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      Trump’s Military Parade Is Designed for TV, but It Won’t Be on Every Channel

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      A minor-league football championship game will air on ABC. Fox News, CNN and C-SPAN will carry the four-hour festivities live.Fox News is airing an extensive four-hour special called “Army 250 Parade.” CNN will carry the proceedings. And MSNBC is sticking with its usual liberal opinion shows.President Trump’s military parade in Washington, celebrating the Army’s 250 birthday and his own 79th, has the hallmarks of a made-for-TV event. The White House has hired an outside production company, Event Strategies Inc., which was responsible for some of Mr. Trump’s Wrestlemania-style campaign rallies, and cameras will be rolling as 28 Abrams tanks and 6,700 soldiers process down Constitution Avenue. (Paratroopers will swoop in from above.)Cable news channels plan to cover the event along familiar lines. And America’s three biggest television networks do not plan to carry the event live on their affiliates. Each had prior programming commitments that evening, although ABC, CBS and NBC say that coverage will be available digitally via their 24-hour streaming channels.At the time that Mr. Trump is scheduled to give remarks, CBS will be broadcasting a rerun of the comic procedural “Elsbeth,” NBC is set to air an episode of a game show called “Password,” and ABC plans to carry the championship game of the UFL, a minor football league.The festivities are set to kick off at 6 p.m. Eastern and conclude roughly four hours later, after a country music concert and fireworks.Fox News has a full day of programming planned around the event, with appearances from several on-air personalities, including a few co-hosts of “Fox & Friends.” (A former “Friend,” Pete Hegseth, is now the defense secretary and has been closely involved in the parade.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Seth Meyers on Trump’s falling approval rating: ‘Worth remembering that people don’t like this’

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      Late-night hosts spoke about how Donald Trump’s presidency is proving unpopular with Americans, looking at the cruelty of his deportation strategy and the response to protests in Los Angeles.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers spoke about Trump’s approval rating going down this past week and in particular he looked at how people are against his extreme immigration strategy.“People don’t even approve of Trump on immigration and that’s what people wanted him for,” he said.Meyers called his tactics “needlessly cruel” before speaking about his appearance at the Kennedy Center this week where he went to see a performance of Les Misérables.Trump was booed by many and Meyers said it was “like Darth Vader getting booed on the Death Star”.He said it was “worth remembering that people don’t like this stuff” and that while Trump might have promised to crack down on criminality, instead he has been “letting Stephen Miller run rampant” targeting everyday workers.Meyers called it a “wildly unpopular crackdown on innocent people living their lives” and Trump now trying to control the narrative showed how he is “terrified” of losing more support.Stephen ColbertOn the Late Show, Stephen Colbert said that there was a possibility that thunderstorms might force Trump to cancel the military parade planned for the weekend.“You made God mad and now he’s shooting lightning at your birthday tanks,” Colbert joked.He added: “If he gets too wet, it all slides off and someone has to carry his face and his hair around in a bucket.”It’s proving to be an unpopular plan already with six in 10 Americans calling it a bad use of government money. “He’s already throwing a big military parade out in Los Angeles,” Colbert added.This weekend will also see planned pushback across the US dubbed the “No Kings” protests. Trump was asked if he saw himself as a king this week and he claimed that was not how he saw himself. “Why dost thou sons look so inbred?” Colbert quipped.He also spoke about Trump’s unpopular visit to the theatre and joked about his dumb responses to questions on the red carpet. “His brain is wet bread,” he said before joking that Trump probably believes Les Misérables is about a character called “Lester Misérables”.Trump has raged against drag performances at the Kennedy Center so some decked-out drag queens walked in to watch the show near Trump. “That is amazing except for anyone sitting behind them,” he said.Colbert also looked at the coverage of the Los Angeles protests, ridiculing a CNN segment that commented on the smell of weed during a peaceful demonstration. “They better call a Swat team and a taco truck,” he said.This week also saw the Trump administration target the use of any “improper ideology” at the National zoo. “All monkeys doing it in front of our preschoolers must be married,” Colbert said.Jimmy KimmelOn Jimmy Kimmel Live! the host joked about surviving the “post-apocalyptic hellscape” that is Los Angeles.He also brought up the “Maga-friendly” Kennedy Center and how Trump going to see Les Misérables was “like Kanye going to see Fiddler on the Roof”.He added: “Usually when Trump watches a staged rebellion, it’s Fox News’s coverage of the riots here in LA.”Kimmel joked that Trump was “putting out fires with his brain” given how calm things have really been in the city, and compared it with the January 6 riot where Trump and his followers called those involved “concerned citizens on a sightseeing tour”.He spoke about the the planned protests this weekend, saying: “I really hope that doesn’t put a damper on Trump’s big birthday parade.”This week also saw Trump admit in an interview to once playing the flute when he was younger. “I feel like I’d have the same reaction to a gorilla using a curling iron,” Kimmel said.In other news, Rand Paul’s refusal to support Trump’s bill that would increase the national debt also saw him disinvited from this year’s White House picnic, but after he told reporters, Trump claimed this wasn’t the case. “Trump thought RuPaul was trying to get in,” he joked. More

