LGBTQ news and entertainment
Watching Rudy Giuliani on CNN’s “State of the Union” this morning was an adventure in twisted logic.
CNN’s Jake Tapper attempted get straight answers from Giuliani regarding the latest Trump bombshell concerning his income taxes via the New York Times, but to little avail. Giuliani appeared a bit wild-eyed at times trying to get his approved “talking points” across.
Watch below.
The 42nd season premiere of Saturday Night Live did not disappoint as newly-annointed Emmy Award winner Kate McKinnon came on strong with her incarnation of “Hillary Clinton,” and Alec Baldwin delivered a drop-dead “Donald Trump,” in SNL satirical version of this week’s first presidential debate.
Mic has the recap:
“We should be talking about the important issues like Rosie O’Donnell and how she’s a fat loser,” Baldwin-as-Trump says after Clinton cedes her response time to him in the hopes of such a remark.
Jabbing at Trump’s complaint that he experienced microphone problems during Monday’s debate, Baldwin’s character immediately turns the blame on Clinton.
“She broke it with Obama; she and Obama stole my microphone and took it to Kenya and they broke it,” he says.
The sketch also features a sparring match almost identical to the one that played out on the debate stage on Monday, with McKinnon mimicking Clinton’s speculation about why Trump has refused to release his tax returns while Trump interrupts her sporadically.
“He hasn’t released his tax returns which means he’s either not that rich,” (“wrong”) “not that charitable” (“wrong”) “or he’s never paid taxes in his life” (“warmer”).
When Michael Che as Lester Holt asks “Clinton” why she is crying towards the end of the sketch, McKinnon’s perfectly timed answer pretty much sums it up:
“This is going so well,” she says, referring to Trump’s unprompted reference to Rosie O’Donnell. “It’s going exactly how I’d always dreamed.”
Happy Sunday, folks!
Here’s this week’s episode of The Randy Report on BlogTalkRadio.
My recap of popular & important stories of pop culture, politics and entertainment of interest to the LGBT community:
• Edie Windsor, LGBTQ hero who helped bring down the Defense of Marriage Act, finds love a second time.
• Anti-gay Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore suspended from the bench for instructing judges to not perform same-sex marriages even after SCOTUS ruled in favor of marriage equality.
• The first presidential debate came and went this week. Who won? I think Randy Rainbow did with his parody of a classic Mary Poppins song that recaps the Donald’s debate performance.
• GLEE star Alex Newell teams up with the CDC to share new music and a new campaign to help stop HIV.
Tune in for these stories and more.
An anonymous source has mailed three pages of Donald Trump’s 1995 income tax returns to a reporter at the New York Times.
The pages indicate that Trump declared a $916 million loss that year in connection to the “mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan,” the newspaper reports.
Trump lost almost $1 billion in one year running casinos??? Think on that for a minute.
According to the NYT, the loss could have allowed Trump to avoid paying federal income taxes up to $50 million for the next 18 years.
Trump’s campaign issued a statement which read, in part:
“Mr. Trump is a highly-skilled businessman who has a fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required. That being said, Mr. Trump has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes, sales and excise taxes, real estate taxes, city taxes, state taxes, employee taxes and federal taxes, along with very substantial charitable contributions.”
“Mr. Trump knows the tax code far better than anyone who has ever run for President and he is the only one that knows how to fix it.”
The New York Times has obtained portions of Donald Trump’s 1995 income tax returns that indicate he may not have paid any federal income taxes for almost two decades.
The three pages from Trump’s tax returns, which were mailed to the NYT by an anonymous source, showed that Trump declared a $916 million loss that year due to “mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan,” the newspaper reports.
The loss would have allowed Trump to avoid paying federal income taxes on up to $50 million for each of the ensuing 18 years, the NYT notes. One of Trump’s lawyers has already threatened to sue the NYT for publishing the returns, but his campaign appeared to confirm the validity of the newspaper’s report in a statement.
“Mr. Trump is a highly-skilled businessman who has a fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required,” the statement said. “That being said, Mr. Trump has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes, sales and excise taxes, real estate taxes, city taxes, state taxes, employee taxes and federal taxes.”
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the NYT’s scoop is the fact that the person who mailed the pages from Trump’s tax returns to the newspaper listed their return address as Trump Tower.
In his editorial New Rule, Bill Maher examines Trump’s surrogates, and questions whether this cast of characters would be fit to serve in a Presidential administration.
Esquire breaks down the “who” and “why” of the Donald’s inner circle.
Why would Trump surround himself with these idiots? Well, as Trump once said, “Always be around unsuccessful people because everybody will respect you.”
