Next year, Elise Stefanik will a loud noise maker.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), one of the top leaders within the Republican Party may seek the House Speakership if the Republicans reject Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
However, the ultra-MAGA may have her dirty laundry aired out.
No. 1, her endorsement of controversial Rep-elect George Santos (R-NY). The Rep-elect is facing heat for misleading voters about his record. Now there are calls for him to resign and so far, Republicans won't say they want him go, but they are concerned that his issues will be a big distraction.
No. 2, she called Washed Up 45 a "whack job."
n an extensive feature article headlined “The Invention of Elise Stefanik,” NYT reporter Nicholas Confessore writes about the GOP leader’s migration from the Paul Ryan moderates to the “ultra-MAGA” hard right.
“I am Ultra-Maga, I’m proud of it,” Stefanik said in May of this year. Confessore describes it as “one of the most brazen political transformations of the Trump era.”
The NYT article goes back to Stefanik’s earlier days, pinpointing the 2018 midterms as the corner turn for the New York Republican.
“(A)s her third term unfolded, according to current or former friends and advisers, it was becoming painfully clear that she was the future of a Republican Party that no longer existed,” writes Confessore. “The party was now firmly controlled by Donald J. Trump, a populist president she didn’t like or respect…”
Staying close to the former president was beneficial.
As it turns out, more than not respecting him, she had some very negative comments about him, which the Times reveals included calling him a “whack job” in a message “obtained” by the paper.
In the beginning, she was not supportive of the former president when he ran as a candidate in 2015-16.
The "grab 'em by the pussy" remark kind of turned her off. Soon after he became the president, she ended up becoming one of the most loyal members of MAGA. She soon became a top leader after Republicans rejected Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), the sole member of top leadership at the time who voted to impeach the former president.
The Republican was a moderate at one time. Many Democrats crossed over to support her with 80% of the vote. Now she gets at least 64% of the vote. Still a win but now it's mostly a partisan deal.
No. 3, she talks about "the white replacement" theory which is a dangerous conspiracy theory that agitates white extremists to violence.
As she prepares for a new role in top leadership, we want to make sure that she's going to be held accountable for her actions.
So inside a California In-and-Out Burger, two young adults were threatened with violence from a Colorado man who threatened them with racial slurs and physical violence.
Two people enjoying food at an In-N-Out Burger in California were faced with racist language and threats on Christmas Eve.
The extremist, 40-year-old Denver resident Jordan Douglas Krah, approached two suspects to whom he made racist and homophobic comments.
Arine Kim and her friend were filming themselves while trying menu items at an In-N-Out location in San Ramon. She said that’s when a man approached them and said, “You’re filming yourself eating? You’re weird homosexuals.”
Kim and her friend laughed in shock. Not long after, the man returned to their table and asked, “Are you Japanese or Korean? Are you Kim Jong Un’s boyfriend? You have gay sex with him?”
As the exchange continued – and the camera kept recording – Kim’s friend responded with sass at one point, and asked if he could take the man out to dinner. That’s when Kim realized the incident could escalate, and she repeatedly asked her friend to stop engaging with the stranger. The man responded by threatening to spit in their faces.
The pair tried to ignore him, but the man later returned and referred to himself as a slave master and used a homophobic slur. He then said, “See you outside in a minute.”
Kim and her friend decided to wait until the In-N-Out location closed before leaving. The pair asked one of the employees to check outside to be sure he wasn’t still waiting for them. An employee watched as they walked to their car.
Caught the digital dash.
Kim later posted the video to her social media pages, where it caught the attention of San Ramon Police Chief Denton Carlson. Carlson retweeted her video and asked the pair to reach out. Kim said they have been in touch with police to investigate the incident.
On Sunday, Carlson tweeted a photo of the suspect. Carlson says the photo was taken on Christmas morning when the man in the photo exhibited “similar behavior.” The vehicle in the photo is a silver Mustang with Florida license plates, according to police.
Kim said it was a scary incident, but she’s happy they didn’t get hurt. “My friend and I were a bit shaken after the incident but I’m just grateful we’re both safe and out of harm’s way.”
The suspect is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
In Washed Up 45's universe, if you lost an election, you called it rigged and refuse to concede to the election. It happens with Arizona's losing candidate Kari Lake and now Jair Bolsonaro, the one term Brazillian president. He was a race-baiting, Amazon-developing, coronavirus-downplaying, vaccine-skeptical leader of Latin America’s largest country
Now he pouts about his loss and is planning on heading to Florida for a residency.
Days after Bolsonaro’s loss, allies met with Trump aides in the United States to discuss next steps. His son Eduardo, a Brazilian congressman, met Washed Up 45at Mar-a-Lago last month in Palm Beach, Florida.
He may meet with the former president at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Bolsonaro remained defiant in a teary farewell address on Friday, defending his record and saying the election that led to his ouster was not impartial, but condemning violence against the result.
He apparently planned to skip the inauguration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Sunday, when the outgoing leader traditionally presents the presidential sash to his successor, a ceremony intended to reaffirm the country’s young democracy.
