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Poll: 62% Of Americans Don’t Believe Trump Has Been Honest About Russian Interference

A new poll by NBC/Wall Street Journal taken after the midterm elections shows a majority of Americans think Donald Trump hasn't been truthful regarding the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Donald Trump

A new poll by NBC/Wall Street Journal taken after the midterm elections shows a majority of Americans think Donald Trump hasn’t been truthful regarding the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

• Almost two-thirds (62% of those polled) say Trump has not been honest regarding Russian interference in the last presidential election.

• 33% believe the economy will get worse in the next 12 months versus 28% who believe it will continue to improve.

• Only 38% of those polled would vote to re-elect Trump president.

• Only 33% say Trump ‘got the message’ that voters want a change of direction via the midterm elections; 22% say he got the message but won’t make any changes in his approach to the presidency.

• 56% say the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Check out more from the recent survey here.

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Podcast: Talking With The Disarmingly Charming Actor/Designer Matthew Camp

Matt Camp (image via Instagram)

In this episode of The Randy Report, I’m chatting with the oh-so-handsome and beguiling Mr. Matthew Camp.

I have to tell you upfront that this is one of my favorite interviews in a while.

An intoxicating blend of good-looking country boy with a side of danger, what I enjoyed most about chatting with him was how smart and thoughtful he is. It’s a disarmingly charming equation.

The social media celebrity – over half a million followers on Instagram alone – first attracted attention some years ago after moving to NYC and becoming a go-go boy. But starring roles in indie movies like Getting Go: The Go Doc Project (which was loosely based on his life) and Sock Job quickly sent Matthew’s star into a new orbit.

At the same time, he was encouraged by friends to design his own line of t-shirt and leather gear fashions. Matthew says he took a couple of classes in construction and pattern making a few years ago for the ABCs of it all, but admits to having an interest in fashion since he was a kid.

Plus, he launched a line of provocatively named fragrances (8.5, Transgression) that are inspired by and conjure up his memories of working in bars around sexy men.

A big proponent of the ‘sex-positive’ movement, he’s also an ambassador for Oraquick, the in-home HIV test. Matthew is big on encouraging people to know their status by getting tested on a regular basis and owning your own sexual health.

Matthew has a new video series project in the works – it delves into a person’s sexual personality by exploring formative sexual experiences from their past. The format will be a hybrid of documentary and experimental art film.

AND – the producers are looking for folks to take part in the project on camera with Matthew.

So I’ll be chatting with him about that, what it’s like to have over half a million people follow your life, plus a few other things that come up.

If you would like to submit yourself to be considered for the new video project, you can contact the producers at CampChaosSeries@gmail.com.

You can (and should) follow Matthew on Instagram at www.instagram.com/matthewcamp/ and find even more on at OnlyFans.com/MatthewCamp.

Hit the play button to listen to my chat with Matt Camp.

And please SHARE the link with your social media, please 🙂

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News Round-Up: December 16, 2018

Broadway hunk & 'Daddyhunt' star Jim Newman (above) demonstrates that even Santa's elves have to do laundry some time...
Jim Newman (via Instagram)

Some news items you might have missed:

• Broadway hunk & ‘Daddyhunt’ star Jim Newman (above) demonstrates that even Santa’s elves have to do laundry some time…

• San Diego Pride is so successful, the organization has announced that it will be donating more than $170,000 to 59 different LGBTQ-serving charities and organizations around the world.

• Ann Coulter offered her description of the Democratic Party on Laura Ingraham’s show Tuesday night: “The Muslims and the Jews and the various exotic sexual groups and the black church ladies with the college queers”

• Sexual abuse settlements could force the Boy Scouts of America into bankruptcy.

• A new poll by the Washington Post Fact Checker shows 70% of Americans don’t believe Trump’s lies.

• Frankie Grande teams up with his sis, Ariana, for this take on the Act Two opener from RENT, “Seasons of Love,” as part of the #RentSingALong initiative celebrating the upcoming live presentation of the hit musical

RENT will air live on January 27 at 8/7c on FOX. Hit play below.

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SNL Cold Open Offers “A Wonderful Life” Where Trump Was Never President

SNL’s holiday show cold open threw a new spin on the Christmas classic, It’s A Wonderful Life, where Donald Trump wishes for a world where he was not elected president.

