I didn’t watch any part of Donald Trump’s second inauguration. Come to think of it, I didn’t watch any part of his first inaugural either. Since this is my job, I tend to microdose this kind of sh-t and just look through the photos to see what storylines are there. Imagine my shock when I came across the photos of Trump taking the oath of office… and he didn’t have his left hand on the bible. Did he forget? Is the oldest president ever to be elected too senile to remember to put his baby fist on the bible? Or is there something happening with his left hand/arm and he couldn’t move it properly? Come and get your village idiot, Evangelicals. This is what you wanted – a demon who couldn’t even put his ugly orange hand on a bible, lest it burn his rapist flesh.

The photos of that ugly man trying to kiss his wife are pretty funny too. As many suggested, that is probably why Melania wore the hat in the first place, so her husband would be blocked from kissing her. Other random thoughts… did George W. Bush fall off the wagon? He had the vibe of a man who started day-drinking.

As for the rest of it… I’ve seen the headlines about his inauguration speech and people are already feigning outrage over “the Gulf of America” and his “two genders only” crap. What did people expect? He didn’t turn into a completely new person? He’s the same serial sexual predator, fascist, moron, racist and dumbass as always. What I find interesting is the guest list – since the inauguration was held indoors, in the Capitol Rotunda, there was a very tight limit on which donors/celebrity guests could be invited. Rupert Murdoch got an invite, as did Elon Musk, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos. Bezos even brought Lauren Sanchez, who looked like a horse’s ass in her exposed lace bustier. What was somewhat shocking is that Logan Paul, Jake Paul and Conor McGregor were also on the shortlist. McGregor, like Trump, is an adjudicated rapist. The Pauls are sleazy influencer types. I’d love to know if all of those whackjob big-money donors are mad that they didn’t get a seat but Conor McGregor did.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.

Joe Biden’s last act as president was to issue preemptive pardons for Dr. Anthony Fauci, Gen. Mark Milley, Liz Cheney and everyone on the January 6th committee. [NYT]
TikTok made a point of restoring service in America and thanking Donald Trump, which tells you all you need to know about TikTok. [Just Jared]
Julia Fox’s haircut: love it or hate it? [Go Fug Yourself]
Cameron Diaz & Jamie Foxx are still on the promotional trail. [Socialite Life]
Should Wendy Williams be freed from her conservatorship? [LaineyGossip]
A Different Man is now on HBO/Max. [Pajiba]
Keke Palmer, SZA & Issa Rae? I’m there! [OMG Blog]
Women were especially well-dressed last week. [RCFA]
People are always surprised by this, but Christopher Walken has been around forever and he’s always been really well-connected. [Seriously OMG]
Southern Charm star takes in Californians. [Starcasm]
David Lynch would have turned 79 years old today. [Hollywood Life]

This is getting increasingly bizarre. Around the Princess of Wales’s “state of Kate” briefings around her 43rd birthday, we were told endlessly that Kate must take it easy, that no one should expect her to go back to work, that everything around Kate and her health is so delicate. Then she made an appearance at the Royal Marsden Hospital last Tuesday, timed specifically to try to steal the Duchess of Sussex’s thunder, given Meghan’s Netflix show was originally planned for release the next day. After Kate said weird things at the hospital, a quick cleanup was ordered and we were once again told that no one should expect anything more from her for a while, that Kate’s “new normal” was little-to-no work for the foreseeable future. As it turns out, the birthday briefings happened while Kate was on vacation in Switzerland, and her visit to the hospital happened soon after she returned from her ski jaunt.

The Princess of Wales has taken another step on her road to recovery from cancer by enjoying a ski holiday over the New Year. The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Kate – along with Prince William and their children Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis – enjoyed a quiet break in the Alps just over two weeks ago.

They are said to have slipped away from their home at Anmer on the Sandringham estate shortly after Christmas, and spent several days away, along with members of the Middleton family. The couple and their children were spotted enjoying morning hot drinks at a mountaintop restaurant that is a popular stop-off point for British skiers and has panoramic views of snow-covered peaks. It is believed they returned for a meal at the same restaurant, which was once a shepherd’s hut.

