Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesMAGA took no responsibility for the mega size of Hurricane Milton and the damage it threatens to inflict on Florida—but maybe it should have.The historical storm was supercharged by record water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, a phenomenon worsened by the climate change that Donald Trump and his acolytes are determined to do nothing about.In fact, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis went so far as to sign legislation in May that excises any reference to climate change from state law.Read more at The Daily Beast.

ReutersDonald Trump can’t stop raving about his buddy Elon Musk—especially now that the billionaire is helping to fill his campaign coffers with money from the sale of “dark MAGA” swag.“He got a black hat—I didn’t even know we made black hats,” Trump said, speaking at a rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday. “He loves that hat. And he called it ‘Dark MAGA,’ right?”“And I called him, I told him, ‘Thank you very much, we sold like 10,000 hats in the last two days,’” Trump said.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesFormer President Donald Trump had harsh words for his one-time friend Howard Stern after he hosted an amiable interview with Vice President Kamala Harris on his radio show, in which the two frequently bashed the GOP nominee.Trump, once a frequent voice on Stern’s show, took to Truth Social to express his discontent.“BETA MALE Howard Stern made a fool of himself on his low rated radio show when he ‘interviewed’ Lyin’ Kamala Harris, and hit her with so many SOFTBALL questions that even she was embarrassed,” he wrote Wednesday.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Mark Sagliocco/GettyFormer Good Morning America meteorologist Rob Marciano is back on TV covering Hurricane Milton for CBS News.Marciano announced his return to TV with a post on Instagram.“Back to work… be safe Florida,” Marciano captioned a screen grab of himself reporting from Tampa.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Getty ImagesFox News is trying once again to lure Donald Trump and Kamala Harris for a debate—with terms neither side will likely agree to.The network announced on Wednesday it invited both campaigns to an Oct. 24 or an Oct. 27 debate in Pennsylvania. The proposed showdown would be moderated by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, the network’s go-to emcees for such forums, and the format would mirror the presidential debates already hosted by CNN and ABC.In its plea to the campaigns, the network tried to tout its ratings and New York Times columnist David Swerdlick’s suggestion that Harris agree to a Fox News debate, according to the network.Read more at The Daily Beast.

YouTube/FlagrantA podcast host interviewing Donald Trump openly mocked him in a recent sit-down, at one point breaking into an intense fit of giggles when the former president referred to himself as “basically a truthful person.” Comedian Andrew Schulz and his co-host Akaash Singh spent the better part of a brutal 90 minutes roasting Trump on an episode of their podcast Flagrant. At one point in the discussion, Trump launched a broadside against his Democratic opponent, saying that Vice President Kamala Harris’ ads against him were full of lies. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Montinique Monroe/Getty ImagesVice President Kamala Harris has raised over $1 billion since her campaign launched in July, according to multiple reports.Multiple sources in the Harris campaign confirmed the staggering total to both the New York Times and NBC News on Wednesday. The Democratic nominee’s total fundraising haul for September has not been made public yet.The windfall follows a month of major fundraisers, including a big ticket event on Wall Street that netted her $27 million in one night, as well as a push through her home state of California that earned her about $55 million in donations in one weekend.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Scouted/The Daily Beast/Lola Blanket. Scouted selects products independently. If you purchase something from our posts, we may earn a small commission.Now that the temps are (finally!) beginning to dip, cozying up in a blanket on the couch in honor of cuffing season is non-negotiable. Whether I’m having a slow morning with coffee or settling in for movie night, I love nothing more than cocooning myself in a luxury blanket. Of course, as an interior design enthusiast, I appreciate how a chic throw can instantly elevate your living room sofa and signal the change of seasons. Fall and winter are the perfect time to incorporate heavy knits and faux fur into your home decor lineup, so when Lola Blankets reached out to see if I’d like to try one of their throws, it was a no-brainer.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Scott Presler/InstagramDonald Trump wasn’t the only one thirsty for redemption at his second rally in Butler, Pennsylvania—the first time that the former president was back in the city since an assassination attempt was made on his life.Just before Trump took to the stage on Oct. 5 for an emotional roller coaster of a keynote speech—which included Elon Musk awkwardly jumping for “Dark MAGA”—a long-haired, right-wing conservative Scott Presler was introduced to the crowd.“And he wore shorts for us today so check out his legs. Look at this!” said Trump’s daughter-in-law and RNC co-chair Lara Trump, calling Presler up to the podium.Read more at The Daily Beast.

