A few secret investors reportedly gave former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos $12 million to start a new company to bring right-wing YouTubers on tour, Vanity Fairreports.
Milo Inc., which will be based out of Miami and employ around 30 people, is a media company meant to compete with the Blaze and Infowars. But from the sounds of it, the new venture will be less like like a conservative news outlet and more like Live Nation for trolls, or an American Idols Live tour if all of the singers were replaced with people yelling about globalism.
"I'm the proof of concept," Yiannopoulos told the magazine. "The thing about me is that I have access to a talent pipeline that no one else even knows about. All the funniest, smartest, most interesting young YouTubers and all the rest of them who hate feminism, who hate political correctness."
Yiannopoulos got his start as the instigator of Gamergate and kicked off the current culture war related to free speech on college campuses. He then lost his editing job at Breitbart, a six-figure book deal, and a speaking slot at CPAC after old footage resurfaced of him saying relationships between younger boys and older men can be "hugely positive experiences."
After that happened, it seemed like Yiannopoulos was done. But on April 21, he wrote a Facebook Post announcing a multi-day event called Milo's Free Speech Week planned for later this year in Berkeley, California. He also released a weird compilation video declaring that MILO IS COMING––although there was no real indication of what that meant. But now we now know he's apparently returning to ring-lead a group of racist teen vloggers.
"This generation that's coming up, it's about 13, 14, 15, now have very different politics than most other generations," he told Vanity Fair in an odd choice of words for someone who's career was recently derailed for seeming to condone child molestation. "They love us. They love me, and I'm going to be actively hunting around for the next Milo."
I feel old. I'm looking down the barrel of 30 and I am now closer in age to Jason Sudeikis than I am to Jaden Smith. Part of me still thinks I should feel young—at least because I'm definitely not grown-up in the pension-and-stock-portfolio sense of the word. But I feel the cold skeletal hand of irrelevance on my aging shoulder all the time now. There are things I just don't understand now, like Lil Peep, and I just have to chalk it up to my ongoing decrepitude.
That doesn't mean I'm ready to go gently into that good night, though. So for Teen Week, I've enlisted the help of my 14-year-old cousin David to teach me how to be a Cool Teen.
David isn't just your average cool teen with over a thousand followers on Instagram. He goes to school with the daughter of a famous supermodel. Justin Bieber once played soccer on his school field. In contrast, the last time I was deemed cool by a cultural arbiter was back in 2009, when I was scouted as a model by the store manager of an American Apparel in Williamsburg (RIP). Once, David instagrammed a picture of himself holding a Supreme beach ball. Did you even know Supreme did beach balls? I didn't.
"First question," I DM him on Instagram. "Do you think I should go to work today?"
Donald Trump said a lot of outrageous things over the past two years, but his most obviously fake lines were about how simple running the country would be. Among other things, he said he'd label China a currency manipulator on day one and promised that repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act would be "so easy." Maybe he believed these things at the time when he said them; if he did, he has since changed his mind. "After listening for ten minutes, I realized it's not so easy," Trump said of a conversation he had with Chinese president Xi Jinping about North Korea. (He subsequently reversed himself on the whole currency manipulation thing.) "Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated," Trump declared just before his healthcare bill failed to even get out of the House.
As Trump surely realizes by now, 99 days into the presidency, nothing is easy and everything is complicated once you're in the White House. Every crisis demands a response from you. Every problem in the country is your problem, and if an attempt at a solution fails, that's your failure. Every foreign leader wants something from you. So do members of Congress, lobbyists, and your own staff. Every move you make—every vacation, every church visit, the outfits your spouse wears—are scrutinized by a Media Establishment that exists to gin up controversy. The choices you make are literally a matter of life and death. Sometimes you will make a mistake. Sometimes there are no good options. No matter what you do, it's more than likely half the country will think you're doing a bad job. It takes a special kind of narcissist to want that power; it takes an even more special kind of talent to wield it successfully.
It's too soon to judge Trump's presidency as a success or a failure. But it's as good a time as any to survey the challenges facing him. Some of the 99 problems listed below are issues that came with the job, others have developed during his brief tenure through no fault of Trump's, and still others are the result of the administration's elevation of a variety of fringe figures, oddballs, and Trump family members who have little to no experience in government. At least a few of these problems are also opportunities for the Trump administration to demonstrate its competence, and some of them are things he doesn't seem too concerned with at the moment—and others seem insurmountable. And by the time you read this, there will probably be at least one new one.
1. Trump doesn't have any relevant experience. Having never held an elected office or served in the military, the president has been learning on the job a lot—which explains a lot of the below issues.
2. A lot of government positions are unfilled. Out of 556 key jobs requiring Senate approval, only 25 have been confirmed, according to the Washington Post. Some of that delay can be blamed on the Senate, but in a whopping 468 cases, no one has even been nominated—likely a product of an inefficient and chaotic process on the part of White House officials.
3. Some Trump appointees have massive conflicts of interest. Despite promises to "drain the swamp," Trump has hired many former lobbyists and affiliated lawyer types to fill posts in agencies that they spent time influencing. "In at least two cases, the appointments may have already led to violations of the administration's own ethics rules," the New York Times reported this month. "But evaluating if and when such violations have occurred has become almost impossible because the Trump administration is secretly issuing waivers to the rules."
4. Trump seems incapable of hiring anyone who is critical of him. The president's predilection for hiring people who didn't badmouth him during the campaign is so well known one right-wing wonk who wanted a State Department gig got Arab News to delete columns he had written that attacked Trump. Given how many Never Trump conservatives there were before Election Day, this unofficial policy makes hiring awfully hard.
5. Sebastian Gorka. The deputy assistant to the president may not have much official power, but he's been getting a lot of press thanks to his ties to far-right groups in his native Hungary and his questionable credentials in counterterrorism, his supposed specialty. (He reportedly doesn't even have a security clearance.) This is the sort of person you end up hiring when you only want loyalists.
7. Even ambassadors haven't been appointed. The granting of plum diplomatic assignments to top donors is one of the more routine—if odious—traditions in DC, but even here Trump has been dropping the ball. The administration has been dragging its feet when it comes to vetting potential ambassadors, and training sessions recently had to be delayed until May because there weren't enough new ambassadors to train.
8. The White House is at war with itself. The early days of the Trump administration have been defined by squabbling, in particular a long-running fight between White House adviser Steve Bannon and fellow adviser Jared Kushner, who happens to be Trump's son-in-law. More broadly, there's conflict between right-wing nationalists like Bannon and Kushner's crew of slightly less angry and ideological New Yorkers.
9. The constant leaking. Not surprisingly, this divided White House is prone to self-serving leaks as the factions attempt to make each other look bad. That doesn't make it an easy place to work, and evenly supposedly confidential meetings are quickly made public.
10. The paranoia. Those leaks in turn have led to a well-documented atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. "People are scared," is how one senior White House aide put it while talking (a.k.a. leaking) to Politico.
11. Jared Kushner, despite a history of incompetence, has too many jobs. As Kushner's star has risen, he's been tasked with Mideast peace, solving the opioid crisis, making the federal government more efficient, and assisting with diplomacy involving China and Mexico, among other jobs. Maybe the 36-year-old real estate scion is super brilliant—he's probably not—but no one is that brilliant.
12. Trump himself doesn't really seem to have policies. "Trump's critics and supporters alike are equally flummoxed about what this president stands for," is how a recent Politico piece put it. His foreign policy flip-flops on everything from China to NATO are evidence of that, as is his failure to understand what was happening in the debate over the American Health Care Act. That makes him vulnerable to being pushed or pulled in various directions by the mess of advisers he's hired.
13. Trump watches too much cable news—and is influenced by it. The president's TV news addiction is at this point sort of a joke, but his constant consumption of cable (especially FOX News) may also be exerting a powerful pull on him. Reportedly, it was the images of children injured or killed in a chemical weapons attack on Syrians that led Trump to order a missile strike against the Assad regime. Whatever you think of Syria, military intervention on the basis of whatever crisis has captured the media's capricious eye is likely not the best policy.
An example of the "Mother of All Bombs," a huge explosive dropped by the US in Afghanistan
14. The Syrian Civil War. A sprawling, long-running conflict that has captured the world's eye and resulted in a refugee crisis, this was always going to be one of the nastier challenges facing Barack Obama's successor.
15. Trump hasn't made his policy on Syria clear. ... but Trump has so far failed to define what exactly he wants to do in Syria beyond defeat ISIS. Is removing Syrian President Bashar al Assad from power a priority? Is that missile strike going to be a one-off? Congress wants answers; so do a lot of other people.
16. Airstrikes against ISIS have reportedly led to more civilian casualties. It's not clear whether this is a result of changing policies or simply shifting conditions in the long-running campaign against ISIS, but a monitoring group says that the US has been bombing Iraq and Syria more aggressively than ever under Trump, resulting in more civilian deaths.
17. The first counterterrorism raid under Trump was a total failure. A January operation in Yemen ended with a lot of dead civilians and a dead Navy SEAL and didn't produce any intelligence worth having. What's more, it led to Yemen's government revoking permission for the US to conduct similar operations in the future.
18. By the way, Yemen is still in crisis. A civil war in the country has resulted in widespread starvation, and atrocities have been committed by Saudi Arabia—which is using US weapons to attack the rebels.
19. So is South Sudan. The African country is still suffering from war and famine, a situation that looks unlikely to change anytime soon. Trump's proposed budget cuts would likely limit aid to the country.
20. Famine is widespread in many other countries. Yemen and South Sudan aren't the only countries where millions are starving to death. In those two nations and two more (Nigeria and Somalia), 20 million people are starving or in danger of doing so.
21. The Philippines is still engaging in a brutal crackdown on drugs. Almost 9,000 drug dealers and users have been killed, many without a trial, under the brutal anti-drug government of President Rodrigo Duterte, a populist who was elected in 2016 after campaigning on a stark law-and-order platform. It's concerned many international observers, but Trump allegedly praised Duterte as recently as December.
