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Tiffany Trump Hosts So-Called ‘Trump Pride’ Event

Tiffany Trump dances out on stage at a so-called 'Trump Pride' event

Tiffany Trump dances out on stage at a so-called 'Trump Pride' event
Tiffany Trump (screen capture)
Tiffany Trump, the youngest daughter of Donald Trump, hosted a ‘Trump Pride’ event in Florida in hopes of attracting queer votes for her father’s reelection despite his dismal record on LGBTQ rights and protections. From Newsweek:

“I know what my father believes in. Prior to politics, he [Trump] supported gays, lesbians, the LGBQIIA+ community,” Tiffany began before then talking about “fabricated lies” and social media.

She said: “It saddens me. I have friends of mine who reach out and they say how could you support your father, we know your best friends are gay.”

“I know what my father believes in,” said Tiffany Trump in a 10-minute speech at the Westshore Grand Hotel. “Prior to politics he supported gays, lesbians … the LGBQIA+ community, okay.”

Many have pointed out she left out the ‘T’ in the acronym which stands for trans.

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News Round-Up: October 19, 2020

Cameron Hawthorn (photo: Matthew Holler)
Some news items you might have missed: • Podcast: Just a reminder to please take a listen to my chat with the oh-so-talented country artist Cameron Hawthorn (above). I’ve been a fan for a long time, so I’m happy to share he’s just as charming as I expected. • Instinct Magazine: With hate crimes on the rise in Italy, LGBTQ folks are marching in the streets. • Netflix: Check out the trailer for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom directed by George C. Wolfe starring a cast headed up by Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman. Coming to Netflix on December 18. “Tensions rise between Ma Rainey (Viola Davis), her ambitious horn player (Chadwick Boseman), and the white management determined to control the legendary ‘Mother of the Blues.’”

• Axios: The Supreme Court denied a request from Pennsylvania’s Republican Party to shorten the deadlines for mail-in ballots in the state. Thanks to the court’s 4-4 deadlock, ballots can be counted for several days after Election Day. • Jewish News: Ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election, some 75 percent of U.S. Jews would vote for Democratic nominee Joe Biden, while 22 percent would vote to re-elect U.S. President Donald Trump, according to a poll released on Monday by the American Jewish Committee. In 2016, 71 percent of American Jews voted for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, while 24 percent voted for Trump. • Politico: In an episode that has since become legendary within the CIA, Donald Trump was reportedly in the middle of a highly classified briefing on Afghanistan at his New Jersey golf club when he suddenly craved a malted milkshake. “Does anyone want a malt? We have the best malts, you have to try them,” Trump insisted, as he beckoned a waiter into the room where code-word classified intelligence was being discussed. • Fox News: Donald Trump called CNN “dumb bastards” during a campaign stop today for continuing to cover a worldwide pandemic that’s killed over 220,000 Americans and continues to surge across the country.

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Podcast: Chatting With Country Music Star Cameron Hawthorn

Cameron Hawthorn (photo: Matthew Holler)
Since the release of his oh-so-romantic 2019 single, “Dancing in the Living Room,” out singer/songwriter Cameron Hawthorn has continued to release a string of top-shelf country anthems. Continue reading “Podcast: Chatting With Country Music Star Cameron Hawthorn”

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Dumbassery Of The Day

Jeffrey Toobin (screen capture)
I can’t imagine a single scenario that someone as smart as Jeffrey Toobin would find himself performing such dumbassery. And yet… From the New York Post:

Writer Jeffrey Toobin has been suspended by The New Yorker — because he exposed himself on a Zoom call between magazine colleagues and WNYC workers, a report said Monday.

Toobin told Vice in a statement: “I made an embarrassingly stupid mistake, believing I was off-camera.

“I believed I was not visible on Zoom. I thought no one on the Zoom call could see me. I thought I had muted the Zoom video.

“I apologize to my wife, family, friends and co-workers.”

A spokeswoman for the magazine said, “Jeffrey Toobin has been suspended while we investigate the matter.”

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Trump On COVID: People Are Saying ‘Whatever – Just Leave Us Alone’

Donald Trump

Donald Trump is D-O-N-E done with the coronavirus pandemic. During a conference call with campaign staffers, Trump expressed frustration with infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci and other health officials calling them ‘idiots.’ From Politico:

“People are tired of Covid. People are saying, ‘Whatever, just leave us alone.’ People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots,” Trump said on the call, which included press.

“He’s been here for, like, 500 years. He’s like this wonderful sage telling us how — Fauci, if we listened to him, we’d have 700,000 [or] 800,000 deaths.”

Trump described Fauci as a “disaster” and added that “every time he goes on television, there’s always a bomb. But there’s a bigger bomb if you fire him.”

