politics
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It was a music-packed first night at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, with Jason Isbell, Mickey Guyton and James Taylor all performing at Chicago’s United Center in support of presidential hopeful Kamala Harris. Isbell and Guyton both made their DNC debuts on Monday night (Aug. 19), while Taylor was playing his fifth straight convention in […]
John Legend was one of the first major musicians to publicly endorse Kamala Harris for president in 2024, but he’s not the only one in his family supporting the politician.
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter ahead of his private performance at the Democratic National Convention this week, the “All of Me” singer revealed that his 8-year-old daughter Luna — one of four kids he shares with Chrissy Teigen — sees Harris as a role model. “[Luna] is so excited to see someone who’s Black and Asian like she is, [and] a woman like she is — so she’s looking at [Kamala] like, ‘This is me’ up there,’” he told the outlet.
“For her to see that, of course, is really inspiring, and she’s excited,” he continued. “And she can’t imagine why anyone would vote for Donald Trump, but that’s another issue.”
As mentioned, Legend was quick to voice support for Harris when President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race in July. “I’m so ready to work to help unite the pro-democracy coalition to reject Trump’s authoritarian, oppressive Project 2025 and elect Kamala Harris as our President,” he tweeted at the time. “She’s ready for this fight and I’m excited to help her in any way I can.”
The EGOT winner also praised Biden’s decision to let Harris take the reins while speaking to THR. “I think people were kind of apathetic about voting for two 80-year-olds, and they were ready for some new energy and some new excitement,” he said. “I’m truly grateful to President Biden for making that sacrifice, because the default for any president, especially someone who’s had as successful a first term as he has, is to run for re-election. And he understood that that wasn’t necessarily the best thing for the country, and he did something that was really graceful and patriotic by stepping down and allowing a new generation to step up.”
Legend’s remarks come over a week after he announced plans to release an album full of children’s lullabies titled My Favorite Dream, featuring lead single “L-O-V-E.” On the track he sings alongside Teigen and their oldest two children, Luna and 6-year-old son Miles.
Luna also personally illustrated the single’s cover art, and Legend — who’s also Dad to 1-year-old daughter Esti and 2-month-old Wren — wrote on Instagram that all the album’s songs were “baby tested, baby approved.”
“I’m right in the thick of fatherhood,” he added in a statement about the LP, which is due Aug. 30. “My parents loved to sing around the house, making up bedtime songs for us and songs to motivate and inspire us. And Chrissy and I also love singing to our kids. We make up little jingles and ditties for them all the time. In our home, music is very important to the way we interact and communicate with them.”
It looks like Ye still has love for Donald Trump.
Over the weekend, the Chicago rapper was spotted with his wife, Bianca Censori, in their Tesla Cybertruck outside a Donald Trump rally in Beverly Hills, California. TikTok user @ali.aam.06 captured a group of Trump supporters running up to Ye’s car as he pulled over to show them love. Naturally, the crowd went nuts and couldn’t believe they had just met him as he drove off.
Last month, during an appearance on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, former White House director of strategic communications Alyssa Farah Griffin revealed a plan the ex-president had for “unifying” the country. “One day he wanted to have Kanye West come and do a church service on the White House lawn to unify the country,” she told a fan after being asked what was the wildest thing that came across her desk as a Trump staffer. “And I can think of a few things less unifying than that. But we were like, ‘Not the time or the place, sir.’”
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The former president and Ye have been linked since 2016, when the rapper met with Trump in New York City after he won the presidential election. “I wanted to meet with Trump today to discuss multicultural issues,” Kanye tweeted at the time. “I feel it is important to have a direct line of communication with our future President if we truly want change.”
Their most recent link-up was when they had a controversial dinner with far-right streamer Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, where Ye reportedly asked Trump to be his 2024 running mate. “So I help a seriously troubled man, who just happens to be black, Ye, who has been decimated in his business and virtually everything else and who has always been good to me, by allowing his request for a meeting at Mar-a-Lago, alone, so that I can give him very much needed ‘advice,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social at the time. “He shows up with 3 people, two of which I didn’t know, the other a political person who I haven’t seen in years. I told him don’t run for office, a total waste of time, can’t win. Fake News went CRAZY!”
Also, Trump made an appearance on Adin Ross’ stream earlier this month (Aug. 5) and referred to the rapper as “complicated.” Trump said of West, “He’s very complicated. Let’s say complicated, because he is. He’s a really nice guy, but he can get some people into trouble.” Adding, “And he can get some other people — he’s got a good heart, he does, he does, but he’s complicated.”
