The Duchess of Sussex was seen outside this week! It’s the first time we’ve seen “street style” Meghan in a while, right? While she was seen at the ESPYs two weeks ago, there were no paparazzi photos of Meghan out in Montecito for several months. Well, Meghan was seen on Sunday, having lunch with Kimberly Williams-Paisley at a Montecito hot spot.

Meghan Markle and Kimberly Williams-Paisley caught up over an Italian meal last weekend.

On Sunday, July 21, the Duchess of Sussex, 42, and actress and activist, 52, were seen leaving Tre Lune in Montecito, California, in photos obtained by the Daily Mail. The Italian restaurant and celebrity hot spot is in the same Santa Barbara enclave where Meghan lives with husband Prince Harry and their kids Prince Archie, 5, and Princess Lilibet, 3. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex dined at Tre Lune a few days before Meghan’s birthday last August.

The pair, who are both alumni of Northwestern University, caught up over pasta and wine, PEOPLE understands. Williams-Paisley graduated from Northwestern in 1993, and the Duchess of Sussex earned her degree in 2003.

Meghan and Williams-Paisley aced summer style, with the Duchess of Sussex wearing a white Anine Bing button-down tucked into jeans with Chanel flats. She accessorized with Ray-Ban aviator shades and two gold necklaces, carrying her Dior Lady D-Lite handbag.

[From People]

It feels so random that Meghan would be friends with Kimberly, but maybe it’s the actress connection or maybe it’s the Northwestern alum connection or maybe they’re just neighbors or something. No, that’s not right, the Paisleys live in Tennessee? So who knows. As for the restaurant… I remember looking up Tre Lune’s menu before, so that must be one of Meghan’s favorite local places. The menu is amazing and I would love to try like five of those pasta dishes. I’m dying to know Meghan’s order.

Something I do know is that Meghan’s ability to accessorize causes the British press to freak out every single time. For this outing, Meghan wore “accessories worth £61,795” and of course they’re including her engagement ring and Dior purse. She also wore a Cartier necklace, because Meghan loves some sparkle and some gold jewelry. The Dior bag is the Lady Dior, which they named in honor of Princess Diana. My least favorite part of the ensemble? Those terrible jeans. The wash is too light and the cut is tragic.

Who is Meghan Markle’s lunch pal? Kimberly Williams-Paisley starred in Father of the Bride alongside Steve Martin and is married to Brad Paisley https://t.co/CyljiDYrlO pic.twitter.com/X7mufZGjxk

— Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) July 23, 2024

Meghan Markle sports outfit and accessories worth £61,795 as she visits Montecito restaurant with actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley – including a £15,500 Cartier necklace and Dior bag named after Princess Diana https://t.co/3jy1kb1w8r pic.twitter.com/vWcyaddLYn

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) July 23, 2024

Meghan was spotted having lunch with Kimberly Williams-Paisley yesterday in Montecito.
She wore –
Anine Bing shirt – https://t.co/EtRwWqlSCo
La Ligne jeans – https://t.co/X6FDgeOnH8
Ray-Ban sunglasses – https://t.co/HgnWtbrizC
Dior bag – https://t.co/bzJibn5cT6
Ariel Gordon… pic.twitter.com/I3JTjYt06S

— What Meghan Wore (@whatmegwore) July 22, 2024

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.

It’s Disclosure Week over in the UK, with Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace courtiers sitting down with royal reporters and talking them through the royal finances at the end of the British “tax year.” Just in time for the Windsors’ summer holidays too – they really want to drop these disclosures and walk away for three months. There’s a lot of information to get through, but this one deserves its own stand-alone story. Remember how King Charles evicted the Duke and Duchess of Sussex from Frogmore Cottage last year? Remember how the eviction came after the Sussexes paid for extensive renovations on the dilapidated shack they were “gifted” by QEII? Remember how they had a valid lease and Charles still evicted them, and then he was fully prepared to give the cottage to Prince Andrew? Yeah, funny story – Frogmore is still sitting empty.

Frogmore Cottage is still lying empty more than a year after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were forced out, as Prince Andrew refuses to move into the residence. Prince Harry was asked to remove his remaining possessions from the property just weeks after he published his explosive memoir Spare last year.

