KINSLEY GAFFE: Kamala Harris makes a brutal gaffe in speech to Wisconsin voters: ‘I stood up to veterans.’

ROGER KIMBALL: If Kamala Harris Wins.

Imagine you are a mini-Rip Van Winkle. You sink into a deep slumber on November 4 and do not awaken until, say, December 2026. You won’t have missed the original American Revolution, as the first Rip did. But you will have missed another revolution that undid many aspects of the first. You won’t be subservient to a foreign king in far-away England. You will now be utterly subservient to a tiny, home-breed oligarchy. Will it quarter its troops—otherwise known as illegal immigrants—in your homes? Maybe. In fact, some Democratic politicians have suggested just that. And of course, dropping thousands of foreign criminals into your small town, a notorious practice that has become increasingly popular under the Biden-Harris Administration, has pretty much the same effect.

Expect such community-destroying expedients to multiply if Harris wins. Here are few other features of the new Kamalist dispensation you will discover as you shake off the cobwebs of your long slumber.

First, you will discover that there are no longer any any swing states in America. As Elon Musk observed, the Democrats will declare illegal migrants legal voters by fiat, thus transforming America into a one-party state. What Gavin Newsom just did in California, banning local checks on voter ID, will be nationalized. No voter ID, no meaningful elections.

And speaking of Elon Musk, X will be regulated into oblivion—or, if not into oblivion, then at least into a reliable adjunct of the propaganda press now replicating the Democratic narrative. Remember, John Kerry, speaking recently from the World Economic Forum, said that the First Amendment was the great “block” in the battle against “disinformation.” If the Democrats win, he said, they can “change,” that is, gut, the First Amendment.

In a similar vein, Hillary Clinton has repeatedly called for greater supervision—that is, censorship—of social media. People who spread “disinformation,” she said, should be “civilly or even in some cases criminally charged.” Forget about the fact that she actually paid for “opposition research” against Donald Trump and then assiduously spread the gigantic disinformation of the Russia Collusion hoax in order to discredit him. In one revealing comment, Clinton acknowledged that the real threat of platforms like X under Elon Musk was that “we”—that is, people who agree with Hillary Clinton—“lose total control.” We can’t have that, now.

Back in 2019, Harris herself evinced a similar sentiment. Donald Trump, she said, had lost the “privileges” of free speech. No one was there to explain the difference between a “privilege” and a constitutional right to the vice president. Clearly, the distinction does not signify under the new dispensation.

Read the whole thing.

HOW IT STARTED:

Under the inescapable smog that still blanketed the city, Los Angeles in the early 1970s was poised between its parochial past and its global future…Downtown Los Angeles was a ghost town. The big East Coast department stores had not even opened LA branches yet. The Los Angeles Times was just emerging from its insular, arch-conservative past to pursue its ambition of becoming a world-class newspaper. Control of City Hall finally shifted in 1973 from longtime mayor Sam Yorty, an erratic midwesterner who held power in his final years by overtly appealing to white anxiety about racial change, to African American Tom Bradley, a dignified and reserved former police officer who became the first Black mayor of a mostly white large city. The model and actress Anjelica Huston, who arrived just before Bradley’s victory in the spring of 1973, wrote later that “Los Angeles was a small town then; it felt both incredibly glamorous and a little provincial.” Huston arrived from Manhattan, leaving a tumultuous relationship with a brilliant but erratic fashion photographer that had immersed her in the nocturnal Andy Warhol demimonde of the Lower East Side. Bright and sunny, healthful and relaxed, Los Angeles then seemed to her “the antithesis of New York,” as she recalled. Unlike New York, “there were no rats in the trees, no smell of urine on Third Avenue.” Huston rode horses through Griffith Park and planted wisteria, dahlias, and chrysanthemums behind her house on Beachwood Drive. “It was like a big garden to me,” she remembered of LA in those years. “After those years in New York, it was like the land of milk and honey.”

—Ronald Brownstein, Rock Me on the Water: 1974-The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television, and Politics, published in 2021.

