Bob Ritchie, a.k.a. Kid Rock, sent a stern message to former first lady Michelle Obama for her decision to skip his pal Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

On the Fox News show Jesse Watters Primetime, the MAGA music star, who will be performing at the president-elect’s inauguration, appeared stunned that the former first lady has opted out of attending. A source close to Obama told People, that she is “not one to plaster on a pleasant face and pretend for protocol’s sake.”

Obama campaigned against Trump during his presidential campaigns in 2016, 2020 and 2024.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Dozens of commercial airplanes were forced to change course to avoid falling debris after a SpaceX rocket exploded over the Gulf of Mexico, Reuters reported.

The massive Starship rocket broke up in space just minutes after launching from Texas on Thursday, sending flaming debris streaking across the sky, according to video footage.

Elon Musk’s private rocket company confirmed SpaceX mission control had lost contact with the unmanned rocket, which had been newly upgraded and was carrying a test satellite payload, eight minutes after liftoff.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)

Severance shares more with Selling Sunset than meets the eye.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Jimmy Kimmel sarcastically offered President-elect Donald Trump some credit for his announcement appointing a number of MAGA celebrities as his “special ambassadors” to Hollywood.

“While everybody has been worried that he won’t do anything to help us, turns out we’re wrong,” Kimmel said.

Kimmel showed Trump’s Thursday Truth Social post, which read, “It is my honor to announce Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone, to be Special Ambassadors to a great but very troubled place, Hollywood, California.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher (update links).

Just as it appeared Donald Trump’s controversial nominees were all but confirmed, it seems one of the president-elect’s most high-profile picks might be on the chopping block.

That’s according to Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, who chairs the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and is, among other titles, the Democratic Party’s chief deputy whip. Schatz told co-host Andy Levy on the latest episode of The New Abnormal that RFK Jr., Trump’s choice for health secretary, “is in serious peril” of losing his nomination battle.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

China’s vice president will attend President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, the nation’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Friday morning local time. The Chinese government confirmed that Vice President Han Zheng, a high-ranking Chinese politician who was tapped for the role in August 2023, according to the South China Morning Post, will travel to attend the ceremony in Washington, D.C. “China follows the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation in viewing and growing its relationship with the United States,” the ministry said in a statement. China said they planned to work with the US to “enhance dialogue and communication, properly manage differences, expand mutually beneficial cooperation, jointly pursue a stable, healthy and sustainable China-U.S. relationship and find the right way for the two countries to get along with each other in the new era.” The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the invitation was extended earlier by Trump’s team. The unprecedented move comes after Trump repeatedly promised to levy tariffs on Chinese imports. He has also nominated multiple China critics to top-level Cabinet positions, including Sen. Marco Rubio for secretary of state. China’s plans to send a high-level envoy to the presidential inauguration was first reported by the Financial Times last week. The Trump transition team did not immediately return a request for comment from the Daily Beast.

Read it at NBC News

Read more at The Daily Beast.

CNN is considering a substantial demotion for one of its highest-rating stars—who also happens to be a longtime antagonist of President-elect Donald Trump.

CNN chief Mark Thompson called Jim Acosta on Wednesday to propose that his show, CNN Newsroom with Jim Acosta, be moved from its 10 a.m. ET time slot to midnight, according to the newsletter Status News.

“The move would effectively exile Acosta to the Siberia of television news,” media reporter Oliver Darcy pointed out.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Greenland Prime Minister Múte Egede said on Fox News that his country’s residents “don’t want to be Americans,” despite what any possible public relations stunts by right-wingers like Donald Trump Jr. might suggest.

“We will always be a part of NATO. We will always be a strong partner for the U.S. We are close neighbors. We have been cooperating in the last 80 years, and I think the future has a lot to offer to cooperate with,” Egede told anchor Bret Baier.

“But we want to also be clear,” he stated. “We don’t want to be Americans. We don’t want to be a part of the U.S., but we want a strong cooperation together with the U.S.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Donald Trump’s team is reportedly not breaking a sweat over Michelle Obama’s absence from his inauguration on Monday. A source close to President-elect Donald Trump’s MAGA orbit told Page Six that those involved in planning his inaugural festivities are “having a good laugh” about Michelle’s snub and “didn’t expect her to come anyway.” Meanwhile, a Democratic source told the outlet that “Donald Trump and Melania didn’t go to Joe Biden’s inauguration and nobody cared. No one said anything.” Barack and Michelle Obama’s office announced that the former first lady would be missing Trump’s swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 20, but that the former president would still attend. Michelle also didn’t attend former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral service last week as she was on an “extended vacation” in Hawaii. Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as George W. and Laura Bush, are expected to attend Trump’s second inauguration on Monday.

Read it at Page Six

Read more at The Daily Beast.

President Joe Biden is reportedly not planning to enforce TikTok’s ban on Jan. 19, and is opting to leave the fate of the app in President-elect Donald Trump’s hands. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a U.S. official told the Associated Press that the Biden administration will be leaving the implementation of a law pertaining to TikTok’s China-based ownership and its subsequent ban to Trump. Last year, Biden signed a law into Congress that required TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest the app by Jan. 19, alleging that it posed a national security threat. While the ban is slated to ensue a day before Trump’s inauguration, the president-elect’s incoming national security adviser, Mike Walz, told Fox News that Trump’s ready to intervene to keep the app afloat. A Biden administration official also told NBC News Wednesday that “Americans shouldn’t expect to see TikTok suddenly banned on Sunday.” In light of TikTok’s ambiguous fate, a slew of users have flocked to Chinese social networking app Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, instead.

Read it at The Associated Press

Read more at The Daily Beast.

There’s a bit of a mystery surrounding who may have offered the financial backing for Rudy Giuliani to settle with a pair of 2020 election workers from Georgia that he repeatedly defamed.

Under the agreement, Donald Trump’s former personal attorney gets to keep his New York and Florida apartments, as well as other valuables, in exchange for a payment to Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss. The amount of the payment, and its source, is undisclosed.

Giuliani was ordered in December 2023 to pay the pair $148 million, but in the following months he was regularly uncooperative when it came to turning over his assets, having recently been held in contempt not only in New York but in a Washington, D.C., courtroom as well. His reported net worth is about $10 million.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

John F. Kennedy’s grandson Jack Schlossberg is well-loved by Democrats for his quirky social media posts, but this time he may have gone too far.

Schlossberg got ripped apart by supporters and haters alike after he posted an Instagram video mocking his cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s speech disorder.

“Hey everybody, I’m trying to figure out the right present to get Donald Trump for the inauguration,” he said with a shaky voice in the short clip, tagging Kennedy.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is flying to Mar-a-Lago for a “sit-down” with Donald Trump just days before the president-elect’s inauguration, his office confirmed on Thursday night. “Mayor Adams has made quite clear his willingness to work with President-elect Trump and his incoming administration on behalf of New Yorkers,” the mayor’s office said in a statement confirming the meeting, adding that Adams “looks forward to having a productive conversation with the incoming president on how we can move our city and country forward.” The statement did not elaborate on exactly what Adams planned to discuss with the president-elect. News of Adams’ meeting was first reported by The New York Times, who noted it originally did not show up on the mayor’s public schedule. Adams was indicted in September on federal corruption charges, and is facing possible prison time for allegedly accepting “travel-related bribes” and illegal campaign finances from straw donors. Adams has repeatedly insisted he has “done nothing wrong.” Trump has previously said he would consider pardoning the New York City mayor, who he said was “treated pretty unfairly” at a December press conference. Adams previously met with Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican and Trump ally, on Tuesday night, the Politico’s New York Playbook reported.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Ten years after she seemingly hung it up for good, Cameron Diaz returns to the big screen—or, at least, Netflix—with Back in Action, an action comedy that pairs her with her Annie co-star Jamie Foxx. She should have stayed retired.

