Trump admits defeat
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The last presidential debate in June was among the most consequential televised debates in U.S. history, prompting a dramatic switch at the top of the ticket. President Joe Biden rode into office in 2021 thanks to a broad coalition united to beat former President Donald Trump, but trailing Trump in the polls, his poor debate performance raised questions about the rationale for his candidacy. If the stakes are really as high as you say they are, step aside so someone else can win.
Biden meant what he said, and Vice President Kamala Harris is seeking to rebuild a version of his coalition for herself, uniting her party behind her and reaching across the aisle. But Harris is a different candidate and 2024 is a different time. She tells her supporters “we are not going back,” but if elections are about the future, she has to argue a path forward too. Tuesday’s debate is her chance to do that and show she can defeat Trump once and for all.
A former prosecutor, Harris has prepped for the debate by running through mock sessions in a Pittsburgh hotel with replica TV lighting while Trump has held “policy sessions” to brush up. With early voting beginning as soon as next week in some states, time is running short for the candidates to make their case to voters, which makes Tuesday’s showdown all the more important. As very recent history has shown, a debate can change everything. — Hunter
Trump admits defeat:
Speaking to podcast host Lex Fridman in an episode released last week, Trump admitted he lost the 2020 election “by a whisker,” after nearly four years of false claims that he won and the results were rigged.
“I was told if I got 63 million, which is what I got the first time, 'You would win. You can't not win,' and I got millions more votes than that and lost by a whisker,” Trump said.
Former Trump aides Alyssa Farah and Cassidy Hutchinson testified in 2022 before the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol that Trump admitted privately that he knew he lost the 2020 election.
420 blaze it, Trump supports legalizing weed:
Richard Nixon must be spinning in his grave. Trump, a Florida man, said in a post on his social network Truth Social Sunday that he’ll vote yes on Amendment 3 in November, which would legalize recreational marijuana in the state.
Trump’s stance puts him at odds with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who opposes the amendment. “I believe it is time to end needless arrests and incarcerations of adults for small amounts of marijuana for personal use,” Trump wrote in his post, adding he also supports unlocking “the medical uses of marijuana” and “safe banking” for authorized companies.
FLOTUS kicks off NYFW:
New York Fashion Week opened last week, and First Lady Jill Biden was on hand for Ralph Lauren’s spring 2025 runway show Thursday and Fashion for Our Future on Friday, a rally in Bryant Park in support of voting with Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and others.
During Dr. Biden’s remarks at the rally, which was organized by Vogue and the Council of Fashion Designers of America, she spoke about her first date with her future husband the President and called for assault rifles to be banned following the fatal shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., that left two teachers and two students dead.
“This week we saw yet another tragic school shooting,” FLOTUS said. “We all stand with Georgia in sorrow and prayer but we also have to act. We cannot accept these school shootings as a fact of life. We must ban assault rifles.”
Melania gets political in memoir promo:
Former First Lady Melania Trump is officially doing more to promote her memoir than Britney Spears ever did. Trump has posted multiple video messages promoting her self-titled book on social media, including her first (below), in which she wears a houndstooth suit and images from her time as FLOTUS flash on screen. “I believe it is important to share my perspective,” she says. “The truth.”
More recent videos are more pointed. In a second video, Trump essentially criticizes Biden’s handling of the presidency without mentioning his name (“The 2020 election results changed our lives forever,” Trump says. “It impacted our quality of life, cost of food, gasoline, safety, and even the geopolitical landscape. America is more divided today than ever before.”), and in her latest video, posted today, she says there’s more to learn about the assassination attempt against her husband.
“The attempt to end my husband’s life was a horrible, distressing experience,” Trump says. “Now, the silence around it feels heavy. I can’t help but wonder why didn’t law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech. There is definitely more to this story and we need to uncover the truth.”
Emhoff on how he developed his platform as Second Gentleman:
Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff said “everything’s changed” since his wife announced she was running for president. “It’s like being shot out of a cannon,” he said during his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live Thursday, and he said it feels like he’s always working. “There’s almost no happy couple time anymore,” Emhoff said. Harris tells him, “stop, focus, we've got to win this thing. Get back on the road, get out there.”