22. Tensions with Iran are still high. This week, an encounter between an American ship and an Iranian one resulted in the US vessel firing a warning flare.
23. Egypt is still abusing human rights. Trump was able to negotiate the release of an Egyptian American aid worker who had been in Egyptian prison for three years. (Which is good!) Still, the broader question of Egypt's abysmal record on human rights remains. The government of Abdel Fattah al Sisi engages in "torture, enforced disappearances and likely extrajudicial executions," according to Human Rights Watch.
24. ... And so is Saudi Arabia. Like Egypt, the US ally has a record of habitual brutality, not only in Yemen but also against dissidents on its own soil.
25. Israel and Palestine are no closer to peace. Former secretary of state John Kerry's effort to finally work out a deal between the two sides fell apart during Obama's second term. The only thing Trump has done on this front so far is to suddenly withdraw American support for a two-state solution in public—a position that was later reportedly reversed, sorta.
26. North Korea. The hermit kingdom is continuing its aggressive posturing and still has nukes.
27. South China Sea tensions. Meanwhile, China has continued to build man-made islands in a disputed body of water, leading to yet another source of potential conflict.
28. China is making trade deals with would-be TPP countries. When Trump killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership as he promised, many Americans skeptical of free trade deals cheered. Whether that was the right move or not, China is stepping into the void, attempting to make its own trade deals with countries in the region who would have been part of the TPP.
29. Russia is violating a nuclear arms control treaty. It's reportedly deploying missiles that a 1987 treaty banned.
30. ... And is continuing its aggressive posture toward Ukraine. Last month, Russian tanks were seen edging up on the Ukrainian border.
31. Renegotiating NAFTA. The president has threatened to cancel the free trade agreement, but it's unclear whether that's a negotiating tactic or what. Ironically, Trump tossed out some trade concessions from Canada and Mexico when he scrapped TPP, making any upcoming talks more difficult.
32. Mexico could swing left in the next election. If Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is running for president on an explicitly anti-Trump platform, wins the 2018 election, it could complicate Trump's relationship with the US's southern neighbor even more.
33. Germany might get more anti-Trump, too. Martin Schulz, a left-wing opponent of current German chancellor Angela Merkel, said he has no desire to spend more on defense, which would come into conflict with Trump's demand that NATO nations bump military spending.
34. Puerto Rico needs money. Puerto Rico—whose residents are US citizens who pay taxes—is broke and likely won't be able to fund Medicaid this year, resulting in hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans losing health insurance coverage. Democrats want the federal government to pick up the slack, but Trump is opposed to it, which could lead to a government shutdown. That is very unlikely, but the Puerto Rican debt crisis isn't going away.
35. Congressional Republicans aren't used to being in power. After eight years of being the pissed-off opposition party, the GOP is suddenly in charge. Governing is harder than simply trying to block the Democrats' agenda, as House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republicans have admitted.
36. The House Republicans aren't unified. One problem the GOP faces is that the Freedom Caucus—a group of hard-right congressmen—are willing to split from Trump. They helped kill the American Health Care Act because they thought it didn't do enough to dismantle Obama's Affordable Care Act, and they want to make sure they're involved in negotiations over tax reform too. But after some members of the Freedom Caucus backed a new healthcare bill, more moderate Republicans were hesitant to embrace it, because it would lead to too many people losing insurance.
37. Maybe Paul Ryan is bad at his job? The AHCA was the speaker's first piece of big legislation, and it was terrible.
38. Conservatives are fine with opposing Trump. Under some circumstances, opposing a president from your own party could lead to political blowback. But the Freedom Caucus isn't worried about facing any primary challenges from the right and so don't mind standing up to Trump.
39. Trump has a low approval rating. Only 44 percent of voters like what he's doing, according to a CNN/ORC poll, compared to 54 percent who dislike him.
40. People don't trust Trump. Just 45 percent say he'll keep his promises, according to Gallup.
41. Republicans as a whole are becoming less popular. The GOP's popularity has dropped from 47 to 40 percent since Trump has been in office, according to Pew Research.
43. A Kansas election was closer than it should have been. A Republican's narrow victory in a safely red district this month could show how vulnerable the GOP is.
44. Republicans are having to work hard to hold onto a Georgia House seat. Another special election is slated for June, and the GOP is spending a lot of time and money defending it from Democrat Jon Ossoff. Even if Ossoff loses, it's another warning sign for Republicans because...
45. ... The midterms are coming in November 2018. If Republicans lose control of the House, Trump will have an even harder time passing anything, and investigations against him and his allies would likely intensify since Democrats would run the relevant committees.
46. It's not clear a healthcare bill will ever become law. Trump and Ryan have expended a lot of energy trying to line up votes in the House for the AHCA—but even if it did pass the House, it would probably run into more opposition in the Senate.
47. Trump's new tax plan is extremely vague. As everyone expected, Trump wants to cut taxes for the rich—but the document sent out this week is a back-of-the-napkin sketch that offers few specifics.
48. Some Republicans don't like the tax plan. Anonymous GOP sources in Congress told CNN they weren't happy they were kept out of the loop. That's not the way to start a major legislative push.
49. The tax plan as proposed would cause the national deficit to rise. By a lot. Groups estimate it would cost more than $3 trillion over ten years.
50. Democrats are unified in opposing Trump. There's a lot of attention on divisions in the Republican Party at the moment because Democrats have it relatively easy—they can just vote against everything Trump proposes.
51. Senate rules make it almost impossible to get anything done. Controlling both houses of Congress isn't enough—to pass sweeping, nation-changing laws, Trump would need a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate. It's highly unlikely that that will ever happen; even though the Republicans recently eliminated the filibuster to seat Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, they haven't yet contemplating ending filibusters forever.
52. Cross-party compromise is a dead art form. You could get to the necessary 60 votes in the Senate if you wrote a bill that some Democrats could support. But Trump has pursued a historically polarizing agenda.
53. The famed infrastructure plan doesn't exist yet. Trump keeps talking about investing in infrastructure, but he hasn't even submitted the barest outline of a plan.
54. The looming threat of a shutdown. Even if Congress can keep the federal government open after Friday—which wasn't totally clear by mid-afternoon Friday—the partisan atmosphere in Congress means that a shutdown is a constant threat.
55. Trump can't book good talent at his events. Maybe not the biggest issue in the world, but it must eat up the fame-obsessed Trump that he couldn't book A-listers for his inauguration.
56.He's being sued for defamation. A former Apprentice contestant who says Trump sexually harassed her is suing him for calling her a "liar" and "phony," a case that's winding its way through the legal system.
58. Ivanka Trump's ethical conflicts. The president's daughter—who also works in the White House—has placed her company in a trust, but some ethics experts say that isn't enough to prevent conflicts of interest. She also recently announced the creation of a fund for female entrepreneurs, which could be complicated since White House officials aren't supposed to solicit funds.
59. Trump's own potential conflicts of interest. There are too many of these to go into, but in brief: Trump's sprawling business empire gives people plenty of ways to try to ingratiate themselves with him by say, buying a high-priced condo.
60. A Dallas hotel deal fell through because the Trump brand is so controversial. The developer is going with another company instead of the Trump Organization.
61. The EPA is in revolt. "Pretty much everybody is updating their resumes. It's grim," one EPA staffer told theWashington Post.
62. Morale at the State Department is in tatters. "I used to love my job," one employee told the Atlantic recently. "Now, it feels like coming to the hospital to take care of a terminally ill family member. You come in every day, you bring flowers, you brush their hair, paint their nails, even though you know there's no point. But you do it out of love."
63. All the squabbling in the administration has spread to federal agencies. Trump loyalists and Establishment Republican figures are engaged in toxic office politics across the government. "The backbiting is further paralyzing federal agencies, which have been hamstrung by slow hiring, disorganization and an overall lack of direction since Trump's inauguration," is how Politico described it this month.
64. The economy isn't growing especially fast. US GDP expanded just 0.7 percent in the first quarter of 2017.
65. The economic recovery has been uneven. Though some big cities are doing well, large swathes of the country are gripped by poverty. This geographic inequality helped Trump get elected, but it's also now his problem. (Like everything else.)
70. Robots are replacing a lot of jobs. It will be hard to revitalize the manufacturing industry—as Trump wants to do—when automation has transformed it so completely. Even though the threat of robots is sometimes overstated, other areas of the economy are also at risk to lose jobs due to greater productivity.
72. Health insurance companies are pulling out of exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act. Aetna was the latest to announce plans to leave, blaming uncertainty over the law's future. Trump may want to repeal the ACA, but he also has to manage the exchanges or risk being blamed for their failures.
73. The ACA is more popular than ever. According to one poll, more than 60 percent of Americans want the law to be fixed rather than replaced. Trump, of course, would rather replace it.
76. Trump's "travel ban" remains held up by courts. The executive order intended to keep people from several Muslim-majority countries out of the US hasn't gone fully into effect thanks to court rulings.
A section of border fencing
77. Trump's border wall is extremely expensive. It might cost as much as $20 billion, money that Congress will have to approve.
79. But the Republican base really wants the wall. Or so says the Republican National Committee chair.
80. Authorities are in no position at all to deport all the undocumented immigrants Trump wants kicked out of the US. A report from a watchdog found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are already desperately overworked.
81. The legal system may be overwhelmed by attempts to deport migrants en masse. Prosecutors only have so many resources.
82. Deportations can be unpopular. Many Americans like the idea of removing undocumented immigrants in the abstract, but there have already been cases where a deportation has caused pain for Trump supporters. One well-liked businessman in a Trump-supporting town was at risk of being deported in February, and in April, the husband of a Trump voter was deported. Those stories are likely to multiply as time goes on.
83. Voters are warming to the idea of immigration. Rather counterintuitively, some polling has found that Americans are actually getting more liberal when it comes to immigration policies—in other words, Trump's position may become less popular.
84. Trump's threat to take federal funding away from "sanctuary cities" that didn't comply with federal immigration law was blocked in courts.