The skit features celebrity cameos by Ben Stiller (Michael Cohen), Robert De Niro (Robert Mueller), and host Matt Damon (Brett Kavanaugh).

Entering a holiday party, Trump looks around the room noting the mood of the party goers: “Everyone looks so different. What are those things on their faces?”

Kenan Thompson’s ‘Clarence the Guardian Angel’ replies, “Those are called smiles.”

When Trump asks if ‘they ever found’ Hillary Clinton’s emails, Clarence shares, “They did – they were all Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons.”

In this new world, Mike Pence is a gay DJ (“It’s so great to be myself”).

And Melania Trump, no longer married to the Donald, doesn’t have an accent anymore. “After our divorce, I lost it. They said being around you was hurting my language skills.”

The sketch appears to have triggered the Trumpster:

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Trump Rants About Cohen Becoming A ‘Rat,’ Wonders Why Folks Didn’t “Break Into The DNC?”

Donald Trump went on one of his usual Sunday morning Twitter rants raging about his former ‘fixer,’ Michael Cohen, becoming a “Rat” after the FBI “BROKE INTO AN ATTORNEY’S OFFICE!”

Of course, the FBI didn’t ‘break’ into Cohen’s office. A federal judge authorized a legal search warrant after finding that there was a good reason to believe evidence of a crime would be found in his office.

p.s. They did find that evidence. Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison this week.

The president of the United States just wondered in front of millions of Twitter users why someone didn’t break into the Democratic National Committee offices.

Doesn’t that sound familiar? I’m thinking circa 1972 and a certain Richard Nixon…?

History truly repeats itself.

By the way, Cohen tweeted that the FBI was “extremely professional, courteous and respectful” during the search.

It’s worth noting that Ken Starr has absolutely NO idea what Special Counsel Robert Mueller has found during his investigation.

Also – the Ken Starr/White Water investigation went on for four years. Mueller was appointed to head up the current investigation in May 2017 meaning he’s spent less than half the time Starr took to look into White Water.

Similarly, Starr expanded his investigation far afield from his original mandate. So arguments that Mueller should ‘ignore’ crimes not related to Russia along the way are ridiculous.

When the police investigate a robbery and trip over a dead body, they don’t ignore the body.

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Trump Administration Asks SCOTUS To Allow Trans Military Ban Before Review

The Department of Justice has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow Donald Trump’s ban on transgender military service members to go into effect while waiting on SCOTUS to decide whether or not to even take the case up for review.

The Department of Justice has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow Donald Trump’s ban on transgender military service members to go into effect while waiting on SCOTUS to decide whether or not to even take the case up for review.

Apparently, the United States is in a state of emergency regarding the few thousand transgender people currently serving with honor in the U.S. military.

I know – it doesn’t make any sense.

Let’s go back a bit, shall we?

In July of 2017, President Trump surprised American military leaders and the world when he announced his plan to ban trans military service members after “consultation with my Generals and military experts” due to the “tremendous medical costs and disruption” of transgender service members.

Remember, this is the guy who told Americans during the 2016 presidential campaign that he would ‘fight’ for the LGBTQ community.

Riiiiight.

Conservatives loved the idea; Liberals and LGBTQ activists were outraged.

In the ensuing months, numerous injunctions were ordered by judges blocking the implementation of the policy, and for good reason.

Not only has The American Medical Association (AMA) issued a statement saying there is ‘no medically valid reason’ for banning transgender people from serving in the United States military, but all four service chiefs (Navy, Army, Marines, Air Force) have testified they’ve seen no negative effects from transgender military personnel serving the country they love.

According to a 2016 RAND Corporation study, there are an estimated 1,320 to 6,630 transgender individuals out of the 1.3 million service members on active duty.

That same study estimated the cost of health care coverage for transgender personnel could range from $2.4 million and $8.4 million a year, which is about one-fifth of what

So, we can afford dick pills, but not trained trans soldiers…?

Then, earlier this month, Department of Justice Attorney Brinton Lucas told the D.C. Circuit Court that if the Trump policy were to be implemented, transgender troops would not be “discharged on the basis of their transgender status.”

(Wait for it…)

But, they would have to identify as the biological sex assigned to them at birth meaning they would have to stop any transition-related medical treatment – treatment that every major medical association has deemed necessary and life-saving for trans people.

Then, over Thanksgiving weekend, the Trump administration bypassed the appeals court process and requested the Supreme Court review the case before the circuit level courts even issue their opinions.