A member of staff revealed: ‘It was lovely to see Kate relaxing and enjoying herself. They looked like a normal English family, and a lot of people didn’t recognise them. It was not the first time we had seen them. They have been coming here for years. I think they love the area. We often see Kate’s sister Pippa as well.’

Although the trip will be viewed as a positive sign in Kate’s ongoing recovery from cancer, Kensington Palace have stressed that the princess’s return to full duties will only be gradual.

Kate – who, after a visit to the hospital where she had chemotherapy, announced last week that she was ‘in remission’ from cancer – spent time with her brother James while on her break, including seeing him at the restaurant.

An onlooker said: ‘James was there with his wife and then Kate arrived with Charlotte and Louis. It seemed like a bit of a Middleton family knees-up. Everyone seemed to be really happy. There were no airs and graces and actually they seemed like any normal family enjoying a ski break. There were lots of laughs and the children were very polite. The only reason you would have known that they were people of importance was because when Kate arrived so did a group of security guards. Kate looked like she was having a lovely time.’

Kate is thought to have returned back to the UK in time to celebrate her 43rd birthday at home on January 9. She then undertook her first solo engagement in more than a year at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, where she was treated for her cancer. Her visit to the hospital was described by royal watchers as part of her ‘carefully calibrated plan to manage her recovery and measured return to official duties’.

[From The Daily Mail]

Did anyone actually see William on the slopes or dining with his wife and children? Or did people only see James Middleton, Kate and the two younger Wales kids? The whole thing is odd. Granted, most of us assumed that Kate and William (together or separately) have slipped away for vacations outside of the UK a lot in recent years. But given all of the attention on Kate, her whereabouts, her birthday and her health, it feels especially notable that Kate and at least two of the kids were able to leave the country and no one heard about it for a couple of weeks. Does KP understand that they’re stepping on their own messaging? Maybe this is the message – Kate is perfectly capable of gearing up for international ski vacations, but you can’t expect her to visit a London charity or attend a diplomatic reception at the palace.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Kensington Palace.

I guess we have to do this every six months or so. We have to hear about how Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, is a bully, a Mean Girl, a woman who yells without raising her voice, a boss who “undermines” her staff, whatever that means. Those are the latest claims in Vanity Fair’s February cover story. The only throughline of all of the “Meghan is a bully” claims is that no one has been able to come up with a specific accusation of exactly what Meghan said or did. Hearing from a secondary source, six years later, that Meghan “screamed at a florist” does not count in my book (because why the hell would she scream at a florist?). Last September was the last time we went through a “Meghan/bully” cycle and that’s when Meghan and her Archewell team finally clapped back. They organized an Us Weekly cover story in which people went on the record about what Meghan is like as a boss, and quelle surprise, she’s lovely and warm.

Well, the Us Weekly story had “royalist sources” mad as hell. They were incandescent with rage that people went on the record with nice things to say about Meghan. The Daily Beast’s Royalist quoted one courtier who insisted that Meghan had “psycho moments” where Meghan “chewed people out” and made them feel like sh-t. Unsurprisingly, those same courtiers are piggybacking on the Vanity Fair story, telling the Daily Beast: “I am surprised that people spoke out, but I am not surprised by the content of their allegations. It seems like nothing has changed. There is not really much more to say.” Actually, there’s a lot more to say? Like specifics of what Meghan supposedly did which was so demonic, so sociopathic? But that’s not all. The Royalist also posted this story, tying the VF piece with Camilla Tominey and her racist reporting at the Telegraph.

Meghan Markle used a “whisper shout” to aggressively berate employees so Harry wouldn’t realize what was going on, according to a new claim by one of the first British journalists to report Meghan bullied her staff. Camilla Tominey, a senior editor at the Daily Telegraph, who was formerly that paper’s royal correspondent, also posted a gloating message to X saying that her reporting had been vindicated by the report in Vanity Fair, which alleged that her treatment of staff has been so poor since relocating to America that at least one ended up in “long-term therapy.”

Tominey first reported that Meghan and Kate fell out over a bridesmaid dress fitting for Kate’s daughter, Princess Charlotte.

This weekend, citing “multiple sources,” Tominey concurred with a line in the Vanity Fair piece in which a former staffer said: “You can be yelled at even if somebody doesn’t raise their voice.”

