince half the country they're either incompetent or too cautious to deliver real change. If things keep going this way, America might just be headed south—and I don't mean Florida. Voters are tired of choosing between two stale brands that offer either chaos or gridlock. A third party—ideally one that's less like a sideshow and more like a serious movement—might be the jolt of caffeine this democracy needs. Of course, building a viable third party is harder than landing a Tesla on Mars. But if anyone has the money, the ego, and the Twitter presence to try, it's Elon Musk. If he pulls it off, Republicans might find themselves fighting off more than just the Democrats—and Democrats might need to finally, actually, get their act together. So, here's to the chaos. May it force both parties to remember that voters deserve better than a rerun of 2016. And if not, maybe we'll just end up on Mars with Musk's new political party. At least the view will be interesting.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Donald Trump Gives Away the Game on His Made-for-TV Presidency
As Donald Trump neared the end of his contentious Oval Office exchange with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he almost absent-mindedly revealed his made-for-TV approach to the presidency, telling the assembled press, 'This is going to be great television.' Everything about Trump's time in politics, from the moment he descended that escalator to announce his candidacy to his 'casting' of Cabinet positions based on their telegenic qualities, has reinforced that premise: That Trump, as a heavy consumer of TV and one-time reality star, sees everything through the lens of the 'show' he's producing. Indeed, if the 1998 movie 'The Truman Show' focused on a man blithely oblivious (at first, anyway) to the fact his entire existence featured him as the star of a TV show, 'The Trump Show' is its polar opposite — a spectacle almost painfully aware, at all times, of the cameras, and how he perceives it unfolding through the prism of a screen. Trump even uses his social-media feed to tease upcoming events, such as Tuesday's address to Congress, promoting the evening in advance like a season-ending cliffhanger by posting (all-caps his), 'TOMORROW NIGHT WILL BE BIG.' The 'show' was big, both literally — running nearly 100 minutes, a record for such an address — and figuratively, filling the speech with human-interest anecdotes and 'Queen For a Day'-style giveaways to reinforce various aspects of administration policies and buttress some of Trump's fact-challenged claims. In those moments, this 'Trump Show' more than anything resembled earlier days of daytime TV, with stories of victims, survivors and heroes, such as the heart-tugging tale of a 13-year-old cancer survivor and stirring moments for him and others. As critics were quick to point out, several of Trump's actions and policies have actually clashed with the reality of these stories, among them funding for cancer research. 'The beauty of that child is the tragedy of the Trump presidency, because we don't know how he survived pediatric cancer, but it is likely he benefited from some sort of cancer research,' MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace said during the network's post-speech analysis, which drew a rebuke from the White House. 'And it is a fact that Trump has slashed cancer research.' At CNN, commentator Van Jones proclaimed Trump 'a master showman,' before dissecting many of the places where what he said represented fantasy, not reality. Such details, however, are easily lost in the emotion and pageantry of the moment, which was, of course, the goal when weaving in each carefully orchestrated digression. Again, Trump and his supporters didn't exhibit much subtlety about the political angle built into those made-for-TV vignettes, or who the bad guys were. The president complained early in the speech that Democrats wouldn't rise to applaud anything he said, and Donald Trump Jr. seized on the cancer-stricken child by posting on X, 'If you can't stand up and cheer for a kid with brain cancer being made an honorary member of the Secret Service, then you might be a deeply disturbed and f—ed up person!!!' Admittedly, identifying Trump's preoccupation with how things play on television hardly qualifies as a fresh insight. The issue arose frequently during his first term, as people came to grips with Trump's relationship with a medium he and indeed an entire generation of Baby Boomers were weaned on. 'Trump has always been both acutely aware of the power of TV and absolutely and completely addicted to it,' journalist Chris Cillizza noted in 2019. Even earlier, The Atlantic's Elaine Godfrey analyzed Trump's 'obsession' with TV, writing shortly after he took office, 'No president has consumed as much television as the current one, or reacted as quickly or directly to what they were seeing.' The second term, however, already feels even more overtly focused on optics and imagery, from the laundry list of Fox News alumni filling key White House positions to Trump's frequent press availabilities while simultaneously endeavoring to control the message by filling the White House with more pro-administration media figures. Perhaps more than anything, Trump recognizes the inherent appeal of conflict and surprise. Jon Stewart identified that in a recent 'The Daily Show' monologue in which he compared the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting to professional wrestling, which in its modern form has always served as a violent soap opera, just aimed primarily at male demographics. Trump's ties to wrestling and mixed-martial arts go deep, serving as conduits his campaigns used to woo and interact with men, while securing support from figures like UFC CEO Dana White, wrestler Hulk Hogan and WWE's Linda McMahon, the last recently confirmed as Secretary of Education. As biographer Tim O'Brien noted after Trump named his trio of 'ambassadors to Hollywood' — the AARP-eligible trio of Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone and Jon Voight — he appreciates TV's power thanks in part to the significant role 'The Apprentice' played in building his image and sees himself in cinematic terms. 