Year: 2022

Donald Trump has never seemed to have much of a grasp on reality. At times he genuinely seems to believe his own bull. Perhaps he really does seem to think the 2020 election was stolen from him, despite a complete dearth of evidence to prove it. Still, calling his chaotic one-term presidency a “romantic period” seemed to be going too far, particularly knowing what we now know about him clogging White House toilets with illegally torn-up documents.

The former president, who now lives in resorts where he babbles to strangers, called into Fox News as he so often does these days. And he ranted about his successor, as he also so often does these days. He was waxing poetic on the glories of a term during which his approval rating never hit acceptable marks and during which hundreds of thousands of Americans died.

“Our country was thriving. We were just beating everybody,” Trump told his hosts, though it wasn’t clear who he meant by “everybody.” He then imagined what his base thought of a term that ended in disgrace. “And they view it as a romantic period I think, and I think that’s really why it’s doing so well, because there is a lot of romance to the book.” (This was a reference to his pricey coffee table book, which The Washington Post described as the product of a “wandering mind.”)

He went on to talk about how “we were respected,” though the only people he could cite as respecting the country under his watch were Vladimir Putin, who may be about to start a war, President Xi of China, who has been accused of human rights violations, and Kim Jong-un, who is a straight-up dictator.

He went on, saying, “And people viewed it as a very beautiful and maybe romantic time in a sense, despite all of the nonsense by the other side, the radical left I call it, because that’s what it is, they’re sick. So it was a beautiful time and people loved it.”

It’s a grossly distorted view of a time of high anxiety and government incompetence. And people online couldn’t help but beg to differ with his rosy summation.

Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani, one of his closest cronies, is reportedly in talks to sing to the House Select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, which closed out his term in appropriately disgraceful fashion.

(Via Raw Story)

It’s said that superhero movies have kept adults in a state of arrested development, but some take it further than most. Case in point: In a recent post on Reddit (as caught by IndieWire), one woman claims that her husband is willing to miss the birth of their child so he can see The Batman on opening day.

In one of those “AITA” (“Am I the Asshole?”) posts that often go viral, a mid-twenties woman says that her 28-year-old husband is prioritizing Robert Pattinson’s maiden voyage as the Caped Crusader over being there when a person he helped create enters the world. The issue is that the film’s release date coincides with one of their estimated due date. While only a fraction of babies arrive on due dates, there’s still a chance.

“He says it is important to see the movie the first day because of spoilers and that, even I end up having the baby that day while he is watching the movie, at worst he would arrived [sic] a few hours late and is not such a big deal,” the woman writes. “He says I am being irrational and emotional because of being pregnant. I am upset because I feel deprioritize by him.”

Commenters have by and large been supportive, some wondering whether the “irrational and emotional” might be the person who would rather see a comic book movie (even one with nods to Kurt Cobain) instead of being there to support his wife through one of the most difficult days of her life. It’s also worth noting that The Batman is incredibly long, about a half hour longer than Goodfellas. That’s a lot of time away from your spouse’s side as she’s going through pain you will never have to experience.

(Via IndieWire)

Not only are we a few hours away from a Super Bowl matchup between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Los Angeles Rams, but we’re also almost moments away from what’s lining up to be an awesome halftime show. Dr. Dre, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, and Mary J. Blige are all going to take the stage later tonight. Dre has promised some surprises for the halftime show, but whatever’s about to happen won’t occur without approval from the NFL.

One thing they shot down was this: Eminem reportedly wanted to take a knee in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick. According to Consequence and Puck, the NFL denied Eminem’s request. The league has also allegedly denied one of Snoop Dogg’s outfits due to possible gang ties and it flagged Dr. Dre’s lyric from “Still D.R.E.” as it includes lyrics like “still not loving police.” It’s reported that the league doesn’t want the Super Bowl to be perceived as a “divisive culture war moment.”

Nonetheless, Dre is very excited about the halftime show, which he spent upwards of $7 million worth to put together. “Hip-hop is the biggest genre of music on the planet right now, so it’s crazy that it took all of this time for us to be recognized,” he said. “I think we’re going to go on and do a fantastic show and we’re going to do it so big that they can’t deny us any more in the future.”

Marvel movies and shows tend to be strictly PG-13. You might get a decapitation here, mass genocide there, but such instances are quick and bloodless, nothing that can’t stream on the family friendly-ish Disney+, where even a brief butt shot from a nearly 40-year-old movie has to be awkwardly censored. But while Moon Knight, the forthcoming Marvel show with Oscar Isaac, Ethan Hawke, and the recently late Gaspard Ulliel is unlikely to go the Deadpool/Zack Snyder route, it’s definitely going to be heavier than the usual fare.

