Kamala Harris covers the November digital cover of Vogue Magazine, with the cover photo and editorial taken by none other than Annie Leibovitz. I saw the cover pop up on my social media feed early on Friday, and I honestly thought it was some fan-made cover. I did not realize it was real until I saw it for the sixth time – “oh, Vogue seriously did that?” A lot of people think the cover is beautiful and powerful. I think Kamala Harris is beautiful and powerful. But the cover itself is not great, in my opinion, and this is what you get when you hire Annie Leibovitz to photograph a woman of color. Without analyzing every single little thing wrong here, I’ll just say that it’s giving Princess Kate’s Mother’s Day frankenphoto. If the palace had released a photo this heavily manipulated, there would be widespread outrage. But when it’s Vogue, people shrug, I guess. The biggest issue is what they did to her head, but the angle of the shot makes it look like she has giant hands and a broken arm. The proportions are a mess.

The Vogue cover story is really well-done – you can read the full piece here. There’s a lot about Harris’s background, her beloved mother, her close friends and her inclusive political and personal life. One quote from VP Harris sums up everything in her life: “People, at this point, have memes about my love of Venn diagrams. You’re never going to have a complete agreement on all the issues. But you can find common ground—and expand that.” Vogue also retells the classic story of Doug Emhoff being stranded in LA that weekend when President Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed his VP. Emhoff was in SoulCycle with a friend, having left his phone in the car. When he finally got back to his phone, there were hundreds of messages, including one from his wife saying “where the f–k are you??” It’s a great story. They also retell the story about what VP Harris did right after Biden’s endorsement – she was on the phone for hours that day, putting together the Harris coalition and calling in every IOU chip she had gathered over eight years as a senator and vice president.

The Vogue piece also highlights something interesting which has been spoken about on the edge of this campaign cycle, but will be analyzed more heavily once all of the votes are tallied. Harris is not running as a wide-eyed idealist or a generational political unicorn – she’s running as a pragmatist from the middle class, a worker who will put her head down and get sh-t done. It’s also notable that she’s not really leading with “I could be the first female president” or any kind of identity politics. Also: Nancy Pelosi is still backtracking in this Vogue piece – she’s now insisting that even if she had gotten her wish for an open primary in July and August, she had every confidence that VP Harris would have won! Sure.

Cover courtesy of Vogue, additional photos courtesy of Cover Images.

JD Vance stupidly agreed to “the New York Times interview.” One of my big questions is: why? Did the Trump campaign not know about it? Did Vance think that his awkward sociopathy would somehow translate to a grilling from the Times? Donald Trump obviously can’t handle anything like this, so they gave it to Vance? As you can imagine, the interview didn’t go well, as Vance hemmed and hawed and tried to lie smoothly about his creepy obsession with women’s reproduction. He also tried to sleaze his way out of answering the “who won the 2020 election” question. Some highlights (you can read the full piece here):

Converting to Catholicism & being married to a Hindu: “Usha was raised in a Hindu household, but not an especially religious household. And she was, like, really into it. Meaning, she thought that thinking about the question of converting and getting baptized and becoming a Christian, she thought that they were good for me, in sort of a good-for-your-soul kind of way. And I don’t think I would have ever done it without her support, because I felt kind of bad about it, right? Like, you didn’t sign up for a weekly churchgoer. I feel terrible for my wife because we go to church almost every Sunday, unless we’re on the road. She does [go to church with me but] No she hasn’t [converted]. That’s why I feel bad about it. She’s got three kids. Obviously I help with the kids, but because I’m kind of the one going to church, she feels more responsibility to keep the kids quiet in the church. And I just felt kind of bad. Like, oh, you didn’t sign up to marry a weekly churchgoer. Are you OK with this? And she was more than OK with it, and that was a big part of the confirmation that this was the right thing for me.