CIRA/NOAAHurricane Milton’s ferocious winds that peaked at 180 mph have people asking yet again—is it time for the National Hurricane Center to add a “Category 6” classification to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale?The question will likely take a backseat at the NHC ahead of Milton’s landfall in Florida on Wednesday evening. Once the storm surge recedes and hurricane season comes to a close, however, some researchers want the federal agency to make a change—especially as powerful hurricanes are expected to increase in frequency amid the warming of our oceans.Among those in favor of adding a new designation is Michael Wehner, a climate scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He co-authored a study earlier this year that looked at recent storms that would be worthy of the Category 6 hurricane denomination and determined a new classification would help emphasize a truly catastrophic storm’s potential devastation.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Eric Faison/The Daily Beast/ABC Abbott Elementary's third season (shortened due to last year's WGA strike) ended on a cliffhanger as teachers Janine Teagues (Quinta Brunson) and Gregory Eddie (Tyler James Williams) finally kissed after her end-of-school party. It was thrilling news for fans of the show—like myself—who had been waiting oh-so-patiently for the pair to finally connect. That’s part of the joy (and frustration) of watching a sitcom, as the will-they-or-won’t-they of a seemingly perfect couple develops over multiple seasons. While it seems we’ve finally reached the beginning of Janine and Gregory’s relationship, there was no guarantee they’ll be together by the time Season 4 starts.After all, another famous sitcom—The Office, a key influence for Abbott Elementary—had fan favorites Jim and Pam finally kiss in the Season 2 finale, “Casino Night,” before ultimately moving their relationship backwards for an entire season. That episode was shot by Randall Einhorn, who directed Abbott Elementary's Season 3 finale, “Party.” So there are plenty of reasons to be worried.While I won’t spoil it here, the first episode of Season 4, "Back to School," which premieres Oct. 9, delivers a definitive answer on Gregory and Janine’s romance. You can be sure that whether or not they’re together, the Janine-and-Gregory dynamic will continue to be a key part of the show's newest season. Abbott faces plenty of other issues in the premiere, though, particularly the development of a new golf course in West Philadelphia that brings a white family to the school and could have significant implications for the student body's demographics. It’s also causing plenty of trouble with the campus's infrastructure, including water and electricity, leading to plenty of enjoyable antics, including some seriously undercooked chicken nuggets.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Getty Images/Eric Faison/The Daily BeastNo one needs reminding these days that real life is stranger than fiction. Still, if you do need a recap, I might suggest Melania’s new memoir, which I read so you don’t have to.Actually, it wasn’t that hard: partly because it’s only 184 pages of prose, plus 179 photographs, and partly because it’s so free of the woman in question that the whole thing slides over you, like JD Vance’s hair.From the moment she arrived on the political scene, Melania has inspired me, and I don’t mean to Be Best (whatever that means; I’m still none the wiser). I was a reporter in the 2016 U.S. election, and I wound up writing a novel about a cryptic and beautiful dictator’s wife, one who flips between domesticity and cruelty, a woman who’s essentially a Rorschach blot of herself.Read more at The Daily Beast.

The Daily Beast/Getty/Reuters/GettyDonald Trump, perhaps gunning for a Nixonian repeat, plans to hold a rally at Madison Square Garden just nine days before Election Day.It worked for Richard Nixon in 1968. A week after he held his Halloween rally at the famed venue he won the presidential election.Trump's planned rally at the Garden on Oct. 27 has critics drawing parallels to the most infamous political event held there: the pro-Nazi rally of 1939, when Hitler sympathizers railed against "job taking Jewish immigrants."Read more at The Daily Beast.

