FLOTUS backchannels with Putin
Plus: Bad Bunny’s streams are up
The First Lady has been working behind the scenes to reunite families torn apart by Russia’s war in Ukraine. And Taylor Swift just broke a bunch of chart records.
Welcome to this week’s issue of Whig. Read to the end to hear how AMC is honoring the life of Diane Keaton. — Hunter Schwarz
Trump speaks peace:
President Donald Trump, who just got his flu shot and COVID-19 booster, spoke in Egypt Monday during peace talks for the Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement he announced the “first phase” of last week.
“This took 3,000 years to get to this point. Can you believe it? And it’s going to hold up too. It’s going to hold ups,” Trump said. Twenty surviving hostages were returned to Israel Monday.
Trump said on the plane ride over to the Middle East that he doesn’t think he’s getting into heaven.
Trump hates his Time cover:
Trump complained about his new Time magazine cover story showing him with the coverline “His Triumph.” Trump wrote on his social network the story was “relatively good,” but the picture, however, “may be the Worst of All Time” (capitalization his).
“They ‘disappeared’ my hair,” Trump wrote in part. “I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a super bad picture, and deserves to be called out.” OK, diva.
Government shutdown continues:
The shutdown is entering its third week. Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday, “We’re barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history.”
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told Fox News Sunday “Even (Rep.) Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) agrees that we have to address this health insurance crisis right now.”
FLOTUS backchannels with Putin:
First Lady Melania Trump has been backchanneling with Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin to reunite eight Ukrainian children displaced because of Russia’s invasion. Trump said at the White House Friday that since she wrote a letter to Putin in August about bringing children home, “much has unfolded.”
“He responded in writing, signaling a willingness to engage with me directly and outlining details regarding the Ukrainian children residing in Russia,” Trump said. “Since then President Putin and I have had an open channel of communication regarding the welfare of these children.”
FLOTUS said there have been several backchannel meetings and calls “all in good faith.” Ukraine says nearly 20,000 children have been abducted in the war.
Hegseth said there’s going to be a Qatari military facility in Idaho:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday that the U.S. was “signing a letter of acceptance to build a Qatari Emiri Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Air Base in Idaho. The location will host a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots to enhance our combined training.”
He added on X later Friday that “Qatar will not have their own base in the United States—nor anything like a base. We control the existing base, like we do with all partners.”
Already, the Mountain Home Air Base hosts jet fighters from Singapore, according to the Wall Street Journal, but the Qatari announcement inspired backlash on the right. Qatar previously gifted Trump with a jumbo jet that the U.S. accepted in May.
Here’s the National Guard at Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid in Memphis:
This is a wild shot. National Guard troops were spotted guarding the largest pyramid in the U.S. last Friday. On Saturday, a federal appeals court upheld a block on the deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago.
Biden is undergoing radiation treatment:
Former President Joe Biden, whose office announced in May that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, is now “undergoing radiation therapy and hormone treatment,” according to a spokesperson. Biden’s treatment is expected to last five weeks, per NBC News.
In an interview with MSNBC conducted shortly after the news broke, former Vice President Kamala Harris said she called Biden and left a message. “I think Joe Biden is a fighter and that is what I told him and left him a message, he’s a fighter, and he’s going to fight this. And we’re going to hold him up, and pray for his recovery and for his strength and for his family,” she said.
Harris doesn’t know “if we can trust what’s coming out of the DOJ right now”:
Also during her MSNBC interview, Harris told host Eugene Daniels, “I don’t know if we can trust what’s coming out of the Department of Justice right now. And that pains me to say that, as someone who spent the majority of my career as a prosecutor, where the work of a prosecutor should be to do justice.”
Talking about the Trump administration’s targeting of Trump’s enemies, Harris said “the rule of law is very much under attack by this president who thinks that the Department of Justice is his personal lawyer and is basically subverting the will of the people around constitutional safeguards.”
“A justice system is actually supposed to be blind in the way that it does it work, not targeting people because of who they are, or for that matter, what they look like,” Harris said.
Obama calls on companies to take a stand:
In an interview with Marc Maron for the final episode of his podcast WTF, former President Barack Obama had good advice about pivoting to the next thing drawn from his experience leaving elected office (“take your time,” he told Maron) and shared his thoughts on changing people’s minds.
“You can’t just be a scold all the time. You can’t constantly lecture people without acknowledging that you got some blind spots too and life’s messy,” he said.
Obama also called out universities, law firms, and businesses that made deals with the Trump administration. “We all have this capacity, I think, to take a stand,” he said. “We’re not going to be bullied into saying that we can only hire people or promote people based on some criteria that’s been cooked up by Steve Miller.”
The new American pope’s first apostolic exhortation is to care for the poor:
Pope Leo has a message. In his first major document, an apostolic exhortation, the first American Pope called on people to care for the poor.
“Charity has the power to change reality; it is a genuine force for change in history. It is the source that must inspire and guide every effort to ‘resolve the structural causes of poverty,’ and to do so with urgency,” Leo wrote in part.
He called for denouncing the “dictatorship of an economy that kills” and said, “We need to be increasingly committed to resolving the structural causes of poverty. This is a pressing need that ‘cannot be delayed, not only for the pragmatic reason of its urgency for the good order of society, but because society needs to be cured of a sickness which is weakening and frustrating it, and which can only lead to new crises.’”
🎬 No. 1 movie: Disney’s Tron: Ares with $33.5 million.