A drearily formulaic comeback vehicle that’s been sitting on a shelf for nearly two years and boasts not a single original, amusing, or exciting moment, director Seth Gordon’s feature is a hodgepodge of the hoariest of clichés, none of which have been fresh since the 1980s and most of which have to do with underlining the fact that—no matter their entry into middle age—its stars remain as sexy, funny, and desirable as ever. Diaz and Foxx still got it, the film constantly screams. The evidence on display, however, suggests otherwise.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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In moments of unimaginable loss, one truth becomes clear: healing is never something we do alone. This sentiment feels especially poignant for Los Angeles right now. As the city grapples with the ongoing devastation of wildfires, it remains uplifted by an unshakable sense of community. While the flames have brought shock and grief to Angelenos, they’ve also sparked a powerful wave of support.

Neighbors are helping each other, people from around the country are donating to causes supporting the city, first responders, and those who have lost their homes, and brands are stepping up to assist the community in meaningful ways—especially in the beauty space.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Kevin O’Leary, the Canadian Shark Tank investor who has been palling around with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in recent weeks, complained at length on Fox News about former first lady Michelle Obama’s decision to skip the president-elect’s inauguration.

On the Fox News midday show Outnumbered, O’Leary reacted to Obama’s decision, which, a source close to her told People, came because she is “not one to plaster on a pleasant face and pretend for protocol’s sake.”

“This tradition has gone on for over a hundred years. This is what presidents do—and their wives—on inauguration day,” O’Leary claimed, adding later that it was “wrong” for Trump to choose not to attend President Joe Biden’s swearing-in four years ago.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

An attorney for Wendy Williams poured cold water on fan theories claiming that the former talk show host isn’t cognitively impaired and suffering from dementia. Fans reacting to Williams’ viral Breakfast Club podcast interview Thursday began calling for her release from conservatorship, a la the #FreeBritney movement, over concerns that Williams appeared to be “present” and “coherent” like when she used to draw viewers into her eponymous talk show, The Wendy Williams Show. However, attorney Roberta Kaplan cautioned in an interview with TMZ that fans shouldn’t be fooled by Williams’ clarity. She has good days and bad days due to her battling an a neurological disease that will require her to have around-the-clock care for the rest of her life. It was revealed that Williams was diagnosed with frontal lobe dementia just before the documentary, Where Is Wendy Williams?, which also detailed Williams’ struggles with alcohol abuse. Williams compared the facility where she is staying in New York City to a “prison.” Her niece, Alex, stated that she is fighting to have Williams taken under the care of her family.

Read it at TMZ

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Mel Gibson is just as surprised as you are.

The controversial Hollywood star apparently found out about his new diplomatic posting at the same time as the rest of the world when President-elect Donald Trump announced he would be appointing actors Sylvester Stallone, Jon Voight, and Gibson as his “special ambassadors” to Hollywood.

In true Trump fashion, he said the new roles were part of his effort to the American film industry “bigger, better, and stronger than ever before.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

A pilot on a Southwest Airlines flight was walked off the flight by police officers and arrested for allegedly showing up for the flight intoxicated.

David Paul Allsop, 52, was arrested by airport police in Savannah just before he was supposed to pilot a Southwest flight from Savannah/Hilton Head Airport in Georgia to Chicago-Midway on Wednesday morning.

A spokesperson for the Transportation Safety Administration told the Daily Beast that one of their agents at the airport was the one who noticed Allsop appeared intoxicated and alerted police.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Stephen King revealed that he would sit out voting for the 2025 Oscars as Los Angeles continues to burn from three major fires.

“Not voting in the Oscars this year,” the 77-year-old announced on the social media platform Bluesky.

“In my honest opinion, they should cancel them,” he added. “No glitz with Los Angeles on fire.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Shortly after a heated exchange between Reps. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) and Nancy Mace (R-SC) during a House committee meeting earlier this week, the Texas Democrat said she received a creepy phone call from a Republican staffer that seemingly doubled down on Mace’s threats of “violence.”

“That was a pretty heated exchange between y’all and Mace. My money’s on Mace,” the staffer said on the call, according to Crockett’s office.

She did not name who the staffer was—but the Texas Democrat said she isn’t taking the call lightly.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Donald Trump is slated to have one of the coldest Inauguration Days in 40 years, according to CNN. The outlet reports that when Trump is sworn in at noon on Monday, the temperature is expected to be in the low 20s (around 20 degrees below normal) with winds reaching 10 to 20 mph. Although rain and snow are expected to pour the day prior, Inauguration Day is looking clear, though wind gusts up to 30 mph will make for freezing conditions. CNN reports that noon temperatures were as low as 7 degrees for Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration in 1985, while at Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009, they hit 28 degrees. The anticipated temperatures for Trump’s second inauguration would make it the coldest Inauguration Day since Reagan’s. The expected cold is a result of Arctic air that’s slated to spill south from Canada late this week and drop temperatures to below normal across a multitude of states.

Read it at CNN

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Mark Zuckerberg reportedly blamed one of his former executives, Sheryl Sandberg, for Meta’s recent “culture” issues during a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump—despite the fact that she has not been with the company for more than two years.

The Facebook founder is accused of playing the blame game at a November meeting at Mar-a-Lago, where The New York Times reports he also made assurances to not stand in Donald Trump’s way after he returns to office next week.

The newspaper reported that high-level discussions occurred between Zuckerberg and top Trump advisers—including Stephen Miller—and that crackdowns on immigration and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts were all topics of discussion.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency struggled to answer straightforward questions about science.

At his confirmation hearing on Thursday, former Rep. Lee Zeldin faced scrutiny of his limited environmental experience. For one senator, Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, this took the form of a science pop quiz—asking, in his words, “really basic no-tricks questions about climate change.”

Whitehouse started off with a softball: “First, as a matter of law, is carbon dioxide a pollutant?”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Hollywood star Jessica Alba posted to Instagram Thursday to let her more than 20 million followers know that she and her husband, Cash Warren, will “embark on a new chapter.” That sugar-coated language means they are getting a divorce, ending their 16-year marriage. Alba emphasized that their three underage children are the couple’s highest priority as the divorce unfolds. A source with knowledge of the family told the New York Post that the famous duo are not getting divorced for petty or dramatic reasons, and that they have simply grown apart over time. Alba has usually spoken highly of her marriage with Warren, though recently, he has not accompanied her to public events, causing speculation about the couple’s future. However, their dedication to their children was apparent when they joined forces for their son Hayes' 7th birthday on Jan. 3 despite not being photographed together for months. That speculation was fueled further however when she was seen without her wedding ring at a pre-Golden Globes party days later.

Read it at New York Post

Read more at The Daily Beast.

British soap actor Paul Danan died less than a year after being hospitalized for respiratory failure, his management company revealed Thursday. He was 46.

At the time, Danan said a prolific vaping habit—developed after years of smoking cigarettes—pushed him “over the edge.”

Danan’s management company Independent Creative Management broke the news in a Thursday statement posted to Instagram that was flooded with well wishes from fans.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

A Trump adviser said the president-elect’s pick for the FBI will take Democrats on an interesting trip if they question his controversial far-right conspiracy theories.

Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Donald Trump, jumped to defend FBI chief nominee Kash Patel in a tweet calling out The New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush.