Pierre CromGeorgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has become the most senior Republican yet to swallow wildly disputed claims about the health benefits of drinking “raw milk” straight from the udder.In an Oct. 6 tweet, Greene wrote, “Raw milk does a body good,” adding. “Make America Healthy Again.” She include a photo of a glass half full with custard-colored liquid.Her claim immediately prompted X’s fact checking bot to slap a disclaimer below the tweet that said: “Raw milk consumption is linked to a number of foodborne illnesses (e.g., Campylobacter, Cryptosporidium, E. coli, Listeria, Brucella, and Salmonella) that can result in serious complications and death.” Read more at The Daily Beast.

Hollie Adams/Pool/ReutersAs a vocal champion of the environment, King Charles has long sought to use his position to steer and influence the global discussion around climate and conservation.So it is perhaps a sign of just how seriously he and his aides are taking his current cancer diagnosis that he is foregoing an opportunity to do that on a global stage at the annual COP conference in Baku, Azerbaijan later this year.A friend of Charles and Queen Camilla told The Daily Beast: “Camilla will be pleased he is not going straight off to Azerbaijan. She didn’t particularly want him to go to Australia, and she will be encouraging him to take it easy once he gets back—never an easy task.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Theo Wargo/Getty ImagesThe attorneys for the hair and make-up artist who accused country-music star Garth Brooks of raping her in 2019 slammed the artist for revealing her identity.In a Tuesday filing, Brooks revealed himself to be a John Doe who filed a countersuit in Mississippi on Sept. 13 asking a judge to preemptively throw out a sexual misconduct suit against him and award damages for emotional distress and defamation, USA Today reported.The court documents also shared the name of his accuser, who used the pseudonym “Jane Roe” in her suit Thursday against him for allegedly assaulting her in a Los Angeles hotel room five years ago.Read more at The Daily Beast.

REUTERSBaz Ratner/ReutersA Boeing 737 MAX crash which killed 156 people was caused, at least in part, by the company refusing to pass on safety information to its operator, aviation experts have revealed.The 2019 Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crash killed all passengers on board when the MAX-8 nose-dived into a field just south of the capital, Addis Ababa, and came just months after another plane in Indonesia had crashed almost identically.Now experts say that Boeing’s refusal to provide Ethiopian Airlines pilots with the same safety information shared with U.S. airlines “most likely” contributed to crash. Boeing initially suggested that the Ethiopian crash was due to pilot error–making the finding the latest blow to its battered reputation.Read more at The Daily Beast.

YouTube/Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording AcademyBritish broadcaster Piers Morgan has said he’s sorry to music power couple Beyoncé and Jay-Z after a guest invited on his YouTube show to discuss Sean “Diddy” Combs falsely claimed that the pair also had “hundreds of victims.”Singer-songwriter Jaguar Wright made the remark last week during an appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored, which focused on allegations against Combs, the disgraced music mogul facing racketeering and sex trafficking charges.“For four years I’ve been screaming not just Diddy, but Diddy and Jay-Z are monsters,” Wright said, going on to allege that the rapper, real name Shawn Carter, and his superstar singer spouse Beyoncé Knowles have “hundreds of victims with stories about what they've experienced.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Fox NewsThe hosts of Fox & Friends turned their faux outrage on Vice President Kamala Harris for continuing to campaign for president as Hurricane Milton prepares to hit Florida.They were incensed that Harris would appear on “light-hearted” shows such as The Howard Stern Show, The View and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert—where the two discussed foreign policy over beers—with the clean-up from Hurricane Helene continuing and as Hurricane Milton approaches Florida.“Even though you tape in the afternoon and it’s in New York, it’s not in Florida, the whole country is watching and this is what they saw,” co-host Brian Kilmeade said on Wednesday’s show before cutting to a clip of Colbert giving Harris a Miller High Life.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Marco Bello/REUTERSFormer president Donald Trump aggressively lashed out at CBS News on Wednesday, alleging the network’s 60 Minutes favorably edited its televised interview with Vice President Kamala Harris to make her sound better.“I've never seen this before, but the producers of 60 Minutes sliced and diced ("cut and pasted") Lyin' Kamala's answers to questions, which were virtually incoherent, over and over again, some by as many as four times in a single sentence or thought, all in an effort, possibly illegal as part of the ‘News Division,’ which must be licensed, to make her look ‘more Presidential,’ or a least, better,” Trump wrote in a Dickens-length sentence featured in a Truth Social post.The twice-impeached, convicted felon Republican nominee for president bellowed that the public was owed a “MAJOR AND IMMEDIATE APOLOGY” and called for CBS to be investigated.Read more at The Daily Beast.

