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      in Elections

      Stephen Colbert on report on Trump’s attempts to steal election: ‘Smells like consequences’

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      Late-night hosts talk Jack Smith’s new report on how Donald Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election and Republican hypocrisy over Joe Biden’s age.Stephen ColbertBack in July, the supreme court released a 6-3 decision declaring that Trump had immunity from prosecution on acts committed as president, “all but guaranteeing that the case would be delayed past the election, and no one would be talking about or learning any more about it”, said Stephen Colbert on Thursday’s Late Show.“Well, surprise!” he added, holding a 165-page report by special counsel Jack Smith on Trump’s efforts to steal the election. “Mhmmm, that’s beefy. Smells like consequences.”The report details efforts by Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election, and “how they are not covered by that ridiculous immunity ruling”, said Colbert.“We knew stuff in this report already, but it’s still gratifying to read the novelization of the horror movie we all lived through,” he added. According to the report, Trump knew he lost the 2020 election, knowingly pushed false claims of voter fraud and in his bid to hold on to power, “resorted to crimes”.“Pretty damning language, but kinda weird word choice to say Trump ‘resorted’ to crimes,” said Colbert. “That’s like saying ‘With nowhere else to turn, the bear resorted to pooping in the woods.’”“Just to note, ‘resorted to crimes’ should not be confused with ‘crime resort’ – another name for Mar-a-Lago.”Seth MeyersAccording to Republicans, January 6 is ancient history, “which is why a new filing from special counsel Jack Smith in the election subversion case is so damning”, said Seth Meyers on Late Night. “It reminds everyone of what Trump and his allies tried to do, and how brazen they were about it.”According to Smith’s report, Trump was overheard saying to his daughter Ivanka: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”“This is the most damning thing: in private, Trump knew he lost, despite what he was telling his supporters in public,” said Meyers.The report also details how Rudy Giuliani accidentally butt-dialed an NBC reporter, who overheard him discussing his need for cash and trashing the Biden family. “As a favor to Rudy, stop giving this man your phone number,” Meyers laughed. “The only two numbers he should have in his phone are his doctor and a liquor store that delivers.”“Rudy is the first criminal in history who has managed to rat on himself,” he continued. “The FBI doesn’t need to bug him or monitor his calls. They just have to sit around and wait until he accidentally sits on his phone and calls them.”Jimmy KimmelAnd in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel marveled at how Trump is now trying to get out of election fraud charges by claiming that the investigators rigged the election. “The old ‘he who smelt it dealt it’ defense,” said Kimmel.As Trump said in a recent far-right news interview: “The election was rigged. I didn’t rig it. They did.”“He’s actually right about some of that – he didn’t rig the election,” said Kimmel. “He tried to rig the election, and failed to rig the election. He’s rig-noramus, is what he is.”Meanwhile, Trump was “ranting and raving” in Michigan this week on the campaign trail. “If you watch any of his speeches from the last election, from 2020, you’ll see he’s slower,” said Kimmel. “He slurs his words, he repeats the same stories over and over and over again. He’s repeatedly promised to release his medical records and has not.”Which is notable, because Republicans “were very worked up about Joe Biden and how old he was, his energy levels and ability to lead, but even though Trump is only three years younger than Biden, they don’t seem too worried about that anymore”, said Kimmel before a montage of all the GOP Biden criticisms easily applied to Trump’s ravings on the campaign trail. More

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      in US Politics

      Bruce Springsteen endorses Kamala Harris for president while criticising ‘dangerous’ Trump

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      Bruce Springsteen has officially thrown his support behind Kamala Harris, endorsing her for president and simultaneously opposing Donald Trump, calling him “the most dangerous candidate for president in my lifetime”.The Born to Run singer made the announcement in a video posted to his Instagram on Thursday evening (US time) in which he described the upcoming election as “one of the most consequential elections in our nation’s history”.“Perhaps not since the Civil War has this great country felt as politically, spiritually and emotionally divided as it does at this moment. It doesn’t have to be this way.”Springsteen, who was a vocal supporter of Barack Obama and Joe Biden in their respective presidential campaigns, is the latest high-profile endorsement for Harris, joining Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey and Barbra Streisand.In the video, he praised Harris and Walz’s commitment to “a vision of this country that respects and includes everyone, regardless of class, religion, race, your political point of view or sexual identity, and they want to grow our economy in a way that benefits all, not just a few like me on top”.“That’s the vision of America I’ve been consistently writing about for 55 years.”Trump, by contrast, “doesn’t understand the meaning of this country, its history or what it means to be deeply American”, the singer said.“His disdain for the sanctity of our constitution, the sanctity of democracy, the sanctity of the rule of law and the sanctity of the peaceful transfer of power should disqualify him from the office of president ever again.”Concluding, Springsteen said: “Now, everybody sees things different, and I respect your choice as a fellow citizen. But like you, I’ve only got one vote, and it’s one of the most precious possessions that I have. That’s why come November 5 I’ll be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Thanks for listening.” More

