Category: Celebrity

Former White House communications aide Cliff Sims says he’s one of the vipers in his new memoir, Team of Vipers, about his 500 days in President Trump’s West Wing, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is a snake. At least that was Trump’s assessment of McConnell after their first legislative strategy session in February 2017, Sims recounts, according to an excerpt in Politico. The topic of discussion was repealing ObamaCare, and Trump’s interest was piqued by “an offhand comment” from McConnell about “doing this without any Democratic votes,” Sims writes.

Trump suggested the bill might get support from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), “a friend of mine” from a state he’d just won by 42 points. “Absolutely not,” McConnell responded. Manchin will vote no, and “we’re going to do everything in our power to beat him when he comes up for reelection in 2018.” Trump asked: “Do we have to go after him like that?” And McConnell said yes, “we’re going to crush him like a grape.”

On Thursday, Manchin — who did vote against the GOP’s failed ObamaCare-repeal bill, along with three Republicans, and won re-election in 2018 — made a joke of McConnell’s reported threat.

I heard @senatemajldr wanted some #WV crushed grapes, so I dropped some off at his office today. pic.twitter.com/jvp2IDfOwl

— Senator Joe Manchin (@Sen_JoeManchin) January 31, 2019

McConnell’s statement had a different effect in the Roosevelt Room, Sims writes:

There was a brief silence — maybe a half second — when the atmosphere in the room felt like the scene in Goodfellas when no one can tell how Joe Pesci is going to react to Ray Liotta calling him “funny.” Would he freak out? Would he laugh it off? Finally Trump broke the tension. “This guy’s …read more

Source:: The Week – Lifestyle

      

Actress Ellen Page was Stephen Colbert’s guest on Thursday’s Late Show, and if you want to know more about her new Netflix show, The Umbrella Academy, this isn’t really your late-night clip. She and Colbert discussed her one-year-old marriage, Hollywood’s slightly improving record on LGBT issues, and the environment, all issues Page clearly cares deeply about.

“We’ve been told, as we know it, that by 2030, the world as we know it, that’s it,” Page said. “That’s it. If it was a movie, we’d have Bruce Willis in a suit, like talking about something — please cast me,” she deadpanned. “Please, Amy Adams, save us.” She said climate change’s reality isn’t any more of a “debate” than the hate crime against Jussie Smollet.

“Sorry, I’m like really fired up tonight,” Page said. “But it feels impossible not to feel this way right now, with the president and the vice president, Mike Pence, who, like, wishes I couldn’t be married. Let’s just be clear: The vice president of America wishes I didn’t have the love with my wife. He wanted to ban that in Indiana, he believes in ‘conversion therapy,’ he has hurt LGBTQ people so badly as the [governor] of Indiana.” Page returned to Smollet, who she said she doesn’t know, and laid a trail of bread crumbs back to Pence: “If you are in a position of power and you hate people, and you want to cause suffering to them, you go through the trouble, you spend your career trying to cause suffering, what do you think is going to happen? Kids are going to be abused and they’re gonna kill themselves, and people are going to be beaten on the street. … This needs to f—ing stop.”

The audience, which had been completely silent since booing “conversion therapy,” …read more

Source:: The Week – Lifestyle

      

Super Bowl LIII is on Sunday, between the New England Patriots and the Los Angeles Rams. The big game is being broadcast on CBS, and that may be the only reason why sports semi-enthusiast Stephen Colbert allowed his staff to ask one question of some Super Bowl players on Thursday’s Late Show. Johnny Hekker, John Johnson III, Trey Flowers, Julian Edelman, Rob Gronkowski, Ndamukong Suh, Dante Fowler, and Jason and Devin McCourty each answered their one question, give or take a question, but Tom Brady affected a strange quasi-British accent and recited Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy, complete with poor Yorick’s skull.

It is a testament to the fact that you can be amazing in one field and … not in another, and also that Shakespeare really did some exceptional work with this speech. Watch below.

…read more

Source:: The Week – Lifestyle

      

“The nation’s gripped with cold right now, but despite that, you know who’s all hot and bothered? Donald Trump,” Stephen Colbert said on Thursday’s Late Show. “The president’s intelligence chiefs publicly contradicted him Tuesday,” so at the White House on Thursday, Trump first told reporters that he would probably be proved right, Colbert said, then “later this afternoon, Trump explained that what the intelligence chiefs said to Congress wasn’t actually what they said to Congress.”

“What do you mean they were ‘misquoted’?” Colbert asked Trump, rhetorically. “There were cameras. It was live. We all watched it.” He helpfully juxtaposed the intelligence chiefs’ comments with Trump’s assertions, for context. “Now, after reviewing all that, some would say that Donald Trump is denying reality at a level that is clinically insane,” Colbert said. “Others would say that, too.”

Trump also talked about his wall, confusingly. “So, he’s going to shut down the government unless he gets the wall we already have,” Colbert paraphrased. He found more to like in Trump’s tweet about calling the wall the wall: “Yes, thank you, let’s stop playing these political games. Who was that jerk who kept insisting on not calling the wall the wall?” You probably know the answer, but Trump suggesting we call the wall a peach was too much for Colbert — until he envisioned it as Trump’s new slogan: “We’re going to build a giant peach, and James is going to pay for it. Build the peach! Build the peach!”

At The Daily Show, Trevor Noah agreed about mocking Trump’s attacks on other politicians for not saying “wall,” but he drew the line at “peaches.” “If the wall is called ‘peaches,’ then I think we should build a wall,” he joked. “Because Peaches the Border Wall is the most …read more

Source:: The Week – Lifestyle