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      in Elections

      Anna Sawai and Hiroyuki Sanada on How “Shogun” Recreates History

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      Anna Sawai and Hiroyuki Sanada, two stars of the hit series “Shogun,” discuss history, acting and what they’d bring to the present from feudal Japan.This personal reflection is part of a series called The Big Ideas, in which writers respond to a single question: What is history? You can read more by visiting The Big Ideas series page.The 2024 television series “Shogun,” a historical drama set in feudal Japan, was a worldwide hit. The show and its actors won a record 18 Emmy Awards, as well as four Golden Globes. Critics and viewers praised it not only for its writing, acting and production, but also for its devotion to accurately portraying Japan and Japanese culture in the early 1600s.The historical drama, which has been renewed for a second season, is based on a novel of the same name by James Clavell, published in 1975 and adapted into a mini-series in 1980. The story focuses on the relationship between Lord Yoshii Toranaga, a warlord struggling to fend off his political rivals, and John Blackthorne, a marooned English navigator who becomes an adviser to Toranaga. The 2024 series gives a more prominent and complex role to Toda Mariko, Blackthorne’s interpreter.The characters’ historical counterparts are Tokugawa Ieyasu (Toranaga), the “shogun,” or military ruler who helped to unite Japan; William Adams (Blackthorne), the first Englishman ever to reach Japan; and Hosokawa Gracia (Mariko), a Japanese noblewoman and converted Catholic.The novel and two series show varying degrees of faithfulness to the events they’re based on. The newest “Shogun,” however, is built around its Japanese characters and culture in ways that the 1980 series was not, foregrounding those characters’ points of view and their presence as drivers of the plot. And the accuracy the show embraces in details as small as gestures and fabric colors makes it a striking recreation of some parts of historical Japanese culture.It does include changes — some modernized language, for example, or stylistic omissions — to make it understandable to modern viewers around the world. But its commitment to authenticity makes “Shogun” a compelling lens through which to examine television’s role in interpreting and portraying history, as well as how actors inherit and embody history and culture in their performances.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why TV Meteorologist John Morales’s Hurricane Plea Went Viral

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      A TV forecaster said he was not confident he could predict the paths of storms this year, touching a nerve amid concerns about how federal cuts could affect hurricane season.A meteorologist who has spent his career warning South Florida about hurricanes had a new warning for viewers last week: He’s not sure he can do it this year.John Morales of WTVJ in Miami said the Trump administration’s recent cuts to the National Weather Service could leave television forecasters like him “flying blind” this hurricane season. “We may not exactly know how strong a hurricane is before it reaches the coastline,” he warned.Clips of Mr. Morales’s comments have spread widely: one posted on MSNBC’s TikTok account has nearly 4,500 comments, and news outlets around the world have written articles about what he said. (This isn’t the first time Mr. Morales has been the subject of viral attention: In the fall, his emotional reaction to Hurricane Milton’s rapid intensification also hit a nerve.)Here’s what Mr. Morales had to say and more about what is going on with the Weather Service.He warned of less accurate forecasts.Mr. Morales’s presentation on Monday began with a clip of himself following the Category 5 Hurricane Dorian in 2019 as it moved over the Bahamas. He reassured his Florida viewers that the powerful storm would turn north before it reached their coastline. And it did, exactly when Mr. Morales assured anxious viewers it would.The clip cuts to him in present day, slightly older and now wearing glasses. He recalled the confidence he used to have in delivering an accurate forecast to his viewers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Turned the Oval Office Into “Watch What Happens Live”