This isn’t a very popular approach as SCOTUS doesn’t like to review a case before it has made its way through the lower courts.

The high court likes to have cases work their way through traditional channels so they have the benefit of the opinions of lower court judges by the time cases reaches SCOTUS.

This week, the Trump administration filed emergency briefs asking the high court to allow the transgender ban to go into effect until SCOTUS can review the case in 2019.

According to Think Progress, the emergency briefs claimed waiting any longer to boot transgender military service members poses “too great a risk to military effectiveness and lethality” and it would be “contrary to the Nation’s interests.”

But such arguments have gained little traction in the past.

For example, U.S. District Judge Jesus Bernal ruled in September that “loss of unit cohesion” was the same argument used to keep Black people, women, and gay people from joining the military.

“The military has repeatedly proven its capacity to adapt and grow stronger specifically by the inclusion of these individuals,” wrote Bernal as he dismissed claims that including trans people would generate any different outcome.

It’s worth noting that the emergency briefs filed this week object to numerous motions for discovery filed in the cases. It seems the Trump administration wants to claim that all documentation related to how the ban was developed would fall under executive privilege.

What they really mean is that if those documents came to light, the American public might discover that Vice President Pence (a known homophobe) and his virulently anti-LGBTQ friends were instrumental in pushing the new ban through.

Should the Supreme Court allow the policy to be implemented before the case reaches SCOTUS, thousands of transgender soldiers could be discharged for being who they are.

This short video from the New York Times introduces just a few of the trans soldiers who are at risk of being discharged.

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Trailer For Upcoming Biopic ‘MAPPLETHORPE’

Official poster for MAPPLETHORPE

“In church I found God, and then Polaroid led me straight to the devil.”

A rather apt statement from Matt Smith’s “Robert Mapplethorpe” in the trailer for the upcoming biopic, MAPPLETHORPE.

Smith (The Crown, Doctor Who) stars as the controversial and provocative photographer of the 1970s and 1980s who became a flashpoint for political conversations about art versus pornography.

The influential artist, who died in 1989 due to AIDS-related causes, scandalized the art world with his images S&M scenes and the naked male body.

From the trailer description:

Robert Mapplethorpe (Matt Smith) is arguably one of the most important artists of the 20th century. Mapplethorpe discovered himself both sexually and artistically in New York City throughout the 70’s and 80’s. The film explores Mapplethorpe’s life from moments before he and Patti Smith moved into the famed Chelsea hotel, home to a world of bohemian chic. Here he begins photographing its inhabitants and his new found circle of friends including artists and musicians, socialites, film stars, and members of the S&M underground.

Mapplethorpe’s work explored eroticism in a manner that shocked and challenged the public’s views on the boundaries of art. The film explores the intersection of his art and his sexuality along with his struggle for mainstream recognition.

“Like any artist in many senses he was vilified at the time,” Smith told EW. “But that’s because he was pushing the boundaries and the form and the envelope of that he was doing and the time he was in, and often the purpose of art is to do that.”

Mapplethorpe was also responsible, in part, in reigniting interest in photography as a mainstream, evocative art form.

“I’m an artist,” says Smith’s Mapplethorpe. “I would have been a painter, but the camera was invented.”

Matt Smith as “Robert Mapplethorpe”

In that Mapplethorpe died of AIDS, Smith also explored the impact of the disease that nearly wiped out a generation of gay men. He told EW:

Just investigating that moment in time, it certainly made me reflect on being a homosexual in the ’70s in New York and the way they were treated for a disease that was completely misunderstood. You think with what we know now about HIV and AIDS, you think if only we could have imparted a bit of the medicinal knowledge and the cultural understanding of that thing. It was appalling really what happened to gay men then, and the way they were treated, and what they had to go through.

It’s amazing how far we’ve come in being able to treat that particular disease. It absolutely made me think about that. He died so young and if he were around now, then he’d live out the whole of his life and still be a brilliant, prolific artist I’m sure. Because he was prolific. He just worked and worked and worked.

Directed by Ondi Timoner, the movie premiered earlier this year at the Tribeca Film Festival and the critics raved.

“A phenomenal performance from lead Matt Smith,” wrote Lena Smith for Slate. “Audiences will feel unable to tear themselves away.”

The Hollywood Reporter also gushed about the film’s lead: “A superb performance from Matt Smith.”