It seems that Trump takes his own advice. “That does explain Rudy Giuliani,” Maher joked. It also explains the pastor who, when interviewed by CNN, declared the conversation “off the record” only after the reporter questioned him about his bogus claims that he graduated college.
And then there’s Marco “taco truck on every corner” Gutierrez. Or Katrina “Obama started the war with Afghanistan” Pierson. And let’s not forget Trump’s lawyer, Michael “Says who?” Cohen.
The Daily Show thought North Carolina might understand the impact of the state’s anti-LGBT law, HB2, through the use of some interactive learning.
The Raleigh News & Observer recaps:
Comedy Central’s The Daily Show came to Raleigh recently to poke fun at House Bill 2 by operating a food truck that refused to serve gay people. The show parked a fake barbecue business called Bone Bros. Flamin’ BBQ outside Trophy Brewing on Maywood Avenue and the Ruby Deluxe bar on Salisbury Street earlier this month.
“I wanted to show North Carolinians what HB2 would look like in action, so I rented a food truck … and set out to refuse service to people by telling them they’re gay,” Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr. says at the beginning of the segment, which aired Thursday. “HB2 says I can do this Jim Crow-level (expletive), and nobody can stop me.”
For the record, HB2 doesn’t explicitly state that businesses can refuse service to LGBT people. But it did repeal local nondiscrimination ordinances that included LGBT protections and replaced them with a statewide nondiscrimination law.
That law bans “places of public accommodation” such as restaurants, stores and hotels from discriminating on the basis of “race, religion, color, national origin, or biological sex.” But it leaves two categories unprotected: Sexual orientation and gender identity.
After Donald Trump’s now infamous 3AM Twitter rant early Friday morning attacking former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton unleashed her own 3AM Twitter-storm this morning.
But her early morning tweets were about her proposed expansion of Americorps and a call to young Americans for national service.
“Remember, don’t believe the haters who describe America as hopeless and broken. We should lift each other up, not tear each other down.”
There are hundreds of thousands more @AmeriCorps applications than spots. Horrible! Let’s expand it from 75,000 annual members to 250,000.— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 1, 2016
Too many talented young people pass up on programs like @Peacecorps because of student loans. Let’s use GOOD JUDGMENT & lighten that burden.— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 1, 2016
Remember, don’t believe the haters who describe America as hopeless and broken. We should lift each other up, not tear each other down.— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 1, 2016
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| Hillary Clinton (L), Donald Trump (R) |
For the first time in USA TODAY’s 34 year history, the national newspaper has weighed in on a presidential election by endorsing Democrat Hillary Clinton for president.
In doing so, the paper’s editorial board urges all Americans to vote, “just not for Donald Trump.”
From USA TODAY:
This year, the choice isn’t between two capable major party nominees who happen to have significant ideological differences. This year, one of the candidates — Republican nominee Donald Trump — is, by unanimous consensus of the Editorial Board, unfit for the presidency.
From the day he declared his candidacy 15 months ago through this week’s first presidential debate, Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he lacks the temperament, knowledge, steadiness and honesty that America needs from its presidents.
Whether through indifference or ignorance, Trump has betrayed fundamental commitments made by all presidents since the end of World War II. These commitments include unwavering support for NATO allies, steadfast opposition to Russian aggression, and the absolute certainty that the United States will make good on its debts. He has expressed troubling admiration for authoritarian leaders and scant regard for constitutional protections.
[snip]
Our bottom-line advice for voters is this: Stay true to your convictions. That might mean a vote for Clinton, the most plausible alternative to keep Trump out of the White House. Or it might mean a third-party candidate. Or a write-in. Or a focus on down-ballot candidates who will serve the nation honestly, try to heal its divisions, and work to solve its problems.
Whatever you do, however, resist the siren song of a dangerous demagogue. By all means vote, just not for Donald Trump.
Hillary Clinton, speaking in Florida today, announced her plans for a program of national service in a direct outreach to millennials.
“National service has always been a bipartisan goal,” said Clinton.
The Democratic presidential candidate’s proposal called for the creation of a National Service Reserve with a target of five million people around the country, as well as tripling the size of AmeriCorps.
.@HillaryClinton on service: “National service has always been a bipartisan goal.” pic.twitter.com/2Jbly3yHCM— POLITICO (@politico) September 30, 2016
Likely voters in Florida give Democrat Hillary Clinton a 4 point lead (46% – 42%) over Donald Trump in the latest Mason-Dixon Poll.
These are the first Sunshine State polling results since the first presidential debate, which Clinton was widely credited with winning.
RealClearPolitics polling average for Florida now shows Clinton ahead by 1.2% in the important swing state, and trending upwards.