'He is constantly directing, writing and starring in his own movie about his life,' O'Brien, the author of'TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald,' told TheWrap in January. Trump has spoken of restoring a 'Golden Age' for both Hollywood and the arts and culture — the latter in reference to his controversial takeover of the Kennedy Center — which, like his 'Make America Great Again' slogan, reflects the backward-looking lens through which he tends to see the world. For many that nostalgic mentality has struck a resonant chord, and the address to Congress averaged 36.6 million viewers across multiple TV platforms, per Nielsen — ranking below earlier Trump speeches, but registering a 13% increase over last year's State of the Union delivered by Joe Biden. Yet even for those who reject the formula, buckle up. Because 'The Trump Show' has been renewed, and while it's unclear what happens in the next episode, the producer/star looks determined to ensure that it 'WILL BE BIG.' The post Donald Trump Gives Away the Game on His Made-for-TV Presidency appeared first on TheWrap.
Yahoo
04-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Separating show and substance as Trump addresses Congress
It's been exactly five years and one month since President Trump last addressed a joint session of Congress, and the biggest story of the week back then wasn't about anything he said in his one hour, 18 minute stem-winder. Maybe that's not a surprise. Such speeches in presidential reelection years are always more campaign kick-off than policy prescription. But what grabbed attention in the first full week of February 2020 was certainly about the speech. Yes, that was the episode of the original Trump Show when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ripped up her copy of president's speech and held up the remains like a trophy. That came after Trump appeared to snub Pelosi's offer of a handshake when he reached the rostrum. Ah, the majestic pageantry of the republic. The larger context, though, was that the speech took place at the conclusion of Trump's first impeachment trial in the Senate, one day before his inevitable acquittal. Trump had been impeached for trying to squeeze the then little-known president of Ukraine for something to use against former Vice President Joe Biden, who had been the front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. I say 'had been' because the day before Trump's big speech, Biden laid an enormous egg with a dismal fourth-place showing in the Iowa caucuses. Pelosi had counseled her party to resist the urge to impeach Trump ever since Democrats took control of the House after the 2018 midterms. But she had to acquiesce once a whistleblower revealed Trump's request in the summer of 2019 that a newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky do him a 'favor.' The impeachment was doomed since there was no way the Republican-controlled Senate was going to find 67 votes for conviction, but Pelosi couldn't hold her members back. They were still smarting from Trump escaping any serious consequences from a two-year-long federal probe into Russian efforts to help him win the 2016 election. Things were looking pretty good for Trump in those days. The impeachment had, as Pelosi feared, backfired, and the president was reaching his highest job approval rating yet. Democrats' party-line vote to impeach Trump on a matter related to Russian intrigues helped him start the election year with momentum instead of the dissatisfaction that might have otherwise met an incumbent at the end of a tumultuous first term and with a stagnating economy. A straight-line projection on the day of Trump's 2020 speech to Congress would have pointed to pretty rosy chances for his reelection. He had survived an all-out assault on the legitimacy of his presidency and the economy was growing, even if slowly. Better still for Trump, his opponents were a shambles. Biden seemed unlikely to resuscitate his campaign, and the initially preferred choice of the Democratic establishment, Kamala Harris, had flamed out before a single vote had been cast. When Republicans looked at their potential general election opponents, they saw avatars of a Democratic Party teetering out of balance: the former mayor of the fourth-largest city in Indiana and two radically progressive senators from New England. With a job approval rating climbing close to 50 percent and the strong historical track record for incumbent presidents seeking reelection, Trump was hardly a lock, but you would have had to call him a heavy favorite. In that context, Pelosi's speech-shredding looks like a fit of pique by a frustrated opposition leader, but not a matter of any real import. Right? Lolz. In a media