MONDAY, AUGUST 14
Welcome back to One Day at a Time, dears, where… hold on a sec, we’re just confirming one little thing… yep, mmm-hmm. Okay! Yes! Confirmed: Donald Trump, who lost the popular vote by 2,864,974 votes, has officially come out as a Nazi sympathizer. What a time to be alive! This week, America’s kommondant-in-chief doubled down on his support for the actual holy shit swear-to-god American Nazis who clashed with counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. Holding court at Trump Tower, Trump shouted at reporters, insisting counterprotesters “acted violently and should share the blame for the mayhem that left a woman dead and many injured,” the Washington Post reports. “I think there’s blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it,” Trump said. “You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. No one wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now: You had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit and they were very, very violent.” SO… HOW’D THAT GO? Well, Trump’s tirade went over great with his loyal supporters, like former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke (who tweeted, “Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa”)… and terribly with EVERYONE ELSE. “I’m still in the phase where I’m wondering if it was actually real life,” Fox News’ Kat Timpf said after Trump’s remarks. “I have too much eye makeup on to start crying right now.” On MSNBC, Chuck Todd—who, as the New York Times noted, was “visibly stunned”—said, “What I just saw gave me the wrong kind of chills. Honestly, I’m a bit shaken by what I just heard.” And on CNN, Jake Tapper ended his broadcast by laying things out as clearly as possible: “To anybody out there watching today who is confused and thinks, ‘I thought that the Klan and neo-Nazis and white supremacists, I thought there was no debate about this thing among civilized people’—there isn’t a debate about it.” Oooh. We can’t wait to see Republicans turn on Trump! This has to be the final straw, right? Right?
TUESDAY, AUGUST 15
Wrong! Even as outrage continued over Trump’s defense of actual holy shit swear-to-god American Nazis, two of the most powerful men in the GOP refused to criticize Trump. Senate Majority Turtle Mitch McConnell released a meaningless statement “condemning the hate groups without mentioning Trump at all,” reports the Huffington Post’s Marina Fang, while House Frat Boy Paul Ryan “issued a similar statement” that “also did not mention Trump by name.” “Both statements follow many, many instances during Trump’s campaign in which Ryan and McConnell criticized Trump’s offensive remarks but still stood by his candidacy in the hopes that a Trump presidency would help them secure the GOP’s legislative priorities,” Fang notes. Next time you’re wondering how monsters gain and retain power, just remember McConnell and Ryan—two chickenshits who could unite their party against Trump, but are too corrupt to do so. HOWEVER… Kudos to Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh, who ordered Baltimore’s “Confederate monuments removed under the cover of darkness, days after violence broke out during a rally against the removal of a similar monument in neighboring Virginia,” reports the New York Times. “The mayor has the right to protect her city,” Pugh explained. “For me, the statues represented pain, and not only did I want to protect my city from any more of that pain, I also wanted to protect my city from any of the violence that was occurring around the nation.” Hey, McConnell and Ryan? That’s what leadership looks like. Take notes, you cowards.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16
In America’s darkest hour, one group of heroes brings us light. We speak, of course, of the Wu-Tang Clan. “Earlier this month, Martin Shkreli was convicted of three counts of fraud,” writes Spin. “Shkreli, of course, worked hard to make himself a public villain after it was revealed that he had raised the price of an anti-AIDS drug 5,000 percent.” Shkreli also spent $2 million for a one-of-a kind Wu-Tang album, on the condition he wouldn’t release it for 88 years. He then released it when he was celebrating the election of Donald Trump. “One imagines,” Spin continues, “that his attorneys had trouble finding the mythical ‘impartial juror’ who could come into the trial with no preconceived notion or opinion of the defendant.” And today, thanks to Harper’s, we present an actual transcript from that jury selection! “THE COURT: Juror Number 59, come on up. JUROR NO. 59: Your honor, totally he is guilty and in no way can I let him slide out of anything because— THE COURT: Okay. Is that your attitude toward anyone charged with a crime who has not been proven guilty? JUROR NO. 59: It’s my attitude toward his entire demeanor, what he has done to people. THE COURT: All right. We are going to excuse you, sir. JUROR NO. 59: And he disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan.” Juror No. 59, you may not have been selected for the Shkreli jury—but you’ll always be juror of our hearts.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 17
And now we return to Charlottesville—and the memorial service for Heather Heyer, the activist killed by a white nationalist who drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters. “They tried to kill my child to shut her up,” Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, said at the service. “Well, guess what—you just magnified her.” “The 1,200 mourners in the room rose to their feet and applauded as the mood ebbed between somber reflection, defiance, and a celebration of 32-year-old Heather Heyer’s life,” the Guardian notes. “This is just the beginning of Heather’s legacy. This is not the end of her legacy,” Bro said, urging the crowd to turn “anger into righteous action.” “I’d rather have my child,” said Bro. “But by golly, if I’ve got give her up, we’re going to make it count.”