The Sussexes had provoked fury by spending £2.4 million of taxpayers’ money renovating it, but they covered the costs themselves following the outcry.

The Duke of York was offered the option to move into the cottage, instead of residing in the £30 million Royal Lodge while he has no apparent source of income, but he declined. Prince Andrew was forced to step back from royal duties amid the scandal over his friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The King has long been trying to persuade him to leave his 30-room Windsor mansion in favour of Frogmore Cottage.

But yesterday a Buckingham Palace spokesman confirmed that Frogmore is still empty as they detailed the annual Sovereign Grant report, which sets out how the monarchy is funded by taxpayers.

‘I think at this point I wouldn’t speculate on who would be the future occupant of Frogmore Cottage,’ they said.

[From The Daily Mail]

These people suck so hard. All of them – the focus on Frogmore specifically is all about the Sussexes and the British media’s gloating that the Sussexes were evicted out of spite. But there are so many cottages, mansions, palaces, forts and castles sitting empty on Crown-owned estates or part of private royal real estate holdings. Charles has made this big deal about how much money can be made renting out all of these properties and he still can’t fill Frogmore. It’s wasteful, stupid and extremely petty.

Photos courtesy of Netflix/The Sussexes. Cover courtesy of The Sun.

None of the Windsors are big on public disclosures, but King Charles arguably disclosed the most information out of his entire family, disclosures about income, staffing and taxes when he was Prince of Wales. Now that Prince William is PoW, he’s “doing things his own way,” which means… nowhere near the kind of disclosures his father used to make. Per ITV:

Prince William has chosen to withhold more information about his finances, as the Prince of Wales, than his father did before him. In the end-of-year accounts for the Duchy of Cornwall, the estate William inherited when he became the heir to the throne, shows that he has withheld the amount of tax he pays on his earnings. The accounts for the last full year – in which Charles was the Prince of Wales – revealed he voluntarily paid £5.9 million in income tax.

While Prince William, as the 25th Duke of Cornwall, still pays income tax in the same way as the 24th Duke (Prince Charles), his office has decided not to reveal the amount as they are not obliged to do so. Tax is paid by the Prince of Wales on his earnings from the Duchy of Cornwall after deducting official expenditure on his family.

The integrated Annual Report released on Wednesday by the Duchy of Cornwall shows that the surplus available to William, Kate and their family was £23.6 million – a small reduction from the year before caused by property management. The surplus pays for the official, charitable and private lives of the Prince and Princess of Wales and their household. Tax is paid at standard UK tax rates once official costs have been deducted from the £23.6 million figure.

Senior royal sources indicated that the amount of income tax William pays is higher than his father, but Kensington Palace declined to say how much tax was paid in 2023/24, nor how much money was left from the surplus on which tax was owed. It meant the report into finances for the Prince of Wales’ office was much less transparent than the one in 2021/22 – the last full year that Prince Charles was entitled to the Duchy of Cornwall money.

William and Kate employ less staff than Charles and Camilla did when they had the Duchy of Cornwall funds. The current Prince and Princess of Wales employ 66 staff – whereas his father used to employ around 100. 67% of William and Kate’s staff are female and 33% are male. Kensington Palace does not have a target for the diversity of their staff but did reveal 14% of their employees are from minority backgrounds. But the most senior team around William and Kate, the management body that reports directly to them, are all white men.

The Executive Committee of the Household is made up of five men: William’s Private Secretary, Ian Patrick, Kate’s Private Secretary, Tom White, Chief Operating Officer, Sean Carney, Head of the private household, James Benbow, and Communications Secretary, Lee Thompson.