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      in US Politics

      Seth Meyers on JD Vance’s debate performance: ‘Brazen and shameless’

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      Late-night hosts talk JD Vance’s many lies during the vice-presidential debate and a new special counsel report detailing how Donald Trump tried to steal the 2020 election.Seth MeyersDonald Trump is “a bad liar”, said Seth Meyers on Wednesday’s Late Night, but he chose as his running mate “someone who is much more polished at it”. JD Vance, Ohio senator, is “brazen and shameless, but he’s admittedly very smooth. He’s like a slick used car dealer, and can be very convincing until you remember the car he’s trying to sell you is an AMC Gremlin with raccoons in the engine.”For instance, during the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday evening, Vance claimed that he was not in favor of a national abortion ban, but did support a “minimum national standard”.“That’s a ban,” Meyers corrected. “A ‘minimum national standard’ is just a bullshit way of describing a national abortion ban. It’s like when I go to the coffee shop on my block and they say they sell all-natural, gluten-free breakfast biscuits. That’s a cookie, dude. Except now you’ve guaranteed that my kids won’t stop asking me why they can’t have it.”Vance has said multiple times that he favors a national abortion ban. On a rightwing podcast in 2022, he said: “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.”“That’s what happens when you say yes to every rightwing podcast in the universe,” said Meyers. “JD Vance is on record contradicting every thing he says now. Politicians used to be worried about being caught on a hot mic. But now they go into every McMansion basement they can find like they’re on a hot mic scavenger hunt.”Vance also refused to say whether Trump lost the 2020 election. When asked point blank by his opponent, Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, Vance deflected with: “I’m focused on the future.”“If you ask someone a straightforward question and they say ‘I’m focused on the future’ that’s how you know they’re caught in a lie,” said Meyers. “Vance may have delivered a slick performance last night, but it was just that – a performance.”Stephen Colbert“We are all still struggling to digest last night’s vice-presidential debate – which is surprising, because usually I have no trouble eating two slices of white bread,” joked Stephen Colbert on Wednesday night.The Late Show host described the debate as a “frosty cup of ZzzQuil”, as the two politicians performed civility and appeared to frequently agree with each other.The Atlantic described the debate as “a vision of what American politics could be without the distorting gravitational field generated by Donald Trump”.“I would love that,” said Colbert, “but here’s the thing: Donald Trump hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s still the main character. This is like a scene from It without Pennywise on camera, and everyone is suddenly like, ‘Welp, guess there’s no more scary clowns in Derry. Ooh, free sewer balloon!’”Colbert took particular aim at Vance’s answer to a question on Obamacare, which Trump tried to destroy numerous times: “I think you could make a really good argument that [Trump] salvaged Obamacare, which was doing disastrously until Donald Trump came along.”“That kind of junior high debate team sophistry is exactly the worst kind of behavior that intelligent people use to justify evil,” added Colbert. “You know, when you think about it, it could be argued that Godzilla really spearheaded Tokyo’s urban renewal.”Colbert was also incensed at Vance’s characterization of January 6: “It’s really rich for Democratic leaders to say that Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy when he peacefully gave over power on January the 20th.”“Yeah, 14 days after his plot to overthrow the election ended in a violent coup that failed,” said Colbert. “That’s like saying to your ex: ‘Barbara, I think it’s rich that you’re calling me psychotically obsessed with our relationship, when I left your and Brad’s wedding peacefully. You’re the one who won’t stop talking about me setting fire to the DJ.’”Jimmy KimmelAnd in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel looked ahead to election day: “We are 34 days away from Trump saying the election was rigged, just as he did four years ago.” Trump’s efforts to overturn the election four years ago are detailed in a new report from special counsel Jack Smith.The judge overseeing the January 6 case in Washington unsealed a 165-page court filing containing a “mountain” of testimony and evidence against Trump. “All the stuff we know happened, we now have in writing,” said Kimmel.The filing lays out “the increasingly desperate ways Trump tried to steal the election”, Kimmel explained. “You know, sometimes I would wonder, does Trump really believe that this election was stolen from him? And the answer is no, he doesn’t. The plan all along was to declare himself the winner even he if wasn’t, which he did. And then when he realized he was going to lose, he made up these claims of fraud.“He called governors and election officials,” he continued. “He hammered Mike Pence. He deliberately spread lies, even though he privately admitted they were crazy lies. He was directly involved in the fake elector scheme. And he stole all the Oreos from the White House snack cabinet.”The report also detailed just how many times Trump pressured Mike Pence to try to decertify the election, though he had no authority to do so. “There were meetings, phone calls, text messages – Pence was basically Trump’s Baby Reindeer,” Kimmel joked. More