BravoThis week’s episode of The Real Housewives of New York City ended with the conversation that fans have been dying to see since this season’s cast was announced.Season 2 of the Bravo series reboot—and technically Season 15 of the show, in general—added fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff as what the franchise calls a “friend of” the full-time ensemble of women. Immediately, headlines flooded the internet heralding the news: She is the first Real Housewives cast member who is a Scientologist.In Tuesday night’s episode, the RHONY cast had questions. Minkoff did not have answers.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Interview Magazine/Getty ImagesBy all accounts, it has been a grueling year for Jennifer Lopez.She dropped a multi-million dollar multimedia project about her relationship with actor Ben Affleck, only to see the movie-slash-album tank and the marriage careen suddenly onto the rocks. Under intense scrutiny from the tabloids, she canceled her summer concert tour in order to focus on her personal life, but wound up filing for divorce in August, precisely two years after the couple’s massive celebrity ceremony in 2022. On Instagram, Lopez appeared to be live-laugh-loving her way through the tabloid shitstorm.But in real life, she tells Interview magazine, the whole thing nearly did her in.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Joe Raedle/GettyThousands of “God Bless the USA” Bibles that Donald Trump has been hawking while seeking a return to the White House were printed in China, according to a report.Records show a printing company in the eastern city of Hangzhou shipped almost 120,000 of the books to the U.S. in February and March this year, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. News about the books—which Trump has promoted in partnership with country singer Lee Greenwood—comes after the Republican nominee has called for higher tariffs on Chinese imports, accusing the country of stealing American jobs.Databases using customs data tracking imports and exports show that the three shipments of Bibles had a total estimated value of $342,000—less than $3 per book—according to the AP. But the Trump-endorsed Bibles are then sold online for at least $59.99, meaning the Chinese-printed books could rake in up to $7 million in sales revenue.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Fox NewsLara Trump is confident Donald Trump will win in November thanks to unconventional new polling data: beverage napkins on airplanes.Appearing on The Ingraham Angle on Fox News on Tuesday, the Republican National Committee co-chair was asked about a new New York Times/ Siena poll finding that on the question of which candidate most represents change, Vice President Kamala Harris had a slight edge over her father-in-law among likely voters.“Polls like that, I think, are absolutely ridiculous,” Lara Trump told host Laura Ingraham. “I get slipped beverage napkins every time I get on an airplane saying, ‘We can’t wait to vote for Trump,’ ‘Go Trump,’ ‘Trump 2024.’”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Piers Morgan Uncensored/YouTubeLawyer and law professor Alan Dershowitz, 86, threatened to sue a debate opponent who called him an “old pervert” over his ties to the notorious sex trafficker and financier Jeffrey Epstein.During a combative appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored on Tuesday, YouTuber and author Mohammed Hijab interrupted a debate about Israel’s war on Gaza to ask the show’s host, British broadcaster Piers Morgan, if Dershowitz, formerly Epstein’s lawyer, had “leverage” on him.“There’s no leverage on me, no,” a confused Morgan replied. Hijab noted Morgan “has got a picture with [Ghislaine] Maxwell,” referring to a photo of him taken with the late sex criminal’s socialite co-conspirator at a book launch in 2013.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Illustration by Eric Faison/The Daily Beast/FX/Getty Images Norbert Leo Butz’s sinister version of New England Patriots’ head coach Bill Belichick first appeared in American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez as a king surrounded by a loyal court. He’s introduced in the FX series on NFL draft day in 2010, where Belichick’s obsession, knowledge, passion, builds to a mid-round draft pick. Stakes are lower—and risks more acceptable—than the expensive players in the early rounds.Belichick’s assistants resist when Belichick mentions drafting Hernandez in the fourth round. The Patriots have already drafted a tight end, Rob Gronkowski.