On calling childless women sociopathic, psychotic, deranged. “Well, as I said when I made those comments — and look, they were dumb comments. I think most people probably have said something dumb, have said something that they wish they had put differently. [NYT: You said it in several different venues.] In a very, very short period of time. It was sort of a thing that I picked up on. I said it a couple of times in a couple of interviews, and look, I certainly wish that I had said it differently. What I was trying to get at is that — I’m not talking about people who it just didn’t work out for, for medical reasons, for social reasons, like set that to the side, we’re not talking about folks like that. What I was definitely trying to illustrate ultimately in a very inarticulate way is that I do think that our country has become almost pathologically anti-child.”

He does think it’s sociopathic to not have kids because of climate change: “You know, when I’ve used this word sociopathic? Like, that, I think, is a very deranged idea: the idea that you shouldn’t have a family because of concerns over climate change. Doesn’t mean you can’t worry about climate change, but in the focus on childless cat ladies, we missed the substance of what I said…. I think that is a bizarre way of thinking about the future. Not to have kids because of concerns over climate change? I think the more bizarre thing is our leadership, who encourages young women, and frankly young men, to think about it that way…And if your political philosophy is saying, don’t do that because of concerns over climate change? Yeah, I think that’s a really, really crazy way to think about the world.

He lies about referring to Kamala Harris as a childless cat lady: “Everything that I know about Kamala Harris, that I’ve learned about Kamala Harris, is that she’s got a stepfamily, she’s got an extended family, she’s a very good stepmother to her stepchildren. I would never accuse Kamala Harris along these lines. What I would say is that sometimes Kamala Harris, she hasn’t quite jumped over the “You shouldn’t have kids because of climate change.” But I think in some of her interviews, she’s suggested there’s a reasonableness to that perspective. But again, I don’t think that’s a reasonable perspective. I think that if your political ideas motivate you to not have children, then that is a bizarre way of looking at the world. Now, again, sometimes it doesn’t work out. Sometimes people choose not to have children. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the political sensibility that’s very anti-child.”

Whether he will support the election results this time and commit to a peaceful transfer of power: “Well, first of all, of course we commit to a peaceful transfer of power. We are going to have a peaceful transfer of power. I of course believe that a peaceful transfer of power is going to make Donald Trump the next president of the United States. But if there are problems, of course, in the same way that Democrats protested in 2004 and Donald Trump raised issues in 2020, we’re going to make sure that this election counts, that every legal ballot is counted. We’ve filed almost 100 lawsuits at the R.N.C. to try to ensure that every legal ballot has counted. I think you would maybe criticize that. We see that as an important effort to ensure election integrity. But certainly we’re going to respect the results in 2024, and I feel very confident they’re going to make Donald Trump the next president.”

[From The NY Times]

I’m also including his back-and-forth over the election denialism in the video below. He literally cannot admit that Trump lost the 2020 election. He cannot admit that he’s said wildly crazy sh-t about a national abortion ban and states creating laws to keep women from traveling out of state to seek abortions. He cannot admit that he spent years bashing “childless cat ladies” as inferior and sociopathic. And the stuff about his conversion to Catholicism and “She’s got three kids.” They’re your kids too, you f–king psycho. Vance stays in all women’s business except his wife’s, it’s the strangest f–king thing.

Asked 5 times by @LuluGNavarro whether Trump lost the 2020 election, JD Vance declines to say yes or no. pic.twitter.com/n2Ssm7s66J

— bryan metzger (@metzgov) October 11, 2024

JD Vance doubles down on calling women without children “sociopathic,” “bizarre,” and “deranged” pic.twitter.com/boVghJBWdy

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 12, 2024

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

It’s been well-known for decades, if not centuries, that the British monarch gets to keep all of the gifts they receive from friends, world leaders, despots and everyone else. Many of the jewels in the Royal Collection were “gifted” to the Windsors, and the Windsors obviously never pay taxes on any of those gifts, no matter how lavish. Something shifted when then-Prince Charles married Camilla, and Camilla received and accepted millions in jewelry from Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern kingdoms and emirates. Suddenly, people had concerns and the Windsors were supposed to disclose the gifts they received annually. For the past four years, no disclosures have been made, according to Richard Palmer writing for the Guardian.

King Charles and his family have failed to reveal their official gifts for the past four years, despite previously promising to publish an annual list. Palace officials have blamed the pandemic, the change of reign, and then planning for last year’s coronation for their inability to publish details of the gifts received by members of the royal family.