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      in US Politics

      Veep cast reunites, with special guests, to raise money for Harris

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      As soon as Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential election and threw his support behind Kamala Harris, people immediately started comparing the shocking turn of events to something that would unfold on HBO’s critically acclaimed political satire Veep. At the time, the US vice-president was seen as a Selina Meyers-esque figure, what with her penchant for public awkwardness, clunky turns of phrase and the perception of her as a perpetual also-ran.Since then, things have changed quite a bit, with Harris rising to the occasion and running a highly effective and exciting campaign that has seen her ascend to frontrunner in the race (even if her advantage remains razor-thin).Still, as I wrote in my article from July, her campaign and the Democrats as a whole would be wise to lean into comparisons to Veep. Despite how venal and vain the characters on the show were, the workplace comedy (which wrapped up in 2019) remains as popular and relevant as ever.When you consider this alongside the fact that the majority of the cast, including and especially its star, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, are outspoken liberals, it made all the sense in the world for some Democratic group to try to work with them to raise funds and awareness during this final leg of the campaign.That group ended up being the Wisconsin Democrats. A swing state that is likely to have a big hand in deciding not only who the next president is, but also which party controls the Senate, WisDems put together a live Zoom table read of a classic episode of Veep, featuring the majority of the cast, plus some big-name guest stars, to be livestreamed to the donors, with the money raised going towards presidential, congressional and assembly campaigns across the state.Fellow liberal comic and Veep super-fan Stephen Colbert took on hosting duties. Special guest stars included the Wisconsin senator Tammy Baldwin in her acting debut (not counting her childhood performance in a school production of Finian’s Rainbow), actor and comedian Kumail Nanjiani as a Syrian refugee (“I’m Pakistani, but I can play cat-eating immigrants from all over the world”), Seinfeld co-star Jason Alexander as a pompous feature writer, film-maker Kevin Smith as a reporter, and Larry David – who, in the most fitting turn of events imaginable, spent the first several minutes of the live stream trying to figure out how to work his Zoom – as Selina’s chief hatchet man, Ben Cafferty.View image in fullscreenReprising their roles from the show were actors Diedrich Bader, Nancy Lenehan, Gary Cole, Sam Richardson, Sufe Bradshaw, Timothy Simons, Reid Scott, Matt Walsh, Anna Chlumsky, Tony Hale and, of course, Louis-Dreyfus, while series regulars Clea DuVall and Sarah Sutherland took on other roles, since their characters don’t appear in this ep. (Patton Oswalt, who was also on the show, made a surprise appearance during the post-read Q&A.)The episode chosen was Crate, from season 3, which finds Selina and her cronies campaigning in New Hampshire ahead of the upcoming primaries. Various mishaps involving a pricey photo-op prop, an incriminating cellphone recording and the suicidal first lady, ensue. This episode is regarded as one of the very best in the show’s history, mostly due to one scene: Selina, having just learned that Potus will be resigning from office, effective immediately, shares a joyous freakout alongside her body man/closest confidant, Gary. It’s a bravura performance from both Louis-Dreyfus and Hale, one that probably secured them each an Emmy the following year.