Daily Beast

Cooper Neill/Getty ImagesKansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker went off on a politically conservative and deeply religious tirade, going after working women, people who identify as LGBTQ+, President Joe Biden, and other Catholics.During his commencement address on Saturday at Benedictine College, a conservative Catholic college in Kansas, Butker wasted no time getting to his grievances with the Biden Administration, blaming the president for the “COVID fiasco” he inherited from former President Donald Trump.“While COVID might’ve played a large role throughout your formative years, it is not unique. The bad policies and poor leadership have negatively impacted major life issues,” he said. “Things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values and media all stem from pervasiveness of disorder.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Radovan Stoklasa/ReutersRobert Fico, the populist prime minister of Slovakia, was shot several times in an assassination attempt Wednesday that left him in “life-threatening condition,” officials say.The 59-year-old politician was meeting with supporters in the central Slovak town of Handlova when he was attacked, according to local media reports. A post on Fico’s official Facebook page suggested he may not survive his injuries. “The next few hours will decide,” the post read.The update also said he was being transported by helicopter to the city of Banská Bystrica instead of the capital, Bratislava, “due to the necessity of an acute procedure.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Reuters and National Gallery of AustraliaMining billionaire Gina Rinehart, Australia’s wealthiest woman, has reportedly launched a campaign to pressure the National Gallery of Australia into removing a portrait of her drafted by the award-winning aboriginal artist Vincent Namatjira.Rinehart reportedly appealed to the gallery herself, demanding the artwork be removed because of its “unflattering” depiction of her.Despite donating up to $10,000 to the gallery, located in Australia’s capital of Canberra, Rinehart had her efforts rebuffed by gallerists. She then embarked on a campaign to have those in her orbit pester the gallery with the same demand, which included dispatching associates at Hancock Prospecting and professional athletes sponsored by Hancock, The Sydney Morning-Herald reported. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Lucas Boland/USA Today Sports via ReutersAll hail Sage, the immaculately topiaried miniature poodle who was named Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show on Tuesday night.The 3-year-old from Houston, Texas, became the first female to win the coveted canine title since 2020. Her dramatic victory came at the expense of fan favorite Mercedes, the German shepherd who won the herding group, who went home with the runner-up honor of “Reserve Best in Show.”Kaz Hosaka, Sage’s seasoned handler who has been competing for 45 years, said 2024’s show would be his last. He was overcome with emotion as his Sage’s win was announced, saying: “No words. I am so happy.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Courtesy of PrimeAs far as ideas created under the almighty eye of the streaming algorithm go, “Yellowstone, but make it science fiction” isn’t a terrible one. The challenge here isn’t blending the Western and sci-fi genres: There’s lots of space for things to get weird in the rural West, as many films and TV series—recently, Jordan Peele’s Nope—have proven. The question is how the “god ‘n’ guns” conservative ethos of the Yellowstone franchise will sit alongside all of the woo-woo “time is a river” bullshit. Awkwardly, as it turns out, which is presumably why Outer Range's second season paradoxically downplays the strangeness while upping the time travel.Season 1 took its time debuting “the hole,” a portal through time located in the pasture of a Wyoming ranch belonging to the upright, unsmiling Abbott clan. But it got there. Now Schrödinger’s cat is out of the cosmic bag, and people are diving through the dang thing all willy-nilly.This does further complicate the lives of Royal Abbott (Josh Brolin) and his pious, faithful wife Cecelia (Lili Taylor), who’s as tangled up in all this time-travel hooey as anyone despite never taking a dip in the hole herself. She’s too occupied with repairing her family’s finances and reputation—both compromised back in Season 1—as well as caring for Autumn (Imogen Poots), the backpacker/aspiring cult leader who moves from a campsite on the Abbotts’ land into the family homestead at the beginning of Season 2. The reason for the upgrade? Royal’s convinced that Autumn is actually Abbott granddaughter Amy (Oliver Abercrombie), coexisting as a 9-year-old girl and as a full-grown adult, thanks to the magic of the hole.Read more at The Daily Beast.

AFP via Getty Images Donald Trump weighed in on the furor surrounding Kristi Noem’s book in an interview Tuesday, praising the South Dakota governor as a “terrific person” who “got hit hard” over the memoir’s contents, which included the now infamous revelation that she executed her pet dog, Cricket, in a gravel pit.“She had a bad week,” the former president told radio hosts Clay Travis and Buck Sexton. “We all have bad weeks.”Noem is thought to have significantly damaged her chances of being chosen as Trump’s 2024 running mate with the book, No Going Back, and the intense backlash it has received. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesDonald Trump’s plane clipped a parked corporate jet at West Palm Beach International Airport early Sunday, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.The former president’s Boeing 757 had landed at the airport in Florida at around 1:20 a.m. and was taxiing when its winglet hit the rear elevator of the stationary VistaJet, the agency said. An FAA notice about the incident didn’t identify Trump as the owner of the 757 but it did disclose the tail number—N757AF—which is registered to DJT Operations I LLC and is clearly visible on the fuselage of his plane.It’s not clear if Trump—who held a campaign rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, on Saturday—was on board his plane at the time of the collision. No injuries were reported in connection with the incident, and the FAA report said the extent of damage was unclear. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesWhat week are we in on the first (and possibly last) Donald Trump criminal trial? Week 3? Week 4? It’s hard to keep track. One sleepy/farty court day bleeds into another.As I write these words, Trump’s former thug, Michael Cohen, is on the stand. Last week we had Stormy Daniels. The week before, National Enquirer publisher David Pecker. It’s a sad and shabby affair conducted in a sad and shabby Manhattan courtroom, and what began as Shakespearean drama has instead revealed itself to be nothing more than a banal parade of horribles. Less King Lear and more Big Lebowski.Every network has reporters covering the trial. The New York Times has multiple reporters in the courtroom live-texting testimony. World media is there. All for a sad and shabby business-records case centered around covering up a hush-money payment to a porn star.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero / The Daily Beast / GettyQueen Camilla is among those urging King Charles III to “slow down,” amid ongoing fears about his health and concerns the king might exhaust himself by taking on too many public engagements, thus endangering his chances of success in his battle against cancer.“She has been trying to encourage him to slow down,” said one friend of the queen. “Of course, he wants to keep cracking on, but she is afraid that doing too much could set him back.”The friend spoke to The Daily Beast after a report in the Daily Mail said that Camilla has resorted to scrawling marginalia into Charles’ daily schedules encouraging him to pace himself.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty Images/Warner Bros.Ever since her breakout role in the harrowing horror film The Witch, actress Anya Taylor-Joy has stood out as not only a talent to watch, but a formidable, unflappable presence. Maybe that’s part of why her latest interviews surrounding George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, in which she stars as the titular heroine, have caused such a palpable ripple of alarm. Like some of her Mad Max predecessors, Taylor-Joy appears to have gone through hell and back in order to pull off the job.The groundbreaking 2015 blockbuster Mad Max: Fury Road notoriously required its actors, crew, and stunt team to perform while isolated in the desert in Namibia for months and, as its prequel, Furiosa necessitated similar filming conditions. Even so, one imagines that such extreme requirements would inspire some sense of camaraderie. But as Taylor-Joy told reporter Kyle Buchanan at the New York Times this week, “I’ve never been more alone than making [Furiosa]. I don’t want to go too deep into it, but everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard.”When Buchanan pressed the actress for more details, Taylor-Joy demurred, saying, “Talk to me in 20 years.” She eventually opened up a bit further, explaining that because of Miller’s bare-boned script and hard-nosed vision for her character, “months” went by on set without her character speaking a single line. Read more at The Daily Beast.