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News Round-Up: November 21, 2019

(photo: Tibo Norman)

Some news items you might have missed:

• InstaHunks: Joel Green (above), photographed by Tibo Norman, is definitely giving off some super-hero vibes a la The CW.

• The Hill: A new poll shows that 66% of Republicans believe adoption groups should not be able to turn away LGBTQ parents, compared to 75% of Democrats and 73% of independents. Overall, 72% say adoption agencies should not be allowed to deny service to members of the LGBTQ community, while 29 percent disagreed.

• NBC News: A Florida jury has awarded a gay man more than $157 million in a wrongful death lawsuit after his husband died from lung cancer caused by smoking cigarettes, in what an attorney said is the first such case involving a same-sex married couple.

• Raw Story: The Republican National Committee admits to buying nearly $100,000 worth of Donald Trump Jr.’s new book just days before it was released. When the tome landed on the NY Times Bestseller list, it received a connotation that ‘bulk purchases’ were involved in the sales numbers. NY Times reporter Nick Confessore confirmed the bulk purchase today with the RNC today.

• CNN: Democrats are anticipating a busy December that will be filed with proceedings before the House Judiciary Committee, including public hearings and a markup, and a likely vote to impeach Trump on the House floor by Christmas Day, according to multiple Democratic sources.

• HuffPost: Donald Trump traveled to Austin, Texas, on Wednesday to tour a manufacturing plant with Apple chief executive Tim Cook, touting the opening of a “new” facility that would bring high-paying jobs back to America. Except – the plant has been making Apple computers since 2013, long before Trump was elected.

• Billboard: Randy Report favorite Randy Rainbow debuted at #1 this week on the Billboard Comedy chart with his new release, Hey Gurl, It’s Christmas!

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News Round-Up: January 19, 2017

(via Instagram)

Some news items you may have missed:

• Instahunk Lex Abramov (above) is giving you “silver-haired ice-bear.”

• The niece of former GOP presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, will take over the reins as Chairman of the Republican Party from outgoing Reince Priebus. Ronna Romney McDaniel takes over as Priebus is moving on to be Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff in the White House.

• Energy Secretary Rick Perry was quite contrite at his confirmation hearing today, saying he regrets his now infamous “oops” moment during the 2012 presidential campaign when he vowed to eliminate the department he’s now nominated to run.

• The latest CBS poll shows President Obama leaving office with a 62% approval rating.

• The former Apprentice contestant who accused Donald Trump of groping her is now suing him for defamation.

• North Korea may test-fire one of their intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) as early as Friday, the day Donald Trump is inaugurated, in an attempt to provoke Trump.

• The Virginia state House killed a potential “bathroom bill” similar to North Carolina’s HB2, which has had a devastating effect on the Tarheel State’s economy.

• Check out Troye Sivan’s latest single, “Heaven” featuring Betty Who, from his Blue Neighbourhood album. You can watch the gorgeous black and white music video below featuring intimate shots of Sivan along with vintage clips of important moments in the LGBTQ rights movement.

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Muddled Republican Message – Winning? Behind? Tied?

Over the weekend, Donald Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway admitted that her candidate is currently behind in the race for the White House.

On the campaign trail today, Donald Trump told supporters that he’s winning and that the polls that he’s championed for a year now are faked.

Today, RNC spokesman Sean Spicer told CNN that the contest is in a dead heat, and that the media is pushing polling results showing Trump behind so that Republican voters will stay home.

You have to wonder – which is it? Behind? Winning? Tied?

Or is Spicer doing his job trying to keep GOP morale up so down ballot candidates don’t lose in their races?

From Mediaite:

During a heated and contentious interview with CNN’s John Berman and Kate Bolduan, RNC communications director Sean Spicer insisted that the race for the White House was a “dead heat” and said that Republican nominee Donald Trump was ahead in several key battleground states.

Per Spicer, the whole thing is even and many polls show Trump is trending up. The spokesperson pointed out a recent national poll from IBD that shows a tied race to justify his belief that it is a dead heat. At that point, Berman interrupted him, saying that they are now getting three narratives — Trump is winning, Trump is behind and now Trump is tied.

Bolduan jumped in to push Spicer to take a side since they had just showed Trump saying that he is winning right now. The Republican strategist then said that Trump was right because he’s winning the state he is currently in, which is Florida.

“He’s winning in Florida,” Berman asked. “Absolutely,” Spicer responded. When Berman questioned by how much, Spicer answered that it was by a “few points.”

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Former RNC Chief Michael Steele Adds His Name To Growing List Of Republicans Who Won’t Vote Trump

Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele is the latest in a line of former GOP party heads to announce he will not be voting for his party’s nominee, Donald Trump.

From The Week:

Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele just can’t stomach voting for either major-party presidential candidate. “I was damn near puking during the debates,” Steele said Thursday at a dinner in San Francisco in honor of the 40th anniversary of Mother Jones.

Steele, who led the RNC from 2009 to 2011 as the first black GOP chairman, said he won’t be casting a ballot for his party’s nominee Donald Trump, and he won’t vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton either. He cannot support Trump because he has “captured that racist underbelly, that frustration, that angry underbelly of American life and gave voice to that,” Steele said. He also argued that Trump only represents about 30 percent of the Republican Party.

In addition to Steele, four other former RNC chairmen have declared they cannot support Donald Trump: Marc Racicot, Mel Martinez, Bill Brock, and Ken Mehlman.

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Dozens Of High Profile Republicans Beg RNC To Stop Funding Flailing Trump Campaign

Dozens of Republicans have penned an open letter to Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus begging him to stop funding the flailing Trump campaign and shift those efforts to Senate and House races.