“F--- it. I’ll use both of them,” says Belichick, and Butz plays him distant from the other coaches, chuckling as he sees two steps ahead to the forthcoming season. “Two tight ends with a full-back offset strong side. No one’s ever done that before.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Apple TV+Written and directed by Oscar-winner Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Roma), and starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Lesley Manville, Disclaimer has an unimpeachable pedigree. No amount of artistic talent, however, can salvage this seven-part series, which works when it embraces its pulpier instincts but unwisely opts, during its table-turning finale, to wag its finger at anyone who might have enjoyed its more thriller-ish aspects.It’s a grave misstep compounded by plotting that’s both distended and, at times, preposterous. Still, if less than the sum of its parts, it does boast a delicious performance from Kline as a man on a mission of a most devious sort.Premiering Oct. 11 on Apple TV+ and based on Renée Knight’s 2015 novel, Disclaimer opens with documentarian Catherine Ravenscroft (Blanchett) being feted at a gala by Christiane Amanpour—an immediate (if unintended by Cuarón) sign of her journalistic untrustworthiness. Catherine is praised for revealing “our own complicity in some of today’s most toxic sins,” and as it turns out, she’s believed by retired private school teacher Stephen Brigstocke (Kline) to be guilty of a heinous offense.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/ReutersI come today to praise Donald Trump, not bury him. With less than a month to go before Election Day, and with an oversized mug of tea at my side, I would like to take the moment to celebrate the former president and all he has brought to the nation.Nine years ago, most of the nation laughed at the brassy businessman when he descended his golden escalator to announce his candidacy for President of the United States in front of a crowd of paid extras. We laughed because Donald Trump has always been a laughable figure. Those of us who grew up in the New York area had long been accustomed to the braggadocious real estate developer elbowing his way in front of cameras, pontificating on the love lives of the famous, celebrating his own sexual conquests, bankrupting various businesses, and generally making a buffoon of himself.Nobody’s laughing now.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Kevin Lamarque/ReutersDonald Trump’s morning is surely off to an angry start Wednesday as Russia responds to reports of a special (and ongoing) relationship between the Republican nominee and Vladimir Putin. On Tuesday, excerpts from Watergate journalist Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book War accused Trump of gifting Putin a “bunch of Abbott Point of Care COVID test machines for his personal use” at the height of the pandemic, and of holding as many as seven “private” calls with the Russian president after leaving office. Worse for Trump, Putin’s camp is now saying Woodward’s account is at least partially true.“We also sent equipment at the beginning of the pandemic,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Bloomberg, claiming Russia had indeed received COVID tests from Trump. “But about the phone calls—it’s not true.” Speaking to the New York Times, Peskov called that element of Woodward’s reporting “a typical bogus story in the context of the pre-election political campaign.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

National Hurricane CenterStorm surge warnings covered almost the entire west coast of Florida in the early hours of Wednesday morning as “dangerous major hurricane” Milton strengthened on its way to the state, threatening to plunge city districts underwater and violently hurl construction cranes into nearby buildings.“I can’t stress enough that this is not an ‘if’ event. It’s a ‘when’ event,” Pinellas County Director of Emergency Management Cathie Perkins told a Tuesday evening news conference. “We’re going to get hit, and it’s going to be hard.”Milton was a Category 5 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 160 mph as of 1 a.m. ET on Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.Read more at The Daily Beast.