 How it’s going:

A journey through Los Angeles, the adopted home of Vice President Kamala Harris, offers a masterclass in urban dysfunction. As you drive through the streets of the southside, and along Central Avenue, the historic main street of black LA, now mostly Hispanic, the ambience is increasingly reminiscent of Mexico City or Mumbai: broken pavements; battered buildings; outdoor swap meets; food stalls serving customers much as one would see in the developing world.

Democrats, particularly in deep blue California and even bluer cities like Los Angeles, can clearly win elections. But what they can’t do is govern effectively. Virtually every Democratic city in the land is now in decline. Crime, especially of the violent variety, is rising. That’s shadowed by continued out-migration to less dense, more conservative areas, a trend that’s seeing the country’s biggest cities lose out economically.

But if signs of progressive failure are clear from New York to San Francisco, it’s Los Angeles where I feel it most keenly. I’ve lived here since 1975. Back then, the idea that this diamond in the sands could tarnish was unimaginable. But it has. Once a middle-class haven with a broad industrial base, LA now suffers the highest poverty rates in the state, and among the worst in the country. Dovetailed by failing schools and parks, and an exodus of residents and businesses, long-term prospects of this great American city look bleak — a future that could yet be translated right across the country.

— Joel Kotkin, “How the City of Angels went to hell,” UnHerd, yesterday.

Gooder and harder, California.

Related: Americans Are Fleeing Los Angeles More Than Anywhere Else for First Time.

Earlier, from Jack Dunphy: The Slow, Agonizing Death of Los Angeles. “I was born in Los Angeles and spent most of my life within its city limits. My father was born there, also, and by the standards of L.A., where most people’s roots are as deep as a tumbleweed’s, this is rather like tracing one’s lineage back to the Mayflower. About twelve years ago, while still employed with the Los Angeles Police Department, I made what was at the time an anguished decision to move my family to the suburbs. Today, the only anguish I feel about Los Angeles comes when I’m obligated to go there for some work, social, or entertainment activity, and I’m grateful these are more infrequent as the years pass.”

‘WHEN HITLER ISN’T BAD ENOUGH!’ The Atlantic Ups Dictator Ante to Sound Alarm About Trump:

When it comes to the alarmist rhetoric from Democrat, the media and self-described anti-Trump “Republicans” who now only support Democrats, a lesson that should have been learned is “don’t peak too soon.”

Trump was laughably framed as “Hitler” and then “worse than Hitler” years ago, but now that the Republican nominee is leading in most (if not all) swing state polls with the election coming up quickly, something bigger is needed.

The Atlantic has served up another doozy for an emergency “when Hitler isn’t bad enough”:

“Trump’s worse than every dictator ever combined, and then some!”

Applebaum wrote Gulag: A History in 2003, so she knows how badly she’s gaslighting her readers, but then, as Christine Rosen wrote in Commentary, reading the Atlantic these days “is like being a therapist whose severely anxious patient flops on the couch and delivers a monologue about the tortures of his daily life.”

But hey, you know who’s even worse then Trump? Scratch ‘Joy,’ Time to Push Fear: The Hill Claims J.D. Vance Is Even Worse Than Donald Trump:

But every Republican president or presidential candidate is Hitler, until he’s rehabilitated, given a new suit, allowed to leave the bunker, and treated as a wise elder statesman by the DNC-MSM to attack the latest Hitler.

OKAY, GROOMERS: Under Tim Walz, Minnesota Pays For Kids To Go On ‘Queer’ Wilderness Trips Without Parents.

SHE’S STUDIED THE MAPS!

“It would be a huge mistake for Israel to enter Rafah. I've studied the maps”

I will never get over this sound bite. The worst possible combination of ignorant and arrogant. pic.twitter.com/oNVDQVGLLr https://t.co/4wX1bqdldH

— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) October 17, 2024

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN: Maxim makes an endorsement for the 2024 presidential election: ‘You just lost zero fans.’

Would Trump drive a Lambo? I thought he’d be more of a Pagani Zonda or Bugatti Chiron man, myself.

TO BE FAIR, THAT’S THEIR JOB: The Media Shouldn’t Overlook Kamala Harris’ Plagiarism.