Trump also commented on the call that he “couldn’t care less” if the media reported the remarks. “If there’s a reporter on, you can have it just the way I said it. I couldn’t care less.” Trump’s statement was probably in response to an interview Fauci gave CBS’s 60 Minutes where he told the venerable news magazine that Trump’s reluctance to wear a face mask in public is because he “equates wearing a mask with weakness.” “You know, a statement of strength,” Fauci said. “Like, ‘We’re strong. We don’t need a mask.’ That kind of thing.” Asked if that makes sense from a scientific stand point when facing a pandemic, Fauci answered, “No, it doesn’t. Of course not.”

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Twitter: Gay Pride Parade Or Shirtless Police Cadets Graduating From Academy?

(screen capture)
Video footage of shirtless Egyptian police cadets graduating from the Police Academy in New Cairo raised more than eyebrows on Twitter. George Takei highlighted the video clip on Twitter writing, “For a terrifyingly homophobic and dangerously anti-LGBT government in Egypt, this screams pretty gay.” In the video, the shirtless buff graduates are shown riding on military vehicles appearing to be flexing for their lives. The Daily Star reports over 1,500 cadets took part in the event. Several of the comments on Twitter compared the event to a Pride parade.

Another clip showed the graduates performing a series of stunts including jumping through rings of fire, breaking cement blocks on each other’s chests with sledgehammers, and climbing up the side of a building. At one point, the graduates even dive through the air over a set of sharp spikes.

While the spectacle was visually impressive, the sad irony in all this, as Takei points out, is Egypt continues to be a virulently homophobic country. The Human Rights Watch reported this past spring that Egypt rejected recommendations by several members of the United Nations Human Rights Council to end arrests and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Egypt responded by denying the existence of sexual orientation and gender identity saying the country “does not recognize the terms mentioned” in the recommendation. But an LGBTQ rights organization in Cairo reported 92 arrests in 2019 for so-called ‘same-sex conduct.’ Included in the report were incidents of “entrapment through dating apps, random arrests off the street and hotel/house arrests.” Rights Africa notes that 69 percent of the cases were street arrests “with no legal basis for the arrest other than the individual discretion of the police officers.” As there is no explicit law banning same-sex conduct, the majority of LGBTQ prosecutions are based on “debauchery” laws insinuating prostitution. While under arrest, gay men and transgender women have been subjected to torture, assaults, and degrading forced anal examinations. (source: Daily Star)

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Streaming Tonight: Divas For Democracy ‘United We Slay’

Guest post by Lawrence Pfeil Jr. As the 2020 Election heads into the home stretch it’s all hands on deck, but for One Night Only it’s all divas on deck, as in the “stage deck.” This Sunday, October 18th at 8 pm EST Drag Out the Vote presents the fiercest divas from Broadway and RuPaul’s Runway together for a streaming evening of entertainment, Divas For Democracy: United We Slay.

Hosted by Entertainment Tonight’s Keltie Knight and RuPaul’s Drag Race’s Nina West, Divas For Democracy: United We Slay is a variety show where the divas of Broadway join forces with the divas of the drag world to encourage participation in our democracy. Broadway divas will sing some of the most iconic musical theatre songs while their drag counterparts match their vocal prowess with lip sync passion and style. Special segments will feature LGBTQIA+ activists in a nonpartisan fashion to promote the importance of the LGBTQIA+ community engagement and voter participation. “Drag Out The Vote™’s mission is to educate, register, and turn out voters with the art and activism of drag.”  They also server voter realness: • 100 million people did not vote in 2016 • 1 in 5 LGBTQ+ Adults is not Registered to Vote • Youth voter turnout had a historic high in 2018… of only 35% And you better believe Divas for Democracy is going to have more stars than a Drag Queen’s ass has sequins! See for yourself at  Divas for Democracy  Divas for Democracy streams exclusively on StageIt, October 18th, 2020 at 8 PM EST. Tickets are “donate what you can” with a minimum $5 donation, with optional “tipping” for additional donations. All proceeds benefit Drag Out The Vote’s get-out-the-vote efforts in 2020 and beyond. Click here for tickets. Lawrence Pfeil, Jr., is a freelance writer/playwright who has written for media outlets including The Randy Report, the New York Blade, and Edge Publications. You can follow him at TheOUTfront.com.

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Fitness Influencer Denied COVID Existed Until He Got It (And Died)

Dmitriy Stuzhuk (images via Instagram)
Dimitriy Stuzhuk, a social media fitness ‘influencer’ with over a million followers on Instagram, has died of COVID-19 after spending months denying the virus even existed. While he may have been in top physical shape, the 33-year-old sports and healthy living proponent was not able to survive the effects of the coronavirus. Four days ago, Stuzhuk told his followers in a post that he contracted the disease while traveling in Turkey. After a few days of body aches, a swollen neck, and a recurring cough, the fitness lifestyle returned home to Ukraine where underwent a battery of tests which showed he had tested positive for the coronavirus. While in the hospital he was given oxygen and additional medications. He was discharged after 8 days in the hospital, at which point he told his Instagram followers, “I was one who thought that Covid does not exist…until I got sick.” Accompanied by a photo wearing an oxygen mask, he added, “COVID IS NOT A SHORT-LIVED DISEASE! And it is heavy,” according to Sky News.