[From ITV]

Shock of all shocks, William is secretive and squirrelly. He does not want peasants to know the actual breakdown of his office staff, he doesn’t want people to know his income or who pays for what, and he does not want anyone to know about his tax situation. I find the gender situation in Kensington Palace fascinating – a bunch of white men in “executive” positions, bossing around a staff of mostly younger women. Judging from what we can see of KP’s operations, that’s my assumption, that these are mostly younger, inexperienced female staffers who don’t actually know what the hell they’re doing. The ethnic breakdown… “14% of their employees are from minority backgrounds.” I’m going out on a limb and saying that I bet that 14% is mostly Asian and not Black. Anyway, I’m still waiting for people to mock William’s “obsession with privacy” considering the man won’t even reveal his taxes.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

With all the political games that have been playing out over the last few weeks, I genuinely lost track of the fact that the Paris Olympics begin on Friday. But they are indeed upon us! I unabashedly admit that I’m a total sucker for the opening ceremonies. The pageantry! The storytelling! Well, Paris is really out to dazzle us this year with a certain je ne sais quoi, as their ceremony will be held outside across the city and in a flotilla on the Seine. How avant garde! I hope it doesn’t rain on the parade! (And I really hope they got that bed bug situation under control.) As per usual, most of the production is being kept under wraps. But the world could not ignore when two icons landed in the city of light, in this of all weeks. So now everyone is asking: are Lady Gaga and Celine Dion part of the big show?! C’est magnifique!

Is Lady Gaga going to perform at the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony in Paris on July 26?

Just days before the biggest sporting event in the world kicks off, Gaga was seen arriving in the French capital. The award-winning singer, who famously sang Edith Piaf’s La Vie en Rose in “A Star is Born,” and performed the song during her Las Vegas residency Jazz and Piano, is rumored to be rehearsing her performance for the Opening Ceremony. R&B star Aya Nakamura and Celine Dion are also rumored to be performing.

For the first time in history, the Opening Ceremony is set to take place outside of a stadium and will be held along the Seine River that runs through the city. The nautical show will be following 85 boats carrying athletes from each Olympic delegation on a four-mile parade. Kicking off from the Pont d’Austerlitz and culminating at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, the ceremony will showcase the city’s historical landmarks and will bring together 3,500 actors, dancers and musical performers.

The show has been designed by theatre director Thomas Jolly, best known for hit rock-opera musical “Starmania”. In an interview with the Associated Press, Jolly remained tight-lipped about the performers saying, “All I can tell you is that it will be very meaningful for the artists that will perform.”

[From Variety]

And then Variety reported on Celine’s arrival:

Celine Dion looks set to make her return to the stage at the Olympic Games, and it’s rumored to be during the opening ceremony on Friday. It will mark the pop legend’s first performance since halting her touring schedule and stepping away from the spotlight after being diagnosed with Stiff Person Syndrome in December 2022.

Dion arrived in Paris on Monday at the Royal Monceau hotel near the Champs-Élysées, where Lady Gaga, another potential opening ceremony headliner, is also staying. Specific details about Dion’s performance are being kept under wraps.

[From Variety]

Celine performed at the Atlanta opening ceremony in 1996, but this appearance would be no less significant, if the rumors are true. As noted by Variety, Celine hasn’t performed in two years due to her SPS diagnosis, which was part of why her fans and colleagues gave her such a warm reception when she presented at the Grammys this year. But to mark her return to singing at the Olympic Games? Now that’s a power move worthy of the Queen of Power Ballads. My prediction: Celine will be stationed at the Eiffel Tower, while Gaga will perform on one or more boats (and yeah, my sources gave me the nod that the Lady is in the lineup!). I love Gaga, but I actually hope she doesn’t sing “La Vie en Rose.” I don’t think the French would take kindly to an American performing that on French soil, non? Why not instead treat us to some of the new music she’s been cooking up? And while I’m here throwing out suggestions for free, I beseech the IOC to put a moratorium on John Lennon’s “Imagine.” It’s a stunning, singular song. But it’s been more than overused at Olympic ceremonies. Give it a rest, let it be! (I know, I know; just watch Celine and/or Gaga sing “Imagine” come Friday, le sigh…)

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

Photos credit: Jasmine Aissaoui/INSTARimages, Aissaoui Nacer/Backgrid and Getty

My fellow Americans, the last three weeks have been quite a year, #amirite? But now that we’re falling out of that coconut tree and into the KHive, LFG! While this moment in history may be unprecedented, it was not unpredicted! In fact, after the news broke on Sunday afternoon, it didn’t take long for people to point out an eerie similarity between Vice President Harris’ attire from the January 2021 inauguration and an episode of The Simpsons from 2000. The episode is called “Bart to the Future” and in it, Lisa Simpson becomes America’s first female president. She’s dressed in a purple pants suit, pearl necklace, and earrings, which is a look that we’ve all come to associate with Madam Vice President. It’s so uncanny that Simpsons writer Al Jean chimed in, Tweeting that he was “proud” to be a part of this potential prophecy.