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      On Thursday, right around the time of the online breakout of a feud between Elon Musk and Donald Trump that resembled a “Real Housewives” reunion show, we were treated to another episode of what has become the president’s favorite reality TV reboot. Call it “The Apprentice: World Leaders,” and in this latest installment, the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, appeared alongside Mr. Trump, displaying a sophisticated instinct to hold his ground and emerge unscathed during his visit to the gilded zoo of the Oval Office.We’re becoming all too used to watching this new kind of presidential meet-and-greet. What traditionally had been a low-stakes and highly choreographed government function has this year been reinvented by Mr. Trump as “Watch What Happens Live” set in the Oval Office (with JD Vance on hand to play the supporting role of the bartender).For many of us, watching these affairs offers the same queasy experience as the most car-crash-reminiscent reality shows, but with geopolitical consequences. We brace ourselves for the inevitable moments of skirmish and bluster, of braying rudeness and the possible surprise reveal straight out of “Punk’d” or “Jerry Springer.” We grimace in preparation for the next big cringe moment before the show goes to commercial. We watch — often through eyes shielded in dismay — as the president falls just short of resorting to his favorite catchphrase: “You’re fired!”It’s natural to conflate these moments with the worst — and most addictive — elements of reality TV. Maybe it’s a remnant of my early career writing public-television program guide listings, or perhaps my childhood spent within reach of the Bronx Zoo, but I have come to understand, or at least to tolerate, these diplomacy-shattering displays of ginned-up drama as more like episodes of classic nature programs.For me, they often recall “The Living Planet,” that grand adventure in BBC travel-budget largess, narrated by David Attenborough, from the 1980s — right around the time a self-styled real estate developer from Queens was buying up New Jersey casinos that would go bankrupt.Admittedly, I might be overly influenced by the news that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a recent most-favored autocracy, will be sending two rare Arabian leopards to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington. Brandie Smith, the director of the zoo, said that Mr. Trump was most interested in learning about the leopards’ “personality.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ Keeps Pushing Back TV’s Fourth Wall

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      Reality TV had long advised casts to pretend the cameras (and producers) weren’t there. But for the Mormon influencers of MomTok, the business of being on camera is central to the plot.The women of MomTok, the 20- and 30-something Mormon influencers who make up the cast of Hulu’s “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” built their livelihood on upsetting codes of conduct.The series’s first season was birthed in the wake of a “soft swinging” scandal involving some of its couples. A few of the cast members drink alcohol. Some abstain in keeping with the Church’s doctrine, but interpret its teachings on ketamine use more loosely.In the show’s second season, which finished airing this month, the group routinely flouted what, in eras past, had been a cardinal rule of reality TV: Don’t break the fourth wall.“It’s not a shock that I was a fan favorite,” Demi Engemann pointedly told her MomTok peers in Episode 6. The group had just learned she tried to persuade producers to kick off her co-star Jessi Ngatikaura to secure a higher contract for this season. “I feel like I’m an asset, I should fight for more.”That prompted Taylor Frankie Paul, the unofficial founder of MomTok, to push back about her own negotiations over the very show on which they were appearing.“I’m the that one that’s actually struggling because I’m open to the [expletive] world,” she said. “If anyone deserves to be paid more it’s me and I’ve never even asked for that.”