Bolsonaro’s remarks, live-streamed for nearly an hour Friday morning, were his most extensive since he lost the election in October. He still has not conceded the race, but acknowledged that a new administration would take over on Sunday.
“Nothing is lost,” he told supporters. “Brazil is a fantastic country, and Brazil doesn’t end on January first.”
Lula won Brazil's closest-ever election. That was the easy part.
Concern is growing over security around Lula’s inauguration in Brasília on Sunday. Bolsonaro supporters have camped outside army installations since his Oct. 30 defeat to call for a military coup to keep him in power. A group of radical bolsonaristas set fire to buses and tried to invade federal police headquarters in the capital this month after the arrest of a Bolsonaro supporter who was accused of having “expressly summoned armed people to prevent the certification of elected” officials.
On Saturday, police said they defused a bomb planted by a Bolsonaro supporter in a tanker truck full of gas near the international airport in Brasília. They said the suspect told investigators his plan was to provoke chaos to draw military intervention.
In a sea of white, Kirk Cameron reads his Christian propaganda.
In the bubble of Fox, if you are an actor, academic, rapper, singer, entrepreneur, athlete or an activist who opposes conservatives or Republicans, you should "shut up and dribble" to quote Laura Ingraham.
Fox often criticizes entertainers and politicians who lean towards the left.
The same bubble says that the left wants to silence them.
So when an actor who supports conservatives is told he/she can't get what they want, they scream, plead to social media to get people riled up to do something.
Speak of that, LibsofTikTok has become a dangerous figure. She revealed herself to Fox.
Some claim she was at the U.S. Capitol during the deadly attack.
Washed up entertainer and Christian extremist Kirk Cameron celebrated a victory. He gets to read his propaganda to his cult at the downtown Indianapolis Public Library.
Upset over drag queens reading children stories in libraries, the far right extremist had decided to stage these read a longs at libraries. He of course paid for the spacing but he acts like thousands of people come to see him.
IndyPL responded in kind saying that less than 500 people saw the washed up celebrity.
They shared that he did not rent out a full capacity center. He rented a small room.
Cameron promotes his latest propaganda “As You Grow.”
Cameron’s publisher Brave Books booked a room at the Central Library, and some members of the public had to be turned away because the room had reached capacity.
Brave Books posted on Twitter following the event, saying, “This is a message to every library in the United States: In 137 years of the Indianapolis Public Library’s history, NEVER ONCE have they had over 2,500 people show up to a single event. UNTIL TODAY.”
The tweet was accompanied with a video showing a full room and a line outside the door.
IndyPL responded and said the alleged numbers were inaccurate, also pointing out Brave Books could have booked a larger room but chose not to.
This is a message to every library in the United States:
In 137 years of the Indianapolis Public Library’s history, NEVER ONCE have they had over 2,500 people show up to a single event.
We are being inaccurately portrayed in news/social after a room rental yesterday. Our estimated door count during the event is around 750, not 2500. We've had larger events. We turn 150 yrs old in 2023. And our auditorium, which our guests chose not to rent, holds 300, not 2000. pic.twitter.com/ETwtOhS7AP
Fox News anchor Julie Banderas to Kirk Cameron, who has been demanding public libraries give him story hours: "This has been quite a battle. You would never imagine you'd be in for the battle of your life because you wrote a children’s book!" pic.twitter.com/NhUMIp7dVW
“Our estimated door count during the event is around 750, not 2500. We’ve had larger events. We turn 150 yrs old in 2023. And our auditorium, which our guests chose not to rent, holds 300, not 2000,” read a tweet Friday morning.
However, IndyPL said its programming department only declined to partner with Brave Books for the event, and it never turned down a request to host the story hour.
“We have a programming department that handles Library events, and they do not say yes to everyone who asks to work with them on an event. Declining to partner on or promote a program happens often and is not a unique circumstance,” IndyPL said in a statement.
IndyPL stated Brave Books was also made aware of the room’s capacity before the event and never inquired about securing a larger space.
Pope Emeritus Benedict passed away in the Vatican City.
The Vatican announced the passing of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI at the age of 95.
President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Congress, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, King Charles III, Valdimir Putin, Emmanuel Macron and the world leaders will respond in due time.
Benedict lived at the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in Vatican City following his retirement, where he continued to write and pray until his death.
Benedict pushed for greater cooperation and ecumenical dialogue between the Catholic Church and other religions, most notably Islam and Judaism. He also encouraged greater understanding and reconciliation with Protestant churches, despite a firm rejection of Protestant theology.
The pope viewed Christianity as a logical reality that could be studied and slowly understood piece by piece. He expressed approval for the Theory of Evolution, reminding Catholics that science was not at odds with religion and that Genesis was not considered a straightforward text by early Christian communities.
He is most immediately remembered outside the Catholic Church for his surprise resignation — the first papal abdication since 1415 — and subsequent life as the world’s first "pope emeritus" in centuries.