In the 2000 episode of the comedy series, “Bart to the Future,” Lisa Simpson becomes the first female president of the United States. She sports the exact same purple ensemble that Harris rocked during the 2021 inauguration, including the pearl necklace and earrings.

The back-to-back images of Lisa and Harris, 59, went viral on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday after the huge shake-up to the Democratic presidential ticket.

“The Simpsons as Prophetic has become one of the most enduring mysteries of our times!” one fan tweeted.

“It’s unnerving how often these predictions have been spot on,” someone else said.

Al Jean, a screenwriter for the show, tweeted out the prescient photo as well.

“@TheSimpsons ‘prediction’ I’m proud to be a part of,” he wrote.

The Matt Groening-created show is notorious for predicting future events, including Donald Trump’s presidency. In the same episode, President Lisa remarks, “We’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump.”

Groening, 70, addressed the show foretelling Trump, 78, reaching the White House in a 2016 interview with the Guardian.

“We predicted that he would be president back in 2000 — but [Trump] was, of course, the most absurd placeholder joke name that we could think of at the time, and that’s still true. It’s beyond satire,” he said.

[From NY Post]

This isn’t the first time that The Simpsons has predicted the future, either. In the same episode, Lisa mentions inheriting a “budget crunch” from a “President Trump.” A 1996 episode predicted Trump’s January 6 insurrection, a 1997 episode alludes to 9/11, a 1999 episode predicted the pandemic, and a 2018 episode predicted the Game of Thrones finale (although, let’s be honest, that one was somewhat easy to predict). The Post has a compilation of other crazy Simpsons prophecies here.

Anyway, this is eerie, but you know what? The Universe works in mysterious ways. I don’t care if it comes from a crystal ball, tea leaves, a fortune cookie, or a cartoon show. The Simpsons thing isn’t the only potential cultural prediction, either. Biden’s announcement came on the one-year anniversary of Barbie’s release, which I have to think is also a good sign. We need Issa Rae to campaign with VP Harris as President Barbie! Ahh, pump some more of this President Harris sh-t into my veins and revitalize my frayed nerves. Now we just need to GOTV and make these prophecies a reality.

Photos credit: Avalon.red, Ting Shen/POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com, Alex G. Perez/Pool/CNP/startraks/Cover Images, and via YouTube/The Simpsons

Here are some photos of Keanu Reeves this week in New York, and some pics of Keanu performing with his band, Dogstar, at the Rock im Park festival in Germany back in June. Keanu remains the coolest, and I have to admit, his hair is really working for me these days. I love scruffy men, but I love it even more when a scruffy guy cleans up his look just enough. Like, he still has a beard but he recently trimmed it. His hair is just the right length too. Anyway, Keanu is currently promoting his first novel! He collaborated with British sci-fi author China Mieville on The Book of Elsewhere. It’s based on the “hugely successful BRZRKR comic book series created by Reeves,” per the BBC, who interviewed Mieville and Reeves. Some highlights:

Keanu thinks about death: “I’m 59, so I’m thinking about death all the time.” That’s a good thing, he adds. “Hopefully it’s not crippling, but hopefully it’s sensitised [us] to an appreciation of the breath we have, and the relationships that we have the potential to have.”

Creating the BRZRKR comic book series: “I love the images. I love words and storytelling and I love the way that you can have this engagement that overlays. And so you can look at the art and then you can follow the story.” The actor plays down his role in the collaborative process though, insisting: “I didn’t write a novel. China wrote a novel.”

Whether he thinks writing about violence will lead to violence irl: “I hope if they read BRZRKR, that they don’t go out and start ripping people’s arms off and chopping their heads off. Because there’s also a love story in it. But if you do read it, I hope maybe you can find love if you don’t have it.”

Creation & pain: “Maybe ultimately the fantasy of building another world brings some kind of comfort in some way. There’s something ultimately about the creative gesture that comes from pain. Creating stuff is great. Just creating, sharing, and hopefully people like the stories that we tell.”

