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Jimmy Kimmel

Jimmy Kimmel Skewers Trump Over Oscars Joke Tantrum (VIDEO)

Donald Trump attacked late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel in an early morning all-over-the-map social media post Wednesday. That night, Kimmel told his audience that he learned about Trump’s latest attack on him from all the text messages waiting for him when he woke up.

“Usually, like, I'll have maybe four,” he said. “I had 100 because it appears that I once again ruffled the feathers of our Kentucky Fried former president who is—apparently, with all that's going on—still smarting from my joke about him at the Oscars."

After reading Trump’s Truth Social screed out loud, Kimmel joked, "My first thought is I'm impressed by his use of the word 'vaunted.' He was even able to spell it correctly, which is really good!" He added, "But literally everything else is not just wrong, but ‘maybe we should be worried about him’ wrong. Like, ‘maybe we should take the keys away from grandpa’ wrong."

Kimmel then fact-checked Trump’s rant.

He conceded that Trump calling him "stupid Jimmy Kimmel" was a debatable fact. But he took issue with Trump’s claim that Kimmel is not only bad at hosting the Academy Awards, but he was somehow responsible for the show’s “big ratings drop”—a “weird” assertion, Kimmel said, because ratings were up this year.

Does the late-night comedian suffer from “Trump derangement syndrome,” as the Donald claims?

“There's only one person who suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Kimmel said. “His name is Donald Trump."

Kimmel noted that a big part of Trump’s attack on him seems to be rooted in his inability to distinguish Kimmel from Academy Award-winning actor Al Pacino.

"Now, don't get me wrong,” he said. “I wish I was Al Pacino. I'm just not."

As for Trump’s insistence that Kimmel’s wife, along with people behind the scenes of the show, were begging Kimmel to not read Trump's Truth Social attack live on air during the Academy Awards broadcast, Kimmel gave this hilarious blow-by-blow account of how that all went down.

What happened is they showed me what he posted. I looked at it. I said, “Oh, I'm going to read this.”My wife went, “Oh no.”
I said, “Oh yes.”

And that was that. That was the whole story.

Kimmel said he wasn't planning to accept hosting duties again, even though he's been asked, but now that Trump weighed in on it, he has to consider it.

"You know what? Maybe you can watch on the TV in the rec room at Rikers with all the guys," he said.

And since it clearly still bothers Trump, Kimmel played the clip of him making fun of Trump at the Academy Awards by reading out Trump's attack on him.

Kimmel then reminded the audience that his show received better ratings than Trump would have you believe, with a graph showing that ratings have increased in the two years Kimmel has hosted.

"I just want to say that that is not 'down.' You want to know what 'down' looks like?” Kimmel asked, before putting up a graph showing stock plummeting. “This is the value of Truth Social stock, your company. That's 'down.'"

Zachary Mueller is the senior research director for America’s Voice and America’s Voice Education Fund. He brings his expertise on immigration politics to talk about how much money the GOP is using to promote its racist immigration campaigns.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Truth Social Founders Sue Trump For Trying To Swindle Them

Truth Social Founders Sue Trump For Trying To Swindle Them

Former President Donald Trump is now being accused in a lawsuit of intentionally devaluing the media company he co-owns with two associates who met him as contestants on his reality TV show The Apprentice.

The Washington Post reported Thursday on the lawsuit filed in Delaware Chancery Court by United Atlantic Ventures (UAV) — a partnership run by former Apprentice contestants Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss. According to the Post, Litinsky and Moss successfully pitched Trump on a tech and social media company branded with the ex-president's name, and agreed to give him 90 percent of the company's stake while they split the remaining 10 percent between themselves and an attorney. The new company — Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) — owns and operates Trump's far-right Truth Social platform.

TMTG was set to go public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) called Digital World Acquisition. However, Litinsky and Moss are now alleging in their lawsuit that Trump sought to "drastically dilute" the shares of the company in an "11th hour, pre-merger corporate maneuvering" scheme.

Initially, Trump's stake was 78 million shares, valued at roughly $3.5 billion. UAV's stake in the company amounted to seven million shares valued at approximately $339 million. However, the lawsuit alleges Trump then engaged in a "dilution scheme" to increase the number of total shares to one billion, which they said had "no legitimate business purpose." UAV accused Trump of possibly scheming to distribute the additional shares among himself and his family, while significantly decreasing their stake in the company to less than one percent.

"[UAV was] promised 8.6 percent of this company and sadly its business partners are baselessly trying to renege," Litinsky and Moss' attorney, Christopher J. Clark — who has previously represented Hunter Biden, Elon Musk, and Mark Cuban — told the Post.

"They feel like: We made Truth Social for you. You get 90 percent. But some people just aren’t happy with 90 percent."

UAV has since threatened to block TMTG's merger with the SPAC, which would significantly delay its plans to go public. The SPAC stated in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the latest developments could "significantly impact" the proposed merger and "negatively impact investor confidence and market perception."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

'Nice Try': New York Judge Shoots Down Trump Bid To Delay Testimony

'Nice Try': New York Judge Shoots Down Trump Bid To Delay Testimony

Christopher Kise — the attorney representing former President Donald Trump in the ongoing New York civil fraud case — tried to throw another wrench in the works of the justice system currently ensnaring his client. However, the judge overseeing the case appeared to reject his argument outright.

MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin tweeted on Tuesday that Kise did a 180 on a statement yesterday in which he said he wouldn't play to file a motion attempting to delay Trump's upcoming testimony in the case until the appeals challenging Judge Arthur Engoron's gag order had been exhausted. Rubin tweeted an exchange she had with Kise in which she asked if Kise planned to "ask Judge Engereon[sic] to pause the trial so that President Trump's appellate rights can be vindicated." Kise indicated he didn't plan to do so, telling the reporter she was "probably smart enough to know where that would land," and that he tried "not to engage in futile efforts."