Benedict was born Joseph Ratzinger on April 16, 1927, in Bavaria. He came of age in Germany after World War I at the same time the Nazi regime was growing in power.
His Roman Catholic family — harassed and punished by the Nazi Party for their opposition to state policies — shaped his desire to commit to the church.
Pope Benedict XVI was a staunch traditionalist associated with the Catholic Church. He was more conservative than his successor Pope Francis.
Francis is considered more moderate than Francis and Saint John Paul II.
Ratzinger was inspired to join the priesthood at an early age when he was tasked with presenting flowers to Archbishop Michael von Faulhaber of Munich. Seeing the clergyman’s crimson robes and refined demeanor, the five-year-old Ratzinger declared he would become a cardinal.
"It was the way the cardinal looked, his bearing, and the knickerbockers he was wearing that made such an impression on him," his brother Georg recalled in a 2005 interview with the New York Times.
At the age of 14, Ratzinger was mandated by law to become a member of the Hitler Youth alongside all other German children of his age group. Ratzinger resented the organization and became horrified after his cousin, who suffered from Down’s syndrome, was abducted and killed by the government as part of their Aktion T4 campaign.
Despite entering seminary, Ratzinger was drafted into the anti-aircraft corps in 1943 and later into the regular military during World War II. He deserted the German military in April 1945.
Benedict said that he chose to abandon the military after witnessing the horrors of the war, including Jews in Hungary being sent to death camps, according to an interview with Time Magazine in 1993.
He was captured and held as a prisoner of war by American forces for several months before returning to Germany and re-entering the seminary with his brother, Georg.
Pope Francis saw Benedict as a spiritual mentor and friend.
Ratzinger and his brother were ordained on the same day in 1951, receiving Holy Orders from the same cardinal who had inspired Benedict’s decision to enter the priesthood as a child.
His extensive work in theology and Christology saw him promoted to Archbishop of Munich and Freising in May 1977. He was then swiftly promoted to cardinal by Pope Paul VI in June of the same year.
Cardinal Ratzinger built a positive reputation in Catholic circles for his intense scholarship and prolific writing career.
His bibliography — volumes of works that span from his earliest years of the priesthood through his papacy and beyond — includes encyclicals on morality, explorations of the life of Jesus, and retrospective looks at church history.
Perhaps one of his most profound early contributions included founding the theological journal Communio, which became one of the most important journals of Catholic thought in his home country.
He was also among the vanguard in tackling the issue of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church while serving as a cardinal under Pope St. John Paul II.
Pope Francis has been a fervent supporter of Benedict and has spoken highly of his predecessor as both a theologian and a priest.
The two have been photographed together frequently, celebrating holy days, and attending events. The pair of popes often prayed together, and Benedict spoke approvingly of his successor in rare interviews.
Benedict even attended Pope Francis’s ceremony appointing 19 new cardinals in 2014.
Somewhere in Mar-a-Lago, Washed Up 45 is fuming at the House Weight and Means Committee releasing six years of his taxes. He called it a travesty and a partisan witch hunt for the House Democrats to look into his financial dealings.
For most of his time as a candidate to his God awful presidency, Washed Up 45 has stood by the claim that his taxes are being audited.
Democrats gave the 2024 presidential candidate a bigger headache than Ye and Nick Fuentes sitting at the table with him.
The documents include individual returns from Washed Up 45 and his wife, Melania, along with his business entities from 2015-2020. They show how the former president used the tax code to lower his tax obligation and reveal details about foreign accounts, charitable contributions and the performance of some of his highest-profile business ventures, which had largely remained shielded from public scrutiny.
The disclosure marks the culmination of a yearslong legal fight that has played out everywhere from the presidential campaign to Congress and the Supreme Court as the former president persistently rejected efforts to share details about his financial history — counter to the practice of transparency followed by all his predecessors in the post-Watergate era. The records release comes just days before Republicans retake control of the House and weeks after he announced another campaign for the White House.
The records show how Washed Up 45 limited his tax liability by offsetting his income against corporate losses as well as millions of dollars in business expenses, asset depreciation and other deductions.
While Washed Up 45 paid $641,931 in federal income taxes in 2015, the year he began his campaign for president, he paid just $750 in 2016 and 2017, according to a report released last week by Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. He paid nearly $1 million in 2018, but only $133,445 in 2019 and nothing in 2020, the year he unsuccessfully sought reelection.
The records also detail Washed Up 45’s foreign holdings.
Washed Up 45, according to the filings, reported having bank accounts in China, Ireland and the United Kingdom in 2015 through 2017, even as he was commander in chief. Starting in 2018, however, he only reported an account in the U.K. The returns also show that the former president claimed foreign tax credits for taxes he paid on various business ventures around the world, including licensing arrangements for use of his name on development projects and his golf courses in Scotland and Ireland.