He doesn’t give away all of his stuff, despite reports to the contrary: “I love owning things, I love having stuff. I’m certainly not going to present myself as someone who gives everything away.”

[From BBC]

Is Keanu Reeves the perfect man, yes or no? I don’t think he’s perfect, actually, but I think he’s the best person to come out of the crazy 1980s/90s Hollywood scene. He survived, he stayed grounded, humble and compassionate, and he’s continued to do work which makes him happy. I think people miss the fact that he’s genuinely very artsy because he makes so many commercial films. He has all of these amazing side-projects and such a wide variety of interests and passions. Such a cool guy. And yes, as you get older, you just think about death a lot. Incidentally, did you know that Keanu and Kamala Harris are the same age? Their birthdays are about seven weeks apart (he’s a Virgo, she’s a Libra).

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

On July 2, actress Sydney Sweeny’s X account was hacked by crypto scammers who used it to promote one of those crypto meme scams. This is the second time this year that Syndey’s account was hacked. Back in January, her account was hijacked to promote a different crypto meme coin. Unfortunately, Sydney’s cell phone number was also hacked at the same time as her Twitter account. After a picture of a Verizon receipt in Sydney’s name was posted online, it was determined that she’s also a victim of SIM swapping. Essentially, SIM swapping is when hackers take control of someone’s phone number, meaning all their phone calls, text messages, etc. will move over to a new device that the hacker controls.

Sydney Sweeney’s cellphone number was hijacked the same day hackers took over her X account to promote a crypto meme coin scam, according to a new report. A copy of a Verizon Wireless receipt from July 2 was posted online and obtained by technology news site 404 Media, showing that someone made changes to the “Euphoria” star’s account.

“Hi SYDNEY SWEENEY, Thank you for your order,” the paper read. “If you have any question [sic], please feel free to contact me.”

An iPhone and its box were next to the receipt in the photo.

The outlet speculated that the Emmy nominee, 26, was “a victim of SIM swapping, where hackers take over a target’s phone number and reroute text messages and phone calls to a device that the attackers control.”

Page Six has reached out to Sweeney’s reps for comment.

A Verizon spokesperson, Richard Young, said in a statement to 404 Media that he could not “discuss a specific customer situation” but added, “Verizon takes customer privacy and account security very seriously. When an issue is brought to our attention, we work quickly to investigate and remediate the issue, and work to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

The date listed on the receipt was the same day Sweeney’s X account was hacked by someone tweeting about cryptocurrency.

“Well I think it’s time $sweeney is now live 100mc incoming,” wrote the hackers on the actress’s account. “At 10mc, 10% of the supply will be burnt.”

The post also included a link that directed users to a newly created Pump.fun meme coin that the hackers claimed was from Sweeney.

The cyberterrorists also told the “Immaculate” star’s 1 million followers that she would be “going live on spaces soon” to show “what $sweeney can do.”

The hackers’s tweets didn’t stay up for long, as Sweeney reclaimed her account and deleted all traces of the crypto scams. In fact, the “Anyone But You” star’s X page shows that her last message was posted in May to promote her forthcoming film, in which she’ll be portraying boxer Christy Martin.

Sweeney is part of a long list of stars whose social media accounts have recently been hijacked by hackers. Rappers 50 Cent, Doja Cat and Rich the Kid and former wrestler Hulk Hogan were also victims of the hacks.

[From Page Six]

Ugh, I feel terrible for her. It’s such a gross invasion of privacy. I hope she doesn’t have any other problems, like them hacking into her iCloud Photos or Apple wallet. I would be beyond angry if someone did this to me. It makes me worried to know that AT&T was hacked a few weeks ago and the hackers got access to “nearly all” of their customers’ records. As an AT&T cellular customer, I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop on that one. I know it’s probably unlikely to track down who hacked her account and swapped SIM cards, but I hope there’s a way to do it. The crypto scams have gotten out-of-control on both Elon Musk’s platform and Instagram. Over the past few years, I’ve had a few people in my life whose Instagram accounts got hacked and it was hard to get them back. For a family member, whoever hacked their account still constantly posts those spammy things. I hope something can be done about it, with legislation or other official channels.