Emhoff dropped some details about his 10th wedding anniversary the night of Harris’ acceptance speech. “I still of course had to come up big for our anniversary,” he said, so he got the piano player who played at the after party of their wedding 10 years ago to come play for them again. “I figured out a way to get him to Chicago.”
Emhoff said his platform as SGOTUS was inspired by his wife. She said, “how about focusing on gender equality,” he recalled, and since Emhoff is the first Jewish White House principle, he’s also added combatting anti-semitic hate to his portfolio. The issue is “another thing that she really pushed me to use my voice on,” he said.
Liz Cheney is voting for Harris and her Republican dad will to:
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chair of the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, said last week at an event called “Defending Democracy” at Duke University that she’s voting for Harris.
“As a conservative, and someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this and because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris,” Cheney said.
Her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, joined her Friday saying publicly he would also vote for Harris. In a statement, the elder Cheney said, “there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump” and he “can never be trusted with power again.” Cheney’s former boss, former President George W. Bush, is staying out of things. “President Bush retired from presidential politics years ago,” Bush’s office told NBC News. Speaking to press at a spice shop in Pittsburgh that had a giant heart on the wall that said “Kind,” Harris said she’s “honored” to have the Cheneys’ endorsement, calling it an important statement about putting country over party.
Pence is teaching poli sci:
Call him Professor Pence. Former Vice President Mike Pence has a new job teaching political science at Grove City College, a small, private, conservative college in Grove City, Pa. Class started Thursday, per the Erie Times-News, and though Pence was there in person, he will teach some classes via videoconference.
Barron enrolls at NYU:
Former first son Barron Trump started school last week at NYU’s Stern School of Business. “He was accepted to a lot of colleges,” his father told Daily Mail. “He's a very smart guy, and he'll be going to Stern, the business school, which is a great school at NYU.”
This never-before-seen footage of the JFK assassination is heading to auction:
More than 60 years after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, previously unseen 8mm color silent film footage of Kennedy’s motorcade in Dallas before the shooting and then footage after the shooting showing the presidential limousine rushing to Parkland Memorial Hospital has been uncovered and it’s now heading to auction. The footage was shot by Dale Carpenter, a truck driver, and it’s being sold at RR Auction by his grandson. The auction ends on Sept. 28, and the price is currently up to more than $16,000 after six bids.
“Virtually every still photograph and motion picture of the events in Dallas was confiscated for examination by authorities in the aftermath of the assassination; every frame of all known footage has been exhaustively studied by government investigators, historians, researchers, conspiracy theorists, and the public at large,” RR Auction said in a statement about the footage. “As this reel has remained unknown and unseen for decades, it represents a unique opportunity to reopen the study of the tragedy of Nov. 22, 1963.”
This documentary suggests Abraham Lincoln was a little bit Gaybraham Lincoln:
A new documentary about Abraham Lincoln called Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln says America’s 16th President shared a bed with a man named Joshua Speed for four years and fell into suicidal depression when Speed left.
The doc is directed by Shaun Peterson, who told The Hollywood Reporter he’s been researching for it since 2007. It focuses on Lincoln’s relationships with four men, but Lincoln was especially close to Speed, who once wrote about himself and Abe, “No two men were ever more intimate.” Cute.
🇺🇸 More members of FDNY have died from 9/11-related illness than were killed on day of attack. There were 343 members of the FDNY that died on 9/11. In the 23 years since, more than 360 have died of World Trade Center-related illnesses, the department said. [ABC 7 New York]
📱 Google faces a new antitrust trial after ruling declaring search engine a monopoly. One month after a judge declared Google’s search engine an illegal monopoly, the tech giant faces another antitrust lawsuit that threatens to break up the company, this time over its advertising technology. [Associated Press]
💿 North Carolina man accused of $10 million A.I.-aided streaming fraud. The 52-year-old man was accused of creating "hundreds of thousands of songs with artificial intelligence" and using "bots" to stream the A.I.-generated tunes billions of times to earn royalties, federal prosecutors said. [USA Today]
🚬 Teen vaping hits 10-year low in the U.S. More than 1.6 million students reported vaping in the previous month — about one-third the number in 2019, when underage vaping peaked with the use of discrete, high-nicotine e-cigarettes like Juul. [ABC News]
👑 Kate Middleton reveals she has finished chemo, says the “last nine months have been incredibly tough.” "Life as you know it can change in an instant and we have had to find a way to navigate the stormy waters and road unknown," the Princess of Wales says. [People]
Kendrick Lamar will perform at the Super Bowl next year:
Rapper Kendrick Lamar will headline the halftime show at next year’s big game in New Orleans, the NFL announced Sunday. The Pulitzer Prize and 17-time Grammy Award winner, who performed as part of the 2022 Super Bowl halftime show with Dr. Dre, made the news official with a video of him launching footballs in front of an oversized U.S. flag. “I don’t want you miss it,” he says. “Meet me in New Orleans Feb. 9, 2024. Wear your best dress too, even if you’re watching from home.”