In a new interview with Empire, Marvel Studios honcho Kevin Feige talked up the show, which stars Isaac as a former marine who adopts the powers of an Egyptian god. And he promised the protagonist, who becomes a vigilante, was both superhero and antihero.

“He’s brutal,” Feige claimed “It’s been fun to work with Disney+ and see the boundaries shifting on what we’re able to do. There are moments [in the series] when Moon Knight is wailing on another character, and it is loud and brutal, and the knee-jerk reaction is, ‘We’re gonna pull back on this, right?’ No. We’re not pulling back. There’s a tonal shift. This is a different thing. This is Moon Knight.”

Again, it’s highly unlikely that things will go full gorehound. This is Disney+, not Shudder. But the MCU could stand some morally gray superheroics, and it might get some.

Moon Knight debuts on Disney+ on March 30.

(Via Empire)

It’s pretty clear that Kanye West isn’t too fond of Pete Davidson at the moment. The SNL star is currently dating the rapper’s ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, which is one reason Kanye’s been continuously attacking Pete, whether it be through his music (see: “Eazy” and “City Of Gods“) or through Instagram posts. Kanye shared another example of the latter while making a firm declaration against Pete.

On Instagram, Kanye shared a screenshot of a text message he received from Pete. “… As a man, I’d never get [in the] way of your children,” Pete says in the slightly-cropped screenshot. “[That’s] a promise. How you guys [go about] raising your kids is [your business] and not mine.” He adds, “I do hope [one] day I can meet them and [we can] all be friends.” Despite the genuine move from Pete, Kanye shut it down through his caption of the Instagram post. “NO YOU WILL NEVER MEET MY CHILDREN,” he wrote.

Kanye also shared the post with a screenshot from Pete and Machine Gun Kelly’s infamous Instagram Live session that took place on Calvin Klein’s main account. In it, the two stripped down to their underwear for a truly wacky livestream. Kanye’s post comes after he announced an event for Donda 2 in Miami. It’s set to occur on February 22, the same day that the album is set to be released.

Today is Super Bowl LVI, when the Cincinnati Bengals will take on the Los Angeles Rams for this year’s NFL championship. There are plenty of exciting factors with this year’s game, which takes place in Los Angeles. The Bengals could win their first-ever championship; for the Rams, it could wind up being their first since 2000. Them there’s the halftime show, which is set to be epic, with Dr. Dre, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Mary J. Blige, and Snoop Dogg. Despite all of this, Cardi B has noted a downside with the big game taking place in LA.

During an Instagram livestream, Cardi expressed her frustration with not being able to spend a full night out because of city regulations. “My question is who thought it would be a good idea to do the Super Bowl in LA when everything closes at 2 AM?” she said during the livestream while riding around in her car. “Who thought that was a motherf*cking good idea? That’s not a good idea, it’s 2 AM there’s no afties.” She then asks if there’s a strip club open which there was not.

She went on: “Everything closes at 2 AM, oh my god, all the baddies are texting me right now. Oh my god, Normani’s texting me right now y’all, all the baddies are texting me right now. We were supposed to be going out somewhere else, but there’s no place else my n****. We’re homeless, we’re party homeless. Everything closed at 2 AM b*tch, this don’t make no f*cking sense. I don’t understand.” She then asked someone in her car — presumably her driver — who was responsible for creating such a law before comparing her nightlife experiences to that of Atlanta and New York.

Cardi concludes her light-hearted rant by once again saying it doesn’t make sense that everything closes at 2 AM in LA. She also noted that Teyana Taylor, Normani, Megan Thee Stallion, Karrechue, Chloe Bailey, and “every f*cking body is outside.” Finally, she and Offset, who was also in the car with her, settle on inviting everywhere to their house to continue their fun for the night.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The new Hulu miniseries Pam & Tommy chronicles one of the most shocking stories about one of the ‘90s most high-profile couples: when model/actress Pamela Anderson (played by Lily James) and heavy metal god Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan) had a tape featuring them having sex was stolen from their home and sold on the market. It was not, as Anderson has pointed out, technically a “sex tape”; she described it as “a compilation of vacations that we were naked on.”

But how did the pair first discover the tape had been stolen and disseminated.

The answer is: along with everyone else. In a new piece by Esquire recounting the history of the infamous tape, Lee describes how he and Anderson learned about the fate of the intimate footage. First of all, the two had brought a camcorder with them on their honeymoon, having married about a month-and-a-half after meeting.

Some time later, a disgruntled builder (played on the show by Seth Rogen), miffed at being fired for a job deemed by Anderson and Lee as not very good, broke into their home and stole a safe that he didn’t know contained said tape. He sold it to a retired porn star (played on Pam & Tommy by Nick Offerman), who quickly got it on the market.