Thrush said that Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi appeared to distance herself from Patel during her confirmation hearing on Wednesday after she was grilled about his wild conspiracy theories. Bondi would become Patel’s boss if they are both confirmed.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Tennis star Danielle Collins thanked a crowd of hecklers at the Australian Open for helping fund her next vacation—shortly after motioning that they should kiss her behind. The crowd didn’t take lightly to Collins winning over their home player Destanee Aiava in Thursday’s match, prompting her to blow kisses to them as they booed her and motioning that they should kiss her a--. Later in a post-match interview, Collins referred to her friend and former tennis player CoCo Vandeweghe while thanking her haters for paying for their “five-star vacation.” “CoCo and I love a good five-star vacation,” Collins said. “So part of that check is going to go towards that. So thanks for coming out here and supporting us tonight.” The tennis star continued to express her gratitude for her hecklers in a post-match press conference, adding: “One of the greatest things about being a professional athlete is the people that don’t like you and the people that hate you, they actually pay your bills. It’s kind of a cool concept.” She continued, “Every person that’s bought a ticket to come out here and heckle me, it’s all going towards the Danielle Collins Fund. Bring it on. I love it.”

Little bit of prime "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan about Danielle Collins post match!#AO2025 pic.twitter.com/nyusDgt3PP

— #AusOpen (@AustralianOpen) January 16, 2025

Read it at The Athletic

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Donald Trump has fired a defiant riposte to Joe Biden’s parting warning that a tech titan oligarchy is threatening America’s democracy.

The president-elect has invited the world’s wealthiest billionaires to join his family and former U.S. presidents in prime positions on the dais for Monday’s inauguration ceremony.

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and Shou Zi Chew will take pride of place outside the Capitol in a clear show of money power behind the new administration.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Kyle MacLachlan penned a touching tribute to his “dear friend” and frequent collaborator David Lynch, the cerebral director who launched the Hollywood star’s career and continued working with him for years. Lynch’s family announced his death on Thursday at 78, about five months after the director announced he could only work remotely in the future due to emphysema. MacLachlan, 65, credited Lynch with giving him his big break when he cast him as Paul Atreides in his 1984 adaptation of Dune. “He clearly saw something in me that even I didn’t recognize. I owe my entire career, and life really, to his vision.” Lynch and MacLachlan continued to work together for years, with the actor playing the lead in Lynch’s iconic television show Twin Peaks, its 2017 sequel Twin Peaks: The Return, as well as his films Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. “Our friendship blossomed on Blue Velvet and then Twin Peaks and I always found him to be the most authentically alive person I’d ever met,” MacLachlan said.

Read it at Instagram

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Comedian Damon Wayans appears as a sort of ghost from Saturday Night Live’s past in the new Peacock docuseries SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night to explain why he “went rogue” and “wanted [Lorne Michaels] to fire me” after his brief stint during the show’s notoriously troubled 1985-1986 season of the show.

Wayans says in the doc, which began streaming on Thursday, that he was tired of his ideas being “shot down” as he chafed against racially insensitive sketches from the show’s writers. The comedian was trying to follow cast mate Eddie Murphy’s advice as a former Black cast member on the show.

“Eddie’s advice to me was, ‘Write your own sketches. Otherwise, they’re gonna give you some Black people s--t to do and you ain’t gonna like it,’” Wayans recalls. But getting his own ideas on the air proved difficult.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

The chief executive of a Greenland hotel where Donald Trump Jr. hosted a lunch in for MAGA supporters has claimed that the attendees did not actually know who Don Jr. was and were just looking for a free lunch.

“[Trump Jr.] had just met them in the street and invited them for lunch, or his staff did. But I don’t think they knew who they were inviting,” Jørgen Bay-Kastrup, the chief executive of Hotel Hans Egede in Nuuk, Greenland, told the Guardian in an interview published Thursday.

“That of course was a little bit strange to us because we saw guests that we have never seen in our hotel before — and will probably never see again because it’s out of their economical means,” he continued, with the Guardian noting that he described many of the attendees as “homeless.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Speaker Mike Johnson appointed a relatively unknown MAGA loyalist on Thursday to lead the House Intelligence Committee after he stunned colleagues by ousting the previous chairman—who blamed his firing on Donald Trump.

Rep. Rick Crawford of Arkansas is now set to take over the powerful committee, which oversees the U.S. intelligence community, including the CIA and the FBI.

Crawford—a former Army veteran and rodeo announcer—is a conservative hardliner compared to his predecessor, Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio. Crawford voted against certifying the 2020 election results; Turner voted in favor of validating Joe Biden’s election victory over Trump.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Crowds of MAGA followers, politicos, journalists and tech bros will be descending on Washington, D.C. over the next few days for president-elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration. But one name is notably absent from the guest lists: Michelle Obama.

The former first lady has said she won’t be in attendance—sans excuse—having also bailed on Jimmy Carter’s funeral last week, because of a “scheduling conflict.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Pete Davidson says he felt like a failure at Saturday Night Live at the end of his first season as one of the youngest cast members in the show’s 50 year history.

Davidson, who was just 20 when he joined the show in 2014, revealed that he requested a meeting with executive producer Lorne Michaels to directly ask to be let go.

“After my first year, I actually called for a meeting with Lorne. I was like, ‘Please fire me,’” Davidson says in the new Peacock docuseries SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night. “‘I don’t belong here. Everybody here is so talented, and they don’t want to be my friend.’ I was a child! I was like, ‘Nobody wants to be my friend!’”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

David Lynch, the peerless director behind such masterpieces as Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks, and Mulholland Drive, was one of cinema’s all-time greats, a unique visionary whose dark and surreal films were the stuff of both unsettling dreams and sumptuous nightmares.

His passing Thursday at the age of 78 (following his announcement earlier this year that he was suffering from emphysema) is a titanic loss to the medium, and in an exclusive new interview with The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh pays tribute to the late auteur as a true one-of-a-kind – as well as a pretty great furniture maker.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

David Lynch made many tremendous works of art over his staggering career. His 2001 film Mulholland Drive is often cited as one of the greatest films of the 21st century. His television series, 1990’s Twin Peaks and 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return has received similarly titanic praise. He’s directed music videos for artists including Moby, Interpol, and Nine Inch Nails and commercials for companies as wide-ranging as Calvin Klein, Honda, and PlayStation. That’s not to mention various short films, web series, and even music albums.

Lynch died Jan. 16, and in his vast body of work, there’s one piece I’ve never stopped thinking about: Inland Empire, his final feature film from 2006.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Bob Uecker, the Hall of Fame baseball player who later became the voice of the Milwaukee Brewers, has died at the age of 90. Uecker’s death Thursday was announced by the team, which called it “one of the most difficult days in Milwaukee Brewers history.” Uecker’s family said he had “faced a private battle with small cell lung cancer” since early 2023. Throughout the 1960s, Uecker played baseball for Milwaukee, the Atlanta Braves, St. Louis Cardinals. “Mr. Baseball,” as he was affectionately called, became a sports broadcaster for the Milwaukee Brewers in 1971. He was initiated into the Hall of Fame in 2003. Uecker was also a comedian, making frequent “colorful” appearances on Johnny Carson’s show. Uecker described being a sports broadcaster as like being part of “people’s families,” which he said was deeply rewarding. Even in the last year of his life, he was deeply involved with the Brewers. After the team won the National League Central title in 2024, players showered “Ueck” with Champagne in the locker room. The team’s official statement reflected this affection, saying they had “no words for how much he was loved. We are left with a giant void in our hearts.”

Read it at CBC

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Tulsi Gabbard’s spiritual “guru” called gay people “perverts” and spewed homophobic slurs when she was involved in his tiny group, an audio recording obtained by the Daily Beast reveals.

Gabbard is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be director of national intelligence after a dramatic political switch from left-wing Democratic presidential candidate to MAGA firebrand.

The tape shows how Chris Butler—the leader of the Science of Identity Foundation in which Gabbard was brought up—called homosexuality “abnormal” and “unhealthy and unnatural.” He compared it to having “sex with a fire hydrant” in a recording made a few years before Gabbard first ran for state office–which she did on an anti-gay platform.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

MAGA-loving media organizations are gearing up to celebrate Donald Trump’s return to Washington with a spectacular party weekend ahead of his swearing-in on Monday.