Tominey said a former employee had told her: “Meghan has a habit of using a whisper shout, so when Harry is in the room, he just hears her talking normally and doesn’t understand why people describe her as aggressive. His default response is always ‘Meghan is misunderstood’.

“She’d throw around phrases like ‘lack of accountability’, ‘disappointment’ or ‘we know what you did, and yet we still decided to support you’. But when staff tried to get clarity, asking what exactly they had done wrong, she’d dismiss them with lines like, ‘I think it’s best we keep it to ourselves and not advertise it in front of the team,’ ‘We’re here to protect you, not throw you under the bus’.”

Tominey quips that “other people’s truth may finally be catching up with Meghan.”

The VF article says that one person “took a leave of absence” after working on three episodes of Meghan’s podcast and adds that “several others described taking extended breaks from work to escape scrutiny, exiting their job, or undergoing long-term therapy after working with Meghan.”

Meanwhile, former employees of Meghan’s—the so-called “Sussex Survivors Club,”— who told The Daily Beast in September that Meghan was a boss who had “psycho moments” and could be a “demon” have told The Royalist that they feel “vindicated” by the astonishing claims in Vanity Fair. One source told The Daily Beast in September: “I always thought she was a classic narcissist and getting her staff to tell a magazine how amazing she is only confirms that in my mind. She is lovely when it is all going her way but a demon when the worm turns.”

The Daily Beast touched base this weekend with some of the sources we spoke to back in September to garner their views in the wake of the VF piece. One said: “I feel desperately sorry for the people affected, because I have been there, but I also feel vindicated. All those people saying she is the world’s greatest boss should be ashamed of themselves. It’s obviously very tempting to work for her when you are being wooed and love-bombed, but people should be in no doubt; she is a nightmare. I would think the atmosphere will be particularly hellish now everything is going to s**t. She doesn’t do disappointment well.”

[From The Daily Beast]

“Meghan has a habit of using a whisper shout, so when Harry is in the room, he just hears her talking normally and doesn’t understand why people describe her as aggressive.” What are we doing here? A whisper-shout? This is the long-awaited specificity on Meghan’s bullying behavior? According to Tominey, Meghan used to “whisper-shout” at staff? What is whisper-shouting? Is it a racist-dog-whistle for Meghan speaking in her soft voice and saying “please complete this task?” And this: “But when staff tried to get clarity, asking what exactly they had done wrong, she’d dismiss them…” Imagine that – trying to get clarity on what, exactly, was so offensive in one’s behavior. It’s almost like Meghan has been victimized for seven f–king years by the vaguest, cloudiest accusations ever.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

One thing is for sure: a lot of people in the media and in Britain were paying close attention to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s 2025 schedule. Prince William and Kate threw together appearances to coincide with/thunder-steal from Meghan’s Netflix show, which was originally scheduled to drop on January 15. Those people were also hyper-aware of Harry’s massive trial against Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers. And don’t forget the Invictus Games next month, because I believe some of these stories were anticipatory for all of the amazing press Harry and Meghan get for every Invictus event. All in all, it feels like there’s another high-level effort to smear Harry and Meghan. This Vanity Fair cover story is going to be referenced and discussed for a while too, which sucks. So, Vanity Fair published this cover story called “Inside Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Big Business Ambitions, 5 Years After Their Royal Exit.” It was written by Anna Peele, and Peele notes that Harry & Meghan “declined to be interviewed for this article.” You can read the full piece here. I’m going to have to cover this over multiple posts, sadly.

Having read the VF piece a couple of times now, I feel safe in saying that it’s overwhelmingly unfair to Harry and Meghan. Whatever “case” Vanity Fair is trying to make – that Meghan sucks and Harry is okayish – is hurt by Peele quoting unnamed sources with really obvious axes to grind, so much so the sources sound like palace courtiers hiding behind gopher wigs and sunglasses. Full disclosure though: there are some sections which I found notable, interesting or believable. Most of those parts are about how Harry probably would prefer if Meghan goes out and makes the money (I believe that completely) so he can just do his advocacy and charity work. I also believe some of the stuff about how toxic it got between Spotify and the Sussexes, and I think we just have to eat some of that, as fans of Harry & Meghan. Spotify had legitimate beef with the Sussexes and Spotify had every right to be disappointed with how little they did with their contract. Now, it was a choice to put so much of the Spotify stuff in the VF article, because it’s been abundantly clear for years that there’s no love lost. I would also assume that associates from other companies didn’t want to speak to VF, or they didn’t have any axe to grind and so their comments were left out. Anyway, here are the Spotify sections:

The naivete: “They have this naivete and their hopefulness about what’s possible in terms of storytelling and good works and all those things,” says producer Jane Marie, who collaborated with the couple while they developed audio projects at Archewell and later produced a podcast with Michelle Obama. “I wish I had that kind of optimism.”