💿 No. 1 album: Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl debuts with a record 4 million copies sold in a week, breaking Adele’s previous record of 3.482 million copies of 25 sold in 2015. The album becomes Swift’s 15th No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 album chart. Swift is now second to only the Beatles on the chart, who have 19 U.S. No. 1 albums.
🎵 No. 1 song: Swift’s “The Fate of Ophelia” debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming her lucky 13th No. 1 hit. She’s now tied for the fourth most No. 1s on the chart. Swift occupies the entire top 12 of the chart with all 12 tracks from The Life of a Showgirl, which is now the first album in chart history “to place all its songs uninterrupted from the top of the chart on down,” per Billboard, and she’s the first artist in chart history to occupy the entirety of the top 10 on three separate occasions.
Bad Bunny’s streams are up:
Since he was announced to be next year’s Super Bowl halftime show performer late last month, Bad Bunny’s streams rose 26%, from 173 million streams the nine days before the announcement to more than 218 streams the eight days after, according to data from Luminate.
Speaker Johnson said last week he “didn’t even know who Bad Bunny was” and “it sounds like he’s not someone who appeals to a broader audience,” and he suggested Lee Greenwood should do the Super Bowl instead. Bad Bunny was the top-streamed artist on Spotify from 2020 to 2022 and he’s been one of the platform’s top three most-streamed artists every year for five years, fyi.
Zach Bryan responds to backlash over the ICE lyrics in his song snippet:
Zach Bryan faced blowback after posting a song snippet last week with lyrics like “ICE is gonna come bust down your door” and “the fading of the red, white and blue,” and he said last Tuesday the song has been “misconstrued.”
“I served this country, I love this country and the song itself is about all of us coming out of this divided space. I wasn’t speaking as a politician or some greater-than-thou a**hole, just a 29-year-old man who is just as confused as everyone else,” Bryan wrote on his Instagram Story. “This shows you how divisive a narrative can be when shoved down our throats through social media.”
Bryan said that the song is about “how much I love this country and everyone in it more than anything. When you hear the rest of the song, you will understand the full context that hits on both sides of the aisle.”
Chappell Roan says “f*** ICE”:
At her L.A. comeback show Friday in Pasadena, Calif., Chappell Roan proclaimed her love for her adopted hometown and said, “f*** ICE.”
“L.A.’s my favorite city in the world, to be honest,” the singer said. Describing the first five years after moving to L.A. from Missouri as a “really, really tough time,” she said she loves the city “more than ever than” after the fires.
“I just realized that I’m so lucky to be able to live here and to play here, and the city has taken care of me, and it’s my duty to take care of it back,” she said. “Oh. F*** ICE.” Variety notes that though some in the crowd started chanting the phrase, Roan “moved on rather than encourage it.”
Katy Perry was spotted kissing Justin Trudeau on a yacht:
Paparazzi captured Katy Perry and former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in photos Sunday embracing and smooching while on a yacht off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., the pop star’s hometown. The pair were previously spotted having dinner in Montreal in August, so I guess things are getting serious. The next album is going to be insane.
Charli XCX covers Vanity Fair:
Charli XCX reads the comments. In her cover story for the November cover of Vanity Fair, the singer said she reads every bit of coverage about herself. “It’s fascinating to see how people ingest your personality and spit it back out—what people cling on to, what people miss,” she said. “I’m always interested in, like, what does the casual viewer think? And they probably think I’m a girl who parties and does drugs and is a little bit bitchy.” The cover was photographed by Aidan Zamiri.
Dolly Parton is out here doing proof-of-life videos:
Dolly Parton is setting the record straight. In a video to prove she “ain’t dead yet!” after her sister Freida Parton posted online last week that she was “up all night praying for my sister, Dolly,” Parton said “I want you to know that I’m OK.”
Parton, who recently postponed her Las Vegas residency over health reasons, said that after her husband died, “I didn’t take care of myself,” and “I let a lot of things go that I should have taken care of.” “Nothing major,” she said. “I’m not ready to die yet. I don’t think God’s through with me, and I ain’t done working… keep praying for me.” Yes, ma’am.
K-Fed speaks out on Britney:
I’m fiercely protective of Britney Spears and don’t like elevating gossip, but her ex-husband Kevin Federline is calling on Britney fans to “save” her in his forthcoming memoir. K-Fed describes Britney’s behavior as erratic and writes that “this situation with Britney feels like it’s racing toward something irreversible” and “It’s become impossible to pretend everything’s OK,” according to The New York Times.
Federline claims the “Free Britney” movement to end her conservatorship “started from a good place” but now since people around Britney were villainized, professionals who could help her now might be afraid to work with her.
“All those people who put so much effort into that should now put the same energy into the ‘Save Britney’ movement. Because this is no longer about freedom. It’s about survival,” Federline wrote, adding that anyone “who has ever been moved by Britney” to stand by her and her sons. “Now, more than ever, they need your support.” Wishing Britney and her family the best and sending love and prayers, as always. We love you, Britney. 💕
AMC is re-releasing these two movies to honor Diane Keaton:
Diane Keaton died Saturday at the age of 79, and AMC Theaters is honoring the Oscar-winning actress by bringing her 1977 film Annie Hall and her 2003 film Something’s Gotta Give back to 100 theaters, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley, who played Keaton’s character’s daughter in Father of the Bride, told People that Keaton “had such a great sense of humor, and was just full of laughter, and so generous with compliments.” RIP 🕊️
Thanks for reading! See you next week. ⭐