Newsmax and The Daily Caller have both sent out invites for pre-inauguration parties ahead of Monday’s Inauguration Day, according to copies of the invites obtained by the Daily Beast. Newsmax, the conservative cable network founded by longtime Trump ally (and golfing buddy) Christopher Ruddy, is hosting an “Inaugural Eve Celebration” on Sunday, where it expects at least 1,500 politicians and media figures to attend, a spokesperson said.

Its party will be held at the Mellon Auditorium, which housed much of the 2020 Republican National Convention.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Ben Stiller revealed that his real-life father-in-law isn’t much different from the one Robert De Niro played alongside him in Meet The Parents.

On Thursday’s episode of The View, Stiller told the hosts meeting his wife, actress and Zoolander co-star Christine Taylor’s dad was the “exact same experience” as the movie.

“When we were making Meet the Parents, I had just met Christine and I was gonna ask her to marry me,” he explained, but wanted to ask her father for permission first.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Many White House officials believe that Joe Biden missed an opportunity by not making a friend of Elon Musk, according to a report.

While Biden in his Wednesday farewell address warned of the emergence of oligarchs in the United States, some of his aides told CNN that his decisions may contributed to the creation of one.

Musk, who has emerged as one of Donald Trump’s most powerful allies, was previously a Democrat and did not back the now-president-elect until his near-miss assassination attempt in July.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Don Lemon isn’t holding back about his split from CNN—and his disdain for the constraints of traditional media. During a conversation with Joanna Coles and Samantha Bee on this week’s episode of The Daily Beast Podcast, the former primetime anchor said he’s found freedom—and a bigger audience—in going solo. “They don’t like us big mouth, sort of middle or left-leaning people,” Lemon said of big TV networks and their executives. “They just find ways to get rid of us for little things.”

(They just sweep us away. It’s relaxing for them,“ added Bee, whose show Full Frontal navigated the response to similarly unfiltered commentary.)

Read more at The Daily Beast.

A United Airlines flight was forced to turn back around after hitting a coyote during takeoff.

None of the 167 passengers or six crew members were injured, but the Boeing plane had to quickly turn back around to Chicago O’Hare Airport to check the landing gear.

“We arranged for another plane to take our customers to their destination later that afternoon,” the airline said.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

A MAGA state senator in Georgia was shoved to the ground and arrested Thursday for trying to defy a ban and forcefully enter the House chambers.

Colton Moore was thrown down as he tried to push his way past police and officials to make it inside the chamber for Gov. Brian Kemp’s state of the state speech.

Moore, 31, was banned indefinitely from the chambers last year after he referred to the late House speaker David Ralston as “one of the most corrupt Georgians we’ve seen in our lives” during a day of remembrance for the longtime Republican politician, whose loved ones were in attendance.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Brad Pitt has issued a cautionary statement in response to the viral story about a French woman who divorced her husband and handed over her life savings to a scammer posing as the actor by using crude AI images. “It’s awful that scammers take advantage of the strong bond between fans and celebrities,” a spokesperson for Pitt said in a statement to Variety. “This is an important reminder not to respond to unsolicited online messages, especially from actors who are not present on social networks.” The 53-year-old woman came forward this week to reveal that she had been duped out of more than $850,000 after a man she believed to be Pitt initiated a virtual relationship with her and claimed to need an enormous amount of money for a kidney transplant. “At first I said to myself that it was fake, that it’s ridiculous,” the woman, identified only as Anne said in a TV interview. “But I’m not used to social media and I didn’t really understand what was happening to me.”

Read it at Variety

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Bill Maher is just fine with not the be in the “fraternity” of late-night hosts who lean left, he said in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

Noting that he “knows and loves” Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon but others (like the more openly political Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers) he doesn’t “know at all,” the host of HBO’s Real Time told the magazine that when he was launching his previous talk show Politically Incorrect on ABC, he was told, “You can’t do a show where you have political opinions because the audience will turn off to that.”

“Johnny Carson always played it down the middle. You didn’t even know who he voted for. Same with Letterman and Leno. That was the template. Now, it’s completely the opposite. The politics come first on those shows.” Maher said the hosts “echo what [their liberal audiences] already want to believe and do believe.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday that he has appointed a few of his favorite celebrity hangers-on as his “special ambassadors” to Hollywood.

Trump shared on Truth Social that it was his “honor” to appoint Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone to be his envoys to California’s “great but very troubled place.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

David Lynch, the groundbreaking director of TV and movies from Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet to Wild at Heart, has died at 78.

“It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch,” his family said in a statement. “We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’ It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”

Deadline reported that Lynch was forced to relocate from his Los Angeles home due to the wildfires and that things then “took a turn for the worse.” In August, he revealed that he was suffering from emphysema after a lifetime of smoking and that he couldn’t leave his home for fear that he would get COVID.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

After years of “democracy dies in the darkness,” The Washington Post now wants to play host to “riveting storytelling for all of America.”

The new mission statement was previewed to some staffers by Post chief strategy officer Suzi Watford in meetings this week, according to The New York Times.

The slogan is meant to be an internal rallying cry for the Post‘s journalists as the paper seeks to reach 200 million paying users, according to the Times, and will not replace the public “democracy” slogan used publicly, including on the paper’s homepage.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott appeared to prematurely congratulate Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody on her nomination to fill Marco Rubio’s vacated Senate seat before Gov. Ron DeSantis officially announced it. In a quickly-deleted tweet, Scott hailed Moody as a “proven conservative fighter” for President-elect Donald Trump and a “national leader on border security,” reported Politico. Shortly after the tweet disappeared, DeSantis made his own announcement for Moody. “Talk is cheap. We need people that have demonstrated fidelity to these principles with their actions,” said DeSantis of Moody, who has been attorney general in the Sunshine State since 2019. DeSantis said Moody “has been somebody that has acted time and time again to support the values that we all share.” He added, “Whether that’s illegal immigration, [the] opioid and fentanyl crisis, human trafficking. She has stood strong time and time again, most recently in this past year, filing lawsuits and joining lawsuits to take on the weaponization of law enforcement that targeted then-candidate Donald Trump.” Moody will run in a special election in November of 2026 to complete the remainder of Rubio’s term.

Uh NRSC chair Tim Scott just welcomed Ashley Moody to the Senate and then quickly deleted it #FLSEN pic.twitter.com/8Bk7FXQoGW

— Ally Mutnick (@allymutnick) January 16, 2025

Read it at Politico

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Justin Baldoni filed a new lawsuit Thursday against Blake Lively, alleging that she used her industry “power”—including her friendship with Taylor Swift—to seize control of their film It Ends With Us and “destroy” him.

The 179-page suit includes text messages that name Swift as the “megacelebrity friend” who attended a meeting wherein Baldoni, Lively, and husband Ryan Reynolds discussed Lively’s rewrites of the film’s pivotal rooftop scene. It was during that meeting that Reynolds and Swift “began praising Lively’s script.”

Lively admits in the presented text messages that Baldoni’s hesitance about her version “of course, didn’t feel great for me.” Baldoni said that instead of accepting his stance on the issue, she enlisted Swift to “pressure” him.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Rudy Giuliani is not letting his legal woes ruin his inauguration excitement.

Despite being scheduled to testify in a New York courtroom, the disgraced lawyer was absent from the proceedings Thursday and instead shared a video of his Pomeranian frolicking at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

“Vinny loves hanging out at Mar-a-Lago, but he’s ready to spend a lot more time in Washington, D.C. over the course of the next four years in support of his favorite President—Donald J. Trump!,” Giuliani wrote alongside the clip of his pup on Thursday.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

A ghostwriter who penned Prince Harry’s contribution to a best-selling book about his walk to the North Pole has revealed a promised meeting with the prince never materialized, and he had to make do with a 15-minute video message from the royal instead.