CNN’s report on the Harris plagiarism accusation is headlined: “Conservative activist accuses Harris of plagiarizing passages in co-authored 2009 book.” Note that the identity of the accuser—of the plagiarism discoverer—was not at issue in the Melania Trump case. But here, mainstream media feels compelled to position Rufo rather than Harris at the center of the controversy.

Conservatives complain ceaselessly—and not without reason—that scandals involving Republicans, conservatives, and Trump world personalities are reported in straightforward fashion, whereas scandals involving Democrats, liberals, and the media itself are not. In these latter cases, the media focuses on the motivations, agendas, and responses of conservatives who are involved in surfacing the controversy. This is often done, in headlines, using the exact phrasing Republicans pounce on X or Republicans seize on X, where X is the thing Democrats did wrong.

This is such a well-worn trope by now the one might have expected mainstream media institutions to take greater pains to avoid it, if only to deprive conservatives of ammunition. And yet The New York Times write-up of the Harris plagiarism accusations is headlined: “Conservative Activist Seizes on Passages From Harris Book.”

The article itself minimizes the extent of Harris’ wrongdoing, and cites a plagiarism expert, Jonathan Bailey, who claims that Rufo was “making a big deal” out of relatively minor transgressions. The Times did not share with him the full list of plagiarized passages in the book, however; on his website, Bailey noted that after reviewing all the allegations, the case is “more serious” than he first thought, although he maintains Harris did not engage in “wholesale fraud.”

It’s perfectly fine for journalists to report on the agendas of conservative activists making such claims; Rufo does not deny that he is politically motivated; on the contrary, he constantly explains his agenda, and strategy for implementing it, in posts on X. But perhaps The New York Times might consider whether the pouncing and the seizing are the most important parts of this story.

From their point of view, invariably it is:

WHEN BRET MET KAMALA:

For a long stretch, Americans have hungered for real leadership. We’ve yearned for a figure who was sharp, well-versed on all the tough issues on our national political scene, and not afraid to get into the details. A level-headed thinker who challenges assumptions and rejects the knee-jerk rhetoric and partisan talking points. Someone on the hunt for genuine answers to the country’s questions, with little patience for blather. Whether it’s a moment of crisis or a relatively normal evening, we just want to turn on the television and see someone talking to us who’s poised, reassuring, and direct.

Finally, last night, the 2024 presidential campaign delivered us that figure.

The only problem is that Bret Baier isn’t running for president.

Last night marked the first time that Vice President Kamala Harris had ever sat down for a formal interview with Fox News. She had never done so as California state attorney general, or U.S. senator, or presidential candidate, or as vice president.

Last night was also probably the last time she’ll ever agree to an interview with Fox News.

How did it go? The Journolist got its marching orders: “Democrats and multiple media personalities took to X to do damage control because, as Mark Hemingway noted, ‘If Kamala had done well, they’d be posting her highlights from the interview, not attacking Baier, who was perfectly professional.’”

READY TO HELICOPTER AGAIN BACK INTO THE BATTLE ZONE! Amazon makes first foray into live news with election night special hosted by Brian Williams.

Amazon said Thursday it plans to host an election night special anchored by Brian Williams, marking the company’s first foray into live news coverage.

The one-night special will provide election results and analysis on Prime Video starting at 5 p.m. ET on Nov. 5, the company said. Amazon emphasized it will be a “non-partisan presentation” pulling information from a variety of third-party news sources.

Williams will lead the special and interview analysts across the political spectrum. Viewers will not be required to have a Prime subscription to access the stream.

“After 41 years in the business — from local news to network shows to cable news — this feels like the next big thing,” Williams, who left NBC News in 2021 after a 28-year run, said in a release. “And the global marketplace of Amazon is a natural home for this first-of-its-kind venture.”

Williams hosting election night brings together two of former NBC president Jeff Zucker’s most, err, unique talents. Regarding Williams, as USA Today reported in November of 2004:

Williams has more plebian interests than his soon-to-be rivals, CBS’ Dan Rather, 73, a friend from CBS days, and ABC’s Peter Jennings, 66.

A onetime volunteer firefighter, Williams talks excitedly about the prospect of handling hoses and climbing ladders again on an upcoming story. He has been a stock-car racing fan since childhood days at the Chemung Speedrome near Elmira, N.Y., and is part owner of a dirt-track stock car team.