In several years, the former president appears to have paid more in foreign taxes than he did in net U.S. federal income taxes, with income reported in countries including Azerbaijan, China, India, Indonesia, Panama, the Philippines, St. Martin, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
The documents also show that the former president’s charitable donations often represented only a sliver of his income. In 2020, the year the coronavirus ravaged the economy, Washed Up 45 reported no charitable donations at all. In 2019 and 2018 he reported writing checks for about $500,000 in donations. In earlier years the numbers were higher — $1.8 million in 2017 and $1.1 million in 2016.
It’s unclear whether the reported sums included the former president’s $400,000 annual presidential salary, which he had said, as a candidate, that he would forgo and which he claimed he donated to various federal departments.
Jeff Hoopes, an accounting professor at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, described Washed Up 45’s returns as “large and complicated” with “hundreds of entities scattered all over the globe.”
He noted that many of those entities are slightly unprofitable, which he described as “pretty magical as far as the tax code.”
“It’s hard to know if someone’s really bad at business or really good at tax planning, because they both look like the same thing,” he said.
Daniel Shaviro, a taxation professor at New York University, cited the large financial losses from so many of Washed Up 45’s businesses, despite their often healthy sales, as something that should raise suspicions from auditors. “There’s fishy looking stuff here.”
Shaviro also cited examples of suspicious or sloppy math even in smaller businesses, such as an aviation firm dubbed “DT Endeavor I LLC,” which in 2020 reported both sales and expenses of $160,144. Such exact matches are unusual, Shaviro said. Yet the form also reported an $18,923 loss.
“The return doesn’t say, ‘Guess what? I’m committing fraud,’” Shaviro said, “but there are red flags.”
The release marks the latest setback for Washed Up 45, who has been mired in investigations, including federal and state inquiries into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The Department of Justice also has been investigating reams of classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago club and possible efforts to obstruct the investigation.
I really though they had him this time. If I had a dollar for every time they “finally got him” I’d be Volodymyr Zelensky… +\- 130,000,000,000 pic.twitter.com/6nH9tXh3xy
In a statement Friday, Washed Up 45 lashed out at Democrats and the Supreme Court for the release.
“It’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people,” he said. “The radical, left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!”
He said the returns demonstrated “how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions” to build his businesses.
The returns were released by the House Ways and Means Committee, which held a party-line vote last week to make the returns public after years of legal wrangling.
The returns detail how Washed Up 45used tax law to minimize his liability, including carrying forward massive losses from previous years. Washed Up 45 said during his 2016 campaign that paying little or no income tax in some years “makes me smart.”
In 2020, more than 150 of Washed Up 45’s business entities listed negative qualified business income, which the IRS defines as “the net amount of qualified items of income, gain, deduction and loss from any qualified trade or business.” In total for that tax year, combined with nearly $9 million in carryforward loss from previous years, Washed Up 45’s qualified losses amounted to more than $58 million.
Another of Washed Up 45’s money losers: the ice rink his company operated until last year in New York City’s Central Park. Washed Up 4t reported a total of $2.6 million in losses from Wollman Rink over the six years made public. The rink, an early Trump Organization jewel run through a contract with New York City’s government, reported a loss of $1.3 million in 2015 despite taking in $9.3 million in revenue, according to the tax returns. The rink turned a $298,000 profit in 2016, but was back to melting cash in each of the next four years.
“Trump seems to be creating huge losses that are suspicious or questionable under current law,” said Steven Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, who said he had spent 20 years preparing taxes for corporations and wealthy individuals and “never saw anyone lose money as regularly and as large as Trump lost money year after year.”
“To me, Trump’s business operations were phenomenally unsuccessful and I struggle to figure out how much of it is attributable to Trump’s unluckiness as a businessman and how much of it is attributable to Trump’s inflation,” he said.
Aspects of the former president's finances had been shrouded in mystery since his days as an up-and-coming Manhattan real estate developer in the 1980s.
Washed Up 45, known for building skyscrapers and hosting a reality TV show before winning the White House, did offer limited details about his holdings and income on mandatory disclosure forms and financial statements he provided to banks to secure loans and to financial magazines to justify his ranking on lists of billionaires.
The former president’s longtime accounting firm has since disavowed the statements, and New York’s attorney general has filed a lawsuit alleging Washed Up 45 and his Trump Organization fraudulently inflated asset values on the statements. Washed Up 45 and his company have denied wrongdoing.
In October 2018, The New York Times published a Pulitzer Prize-winning series based on leaked tax records that contradicted the image Washed Up 45 had tried to sell of himself as a self-made businessman. It showed that the former president received a modern-day equivalent of at least $413 million from his father Fred Trump's real estate holdings, with much of that money coming from what the Times called “tax dodges” in the 1990s.
A second series in 2020 showed that the former president paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years because he generally lost more money than he made.
In its report last week, the Ways and Means Committee indicated the Washed Up 45 administration may have disregarded a requirement mandating audits of a president’s tax filings.
The IRS only began to audit the former president’s 2016 tax filings on April 3, 2019 — more than two years into his presidency — when the Ways and Means chairman, Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., asked the agency for information related to the returns.