(It’s also fitting that this episode should be chosen, given that this intimate scene is immediately followed by Selina betraying Gary, a dynamic that repeats itself in the most devastating moment of the series finale.)For the read-through, the cast slipped back into their roles with ease. Everyone was on point, but Louis-Dreyfus and Hale were extra-dialed in, especially during their big scene. You got goosebumps watching them recreate it 10 years later, over Zoom, while still bringing all of the emotion they did during the actual filming.The guest stars all acquit themselves well, but it should come as no surprise that it was David who got the biggest laughs. While it’s impossible for him not to play himself, his singular delivery proved a perfect fit with Veep’s uber-cynical, profanity-laden screwball dialog.After the reading, we alternated between cast members interviewing a handful of state legislature candidates (with the major focus of the night revolving around abortion rights) and them fielding questions from viewers. Show creator Armando Iannucci joined in for this portion of the event.We got treated to a mini-Seinfeld reunion between Louis-Dreyfus, Alexander and David; Louis-Dreyfus sounded off on her hatred of AI; Smith talked about his favorite scene of the show (Selina accidentally getting high on St John’s wort, naturally); and David went off on a funny tangent about bald men looking better with beards (although he himself would never grow one because comedians can’t be stroking their beards).Someone asked the cast to give their favorite individual lines from the show. Louis-Dreyfus: “Jolly green jizz-face.” Simons: “[You’re] a meme, ma’am.” Walsh: “I’ve met [some] people … and a lot of them are fucking idiots.” Chlumsky: “[That’s] like [trying to use] a croissant [as] a [fucking] dildo. It doesn’t [do] the job and it [makes] a fucking mess!” Bradshaw: “[Get] the government out of my [fucking] snatch.” Colbert: “Danny Wah!”Iannucci seemed to confirm that Kent and Sue indeed hooked up at some point (“It probably involved algorithms”) and speculated on various characters’ outcomes (married politicos Amy and Bill are probably hosting a podcast with their dogs, while the “late” Andrew Meyer is living under a new identity on an island that he’s trying to buy with a view to it being recognized as its own country).When asked about the future of satire, Iannucci said it depended on who wins this election, as the entire premise of political comedy hinges on people holding politicians up to certain standards, standards Trump and his ilk have never shown the least bit of concern over.Colbert wrapped things up by having the cast read aloud their favorite insults of the show’s most despicable and hilarious character, noxious political aide and eventual veep, Jonah Ryan. These cruel gems include: “Childless cat-lady man”, “Disney plus extra chromosomes”, “Harry No-Styles”, “Rape-It Ralph”, “Moonsucker”, “Satellite licker”, “face-circumcised” and “stock photo for sperm-bank reject”.Right as Simons, the actor who played Ryan, broke the news that the fundraiser exceeded its stated goal of $600,000, Iannucci tossed out on final new Jonah barb that he’d come up with earlier in the day:“Jonah, even if you fell into the world’s most powerful castration machine, you’d still come out of it a dick.” More