“No one understands this NASCAR nation more than Brian,” says NBC president Jeff Zucker, who once produced Nightly News for Brokaw.

As part of the Blogosphere Full Employment Act of 2015, Williams would of course apologize for lying about being in a helicopter forced down by an RPG in 2003 during the Iraq War, arguably the biggest of the many fables he told as anchor of NBC’s Nightly News. Rather than being fired by NBC, Williams was merely sent down to host shows for the farm team at MSNBC, until 2021, when the man who once praised Antifa as being the equivalent of the men who stormed the beaches of D-Day, signed off by lying, “I’m not a liberal or a conservative.”

Additionally, as Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post fumed in 2022: Jeff Zucker’s legacy is defined by his promotion of Donald Trump.

Zucker, as much as any other person in the world, created and burnished the Trump persona — first as a reality-TV star who morphed into a worldwide celebrity, then as a candidate for president who was given large amounts of free publicity.

The through line? Nothing nobler than TV ratings, which always were Zucker’s guiding light, his be-all and end-all and, ultimately, his fatal flaw.

Two decades ago, as an NBC executive searching for a way to goose the floundering network’s popularity, he gave the green light to a reality show, “The Apprentice,” featuring a flashy mogul whose soon-to-be-famous tagline was “You’re fired.” Trump had a checkered history of bankruptcies, racism and failed real estate projects, but his confident bluster made him a natural on television.

“The show was built as a virtually nonstop advertisement for the Trump empire and lifestyle,” Washington Post journalists Marc Fisher and Michael Kranish wrote in their 2016 book, “Trump Revealed.” The stunning rise of Donald Trump had begun.

Zucker created Trump the TV sensation, which was the necessary foundation for Trump the candidate. Years later, after moving from NBC to CNN, Zucker recollected very well that Trump was a self-proclaimed “ratings machine” — a rare instance of Trumpian truth-telling.

CNN infamously took his campaign speeches live, sometimes going so far as to broadcast images of an empty lectern with embarrassing chyrons such as “Breaking News: Standing By for Trump to Speak.” You can’t buy that kind of media.

Zucker also brought on the air Trump surrogates who should have had no place on a national news network: people like the bully Corey Lewandowski, the sycophant Jeffrey Lord (who praised Trump as the Martin Luther King of health care) and Kayleigh McEnany, who later became a White House press secretary bad enough to somehow make one pine for Sean Spicer.

When Trump became the Republican nominee for president and started trashing Zucker’s network and staff with invective about its “fake news,” it was too late for second thoughts. By then, the standard had been set. Every Trump utterance became breaking news, and CNN, like many other news organizations, never figured out how to responsibly cover Trump throughout his democracy-damaging presidency.

Zucker expressed a modicum of regret in late 2016. “If we made any mistake last year,” he said, “it’s that we probably did put on too many of his campaign rallies in those early months and let them run.”

But he excused his decision-making: “You never knew what he would say.” Audiences were riveted, so what could he do?

Not to mention thinking Trump would be a pushover for Hillary. How did that work out in 2016?

After Zucker was pushed out of CNN in 2022, Wikipedia notes:

In December 2022, Zucker was named an executive with Redbird IMI, a consortium with majority funding from Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Vice President of the UAE.^[49] The consortium is a joint venture between Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital Partners and International Media Investments, a media investment fund backed by the United Arab Emirates.^[50] The position also includes an active role in the XFL, a professional football league partially owned by RedBird.^[51]

The consortium’s planned purchase of The Telegraph, a prominent British newspaper, has caused controversy in the United Kingdom, as concerns were raised that the newspaper would be coming under the control of an autocratic state.

I wonder if Zucker gives any thoughts to the ramifications of what he set in motion twenty years ago, and how its aftermath will come together in November like a bad hangover? And I wonder if Jeff Bezos has thoughts about who he’s hired to cover that night?

OLD AND BUSTED: Russian Interference in American Presidential Elections.

The New Hotness? British Interference in American Presidential Elections! British Labour Party sending staff to campaign for Harris in US swing states.

The left-leaning British Labour Party is sending nearly 100 members to U.S. battleground states to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the presidential election.