Ye has yet to publicly endorse the former president’s current re-election campaign.
The Democratic National Convention takes over Chicago’s United Center starting on Monday night (Aug. 19), and Mickey Guyton and James Taylor have joined the opening day performer lineup, Billboard has confirmed. Guyton and Taylor will join previously confirmed performer Jason Isbell, who is set to deliver a rendition of his 2015 hit, “Something More Than […]
President Nicolás Maduro lashed out at Venezuelan singer and influencer Lele Pons in a video posted on his Instagram and TikTok accounts, amid the tension generated by the recent Venezuelan presidential elections in which he declared himself the winner. The video was released after the massive opposition march on Saturday (Aug. 17), which brought together thousands of people in Caracas and other cities worldwide, including Tokyo, Mexico City and Miami.
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“Eleonora ‘Lele’ Pons wants to impose a government in #Venezuela through a concert in Miami, but who said she is a politician? Lele Pons is not the #CNE! Do not underestimate Venezuela, you do not know the spiritual power of this #People!” reads the description of Maduro’s TikTok video.
“Who said that Lele Pons and the artists that she is calling, just like the concert in Cúcuta, should determine the life of an entire country?” the Chavismo leader said. “So they think that because some artists were going to sing, the next day they would invade Venezuela. Be careful with manipulations, be careful. And you can conspire from Miami, but in Venezuela, the Venezuelans rule. As we did with the artists at the concert in Cúcuta, so will the people of Venezuela, today even more strongly.”
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Shortly after, Pons reacted in a video on her TikTok account captioned, “You will not silence me! VENEZUELA WON 🇻🇪❤️.” The artist also shared some images on Instagram of her participation in the march, during which she carried the flag of her native country, accompanied by Venezuelan artists Danny Ocean, Elena Rose, Marko and Joaquina, among others.
Pons is the Venezuelan influencer and singer with the most followers on social media, with more than 53.4 million followers on Instagram alone and 32.5 million on TikTok. She has been vocal about the irregularities in Venezuela’s elections, where the opposition claims to have evidence that its candidate, Edmundo González, obtained the majority of the votes.
On Aug. 9, she did an Instagram Live with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, during which the politician answered questions from her followers and announced Saturday’s massive event aimed at the international community.
See Lele Pons’ TikTok below:
Before this wildly unpredictable presidential campaign season even kicked off, technology experts issued dire warnings that doctored artificial intelligence images and videos could be used to manipulate voters. That appears to be the case with some seemingly manufactured images shared by three-time White House candidate Donald Trump on Sunday (Aug. 18) on his Truth Social account.
The twice impeached former one-term Republican president re-posted a series of images whose authenticity could not be verified and which appeared to show Taylor Swift fans, as well as the singer herself, throwing in with his campaign. One featured six squares filled with smiling Swifties wearing “Swifties for Trump” T-shits with the message “Swifties Turning to Trump After ISIS Foiled Taylor Swift Concert,” a seeming reference to the recently foiled plot to attack Swift’s since-cancelled trio of concerts in Vienna after the discovery of a 19-year-old ISIS-radicalized man’s plan to cause a mass casualty event outside the singer’s Austrian shows.
In another image meant to mirror the iconic “I Want You For U.S. Army” recruiting poster, a user doctored up an image of Swift in a patriotic red, white and blue suit and star-spangled top hat with the message, “Taylor Wants You to Vote For Donald Trump.” The other two pictures featured more images of what are allegedly Swift fans in Trump-boosting gear.
At press time spokespeople for Swift and Trump had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment on the post, which also featured Trump’s enthusiastic response to the alleged endorsement, “I accept!” According to The Daily Beast, the Swiftie images were first posted to X on Friday and Saturday by a couple of popular right-wing accounts, including one that reportedly mixed the doctored AI images with a real one of a blonde woman wearing a “Swifties For Trump” shirt at a rally. The Sunday Times noted that one of the 25 Truth Social posts featuring the faked images that read “The Swifties for Trump movement is real!” was labelled “satire,” calling into question whether Trump, 78, realized that he was re-posting computer-generated pictures.
Swift has yet to endorse anyone in the 2024 presidential race between convicted felon Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, whose nomination will be celebrated this week in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention. Harris was swapped in for President Joe Biden last month and since her sudden elevation to the top spot on the ticket polls have shown the once dead-even race that Trump — now the oldest candidate to ever run for the White House — was winning in several key battleground states shifting slightly in Harris’ favor.