Every president and major-party candidate since Richard Nixon has voluntarily made at least summaries of their tax information available to the public.
As he declared his intention to run for president, he has not done many campaign stops.
The Republicans did not surf the red wave. They barely took the House of Representatives, his handpicked candidates Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz, Kari Lake, Blake Masters, Larry Elder and Doug Mastriano lost. The Senate is in Democratic control.
Washed Up 45 is under investigation in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, New York and U.S. Justice Department.
He is trailing behind Ron DeSantis, a divisive nobody who is governor of Florida. Many of the establishment Republican lawmakers are hoping for Washed Up 45 to tire out.
The former president continues to believe the "deep state" wanted him to fail. His allies are turning against him after his latest announcement of NFT trading cards flopped.
Is the chewing gum losing its flavor?
Cause Washed Up 45 is the gum underneath a park bench.
Legendary journalist Barbara Walters passed away at her New York home.
American journalist and iconic host of The View passed away.
Barbara Walters, a longtime stable of ABC News has passed away at the age of 93.
President Joe Biden (with First Lady Jill Biden), Vice President Kamala Harris (with Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff), Congress, former presidents Barack Obama (with Michelle Obama), George W. Bush (with Laura Bush), Bill Clinton (with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton), Jimmy Carter (with Rosalynn Carter) and former vice president Mike Pence (with Karen Pence) will address the passing in some form.
I guess Donald J. Trump might respond but strongly doubt it.
The View, The Talk, Nicolle Wallace, Meghan McCain, Star Jones, Rosie O'Donnell, Raven-Symone, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Jenny McCarthy, Sherri Shepherd and Lisa Lang will respond in due time.
ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, MSNBC, CNN, Fox and NewsNation react to the news.
She was the trailblazing television news broadcaster and longtime ABC News anchor and correspondent who shattered the glass ceiling and became a dominant force in an industry once dominated by men, has died. She was 93.
Walters joined ABC News in 1976, becoming the first female anchor on an evening news program. Three years later, she became a co-host of "20/20," and in 1997, she launched "The View."
In a career that spanned five decades, Walters won 12 Emmy awards, 11 of those while at ABC News.
"We were all influenced by Barbara Walters," ABC News' David Muir said in a tribute Friday, remembering Walters as an "extraordinary human being, journalist, pioneer, legend."
"She broke barriers behind the scenes and she broke news on-camera. She got people to say things they never would've said to another journalist."
Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs were the hosts of 20/20 and were cultural icons.
She made her final appearance as a co-host of "The View" in 2014, but remained an executive producer of the show and continued to do some interviews and specials for ABC News.
"I do not want to appear on another program or climb another mountain," she said at the time. "I want instead to sit on a sunny field and admire the very gifted women -- and OK, some men too -- who will be taking my place."
Barbara Jill Walters was born in Boston on Sept. 25, 1929, to Dena and Louis "Lou" Walters. Her father worked in show business as a booking agent and nightclub producer, and discovered comedians Fred Allen and Jack Haley, who would go on to star as the Tin Man in the classic film "The Wizard of Oz."
Growing up around celebrities taught a young Barbara a lesson that she relied upon throughout her career.
"I would see them onstage looking one way and offstage often looking very different. I would hear my parents talk about them and know that even though those performers were very special people, they were also human beings with real-life problems," Walters said in a 1989 interview with the Television Academy of Arts & Sciences. "I can have respect and admiration for famous people, but I have never had a sense of fear or awe."
Barbara Walters, Joy Behar, Sherri Shepherd, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Whoopi Goldberg with Barack Obama.
In her 2008 memoir "Audition," Walters revealed that she got her ambition to succeed from her older sister, Jacqueline, who was born developmentally disabled.
"Her condition also altered my life," Walters wrote. "I think I knew from a very early age that at some point Jackie would become my responsibility. That awareness was one of the main reasons I was driven to work so hard. But my feelings went beyond financial responsibility.
She made her on-air debut in 1956, when as a writer for CBS’ "The Morning Show," she and four other young women modeled modest one-piece bathing suits. In 1961, she became NBC’s “Today Girl,” and in 1974, the first female co-host of "Today." In 1976, she was disastrously teamed with Harry Reasoner, as co-anchors of ABC’s "Evening News." Reasoner didn’t think much of her, and he didn’t hide it.
But she “survived,” as she put it, and enjoyed a long career at ABC interviewing celebrities and politicians, including Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin (together, for the first time, in 1977). She had a successful run on newsmagazine "20/20" and in 1997, launched "The View," ABC's daily chatfest aimed at women.
Over the years, she interviewed Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat, John Wayne, the Shah of Iran, Fidel Castro (an hourlong prime-time exclusive that was broadcast worldwide), Barbra Streisand and, perhaps most famously, presidential intern Monica Lewinsky (who drew a record news-broadcast audience of 48.5 million viewers).
