FRIDAY, AUGUST 25
It’s been a minute since Taylor Swift released one of her shrieking vengeance screeds (read: a new pop song), so we were excited today to hear her latest single, “Look What You Made Me Do.” In it she solemnly announces, “the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now… why? BECAUSE SHE’S DEAD!” (Oooh… subtle!) The “new” Taylor then spends the remainder of the song whining about how Kanye West and Kim Kardashian stole her innocence by catching her red-handed in a lie (and providing the receipts to prove it). Girlfriend, puh-leeeeze. This sort of snipey shade was cute when directed at lotharios like Jake Gyllenhaal—but here’s exactly why you need to pull your head out of your skinny ass, and learn how to READ THE ROOM: As the most powerful storm in recorded history hit the coast of Texas today, killing an untold number of people, and forcing 30,000 into emergency shelters, President Trump blithely waved at the cameras and wished Texans “good luck!” as he departed for his weekend retreat. He then announced he was formally ordering the military to institute a ban on transgender people joining its ranks, and followed that by pardoning despicable law-breaking racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio (more on him in a sec). Now, we know Taylor couldn’t have known about these events when she chose her single’s release date—BUT HEY TAY-TAY: TRUMP’S BEEN DOING SHIT LIKE THIS EVERY DAY SINCE JANUARY. Girl, no one cares about your touchy, hair-trigger feelings anymore. It’s time for the “new Taylor” to join the rest of the adults in the room, and grow the fuck up or GTFO. (Think she’ll write a song about us now? Fingers crossed!)
SATURDAY, AUGUST 26
And the fury continues with this little public service announcement regarding the many crimes of former sheriff and unrepentant a-hole Joe Arpaio. In a tweet, Trump wrote, “I am pleased to inform you that I have just granted a full Pardon to 85 year old American patriot Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He kept Arizona safe!” Patriot? Safe? From years of reporting in the Phoenix New Times, here’s what we know about Arpaio: He proudly racially profiled the residents of Maricopa County, demanding to see identification based on appearance alone. Under his watch, his department failed to investigate hundreds of cases of sexual abuse—many involving children. He called his own jail a “concentration camp”—where inmates killed themselves at an alarming rate. He marched hundreds of Hispanic prisoners through the streets to a makeshift tent city prison surrounded by an electric fence. He set up “bathroom cams” in his jail cells, which recorded video of women inmates on the toilet that could be accessed on the internet. He arrested reporters for daring to write about his crimes. He used county money to send a deputy to Hawaii to search for Barack Obama’s birth certificate. When a judge ruled that he had been racially profiling Latinos, he hired a private investigator to follow the judge and his wife. After ignoring the judge’s orders to stop racially profiling citizens, he was charged with contempt of court. And those are just the crimes we know about. This is the man President Trump pardoned—which probably gives someone like Charles Manson a lot of hope.