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КОРОНАВИРУС «COVID», ДЕНЬ 8 ⠀ Как вы все знаете из историй, я болею корлнавирусом. Сегодня, вернувшись домой, первый раз появился энтузиазм хотя бы что-то написать. Хочу поделиться, как я заболел и убедительно предостеречь всех: я тоже думал, что нет никакого ковида, и это все относительно. Пока сам не заболел. COVID-19 БОЛЕЗНЬ НЕ ЭФЕМЕРНАЯ! И тяжелая. Но обо всем по порядку. ⠀ Как это было? Плохо мне стало на второй день в Турции. Я проснулся среди ночи от того, что у меня отекла шея и было тяжело дышать. При этом немного побаливал живот. ⠀ На следующий день начал появляться кашель, но температуры никакой не было. Особых симптомов болезни тоже не было, поэтому я подумал, что это могут быть последствия после занятия спортом, смены климата и питания ну и плюс сон под кондиционером. ⠀ После возвращения из Турции я сразу же пошел сдавать разные анализы, делать УЗИ и на всякий случай решил пройти тест на COVID. Он оказался положительным😔 ⠀ На следующий день я поехал делать КТ. Мне назначили лечение и стали настаивать на госпитализации. Это отдельная история, потому что сейчас там идут ремонтные работы, больница полностью набита людьми, некоторые из них живут в коридоре😱😱 Питания никакого нет, бумаги нет, столовых приборов тоже нет! Меня никто об этом не предупреждал. Медицине в нашей стране будет посвящён отдельный пост — что уж там, она это заслужила. ⠀ ПРО ЛЕЧЕНИЕ. Мне назначили курс лечения и сказали, что нужно его продолжать. Дали кислородный аппарат для дыхания, так как у меня низкий уровень кислорода (хотя я считаю, критическим он считается после 90, у меня же 94-96 это вполне позволительно для лечения дома, врач в приемной мне сказал тоже самое😄). ⠀ ☝🏻Учитывая все эти факторы, я принимаю решение, что мне будет удобней и комфортней находиться на дистанционной опеке у себя дома, где у меня есть все условия для нормального лечения. В конце концов я всегда могу обратиться в нужные службы. Та и дома, как говорится, и стены лечат🙌🏻 ⠀ Мое состояние стабильное.

A post shared by Dima Stuzhuk (@stuzhuk_dmitriy) on

In his post, he described less-than-optimal conditions in his Ukraine hospital, which surprised him, and he promised a future post about “medicine in our country.” But that post wasn’t to be. His recovery proved to be a brief reprieve as he was rushed back to the hospital with cardiovascular complications due to the virus. His ex-wife, Sofia, shared on her own Instagram account that Stuzhuk was in “grave condition” and “unconscious.” Shortly thereafter, she announced Stuzhuk’s passing writing, “Only warm memories remain, three beautiful kids and valuable experience.” As you can see in recent Instagram posts, Stuzhuk appeared to be in peak physical shape. Ukraine has reported 307,301 cases of COVID-19 in the country resulting in 5,762 deaths. There have been 39,845,660 cases worldwide with 1,111,957 reported deaths at this writing according to Johns Hopkins University.

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Florida: Mail-In Ballots Have Already Surpassed Primary Vote Total

From Newsweek:

Recent statistics from the Florida Division of Elections have revealed that more people already voted by mail in the 2020 general election than did in the August 2020 primaries. The numbers also show that more Democrats have sent in their ballots than Republicans.

The figures from the Division of Elections website showed that of the more than 2 million mail-in voting ballots sent in, about 49 percent of them were from Democrats. About 30 percent of the ballots submitted were from Republicans, and approximately 20 percent were from people with other party affiliations or no party affiliation.

As of Saturday morning, 2,423,573 people had sent in ballots, with about 1,190,508 of them Democrats and 730,123 of them Republicans. The number just surpasses the 2,342,751 people who voted by mail in the primaries in August.

According to Politico, this is the first time ever at this stage of a general election, Democrats here are outvoting Republicans in the Sunshine state. That said, let this serve as inspiration for you to get out and VOTE!

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Beach Club Fined After Guests Get Busy In See-Through Pool

Mantamar Beach Club, which is my favorite place to spend my days when visiting Puerto Vallarta, was fined after a video clip of two men getting busy in an elevated see-through pool went viral. The adults-only resort, which is predominantly a gay destination but very straight-friendly, had to pay a fine of 22,179.60 pesos — the equivalent of just over a thousand US dollars, according to the Mazatlan Post. Local ordinances prohibit sexual activity in private places that are visible to the public.

I’ve been there many, many times and never seen out-and-out sex in the pool but there’s always a first. I’m of a mind that the beach club shouldn’t have been fined for guests poor behavior. The guests should have been the ones to suffer the consequences. If you’ve seen headlines about this incident, don’t let it dissuade you from going. It’s the best beach club in PV – great food, great views, great service.