85. It's hard to define what a "sanctuary city" is. That led to the administration suspending a plan to list jurisdictions that didn't comply with the law.
87. The National Parks system is falling apart. Congress wants Trump to help fix it.
88. A grain surplus is making life harder for many farmers. They're storing grain and waiting for prices to rise.
89. Rising sea levels are creating a crisis in Louisiana right now. The situation is so bad that the governor has declared a state of emergency.
90. China may soon overtake the US when it comes to renewable energy. Another result of Trump's executive orders dismantling efforts to fight climate change.
91. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn is under investigation for all sorts of things. Flynn was forced out of the White House for lying about his conversations with a Russian ambassador after the election, and now is being investigated for taking money from foreign governments.
92. The whole Russia thing. If nothing comes of all of the investigations into the ties Trump-linked individuals have with Russia, it at the very least is a constant distraction for a very easily distracted White House.
93. The press doesn't like Trump. If you constantly call out major media companies for being "fake news" and denounce them at major rallies, you can't be surprised that so many outlets—even traditionally right-leaning ones—don't go out of the way to praise your presidency.
94. Sometimes Trump says things that are complete nonsense. It seems wrong to use the word lie indiscriminately because sometimes Trump seems badly informed rather than looking to maliciously deceive the public. But he has a long history of saying things that aren't so and hasn't changed this habit in the White House.
95. These misstatements are sometimes big deals. When the administration incorrectly said that an aircraft carrier was headed to North Korea, it showed exactly how serious Trump's combination of imprecise language and incompetence could be. How do you lose track of an aircraft carrier?
96. Trump's response to climate change could threaten disaster preparedness. When Trump signed an executive order rolling back some of Obama's climate change policies, local governments warned that it would make it harder for them to prepare for floods, hurricanes, and other natural catastrophes made more common by climate change.
97. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in particular seems in over his head. "Why should US taxpayers be interested in Ukraine?" is something he actually said at a diplomatic conference in Italy. Some State Department staffers have reportedly been told not to make eye contact with him.
98. Trump actually seems bothered by Saturday Night Live.Really.
99. Trump thought this wouldn't be so hard. He told Reuters this week, "This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier."
The mainstream media wants you to believe Trump's first 100 days in office have been a disaster. Courts have repeatedly blocked his immigration executive orders, using his own tweets as evidence that he wanted to instate a Muslim ban. His first attempt at repealing and replacing Obamacare was a comedy of errors. He's flip-flopped on many of his foreign policy stances, recently telling the Wall Street Journal, "Hey, I'm a nationalist and a globalist." This week he even admitted to Reuters that he thought the job of president would be easier than it is.
But most of that sort of analysis of Trump's first 100 days is written by people who didn't want him to be president to begin with—a category that includes me. So I reached out to a variety of Trump voters to see how they saw his presidency. (Since supporting Trump can be controversial in various workplaces and communities, several subjects asked not to be identified by their full names.) Here's what they told me:
Mo, a fifty-something healthcare professional in Tennessee
VICE: Which of Trump's campaign platforms are most important to you? Do you think he's made good on them? Mo: Trump provided a list of over 20 names that he said he would choose from for the Supreme Court. He kept that promise. He has more than three and a half years to go in this term. I think the big government status quo mindset of politicians, including Republicans, are holding him back.
Something this administration did that I am very thankful for is the first-ever arrest for female genital cutting. The physician involved is believed to have been doing this since 2004. The law has been on the books since 1996. But it is the Trump administration when the first arrest is made.
What's the most important thing you want Trump to accomplish in his presidency? Another conservative, constitutional Supreme Court justice appointment...or two. Plus more conservative justices in the lower courts.
As a healthcare professional, what do you make of his healthcare policy? I don't fully know Trump's healthcare policy. I don't know if he fully knows it since what should be done and what can be done is not yet settled. I agree that ACA needs to go. It is already in the insurance death spiral that was predicted years ago by its earliest critics. People are insulated from the true cost of healthcare by health insurance and health prices are inflated to pay for those who receive care but do not/can not pay for it. Healthcare is not a right. We have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We do not have a right to the goods and services of others.
Have any of Trump's decisions in the first 100 days made you disillusioned with his presidency? No. I do not regret at all that Hillary [Clinton] is not our president.
Chris, a 23-year-old bank teller in Vermont
VICE: Why did you vote for Trump? Chris: I voted for Trump to weaken the moderate left. After the primary, the mood was that Hillary was going to easily win office. A Clinton victory would have set back the left wing of the Democratic Party for years, at the very least until 2020. Having won both the primary and the general election by wide margins, the party establishment would have had an excuse to sweep Bernie [Sanders]'s "revolution" under the rug, never to be seen again.
How do you feel about the mass protests against Trump? They're a little too focused on social justice for my taste. Don't get me wrong, those issues are important, but the whole point of making sure Hillary lost was to promote socialism. The Democratic Party already has a solid set of positions on things like minority rights, women's rights, and abortion. Where's the march for healthcare, or Occupy Wall Street part two?
Which of Trump's campaign platforms are most important to you? Infrastructure. That's one of the few issues where he and the left overlap, and I'm hoping his own party won't derail his planned infrastructure bill when it comes up for a vote.
Also, healthcare. The ACA made Democrats complacent. If Trump destroys healthcare then single-payer will grow in popularity. You can already see polls where support for it is over 50 percent just from the THREAT of the GOP messing with the ACA.
What do you make of the president's use of Twitter? "Weaponized Shitposting," the #1 tool of the Australian army and Internet Trolls everywhere. A lot of people underestimate what Trump accomplished by winning over the "Alt-Right" and generally gaining a huge internet following.
April 29 marks Trump's 100th day in office. Do you think he's met his campaign promises? Do you believe he will? He absolutely has not, and he won't, because he's being held back by his own indifference. All indications so far are that Trump finds actual governance to be boring and he leaves most of the work to rival factions of advisors, many of whom are in the political establishment and don't care about his "agenda."
Spencer Raitt-Forrest, a 23-year-old operating supervisor in New York City
VICE: Do you think Trump has met his campaign promises? Spencer Raitt-Forrest: I think he's met more campaign promises than pretty much any other president in recent history. He is trying his best, I think his healthcare reform is garbage, and that's why it didn't pass. I'm happy the first round didn't pass. But if you ever read The Art of the Deal, that's all according to plan.
Have any of Trump's decisions in the first 100 days made you disillusioned with his presidency? No. With exception of his fair trade policy, history shows that this will not work. [Herbert] Hoover tried it, he failed miserably.
Has Donald Trump's presidency thus far made you confident that he will make America great again? I personally think America was always great. He has done a lot to reduce regulation on business, and as one who has studied economics in depth believe that any barriers of entry that are reduced are for the betterment of the economy. He's fulfilled the promises he could without Congress, and is working towards solutions for the ones he has not met. 100 days is really only a little over three months, that isn't much time at all considering the vast history and governance of the United States.
Jonathan, a 35-year-old insurance agent from Missississippi
VICE: Do you think Trump has met his campaign promises? Jonathan: I would need a refresh on the promises. I'm sure there are more than 100. But so far, I think he's doing as well as I expected. He's pissing off everybody with his big brass balls and the economic numbers and the fact that Kim Jong Un is thinking twice about starting some shit is pretty great.
Do you think the press has covered Donald Trump dishonestly? The press is doing exactly what he wants. He gives them stuff to talk about. His incompetence, his hair, his lack of regard for pomp and manners. I'm almost certain some coverage of it is dishonest. He's went out of his way to piss them all off. They are angry and when you can make someone angry you have (at least a little) control over them. Which is more than he had 98 days ago.
Have any of Trump's decisions in the first 100 days made you disillusioned with his presidency? The whole Russian thing bothers me more than anything. Everything I've seen makes it look systemic. I came up with a theory that after failing at business ventures for years, he borrowed some Russian funds and now he's just trying to clear the debt before.
What's the most important thing you want Trump to accomplish in his presidency? I want socialized healthcare because my divorce dictates that I'm responsible for my kids' medical expenses. I want him to call the Democrats' bluff on the government shutdown. I want him to fix all the military cuts Obama made. And I want him to campaign on the wall platform in 2020.
The GOP healthcare plan is more or less the opposite of socialized healthcare—people on the left like Bernie Sanders are actually the ones advocating for that. Trump's healthcare plan would make healthcare way, way more expensive and give people less government subsidies. Were you aware of that? Does that change the way you understand Trump? Did you think he would socialize healthcare? Nah, he won't socialize healthcare. I never thought he would. I would like it though.
Jason, a 32-year-old digital marketer in Oregon
VICE: Which of Trump's campaign platforms are most important to you? Jason: The biggest issues for me were staying out of the Middle East—Hillary wanted a no fly zone over Syria—and getting rid of judicial activists and putting originalists on the Supreme Court.
Have any of Trump's decisions in the first 100 days made you disillusioned with his presidency? The two biggest things are Syria and Obamacare. He campaigned on ending nation-building, he can't get involved in regime change in Syria. Obamacare is what flipped me from a Democrat to whatever I am now, so seeing Trump screw it up is disappointing. He needs to either leave it alone until it collapses and forces Democrats to give them votes, or repeal it outright and force Democrats to give them votes. The "let's try to get as much through reconciliation as we can" plan is stupid.
What's the most important thing you want Trump to accomplish in his presidency? Do not use our military to force regime change in Syria or any other country. No foreign wars.
Has Donald Trump's presidency thus far made you confident that he will make America great again? I do not trust Trump. His actions on immigration, regulatory reform, DAPL/KeystoneXL, Gorsuch and his tax proposal have given me a small amount of hope that maybe by 2020 I will trust him. I never bought into any of the MAGA stuff, so I can't speak to that. What I can say is that I have absolutely no regrets voting for him over Hillary.
These interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity.
According to the Roanoke Times, some weirdo has been abducting and shaving people's cats since December, sending a small town outside Richmond, Virginia, on a hunt for a mysterious, fur-obsessed criminal.