The royal family’s reticence follows controversy over a cash-for-honours scandal involving the king’s main charitable foundation, which led to a police investigation that was dropped last year without a full explanation from either Scotland Yard or the Crown Prosecution Service. It also comes after revelations that Charles, when he was Prince of Wales, accepted £2.6m in cash in bags from a Qatari politician for another of his charities, the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund.

But unlike MPs, who have to register gifts, donations and hospitality, there is no public register of interests for members of the royal family. Instead, they act on the advice of their private secretaries in deciding what to declare. Annual gift lists were introduced after media criticism of attempts by the royal household to conceal the origin of lavish jewellery given to Queen Camilla by a Saudi royal in 2006 and worn by her on an official visit to the US in 2007.

The last annual list, detailing official gifts received by all working members of the royal family in 2019, was published in April 2020 but since then there has been nothing, apart from the occasional description of an exchange of presents during a state visit or pictures when they are given gifts during an engagement.

Over the years, the annual list has led to controversy, such as in 2012 when it emerged that the king of Bahrain and his country’s prime minister had given a “suite of jewels” to Prince Edward’s wife, Sophie, while facing criticism over human rights abuses. But many presents, including sensitive ones, were often concealed, even though official gifts are not the personal property of the royals and are in effect accepted on behalf of the nation.

Saudi Arabia’s controversial crown prince Mohammed bin Salman gave the Duchess of Sussex a £500,000 pair of diamond chandelier earrings as a wedding present in 2018. In October that year Meghan wore them at a state banquet in Fiji only a few days after the crown prince was accused of ordering the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But when journalists asked where she got them, palace officials said they were “borrowed”. She wore them again that November at a Buckingham Palace dinner to celebrate the then Prince Charles’s 70th birthday. It was only in March 2021, shortly before the Duke and Duchess of Sussex gave a controversial television interview to Oprah Winfrey, that their true provenance was leaked.

The Prince and Princess of Wales, William and Kate, chose not to release a list of any gifts they had received at their wedding in 2011. Only a handful of official gifts received by Queen Elizabeth for her platinum jubilee in 2022 were disclosed and it is not clear what, if any, were given to King Charles and Queen Camilla to mark their coronation.

[From The Guardian]

Re: the earrings from MBS – once again, the earrings were given to the royal family. Then-Prince Charles and Prince William met with MBS just a couple of months before the Sussexes’ wedding in 2018. When Meghan said they were “borrowed,” she was telling the truth. The earrings were borrowed from the Royal Collection. They were “given” to her by Angela Kelly, QEII’s dresser, as a set-up. Ask the palace where the earrings are now and whether MBS’s “gift” is sitting in some palace vault. Throw in the fact that no one knows whether William and Kate are also accepting suitcases full of cash, bags of jewelry or tons of free sh-t from Apple, everyone’s being pretty selective in their outrage.

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Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Avalon Red, Instar.

It’s been a minute since we’ve seen Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce out together in New York. He’s been working, she’s been working, but he came to NYC for the weekend (?) and they stepped out on Friday night. They had a double-date with Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, and the two couples had dinner at The Corner Store in Soho. You can see the menu here – their steaks sound amazing, the “lobster frites” sound like a dream and they do hand-cut fries.

Fashion notes for Taylor… real talk, this outfit looked straight out of a ‘90s mall TO ME, but I’m shocked to discover that these are really high-end designer pieces. Her coat is from Ralph Lauren, her corset is from Gucci ($1650) and her boots are Louis Vuitton. She’s carrying a $4400 Dior saddle bag and she’s blinged out in jewelry pieces from LV and other brands. Meanwhile, Travis wore a Jacquemus Simon printed shirt. Thoughts on Travis’s ‘stache? He’s had it for more than a month and I’m not feeling it, nor am I feeling his overall hairstyle. He looks very… Blue Lives Matter.