Development problems at Spotify. The former Spotify employee says, “They had this idea to do a podcast because they knew celebrities did them,” a category differentiated between celebrities who get a lot of money to begin podcasting, like Harry and Meghan, and celebrities who get large deals after proving themselves to be capable podcasters, like Smartless’s Will Arnett, Sean Hayes, and Jason Bateman. The former Spotify employee says Harry and Meghan “didn’t do what celebrities do on podcasts, which is turn on the mic and talk. They wanted a big theme that would explain the world, but they had no ideas.” Someone who worked closely with them on audio projects disputes this version, lamenting that because of Meghan and Harry’s insistence on silence from employees and their own reticence, the public doesn’t know about good projects that had to be abandoned for practical reasons. “It feels like the only story is ‘They didn’t satisfy their contract,’” she says. “It’s not like work wasn’t being done.”

Harry’s meeting with Spotify: As time passed—it would be nearly two years between the couple’s deal signing and the premiere of Archetypes—Spotify began applying pressure to produce something (anything!) that people might listen to. The former Spotify employee says Harry came to the Los Angeles office once and asked for a cup of cocoa. There was none in the office, so employees scrambled to obtain some. An idea was pitched to Harry—what if he reviewed a hot chocolate every week while chatting with a different friend?—which he and his team considered and rejected. Another concept was that Harry would “fix” something every week, ranging from a flat tire to global warming. “He wanted to do a podcast about disabled people who compete in the Invictus Games,” the former Spotify employee says. “But there’s no crossover between the audience who would listen to that and people who want to hear about Harry’s life.”

Harry was charming but disinterested: The former Spotify employee says it was challenging to engage Harry, and a person who interviewed for a job with the couple says, “I just felt like he kind of didn’t want to be there doing that at this time…. My expectation was ‘charming receiving line.’ And it was clear he wasn’t that person. At least that day.” And at least in the context of a hiring manager: A person who worked on an event during Harry’s book tour says he has the “greatest manners I’ve ever seen. Hands down. Like I can’t believe his knees are as supple as they are. He was getting up and down anytime somebody walked into a room…. He was unfailingly kind and friendly to everyone.”

Harry wishes Meghan would make the money: During the interview, the potential employee says, Harry’s attitude was either “Well, why should I do this?” or “Why are we doing this?” The interviewee says they wondered, “Didn’t Spotify pay you a lot of money to do this?” The person inside the couple’s circle says, “He looks like the kind of guy who would, frankly, happily work for charities for the rest of his life and would be very happy if Meghan made all the money and he didn’t need to.”

The Sussexes’ self-censorship: Harry and Meghan became increasingly nervous about how their content would impact them. Marie says, “I can say that they had really great ideas for shows, interesting pitches, interesting guests. But them as the deliverers or either of them as the hosts of these more kind of edgy ideas would have been like…they would have had to move again. I think it’s a combination of self-censorship for good reason and the corporate powers that be that run podcasting that don’t know what that is [to create valuable shows]. In combination, those things make it really hard to make good stuff.” The person who worked in media projects imitates the thought process behind any decision about the couple’s projects: “Well, he has a million things that he has to protect, and he has the book, and they have the documentary, and they don’t want to make the queen upset, and their public image.…”

The problem with Archetypes: The former Spotify source says, “Archetypes was complicated as a podcast concept. You had to explain what the archetype was, then why the woman embodied it, but also how it wasn’t true about her. Every episode was like, ‘This is my friend who has been called that archetype but is not that archetype.’” These archetypes—actually stereotypes—included diva (Mariah Carey) and bimbo (Paris Hilton and Iliza Shlesinger). As for those “friends,” there was an expectation that Meghan would be able to use her personal Rolodex to book the show, the way hosts like Simmons and the Pod Save America guys do. The person who worked in media projects says the assumption was, “Meghan’s gonna be on the phone with the pope tomorrow.”