Police said at least seven cats have been snatched from outside their owners' homes and completely shaved, returning unharmed shortly thereafter. At first, cops thought some strange, benevolent friend of the feline race was spaying and neutering strays. But then they realized many of the cats were obviously people's pets—sporting collars and tags—and some of the same animals had been targeted.
Once it became clear that Waynesboro, Virginia, was dealing with a serial kitty shaver, the cats' owners started to take matters into their own hands. They've put up flyers around the neighborhood, asking folks to call the police with any info they have about the culprit, whose behavior they say is "very upsetting to the cats."
Photo courtesy of waynesboro.com
Because no one has actually laid eyes on the sadistic barber, or come forward as a witness, there's no way of telling if he (or she) is acting alone. For what it's worth, our best guess is that he's probably in cahoots with The Watcher or those creepy clowns who terrorized the South last summer. You find one weirdo, and—just maybe—you find them all.
What is it? A pink kitchen with a soiled bunkbed in it; Where is it? Hornsey. WHICH SOUNDS LIKE HORNY; What is there to do round there? You're a couple of roads away from this amazing Turkish supermarket which is dovetailed into a bakery, and you go onto one side (the supermarket side) to buy a pot of the best hummus you've ever eaten, and then go into the other side (bakery side) to get some pillowy soft bread, and then you dip the bread into the hummus and reach nirvana, nirvana, and then you go outside and, according to police reports I just pulled up, statistically fall immediately victim to some sort of knife crime; Alright, how much are they asking? As close to a grand as it can be without actually being a grand, i.e. £949 per calendar month.
At what age does a bunk bed stop being exciting? Because there was a time when they were the most exciting thing in the world, and I can't remember when that stopped happening for me. The thrill of a school trip where you bagged the top bunk – and the supremacy that brings – with a well-thrown rucksack and a clear yell of "dibs". Those childhood sleepovers you had at the houses of more-middle-class-than-you children, who always seemed to have a spare room with a bunkbed in it just lying around, for sleepovers, the bunkbed adorned with dinosaur stickers you only get from the dentist. That rain-on-the-window sound of someone quietly wetting themselves into a rubber sheet above you, the wall next to your bed slowly growing warm and tacky with the run off, then the smell, the sour metallic smell. It was probably then, actually, when bunk beds stopped being exciting. It was probably exactly then.
Anyway:
Normally with a London Rental Opportunity of the Week I tend to focus on the property, but along the way have a few sly digs at the photography skills of the estate agent – estate agents, recall, are essentially single-cell organisms with a medium-to-high cocaine problem and a mortal fear of doing simple administrative tasks unless they are being paid £250 cash to do them – but in this case the photography is so bad that it deserves its own section, so we will be splitting the ensuing article neatly in two:
ON: THE PHOTOGRAPHY
I'm fucking serious, did a dog take this photo. Did a dog take this photo. Did they attach a camera to a small low dog and get the dog to take the photo. Did a dog take this photo. Did someone take these photos while lying prone on the floor. Did someone collapse and, in their few last dying moments, take these photos. Either that or a dog. Which is it.
ON: THE PROPERTY
So it seems the shitheel landlord trend for 2k17 is to use the term "studio apartment" as some sort of sweeping catch-all term to allow the smallest one-room hovels – refitted and repurposed to include a kitchen, a sliver of bathroom and a bed, all at odd angles and improbable heights – and then that allows you to i. pretend that such a space is actually inhabitable and ii. charge an extortionate amount of rent for it, in this case £949.
Let's zoom in on what makes this a shithole, one by one by one:
– Somebody has painted the kitchen side of the room pink in a doomed attempt to make it more cheerful, which also coincidentally is the colour psychologists tell people to paint prisons and drunk tanks to make their captives more docile, so I mean I don't know about you but I don't fancy paying £949 (a month!) to sit in a single room painted in a special way to stop me losing my entire goddamn mind and flipping things, because that's exactly what I think an extended period in here (say, eight to ten minutes) would make me do;
– There is absolutely no way that this sofa hasn't been the location from some extremely troubled fingering or just otherwise some incredibly skeezy sex stuff, like the world's most contained three-way, or one of those horrible cold-light-of-day coke shags, like there is absolutely no way that sofa isn't just seeping with human juice and teeming w/ regret as a result of it;
– I mean, there isn't a bed, there's just a raised plinth where you can see all the MDF and pine underneath it with what I'm assuming is a mattress fitted on top of it; the dog photographs aren't explicit enough for me to tell for sure;
– For some reason the ajar door on this cupboard just extremely gives me the wobbles, I just feel like there is a very sinister back story as to why that is hanging off in the way it is;
– I'm not entirely sure but I think there's an extremely thin narrow shelf that runs over the top of this radiator here to act as both a dining table (see: the chair) (you are meant to sit in this chair and somehow balance a plate of food on there and stare out of a window without jumping and eat it) and also seems to be home for the plate rack, which I suppose if this was a nice studio apartment with a nice vibe and actual space for stuff and shelves and things, if it was one of those, this would be photographed and disseminated on Pinterest as some sort of "space-saving hack", but instead is actually one of the bleakest fucking examples of storage I've ever fucking seen in my life;
– The fact that the toilet is installed at such a sharp abrupt angle really does indicate that it was put in there as some sort of afterthought, and it's not the first time we've seen this here on LROTW. We are five years away from toilets being described as a feature, here. We are five years away from a toilet being an added extra. You will be shown three flats by an estate agent before asking why none of them have toilets in them. "Oh, you wanted a toilet?" they'll say. "That's… you're not really in the toilet price range."
– Pretty sure that's a fire blanket installed beneath the off-centre collection of planks and wood fibre that make up the bed, and there's nothing really so soothing as a fire blanket being nailed to the wooden pole that holds your bed up, is there? Nothing says "home" like a red emergency fire blanket in lieu of a "Live, Laugh, Love" sign;
– I am trying to imagine the profile of a human person who has £949 per calendar month to spend on rent (which is an eye-stinging amount), and chooses to spend it here, on this. Because this is a room for one person: there is no way that you can convince another human to share this space. So you have £949 as your rent budget – far above my own – and you choose to spend it here, on this. Sat on your sex sofa. Sleeping huddled alone in your single bunk bed. Washing your plates and drying them over the radiator. Living in Hornsey while you do it. There is no silver lining to this place. Solitude and the luxury of living alone is not worth this. So what the fuck. Who is the person who is going to pay money for this space.
– No, literally, let me run the maths here. The rule of thumb is you should spend no more than 30 percent of your income on rent. That is unviable in London, The World's Most Absurd City, but it's a rule of thumb, so let's stick with it here. So:
So someone pulling £37,000 down is going to choose to spend 30 percent of their income living here? No. So what if we run it at 40 percent? You need a £28,000 salary. At 50 percent you need £22,000, and you're going to be dangerously close to fucking up and going into debt pretty constantly every month if you're running at that high a rev. So who, exactly, is this flat for? Who is going to rent this? I am basically afraid for whoever gets hoodwinked into staying here, under these conditions. I am sad and scared for whomsoever can afford to spend their life on the sex sofa.
Fyre Fest's organizers struggled to contain a debacle that became a national punchline on Friday after leaving hundreds of customers who had paid thousands for a star-studded "luxury" experience stranded on a remote island in battered tents with little food and no one in charge.
They promised to get all remaining ticket holders back to the United States by 9 p.m. Friday.
In a phone interview Friday evening, the 25-year-old tech entrepreneur behind the festival, Billy McFarland, called the previous 24 hours the "worst day of my life" and described the fiasco, which reverberated across social media, as essentially an act of God.
"Unfortunately we were hit by a storm early Thursday morning that caused some damage to half our tent housing and busted pipes and delayed flights that were arriving to the point where we weren't comfortable in our ability to resolve it, and we decided to postpone the festival," McFarland said.
He did not address the "villa" housing, which was sold on the website, but did not appear to exist.
He promised all guests would be "refunded in full" and promised free VIP tickets to a 2018 Fyre Festival, which he says will be held somewhere in the United States with a portion of proceeds donated to the Bahamian Red Cross He said he planned to donate $1 per ticket, though in another interview the same day he said $1.50.
The apology capped a 48-hour period where well-heeled millennials took to Instagram and Twitter to document failed logistics that left them stranded on tarmacs, wandering around a half-built festival, and at least in one case, locked in a Bahamas airport overnight.
Fyre Festival was intended to be a "once in a lifetime musical experience," where revelers could mingle with models and hunt for treasure on jet skis in between big-name artists' sets on a "remote and private island" in the Bahamas.
The following is an excerpt from The Man Who Carried Cash, an upcoming book about the tumultuous relationship between Johnny Cash and his Canadian manager, Saul Holiff. The book, written by Julie Chadwick (an occasional VICE writer), uses exclusive material found in Holiff's storage locker after his suicide in 2005, which includes audio diaries, hundreds of intimate letters and photos, audiotaped phone calls with Cash and newspaper clippings and press materials. In this excerpt, we come in on Johnny Cash and Saul Holiff in the first few months of 1967. Johnny is in the utter depths of addiction and has become known as Johnny "No Show" Cash among promoters. A previous show in Miami ended before it even began when a strung-out Johnny stumbled out onstage and begged Saul for help in front of the audience.
Three weeks after the disastrous show in Miami, the Johnny Cash Show was scheduled for an extensive two-week tour on the turf of Harry "Hap" Peebles, the biggest promoter in the Midwest. Well-respected as one of the founders of the Country Music Association, he kept busy booking more than six hundred shows a year and set high standards for promotional work. This was not a man to cross. Though generally on good terms, Cash had once clashed with Peebles in 1961 over his incessant and unwanted romantic pursuit of Rose Maddox while on tour. Coming to her defence at a stop in North Dakota, Cash had slammed Peebles up against a wall and told him, "If you ever go near Rose again, I'll kill you." By 1967 the incident seemed to be mostly water under the bridge, but the entire Cash show soon realized they had other problems when they started the tour and, once again, Johnny was nowhere to be found.