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      in US Politics

      Jimmy Kimmel on Trump campaign hacks: ‘Shows that his password is McNuggets123’

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      Late-night hosts talk the Trump campaign’s multiple campaign hacks, Kamala Harris’s lead among young voters and a dubious new Trump merchandise product.Jimmy KimmelThe Trump campaign has now been hacked twice in the last two months, “which is what happens when you store secret documents next to the urinal at a golf course”, said Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday evening.Intelligence officials suspect Iran is behind at least one attack, leading campaign spokesman Steven Cheung to claim that the attacks show how Iran is “terrified of the strength and resolve of Donald J Trump”.“And it also shows that his password is McNuggets123,” Kimmel joked.One of the journalists who received the leaked documents said the material may be “embarrassing or problematic” to members of the Trump campaign. “As if anyone who works for the Trump campaign is capable of embarrassment,” Kimmel noted.In other campaign news, Trump was in Georgia on Tuesday, “where they’re working very hard to fix the election for him”, and “once again, he had a lil McFit about whether or not Kamala Harris worked at McDonalds”. Trump repeatedly and falsely said Harris never worked for the fast-food chain, calling her past employment a “lie”.“He really should just be running for Mayor McCheese,” said Kimmel. “It’s so dumb, it’s so petty, but so is he.”Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers laughed at Trump’s campaign trail confession that his “personality defect” is wanting people to like him. “By his own confession, he likes people who like him, and that’s it,” said Meyers. “He doesn’t care about policy or character or integrity. He you like him, he likes you.”That’s why Trump endorsed Mark Robinson, the scandal-plagued Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina. In multiple appearances, Trump praised Robinson, who is Black, saying: “I’ve gotten to know him so well.” He also described Robinson as a “fine wine”, “Martin Luther King on steroids” and “Martin Luther King times two”.“He’s really truly amazing,” said Meyers of Trump. “Everyone agrees Martin Luther King is a great person, but only Trump would say ‘I know someone twice as good! Every night he has two dreams!’”Among Robinson’s numerous scandals is a CNN report of his past racist comments on a pornographic website called Nude Africa, including calling himself a “black Nazi”. In another comment, Robinson, using his full name in his username, said slavery was “not bad” and that he wished it would come back.“First of all, who uses their full name on a porn website?” Meyers wondered. “I don’t even use my full name when I make a dinner reservation – I use Jimmy Fallon, because I want a table.”Despite his past support of Robinson, the Trump campaign is now pretending they don’t know him, and have removed joint events from their calendar. “A healthy, functional political party would do some introspection about how and why they keep attracting deranged extremists and anti-social weirdos like these guys,” Meyers concluded. “But the GOP would rather lie and pretend they have never had anything to do with Robinson in the first place.”Stephen ColbertAnd on the Late Show, Stephen Colbert cited a new Harvard youth voting poll that found Harris leads young female voters 70% to 23%. “Young women are going to save us all. And young men are going to play Xbox and see how high they can jump off a big rock,” Colbert joked.In an effort to attract young voters, the Harris campaign has committed to visiting over 150 college campuses. “Ooh, 150, she’s trying to break Matt Gaetz’s record,” Colbert quipped. “I’m kidding, obviously he’d never date a college girl. Or, as he calls them, mature honeys.”According to a polling director at Harvard, the results show “a significant shift in the overall vibe”.“Yeah the vibes are immaculate,” Colbert said. “The analysis shows that Harris ate and left no crumbs. Her campaign had a bussin’ glow-up. In conclusion, the children have broken my brain. Boots king!”In other news, “Trump may be busy campaigning, but he’ll never lose sight of his first love: selling garbage,” said Colbert. On Tuesday, the former president announced that he’d be selling silver Trump coins with his face on them. The coins are selling for $100 apiece, though the silver they’re made of only costs $30.“What a deal!” Colbert deadpanned, before imagining one man’s justification for buying the coins: “Honey, I know I bought a Trump coin at a 210% loss, but you can use the Trump coin to buy Truth Social stock, and once that eventually bounces back we’ll invest the profit in an NFT trading card of his gold sneakers, which is pegged to the price of the little pieces of his suit we got from when he got arrested, then convert it to Trump crypto, which we’ll use to buy Melania’s book, which, get this, is worth one Trump silver coin.” More