Her "Barbara Walters Specials" for years were among the top-rated broadcasts, and included a Who’s Who of entertainers such as Sir Laurence Olivier, Bing Crosby, Bette Davis, Tom Cruise, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Her "Most Fascinating People" special broadcasts, launched in 1993, offered a year-end review of prominent newsmakers of the year.
The U.S. Justice Department confirms they have the co-founder of GirlsDoPorn in custody after they issued a request to Interpol to Red Notice his ass. He is being arrested for sexual assualt, child porn and deceptive fraud.
New Zealand/American sexual predator Michael Pratt was caught by Spanish authorities.
Pratt is charged in a 19-count indictment with sex trafficking, production of child pornography, sex trafficking of a minor, and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments in connection with the operation of the GirlsDoPorn adult website. Pratt has been a fugitive since 2019 and was named to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List earlier this year.
Pratt was arrested by Spanish National Police on December 21, 2022, in Madrid, Spain, pursuant to an Interpol Red Notice. A Red Notice is a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action. Pratt is being held in Spain pending extradition.
“The capture of Michael Pratt is an example of how the FBI will pursue justice beyond U.S. borders—you can run but you can’t hide,” said Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Stacey Moy of the FBI San Diego Field Office. “Thank you to our determined FBI San Diego Human Trafficking Task Force and to our federal and international partners for their commitment to making sure that Michael Pratt is brought to justice.”
SAC Moy would like to thank the Spanish National Police, the U.S. Marshals Service, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for their coordination in the arrest of Michael Pratt, and the public for their assistance in this investigation.
Victims had their lives in turmoil cause of GirlsDoPorn
Pratt was the 529th person to be placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, which was established in 1950. Additional information concerning Pratt and the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives can be found by visiting the FBI’s website at fbi.gov/topten.
The public is reminded that a complaint is not evidence of guilt and all defendants in a criminal case are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
GirlsDoPorn was an American pornographic website active from 2009 until 2020. In October and November 2019, six people involved were charged on counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion. In December 2019, two more individuals were charged with obstruction of sex trafficking enforcement. The website was removed in January 2020 after 22 victims won the civil case against the company. According to the United States Department of Justice, the website and its sister website GirlsDoToys generated over $17 million in revenue. Videos were featured on GirlsDoPorn.com as well as pornography aggregate websites such as Pornhub, where the channel reached the top 20 most viewed, with approximately 680 million views.
Far right kickboxer/MMA fighter and online troll was arrested in Romania for human trafficking and rape.
The troll and his brother left bread crumbs for Romanian authorities. Earlier this week, he started a feud with climate change activist Greta Thunberg.
Andrew and Tristian Tate were nabbed by the authorities on suspicion of human trafficking. They came armed and ready. The mistake this idiot Andrew Tate made was courtesy of his return to Twitter. Elon Musk reinstated this asshole after he was banned in late 2021 for promoting hate and threats towards others.
Tate (Emory III) is the son of the late chess master Emory Tate, Jr. He was born in Chicago and his brother Tristian is his twin.
Tate has American and British nationality.
He is a Black coonservative.
Tate who previously was banned from various social media platforms for expressing misogynistic views and hate speech, was reportedly detained along with his brother the Ilfov area north of Romania’s capital, Bucharest.
Romania’s anti-organized crime agency said in a statement late that four suspects, including two British citizens and two Romanians, were arrested on charges of being part of an organized crime group, human trafficking and rape.
The agency, DIICOT, said the British citizens recruited women who were subjected to “acts of physical violence and mental coercion,” sexually exploited by group members and forced to perform pornographic acts intended to reap “important financial benefits.”
The statement didn’t name the Tate brothers. Photographs published by Romanian media outlets appeared to show Tate being led away in handcuffs by masked law enforcement officers.
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg gets the last laugh.
DIICOT said it identified six people who were sexually exploited by the organized criminal group, and that five homes were raided on Thursday. The suspects were detained for 24 hours.
On Friday, Andrew Tate, who is known to express various conspiratorial views, tweeted that “The Matrix sent their agents,” without elaborating.
Earlier this week, Tate posted a video on Twitter of a mountainous region of Romania, the Eastern European country where he is reported to have lived for the last five years.
Tate also was embroiled this week in a war of words with 19-year-old Thunberg after he tweeted a picture of himself standing next to a Bugatti and bragged that he owned 33 cars.
Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions. pic.twitter.com/ehhOBDQyYU
Tate tweets about his collection of "33 cars" and their "enormous emissions". Tate's tweet was met with a savage reply from Thunberg who said she would like to know more about them and for that Andrew Tate can mail her at "smalldickenergy@getalife.com".
Thunberg's tweet went viral and it riled up Tate. So for the past 48 hours, Tate was calling his online troll army to go after the woman. He was so angry about it, he made a video eating Jerry's Pizza, a national chain of pizza restaurants.
Jerry's Pizza became famous because of an internet troll's lust for controversy.
The footage confirmed he was in the country and they needed all the proof to get his ass.