Although the content of the message was “hardly illuminating,” ghostwriter Mark McCrum wrote in the Daily Mail that he still managed to generate “a thoughtful chapter, which then had to get copy approval from Clarence House.”

He added that he had “no idea” whether Harry ever read “his” contribution to the best-selling book which followed the stories of four wounded soldiers who trekked across the ice to the North Pole with Harry.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Pope Francis is beloved for his compassion and concern for the poor, sick, and injured. Now he is sparking concern after the 88-year-old suffered yet another fall. Several weeks ago, the pontiff suffered a “chinjury” after bruising his chin when he fell on his nightstand. On Thursday morning, the Vatican announced that His Holiness “suffered a contusion on his right forearm, without fractures.” The news comes in the wake of other health concerns, including hospitalizations and his use of a cane and wheelchair, which he initially described as “embarrassing.” Francis has dismissed concerns about his health, saying, “The Church is governed using the head and the heart, not the legs.” The first pope from the Americas says he will not resign, emphasizing his recent four-country trip and bi-weekly physiotherapy as evidence that he is still up to the job.

Read it at Daily Mail

Read more at The Daily Beast.

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer is reportedly moving to a morning time slot to make room for new talent, amid a larger shakeup at the embattled network.

Blitzer, the long-tenured host of The Situation Room at 6 p.m., will launch a new morning show with Pamela Brown, CNN’s chief investigative correspondent.

The shakeup at the network is part of an effort to pave the way for newer talent while allowing popular anchors like Blitzer to remain on the air, sources told Status, a newsletter written by former CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Jon Stewart admitted he was an “arrogant a--hole” on his Weekly Show podcast Thursday in response to a listener who accused him of “helping push Biden out.”

For that reason, “Jon Stewart is an arrogant, self-righteous a--hole,” the note read, according to Stewart’s producers. The late-night host didn’t disagree.

“I completely [accept] the arrogant a--hole part,” Stewart said. But not because his beliefs about Biden’s mental fitness are any different than they were after last summer’s Trump-Biden debate, when he was among the loudest voices on the left expressing public concern about the president’s mental fitness publicly.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Google searches pondering the meaning of the word "oligarchy" soared in the wake of President Joe Biden’s farewell speech after he warned about the gaggle of elites holding all political power. Biden, 82, who will of course be replaced by Donald Trump in just a few days, spoke from the Oval Office in front of members of his family as well as his Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff, and said: “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedom and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.” In the aftermath of the sternly-worded White House address, Google searches for the word’s meaning spiked, jumping from a score of one to 100 on the platform’s scale. According to Google Trends, the top search was for “oligarchy definition,” while “oligarchy meaning” followed. Merriam Webster’s definition for oligarchy is “a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.”

Read it at X

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Wendy Williams is being held against her will in a high-security treatment facility in New York, the former talk show host said Thursday during an emotional interview with the Breakfast Club.

“I feel like I’m in prison. I’m definitely isolated,” Williams, 60, said.

Williams has been in a conservatorship with a court-appointed guardian since 2022. She was diagnosed in 2023 with frontotemporal dementia and aphasia, and in November 2024, her guardian Sabrina Morrissey wrote in court filings that she was “permanently incapacitated.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

At this point, we’ve just about exhausted the possibilities of the “quarantine movie” following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but every now and then something comes along that proves there’s at least one new angle worth exploring. How about a Shakespeare play cast, rehearsed, and performed entirely inside the virtual reality of an online video game? It’s the kind of harebrained idea born from extremes, and the result is Grand Theft Hamlet, which is exactly what it says on the tin.

During that roughly two-year span of “who knows what’s going to happen next” from 2020 to 2022, with the stress of quarantines and national lockdowns that separated us from our friends and loved ones came, ironically, an extreme sense of boredom. Extreme boredom, many of us found, fosters extreme creativity, or, at the very least, a desperate need to do something with your time to keep yourself from going nuts.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Laura Ingraham was left red-faced after an awkward hot mic moment as she introduced Charlie Kirk on her Fox News show.

A disembodied voice could be heard saying an expletive – “Oh s***!” – as Ingraham launched into a live segment with the conservative commentator.

The Fox host raised her voice in what appeared to be a belated attempt to cover up the hot mic gaffe, but she was unsuccessful.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Alternative für Deutschland, the far-right German political party suspected of extremism by the country’s domestic intelligence agency, said it has accepted an invite to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration next week. The AfD’s co-leader Tino Chrupalla and parliamentary group leader Beatrix von Storch will attend, Chrupalla told news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur Thursday, saying the invite came from within Republican circles. After his election win in November, Trump greeted and posed with an AfD candidate accused of being a one-time porn actor at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Elon Musk, Trump’s MAGA billionaire backer, has been an ardent AfD cheerleader in recent weeks. Last week, Musk interviewed the party’s other co-leader, Alice Weidel, for over an hour on his social media platform X, and promoted the anti-immigrant, Islamophobic AfD in advance of a federal election scheduled for Feb. 23. The far-right party is currently second in the polls, though is unlikely to join government as the other major parties have pledged not to work with it. Other staples of the European alt-right slated to be at Trump’s inauguration are Reform UK chief Nigel Farage and the French right-wing extremist Éric Zemmour. Italy’s right-wing nationalist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has visited with Trump and Musk at Mar-a-Lago in recent weeks, has said she would like to attend but has yet to finalize her schedule.

Read it at Berliner Morgenpost

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has been granted preliminary approval for his plan to construct a $1.4 billion luxury hotel on a bomb site in Albania. His wife Ivanka Trump will “help” with the luxury “eco-resort” hotel complex, which will be built on an abandoned military base currently littered with buried munitions. Kushner’s foreign-funded Affinity Partners is managing the project, which is also investing in a Serbian luxury hotel project in a building which was bombed by NATO in the 1999 war. The projects could create the perception of a conflict of interest between Trump and foreign governments, said Obama-era ethics lawyer Virginia Canter, speaking to The New York Times. Trump will be in charge of the foreign policy relating to Albania and Serbia, which both want U.S. support for their efforts to join the E.U. “It looks like favoritism, like they are providing access to Kushner because they want to be on the good side of Trump,” Canter said.

Read it at The New York Times

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Donald Trump’s official inaugural portrait has been dubbed the “supervillain pic of the year,” and the MAGAverse is loving that it nods to his infamous mugshot.

With just days until he is sworn in, Trump and his team are putting the final touches on preparations for his second stint in office.

As part of that effort, the 78-year-old has been on modeling duty, echoing his infamous 2023 mugshot from Fulton County jail in Georgia. This, of course, is where he surrendered himself after being indicted on racketeering and related charges.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, 69, joked in an interview published Thursday that receiving an invite to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration next week cured his impotence. “I’m feeling like a kid again with Trump’s invite,” he told The New York Times. “I’m fired up. I’m not even taking Viagra anymore.” Trump’s gesture is something to be proud of, right? Who’s Trump? The most important guy in the world.” Like Trump, the right-wing leader has been accused of trying to overturn an election he lost. Bolsonaro—dubbed the “Trump of the Tropics”—was indicted in November for plotting an alleged coup to stay in power after Brazilian voters opted for his opponent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the country’s 2022 presidential election. It is unlikely, however, that he’ll make it to see his firebrand American counterpart sworn in next week. Bolsonaro’s passport was taken as part of the probe into the alleged coup, and Brazil’s attorney general recommended that his request to go abroad for Trump’s inauguration be denied. Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice and Bolsonaro critic, decided Thursday that Bolsonaro should not be allowed to travel to Washington, D.C. The former Brazilian leader hinted to the Times that he believes Trump’s influence on global politics might help him stay out of jail. “Frankly, I wouldn’t mind if there were an anti-Viagra, something with the opposite effect,” Trump, now 78, told Playboy in 2004, the year he turned 58. “I’m not bragging. I’m just lucky. I don’t need it.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Nancy Pelosi will not attend Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday.