Sofia Patel, head of operations for the Labour Party, shared the plans via LinkedIn Wednesday. She claimed current and former party staff will target key swing states like North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

“I have 10 spots available for anyone available to head to the battleground state of North Carolina – we will sort your housing,” Patel offered in the post.

Patel also noted she plans to arrive in the U.S. two weeks prior to the election and stay in Washington, D.C., for a few days afterward.

Patel’s profile shows she previously spent time in the Hillary Clinton campaign from October to November of 2016. She included the description “travelled to the US to campaign for Clinton in the presidential election.”

Reacting to Patel’s post was Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who suggested via X it was “yet another reason to vote for President Trump.”

Heh, indeed. But would this move the needle in either direction? I’m finding it difficult to think of many undecided voters thinking, “Well, I was on the fence about who to vote, but now that Keir Starmer and Sofia Patel have spoken, it’s definitely Kamala for me!”

But turnabout is fair play. It would be fun to see Trump officials parachuting in to Old Blighty to offer the Tory Party a boost should he win next month.

SINWAR DEAD: The Israelis Get Their Yahyas Out! — Live in Concert.

For the State of Israel, Sinwar was literally the single most wanted man in the entire world, more so than any Iranian official you could name. Sinwar was the monster who planned and executed the most traumatic terrorist attack in Israeli history, kicking off a regional war. When the Israelis brilliantly targeted the leadership of Hezbollah a few weeks ago, the attacks were a spectacular execution of tightly orchestrated spycraft involving high and low technology, the sort of work that will be professionally studied by other intelligence agencies for years to come.

But this? Sinwar was apparently found completely by chance. A young IDF tanker merely nine months into his first deployment, doing a random patrol, spotted a terrorist poking his head out a window. An online friend suggested that the American analogy to this would be like Osama bin Laden getting taken out by a random artillery regiment of the Iowa National Guard instead of SEAL Team Six, but I prefer to think of it as Sinwar getting iced by the Israeli equivalent of Harold Ramis and Bill Murray in Stripes. (ZISKEY RATES HAMAS: “They’re P***ies!”) Either way, the world became a better place for his absence in it.

And as America’s Newspaper of Record reports: Washington Post Gives Entire Staff Day Off To Mourn Loss Of Hamas Leader.

The staff of CBS News, Te-Nehisi Coates, and Roger Waters are all likely in mourning as well, as well as many in the Biden-Harris administration:

UPDATE: And here we go!

“I DON’T SUBSCRIBE TO YOUR RELIGION:” DeSantis rips reporter on climate change: ‘Chance of me virtue signaling for people in media is zero.’

KEEP ALL MODALITIES OF COCKINESS FIRMLY IN CHECK: Biden tells Obama ‘she’s not as strong as me’ — and ex-prez agrees ‘that’s true’ at Ethel Kennedy funeral.

HUGH HEWITT INTERVIEWS NRO’S NOAH ROTHMAN ON KAMALA’S FOX NEWS INTERVIEW (Video):

PHONING IT IN: Harris Slated To Attend Famed Al Smith Charity Dinner ‘On Screen’ After Snubbing Catholic Group. “Harris was slated to be the first presidential candidate in decades to skip the event, which benefits Catholic charities that support children’s medical and financial needs. Now, Harris plans to join the Oct. 17 event ‘on screen, likely via video,’ according to a Friday email from vice chair of the Al Smith Foundation’s board of directors, Mary Erdoes.”

DEMOCRATS SURE GOT IT GOOD:

BREAKING: Senior Meta Engineer Reveals Anti-Kamala Posts Are "Automatically Demoted,” Admits Shadowbanning Tactics

"Say your uncle in Ohio said something about Kamala Harris is unfit to be a president because she doesn't have a child, that kind of sh*t is automatically demoted,”… pic.twitter.com/4DSkvzvKmO

— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) October 16, 2024

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD DOING STRAIGHT-UP REPORTAGE ONCE AGAIN:

RIP: Liam Payne dead at 31: One Direction star ‘dies after plunging from hotel in Buenos Aires.’

JOHN NOLTE: Mark Halperin Says Trump Victory Will ‘Cause Greatest Mental Health Crisis in History.’

