by | Jul 26, 2024 | The Hill
The creator of the popular HBO political comedy series “Veep” said the current political reality is “madder” than that portrayed in the comedy series
Friday in The New York Times.
“What’s going on? The stuff happening out there right now is madder than ‘Veep’ and deadly serious,” Armando Iannucci said in his Times piece.
He added, “These are real events, not melodramatic fictions, and they have a real impact on our lives. Depending on who wins, either we’ll continue our attempts to halt global warming, or we’ll sit back and melt in our sleep.”
“Veep” has gained extra attention in the wake of President Biden stepping out of the 2024 presidential race and Vice President Harris becoming the likely Democratic nominee, with some seeing parallels between the show’s storyline and current events.
“The show stars the unbeatable Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Vice President Selina Meyer,” Iannucci said in his Times piece. “As the series progresses, Selina is suddenly thrown onto the main stage when the president decides not to run for a second term, leaving her to go into the convention as the new presumptive nominee. For 24 hours, the mainstream media asked if I was pleased with the comparison.”
“This is the first time I’m setting out a definitive answer to that question, and the answer is: No, I’m not. I’m extremely worried! Not about Ms. Harris. I’m sure she’ll inject much-needed sharpness into the campaign,” he continued. “What worries me is that politics has become so much like entertainment that the first thing we do to make sense of the moment is to test it against a sitcom.”
A
, said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published Wednesday that the most similar candidate in this year’s presidential race to Louis-Dreyfus’ character in the series is Trump, not Harris.
“The Selina-est candidate is Donald Trump,” Mandel said in the interview.
“Vain, worried about his looks, has a ridiculously better relationship with his body people than his own children, petty, vindictive, worries about his own money, doesn’t believe what he says, says whatever to get elected,” Mandel continued.
by | Jul 26, 2024 | The Hill
Former President Trump said Friday he removed “the last bandage off of my ear” in the wake of a recent assassination attempt against him in which one of his ears was injured.
“As I think you can see, I’ve recovered well and, in fact, just took off the last bandage off of my ear,” Trump said at an event by the conservative Christian organization Turning Point Action in Florida.
Trump faced an assassination attempt earlier this month
by a bullet in one of his ears. He could be seen sporting a bandage on one of his ears at the recent Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee and subsequent events.
“I took it off for this group,” Trump said at Friday’s event. “I don’t know why I did that for this group, but, that’s it. I think that’s it, I hope that’s it.”
The former president insisted Thursday that it was a bullet that struck one of his ears following FBI Director Christopher Wray
in front of Congress Wednesday that “there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that, you know, hit his ear.”
“No, it was, unfortunately, a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard. There was no glass, there was no shrapnel,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “The hospital called it a ‘bullet wound to the ear,’ and that is what it was. No wonder the once storied FBI has lost the confidence of America!”
Rep. Ronny Jackson (D-Texas), a former White House physician who has said he treated the president’s ear,
of what hit Trump’s ear.
“During the Congressional Hearing two days ago, FBI Director Christopher Wray suggested that it could be a bullet, shrapnel, or glass,” Jackson said in a letter posted Friday to Truth Social.
“There is absolutely no evidence that it was anything other than a bullet. Congress should correct the record as confirmed by both the hospital and myself. Director Wray is wrong and inappropriate to suggest anything else,” he added.
by | Jul 26, 2024 | The Hill
A new advertisement for former President Trump’s campaign tries to paint Vice President Harris as the face of “Bidenomics.”
The nearly minute-long ad,
on his Truth Social account Friday, features clips of Harris mentioning “Bidenomics” and ends with text stating “HARRIS OWNS ‘BIDENOMICS’ SHE MADE IT HAPPEN.”
“‘KAMALA HARRIS OWNS BIDENOMICS,’” Trump captioned the Truth Social post with the ad.
President Biden has
“Bidenomics” slogan to shine a light on the efforts of his administration to turn the economy around.
“Here’s the simple truth about trickle-down economics, it didn’t represent the best of American capitalism, let alone America,” Biden
June. “It represented a moment where we walked away … from how this country was built, how this city was built. Bidenomics is about the future.”