business always looking for emotional blabber for clickbait to lure addicts of brain-dead partisanship, the Trump v. Pelosi melodrama was treated as major news. Trump and Pelosi, of course, each added to the furor, with Trump accusing Pelosi of a crime by ripping up the speech and Pelosi taking multiple victory laps. Who tore up what and who refused to shake which hand wouldn't have been a matter of any lasting consequence regardless of what happened in the intervening 61 months, but it seems even smaller still, once one considers what actually ended up being the most important news story of that week. Wedged onto the front page of The New York Times the day before the State of the Union address, next to coverage of the Kansas City Chiefs' first Super Bowl win since 1970, was a dispatch from the city of Wuhan, China — a place then almost unknown to Americans — about 'an illness that has sickened more than 4,100 people and killed 224 in their city alone.' On the day the article came out, Trump's Department of Homeland Security ordered enhanced screening for all flights from China. The move even merited two sentences, deep into Trump's big speech: 'We are coordinating with the Chinese government and working closely together on the coronavirus outbreak in China. My administration will take all necessary steps to safeguard our citizens from this threat.' The pandemic would go on to kill more than a million Americans and alter nearly every aspect of our national life. Almost a year later, when Trump was again being impeached and tried — that time for sending an angry mob to the Capitol to try to prevent the certification of his defeat in the same election he once looked so certain to win — lawmakers were still wearing masks, and the nation was still eight months away from having access to an effective vaccine. Which is all a very long way of saying that whatever gestures are deemed ennobling or ignoble at tonight's speech, or whatever emotionally fraught melodramas have currently consumed the media's attention, the forces that will mostly decide the course of the next five years are probably taking place far outside the glare of the bright lights in the House chamber. A big address is like what Trump said of his Oval Office rhubarb with a very different Zelensky from the one who flattered him on a 'perfect' phone call in 2019: 'This is going to be great television.' But great TV doesn't usually change the world. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
04-03-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Separating show and substance as Trump addresses Congress
It's been exactly five years and one month since President Trump last addressed a joint session of Congress, and the biggest story of the week back then wasn't about anything he said in his one hour, 18 minute stem-winder. Maybe that's not a surprise. Such speeches in presidential reelection years are always more campaign kick-off than policy prescription. But what grabbed attention in the first full week of February 2020 was certainly about the speech. Yes, that was the episode of the original Trump Show when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ripped up her copy of president's speech and held up the remains like a trophy. That came after Trump appeared to snub Pelosi's offer of a handshake when he reached the rostrum. Ah, the majestic pageantry of the republic. The larger context, though, was that the speech took place at the conclusion of Trump's first impeachment trial in the Senate, one day before his inevitable acquittal. Trump had been impeached for trying to squeeze the then little-known president of Ukraine for something to use against former Vice President Joe Biden, who had been the front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. I say 'had been' because the day before Trump's big speech, Biden laid an enormous egg with a dismal fourth-place showing in the Iowa caucuses. Pelosi had counseled her party to resist the urge to impeach Trump ever since Democrats took control of the House after the 2018 midterms. But she had to acquiesce once a whistleblower revealed Trump's request in the summer of 2019 that a newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky do him a 'favor.' The impeachment was doomed since there was no way the Republican-controlled Senate was going to find 67 votes for conviction, but Pelosi couldn't hold her members back. They were still smarting from Trump escaping any serious consequences from a two-year-long federal probe into Russian efforts to help him win the 2016 election. Things were looking pretty good for Trump in those days. The impeachment had, as Pelosi feared, backfired, and the president was reaching his highest job approval rating yet. Democrats' party-line vote to impeach Trump on a matter related to Russian intrigues helped him start the election year with momentum instead of the dissatisfaction that might have otherwise met an incumbent at the end of a tumultuous first term and with a stagnating economy. A straight-line projection on the day of Trump's 2020 speech to Congress would have pointed to pretty rosy chances for his reelection. He had survived an all-out assault on the legitimacy of his presidency and the economy was growing, even if slowly. Better still for Trump, his opponents were a shambles. Biden seemed unlikely to resuscitate his campaign, and the initially preferred choice of the Democratic establishment, Kamala Harris, had flamed out before a single vote