“I say this not flippantly,” Halperin explains before adding: ”I think it will be the cause of the greatest mental health crisis in the history of the country.”

He believes, “Tens of millions of people will question their connection to the nation … to other human beings … to their vision to what their future for them and their children could be like. And that will require an enormous amount of access to mental health professionals.”

“Are you being serious?” asks Carlson.

“I’m being a hundred percent serious,” answers Halperin, who then goes on: A Trump victory will “lead to trauma in the workplace [and] alcoholism [and] broken marriages.”

Halperin adds that Democrats were able to dismiss Trump’s 2016 victory as a “fluke” caused by disgraced former FBI Director James Comey re-opening the email investigation against Hillary Clinton. But this time, if Trump wins, it will be in a normal environment and a clear victory will mean “America chose by the rules pre-agreed to [and if] Donald Trump [wins] again, I think it will cause the biggest mental health crisis in the history of America.”

“And it will be sustained, unprecedented, and hideous.”

“Mental health crises often manifest in violence,” Carlson says.

“Yeah,” Halperin agrees. “I think there’ll be some violence. I think there’ll be workplace fights, fights at kids’ birthday parties … protests that will turn violent.”

Exit question: Is It Time to Invest in Plywood? “A recent insurance company alert was a good reminder for me not to hold the naive belief that political riots and attacks on property are only in faraway countries. Should Donald Trump be elected on Nov. 5, among other election outcomes around the world, the money boys at the insurance home offices are warning business owners to take precautions — be prepared!”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): A friend writes: “Haha, apparently Halperin missed the mental health crisis of the last 8 years of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Compounded by that lockdown bullshit. Someone please explain how the mental health of lefties has ever been a matter of serious concern in this country. Help me out here. I thought trauma in the workplace, substance abuse and broken marriages were lefty mainstays…”

UNEXPECTEDLY: Tim Walz Called To Eliminate Spending on National Missile Defense.

Perhaps even more terrifying is Walz on the campaign trail:

The Trump campaign cooked with this lmao pic.twitter.com/T1w57YKg9l

— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) October 16, 2024

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: The Most Devastating Moments of Kamala Harris’ Train Wreck Fox Interview.

Related: Ben Shapiro Reacts: Kamala’s DISASTER Interview with Bret Baier.

UPDATE:

Turn the page? Democrats have controlled the White House for 12 of the last 16 years. https://t.co/ggf3xgL05N

— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) October 17, 2024

‘I’M SPEAKING:’ Bret Baier Interviews Kamala Harris.

UPDATE:

HOLY SMOKES. Bret Baier just called out Kamala's campaign for pulling last minute stunts to shorten the interview and delay its air time.

"We were supposed to start at 5… We were going to do 25/30 mins… they said maybe 20. She came in around 5:15" pic.twitter.com/lTLGvCzgDY

— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) October 16, 2024

The most telling part of this interview. If you’re undecided or thinking of sitting this one out, how do you watch this and come away with any other conclusion but she’s not equipped for this job? https://t.co/br0RCnR0qM

— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) October 16, 2024

Kamala’s handlers tried to prevent a train wreck. They failed. https://t.co/gVENCkV29f

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) October 16, 2024

SATURDAY NIGHT CAPTURES THE SHOW’S CHAOS BUT LEAVES YOU DIZZY:

No need to wait in line in Midtown Manhattan for a front-row seat at SNL — Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night drops you right into the coked-up whirlwind of the show’s October 11, 1975, debut. The film is more than just a nostalgic trip back to the chaotic birth of a comedy institution; it’s a study of the age-old clash between unruly creatives and their corporate overlords, all unfolding within the storied halls of Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza while cultural shifts pulse through the bustling New York City streets below.

The movie effortlessly transports you to the 1970s, when television’s golden age was fading and a new generation — that was brought up on television but never truly saw itself on-screen — was rising to take its place. The opening scene flickers through a cathode-ray tube, as if you’re watching vintage SNL clips on your mom’s old TV. The attention to detail — from the haircuts to the line delivery — is impeccable. It feels less like a re-creation and more like you’re experiencing the raw talent that defined the show’s early days unfold in real time.