Now he is detained and the prosecutors are asking for a confiscation of his passports so he won't be able to escape once released.
this is what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes
Not only did Greta Thunberg destroy Andrew Tate with her tweet, she made him so angry he inadvertently tipped off Romanian authorities of his presence in Romania with his lame comeback video.
Greta's tweet has now become one of the top 25 most liked tweets of all time with 2.8 million likes. It could easily hit the top ten by the weekend. This is absolutely legendary. https://t.co/edp071iCdCpic.twitter.com/C3A5xZL1Oq
Muting this thread. In the meantime, please consider donating to orgs like Reaching Out Romania that help victims of human trafficking. There are real victims involved in this that will need support. https://t.co/j5fzXjGRT3pic.twitter.com/IupSsJWAbq
Thunberg got word of Tate's arrest on social media. She ended trolling him.
By the way, she is an online troll as well. She often claps back at conservative agitators.
Video footage from the police raid accompanying the anti-organized crime agency’s statement shows several blurred-out sports cars, wads of cash and a handgun.
Iconic soccer (football) player Pelé has passed away after succumbing to an illness and colon cancer.
He was a Brazilian soccer legend who won three World Cups and became the sport’s first global icon, has died at the age of 82.
“Everything that we are, is thanks to you,” his daughter Kely Nascimento wrote in a post on Instagram, under an image of family members holding Pele’s hands. “We love you infinitely. Rest in peace.”
Pelé was admitted to a hospital in São Paulo in late November for a respiratory infection and for complications related to colon cancer. Last week, the hospital said his health had worsened as his cancer progressed. He died on Thursday from multiple organ failure due to the progression of colon cancer, according to a statement from Albert Einstein Hospital.
For more than 60 years, the name Pelé has been synonymous with soccer. He played in four World Cups and is the only player in history to win three, but his legacy stretched far beyond his trophy haul and remarkable goal-scoring record.
“I was born to play football, just like Beethoven was born to write music and Michelangelo was born to paint,” Pelé famously said.
Pelé with Richard Nixon.
The standard-bearer of “the beautiful game” had undergone treatment for colon cancer since 2021. The medical center where he had been hospitalized for the last month said he died of multiple organ failure as a result of the cancer.
“Pelé changed everything. He transformed football into art, entertainment,” Neymar, a fellow Brazilian soccer star, said on Instagram. “Football and Brazil elevated their standing thanks to the King! He is gone, but his magic will endure. Pelé is eternal!”
A funeral was planned for Monday and Tuesday, with his casket to be carried through the streets of Santos, the coastal city where his storied career began, before burial.
Widely regarded as one of soccer’s greatest players, Pelé spent nearly two decades enchanting fans and dazzling opponents as the game’s most prolific scorer with Brazilian club Santos and the Brazil national team.
His grace, athleticism and mesmerizing moves transfixed players and fans. He orchestrated a fast, fluid style that revolutionized the sport — a samba-like flair that personified his country’s elegance on the field.
He carried Brazil to soccer’s heights and became a global ambassador for his sport in a journey that began on the streets of Sao Paulo state, where he would kick a sock stuffed with newspapers or rags.
In the conversation about soccer’s greatest players, only the late Diego Maradona, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are mentioned alongside Pelé.
Different sources, counting different sets of games, list Pelé’s goal totals anywhere between 650 (league matches) and 1,281 (all senior matches, some against low-level competition.)
Pelé meets with Jimmy Carter.
The player who would be dubbed “The King” was introduced to the world at 17 at the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, the youngest player ever at the tournament. He was carried off the field on teammates’ shoulders after scoring two goals in Brazil’s 5-2 victory over the host country in the final.
Injury limited him to just two games when Brazil retained the world title in 1962, but Pelé was the emblem of his country’s World Cup triumph of 1970 in Mexico. He scored in the final and set up Carlos Alberto with a nonchalant pass for the last goal in a 4-1 victory over Italy.
The image of Pelé in a bright, yellow Brazil jersey, with the No. 10 stamped on the back, remains alive with soccer fans everywhere. As does his trademark goal celebration — a leap with a right fist thrust high above his head.
Pelé’s fame was such that in 1967 factions of a civil war in Nigeria agreed to a brief cease-fire so he could play an exhibition match in the country. He was knighted by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II in 1997. When he visited Washington to help popularize the game in North America, it was the U.S. president who stuck out his hand first.
“My name is Ronald Reagan, I’m the president of the United States of America,” the host said to his visitor. “But you don’t need to introduce yourself because everyone knows who Pelé is.”
Pelé was Brazil’s first modern Black national hero but rarely spoke about racism in a country where the rich and powerful tend to hail from the white minority.
Opposing fans taunted Pelé with monkey chants at home and all over the world.
“He said that he would never play if he had to stop every time he heard those chants,” said Angelica Basthi, one of Pelé’s biographers. “He is key for Black people’s pride in Brazil, but never wanted to be a flagbearer.”
Pelé’s life after soccer took many forms. He was a politician -- Brazil’s Extraordinary Minister for Sport -- a wealthy businessman, and an ambassador for UNESCO and the United Nations.