      @secretlivesonhulu The girls are fightinggg 🫣 #TheSecretLivesOfMormonWives ♬ original sound – secretlivesonhulu We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 3, Episode 2 Recap: Textual Relations

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      Carrie’s long-distance “situationship” with Aidan becomes frustrating in ways she didn’t anticipate.Season 3, Episode 2: ‘The Rat Race’Here in the real world, it’s a common refrain from single people that dating apps are as tired as the tiramisu Seema’s date orders for her without asking. Everyone is sick of the swiping, the ghosting and the serial situationships. The virtual-first connections that seem essential to dating in 2025 have never played a major role in the “Sex and the City” franchise, mostly because the majority of this decades-spanning story has predated all that.But Carrie’s former neighbor Lisette (Katerina Tannenbaum) shows up at the beginning of Episode 2 to reflect that cultural shift, lamenting to Carrie that, as a single woman of today, she is mostly in a relationship with her phone. Turns out, throwing it across a room may be a more effective way of it helping you meet someone.Some of the characters, though, regardless of age, are no better than Lisette when it comes to phone addiction.Starting with our star, Carrie is in something of a love-hate relationship with texting Aidan. Now that Aidan has cracked the communication door ajar, Carrie feels slightly more empowered to reach out to her “boyfriend.” (I insist on putting that in quotes because while Carrie may use that word to refer to Aidan, at this point, I simply refuse.)First, Carrie drafts a long, meandering voice text to Aidan about a newly-discovered rat infestation in her garden, but she deletes it before sending. Considering Aidan’s request for no contact (or at least very limited contact), she determines it is best to leave him alone.But without any such regard for the rules he set himself, Aidan lights his no-contact contract on fire with a surprise appearance at Carrie’s Gramercy townhouse, to her delight.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Valerie Mahaffey, Actress in “Northern Exposure” and “Desperate Housewives,” Dies at 71

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      She had memorable roles on TV shows like “Desperate Housewives” and “Northern Exposure,” and in the dark comedy film “French Exit.”Valerie Mahaffey, a character actress with a knack for playing eccentric women who sometimes revealed themselves to be sinister on television shows like “Desperate Housewives,” “Northern Exposure” and “Devious Maids,” died on Friday in Los Angeles. She was 71.The cause was cancer, her husband, the actor Joseph Kell, said in a statement.Ms. Mahaffey had worked steadily over the past five decades, starting out on the NBC daytime soap opera, “The Doctors,” for which she received a Daytime Emmy nomination for best supporting actress in 1980. Most recently, she appeared in the movie “The 8th Day,” a crime thriller released in March. She was also known for her guest-starring roles on well-known TV series such as “Seinfeld” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”She won an Emmy for best supporting actress in 1992 for her work as Eve, a hypochondriac, on the 1990s CBS series “Northern Exposure,” a drama set in Alaska. She was best known for playing seemingly friendly women who become villainous characters in dramas such as “Desperate Housewives,” where she appeared in nine episodes.In her “Housewives” role as Alma Hodge, she was a woman trapped in a loveless marriage who faked her own death to get back at her husband, hoping he would be blamed for her disappearance.She most recently won acclaim for her work in the 2020 dark comedy, “French Exit,” which saw her nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for her portrayal of Madame Reynard, a scene-stealing eccentric widow.In an interview in 2021 with the Gold Derby, Ms. Mahaffey discussed the role, saying: “I know how to be funny. I’ve done sitcoms. I know ba-dum-bum humor.”“Maybe it’s this point in my life,” she added, “I don’t want any artifice. And I wanted to play the truth of every moment.”She also said then that she often ended up playing characters who were “a little askew,” which she said was aligned with how people are in reality.Ms. Mahaffey was born on June 16, 1953, in Sumatra, Indonesia. Her mother, Jean, was Canadian, and her father, Lewis, was an American who worked in the oil business. Her family later moved to Nigeria before eventually settling in Austin, Texas, where she attended high school and went on to earn a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1975, from the University of Texas.The frequent moves made her family very close, she told The New York Times in a 1983 interview.“We had to leave friends behind all the time, and so we turned toward one another,” she said.In addition to her husband, Ms. Mahaffey is survived by their daughter, Alice Richards. More