"Johnny blew off the first four dates," said Johnny Western. "The story was that Hap Peebles told Saul that Johnny had slipped on the ice in Nashville in front of Columbia Recording Studios, had fallen and cracked four ribs, and the doctor said he not only couldn't travel but he couldn't fly until his ribs were healed up. That was the official story."
However, the true story was a little more complicated. With the divorce from Vivian imminent, Cash desperately wanted to be with June, but she had made it clear she would never marry him unless he overcame his drug addiction for good. At this point it was a hopeless request, as Cash was deeper in it than ever. It was around this time, before the two-week tour, that they got into a bitter argument over the issue, and according to some accounts, June swallowed some of his tranquilizers. Incensed, she then left for the tour, and after some discussion, June, Saul, and likely Marshall decided the cast would do the shows as planned — without Johnny. The primary goal was to fend off a lawsuit, combined with a fear of letting Hap Peebles down, but there was also an element of frustration involved over the lost revenue — this was work, after all.
"We did Fort Smith, Tulsa, and Oklahoma City without Johnny Cash, and then we heard this rumour that Johnny was furious that we were finishing the tour under his name and that he had had a confrontation with Hap," said Western. Cash was indeed incensed, and unleashed his wrath in a letter to June, which she then handed over to Saul.
June Carter, Johnny Cash, and Saul Holiff, backstage in London, Ontario, 1964. [The London Free Press Collection of Photo Negatives, University of Western Ontario Archives]
Johnny viewed the situation as a betrayal, and told June she had effectively turned her back on him when she joined the other members of their troupe to do the shows without him. That act alone had more than repaid him for any wrongs he had done to her, he said. In his mind, he was hurt more by this than she had ever been. It was unfathomable to him. Was she not able to see how in every way he was working to become a better and stronger person? He had personally told her father, Ezra Carter, as much. Ezra was a man he deeply respected and with whom he had quickly bonded through their discussions of books and the nuances of religion. Johnny had told Ezra that he was going to "be the man they all were proud of," and had sincerely meant it. But now … what did this mean from June, exactly? Did she not see what they had as precious and valuable? Was this her way of dropping him? If so, "you need to think of doing it differently," he wrote. "For a long time you have been my future and I was yours," he continued, adding that it was hard to understand why she would potentially toss that future aside, and disregard all they had endured together, for a two-week tour.
As for everyone else, and Saul, there were no words, he said. He needed an explanation from them personally. But if they insisted on continuing the tour without him, they needed to remove his name from any association with it. He also asked June to spare his feelings and be kind enough to not sing their duet with anyone else.
Much of Johnny's wrath was also directed at Hap Peebles, whom he thought needed to be reminded of his place as a local promoter who was primarily contracted to present his show and little else, and who Johnny believed was under no authority to have acted the way he did. Feeling "disgraced, disregarded, disrespected and not believed," he wanted Peebles to be blacklisted. "You saw, and Hap will soon see, what you have done," Johnny finished.
The duet Cash referred to in the letter was the popular section of their show in which he and June bantered, joked, and sang numbers like "It Ain't Me, Babe" and their newest song, "Jackson." Inspired by the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, "Jackson" was written as a back-and-forth between a married couple. It was intimate, funny, and carried a natural chemistry. Part of their show for some time, their recording was released just before the February tour and was a minor hit for the couple when it went to number two on the country charts. It also later formed part of an entire album of duets rather humorously dubbed Carryin' On with Johnny Cash and June Carter.
"We all got backstage and said, 'Johnny's not going to make it for maybe two, three more days. We've got to continue on. Or as June would say, "Press on," so here we go,'" remembered Western. "[Saul] said, 'I want everybody stretched. Western, you're going to emcee the show and so forth, but instead of doing fifteen or eighteen minutes, you do at least twenty, twenty-two minutes.' The Statlers were totally capable of doing a bigger show than they had with Johnny, but they were his backup singers and were billed as part of the Johnny Cash Show. Gordon Terry, everybody, stretched and made the whole show go on." In the audience at one of those shows was Bob Wootton, a huge Cash fan who taught himself to play guitar just like Luther Perkins. Short on money, he had saved up for some time to buy tickets and travelled to the Tulsa Civic Centre with his wife and their neighbours. "I paid my good money to see Johnny Cash, and he didn't show up.… But I stayed, you know, they had a guy named Johnny Western, and he did his show, he didn't do Johnny Cash's stuff, and I enjoyed it, but I was just so disappointed. I mean, I had gone to see John one other time and I enjoyed the show, but he came this time to the Coliseum and I thought, 'Hey it's gonna be good.' But he didn't show up," said Wootton.
After the troupe managed to complete four shows, with various cancellations in between, Cash suddenly returned to the tour. "It was at the threatening stage, and I guess they had called and called and called and said, 'Either-or you get straight enough to do these shows or there's going to be lawsuits and it's going to be a very, very serious problem,'" said Western.
The latest string of missed dates was definitely worrying, and not just for the obvious reasons. In the latter part of 1966, Saul had painstakingly orchestrated a lucrative deal with Moeller Talent, a major Nashville-based booking outfit, to act as the exclusive agent for booking the Johnny Cash Show into rodeos and fairs the next summer. At a dead end, with Cash's reputation quickly unravelling, Saul had needed Moeller's help for his summer bookings. The deal was of particular importance because it was essentially negotiated out of sheer desperation.
One of the engagements, organized by agency head and former banker W.E. "Lucky" Moeller himself, was dubbed by Saul to be "not only the largest sum of money to ever be received for an individual C & W performance, but twice as large as any figure previously recorded."
In the meantime, unable to find spring work for Cash in the U.S., Saul had resorted to putting up his own money as a promoter and booked him on a seven-show tour of western Canada in April of 1967. However, Johnny would make it only partway through the tour.
"We were in Edmonton and he was on a rampage of pep pills, and he had a Martin, an expensive guitar, very expensive guitar," Saul told author Michael Streissguth. "He was in a darkened room, and he hadn't slept for a couple of days, and he's already missed one of the dates. And they're all my dates that I'd set up because nobody wanted to book him. You know, they couldn't trust that he would be there. He took the guitar and smashed it against the wall. I had said things to provoke him. And I guess he just didn't have the nerve to hit me with the guitar so he hit it against the wall and smashed it."
Saul Holiff and June Carter in the back of a limousine after a show, circa 1962. [Saul Holiff Collection. Photographer unknown.]
It was the end of the line. This time, it would be Saul who would cancel the remaining dates and simply disappear — an action he would learn to perfect over the years. "I had one of the best disappearing acts," he said. "I just felt that there was a dignity involved and I could only go so far, and when I didn't want to go any further, I just left. I don't think I abandoned him. I think he didn't even know where I was. So yes, I did, but we always got back together."
It wasn't only the buyers who were becoming exasperated with Cash's unreliability. The fans were also beginning to see through the facade of his "laryngitis," "broken ribs," and other myriad excuses. Within two weeks of Saul walking off the job in Canada, the Johnny Cash Show arrived for a gig in Waterloo, Iowa. After Cash immediately passed out in the hotel bed, Marshall and June searched his room and flushed all the pills they could find down the toilet. Together they agreed to let him sleep, hoping a solid twelve hours would do him good, and somehow pulled off the show without him. But the fans, once again, were disappointed.
"I was one of the many people who walked out and requested my money back," said audience member Mrs. Ray Kunhtzi, in a letter to the editor following the show. "I really felt very sorry for the rest of the cast. I know they are all capable entertainers, but I also felt justified in asking for a refund. Johnny Cash may be a big name in entertainment, but if he had so little respect for the fans of country music in this town or in any other place he may have failed to appear, then I think he's in the wrong business. I can tell you everyone who asked for their refunds were pretty skeptical about his 'nervous condition.'"
News soon came in from Lucky Moeller about the extra shows, and it wasn't good. Despite his best efforts, he was able to secure only four summer dates for Johnny. Though they were "very sympathetic to the Johnny Cash situation," he said tactfully, they had become aware of just how much that "situation" affected his ability to sell dates to buyers. "I tried very hard this year to sell Johnny on some of these bigger and better fairs and there was always a doubt in the buyer's mind," Moeller wrote. "They wanted to buy Johnny, but they were afraid that he would not show up at the date."
Even as he continued to miss shows, Cash found time to complain about the lack of bookings to Saul, who finally unleashed his mounting frustration. "Moeller has booked only fair dates, as agreed, and after submitting you to every buyer in the business was able to come up with only four dates," Saul said. "Your professional behaviour is totally reprehensible, showing a complete disregard for the rights and feelings of everyone around you."
Of the four dates Moeller had painstakingly managed to secure that summer, Johnny then went on to miss three of them.
"We did our best to convince (the buyers) that he would be there and of course were let down with these three dates, which not only served as an embarrassing situation for us and no doubt we will be hurt next season by trying to place another package with them as an agent," Moeller said. Though they did not harbour ill feelings toward Cash, they did need to respectfully request their lost commission on the eleven thousand dollars in missed dates, he added. At the Missouri State Fair, a crowd of fourteen thousand had waited in the blazing heat on Sunday evening for "No-Show" Cash. Finally, a local couple, R.C. and JoAnn Holmes, scrambled at the last minute and managed to fill in for him onstage. But the organizers of the Illinois State Fair were angry enough about Cash's absence that they decided to sue.
As Saul struggled to mount yet another legal defence on behalf of Cash, the federal government finally launched their own $125,000 lawsuit over the forest fire. And the lawsuit with Stew Carnall continued to rage unsettled. In terms of actual managerial work, as Saul finished up preparations with promoter Mervyn Conn for another major tour of the United Kingdom, he couldn't help but feel overwhelmed. "I am the only booker in show business who sets dates, looks after box office settlements, does all of the surgical repairs on missed dates — which include myriad letters, calls, wires, and meetings, and does it all with the privilege of paying my own costs on the road exclusive of travel. This is unique," he fumed to Johnny. Not only would he now have to arrange for the repayment of Moeller's commission, but he also had to do so knowing he would never receive his own commissions on the shows that Cash blew off. Nor would he be compensated for the days and months of work involved in arranging Cash's divorce, which was now imminent. The final straw came when Cash, beset by financial problems, not only requested that Saul further cut his commission down by 5 percent but also publicly accused him of double-dealing on record sales following a show in Saginaw, Michigan.