Watering down the concepts: According to the source in media projects, Meghan would agree to provocative ideas and then walk them back. In one episode, she wanted to actually say the word bitch because, as the source remembers Meghan saying, “You hear it all the time.” It ended up with Meghan calling it “the B-word.” An episode titled “Slut,” intended to center on how trans women’s sexuality is used against them, was retitled “Human, Being” by Meghan and had to be completely reimagined late in production. “Every episode got more and more watered down and further away from actual conversation,” the source says. “It felt like very Women’s and Gender Studies 101 taught in 2003.”

[From Vanity Fair]

As I said, I think some of these criticisms are fair and some of these stories are true. I believe Harry pitched interesting podcast ideas only to be turned down by Spotify executives who wanted him to give them gossip and scandal rather than “let’t talk to this Invictus competitor.” I could see how Harry would disengage if he was being repeatedly told that no one would listen to a podcast about veterans and mental health (arguably his life’s work). I believe Meghan was self-censoring and she watered down her message in Archetypes. I believe Archetypes was too complicated a pod-concept right out of the gate, and Meghan should have started with a much more simplified concept, like “I’m going to interview this interesting woman about this week’s broad theme.” And yes, I really believe that Harry would love it if Meghan would just go out and make the money so he could concentrate on charity work & Invictus.

Photos courtesy of Spotify, Invictus, AppleTV. Cover courtesy of Vanity Fair.

I totally forgot about this, but last April, Henry Cavill confirmed a rumor which was going around at the time: that he and Natalie Viscuso were expecting their first child. Henry and Natalie had, at the time, just appeared on some red carpets together and many had remarked that it looked like Natalie was in the early stages of a pregnancy. I promptly forgot about all of this, and so did a lot of people. Natalie and Henry never announced the birth when it happened, which I suspect was late last year. They just turned up in Australia over the weekend with a baby and a baby stroller. Henry’s team ended up confirming everything to People Mag.

Henry Cavill and Natalie Viscuso are parents!

A source tells PEOPLE that the Man of Steel star, 41, and his girlfriend have welcomed their first baby together.

No other details, including the child’s name, sex or birthdate, have been shared.

Photos published by The Daily Mail on Saturday, Jan. 18, show Cavill and Viscuso pushing a baby stroller in Australia.

The actor is currently in the country to film the upcoming live-action Voltron movie.

[From People]

Congrats to them! Henry famously has four brothers, so I am wondering whether they got a boy or a girl. Would Henry even know how to raise a daughter? I would love to know the name too, but I bet it’s probably boring. They don’t seem like the type to name their kid Lettuce or Harleigh Basquiat. If it’s a girl, maybe Elizabeth or Jane? For a boy, something British-y, like Rupert or Simon. Also: the Mail says that Henry and Natalie are engaged, but given how quiet they’ve been in the past year, I would not be surprised if we eventually learn that they quietly got married at some point. They’ve been together for years now!

Henry Cavill and Natalie Viscuso were spotted with their newborn baby in Gold Coast, Australia. pic.twitter.com/Hy6RJTT8Rj

— 21 (@21metgala) January 18, 2025

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Avalon Red, Cover Images.

Last September, the Hollywood Reporter published a bizarre piece in its “Rambling Reporter” column called “Why Hollywood Keeps Quitting on Harry and Meghan.” The piece read like a Daily Mail hit-piece circa 2018, all about how Meghan storms around the Archewell office in high heels, barking orders and making grown men cry because she’s such a “bully.” The piece was so bizarre and so nasty, it inspired the Sussexes and the Archewell team to actually respond and organize an Us Weekly cover story in which multiple Archewell staffers (current and former) went on the record about how Meghan. They said Meghan is a lovely boss and she isn’t a bully and they enjoy the work they’re doing. The people pushing the “Meghan is a bully” agenda were really mad about that Us Weekly story, remember? They were mad that people went on the record about Meghan and said she was generous and kind. Well, the butthurt people decided to take their unnamed-source asses to Vanity Fair to once again push the agenda. Some excerpts from Vanity Fair’s Sussex cover story:

A former Harpo executive quit because of Meghan? Terry Wood, an executive vice president at Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions, was brought in to be what Meghan would later call her “right hand” when Archetypes won a People’s Choice Award in 2022. The source familiar with the production of Archetypes describes Wood’s anger, saying that she yelled at Spotify staffers when Meghan changed her mind about episodes. (Wood did not respond to VF’s request for comment.)