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A post shared by Sydney Sweeney (@sydney_sweeney)

photos credit: IMAGO/RW / Avalon, Jeffrey Mayer / Avalon and via Instagram

Donald Trump has been funneling campaign cash to his extensive legal bills for several years now. The Trump campaign is facing FEC inquiries and it will probably take years to untangle the financial mess. This is why Trump chose JD Vance as his running mate: Vance came with built-in financing from Peter Thiel and the Nazi tech bros. Vance was not Trump’s top choice whatsoever, and I absolutely believe that the Trump campaign did the bare minimum when it came to vetting Vance in the first place. They just did whatever would get them the most money. Of course, their choices were also predicated on President Biden staying in the race. Now that he’s dropped out and Trump is facing off against a brilliant and tough prosecutor named Kamala Harris, suddenly MAGA world has figured out that their goose is cooked. Hilariously, they’re now wondering if there’s any way to drop Vance.

Republicans may be starting to second-guess their party’s pick for vice president. Much of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, including the decision to tap Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate, was structured around attacks on President Joe Biden. But then Biden announced Sunday that he was withdrawing from the presidential race altogether.

Trump campaign officials acknowledged that Trump selected the inexperienced Vance, charged with all his techno-authoritarian ideas, to boost support among their own base, not extend a hand to swing voters, according to The Atlantic. Vance was a symbol of the Trump team’s assuredness that they would win in 2024. Come Sunday, that assuredness appears to be shrinking.

“Most striking thing I heard from Trump allies yesterday was the second-guessing of JD Vance—a selection, they acknowledged, that was [born] of cockiness, meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout rather than persuade swing voters in a nail-biter,” Atlantic staff writer Tim Alberta, who had written the piece about the panicking Trump campaign, posted on X (formerly Twitter).

Trump decried Biden’s decision to drop out in a post on Truth Social, writing that his team would have to “start all over again” and asking to be reimbursed for the cost. At the same time, Vance has set straight to work, calling for Biden to resign from the presidency.

[From The New Republic]

I will give Vance credit for one very small thing – last week, when he became Trump’s running mate, VP Harris’s office made some statement about how Harris is looking forward to debating Vance, and Vance’s reply was something like “bold of you to assume that we’ll debate each other given the disarray in your party.” Dude was right. He won’t debate VP Harris. He’ll debate whatever white dude gets chosen by Kamala Harris as her running mate. As for Trump world rethinking their Vance pick… lmao. They really are stuck with him. That being said, Thiel and the tech Nazis have Trump’s cojones in a vice grip and there really won’t be a serious effort to push Vance off the ticket.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

Barack Obama’s former staffers played a big role in the intraparty coup to oust President Biden from the 2024 race. It reminds me a bit of how many of Obama’s former staffers talked out of both sides of their mouths about Hillary Clinton in 2016, only it feels like President Biden and President Obama’s relationship is not in a good place and may never recover. Many sources have said outright that Biden feels betrayed by party leaders and by Obama. Many sources have indicated that Obama has barely been in communication with Biden or his people in recent months. When President Biden withdrew from the race on Sunday, Obama offered a tribute to Biden’s decades of public service but Obama did not endorse VP Kamala Harris. That too has irritated a lot of Democrats and Dem activists, who wonder about the extent of Obama’s role in the party coup.

NewsNation’s Kellie Meyer tweeted yesterday that Obama will not endorse anyone before the nominee is chosen, and he did not endorse Kamala Harris or anyone else because “Obama believes he will be uniquely positioned to help unite the party once we have a nominee, lift-up that candidate, and do everything he can to get that candidate elected in November.” I recognize this as an effort to turn down the temperature on the ratf–king allegations, and I’m sure Obama has been getting some calls too, especially as the party has already enthusiastically coalesced around VP Kamala Harris. Suddenly, Obama and his people are very chatty about Obama’s perspective, and they even contacted the New York Times:

Many of the marquee names in Democratic politics began quickly lining up behind Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday, but one towering presence in the party held back: Barack Obama. The former president has not yet endorsed Ms. Harris; in fact, he did not mention her once in an affectionate — if tautly written — tribute to President Biden that was posted on Medium shortly after he decided to bow out on Sunday.