Meanwhile, Taylor notably missed Travis’s birthday on October 5. She was in Kansas City on the 7th, in time to watch the Chiefs win another game. Page Six claims that on the 6th, Taylor was in town and she hosted a small dinner party for Travis at Noka in Kansas City. They say her dad was there, and Patrick and Brittany Mahomes were there too. What do you think? Did Tay do something special for his birthday, one day late? Her birthday is coming up soon enough… I wonder what he’ll get her for her 35th?

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

King Charles will arrive in Australia on the 18th. This will be his first (!!!) visit/tour to a “British realm” as king. As in, a country which still has the British monarch as their head of state. In recent weeks, Buckingham Palace courtiers have been gently trying to lower expectations for the trip and add some sympathetic layers for Charles. Charles is pausing his cancer treatments for the tour, and they’re limiting his schedule because no one knows how tired he’ll be. They’re telling people that the point of the tour is to show people that he’s still alive. The bar is, as always, in hell. Well, now they’re saying that Charles will travel with two doctors, neither of which is the king’s in-house homeopath. LMAO.

The King will take two doctors with him on his 11-day trip to Australia and Samoa. Charles’s visit to Sydney and Canberra will be his first visit of the reign to a Commonwealth realm. To make it possible, the King will pause the cancer treatment he has been undergoing since his diagnosis in February.

The 75-year-old monarch will be monitored closely during the visit. A palace source said that the decision to pause treatment and resume it when he returns to Britain followed doctors’ advice. It is understood that Michael Dixon, the head of the royal medical household, who is known for his interest in homeopathy, will not be one of the doctors travelling with the King.

Steps taken to support Charles abroad are understood to be the same as previous arrangements put in place for the late Queen. They included travelling with a supply of the monarch’s blood, to ensure an exact match if a transfusion was needed. As well as travelling with his own doctors, the King will be supported by medical teams in Australia and Samoa. In Australia, the itinerary has been designed with the King’s health in mind: the King and Queen will have a rest day and there will be no evening engagements.

Hugo Vickers, the historian and author, said: “I’m sure that the medical team has been consulted and will look after the King and make sure that he doesn’t overwork, as we know he has a propensity to do. I’m sure he wouldn’t be undertaking the trip unless he was fit enough to do it.”

In Samoa, the King and Queen will arrive in the evening and attend a state dinner. The King will meet Commonwealth heads of government in Samoa and has had a series of phone calls with leaders in preparation. In Australia he is due to visit the Sydney Opera House and attand a barbecue, and said to be looking forward to meeting the public. Given his continued ill health, however, a planned visit to New Zealand was cut from the tour.

[From The Times]

If I’m being honest, I do feel a tad sorry for Charles. He waited seventy-plus years to become king and now, two years after his mother’s passing, it’s like he’s holding the whole operation together with scotch tape and glitter. Notice how no one has even suggested that it probably would have been better to send the heir, or that the heir should be stepping up to do more to help his ancient father who still has cancer. Speaking of the whole thing falling apart, the palace corresponded with an Australian republican group about what Charles would do if Aussies want a republic:

King Charles has confirmed that it is up to the Australian people to decide whether the country remains a constitutional monarchy or becomes a republic. Ahead of the King’s visit to Australia next week, the Australian Republic Movement exchanged letters with Buckingham Palace officials, writing on the King’s behalf.

Correspondence from the palace, first revealed by the Daily Mail, says that “whether Australia becomes a republic” is a “matter for the Australian public to decide”.

The letter sent by palace officials restates the existing position, rather than marking any new change in policy – and Buckingham Palace is not saying anything further to the letter’s contents. But it is an amicable exchange, following a request by a group campaigning for a republic to have a meeting with the King during his visit.

“The King appreciated that you took the time to write and asked me to reply on his behalf,” says the letter from Buckingham Palace to the Australian Republic Movement, written in March. “Please be assured that your views on this matter have been noted very carefully. His Majesty, as a constitutional monarch, acts on the advice of his Ministers, and whether Australia becomes a republic is therefore a matter for the Australian public to decide.” The letter adds that the King and Queen have a “deep love and affection” for Australia and “your thoughtfulness in writing as you did is warmly appreciated”.