Meghan’s work patterns: The source who worked in media projects says Meghan’s own relationships with employees tended to follow a familiar pattern. She would be warm and effusive at the beginning, engendering an atmosphere of professional camaraderie. When something went poorly, often due to Meghan and Harry’s own demands—such as a teaser for Archetypes being released five months before the show premiered and before there was any tape to promote—Meghan would become cold and withholding toward the person she perceived to be responsible. The source says it was “really, really, really awful. Very painful. Because she’s constantly playing checkers—I’m not even going to say chess—but she’s just very aware of where everybody is on her board. And when you are not in, you are to be thrown to the wolves at any given moment.” In practice, they say, that manifested as “undermining. It’s talking behind your back. It’s gnawing at your sense of self. Really, like, Mean Girls teenager.” Marie had a different experience with Meghan: “She’s just a lovely, genuine person,” she said.

Meghan yells without yelling!! The person who worked in media projects read stories in the tabloids about Meghan “bullying” palace aides and couldn’t imagine such behavior actually happened. After working with her, though, this person realized, “Oh, any given Tuesday this happened.” While it beggars belief that Meghan actually shouted at a palace aide, as has been reported, a person who interacted with her professionally says, “You can be yelled at even if somebody doesn’t raise their voice. [It’s] funny that people don’t differentiate between the energy of being yelled at and literally somebody screaming at you.”

People needed therapy after working with Meghan? Two sources say a colleague with ties to Archetypes took a leave of absence after working on three episodes, then left Gimlet altogether. Several others described taking extended breaks from work to escape scrutiny, exiting their job, or undergoing long-term therapy after working with Meghan. The person who interacted professionally with her says, “I think if Meghan acknowledged her own shortcomings or personal contributions to situations rather than staying trapped in a victim narrative, her perception might be better.” They added, with the soggy laugh of a plebe rendering judgment on the Duchess of Sussex, “But who am I to criticize Meghan Markle? She’s doing great.”

[From Vanity Fair]

I’ve always been a person who trusts my gut-level instincts about celebrities (and I’m right about 99% of the time). I play a little game of “can I imagine this person doing what they’re accused of?” With all of the Meghan-is-a-bully stories, I’ve never been able to picture it or believe it whatsoever. The stories run contrary to her energy and everything we know about her. The whole “she yells at people without yelling at them” thing is… just odd. What are we doing here, really? What is she actually being accused of again? Like the British stories, no one has any specifics. She throws people to the wolves! Okay, how? She’s a Mean Girl! What are the specific Mean Girl antics? She undermined me! She’s your boss – are you sure she wasn’t just handing you a task? I needed long-term therapy after working on her podcast for a month! Are you being serious right now? Don’t you understand, she’s Black! Is it really that simple?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar, Backgrid. Cover courtesy of Vanity Fair.

On Friday, Vanity Fair dropped their new cover and cover story, all about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The broader concept of the piece is about marking the five-year anniversary of the Sussexit and assessing how Prince Harry and Meghan are doing professionally. But it hits on and feeds into all of the worst of the tabloid narratives: “Meghan the bully” and “Harry is dumb” and “their marriage is trouble.” A lot of people have been really invested in that last one for a while now. In recent months, the “marriage trouble” storyline has been built on the reality that Harry and Meghan are pursuing separate projects – Meghan has her lifestyle show and brand, and Harry has all of his charity work and Invictus. Separate careers aren’t usually an indicator of divorce, but that didn’t stop Vanity Fair from pushing this very bizarre story about how Meghan was pitching a post-divorce memoir:

A few years ago a rumor began circulating around the book world about another prospective project for Meghan. This story, which a person with knowledge confirms the broad details of, was that Meghan’s team had a conversation with a publishing house to gauge interest in the idea for a potential book. The concept, for which there was no written or formal proposal, was post-divorce. Not a general book on life after marital dissolution, or one about Meghan’s past experience. (She was married to producer Trevor Engelson from 2011 to 2014.) This book—this notion of a book, really—might center on a post-Harry divorce. Not that there was actually one in the works! Just…if this a priori divorce ever came to be, would this publisher theoretically be interested in a book that took place in its aftermath? Another source with knowledge says, “If that’s true to any degree, she would have been approached and not vice versa.” No offer was ever made, and no manuscript was produced. After all: There was no divorce.

[From Vanity Fair]

None of this sounds true at any level. First off, Harry & Meghan are fine and by all accounts, they’re deeply in love and committed to one another, their young children and their life together in California. Secondly, why would Meghan – who is notorious for keeping her business on lockdown – go to anyone in the publishing world with this kind of juicy gossip scoop when everyone knows that the information would get out. Thirdly, it doesn’t make any sense at a business or gossip level – say that Meghan considered divorcing Harry and she was thinking about writing a book about it. Meghan knows, as does everyone in the publishing world, that her memoir would be huge (it would be huge even without a divorce). She wouldn’t have to “pitch” it to any publisher. Multiple publishers would be throwing eight-figure deals at her.

The Daily Mail obviously pulled this story out of the VF piece too, and they ran it as an exclusive, with “Meghan’s friends” shutting down VF’s claims, saying: “If that’s true to any degree, she would have been approached and not vice versa.” My guess is that someone in the publishing world – probably someone at the News Corp-owned Harper Collins, IYKYK – started this rumor as wishful thinking and it has no basis in reality.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, cover courtesy of VF.

The only “buzzy” cultural thing happening around Donald Trump’s inauguration is Michelle Obama letting everyone know that she’s not coming and she’s in her IDGAF Era. I’ve seen DC people talk about how the city has been completely dead in the lead-up to Monday’s inauguration, although I’ve also seen that the MAGA oligarch bros are doing a lot of inaugural balls on Monday night. But still, the energy is low, the buzz is nonexistent, and the vibe is nihilist. Trump was looking at a second inaugural which would have been more poorly attended than the first. So, funny story: bigly macho man Donald Trump is worried about his widdle bone spurs freezing off, so the inauguration is moving indoors. Dude is too stupid to wear layers and a coat, I guess.

President-elect Donald J. Trump said Friday that his inauguration would be moved inside the Capitol Rotunda because of a frigid weather forecast, the first time in 40 years that a presidential swearing-in will be held indoors.

The change for Monday’s inauguration means that far fewer people will be able to watch in person as Mr. Trump officially becomes the 47th president. It also avoids the potential for smaller crowds because of the weather. Mr. Trump was furious about reports that he had smaller crowds in 2017 than President Obama had at his 2009 inauguration.

“The weather forecast for Washington, D.C., with the windchill factor, could take temperatures into severe record lows,” Mr. Trump wrote on his social media website, Truth Social. “I don’t want to see people hurt, or injured, in any way. It is dangerous conditions for the tens of thousands of Law Enforcement, First Responders, Police K9s and even horses, and hundreds of thousands of supporters that will be outside for many hours on the 20th (In any event, if you decide to come, dress warmly!).”

Trump officials had been discussing what to do about the weather well before Mr. Trump decided to have the inauguration moved indoors. Temperatures in Washington on Monday are projected to drop to a low of 11 degrees, with a high of 23 degrees. The last time a swearing-in moved indoors was in 1985 for President Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration, similarly because of cold weather.

[From The NY Times]

Apparently, Trump now plans to have his supporters pile into the Capital One Arena to watch the now-indoor inauguration, and he promises to join them afterwards. Which is BS – after the swearing in, there’s a lunch, and then an hours-long parade, and then the inaugural balls. He can’t just peel off and spend a couple of hours with his fascist fans. Apparently, MAGA donors are pissed off, because there are only 600 available seats in the Capitol Rotunda. Anyway, these are the people who want to invade and colonize Canada and Greenland – they’re too scared of a little cold weather! Nah, really they’re scared that they’re going to look like giant losers.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.

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