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      in US Politics

      Lucky Loser review – how Donald Trump squandered his wealth

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      Donald Trump started his career at the end of the 1970s, financed by his father Fred Trump. Over the years this transfer of wealth added up to around $500m in today’s money in gifts. My rough calculations say that, had he simply taken the money, leveraged it not imprudently, and passively invested it in Manhattan real estate – gone to parties, womanised, played golf, collected his rent cheques and reinvested them – his fortune could have amounted to more than $80bn by the time he ascended to the presidency in 2017.And yet Trump was not worth $80bn in 2017. Instead, Forbes pegged him at $2.5bn – which, given the difficulties of valuing and accounting for real estate, is really anything between $5bn (£4bn) and zero (or less). It is in this sense that Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig call Trump a “loser”. He is indeed one of the world’s biggest losers. By trying to run a business, rather than just kicking back and letting the rising tide of his chosen sector lift his wealth beyond the moon, he managed to destroy the vast majority of his potential net worth.How he did that is what Buettner and Craig chronicle in a book dense with facts and figures, but punctuated with moments of irony and dark humour – particularly when contrasting Trump’s public bravado with the often pathetic reality of his money management. The combination turns what might have been a rather boring tome, of interest only to trained financial professionals like me, into something of a page turner. Buettner and Craig paint a picture of Trump’s businesses as “mirage[s], built on inherited wealth, shady deals, and a relentless pursuit of appearances over substance”. And yet, Road Runner-like, he runs off the edge of the cliff, looks down, shrugs – and keeps going until his feet touch the ground again on the other side.Buettner and Craig delve more deeply into this story than anyone I have encountered. They have done their interview and newspaper-morgue homework, checked it against tax information and business records spanning three decades, and so gained an unprecedented look into the real workings of Trump’s financial empire. They uncover, I think as much as we can get at it, the truth behind the narrative of his wealth and its indispensable support: the myth of a genius businessman that he has spun and that, deplorably, much of the press and his supporters have bought, hook, line and sinker. Their conclusion? He was always exaggerating how rich he was, and always skating remarkably close to the edge of financial disaster.But though he squandered a great deal, it’s also true that he was extremely lucky. First, and most importantly, he was a beneficiary of the absolutely spectacular Manhattan real-estate boom. Second, he had things break his way at many crucial junctures that ought to have sunk him into total and irrevocable bankruptcy. Third, he was able to use his celebrity developer-mogul image to attract new business partners after his old ones had washed their hands of him. He was also lucky in the complacency of many of them with respect to his shenanigans: their willingness to play along and not find a judge to pull the plug.What sort of psychology produces this kind of behaviour? Buettner and Craig psychoanalyse Trump as unable to take the hit of recognising his relative incompetence. A deep need for public validation as the master of the Art of the Deal led him, over and over again, to make increasingly risky decisions. The illusion of success had to be maintained at all costs, which meant that a loss had to be followed by an even bigger bet.And so there Trump was at the start of 2017, in spite of everything, stunningly successful. Buettner and Craig call this an “illusion”. I profoundly disagree. To repeatedly save yourself from bankruptcy – to somehow manage to hand responsibility off to the people you do business with while you hotfoot it out of the picture – demonstrates considerable skill and ingenuity of some sort. Trump has exhibited great (if low) cunning and resilience when faced with what often appeared to be near-certain financial, entrepreneurial and business doom. It is, Buettner and Craig say, a combination of “bravado [and] branding” that allowed him to always “walk away with something – usually at the expense of others”.Many of us hope that Trump’s story will end with a proper comeuppance, restoring the appropriate and just moral order of the universe, in which his galaxy-scale hubris does indeed ultimately call forth a satisfying nemesis. Until then, we must regard him as a remarkable success – although few philosophers would judge Trump’s brand of success as the kind worth having.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion More

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      in US Politics

      Chappell Roan isn’t endorsing Kamala Harris. She’s taking a stand for critical thinking instead