Republicans interpreted that as a snub. But people close to Mr. Obama, who has positioned himself as an impartial elder statesman above intraparty machinations, said not to read too much into it — and had no alternate candidate in mind when he made the decision not to immediately endorse Ms. Harris.

Mr. Obama adopted an identical stance four years ago when Mr. Biden’s aides pressured him to endorse early in the Democratic primaries before Senator Bernie Sanders dropped out. (Mr. Obama’s favored phrase back then was “I don’t want to thumb the scale.”) Endorsing too early now would also be a political mistake — fueling criticism that Ms. Harris’s nomination, should it come, was a coronation rather than the best possible consensus under rushed circumstances, they said.

Instead, Mr. Obama sees his role as helping to quickly “unite the party once we have a nominee,” a person familiar with his thinking said.

But there are other more personal considerations, exacerbating Mr. Obama’s innate caution. Mr. Biden is a deeply prideful man, and he has never fully forgiven Mr. Obama for quietly backing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign. Mr. Biden still believes he could have beaten former President Donald J. Trump that year if given the chance. Nor was Mr. Biden pleased when Mr. Obama told him that he should consider sitting out 2020, too, people in his circle have said. Mr. Obama wanted Sunday to be about Mr. Biden, a celebration of his accomplishments — and does not feel pressured to act hastily, according to a former White House official who speaks with the former president regularly.

[From The NY Times]

This reads to me like Obama is in damage-control mode because he’s realized that his public reticence and private maneuvers have not gone down well with the party. As I’ve been saying, this whole episode has left a bad taste in a lot of Democrats’ mouths. Even if you make the argument that President Biden had to be convinced to drop out, did the Obama allies, ratf–kers and Dem Congressional leaders really believe that the best way to achieve that goal was torching a sitting Democratic president publicly and spending three weeks advocating for the disenfranchisement of Democratic voters at the behest of big-money donors?

The fact that Obama is making his endorsement all about his own importance is the wrong move too – the party is quickly coalescing behind VP Harris, it’s July, there are only 104 days until the election. Instead of unifying quickly and ensuring that Democrats look like they’re more than ready to take on Trump and the MAGA cult (after literally overshadowing the Republican National Convention with their party coup bullsh-t), Obama is navel-gazing and dithering.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.

VP Kamala Harris is a stepmother to her husband’s two kids (who are now adults). She is also an attractive woman who dated men before she married Doug Emhoff in 2014. This is the big character assassination plot of the Republican Party: Kamala Harris dated men, she was hot stuff in the 1990s and she’s a stepmother. Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance has been particularly focused on Kamala Harris’s lack of biological children for several years now, and he’s referred to her as a “childless cat lady” several times.

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, said in 2021 that Vice President Kamala Harris is one of the “childless cat ladies” who is “miserable” with her life and has no direct stake in America because she is not a mom.

In a speech at an Intercollegiate Studies Institute conference, Vance specifically named Harris in a tirade against the “childless left” who have “no physical commitment to the future of this country.” He lumped the vice president in with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

“Why is this just a normal fact of … life, for the leaders of our country to be people who don’t have a personal and direct stake in it via their own offspring?” Vance said.

Days later, the Ohio Republican doubled down on his attacks on childless Democrats in an interview with then-Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.

“We’re effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too,” Vance said.

“It’s just a basic fact: You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” he said. “And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people that don’t have a direct stake in it.”

[From HuffPo]

There are millions of Americans, both men and women, who are childfree by choice or by circumstance and we vote. We have the time to vote. We have the disposable income to donate to the Democratic Party. As a childfree woman with cats, I loathe the suggestion that I don’t have a “personal stake” in the future of the country. I have fewer rights as a woman than my mother, and that’s because of Donald Trump and his MAGA cult, and as a woman… I want to ensure that girls and women have their reproductive rights restored so they are not handmaidens in the Confederacy of Trumplandia. And again, arguing that stepparents are NOT parents is kind of wild. It’s a crazy stance to take for Republicans.

JD Vance says women who haven’t given birth like Kamala Harris are “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives,” and have “no direct stake” in America. pic.twitter.com/3DJY3pQTGe

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 22, 2024

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.