Harris became the likely presidential nominee for the Democratic Party after Biden dropped out of the presidential race last weekend. She quickly snapped up key endorsements from those in her party and large amounts in fundraising in the days after her boss dropped out.
According to a
from The Hill/Decision Desk HQ, Harris is behind Trump by 2.1 points, at 45.7 percent support to the former president’s 45.8 percent.
Harris revealed
Thursday titled “We Choose Freedom,” with Beyoncé’s song “Freedom” as background music.
“The freedom not just to get by, but to get ahead. The freedom to be safe from gun violence. The freedom to make decisions about your own body. We choose a future when no child lives in poverty, where we can all afford health care,” Harris says.
The Hill has reached out to the Harris campaign.
by | Jul 26, 2024 | The Hill
Since 2015, the number of Americans who say they are ready for a female president has dropped by nine points, according to a new Times/SAY24 poll from YouGov poll.
The survey, conducted after President Biden dropped out of the race, was designed to assess the electorate’s beliefs surrounding “gender bias,” and Vice President Harris’s chances come November.
While the respondents said that both Trump and Harris are equally qualified for the job, with 49 percent saying they are, voters are hesitant about the idea of a female president — 54 percent of the country says they are ready for a woman president and 30 percent said they aren’t.
That number is down from 2015, when an Economist/YouGov poll found 63 percent of voters were ready for a woman president. That survey was taken in May of that year, just a month after Hillary Clinton declared her candidacy for president, and a month before she became the first woman to secure a major party’s presidential nomination.
As Harris contends to be the second to do so, gender may serve as a significant roadblock. Forty-one percent of Americans assume that more than half of their fellow countrymen would not be willing to vote for a woman over a man if the two candidates are equally qualified.
The assessment extends to members of the Democratic party. While 77 percent say the country is ready for a woman president, 37 percent think their fellow Americans wouldn’t vote for an equally qualified woman. These anxieties may have led 35 percent of Democrats to say Harris should choose a man as her running mate, and only 6 percent to say that she should choose a woman.
Still among Democrats that could be selected as a running mate, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had the highest favorability at 27 percent. She has taken herself out of consideration for the vice presidency, instead choosing to join the Harris campaign as a co-chair.
Two top contenders for the VP nomination poll favorably as well — former astronaut Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) both rate at 22 percent.
The YouGov Poll was conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday among 1,170 registered U.S. voters. The margin of error was 3 percent.
by | Jul 26, 2024 | The Hill
Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) on Friday unveiled an endorsement from the family of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old shot and killed by Ferguson police in 2014.
Bush is locked in a close primary race against St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell, who, defeated a seven-term incumbent in 2018. During his campaign for county prosecutor, Bell vowed to get justice for the Brown family.
In an ad released Friday announcing the endorsement, Brown’s family spoke about that promise. The ad opens with Mike Brown, Sr. and his daughter standing side by side.
“After the murder of my son, Wesley Bell promised to pursue justice for my family,” the elder Brown says.
His daughter adds, “My brother deserved justice.”
Six years after Brown’s death, then newly-elected Bell declined to bring charges against Darren Wilson, the officer who shot the teenager.
At the time, Bell said that although the case represented “one of the most significant moments in St. Louis’ history,” an independent review could not prove that Wilson committed murder or manslaughter under Missouri law.
“He never brought charges against the killer,” Mike Brown, Sr. says in the ad. “He never walked the streets of Ferguson with me. He failed to reform the office.”
Bush has spoken often of her time as an activist leader in Ferguson after the fatal shooting and has said it, and the aftermath, prompted her to run for office.
The progressive “Squad” member is facing a tough re-election bid. A June
found Bell ahead of Bush by 1 point, and this week The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s editorial board
Bell in a scathing rebuke of Bush.
Still, in her latest ad, the Browns throw their full support behind Bush.
Bell “used my family for power and now he’s trying to sell out St. Louis,” Brown’s father says. “He doesn’t care about us.”
Brown’s daughter chimes in, closing out the ad with a resounding, “Cori Bush does.”