Bill Clinton gets a kick with Pelé.
He had roles in movies, soap operas and even composed songs and recorded CDs of popular Brazilian music.
As his health deteriorated, his travels and appearances became less frequent. He was often seen in a wheelchair during his final years and did not attend a ceremony to unveil a statue of him representing Brazil’s 1970 World Cup team. Pelé spent his 80th birthday isolated with a few family members at a beach home.
Born Edson Arantes do Nascimento, in the small city of Tres Coracoes in the interior of Minas Gerais state on Oct. 23, 1940, Pelé grew up shining shoes to buy his modest soccer gear.
Pelé’s talent drew attention when he was 11, and a local professional player brought him to Santos’ youth squads. It didn’t take long for him to make it to the senior squad.
Despite his youth and 5-foot-8 frame, he scored against grown men with the same ease he displayed against friends back home. He debuted with the Brazilian club at 16 in 1956, and the club quickly gained worldwide recognition.
The name Pelé came from him mispronouncing the name of a player called Bilé.
He went to the 1958 World Cup as a reserve but became a key player for his country’s championship team. His first goal, in which he flicked the ball over the head of a defender and raced around him to volley it home, was voted as one of the best in World Cup history.
The 1966 World Cup in England — won by the hosts — was a bitter one for Pelé, by then already considered the world’s top player. Brazil was knocked out in the group stage and Pelé, angry at the rough treatment, swore it was his last World Cup.
He changed his mind and was rejuvenated in the 1970 World Cup. In a game against England, he struck a header for a certain score, but the great goalkeeper Gordon Banks flipped the ball over the bar in an astonishing move. Pelé likened the save — one of the best in World Cup history — to a “salmon climbing up a waterfall.” Later, he scored the opening goal in the final against Italy, his last World Cup match.
Barack Obama with a legend. Pelé changed the world.
In all, Pelé played 114 matches with Brazil, scoring a record 95 goals, including 77 in official matches.
His run with Santos stretched over three decades until he went into semi-retirement after the 1972 season. Wealthy European clubs tried to sign him, but the Brazilian government intervened to keep him from being sold, declaring him a national treasure.
On the field, Pelé’s energy, vision and imagination drove a gifted Brazilian national team with a fast, fluid style of play that exemplified “O Jogo Bonito” -- Portuguese for “The Beautiful Game.” His 1977 autobiography, “My Life and the Beautiful Game,” made the phrase part of soccer’s lexicon.
In 1975, he joined the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League. Although 34 and past his prime, Pelé gave soccer a higher profile in North America. He led the Cosmos to the 1977 league title and scored 64 goals in three seasons.
Pelé ended his career on Oct. 1, 1977, in an exhibition between the Cosmos and Santos before a crowd in New Jersey of some 77,000. He played half the game with each club. Among the dignitaries on hand was perhaps the only other athlete whose renown spanned the globe — Muhammad Ali.
Pelé would endure difficult times in his personal life, especially when his son Edinho was arrested on drug-related charges. Pelé had two daughters out of wedlock and five children from his first two marriages, to Rosemeri dos Reis Cholbi and Assiria Seixas Lemos. He later married businesswoman Marcia Cibele Aoki.
Convicted sexual predator Bill Cosby plans a comeback tour. He is legally blind, senile and completely toxic. No one wants to work with him and he wants to do a comeback tour.
Due to a legal technicality, Cosby served three of a 10 year sentence for sexually assualt of Andrea Constand.
He is a registered sexual offender for the rest of his life.
The comedian told radio host Scott Spears in a surprise appearance Wednesday on "WGH Talk" that he wants to get back to stand-up over the next year when asked if he felt it was time.
Cosby was convicted of sexual assault and served nearly three years in prison before it was overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2021.
He previously canceled a tour in 2021 over legal concerns. Cosby last performed in 2018 before his conviction.
Earlier this year, five Cosby accusers sued him under a New York law that puts a temporarily halt to the statute of limitations on abuse allegations.
Lili Bernard, Eden Tirl, Jewel Gittens, Jennifer Thompson and Cindra Ladd allege in the suit that Cosby abused or assaulted them between the late 1960s through the 1990s at the height of his fame.
Earlier this year, a Los Angeles jury awarded $500,000 to a woman who said Cosby sexually abused her at the Playboy Mansion when she was a teenager in 1975.
"The reality of my situation gets clearer and clearer," Cosby told Spears on Wednesday.
"The reality that my wife and family and friends respect me and respect what I have tried to do and will continue to do when we quote unquote ‘get out of this mess.’ I know who my enemies happen to be and I know why they are my enemies, and I think all told up, as you would say, where we are, where we’re going, I respect people like [Spears] and others who have had a clear viewpoint of what has happened to me."
He added, "When I come out of this, I feel that I will be able to perform and be the Bill Cosby that my audience in person knows me to be."
After Spears asked him if 2023 would be the right time to start performing, he answered, "Yes. Yes, because there’s so much fun to be had in this storytelling that I do."
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