had been cast. When Republicans looked at their potential general election opponents, they saw avatars of a Democratic Party teetering out of balance: the former mayor of the fourth-largest city in Indiana and two radically progressive senators from New England. With a job approval rating climbing close to 50 percent and the strong historical track record for incumbent presidents seeking reelection, Trump was hardly a lock, but you would have had to call him a heavy favorite. In that context, Pelosi's speech-shredding looks like a fit of pique by a frustrated opposition leader, but not a matter of any real import. Right? Lolz. In a media business always looking for emotional blabber for clickbait to lure addicts of brain-dead partisanship, the Trump v. Pelosi melodrama was treated as major news. Trump and Pelosi, of course, each added to the furor, with Trump accusing Pelosi of a crime by ripping up the speech and Pelosi taking multiple victory laps. Who tore up what and who refused to shake which hand wouldn't have been a matter of any lasting consequence regardless of what happened in the intervening 61 months, but it seems even smaller still, once one considers what actually ended up being the most important news story of that week. Wedged onto the front page of The New York Times the day before the State of the Union address, next to coverage of the Kansas City Chiefs' first Super Bowl win since 1970, was a dispatch from the city of Wuhan, China — a place then almost unknown to Americans — about 'an illness that has sickened more than 4,100 people and killed 224 in their city alone.' On the day the article came out, Trump's Department of Homeland Security ordered enhanced screening for all flights from China. The move even merited two sentences, deep into Trump's big speech: 'We are coordinating with the Chinese government and working closely together on the coronavirus outbreak in China. My administration will take all necessary steps to safeguard our citizens from this threat.' The pandemic would go on to kill more than a million Americans and alter nearly every aspect of our national life. Almost a year later, when Trump was again being impeached and tried — that time for sending an angry mob to the Capitol to try to prevent the certification of his defeat in the same election he once looked so certain to win — lawmakers were still wearing masks, and the nation was still eight months away from having access to an effective vaccine. Which is all a very long way of saying that whatever gestures are deemed ennobling or ignoble at tonight's speech, or whatever emotionally fraught melodramas have currently consumed the media's attention, the forces that will mostly decide the course of the next five years are probably taking place far outside the glare of the bright lights in the House chamber. A big address is like what Trump said of his Oval Office rhubarb with a very different Zelensky from the one who flattered him on a 'perfect' phone call in 2019: 'This is going to be great television.' But great TV doesn't usually change the world.
The Independent
25-02-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Federal computers are hacked to show fake AI video of Trump kissing Elon Musk's feet
Federal staffers at the Department of Housing and Urban Development were greeted by a fake AI video depicting President Donald Trump kissing Elon Musk 's feet when they came into work Monday morning. Hackers rolled out the 19-second video throughout HUD 's building on the day that federal workers were ordered to return to the office following an executive order bringing an end to working from home. Captioned ' Long live the real king,' the footage depicted the president enthusiastically kissing the feet of the billionaire 'first buddy,' who is leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency's purge of the federal government. Management officials at the HUD were not impressed by the stunt. 'Another waste of taxpayer dollars and resources,' HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett said in a statement to The Independent. 'Appropriate action will be taken for all involved.' The video played on a loop for five minutes on screens in the building, including in the cafeteria, according to journalist Maria Kabas. 'Building staff couldn't figure out how to turn it off so sent people to every floor to unplug TVs,' Kabas said, quoting an anonymous agency source. Trump's relationship with Musk has been highly scrutinized since the SpaceX boss started bankrolling the president's 2024 campaign. Since then, Musk has muscled his way into the White House, wielding unprecedented powers through DOGE. The duo told Fox News host Sean Hannity last week that they believemedia outlets are trying to drive a wedge between them. Trump revealed that the speculation over their relationship prompted the Tesla CEO to call him. 'Actually, Elon called me. He said, 'You know they're trying to drive us apart,'' Trump recalled. 'I said, 'Absolutely.'' At one point in the interview, Hannity interjected and remarked: 'This is going to be hard. I feel like I'm interviewing the two brothers.' Pundits have speculated that the bromance between the two billionaires will come crashing down eventually. 'The Trump Show is a one-man play,' Politico's senior political columnist Jonathan Martin wrote earlier this month. 'And there's not room for anybody else, least of all somebody wealthier and with a (nearly) comparable thirst for attention.'