From Politico:

More than 70 Republicans have signed an open letter to Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus urging him to stop spending any money to help Donald Trump win in November and shift those contributions to Senate and House races.

The letter comes as a number of Republican senators and high-profile GOP national security officials have come forward saying they cannot vote for Trump.

“We believe that Donald Trump’s divisiveness, recklessness, incompetence, and record-breaking unpopularity risk turning this election into a Democratic landslide, and only the immediate shift of all available RNC resources to vulnerable Senate and House races will prevent the GOP from drowning with a Trump-emblazoned anchor around its neck,” states a draft of the letter obtained by POLITICO. “This should not be a difficult decision, as Donald Trump’s chances of being elected president are evaporating by the day.”

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Radio Show: Recapping The Political Conventions With Aaron Baldwin

Take a listen to my latest online radio show, aptly named The Randy Report, hosted on BlogTalkRadio.

Political activist Aaron Baldwin joined me to look back on the highs and lows of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

The hits, the misses, the winners and losers.

Who gave the best speech? Who dropped the ball on an opportunity? Which party scored better among voters?

Did the upbeat message of the Democrats resonate with voters more than the darker tone of the Republicans?

What did the polls say in the aftermath of both conventions? Will Hillary get a post-convention bounce?

What’s next in this very unusual presidential race?

Aaron Baldwin is my go-to political smart guy, so hit the play button below and see what Aaron thinks.

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Democratic Convention Trounces Republican Convention In TV Ratings By 8 Million Viewers

Folks were looking today to see if Hillary Clinton would win or lose to Donald Trump in the TV ratings race – something we know is near and dear to the Donald’s heart.

So here’s how the numbers break down:

The closing night of the 2016 Democratic National Convention drew numbers which closely tracked the final night of the Republican National Convention.

According to Variety, the Democrats scored 31.72 million viewers vs. the Repubs with 31.95 million viewers – a difference of about 230,000. This accounts for tracking across 6 networks – ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.

From Variety:

Even if you add in ratings from PBS to both the final nights of the DNC and RNC, the DNC still comes up slightly short (31.72 million vs. 31.95 million). The big difference-maker is, unsurprisingly, the audience for Fox News. For the Trump anointing, 9.35 million people tuned in. Less than a third of that number turned on Fox News for Clinton’s crowning.

CNN once again won the DNC coverage ratings race, with 7.5 million total viewers and 2.81 million in the cable-news-coveted 25-54 demographic. MSNBC weighed in with 5.72 million total and 1.53 million in the demo. Fox News had 3.03 million total and 785,000 in the demo.

As Variety notes, the bulk of the differential comes from the
drop in viewership at Fox News last night, from 9 million the week
before to last night’s 3 million.

Comparing the four nights of convention coverage, the Democrats came out the clear winner with 106.19 million total viewers over their full convention compared to the Republicans 98.12 million total viewers – a difference of 8.07 million more in the Democrats column.  

All data from Variety via multiple posts:
24.7 + 24.03 + 25.74 + 31.74 = 106.19 million for Democrats
19.75 + 23.40 + 23.02 + 31.95 = 98.12 million for Republicans

However, I think to get to a clearer picture of which convention attracted a larger audience, you need to look at some additional metrics.

Neither C-SPAN nor Spanish language network Univision are factored into these numbers. As political junkies know, Hillary has held a huge lead over Trump when it comes to Hispanic voters. So, with a difference of only 230K, it’s easy to imagine that difference being overcome by even just one or two million Latino viewers.

Plus, Nielsen doesn’t track any online content where we know the younger voters are. When Variety looked at streaming content, the numbers lean decidedly the Dems way.

For the Democratic confab, ABC News notched more than 16.6 million video views across 44 Facebook Live streams, while for the Republican National Convention it tallied more than 11.6 million views for 52 individual Facebook Live streams.

YouTube, which was the official live-streaming partner for the RNC and DNC, said the conventions were viewed live on on the platform about 9.1 million times, with viewers tuning in for 25 minutes on average. The peak concurrent live audience across both conventions was 250,000 viewers during Hillary Clinton’s speech Thursday evening, followed by Donald Trump’s July 21 speech at the RNC with 217,000.

Finally, you’ll recall that Donald Trump had sent out a request to his supporters to boycott the last night of the Democratic Convention so that his numbers might be higher than Hillary’s.

That doesn’t represent hard numbers, but it does explain some shift in audience to a small degree.

But don’t tell The Donald. He’s a little thin-skinned about these things, you know.

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“Liberal Redneck” On The Republican National Convention

Trae Crowder, “The Liberal Redneck,” offers his sympathies to Cleveland after a week-long invasion from the Republican National Convention.

Trae takes on speeches from Melania Trump, Ted Cruz and of course the Republican candidate for President himself, Donald Trump.

Plus, the “Hillbilly-In-Chief” shares the one “glimmer of sunlight” he saw “through the shit cyclone that was the Republican National Convention.”

Truth and humor makes a formidable team here. Watch below.

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First Openly Gay Person In 16 Years Speaks At RNC

PayPal founder/billionaire Peter Thiel, the first openly gay person to speak at a GOP convention in 16 years.

He’s also proud to have funded lawsuits to bankrupt Gawker.com for exposing that he is gay.

So, I’m not so sure how “proud” he is of being gay. Just saying…

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Awkward RNC Moments

I’m not sure if the most awkward moment of the GOP convention was last night’s Ted Cruz “failure to launch endorsement,” or this when Donald Trump went in to smooch his very homophobic running mate, Gov. Mike Pence.