I’m not sure if “real time” is the right phrase here. I saw it over the weekend, and as someone who loved the show’s first five years, I enjoyed the film quite a bit. But it’s a comedy movie, not a documentary, and compresses the events of the months leading up to the show’s debut into a frenetic 109 minutes of non-stop insanity. For example, a comedy writer who in real-life had been with the show almost since its inception is found by Lorne Michaels in a bar about 15 minutes before SNL debuts. In the scene before that, Michaels is bombing as the would-be host of “Weekend Update,” and immediately decides to give the mock news segment to Chevy Chase. And according to Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad in the meticulously researched 1986 book, A Backstage History of Saturday Night, coke wasn’t that prevalent with the SNL cast and creative team until a year or two into the show’s run – marijuana was the drug of choice when the show first began. An early scene in Saturday Night depicts Billy Preston, who along with Janis Ian performed in the debut episode, handing Garrett Morris a vial of pharmaceutical grade coke. Those knowledgeable of the show’s history will make the connection that Morris is reported to have developed a massive addiction to freebasing coke by the show’s fifth season. (Although to be fair, most viewers will at least make the connection that almost everybody on SNL would soon have coke issues of their own.)

Dylan O’Brien, the actor who portrays Dan Aykroyd, absolutely nails the young Aykroyd’s voice and performing style. But the Saturday Night movie depicts him rehearsing sketches that were months, sometimes years away from debuting on SNL. Willem Defoe plays Dave Tebet, a grizzled real-life NBC executive who worked as a fixer to Johnny Carson, and had grave doubts that SNL could succeed. But Herb Schlosser, the NBC executive who conceived of a live show out of Rockefeller Center replacing Carson’s Saturday night reruns, and championed Lorne Michaels’ vision of the show that would fill that timeslot is nowhere to be found in the movie. And while, at first glance, J. K. Simmons is a very unlikely choice to portray Milton Berle, he does an excellent job – though in real life, Berle was actually nowhere to be found when SNL debuted, but he did host the show (disastrously) in its fourth season, in 1979.

The more inside baseball knowledge you have of Saturday Night Live’s brilliant first five seasons, the more you’ll enjoy Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night movie. It’s not entirely accurate, but to paraphrase the line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, when the legend becomes fact, film the legend – and add plenty of simulated mescaline, to boot.

POLITICO MAKES SURPRISE IN-KIND CONTRIBUTION TO TRUMP 2024 CAMPAIGN: Federal employees are worried about a return of Donald Trump to the White House.

EPA employees are shuffling to “safer” agencies. An Interior Department worker is putting off buying a new car and poring over Project 2025. And civil servants across the government are worried they might soon get fired.

Federal employees throughout the executive branch are panicking at the thought of another Trump administration.

Former President Donald Trump has pledged to “demolish the deep state.” His running mate, Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance, has said Trump ought to fire “every civil servant in the administrative state.” It’s not just campaign-trail bluster. In the waning days of his first administration, Trump sought to make it easier to fire federal employees — a move that was quickly reversed by the Biden administration.

Workers in some agencies are particularly distraught about a possible Trump return. The former president and his allies have singled out certain agencies — including those that issue environmental rules — as prime targets, should he return to office in January.

Climate, clean energy and conservation programs scaled up and burnished with cash during the Biden administration are certain to be lightning rods for Trump and his team. That’s looming large over energy and environmental workers, who are feeling the pressure on a professional level as they’re hustling to get Biden’s priorities wrapped up in the coming months. It’s also hitting them personally as they fear they might soon be out of a job.

The prospect of a Trump return is shaping how one Interior employee and their spouse — another federal worker — are handling their finances.

“We have stopped doing any money-spending things because what if we’re without jobs in the next year?” the Interior employee said. “We need all the savings we can get.”

I’ll take “Statements millions of ordinary Americans have been saying during the last four years” for $500, Alex.

Related: Let’s Assume the Polling Trends Are Right and Donald Trump’s About to Win. Then What?

But what if they’re wrong? ‘I’m Not Doing This S—t Again’: Border Patrol Agents Warn of Mass ‘Exodus’ if Harris Wins Election.