The singer eschewed political endorsements for most of her career, but following Trump’s election in 2016 she endorsed two Democratic candidates in midterm elections in her home state of Tennessee as well as endorsing Biden in 2020. She also took aim at the former Apprentice host during the George Floyd protests in 2020, lambasting Trump’s response to the unrest after earlier saying she was “completely blindsided” by his 2016 victory over former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton.
“After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? ‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’???” Swift wrote in reference to a comment from Trump that many took as a veiled threat to protesters who flooded the streets around the nation following the killing of unarmed 46-year-old Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer who kneeled on his neck for nearly 10 minutes. “We will vote you out in November.”
Trump, who the Washington Post reported in 2021 had made nearly 31,000 false or misleading statements during his presidency — a rate of 21 claims per day — recently claimed that photos of a massive Harris/Walz rally in Detroit were AI-generated, a falsehood that was quickly disproven by photos and videos taken by reporters and attendees on the ground.
Check out the AI Taylor Swift images below.
Lol, Trump posted a collage of AI generated Taylor Swift fans wearing ‘Swifities for Trump’ T-shits, and wrote “I accept!” as if this were real.I mean…..this is uniquely pathetic, even for Trump. pic.twitter.com/GUVXQLqzYo— Peter Henlein (@SwissWatchGuy) August 18, 2024
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Source: Pacific Press / Getty / Eric Adams
The federal investigation into NYC Mayor Eric Adam’s 2021 campaign continues to be a thorn in his side.
Raw Story reports that Mayor Mixxy was reportedly subpoenaed as part of the ongoing federal investigation into corruption and unlawful campaign donations.
Per Raw Story:
Three subpoenas were served in July, The New York Times reported. They seek an array of materials such as texts, documents and other communications, and reportedly seek information on the travel of Adams, his aides and others, as well as fundraising activities.
Specifically, the subpoenas were issued to Adams, City Hall and Adams’ mayoral campaign, according to CNN. The subpoena to City Hall seeks information including about his travel to Turkey.
According to the website, the feds are investigating whether Adams and his campaign were in cahoots with the Turkish government, allowing him to receive unlawful campaign donations and free flight upgrades from Turkish Airlines.
The New York Times also reports that the feds are investigating whether Mayor Adams pushed the fire department into giving the green light on a new skyscraper consulate for Turkey, raising safety concerns.
Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for Adams, spoke to CNN on the matter, saying that the NY Mayor expects everyone to cooperate and “swiftly bring this investigation to a close.”
Levy continued, “As a former member of law enforcement, the mayor has been clear over the last nine months that he will cooperate with any investigation underway. Nothing has changed.”
Welp.
This latest news comes after the feds seized two of Adams’s phones, and the homes of two of his raids were the subject of raids.
We shall see if this investigation has serious consequences for the NYC Mayor.
Barbra Streisand was the marquee star on Thursday night’s (Aug. 15) Jewish Women For Kamala online Zoom rally in support of the presumptive democratic presidential ticket. The latest in a series of similar digital rallies that have brought together white dudes, Deadheads, Swifties, Black men and women and several other niche voting demos drew more than 16,000 attendees according to organizers, many, no doubt, tuning in to hear what the Oscar-winning legend had to say about Vice President Kamala Harris and her VP pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
“It’s been said that Jewish women are known to speak out and tell you what they think and I’m one of them,” said Streisand, seated in a bespoke library. “I’m so tired of hearing [former President Donald] Trump put down America, saying ‘Make America Great Again’ because America has been great since 1776. And it’s still great in 2024.”
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Streisand said she’s supporting Harris/Walz because she wants a president who believes we can “do anything if we work together.” She praised the democratic ticket for bringing a new sense of “optimism, energy and excitement” to the campaign since Harris stepped in for President Biden more than two weeks ago in an unprecedented switch at the top of the ticket with less than 100 days to go in the neck-and-neck race.
The singer called Harris a “terrific combination of both compassion and strength, a joyful warrior who will fight for the values that so many of us hold dear.” She went on to praise the Vice President for being a consistent advocate for programs that support gender equality, social justice and voting rights, while noting that in a recent appearance at a rally with evangelical voters Trump promised that if they voted for him just this one time, “you don’t have to vote again,” a line some took as the latest attempt from the former one-term president to erode democratic norms.
“Can you imagine?” Streisand said. “In contrast, Kamala Harris understands just what a privilege it is to be able to vote! And her commitment to health care, Social Security, education and to combatting climate change are the policies of someone who cares about the future of our country, our children and our planet… and not just the profits from big oil.”
Streisand noted that women are nurturers who take care of others and can think “beyond themselves,” while tagging Trump as someone who cares “only about himself” while insulting “any woman who questions him” by calling them “nasty.”