"By confronting me on Sunday night about record sales and suggesting, by innuendo, that I had contrived to cut myself in for a third, you managed to embarrass me, humiliate me, demean me, and discredit me — unnecessarily — in front of everyone in the show, not to mention [promoter] Phil Simon and, of course, those associated with him who would be aware of this episode. It placed me in the position of appearing to conspire for a lousy four or five hundred dollars," Saul wrote. Not only was Cash missing as many dates as he was playing at this point, according to Marshall Grant, but also what money he did make was disappearing just as quickly on lavish purchases. "You missed $40,000 worth of dates within one year, plus the additional reimbursement costs," Saul continued. "At a time when financial pressures existed, you added both the Carter Family and Carl Perkins at an approximate extra cost of $70,000 a year. You committed yourself to a $150,000 home, purchased land, a new Cadillac, a new fence, a new bus, antique furniture [and incurred] interior decorating charges."
Though Saul questioned the logic of Cash seeking to relieve his financial burden by cutting his manager's commission (down to 10 percent after talent was deducted from receipts), Saul agreed to it, on one condition — that Cash curtail his own expenditures and, most important, miss no more dates.
That would be a tall order for Cash, who in an attempt to meet his expenses, had incurred two sizable loans from Columbia Records that totalled $125,000, and had secured the down payment for his new home in Hendersonville only when a Columbia executive acted as guarantor on the loan.
Even if he cut the unnecessary expenditures completely, the divorce with Vivian would cost him dearly. After his objection to the divorce was withdrawn on August 30, Vivian was eventually granted half of the income from the music Cash had made while they were married, as well as half their assets, the house in Casitas Springs, $1,000 a month in alimony, and $1,600 per month in child support. Cash was also on the hook for her $6,500 attorney's fee. "You should recall that very little has been set aside for 1967 income taxes, and that a sizable amount must yet be raised to meet them," wrote Cash's lawyer Bruce Thompson. "I feel that it would be wise for you to give immediate attention to these financial matters."
Johnny Cash with a Molson Canadian backstage in London, Ontario, 1958. [Photo courtesy Marilynne Caswell.]
Twisting in the mire of his life, with chaos pressing in on all sides, Cash was sinking. The haggling over finances with Vivian became heated and at one point boiled over regarding his purchase of a new tour bus for $9,600. He explained to her that they needed the bus to haul not only all the members of their entourage around but their baggage and instruments as well. The plan was to keep it at Marshall's and use it only as a business vehicle. It was also worth noting, he added, its use was for his touring, which in turn generated everyone's living expenses, including the alimony and child support. Johnny explained that the cost of the bus would be taken out of their joint funds over the next three months, which remained joint until the new year, and if she objected to that, the outcome would only negatively affect all of their finances, including hers.
It was all too much for Cash, who by this point was barely eating. "I didn't want to die, but I'd given up. I'd accepted the fact that I was killing myself, and I was going to try to enjoy it," he acknowledged. Clearly it wasn't an ideal time to kick his habit; the stress of being sober only drove him deeper and deeper into drugs. The love of June Carter was likely the only bright spot in his life, but the drugs were driving her away now, too.
The struggle to keep Cash alive had become routine for June and Marshall, who mounted an ongoing effort to dispense with Cash's pill supply, chase dealers away, clean up after him, and keep him fed and rested while encouraging him to get clean. But June had finally had enough. Just as it looked like his divorce was to be finalized, she told Johnny that when their current October tour through Michigan and Indiana ended, she was leaving him.
The announcement drove him to the brink of madness. One night after a show at the Morris Civic Auditorium in South Bend, Indiana, he turned in desperation to Saul, his "fixer," the man who always seemed capable of combing out even the most tangled messes. As the tears ran down his furrowed cheeks, Johnny pulled out a pen, and as he began to write, the years of pain he had endured came pouring out.
The Man Who Carried Cash, is published by Dundurn and comes out May 27 in Canada, and June 20 in the US.
For more than four years, the YouTube channel Feminist Frequency has published new entries in the essay series Tropes vs Women, carefully breaking down the many tired conventions about how women are portrayed in video games. 18 videos and millions of views later, the regularly controversial Tropes vs Women came to an end yesterday, with a video examining lady sidekicks.
Throughout its entire run, Tropes vs Women was hosted by feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian, who unexpectedly emerged in the wider public consciousness in 2012, after asking for $6,000 to produce the video series. Sarkeesian (and her project) became a target of grotesque harassment, prompting others to show their support by financially backing Tropes vs Women. It raised $158,922.
In raising that money, she endured waves of misogynistic attacks.
"What's most ironic about the harassment is that it's in reaction to a project I haven't even created yet," she said at the time. "I haven't had the chance to articulate any of my arguments about video game characters yet. It's very telling that there is this much backlash against the mere idea of this series being made."
It would only get worse in the years to come. In 2012, the term GamerGate hadn't been coined yet, a colorful label for a phenomenon that existed long before the start of a campaign to harass and discredit a woman who designed a game to help people who were depressed. Women, people of color, LGBTQ folks, and others had been targeted for years, it was just that people like me didn't notice.
It took me too long to pick up on that. It took most of us too long.
While some teens are already activists still living under their parents roofs, others are out getting wrecked on vodka tampons and trying to get high off of special mp3 files, at least according to alarmist local news segments and terrifying web articles warning parents of the next dangerous teen trends.
Most of these reports are written in the name of children's safety and proliferated because everyone loves speculation and feeling in the know about the teens—but do any of these reports ever ask teens what's going on? For Teen Week, Broadly interviewed real-life teenagers about these alleged dangerous trends to see if they actually occur.
One of the teens I have on retainer is 19-year-old Nabil. He's a student at CU Boulder, where he's also an RA—so I expect him to have seen lots of crazy stuff. He's also asked to be described as a future billionaire and sex symbol, so here I am respecting his wishes. The other teens I interviewed are Kaitlyn (a former camper of mine) and Deirdre: Kaitlyn is 16 and lives in the suburbs of St. Louis, while Deirdre is 17 and lives in Virginia.
Vodka Eyeballing and Butt Chugging
The first supposed teen trend that I ask Nabil about is called "vodka eyeballing." It's pretty self-explanatory: adults believe that teenagers are using some kind of innovative contraption to pour grain alcohol into their eyeballs to get drunk. Nabil says he has heard of this. "One of my residents told me about it, he said one of his friends tried it," he said.
I was very surprised to hear this, as I thought I'd be debunking terrifying teen trends—not confirming them. Future billionaire Nabil picked up on my apprehension and started to explain that his school is a "huge frat university" and that they "have a ton of asuh dudes" before shocking me with another bomb: "That same dude started talking about butt chugging."
Literally everyone I know just drinks and smokes weed.
For those who aren't frat bros familiar with dangerous drinking trends, butt chugging is when you take a funnel and start chugging alcohol through your butt, which then enters your system faster than traditional consumption.
Alarmed, I asked Kaitlyn to verify the reality of these heinous acts. She quickly tells me that she doesn't know anyone who has vodka eyeballed or butt chugged. However, she does know girls that have vodka tamponed, which is when one soaks a tampon in vodka and then inserts it in an orifice to get drunk. Kaitlyn describes those who've vodka tamponed as "the super extra ones" at her school, but is certain that this alarming teen trend really does occur.
i-Dosing
The next trend is i-dosing, which is just a fancy name for MP3 drugs, where teens supposedly download tunes crazy enough that listening to them gets you high. This is definitely not a real thing according to Nabil, Deirdre, and Kaitlyn. "Literally everyone I know just drinks and smokes weed," said Kaitlyn, ignoring the fact that she just told me she knows girls who spike their tampons.
Welcome back to Can't Handle the Truth, our Saturday column looking back at the past seven days of fake news and hoaxes that have spread thanks to the internet.
As Donald Trump himself has pointed out, this whole first 100 days thing is a "ridiculous standard" for measuring success. He's right, of course: The hundred-day mark, which lands on Saturday, is premised on a meaningless number that humans only care about because the base ten counting system is rooted in the number of digits a primate has on its hands (exhales).
His first 100 days as president would only be worth mentioning if Trump had ever issued some kind of signed document that he referred to as "my 100-day action plan to Make America Great Again," featuring 60 measurable promises, or if he had created a "First 100 Days" section on the White House website, touting "bold action to restore prosperity, keep Americans safe and secure, and hold government accountable." If he did those things, trying to diminish the importance of his first 100 days would be disingenuous at best, or dishonest at worst.
"Disingenuous at best, or dishonest at worst" is practically Trump's motto, of course, right up there with "don't pay contractors" and "I did try and fuck her. She was married." For most of his public life, he's been an unreliable source of information—in fact, he's actually been a pretty reliable source of bad information about things with serious consequences. For instance, when talking about his real estate seminar, he said, "success. It's going to happen to you," but that school was actually a scam. Then there was the time he claimed that an "'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that @BarackObama's birth certificate is a fraud." But it wasn't. And this other time, he claimed that on 9/11, he had "watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down," and that wasn't true either.
It's exasperating at times trying to hold Donald Trump to some sort of standard of honesty when A) he doesn't seem to care, and B) he has adopted the term "fake news" and weaponized it against organizations that criticize him. Trump's fake news label occasionally gets slapped on examples of bias or error that he's right to criticize. But usually Trump just pulls the term out of his ass to escape from reality. So as part of the continued effort to push back against that rhetorical slippage, here's some of the actual fake news Trump has unleashed on the world during the 100 days he's been President.
His inaugural crowd was the biggest ever
There's not much left to say about this. Trump promised "unbelievable, perhaps record-setting turnout" at his inauguration. The odds were always against that, given that Trump lost the popular vote and the inauguration was being held in deep-blue Washington DC, far away from most of his supporters.