[From BBC]

Canada’s being pretty quiet, eh? I think Aussies will be the first ones to get a big crack at becoming a republic, and all of the other British realms will watch what happens. I hope it happens in the next decade or so. Anyway, I think the palace’s response was polite – as I said, this sh-t is barely being held together during Charles’s reign. I doubt “King William” will bother with any of this.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

Minnie Driver lived and worked in America for nearly three decades. Many British celebrities view America as a place to work but disparage as a place with inferior culture compared to Britain. But Minnie loved her life in California, living in a fancy trailer in Malibu and raising her son Henry. Nowadays, she splits her time between California and the UK, because Henry goes to school over there. But she has nice things to say about America – and awful things to say about Donald Trump – in an interview with the Times of London. Some highlights:

Her “Cinderella moment” while promoting ‘Circle of Friends’ in America. Landing in the US having lost the weight again, she was treated to the full Hollywood glam-over. “They came at my hair and blow-dried it straight. And they got me a good bra and the right size jeans. And suddenly I was sleek. Suddenly, I was revealed to myself as being a girl who was pretty, and it was so exciting.”

Being 54 years old: “I’d much rather have my face when I was 25. But I certainly wouldn’t want to have to go through all that sh-t again, of all the other attendant stuff that was coming down the pipe.”

She’s back to living in London after 27 years in Los Angeles. “I will always be between both places, but my son’s at school here, so if I’m not working, I’m wherever he is.”

She stopped making movies when she became a mother: “It’s why I stopped making movies, really consciously. I called my agent and went, ‘OK, I’m having a baby and I would really like you to go and look for a show that’s called Shoots in Los Angeles and will pay me a regular wage. I couldn’t be travelling. I couldn’t be taking a tiny baby to Romania — and I didn’t want to. As a single mum, I didn’t want him to have that uncertainty. I wanted him to have school and football and mates and tea and his own bed and our house.”

She was happy to find work in America: “In America there was just this idea of, ‘Whatever you want to do, try it. Do it. Throw everything you have at it and see what happens.’ There is this idea that you’re allowed to renew and to change course; you’re allowed to pivot. I can be a writer, I can be a musician, I can be a mother, I can be an actor — you don’t have to be just one thing. In England, I felt I was punished for wanting more. I was punished for being ambitious. The British press think it’s greedy for me to want to be more.”

Whether she believes things really changed with #MeToo: “Yes, I do. But not because of some kind of systemic epiphany that men had. Rather, because they know that there’s accountability now. There are actually mechanisms in place [which mean] that kind of behaviour can’t be hidden. And I think #MeToo put a dent in it, but I just don’t know whether that power dynamic is ever really going to be redressed. Revolutions are bloody. People want to maintain the status quo for as long as they possibly can until they absolutely can’t and then, kicking and screaming, people will change.”

Another big change for the industry: “I watched Challengers the other night and what I loved most was seeing that Zendaya was a producer. Not an executive producer — a producer.” She namechecks Margot Robbie, the creative force behind Barbie. “They’re like, ‘I’m part of this creation, I am making this happen.’ And I think maybe that is how it changes. We all should have been doing that back in the Nineties. When I think about the work that I did on scripts, the fixing things, the making stuff better, absolutely uncredited. I made so many of the roles that I was in through improv, through rewriting, through ideas that were all then completely uncredited. So what’s great is that these girls are now getting credit for it.”

She is British but: “I identify as a Californian.” Driver is more anxious than jubilant [about Trump’s felony conviction]. “He’s going to say that the whole thing is like the election, that it’s corrupt. Of course he deserves to be in prison — of course he does. But just looking at how much money he raised in that two days, $53 million in a 48-hour period, and the idea that because the founding fathers — if there had been some mothers involved perhaps it would be different — left no room in the constitution for the idea that the American people could be so stupid as to vote for a felon, there is nothing reflected in the judiciary about what would happen if he wins. It’s a pickle when you’ve got the Secret Service already scoping out prisons, going, ‘What would this look like?’ ”

Whether she would live in America again if Trump was reelected: “If I lived in a red [Republican] state, no, I couldn’t. But living in California, you are somewhat insulated. But do you want to go and live in a bubble? Do you run away from the fire or do you go back and help?” It’s not just Trump himself, she says, but “the revelation of the 70 million people who really quite like a bit of a racist attitude and non-existent immigration policies and dismantling the environmental agencies. And they were always there; they weren’t created by him. He’s just a symptom, and now they’ve got a mascot.”.