Pelosi attended the president-elect’s first inauguration in 2017, but will be a mystery no-show this time around, reported ABC News and The Hill.

A spokesperson for the former House speaker confirmed Pelosi will not attend but did not state a reason why. The 84-year-old underwent hip replacement surgery last month after she took a “hard fall” on marble stairs during a state trip to Luxembourg.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Wendy Williams addressed Sean “Diddy” Combs’ mounting legal troubles during the shocking claims she made in a rare interview Thursday on The Breakfast Club.

Host Charlamagne tha God brought up Williams’ departure from Hot 97 in 1998, saying toward the end of the interview that she’d been fired “because of Diddy.” He asked her for her thoughts on the music mogul’s current situation, to which Williams answered: “Diddy will go to prison for life, people.”

“You don’t know things I knew about Diddy back in the day,” Williams continued. “And you want to know what? It’s about time, people, it is about time. Diddy done.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Ron DeSantis named Florida’s attorney general, a Donald Trump loyalist, to fill the Senate seat set to be vacated by Marco Rubio.

Ashley Moody, who has served as Florida’s chief law enforcement officer since 2019, emerged as one of Trump’s most vocal surrogates during the 2020 presidential race. After Trump lost, she used her office to support his efforts to overturn the election.

The Florida governor made the announcement at a press conference on Thursday—a day after Rubio, who is Trump’s pick for secretary of state, received cross-aisle support at his confirmation hearing.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Alien-obsessed Donald Trump Jr. believes there is convincing evidence that extra terrestrial beings are headed for Earth, and he wants SpaceX chief Elon Musk to be briefed on the imminent invasion.

Don Jr., the eldest child of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his first wife Ivana Trump, has shown more than a fleeting interest in aliens in the past, and his far-reaching cosmic gaze enticed him to invite UAP expert Ross Coulthart onto his “Triggered” podcast.

Guys special edition of Triggered TODAY at 5 pm et @rumblevideo

Massive investigation into a covert alien retrieval aircraft program, absolutely huge revelations

Investigative reporter @rosscoulthart with the story plus reaction with @LueElizondo pic.twitter.com/rD3bCniK7J

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 15, 2025

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent a day at sea with a vaccine skeptic influencer who once alleged the actress Amber Heard participated in “Satanic-themed” lesbian orgies.

President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for health and human services secretary, who is preparing to face a confirmation hearing where he will almost certainly be challenged over his own conspiratorial views, was also joined by a former American Idol contestant who previously believed he is a psychic capable of speaking to the dead.

Also there was The Sopranos actress Drea de Matteo, who runs an OnlyFans account for which she said her teenage son helps edit some non-explicit content.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Kamala Harris has told friends that she is deeply sad about President Joe Biden’s claim that he could have won the 2024 election.

Biden said in an interview at the start of January that he thought he could have defeated Donald Trump.

“It’s presumptuous to say that, but I think yes... based on the polling,” he said, speaking to USA Today, later clarifying that he meant both he and Harris “could have... would have” beaten Trump.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

A Southwest Airlines flight was delayed several hours on Wednesday after police removed a pilot from the cockpit and later charged him with driving under the influence. Law enforcement at Georgia’s Savannah Hilton Head Airport detained David Paul Allsop, 52, as the Chicago-bound flight was preparing for takeoff. A source told CBS News he “allegedly smelled of alcohol and may have shown other signs of intoxication.” The flight departed at 10:56 a.m., nearly five hours after its scheduled time of 6:05 a.m., owing to Southwest having to search for a new, sober pilot. Jail records show Allsop, who is from New Hampshire, was released on bond after his bail was set at $3,500. “We’re aware of a situation involving an employee on Flight 3772 this morning from Savannah,” Southwest said in a statement. “The employee has been removed from duty.” Last year, a Delta pilot was sentenced to 10 months in prison in Scotland after he pleaded guilty to turning up to work with a blood alcohol limit twice the legal cap.

Read it at CBS News

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Ridley Scott originally had to defend his choice of leading man in the 1982 sci-fi hit Blade Runner, the celebrated director revealed this week.

“Harrison Ford was not a star yet,” Scott said in a video interview with the magazine GQ.

The actor had played a major supporting role in Star Wars and was in the middle of filming Raiders of the Lost Ark, but he’d never helmed a box office hit.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Gavin Newsom has directed California officials to temporarily raise the state capitol U.S. flag to full staff on inauguration day, in honor of Donald Trump. The height of U.S. flags has become a political touchpoint after the death of Jimmy Carter in December. State flags are traditionally flown at half-staff for 30 days after the death of former U.S. presidents. However, several GOP governors have already said they will break tradition for inauguration day, following the lead of House Speaker Mike Johnson, who ordered that U.S. Capitol flags be raised to full staff for the inauguration. Newsom’s decision to follow them could be seen as an attempt to placate Trump, as he tries to secure federal help amid deadly wildfires, which are still burning. Trump previously made his feelings clear about the flags potentially being at half-staff for the inauguration in a post on Truth Social, saying “no American can be happy about it.” Later, flags at Mar-a-Lago returned to full staff.

Read it at Associated Press

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Authorities in Indonesia are rushing to evacuate 3,000 residents near the Mount Ibu volcano after it erupted for a third time in just a few days, sending a 2.5-mile-high ash cloud into the sky. The volcano, on the country’s eastern island of Halmahera, first erupted on Saturday, shooting up a flaming column. On Tuesday afternoon it blasted again, and then again on Wednesday for around two minutes, according to the country’s volcanology agency. The last eruption was enough for authorities to raise the alert level to the most severe in the local area. The Volcanological Survey of Indonesia then declared a three-mile exclusion zone around the mountain. The National Authority for Disaster Management said mass evacuations were initiated late Wednesday for those living closest to the danger. By Thursday morning, around 500 people had been moved. “The evacuation shelters have been prepared by the local administration, and today a full evacuation will be carried out for all residents in six villages,” a spokesman for the local disaster management agency said Thursday.

Rekaman letusan (timelapse erupsi) G.Ibu
Rabu, 15 Januari 2025 pukul 07:11 WIT pic.twitter.com/CDmr9VirE8

— FPMKI (@InfoFPMKI) January 15, 2025

Read it at Reuters

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Canada is preparing billions of dollars in retaliatory import taxes on American products if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his tariff threats.

Outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the potential retaliation would be spread across the whole of the U.S. and that “everything is on the table,” speaking on Wednesday at a meeting with provincial leaders in Ottawa.

Trump has previously threatened to use “economic force” and impose 25 percent tariffs on all Canadian imports, a threat which he has linked to the smuggling of fentanyl and illegal migration across the U.S.-Canada border.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Bill Lawrence is having a moment, and he knows it.

The prolific TV creator, who counts Spin City, Scrubs, and Cougar Town as his early success stories, “never expected to be having a career renaissance in my mid-50s,” he says. But taking in the view from 10,000 feet up, this era feels more like his imperial phase.

He’s turned out one hit after another since Ted Lasso took screens, hearts, and awards by storm in 2020. After that series racked up 11 Primetime Emmys and a Peabody Award over its three seasons, along came Shrinking, another joke-dense hangout show about navigating serious feelings. This summer brought Bad Monkey, a recognizably Lawrentian adaptation of Carl Hiaasen’s sunshine noir, that debuted to acclaim and strong viewership; and an as-yet untitled project for HBO with Steve Carell.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

President-elect Donald Trump says he is all in on the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games, despite calls from some of his top allies for the event to be relocated as punishment against their partisan enemies.