It's possible that the timing of the viral photos that circulated on inauguration day may have made for Twitter-friendly sight gags that overstated the difference in attendance, but that doesn't change the fact that all available metrics say Trump's crowd was smaller than Obama's in 2009. Still, Trump could have just moved on, and crossed "biggest inauguration audience ever" off the list of possible human achievements he can claim—getting elected president at all is pretty good on its own, right?
Instead, at the first White House press conference of Trump's young presidency, his shiny new press secretary, Sean Spicer, had to devote much of his time at the podium to claims that Trump's had been "the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period." Then, when that was quickly debunked, Spicer spent days refining his attempt to wrongly paint the Trump inauguration as the most-watched of all time, mostly by cherry-picking data.
On January 23, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway gave a jaw-dropping interview to Chuck Todd saying team Trump hadn't been providing falsehoods, but "alternative facts." Conway's Orwellian slip of the tongue was a fitting kickoff to life in Trump's America.
There was significant voter fraud during the election
On January 23, Trump revived an idea he first tweeted shortly after the election: that his election win would have been even winnier if millions of people hadn't voted illegally. In a private meeting with Congressional leadership, he "claimed without evidence"—newspaper-speak for "probably a lie"—that 3 to 5 million undocumented immigrants had cost him the popular vote. Two days later, Trump tweeted that he would try and devote government resources to investigating voter fraud.
For many years now, right-wing activists have spent a great deal of time trying to prove the assertion that voter fraud is a massive problem in the US. You, the person reading this, may be part of the almost half of Americans who believe in their hearts that election fraud is a problem in the US.
The revived right-wing fury over fraud at the polls led to new crackdowns on voter fraud, like Arizona's. And there are new voter ID laws now, like the one in Iowa.
But did Trump's actual investigation reveal widespread fraud, leading to his humiliating popular vote defeat by Hillary Clinton? No one knows, because that investigation never happened. But state-wide investigations have turned up nearly no fraud—just dozens, or possibly hundreds of instances. In an election involving almost 140 million ballots, that's pretty slim.
Sinister liberal imposters have been infiltrating town halls in red districts
On one hand, Trump's February 21 tweet is sorta right: Liberal groups were very much part of a groundswell of anti-Trump fury directed at lawmakers in February when they held events in their home districts. But calling them "so-called angry crowds" paints them as insincere. And saying the events are "planned out" makes them sound underhanded. When the conservative media ran with the story, it became a minor conspiracy theory: Liberal "plants" were ostensibly showing up and conducting a misinformation campaign at what should have been conservative town halls.
Republican lawmakers, mind you, are supposed represent their entire constituencies, not just the people who voted for them. So when a group like the Michigan People's Campaign shows up to express anti-Trump sentiment at an event in Detroit held by a Republican representative, that's not an evil campaign of misinformation from George Soros. That's just what democracy looks like (sorry).
People are being paid to protest Trump
Along similar lines, Trump would have you believe the protesters who showed up on tax day to demand his tax returns were "paid for." This goes back to something Trump told 60 Minutes in November about the people at anti-Trump demonstrations being "professional protesters."
This is a popular accusation in Conspiracy Land. A post on Infowars for instance, claims to have "proof" that anti-Trump protesters have been "utilizing paid protesters financed by George Soros." What it actually shows is that a liberal organization is hiring organizers. It's normal for an organization—the National Right to Life, for instance—to fundraise, and then use that money to organize a demonstration—the March for Life, for instance. It doesn't mean the people participating in a demonstration don't believe the stuff on their signs.
The narrator of the video embedded in the Infowars post wants to know why Hillary Clinton won't "command her SJWs to stop protesting" now that she's lost. To Trump and his fans, it's taken as an article of faith that no one would, in their heart of hearts, dislike Trump's policies enough to protest for free. This type of astroturfing is probably familiar to Trump, who appears to have planted supporters at presidential speaking engagements.
The Federal Elections Commission investigated Trump for paying actors to cheer at a campaign event in 2015, but they stopped investigating the matter because, not because the accusation was false, necessarily, but because Trump isn't alleged to have spent very much money.
Obama wiretapped Trump's Campaign
After Trump tweeted on March 4 that President Obama had his "'wires tapped' in Trump Tower" during the campaign, the Trump administration and other officials bent over backwards trying to retcon Trump's assertion into something true. Or if it couldn't be "true," something adjacent to a concept with a drop of truth in it. Or if it couldn't be a drop of "truth" per se, a drop of truth-flavored falsehood.
FBI director James Comey almost immediately asked the Justice Department to refute Trump's accusation. So then Conway tried to backpedal away from the whole idea of wiretapping—the surveillance state has many tools, she said, including smart microwaves. Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, concluded that there'd been no wiretap. Then Trump himself walked back the claim that there'd been a wiretap, pointing out that "wires tapped" was in quotes in the tweet, whatever that means. Then Spicer quoted Fox News talking head "Judge" Andrew Napolitano, who said the surveillance was carried out by British intelligence, but the British called that claim "utterly ridiculous."
Then Devin Nunes, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee received a tip from a source that appears to have been the White House itself telling him that the deep state had conducted surveillance on members of the Trump transition team (though not his campaign) when they were communicating with targets of surveillance overseas. But there's nothing startling about that if you know how the US surveillance state works. "What would truly be 'startling,'" wrote Jon Schwarz of the Intercept, "would be if the US intelligence apparatus hadn't picked up many Trump staffers speaking with foreign targets of surveillance."
In other words, Trump's claim that "Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory" was not true, or based on anything remotely true.
But the effort more or less succeeded, since, according to a CBS poll, 74 percent of Republicans believe Trump's utterly false claim.
So, turns out that Seth Rogen and the Lonely Island crew are working on a movie about a music festival going to shit. Talk about serendipitous timing, given they couldn't ask for a better marketing campaign than the dumpster fire that was the Fyre music festival.
"This seems like a good time to mention the movie we are making with [the Lonely Island] about a music festival that goes HORRIBLY WRONG," Rogen tweeted.
The Lonely Island followed up with a tweet in which they jokingly said they were thinking about suing the people behind the festival.
For the few people uninitiated into the glory that is the Fyre Festival here's a little catch up: The festival was sold as a "luxury" music festival for loaded young people—one where they could mix with "influencers" and models. It was co-founded by Ja Rule and Billy McFarland. When some peeps showed up early to the festival they found not luxury but an complete and utter shitshow.
The tents weren't fully constructed, garbage was everywhere, there were apparently sharks off the coast, and, among other things, the exquisite culinary experience they were promised turned out to be a salad and some bread with cheese thrown on top. The festival goers went to Twitter to express their horror with the event and the internet, overdosing on rich kid schadenfreude, had a heyday.
As for Rogen's movie, the details remain scarce but it's going to be an uphill battle to write anything funnier than rich millennials 'gramming their bread and cheese plates.
The man that many people have dubbed "Canada's Badass Defence Minister" has issued a not very badass apology.
When running for his Liberal Vancouver South seat in 2015, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said that Gen. Jonathan Vance, the current Chief of the Defence Staff of the Canadian Armed Forces, called him the " the architect of Operation Medusa." As reported in the National Post, Sajjan re upped the comments recently during an April 18 speech he gave in India saying, "I was the architect of Operation Medusa where we removed 1,500 Taliban fighters off the battlefield."
Operation Medusa was a Canuck-led offensive that took place in 2006 that attempted to put in place government control over an area of Afghanistan's Kandahar province. The NATO operation cost the life of twelve Canadian soldiers and it is has been estimated that the number of Taliban soldiers killed was as high as 1,500. Operation Medusa remains Canada's bloodiest battle since the Korean war.
Well, as it turns out, Sajjan's claims of valour are not being taken too kindly from the Canadian military community. Sajjin was called out publicly for his statements in regards to Operation Medusa. One retired figure, speaking anonymously to the National Post, called the claim a "bald faced lie." On April 29, Sajjan issued a social media mea culpa for his comments.
"I made a mistake in describing my role. I wish to retract that description and apologize for it. I am truly sorry," reads Sajjin's Facebook post.
"While I am proud of the role I played during my deployments to Afghanistan, my comments were in no way intended to diminish the roles of my former superiors and fellow soldiers. To them I offer my sincere apologies."
Canada's Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan in a photo posted to his Facebook page. Photo via Facebook.
At the time that Medusa went down, Sajjan, a reservist major, was serving as a liaison officer—work that he has received extensive military praise for. In his apology, Sajjan went on to say that Medusa was successful because "of leadership of [major-general David Fraser] and the extraordinary team with whom I had the honour of serving." Several soldiers who were a part of the operation, speaking to the CBC , said that Sajjan played a key role but was in no way "in on the planning of the operation."
Opposition politician and media have claimed that Sajjan's exaggeration brings up questions of his character. Conservative defence critic James Bezan said that Sajjan "didn't misspeak. This is him trying to reinvent history and unfortunately he has a habit of misleading Canadians."
At no point in the apology did Sajjan explain why he made the comments.
Orcas are the wolves of the water: they are smart, they are strong, they are vicious. I mean, we call them killer whales. A pod of these water locked marauders are living up to their name as they go on a killing spree in California's Monterey Bay according to Nancy Black, a marine biologist in the area.
The pod involved in every single one of the kills is about nine strong. Recently, the pod treated a crew of whale watchers to a lifetime of nightmares when they slaughtered a grey whale calf in front of them.
Black said that since April 20 they have taken down five grey whale calves in ten days and that an orca she calls Emma is leading the attacks.
"It's her mother, (Emma) her daughter, and her granddaughter, plus another couple of her offspring," Black told the Mercury News. "So it's a whole family, because killer whales do live in family groups."
Emma and the rest of her fam have been joined by other orcas who want in on the fun. The first kill involved about 33 of the creatures—the hanger-ons probably came after hearing folktales of about the the crew. As for why this particular pod is so bloodthirsty, the explanations vary. It may be because the grey whales were late migrating to the bay this year so the orcas were particularly hungry for their traditional meal of baby grey whale, or they may be teaching their young to hunt.
