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'Omarosa' Reveals How Her White House Firing Really Went Down on 'SNL'


‘SNL’ has been quick with its hot takes this season, and after yet another White House casualty, they couldn’t resist the chance to add their own thoughts on what really went down.

ICYMI, Omarosa Manigault Newman joined the long—like, really long—list of people whom President Donald Trump sent packing this year when it was announced on Friday that she had resigned from her position with the Trump administration, effective January 20, 2018. At first the news didn’t seem all that interesting given the amount of White House turnover we’ve seen during the past months. But then reports started to surface that she had to be removed from the premises after she was fired by chief of staff John Kelly, which were then followed by Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts‘ “Bye, Felicia” quip on the show. Naturally, Saturday Night Live writers and cast decided to take a closer look at what might have gone down.

Michael Che introduced the segment on last night’s “Weekend Update” by saying, “It was announced that Omarosa Manigault Newman was fired from her White House job. Whatever the hell that was.” (His best guess is that she was “Secretary of the Sunken Place.”)

“Man, when you get a ‘Bye, Felicia’ from Robin Roberts, you know you suck,” Che says after a clip of Roberts’ diss of the ex-Apprentice contestant plays (echoing a much re-tweeted tweet from earlier in the week). That’s when Leslie-Jones-as-Omarosa makes her second appearance of the night.

“I demand a retraction,” she tells Che. “I left that job by choice.” Then she spells it out for him: “That’s right, I quit. I deactivated my ID card. I changed the locks on my own office. I escorted myself off the premises. And then I threw myself into the bushes.”

When “security” arrives and tries to escort Jones’ Omarosa off the stage, she remains defiant. “Yeah, you better take my arm,” she tells the bearded guy in a suit. “Because I’m escorting you out of the building. And you better throw me into the Christmas tree!”

Watch the full clip below:

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Related Stories:
–Robin Roberts Told Omarosa ‘Bye, Felicia’ and Twitter Is Loving It
–Thanks to Her Amazing Live-Tweeting, Leslie Jones Has Been Invited to the Rio Olympics
–SNL’s Colin Jost and Michael Che: “When Life Gets Bad, Make It Funny”





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SNL's Michael Che Goes Undercover as a Liberal White Woman Named Gretchen


In this week’s episode of Saturday Night Live, Michael Che, who co-hosts “Weekend Update,” went undercover as a liberal white woman named Gretchen, and the result is pretty much gold. Che has been known to make waves with some of his jokes and comments on and off the show, but he says the hate mail he receives in response is overwhelmingly from “super liberal white women.”

So in an effort to understand things from their perspective, Che went on a hilarious mission to go undercover as a liberal white woman—complete with research (reading Yelp and Lena Dunham‘s book, listening to “the most ignorant rap music” he could find) and a makeover (sporting a long blond wig, Warby Parker glasses, scarves…but no makeup)—and headed off to brunch to see what life is like as a liberal white woman.

Che learned that some stereotypes and generalizations about white women—and in some cases, all women—aren’t, well, completely inaccurate. He did come away with a few #tooreal observations, like: “Maybe they do eat a lot of pizza…and a lot of salads to balance out the pizza.” While in undercover mode, Che also encountered some of the privileges upper-middle-class white women stereotypically benefit from, like randomly receiving money in the mail from their parents and drinking wine during the day without judgment.

But he also experienced some of the downsides and frustrations of being a woman, regardless of race, political affiliation, or economic status. Che encountered—and successfully challenged—a manspreader on the subway, something all of us who take public transportation have experienced countless times.

At a dinner party, he was mansplained to by a white guy claiming that “white men have it just as hard as anybody else,” to which he responded, “Check your privilege, dude!” And when Che found himself alone in an elevator with a man (in his case the man in question was episode host James Franco, so not quite a realistic moment, but still), he reacted the way many of us feel like doing in uncomfortable situations—by hugging his purse in front of his body and turning the other direction.

Che also calls out his girlfriends gushing about Meghan Markle’s engagement ring, saying “I just feel like the monarchy is literally the patriarchy. And as a liberal white woman, I can’t support that sh*t.”

Watch the full video, below:

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Related Stories:
–The ‘SNL’ Girl Group Dropped an On-Point Music Video About Living Life as a Woman
–Taylor Swift Cooked Dinner for Tiffany Haddish After They Filmed ‘SNL’ Together
–Manspreading Has Been Banned in Madrid’s Public Transportation Systems





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The White House Just Said Trump Accusers Are Lying About Sexual Harassment


During a press conference earlier this month, Donald Trump was questioned about an ongoing legal case involving a former Apprentice contestant—one in which the President has been accused of sexual assault.