“The film is afraid of neither the life nor the work of the notorious photographer” wrote Dan Callahan of The Wrap.

The film also stars Marianne Rendón, Mark Moses, Carolyn McCormick, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Brandon Sklenar, McKinley Belcher III, and Kerry Butler.

A favorite on the film festival circuit, the movie garnered several awards including:

• Winner of the Audience Award (Feature Film) at the Auction Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival

• Winner of the Audience Award (Best LGBTQ Film) at the Key West Film Festival

• Winner of the Audience Award (Narrative Film) at the Long Beach Film Festival

• Winner of the Audience Award (Best Feature Film) at the Oslo/Fusion International Film Festival

MAPPLETHORPE lands in theaters March 1, 2019. Watch the trailer below.

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Homophobic NYC Subway Attacker Arrested For Harassment & Assault As A Hate Crime

Allah Allasheed

Earlier this week, I reported on the violent homophobic attack on a New York subway train that left a young woman with a fractured spine.

According to The New York Daily News, the alleged perpetrator has been apprehended and charged with aggravated harassment and assault as a hate crime.

Allah Allasheed, 54, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

The assault occurred on November 20 aboard an E train in Queens.

The victim, a 20-year-old college student, tells the Daily News her friend “gave me a kiss on the cheek while she was making a Snapchat.”

That somehow triggered Allasheed, who flew into a rage, as he started screaming at the two young women.

“Don’t do that gay shit in front of me!,” he yelled as he threatened the victims. “Do that one more time and watch what happens!”

The two students say they stood up to put some distance between themselves and the man, and that’s when he jumped up and ran towards them.

“I knew he was going to hit me,” the victim told The Daily News. “He punched me in the back. I turned around and before I could even defend myself …. he threw me back. My head hit the pole and my back hit the ground.”

Allasheed apparently managed to escape when the train stopped at the next stop.

Hospitalized with a C7 vertebrae fracture near the base of her neck, the victim also suffered torn elbow ligaments trying to catch herself as she fell.

Treated at Elmhurst Hospital, she returned to school for end of semester exams. Nearly a month after the violent assault, she still wears a neck brace.

Allasheed was captured by the New York Police Department Hate Crime Task Force. According to reports, he confessed to the attack and the use of hate speech.

“I stood up and told her kiss her again you dyke and watch what happens,” he allegedly told authorities, according to the Daily News. “I pushed the girl, she turned around and then she fell.”

The victim told the Daily News she is, of course, relieved the assailant has been arrested and charged. She also doesn’t want the incident to change her.

“Bad things happen, but good things happen all the time,” she said. “Hopefully I can move on from it.”

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First Teaser For Upcoming ‘Downton Abbey’ Movie

First teaser released for upcoming film version of Downton Abbey which hits theaters on Sept. 20, 2019.

Executive producer Gareth Neame tells EW about the upcoming cinematic event that will be Downton Abbey:

“We had to do everything that all the fans wanted, but we had to do something that was fresh and original. We wanted a kind of storyline and sense of scale and production value that exceeded even the very high production values the TV show was remembered for.

“On the big screen, it just had to look a little bit more lavish and a little bit bigger and better.

“It’s a return to these really beloved characters and seeing them in new sets of circumstances and how they will deal with those, and hopefully, a good mix of the drama, comedy, and romance that had been the mainstays of it all.”

Squeee!!! We love Downton Abbey here at my house!!!

Downton Abbey will hit theaters on Sept. 20, 2019.

Watch the teaser below.

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John McCain’s Replacement, Jon Kyl, Announces Retirement As Of December 31

Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona (image via Gage Skidmore/WikiMedia)

And speaking of Republicans in the U.S. Senate, according to The Arizona Republic Arizona, place-holder Sen. Jon Kyl has announced he will resign from the U.S. Senate on Dec. 31.

Kyl was tapped to come out of retirement after the passing of John McCain earlier this year.

This will give Gov. Doug Ducey the chance to handpick another replacement to the seat once occupied by McCain.

Odds are Ducey will appoint outgoing GOP Rep. Martha McSally, who lost to Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema last month for Arizona’s other U.S. Senate seat vacated by retiring Sen. Jeff Flake.

Sinema will be sworn into office Jan. 3.

Appointing McSally now would give her a leg up on the next election cycle as the incumbent.