Either way, Black said that the Emma and her pod are "very good" at killing. They were able to murk a grey whale calf in 20 minutes the other day—something that takes a typical pod several hours.
It is unknown whether the orcas will continue their killing spree but, for good measure, take my hand child, let us pray they never find out about their brethren we keep in captivity.
In the fall of 2015, in tiny Lewisburg, West Virginia, Tim Ward and Jon Matthews were gearing up for the second annual Appalachian Queer Film Festival (AQFF for short). Their mission was both simple and profound: to broaden hearts and minds, to change stereotypical perceptions of West Virginians, and to shed light on what it means to be queer in a rural community.
That same year, they'd received a $6,700 grant from the West Virginia Humanities Council to help fund the festival. It proved significant in helping them garner interest and participation in the festival. With that success and encouragement within the WVHC, they applied for $10,000 for their third year, to be held last October. But a few days before they applied, a Koch Brothers–funded PAC released a report lambasting the state for wasting taxpayer money on arts projects—specifically calling out AQFF for screening "films many taxpayers would find objectionable."
The report was far from an exhaustive study, the Charleston Gazette Mail reported—but it condemned spending for Medicaid, public broadcasting, fairs, festivals, community colleges, athletics, and arts programs nonetheless.
As a result, AQFF saw no public funding last year, which had been projected to comprise half their overall budget, Ward said. In October, Ward and Matthews were able to put on a watered-down version of their showcase, and remain dedicated to bringing notable queer films to West Virginia audiences.
"On Saturday we're screening Travis Matthews' Discreet," said Ward, which "follows a young man in rural Texas trying to reconcile a conservative culture and his own sexuality. While his plight is not every LGBTQ person's journey, it presents an interesting perspective worth comparing to our own."
When we think of LGBTQ gatherings and celebrations, we conjure images of Provincetown's Carnival Parade or the massive OutFest film festival in LA. But outside Christopher Street or the Castro, film festivals like AQFF and other events are playing a vital role in galvanizing rural LGBTQ communities, where opportunities to celebrate one's identity are limited—and not solely because of intolerance, as one might assume.
Rural queer communities are "often in regions where there aren't a lot of public resources," said Mary L. Gray, a senior researcher at Microsoft and associate professor at the Media School of Indiana University. "There's no public infrastructure. There's no tax base to build that—so when communities want to come together, there's literally no space to gather.
"There's no gay bar or corner queer bookstore," she continued, "so it's important that film festivals are using what infrastructure is available—an established shared public space—to bring a conversation to a community that otherwise would not have a venue." In this way, festivals like AQFF queer an otherwise universal space: the movie theater.
These film festivals and others queer their town movie theaters for screenings, Elk's Lodges for fundraisers, and churches for meetings. They blur the boundaries of who belongs where and who has claims to be members of one's community.
"The visibility of film festivals reminds the heterosexual members of a community of LGBTQ presence," says Dr. Katie Schweighofer, an assistant gender and sexuality professor at Dickinson College. "The structure brings cultural cachet and tourism dollars that may be useful in gaining support from hesitant community or business leaders."
Moreover, seeing and hearing a moving tale in a dark room offers one of the least confrontational ways to participate in someone else's narrative. "There isn't direct dialogue so much as a dialogue being performed for the audience," said Gray, "so it can be an incredibly rich role modeling of what kind of words can be used around these identities that otherwise is just not a part of day to day life in rural communities."
And with the inauguration of a president with a history of homophobia, it's important to remember the classism that marks many discussions about who belongs where in America. LGBTQ political leaders have for too long paid too little attention to rural communities as places to organize—and where there's more tolerance and support on offer than one might expect.
"There were so few times that we ventured into places where we knew people didn't like us," said Gray, referring to the marriage equality fight. "This is a detriment to queer politics as much as it is to the 'public sphere.' We are limiting our own capacity by presuming that wealth and the power of personal persuasion are our only ways into freedom and equality for all."
There is often a message, or perhaps it's more of an internal monologue, that LGBTQ-identifying people would or should "get out" of their small towns. While some will and can, many don't have it as an option or don't want to leave.
Dr. Schweighofer emphasized that with many of the most significant recent gains in American LGBTQ rights—Don't Ask Don't Tell, Obergefell—having come from the federal level, the time is ripe to focus efforts on rural communities.
"With the new administration signaling they will not be supporting LGBTQ communities—for example, by removing LGBTQ content from the White House websites and changing a proposed addition for adding LGBT to the upcoming 2020 census—LGBTQ communities may find themselves reliant upon local politics for positive change," she said.
Ward, now a full-time student headed towards a medical degree and still a part-time film enthusiast, has gone back to the drawing board with Matthews and their handful of private funders.
"We're taking a strategic approach and branching out into different parts of the state with one-off events, like screening a film and bringing in the filmmaker or doing a talk via Skype," he said, "in hopes of introducing the festival to people that might not have known about us before and would have an interest in driving to Lewisburg."
"As of now, we're still committed to having the larger festival in the fall, the size of which is dependent on our bottom line," he noted.
George Mumford taught NBA superstars Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant the techniques of mindfulness. He tells us how to stay in the moment and achieve 'flow state'.
Instead of covering an Anti-Islam rally, VICE journalist Sarah Hagi escaped her harsh reality and went to the middle of nowhere to learn all about LARPing. In Part 1, she learns how to play and finds out what motivates these live action role-players.
The first time Gerardo, originally from El Salvador, came to the US, it was 1994. He crossed the border into Texas, then moved around the country to wherever he could find work until 2001, when he was deported home for not having papers. He didn't stay south long, however. After a month working in Reynosa, Mexico, he decided to catch a taxi across the border.
"I bought a bottle of tequila and drank half of it," Gerardo tells me, "and I got a taxi and told him to take me across. I spoke in English and I told him I'm an American citizen." The driver took him across the Puente Internacional, where he told the customs officers that he was an American citizen and that his papers were stolen in the bar. "Finally, they believed me," he says, "and gave me a paper that they stamped." The taxi driver left him at his in-laws' house in McAllen, Texas. At least for a time, Gerardo was home free.
Today, though, Gerardo doesn't think that scheme would work. The last time he attempted to cross from Mexico to the US, three years ago, he was arrested. He spent two years in federal prison before being deported once again. Gerardo is now living in Casa Tochán, a migrant shelter in Mexico City. Many of the guests at the shelter have ample experience in moving between the US, Mexico, and Central America as undocumented immigrants. Amid a political climate plagued by sensational discussions of migration, these migrants have unique insight into the challenges of border-crossing. Gerardo is currently seeking to regularize his migration status in Mexico rather than heading north to the US. He's one of many Central American migrants who have decided it's easier to build a life north of home, but south of the US border.
In the last several years, Mexico has seen an increase in migrants from Central America. The UN High Commission for Refugees reported in 2016 that asylum requests in Mexico from migrants from the "Northern Triangle"—El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala—increased by 162 percent between 2013 and 2015. Some of them plan to pass through Mexico on their way to the US and stay because they run out of money or fall victim to crime or injury. Others flee violence in their home countries and hope all along to stay in Mexico.
Many of these Central American migrants have already been to the US and back several times. For these people, Donald Trump's anti-immigrant stance represents a change in degree, not in kind. Like Gerardo, they know what it is to cross the border. They've traversed deserts and rivers, some being arrested in the process, some returning to attempt yet again.
Osman, another guest at Casa Tochán, first entered the US in 1989 hidden in the trunk of a friend's car. Now, he says, the border is more formidable. He's not particularly fazed by President Trump's promises of a border wall, though. The presence of organized crime around the border poses a greater deterrent. "There's not much difference with the wall," he tells me. "They can't keep watch everywhere."
Still, border crossings have dropped dramatically since Trump's election. According to an April 2017 report from US Customs and Border Patrol, arrests of border crossers dropped dramatically in this year's first quarter. The number of migrants arrested in March 2017 decreased by 30 percent from the prior month and by 64 percent from March 2016.
Marvin lived in Boston for 20 years, and he's crossed the US-Mexico border three times, spending a year and a half in prison after his last attempt. After leaving prison in November 2016, he was deported back home to El Salvador. Shortly thereafter, he began the journey north again. He, too, is regularizing his status in Mexico, but he hopes to return to the US again.
"It's the luck of every person," he says. "Now it's really hard to cross, but it's always possible." He's heard, though, that crossings are down. "I have friends who are coyotes, and before, they were taking across 60, 70 people every week. Now they're taking across eight or nine. And they used to charge $7,500 or $8,500. Now they're charging $10,000."
Osman
Osman isn't planning on returning to the US either. He lived in the US from 1989 to 2000, when he left voluntarily to go back to his home in Honduras. In 2015, Osman left Honduras again with the idea of working close to the US border, where he could make more money and take advantage of his English skills. He spent some time working in Nogales, and later came to Mexico City to fix his papers. There, he saw opportunities to build a life. He's regularizing his immigration status and starting a car detailing business and he hopes to bring his son after he earns enough to move out of the shelter.
What dissuaded Osman from going back to the US wasn't increased security at the border, but what life would be like beyond it: The threat of deportation looms greater than ever. "They take you out of your apartment now," he says. "Before they didn't do that." He's heard, too, that it's getting harder to make a living as an undocumented immigrant. "There aren't opportunities in the US anymore," he says. "My family there, my friends and cousins and uncles, they tell me it's hard to get work now."
Being undocumented has always been a precarious way to live, but the increased targeting of migrants under Trump has further impeded building a stable life. "Before, it was pretty calm," Gerardo says. He spent a total of 14 years in the US between 1994 and 2014. "Then, you could get a domestic flight, a Greyhound bus, rent an apartment without needing papers." Now, Gerardo says, his family and friends tell him that fear of arrest severely limits daily activities. Still it's always been hard to make it—but there's always been a way. "Trump is the cat and we're the mice," Gerardo tells me. "And mice will always find a way to get in."