Cut to early 1996. Anderson had given birth to their first child. “One night, Pamela and I were chowing down on some dinner and flipping through television stations when we heard our names being mentioned on some news show,” Lee told Esquire. “On the screen, there was a dude at Tower Video stocking the shelves with videotapes. And we knew just what they were.”

The two then began a very long legal fight to stop the sale of the tape, and broke up after two years, though not necessarily because of the pilfered tape. You can see how that went by watching Pam & Tommy, with new episodes bowing every Wednesday through Feb. 23.

For months, Donald Trump’s orders to his cronies about the House Select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riots were simple: Don’t talk to them. Some haven’t, and face jail time. Many, however, have. And it appears that one of the big fish — someone who likely knows more than most — is reportedly ready to squeal.

That person is Rudy Giuliani, the former president’s lawyer and prominent cheerleader for what has become known as “the Big Lie.” Three sources tell The New York Times that the onetime New York City mayor, whose reputation and financial wellbeing have been in tatters since aiding Trump in his fruitless bid to overturn the 2020 election, is in discussions to provide testimony to the committee so despised by members of the Republican party.

These discussions could fall apart; Trump could always apply some pressure. But sources say Giuliani, the NYT says, “plans to take a less confrontational stance toward its requests than some other members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle who are fighting the committee’s subpoenas or have otherwise refused to cooperate.”

One reason for playing ball? Possibly to avoid further legal headaches that could come with fighting a subpoena. Giuliani already has enough legal problems as it is, being sued for $1.3 billion by Dominion Voter Systems, who have also come for Trump loyalists like lawyer Sidney Powell and pillow salesman Mike Lindell.

Giuliani stuck his neck out for Trump, not only financially but reputationally. His attempts to aid in Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories led to repeated and creative humiliation, including the Four Seasons Total Landscaping debacle, delivering a press conference while mystery goo ran down his head, and introducing the world to the instantly infamous wine lady witness. And after all that, Trump refused to help him out as his legal and financial troubles mushroomed. Maybe this will be both Giuliani’s comeback as well as his payback.

(Via NYT)

On Saturday, Kanye West shared some news about Kid Cudi in regards to Donda 2. “Just so everyone knows Cudi will not be on Donda because he’s friends with you know who,” he wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post. “We all speak Billie language now.” Kanye didn’t specify who he was referring to as “you know who,” but all signs pointed to none other than Pete Davidson. If that wasn’t enough, Kanye used a strange meme to essentially declare war on Davidson, Cudi, and others.

The now-deleted Instagram post saw Kanye putting his own spin on the movie poster for Marvel’s 2016 film Captain America: Civil War. Kanye, who assumes the role of Captain America, places the following heads on the opposing superheroes: Pete Davidson, Kim Kardashian, Kid Cudi, Billie Eilish, and Taylor Swift. Each person is someone Kanye has issues with, whether it dates back to last week or a decade ago.

As for his own team, Kanye has recruited Julia Fox, Future, Drake, and Travis Scott to help him fight back. Kanye also captioned the picture, “THE INTERNET HAS STILL NOT FOUND A DECENT PICTURE OF SKETE,” which is yet another example of Kanye speaking about Davidson without using his name. The caption also confirms that he did not create the meme.

(SPOILERS for this week’s Power Book IV: Force will be found below.)

The conclusion of one of 50 Cent’s Power spin-off series marks the start of another one! After Tariq St. Patrick and company closed off season two of Power Book II: Ghost, Tommy Egan’s journey following the death of James St. Patrick, aka Ghost, is officially underway with Power Book IV: Force. The Tommy-led spin-off begins with him heading cross country from New York City to begin a new life in Los Angeles. However, he makes a quick stop in Chicago to visit his old childhood home. It’s here that he discovers that his grandmother is still alive, but that’s not all.

How Are ‘Power’ Characters Tommy And JP Connected?

After visiting his grandmother’s nursing home for a second time, Tommy is confronted by a man named JP, who questions his reason for visiting the old woman. It turns out that Tommy and JP are half-brothers who share the same mother, Katherine. She left JP and his father and relocated elsewhere to continue her life raising Tommy. JP asks Tommy for more about Katherine, but Tommy says she’s dead to him and tells JP that he’s better off enjoying life without her in it.

The half-brothers exchange numbers to continue communicating in episode one, and it eventually leads to Tommy coming to JP’s rescue. JP’s bar gets severely damaged following a drive-by shooting, and Tommy raises some money for JP to fix the damage. They later watch home videos of their childhood, none of which Tommy remembers.