[From The Times]

Yeah, her assessment of Trump and the MAGA cult is dead on. Trump IS a symptom. The thing is, while I think the cult is a fundamental crack in America’s foundations, I also feel like it’s an underreported story – especially by the American media – that the cult seems to be less enthusiastic these days. The same energy isn’t there. Minnie’s right about being insulated from everything in California too, and she’s right about how the industry has changed.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

I will watch the crap out of Netflix’s documentary on Martha Stewart. [Just Jared]
Variety released their “best horror films of all time” list. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is #1, agree or disagree? Eh. [OMG Blog]
Rest in peace, Ethel Kennedy. [Hollywood Life]
Sarah Jessica Parker & Andy Cohen went to the NYC Ballet gala. [Socialite Life]
Andrew Garfield embraces his pain & vulnerability. [LaineyGossip]
Review of Anatomy of Lies. [Pajiba]
Monique Lhuillier’s latest bridal collection. [Go Fug Yourself]
Selena Gomez wore Schiaparelli to a photocall. [RCFA]
George Lopez is staging a comeback! [Seriously OMG]
How are we on nine seasons of Love After Lockup? [Starcasm]
A backlash to Nobody Wants This. [Buzzfeed]

On Thursday, the Princess of Wales did her first public event in months, since she attended the Wimbledon men’s final in July. She had been seen in careful photo-ops in those three months, of course – there were the photo-ops to church at Balmoral, there was last week’s meeting at Windsor Castle with a 17-year-old girl with cancer, and of course, there was idiotic sepia-toned “cancer-free” video she released in September. But Kate and Prince William’s event in Southport on Thursday was their first public event together since Trooping the Colour in June. It’s a pretty big deal.

Some details about her outfit – Kate wore a polka-dotted dress from Whistles and a McQueen peacoat, both of which look newish to me? The Telegraph dutifully announced that shades of burgundy & merlot are the hottest autumnal colors this year. Naturally. Tatler made a big deal about her fern earrings from Catherine Zoraida – those are a repeat, but according to Tatler, “ferns represent the importance of family bonds and signify hope for the next generation. They are also said to symbolise endurance, with many cultures viewing the unfurling of the plant’s fronds as the natural embodiment of resilience through hardships.” Some people are doing entirely too much to give Kate credit for her symbolism. This is the woman who cosplays national flags. She’s not researching the meaning of ferns. Kate was also notably not wearing her sapphire-and-diamond engagement ring. Again. That ring has been disappearing a lot lately – she wasn’t wearing it in the cancer-free video, nor in the Olympics video.

Most people were not expecting to see Kate this week, as I said yesterday. Most of us thought that she would only come out for some Remembrance events in November. Gee, I wonder why she made a point of going to Southport this week? Especially when the British media was on Day 5 of their aggressively bitter coverage of “Meghan wore a red dress to a charity gala.” It’s almost like that’s why Kate decided to come outside! Speaking of, the Daily Beast’s coverage made note of something curious: “Some media outlets including the Daily Telegraph said that Kate had chosen to join her husband ‘at the last minute’ but an official source at Kensington Palace told the Daily Beast that was not an accurate characterization of matters.” Meaning, what? Kate saw the pics of Meghan on Sunday and decided that she just had to go outside, therefore it wasn’t a last-minute decision?

Will & Kate also did a tweet.

We continue to stand with everyone in Southport. Meeting the community today has been a powerful reminder of the importance of supporting one another in the wake of unimaginable tragedy. You will remain in our thoughts and prayers. W & C pic.twitter.com/CP2DXJaqW2

— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) October 10, 2024

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign crossed the $1 billion threshold this week in donations raised. She’s only been the candidate since July 21!! The Harris-Walz campaign is so flush with cash, they’re spreading out their money to all 50 states, trying to help out Democratic candidates everywhere, from Senate races to House races to state and local elections. The Harris-Walz campaign strategy isn’t just “pushing hard in five swing states” either – they’re actively looking to appeal to rural voters, white working class, the tricky youth voters and former Republicans across the board. You know who else did that? The Big Dog himself, President Bill Clinton. Now the Harris-Walz campaign is letting the Big Dog loose. Bubba’s got big plans in Georgia and North Carolina. Pennsylvania Democrats are dying for Bubba to come up there too.