But on Tuesday, Rubin tweeted that "[Kise] still asked, and got a 'nice try' from Engoron."

Trump is still appealing Judge Engoron's gag order, which he imposed in response to the former president's constant flurry of attacks against law clerk Allison Greenfield. Trump's posts about Greenfield reportedly resulted in the clerk getting a deluge of death threats from Trump supporters — many of them anti-Semitic in nature.

"Ms. Greenfield's personal information, including her personal cell phone number and personal email addresses also have been compromised resulting in daily doxing. She has been subjected to, on a daily basis, harassing, disparaging comments and antisemitic tropes," a court document detailing the threats read. "I have been informed by Ms. Greenfield that she has been receiving approximately 20-30 calls per day to her personal cell phone and approximately 30-50 messages per day on combined sites of social media, Linkedln and two (2) personal email addresses."

Engoron, who is overseeing the bench trial and will decide its verdict, already ruled that Trump was liable for fraud. The verdict will ultimately decide how much in financial penalties Trump should have to pay. New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking $250 million in damages, alleging that Trump knowingly and deliberately submitted false financial statements aimed at increasing the value of Trump's real estate portfolio in order to secure more favorable tax and insurance benefits.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Elon Musk

Will Musk Walk Away From The Smoking Crater That Was Formerly Twitter?

In a fantastic appearance on Wednesday afternoon, Elon Musk told advertisers who had left his X (formerly Twitter) social media site, “Go fuck yourself.” It was not the only F-bomb Musk dropped in a heated rant that included blaming advertisers for the failure of what once was Twitter and accusing them of trying to “blackmail” him by refusing to advertise.

According to the BBC, advertising made up 90 percent of Twitter’s revenue before Musk took over. Immediately following his purchase of the company, Twitter was flooded with an explosion of racism. Within three months, ad revenue dropped by 50%. In his speech, which was given before attendees at The New York Times' DealBook Summit and who sometimes seemed shocked into silence, Musk both admitted that the departure of advertisers would kill the company, and vowed that he would not bail it out with his own money.

It’s been only 13 months since Musk spent $44 billion on Twitter. At the end of October, the employee equity plan set the company’s value at $19 billion. That was before Musk endorsed an antisemitic post based on the “great replacement” conspiracy theory and sent the remaining advertisers fleeing in droves.

If the company should fail in the coming weeks, it will be one of the largest, most astounding, and most self-inflicted business failures in history.

Musk’s conversation with Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin extended for more than an hour, during which time Musk apologized for supporting the antisemitic post, saying it was the "dumbest" thing he has shared online.

However, that’s highly debatable.

Was it dumber than Musk threatening to sue researchers who documented a rise in hate speech on Twitter? Was it dumber than when he sued Media Matters for America for demonstrating how ads can fall next to racist or antisemitic posts? Was it dumber than when he threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League after they found his site overrun with accounts pushing “virulent antisemitism”?

Was it dumber than when Musk welcomed back infamous neo-Nazis, including the man who created the Nazi site “The Daily Stormer” and was an organizer of 2017’s torch-wielding Nazi march in Charlottesville? Dumber than when he welcomed a neo-Nazi group that was suspended for repeatedly pushing the same “great replacement” conspiracy that Musk endorsed in his post? Was it dumber than when he falsely accused a Jewish man of being a neo-Nazi involved in a street brawl?

Was it dumber than when he drove away NPR by labeling them as government-controlled media and then threatened to give away their account so someone else could masquerade as NPR? Dumber than the whole blue checkmark scheme?

Was it dumber than when he accused Black people in South Africa of openly plotting “white genocide”? Dumber than when he reposted a “white lives matter” tweet from a notorious white supremacist? Dumber than when he said the Biden administration was destroying democracy? Or when he defended slavery? Or when he spent Pride Month handing out “likes” to transphobic tweets? Or when he said the media was racist against white and Asian people, and defended a man who called for segregation? Dumber than when he went to the southern border in a cowboy hat and video game T-shirt to spend a day endorsing false claims about an immigrant invasion?

Elon Musk apologized for one post. But advertisers didn’t leave the site formerly known as Twitter because of one post. They left because Musk gutted the site’s moderation teams, welcomed those who spread hate and lies, repeatedly demonstrated that he was always ready to believe a racist conspiracy theory, and showed he would make a threat at the drop of a hat.

Following Musk’s swear-laden appearance, Linda Yaccarino—the world’s most sidelined CEO—reposted a recording of Musk’s full DealBook interview (including the “go fuck yourself” line) and added: “And here’s my perspective when it comes to advertising: X is standing at a unique and amazing intersection of Free Speech and Main Street — and the X community is powerful and is here to welcome you. To our partners who believe in our meaningful work -- Thank You.”

Sure. That’ll work.

There’s no doubt that X is the place to be if you believe the 53 million people who died in World War II didn’t adequately explore the debate between fascism and democracy. Several people who share that belief have already volunteered to hand over their cash to the world’s richest man. But it’s not going to be enough.

Musk already admitted that his site is doomed without advertisers. Then he drove a final stake through the idea of any of those advertisers returning. Then he vowed not to keep X alive with more of his own cash.

All that’s left is the construction of a post-mortem mythology in which Musk complains that he tried to save free speech with $44 billion and his valuable time but that the horrible wokeism (or cancel culture, or whatever boogeyman the right wing invents next) just wouldn’t let him.

Anyway, get ready for the funeral.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.