Axios reported Tuesday that Trump informed Casey Wasserman, the president and chairman of the LA28 committee, that L.A. can expect his full backing.

“These are America’s Olympics,” he told Wasserman during a meeting held at his Mar-a-Lago estate. “These are more important than ever to L.A. and I’m going to be supportive in every way possible and make them the greatest games.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Pakistan’s prime minister has ordered a probe into who greenlit an ad with a plane flying straight at the Eiffel Tower accompanied by the words: “Paris, We’re Coming Today.” The poorly conceived graphic—which many observers were quick to note bore an awkward resemblance to imagery of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York—was designed to announce Pakistan International Airlines resuming flights between Paris and Islamabad. The flights had been suspended for four years after European regulators found nearly a third of PIA’s pilots had cheated on their exams and failed to follow safety procedures. The airline is still banned in the U.S. and U.K. During a parliamentary session this week, Pakistan Finance Minister Ishaq Dar called the advertisement “stupidity.” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif “has directed [authorities] to investigate who conceived this ad,” he added. In 2011, U.S. special forces killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan, where the 9/11 mastermind had been hiding out in a compound in Abbottabad. PIA hasn’t addressed the controversy since it erupted on Jan. 10, and the ad is still visible on its profile on the social media platform X.

pic.twitter.com/qUoNCyL385

— PIA (@Official_PIA) January 10, 2025

Read it at The Guardian

Read more at The Daily Beast.

The world’s second richest man has now got a rocket in space alongside the world’s richest man, after Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket entered orbit.

The spacecraft, called New Glenn, passed the Kármán line—the internationally recognised boundary of space—at around 2 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday after taking off from Cape Canaveral Space Force station in Florida.

pic.twitter.com/o6sMiSABkR

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) January 16, 2025

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Presidential rivals Joe Biden and Donald Trump are both racing to circumvent a law banning TikTok from this Sunday if it remains under Chinese ownership.

Biden’s team is exploring ways to implement the law without immediately shutting down the popular video app, administration officials told NBC News. Trump, meanwhile, is also preparing to intervene keep the app online, his incoming national security adviser, Mike Walz, told Fox News.

Both Biden and Trump originally supported the ban, but now, neither appear keen to incur the wrath of TikTok’s 170 million U.S. users as the clock ticks down. If Biden’s team can’t find a workaround, his last full day in office could be defined not by the ceasefire in Gaza but by TikTok going dark.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

President Joe Biden found support at the Oval Office in second gentleman Doug Emhoff, Vice-President Kamala Harris, first lady Jill Biden, and son Hunter with his wife Melissa Cohen Biden as he delivered his farewell address to the nation Wednesday night. Pictures released by Getty show Biden’s supporters sitting off-camera as the 82-year-old delivered his speech, which warned of an “oligarchy” that “threatens our entire democracy.” He talked of the dangers of social media and technology and without naming Donald Trump, blamed the dangers ahead on a “very few, ultra-wealthy people.” At one point, Emhoff could be be seen hand-in-hand with Jill. Harris and Emhoff have kept a relatively low profile since Harris’ November 2024 election loss. In an interview published hours earlier in The Washington Post, meanwhile, Jill Biden spoke of her relationship with Nancy Pelosi and the role Pelosi played in Biden’s exit. “We were friends for 50 years,” she told the Post. “It was disappointing.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

The CEO of TikTok was invited to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration and is planning to attend. Shou Zi Chew, the Singaporean CEO of the popular vertical video app, will sit at the dais along with other tech leaders, including Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, to watch Trump get sworn in as the 47th president, The New York Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The Supreme Court indicated they would likely uphold the law passed by Congress with bipartisan support in April 2024, which attempted to force the app’s Chinese-owned parent company to sell the app. TikTok is reportedly planning to shut down access to the site across the U.S. just one day before Trump’s inauguration. Although Trump also tried to ban the app during his first term in office, the president-elect is now reportedly exploring options to suspend enforcement of the ban, potentially by executive order.

Read it at The New York Times

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Right-wing media pundits were unimpressed with President Joe Biden’s farewell speech on Thursday, including one Fox panelist who could hardly believe AI didn’t write it and another Newsmax anchor who suggested Biden’s dentures were coming loose.

Appearing from the Oval Office, Biden warned that a “tech-industrial complex” flaming the fans of disinformation and abusing artificial intelligence could become even more powerful in the years to come.

Reacting to the speech on Fox, Dana Perino, a former White House press secretary, said the speech rang “hollow” to her ears and accused speech writers of using AI technology to compose the speech instead.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Seth Meyers mocked President-elect Donald Trump in his “Closer Look” segment Wednesday—all without mentioning his name.

The Late Night host began the segment with a warning to Pete Hegseth fans that he was about to make fun of the defense secretary nominee.

“You might be saying, ‘Seth, why would a Pete Hegseth fan be watching your show?’ Fair point,” Meyers said.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

A judge in Manhattan denied bail for Oren, Tal, and Alon Alexander—two real estate moguls and their brother who are facing federal charges for sex trafficking, allegedly using their wealth and influence to prey on women for over a decade. Judge Valerie Caproni rejected an offer from the brothers’ lawyers asking for release on a whopping $115 million bail. The lawyers tried to argue that if they were released on bail, the family would pay for private security to guard them on house arrest at a high-rise condo in Miami—a deal the judge equated to trying to “buy a private jail,” the New York Daily News reported. Oren, 37, and Tal, 38, were prominent luxury real estate brokers in New York and Miami, reportedly selling ritzy properties to celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, as well as Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Alon is Oren’s twin brother, and was known to frequent the same social circles with his brothers. A federal indictment accused the brothers of “repeatedly drugging, sexually assaulting, and raping dozens of female victims” from 2010 through at least 2021. Prosecutors argued that the brothers posed a significant flight risk, as the charges against them carry a minimum sentence of 15 years to life in prison. The three brothers were arrested in Miami in December, where they have been held without bail. Caproni ordered them to be transferred to Brooklyn’s notorious Metropolitan Detention Center. The trio have denied the allegations.

Read it at New York Daily News

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Christmas may be over, but President-elect Donald Trump still has quite a few names on his naughty list.

In a Truth Social post published Wednesday night, the incoming 47th president of the United States named a handful of former White House staffers as “people suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and asked the public to not recommend job candidates that had previously worked with any of them.

“As of today, the incoming Trump Administration has hired over 1,000 people for The United States Government. They are outstanding in every way, and you will see the fruits of their labor over the coming years,” Trump began.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

President Joe Biden, in his farewell address Wednesday night from the Oval Office, pointed the finger at a “very few, ultra-wealthy people” as he warned about the spread of misinformation and disinformation on social media and the abuse of artificial intelligence—each consequences of a “tech-industrial complex” that could grow even more powerful in the next Trump administration.

Though he didn’t say his name, Biden alluded to his successor’s self-identified “first buddy,” Elon Musk, the billionaire head of X who donated more than a quarter-billion dollars to Trump’s re-election campaign and who is deeply involved with AI.