Former President Bill Clinton will hit the trail this weekend to begin what is expected to be a very targeted push across battleground states through Election Day, three sources familiar with his plans told CNN. The former president will seek to appeal to rural voters, among whom polls have shown Vice President Kamala Harris is performing worse than some of the last few Democratic nominees, particularly among younger Black men. Former President Barack Obama is also hitting the trail, beginning Thursday night in Pittsburgh.

Clinton will start with stops in Georgia on Sunday and Monday, with a bus tour next week in North Carolina expected to follow, pending recovery from the hurricanes. The emphasis is on counties won by former President Donald Trump. But it’s also on Clinton voters, hoping there are enough left from when he was the last Democratic presidential nominee before Biden to win Georgia in 1992 and that he can reconnect them to a coalition they’ve been steadily dropping out of over the last decade.

Clinton won’t appear at rallies. Going back to a kind of campaigning that he hasn’t done since before he became the “Comeback Kid” in the 1992 New Hampshire primary, Clinton’s schedule is for local fairs and porch rallies, talking to at most a few hundred people at a time.

He will talk about the economy, convinced that this is the issue that the election will come down to for the voters on the fence. He will pick up themes from his Democratic National Convention speech this summer about how Trump is only out for Trump, and how he himself has been out of office for more than 20 years and is still younger than the Republican nominee. He will eat fried foods (maybe even briefly breaking the vegan diet he’s famously kept to since heart surgery).

“He’s the perfect messenger to make the case that Kamala Harris would fix inflation and finish getting the economy back on track,” one person who’s spoken with the former president about his plans told CNN on Thursday. “So he’s saddling up, returning to his roots and meeting people where they are to ask for their help electing her.”

Clinton was one of the first five calls Harris made in July after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, a person with knowledge of the conversation told CNN. She asked for his support and he immediately offered it, and their aides have been working out campaigning details ever since.

“He’s an authority on economics and bread and butter issues and the longest peacetime economic expansion in American history,” said Calvin Smyre, a former Georgia state representative who talked to CNN about his warm memories of watching Clinton campaign in the state in 1992. “He has a knack of reaching people.”

[From CNN]

The Clintons have been total champs this entire election cycle. When everyone was freaking out over Joe Biden’s debate performance, the Clintons were the ones working behind the scenes, trying to soothe nervous donors and party faithful. Hillary and Bill endorsed Kamala Harris within hours of Biden withdrawing from the race. And now they’re sending Bubba to Georgia? And they’re making him do small-batch events too, which is an interesting strategy. I would assume that Obama will be used for the rallies and power-house GOTV speeches. Clinton can do that too, but Clinton has always been amazing in smaller groups, where he can really work a room and make sure every single person gets a handshake, a chuckle and a smile.

I remember hearing a wonderful story about Clinton… it was probably during the 2012 election, when the Obama campaign sent Clinton to headline some fundraisers out west somewhere. Clinton worked the room of big-money donors and had them all eating out of his hand, every donor got a handshake and a private joke with the Big Dog. Then, after he worked the room, Clinton went around and shook the hand of every waiter and waitress, then he went into the kitchen and made sure each and every one of the blue-collar workers got a handshake and a smile too. All of which to say, sending Bubba to some fairs in Georgia will probably have a huge effect on the race.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

When Prince Harry’s relationship with then-Meghan Markle was “outed” in the British media in late October 2016, tabloid reporters and paparazzi descended upon Toronto, where Meghan was filming Suits. The situation got so dangerous for Meghan, NBC (which produced Suits) hired private bodyguards for Meghan so that she could simply leave her house and go to work. Meghan went from mildly famous on a cable drama to internationally famous (for dating one of the most eligible bachelors in the world) in the space of a couple of days. She was also not getting any help from the palace, and I believe the palace had already begun throwing her to the wolves, even then, in those early days. Well, now one of her bodyguards during that time has given an interview. Steve Davies is actually pushing back on the revival of the “Meghan bullied palace staffers” storyline. Davies says, actually, Meghan’s great and she’s a really nice person who went through a really tough time.