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      ‘No, I’m not voting for Trump and yes, I will always question those in power,” Chappell Roan said in a recent TikTok video clarifying why she is not stumping for Kamala Harris in the forthcoming US presidential election. As she had explained to the Guardian last week, she doesn’t “feel pressured to endorse anyone” – having previously denounced the Biden-Harris administration’s failure to robustly defend queer rights against hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills tabled by Republicans, and their ongoing support for Israel during the assault on Gaza that has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians.She followed up with another video on Wednesday: “Obviously fuck the policies of the right,” she said, while also castigating what she called “some of the left’s completely transphobic and completely genocidal views”. She said she was voting for Harris, “but I’m not settling for what has been offered … this is not me playing both sides. This is me questioning both sides.”It’s refreshing to hear a pop star talk about politics with conviction and nuance. If only her recent comments had been received that way online. The year’s breakout pop star went viral this weekend when a popular X account that aggregates pop culture titbits cherrypicked a quote from Roan’s Guardian interview in which she said of Democrats and Republicans: “there’s problems on both sides”.While some users supported Roan’s stance, many others called her “cowardly”, criticised her supposedly “neutral” stance, and accused her of being “uneducated”. The backlash suggests that the majority of those pillorying Roan never read the full interview (which wasn’t linked in the original X post), hence Roan hitting out about “being completely taken out of context”.What happened to Roan is emblematic of two things. The first is the parasitic, reductive way that Pop Crave-style news aggregation accounts on X extract quotes from articles in a way that prioritises engagement over substance. Would the outcry have been the same if the account published Roan’s full quote, in which she encourages people to use “critical thinking skills” and “vote for what’s going on in [their] city”, along with her vociferous support for trans rights? I doubt it.The second is that many musicians’ fanbases are now often admirably politically conscious and demand stars speak out against injustice, meaning they will make it known if they are unhappy with an artist’s position. The difficulty comes when those fans expect stars to fit a particular way of performing their politics.Pop stars weren’t always expected to be as politically literate as they are today. The worst of 80s pop was well meaning but wince-inducingly shallow. Later, being political could often be detrimental to mainstream success: in 2003, the Chicks were blacklisted from the country music industry after Natalie Maines said she was ashamed that then-US president George W Bush was from their home state of Texas.But the rise of social media in the early 2010s created an ecosystem of liking, following and sharing, where a user’s tastes reflected back on them and could be used to signal their own political morality. The Tumblr blog “your fave is problematic” documented celebrities’ perceived moral transgressions. Celebrities, particularly pop stars, quickly adapted accordingly.Then came 2016. Hillary Clinton had everyone from LeBron James and Bruce Springsteen to Beyoncé and Kim Kardashian helping her try to stop Donald Trump from becoming president – everyone except Taylor Swift. Swift’s political silence was heavily criticised and conspiracies swirled that she was a Republican. She would later tell the Guardian the pressure she felt “making statements that go out to hundreds of millions of people” and that she worried that her then-maligned reputation (in the wake of beef with Kardashian and Kanye West) might have been “a hindrance” to Clinton.View image in fullscreenShe endorsed Biden in 2020, but more recently, fans have questioned why she has hung out with Brittany Mahomes, a Trump supporter (and wife of a teammate of Swift’s football player boyfriend). Swift backed Harris and Tim Waltz earlier this month – though she explicitly framed her decision to back Harris as triggered by a personal crisis of Trump using AI-falsified images of her appearing to endorse him, rather than leading with a broader social conscience.The furore around both Roan and Swift speaks to the febrile environment dominating US politics. Poll after poll has shown this could be the closest presidential race this century. Women’s right to bodily autonomy is at stake – which is partly why there’s so much more scrutiny on female musicians. The threat of a second Trump presidency, coupled with fears of the far-right activating Project 2025, have made this election feel like a battle for the soul of American democracy. With the race on a knife-edge, leftwing pop fans are grasping at any positive endorsement that might help Harris. It’s not without precedent. Back in 2008, it was estimated that Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama translated into one million votes. Swift’s post endorsing Harris led to more than 400,000 people going to voter registration sites. The potential power of these endorsements is also evident from rightwing attempts to debunk them: after Paramore singer Hayley Williams spoke out against a potential Trump “dictatorship” at a festival last week, Elon Musk called her a “puppet of the machine”.But there’s an argument that we shouldn’t look to them for political guidance, given that wealthy musicians live in a world mostly unburdened by the hardships and struggles faced by everyday people and marginalised communities, and they seem as prone as anyone to accepting disinformation. Many fans of Janet Jackson – the artist behind the radical, progressive politics of 1989 album Rhythm Nation 1814 – were crushed this weekend when in a Guardian interview she parroted Trump-propagated misinformation that Harris is “not Black”. Pharrell Williams is also currently in hot water with fans for saying that he doesn’t “really do politics” and gets “annoyed” when celebrities tell people who to vote for.I would argue it’s fair to want celebrity musicians to be politically astute, particularly if, like Jackson, they’re willing to comment on politics in interviews. The key thing is not to simplify complex political stances to fit the narrow bounds of what a hive mind on social media has deemed acceptable. Think of the way Nick Cave has been accused of being “conservative” – though it’s fine to question his beliefs about religion, boycotts and dogma, those beliefs do not neatly map on to that term and it diminishes the debate to suggest they do.What separates Roan’s political interventions from her peers is the way she wants to empower her young fanbase to think smarter and harder about how they can actively engage in politics. She had asked for critical thinking, but the kind of narrow, hardline stance her comments were met with is the antithesis of the tolerance, empathy and self-reflection that should be part of leftwing thought. Roan is right not to tell fans what to do this election. Instead she’s a valuable demonstration of what it means to live your politics. As she clarified on TikTok: “Actions speak louder than words and actions speak louder than an endorsement.” More