Trump immediately dismissed the situation as “totally fake news,” adding, “It’s just fake. It’s fake. It’s made-up stuff, and it’s disgraceful, what happens, but that happens in the—that happens in the world of politics,”

The litigation dates back to last October—not long after Trump’s infamous Access Hollywood leaked—and was brought forward by Summer Zervos, who says Trump kissed and grabbed her during a meeting at a Beverly Hills hotel a decade ago. Recently, BuzzFeed reported that Trump’s campaign had been subpoenaed for “all documents concerning any accusations that were made during Donald J. Trump’s election campaign for president, that he subjected any woman to unwanted sexual touching and/or sexually inappropriate behavior.”

As the news cycle has been dominated by the barrage of reports of sexual harassment and misconduct against numerous powerful men, Trump’s ongoing legal trouble was once again brought up during Friday’s daily White House press briefing with Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

“Obviously, sexual harassment has been in the news, at least 16 women have accused the president of sexually harassing them throughout the course of the campaign,” one reporter began. “Last week during a press conference in the Rose Garden the president called these accusations fake news. Is the official White House position that all of these women are lying?”

Without mincing any words, Sanders confirmed that the White House does believe all these women are lying, saying “Yeah, we’ve been clear on that from the beginning and the President has spoken on it.”

Numerous women have come forward with allegations of sexual harassment or misconduct against the President. As accusations mounted during the 2016 campaign, Trump said that he was “a victim of one of the great political smear campaigns in the history of our country.”





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An Activist Group Is Playing Trump's 'Access Hollywood' Tape on Loop Near the White House


PHOTO: Ultraviolet via Facebook

It’s been exactly a year since the Washington Post delivered one of the most shocking October surprises to date: the Access Hollywood tape revealing then-presidential candidate Donald Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women. Trump’s exact words—”Grab them by the pussy … You can do anything”—will likely be forever etched into the American consciousness.

But as a timely reminder to the country that this same man now occupies the White House, women’s rights group UltraViolet will be playing the video on loop from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Constitution Avenue.

“It was not so-called ‘locker room talk,’ it was a man bragging about sexually assaulting women,” UltraViolet cofounder Shaunna Thomas told the Hill. “That man may now sit in the Oval Office, but we will not let him—or anyone else—forget the tape or those comments.”

Trump had dismissed the remarks as “locker room talk” or “banter” multiple times, first in an official statement from his campaign (which has since been removed from the site), and later during his debate with Hillary Clinton. Though, for many reasons, it was been a poor excuse at the time, Trump’s apology became all the more meaningless when nearly a dozen women came forward with sexual assault allegations against him.

Trump’s so-called “locker room talk” hadn’t just been talk—according to these women’s traumatic accounts, it’d been action too.

Thomas said there’s a clear connection between Trump’s history as an alleged sexual abuser and his administration’s treatment of women. During his nine months in office, the Trump administration has diligently chipped away at women’s rights, championing health care legislation that would doom women’s reproductive health, giving state’s the go-ahead to withhold funds from abortion clinics and nixing protections for women in the workplace.

And just Friday morning, on the anniversary of his pussy-grabbing comments, the Trump administration announced it would weaken the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that employers provide birth control coverage for its employees.

Thomas isn’t surprised.

“The Donald Trump on that tape is the same Donald Trump that sits in the Oval Office every day, aggressively pursuing an anti-woman agenda,” Thomas said, “including the active dismantling of legal protections for survivors of sexual assault.”



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A 10-Day March Against White Supremacy from Charlottesville to D.C. Starts Today


Calling all civil activists: Just weeks after a “Unite the Right” rally left one woman dead and more than a dozen wounded in Charlottesville, a bloc of several activist groups are marching from the Virginia city to Washington, D.C. to protest white supremacy.

Starting Monday (August 28) groups like Working Families, the Action Group Network, United We Dream, Color of Change, and the Women’s March will assemble in Charlottesville and begin heading North as part of a 10-day nonviolent demonstration that will concluded in Washington on September 6. As the event organizers detailed on the official website, the march is meant “to demonstrate our commitment to confronting white supremacy wherever it is found.”

“It’s clear that we can no longer wait for Donald Trump or any elected official to face reality and lead,” the organizers continued. “We are coming together to reckon with America’s long history of white supremacy, so that we can begin to heal the wounds of our nation.”