Travis Scott disputes Billboard’s album chart:
After Sabrina Carpenter hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart last week with Short n’ Sweet, Travis Scott’s team is crying foul. According to a letter sent from Scott’s Cactus Jack Records to Billboard and the data tracking firm Luminate, which tabulates the chart, Scott’s team said last week’s album chart was “unreliable and incomplete.” Instead, the rapper’s No. 2 album Days Before Rodeo should have narrowly taken the top spot last week, his team says. Luminate says that’s not the case. “We are confident that our numbers are correct in accordance with our processes and methodology,” a spokesperson told Vulture.
Snubbed by CMAs, Beyoncé stuns on GQ:
Beyoncé’s breakthrough country album Cowboy Carter didn’t make the cut when the Country Music Awards announced nominations Monday, something Dionne Warwick called “absolutely ridiculous.” Morgan Wallen leads the CMA’s nominations tally with eight nods.
Awards show snubs aside, Beyoncé looks amazing on the cover of GQ’s October 2024 issue, photographed by Bryce Anderson. In the cover story about “The Business of Being Beyoncé,” the singer said the reason she didn’t release music videos for Renaissance and Cowboy Carter is because the music “needed space to breathe on its own.” “The music is enough,” she said, and instead of music videos, the fans, tour, and film became the visuals.
“Sometimes a visual can be a distraction from the quality of the voice and the music,” she said. “I thought it was important that during a time where all we see is visuals, that the world can focus on the voice. The music is so rich in history and instrumentation. It takes months to digest, research, and understand.”
Jack White is suing Trump over “Seven Nation Army”:
White Stripes singer Jack White has filed suit against Trump after the former president used a snippet of the band’s iconic song “Seven Nation Army” in a social media post. In the suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, attorneys for White said he and band member Meg White “vehemently oppose the policies adopted and actions taken by Defendant Trump when he was President and those he has proposed for the second term he seeks.”
Elton John got a kick out of Trump’s “Rocket Man” nickname for Kim Jong Un:
Speaking to Variety at the Toronto Film Festival, Elton John said he laughed when he heard about Trump using the nickname “Rocket Man” for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. “I thought it was brilliant,” he said. “I thought it was a light moment, and it was fun.”
“Donald’s always been a fan of mine, and he’s been to my concerts many, many times,” John said. “So, I mean, I’ve always been friendly toward him, and I thank him for his support. When he did that, I just thought it was hilarious.”
Don’t mistake the musician’s nice words for an endorsement, though. “People can vote for who they like, but as far as I’m concerned, I love love,” the singer said. “There is a danger, as Dick Cheney said the other day. America is in a very volatile position. And it’s a country I love, and I’ve always loved, and I’m so thankful that it made me who I am.”
Selena Gomez is a billionaire:
Yet another musician has reached billionaire status. Selena Gomez is worth $1.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, but unlike Taylor Swift, who made most of her money from music and touring, 81% of Gomez’ worth comes from her beauty brand Rare Beauty.
R.I.P. James Earl Jones:
Actor James Earl Jones, who voiced Darth Vader, Mufasa, and CNN’s tagline “this… is CNN,” died Monday at the age of 93. Jones, a Tony, Emmy, and Grammy Award winner, once said of overcoming self doubt, “You’re the only person who can tell whether you have talent or not, and there’s a certain point where you’ve got to be really honest with yourself and say, ‘yeah, I do and I’m going on,’ or ‘no I don’t.’ And your parents can’t do it for you. Critics can’t do it for you. Once you determine that, there should be no room for doubt.”
Thanks for reading! See you next time. ⭐