In an exclusive interview with In Touch, Meghan’s former bodyguard Steve Davies is telling all about what it was like for him to work for the duchess. “She gets a bad rap for being a not very good person to work with, that she was this evil person in the royal family,” Steve, who had an intimate, firsthand perspective on Meghan as she transitioned from relative obscurity as a B-list actress to the unforgiving worldwide spotlight, exclusively tells In Touch. “I saw her, from working at the studio to working with charities to working with dog walkers and cleaners. There’s one huge lesson I learned from her: It’s give respect to get respect.”

When they first met in 2018, Meghan’s life had essentially changed overnight. “I felt sorry [for her] because she’d gone from being a celebrity to being a member of the biggest family in the world,” says the bodyguard, who was hired by NBC to watch over the Suits star, 43, in Toronto. “It was stressful for her — all the publicity.”

The constant surveillance [in 2016 & 2017] took a toll, Steve says. “She was paranoid. We had people following us around everywhere we went. We had problems with drones, vehicles chasing us. It was a nightmare.” Everything she’d taken for granted about her old life disappeared. “After a couple of weeks of working with her, I said, ‘What do you really want to do?’ She said, ‘I’d love to be able to go and shop in a grocery store.’ The previous security team wouldn’t let her do that. So I pushed the cart around the grocery store, and she was putting stuff in it. She really enjoyed that.”

From the moment she began dating Harry, 40, photographers have “followed [her] around, jumping traffic lights, trying to get alongside the vehicle,” says Steve, a former British special forces soldier who is now managing partner of Focus One Group in Toronto. These “dangerous” situations — similar to those that Harry and Meghan reported during a May 2023 trip to New York City — were common, he says. If Meghan had stayed in London, he feared that “what happened to Princess Diana in Paris might have happened to her.”

The situation deteriorated so much, Meghan has admitted she suffered from suicidal ideations. “She loves Harry, she loves the children, but it can cause a lot of depression [when] you’re scared to open a paper to see what people are saying about you,” notes Steve, adding that it didn’t help that “Buckingham Palace was controlling the PR and Meghan was always used to being able to control the PR herself with her team.”

It was around this time that employees started complaining. “The staff at Buckingham Palace [said they] couldn’t stand working for her,” Steve says. But back in Toronto, aides had seen a different side of Meghan. “Nobody had a bad word to say about her. Even with the pressure that she was under, she was warm and considerate all the time,” he insists, adding that what might surprise people most is “how friendly she is and what a big heart she has. She’s great to her fans, and she would go out of her way to help people. That’s what hurts me — that people believe [otherwise].”

And that’s why he’s speaking out now. Though he no longer works for her, Steve considers Meghan a friend. “My wife and I got invited to the wedding, that’s how close we became,” he says, adding that they exchange emails on birthdays and holidays. “I would work with her again, not a problem at all. She was a good person to work for, and she still is a good person.”

[From In Touch Weekly]

It’s sort of amazing how the Us Weekly cover story several weeks ago actually did the job. While there was tons of grumbling about it from the usual suspects, the fact is that it’s really tough to say that people should believe unnamed sources with unspecific grievances rather than Archewell staffers (current and former) going on the record about how Meghan and Harry are great bosses. This guy, Steve Davies, is literally just saying what everyone else has said about Meghan outside of the UK – that she was always lovely, even when her life changed so dramatically and she was under so much pressure. The longer this British character assassination campaign goes on, the more I want to know the specific examples people have cited for Meghan’s supposed bad behavior. I think that’s why we never get specifics too – because at some level, the media or the palace know that if those “bullied staffers” actually told their stories, people would laugh and say “are you kidding me, you had a nervous breakdown over an email from Meghan?”

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Pacific Coast News.