Basic meals, water, and snacks will be offered to the marchers, and housing will be provided primarily through churches along the planned route. A charted course can be found on the official website, but a rundown of the scheduled trajectory appears as follows:

Monday, August 28th – Charlottesville to Commonwealth, 3.5 mi.
Tuesday, August 29th – Commonwealth to Ruckersville, 13.2 mi.
Wednesday, August 30th – Ruckersville to Madison, 12.0 mi.
Thursday, August 31st – Madison to Culpeper, 17.6 mi.
Friday, September 1st – Culpeper to Remington, 11.6 mi.
Saturday, September 2nd – Remington to Calverton, 11.0 mi.
Sunday, September 3rd – Calverton to Manassas, 14.6 mi.
Monday, September 4th – Manassas to Fairfax, 13.7 mi.
Tuesday, September 5th – Fairfax to Falls Church, 8.2 mi.
Wednesday, September 6th – Falls Church to D.C., 8.0 mi.

Once the marchers make it to D.C., the plan isn’t to pack up their things a head home. Instead, they intend to remain in Washington for a sustained period of time until their overarching demands are met.

“This is the time for us to stand up for justice and equality. This is the time to confront white supremacy in our government and throughout our history,” the organizers explained. “We demand that President Trump be removed from office for allying himself with this ideology of hate and we demand an agenda that repairs the damage it’s done to our country and its people.”

Related: Raising Our Daughters After Charlottesville: An Open Letter to Ivanka Trump



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Heather Heyer's Cousin Asks Why It Took the Death of a White Woman for People to Talk About Racism


PHOTO: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

At a memorial service for her daughter Heather Heyer—the 32-year-old woman who was killed earlier this month while protesting a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia—her mother Susan Bro made clear that the best way to remember her daughter was to take “righteous action.”

“I’d rather have my child, but by golly, if I’ve got to give her up, we’re going to make it count,” she told the crowd at Heyer’s memorial service last week.

Already, Bro and other members of Heyer’s families are putting these words into actions and taking a stand against injustice and racism. Last week, Bro said she’s refused to speak with Donald Trump following a press conference in which he equated counter-protesters like Heyer to the neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and alt-right groups that had flocked to the Virginia city to keep a Confederate monument from being taken down. And over the weekend, Heyers cousin Diana Ratcliff wrote a powerful op-ed for CNN examining her family’s white privilege in the context of what happened in Charlottesville—and questioning why it took the death of a white woman to open many American’s eyes the country’s ongoing racial conflict that millions have experienced their entire lives.

“We never had to worry someone wouldn’t hire us because of the way we look,” Ratcliff wrote. “We never have to worry that our children might become victims of someone else’s prejudice. We’ve never been told we can’t live in a certain neighborhood or attend a certain school because of the color of our skin. Until last week, we had no idea what it feels like to lose someone to hate.”

Ratcliff then reflected on the poignant memorial service but recounted the one thing that struck her the most. “The moment that will forever be burnt in my memory was when a speaker asked the uncomfortable question,” she said. “While she hailed Heather’s courage, she asked something to this effect: ‘Why does a white woman have to get killed for you all to become outraged?’ All I could think was, ‘Heather is sitting in heaven right now, shaking her head in agreement.'”

“Why is it that the death of a white woman at the hands of a white supremacist group has finally gotten the attention of white folk? Why have we been turning our heads the other way for so long?” she added. “How many black families, Latino families, Asian families, Native-American families before us have been left broken from this ugly vein of hatred in our country? Too many. And to my non-white brothers and sisters, I am so sorry that many of us weren’t paying attention before Charlottesville.”

She continued, speaking critically of those who refuse to acknowledge racism and have grown complacent, saying:

“How did America go from a black President to white supremacist
neo-Nazis marching in the street? That is the question we need to be
asking ourselves. And if we take a long hard look at ourselves, we’ll
find out that it’s because we went into denial. We elected a black
person, we made friends with some minorities, and we patted ourselves
on our backs, saying, ‘Well done self, we have eliminated racism.’
Clearly, we have not. It’s been lurking in the shadows, waiting in the
spaces of the words we say and the words we don’t say. The actions we
take and the actions we don’t take.”

Ratcliff then condemned the idea of this tragedy being a result of violence “on many sides.”

“The majority of the counter-protesters were concerned residents of Charlottesville, not a fringe political group,” she wrote. “The so-called “alt-right,” or the white nationalists, have no place in America, and they don’t deserve a place on our political spectrum. There is no space at the political table for them. There is no common ground, and there is no compromise.”

But as a Ratcliff concluded her op-ed she reinforced the same message that Heyer’s mother relayed to the nation: That the country should look to what happened in Charlottesville as a call to action.

“If there is one positive I have taken away from the loss of Heather, it is that it isn’t the length of your life that is important, it’s what you do with your life that matters,” Ratcliff said. “If you truly believe all lives are equally important, then make your life matter.”



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