FRIDAY, AUGUST 18
As if to wash off the stink of his support of actual holy shit swear-to-god American Nazis, today Donald Trump decided to distance himself from his white nationalist bestie, Steve Bannon! CNN reports the chief strategist was fired today. “The president has privately stewed over Bannon in recent days…. He was furious with his chief strategist after he was quoted in an interview with the American Prospect.” What interview, you ask? Oh, just this rum-soaked gem: “Of the far right, [Bannon] said, ‘These guys are a collection of clowns,’ and he called it a ‘fringe element’ of ‘losers.’” “Privately, several White House officials said that Mr. Bannon appeared to be provoking Mr. Trump.” Well, well, well… it looks like the friendship bracelets are off! “Bannon’s exit meant one of the White House’s most controversial staffers, the man generally perceived as the driving force behind Trump’s ‘nationalist’ ideology, would no longer be at the center of the Trump universe,” writes CNN. Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out, Bannon.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 19
Speaking of friendship bracelets getting chucked in the trash, Jay-Z is loosening his tongue about his ongoing freeze-out of former BFF Kanye West! Things have been icy ever since Kanye delivered one of his patented rants during a concert last year, with some choice words for Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and the fam. “What really hurt me, you can’t bring my kid or my wife into it,” Jay-Z said, according to People. “We’ve gotten past bigger issues, but you brought my family into it, now it’s a problem with me…. And he knows [he] crossed the line. He knows. And I know he knows. ’Cause we’ve never let this much space go between one of our disagreements and we’ve had many. That’s part of who we are.” No one shit-talks Queen Bey. NO ONE. Deep breaths, everyone, deep breaths—Jay-Z is handling the sitch. Beyoncé is too far above this astral plane to sully her hands with Kanye nonsense. All is as it should be.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 20
Ugh, dears. Just ugh—we take it back about things being okay with the world. Last night, comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory died at the age of 84. According to the Hollywood Reporter, “Regarded as the first African American comic to perform regularly in front of white audiences, Gregory appeared on all of the top TV talk shows of the 1960s and 1970s… He made friends with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X… marched in Selma, Alabama… got shot while trying to keep the peace during the 1965 Watts riots… was arrested in Washington for protesting Vietnam… and traveled to Tehran, Iran, in 1980 to attempt to negotiate the hostages’ release.” And if that blow to civil rights and comedy history weren’t bad enough, there’s this: “Jerry Lewis, the comedian and filmmaker who was adored by many, disdained by others, but unquestionably a defining figure of American entertainment in the 20th century, died on Sunday morning at his home in Las Vegas. He was 91,” writes the New York Times. “A mercurial personality who could flip from naked neediness to towering rage, Mr. Lewis seemed to contain multitudes, and he explored all of them. His ultimate object of contemplation was his own contradictory self, and he turned his obsession with fragmentation, discontinuity, and the limits of language into a spectacle that enchanted children, disturbed adults, and fascinated postmodernist critics.” Why are the activists and comedians leaving us when we need them most? We’re looking forward to the eclipse tomorrow—we’re thinking about it like a full-body face mask to shield us from the glaring stupidity of this world.