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      ‘We had no political agenda’: the White House hosts a West Wing TV reunion

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      The marine band struck up a familiar theme. The door of the Oval Office swung open. Out strode the president and first lady to address an expectant crowd – that is, the real first lady, Jill Biden, and the president that fans of the TV show The West Wing used to secretly crave: Jed Bartlet, alias actor Martin Sheen.After a decade in which US politics has often felt like the work of a hyper-imaginative screenwriter, with ever more unlikely plot twists including the election of a reality TV star, it felt strangely natural to see Sheen stepping into the shoes of Joe Biden as his show’s theme music filled the Rose Garden.“We just came from the Oval,” said Jill Biden. “But even though Joe is away hosting leaders of Australia and India and Japan in Delaware, he wanted to make sure that President Bartlet and his staff had a chance to see the Oval Office again.”Sheen and fellow cast members had come to the White House to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first episode of The West Wing, the seven-season drama about an idealist liberal president and his fast-talking staff.On Friday, in warm sunshine, there were references to “big blocks of cheese” – a tradition on the show of requiring presidential staffers to meet with eccentric or offbeat constituents – and the walk-and-talk dialogues in which characters moved through the halls at high speed. Waiters passed out bourbon-and-ginger ale cocktails called the Jackal, a reference to press secretary CJ Cregg’s dance and lip-sync routine in one episode.Sheen – who has said his character was a conglomeration of Democrats John F Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton – rolled back the years. In classic Bartlet mode, he exhorted the crowd to find something worth fighting for, “something deeply personal and uncompromising, something that can unite the will of the spirit with the work of the flesh”.View image in fullscreenThen Aaron Sorkin, the show’s creator, declared: “Our cast will live on as one of the best in the history of television,” and recognised those in attendance. Among them were Richard Schiff, who played communications director Toby Ziegler; Janel Moloney, who played assistant Donna Moss; and Dulé Hill, who played the president’s body man, Charlie Young.Sorkin also noted the absence of a few high-profile actors – Allison Janney, Bradley Whitford and Rob Lowe, better known to fans as Cregg, Josh Lyman and Sam Seaborn – who he said were on set elsewhere. “The rest of us are apparently unemployed,” he joked.After the crowd laughed, a voice chimed in from Sorkin’s right. “Not yet!” Jill Biden said. It was a nod to the fact that her husband still has four months left in office – and a quick retort worthy of Bartlet’s exchanges with wife Abbey Bartlet, played by Stockard Channing.The West Wing remains a favourite of many who now work in Washington. Among those spotted in the Rose Garden were the House foreign affairs chair, Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas, and Joe Walsh, once a Tea Party-aligned Illinois representative who is now a fierce critic of former president Donald Trump.Sorkin reflected: “We had no political agenda. We were trying to do a good show every week. But the greatest delivery system ever invented for an idea is a story and, once in a while, we’ll hear from someone who was inspired to go into public service because of our show. And that’s something that 25 years ago this week, none of us could have foreseen or even dared to hope for.”Born in the last year of the 20th century, the show illustrates that there is nothing so remote as the recent past. Its run coincided with the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was off the air by the time Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden were elected and long gone when the Covid-19 pandemic and January 6 insurrection unfolded.Sorkin continued: “The show was idealistic, aspirational and romantic. Over the years, I’ve noticed that during times of peak political tension, pundits will warn us not to expect ‘a West Wing moment’.View image in fullscreen“They mean not to expect a selfless act of statesmanship. Not to expect anyone to put country first. Don’t expect anyone to swing for the fences or reach for the stars. But the fact is, West Wing moments do happen and Dr Biden, we saw proof of that on the morning of July 21.”That was the day Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election after a disastrous debate performance and growing concerns over the 81-year-old’s mental and physical condition. For months, however, Biden had been in denial. If anyone wants to look for an on-screen parallel, it might be Bartlet hiding a multiple sclerosis diagnosis while running for president.The final season of The West Wing saw Bartlet passing on the torch to fellow Democrat Matthew Santos, played by Jimmy Smits. He becomes America’s first Latino president after defeating Senator Arnold Vinick of California, portrayed by Alan Alda as the kind of old school Republican who is now an endangered species in the Trump era.Nothing, perhaps, dates The West Wing more than that. More