“I don’t think he even respects women,” Streisand said as a pivot to Trump’s appointment of several conservative Supreme Court justices who erased half a century of precedent by overturning Roe v. Wade. “I don’t know of any equivalent law giving the government control over men’s bodies,” she said of the decision that eliminated the federal right to abortion.
“Clearly in some people’s eyes women don’t count… oh but we will in November when they count the votes!,” she added with a sly smile before doing the most Barbra thing possible and taking a brief pause to sip of water from a flowered tea mug through a straw before leaning into Trump’s VP pick, Sen. JD Vance. She lambasted the first-term Ohio native for what she said are his stances that “women should stay at home,” as well as her description of what she said said was his belief that women’s careers are to blame for the nation’s “moral decline.”
“But Vance’s moral compass seems off, because he sees nothing wrong with his running mate — a convicted felon who talks about law and order — but doesn’t think it applies to him,” she said of Trump, who in addition to his 34 felony convictions in New York in his porn star hush money trial, is facing at least three other major court cases tied to his hoarding of government documents at his Florida residence and federal election interference tied to his attempt to results of the 2020 election he lost to President Biden.
She warned that Trump and Vance had given a preview of what they have in mind via their embrace of the Project 2025 blueprint from the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, a document that seeks to replace thousands of non-partisan federal workers with political appointees loyal to Trump while injecting conservative Christian values into government as well as eliminating the Department of Education and the Head Start program for young children living in poverty. Calling it a “naked grab for power… a blueprint for a dictatorship,” Streisand said the 900-page document is full of things that should be alarming to anyone who cherishes the Constitution.
Trump has claimed he has “nothing to do” with the controversial Project 2025, despite Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts telling the Washington Post that he personally briefed the former president on it, as well as recent hidden camera footage in which one of the document’s co-authors talked extensively about his work behind-the-scenes to prepare policy for a potential second Trump administration.
Decrying the use of “fear and hate” to pit people against each other, Streisand described great presidents such as Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson working to bring Americans together and change the world. “This is how we make progress, not with hateful, divisive leadership,” she said, praising Harris’ compassion “for all human beings,” while criticizing Trump for what she said was his lack of “intelligence, judgement and heart.”
“Our society will flourish with a smart, experienced woman,” Streisand said in conclusion to her two-plus minute endorsement. “Who will defend our rights and send Trump back to where he belongs… in his golf cart, lying about his scores.”
Check out Streisand on the Jewish Women for Kamala call below.
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With the presidential elections approaching, the Democratic ticket is helping voters get to know them on a personal level.
Kamala Harris and her selected Vice President, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, sat down for a wide-ranging chat uploaded to YouTube on Thursday (Aug. 15), where the duo discuss topics including their childhoods, taco recipes and their hope for the future of America.
They also share a love for music, and the conversation led to each politician sharing the music that shaped them throughout their lives. For Walz, it started with Bruce Springsteen’s 1980 album The River, which he called a “transformational piece of music” for him. He also shared his love for Bob Seger. “My first car, it was the summer of 1980 and I’d been saving up. I buy a 1973 orange Chevy Camaro,” he recalled. “Got an eight-track player in it. The previous owner left Bob Seger’s Night Moves in there. I listened to it, and it’s kind of the soundtrack of my life. […] What’s really great about it is I’ve got a ’79 international that’s my car and it’s got an eight-track player in it. I have the very eight-track to this day.”
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For Harris, Aretha Franklin was a major part of her childhood. “My mother had every Aretha album and our Christmas gift to my mother, her birthday gift was always like, what’s the latest Aretha Franklin record?” she explained.
Harris added that while Stevie Wonde, Miles Davis and John Coltrane were also fixtures within her family home, one of her “personal favorite musicians” was Minnesota’s own Prince. “My husband Doug and I — I’m more of a hip-hop girl, and he’s more Depeche Mode,” she shared. “However, in the Venn diagram of things, Prince he and I love the same. Talk about how Prince was with that guitar, man. I almost know by heart every one of those songs.”
“I feel like a trip to Paisley Park is going to happen here,” Walz said of the late icon’s beloved Minnesota estate, to which Harris happily replied, “It’s on my bucket list.”
Watch Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s full conversation below.
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Meek Mill wants to sit down with Vice President Kamala Harris and ask her three questions. The Philly rapper took to X on Wednesday (Aug. 14) and had questions about the Democratic presidential nominee’s past as San Francisco’s district attorney. “I wanna ask Kamala Harris questions about her past as a da, even if she […]