“There’s a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people. There are dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked,” Biden said. “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Timothée Chalamet skipped the limo and rode a Lime bike onto the red carpet for the London premiere of A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic starring the 29-year-old as the iconic folk singer. In an interview on Wednesday with the French program Quotidien, the actor revealed he was hit with a fine for £65, or about $79, for the stunt. “It’s horrible, because it was a bit of an advertisement for them,” Chalamet laughed with the hosts in French. The host joked with Chalamet, asking him if the e-bike stunt was related to Dylan Goes Electric—the book the biopic was based on. Both the book and movie feature Dylan’s now-legendary performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where the folk star first performed with electric guitars and rock instrumentation. But Chalamet confirmed that it wasn’t a movie tie-in, just a choice he made due to the busy London streets. “No, there were loads of traffic jams,” Chalamet said.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

And just like that ... New York City is moving to finally put an end to unwanted visitors at Sex and the City’s most famous filming locations. The Associated Press reported that the real-life owner of the Brownstone frequently shown as character Carrie Bradshaw’s home in the show has had enough of tourists trespassing on their stoop. On Tuesday, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission approved an application for a gate by Barbara Lorber, who said she “hoped for literally decades that this would pass.” Lorber said fans of the show have disregarded a sign not to sit on her Brownstone’s steps to take pictures and even knock on her door in some instances to recreate moments from the show. Even the show’s star Sarah Jessica Parker was reprimanded for crossing the chain barrier on the Brownstone to do a mini photo shoot for her shoe collection. About the issue, Lorber added, “At this point, I think even someone as stubborn as I am has to admit that this isn’t going away in the near future.” Lorber hopes an iron gate will put an end to the problem and bring her Brownstone some peace.

Read it at Associated Press

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Receipts, proof, timelines, and screenshots were nice, but what happens next?

The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City is Bravo’s perennial underdog, a show that knows full-well the second it slips, vipers are waiting to take it out. So, it’s my pleasure to report that Season 5 has stuck the landing in flawless form, delivering a wonderful finale that caps the best season of Housewives since… Well, maybe it’s the best season ever. It’s just that good.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman said Wednesday he’s open to Donald Trump’s idea that the U.S. acquire Greenland, telling reporters that it’s “strategically a smart thing.”

“I mean, it’s pretty reasonable, and I think it’s actually strategically a smart thing,” Fetterman said, according to NBC News.

CNN’s Manu Raju added that Fetterman told the press that he would support the acquisition if Denmark did as well.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Podcaster and public intellectual Sam Harris has spilled the beans on his falling-out with former pal Elon Musk.

In a 1,700-word Substack post titled “The Trouble with Elon,” the Making Sense host revealed that a text exchange over COVID-19 led to the end of their years-long friendship.

Harris said he and Musk first met around 2008, when the billionaire tech entrepreneur was “teetering on the brink of bankruptcy” as he struggled to pay staff at Tesla.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Incoming White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller stopped by Capitol Hill Wednesday to ask for help sketching out President-elect Donald Trump’s signature mass deportation plan.

Miller, an alum of Trump’s first administration, called on GOP lawmakers to unify and quickly move on immigration legislation during a huddle with members of the Republican Study Committee.

He said lawmakers should prioritize figuring out a funding number that would allow the administration to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, according to sources in the room.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

President-elect Donald Trump is looking to save TikTok from being banned at all costs—even if it means taking a nontraditional route to keep the app in play. As soon as he takes office Jan. 20, sources told The Washington Post that Trump could sign an executive order to suspend the enforcement of the TikTok ban-or-sale law until he can make an adequate deal that would keep the app available in the U.S. A source added that Trump’s interest stems from his fanbase on the app and its ability to serve as an echo-chamber for his political policies. “I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” said Trump last month when asked how he plans to stop the ban. The topic came up while Trump was discussing foreign policy at a Mar-a-Lago press conference. He added that he would “take a look” at policy surrounding the ban. His position marked a 180-change from his previous support of the ban. In 2020, the government began investigating a ban of the Chinese-owned social media app at his request as then-president, deeming it a “national security threat.”

Read it at The Washington Post

Read more at The Daily Beast.

UFC star Conor McGregor has been sued by a woman, identified as a 49-year-old “Senior Wall Street Vice President at a high-profile financial institution,” for alleged sexual assault. In the Tuesday filing, the woman alleges that McGregor assaulted her in a bathroom at the Kaseya Center during an NBA Finals game between the Miami Heat and Denver Nuggets on June 9, 2023. The Kaseya Center and the Heat are also both named as co-defendants in the suit. A criminal investigation into the allegations was previously conducted in 2023 after an incident report was filed by the plaintiff to the Miami police department two days after the alleged assault occurred. The Florida State Attorney’s Office declined to go forward with the charges in October, 2023, however. “After a thorough investigation at the time, the State’s Attorney concluded that there was no case to pursue,” McGregor’s attorney, Barbara Llanes, said in a statement to the New York Times’ sports division The Athletic. “Almost two years and at least three lawyers later the plaintiff has a new false story. We are confident that this case too will be dismissed.” The Athletic adds that the Heat and Kaseya Center declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Read it at The Athletic

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Walgreens has come to find out that both shoplifters and customers are turned off when items are locked away. In an earnings call on Tuesday, the drug store’s CEO Tim Wentworth blamed declining sales on locked-up items: “When you lock things up… you don’t sell as many of them. We’ve kind of proven that pretty conclusively.” The method of locking things away on shelves has become somewhat popular in recent years as retailers look to reduce product theft. But it may be scaring away those who want to buy an item but don’t want to wait for it to be unlocked. Wentworth referred to the struggle as a “hand-to-hand combat battle,” and said they were looking for “creative” solutions to fight theft, according to CBS News. Walgreens reported an operating loss of $245 million in the quarter, up over $200 million from the same time period last year. The outlet reported that the company plans to close hundreds of stores in 2025.

Read it at CBS News

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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Valentine’s Day is a few weeks away, which means it’s time to start thinking about gifts for your S.O. Finding the right present for the man (or person) in your life can be tricky—especially for a “Hallmark Holiday.” Fortunately, MANSCAPED has you covered with its selection of grooming tools he’ll actually use. Whether surprising a long-term significant other, impressing a new flame, or treating yourself in the spirit of self-love, the brand’s bestselling, all-inclusive bundles make for the perfect gift.

From trim to aftercare, MANSCAPED’s Performance Package 5.0 Ultra kit has everything a man needs to feel clean-cut and confident. The bundle includes the brand’s marquee Lawn Mower groin and body hair trimmer, as well as aftershave lotion and anti-chafing deodorant—a combination guaranteed to give him an expertly-groomed groin (and set the stage for some post-holiday fun!) Once the NSFW nether regions are taken care of, he can use MANSCAPED’s Weed Whacker ear and nose hair trimmer to make sure his face looks and feels fresh, too. Plus, the package comes with super-soft supportive boxers and a luxury toiletry bag to add to its overall value.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Former Tonight Show host Jay Leno is on the front lines helping first responders in the wake of the deadly L.A. fires.

Leno told host Sandra Smith that he volunteered to serve meals to the firefighters responding to the emergency affecting the greater Los Angeles area because he didn’t want to be a part of the “blame game.”

“The great thing is I haven’t heard a political discussion for the last four days. Nobody’s blaming this, that,” said Leno. “Everybody else in L.A. is pointing fingers and blaming people. These are the people actually doing something to fix it.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Although he’s yet to outwardly confirm it, this is probably the closest Severance fans will get to Ben Stiller acknowledging his secret cameo on the show.

The Apple TV+ sci-fi thriller series stars Adam Scott, Zach Cherry, Britt Lower and John Turturro as a group of employees at Lumon Industries, an enigma of a company that prides itself in its “severance” program which splits its staff’s personal memories from their work memories in an effort to achieve work-life balance.

Along with serving as one of the show’s directors and executive producers, Stiller also boasts an uncredited voice-over cameo in the series which some might miss on their first watch. The short scene takes place in episode 8 of Severance’s first season, and sees–more like hears—Stiller voicing the animated version of Lumon founder Kier Eagan as he congratulates an employee for reaching their quota.

Read more at The Daily Beast.