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Get in, loser! We’re going to Oklahoma

3 October 2026 at 16:30

President Donald Trump’s motorcade approached 100 mph on wet highways Thursday after bad weather grounded his aircraft — and the president boasted about the high-speed trip in real time.

Trump was traveling from a campaign event at a Peterbilt Motors plant in Denton, Texas, to a rally roughly 90 miles away in Durant, Oklahoma, when stormy weather disrupted his travel plans. The president would typically make the trip by air, but conditions prevented planes and helicopters from landing in Oklahoma.

Rather than postpone the rally, Trump opted for the presidential motorcade.

“The Beast is going faster than it has ever gone before,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, referring to the heavily armored presidential limousine.

Reporters traveling with the president confirmed the unusually speedy trip. A White House press van reached 98 mph at one point as the motorcade traveled north toward Oklahoma, according to Reuters and CBS News.

A little more than 20 minutes after his first post, Trump offered another update.

“I’m almost there Oklahoma — 10 minutes!” he wrote.

Trump ultimately arrived in Durant nearly two hours behind schedule. Once onstage, he gave supporters his own account of the decision to make the drive.

Trump said aides had warned him that the weather was too bad to take either a helicopter or plane and suggested canceling the Oklahoma appearance. He instead asked how fast his presidential limousine could travel.

“We could go close to 100 miles per hour,” Trump recalled being told.

“Get your asses in that car,” Trump said he responded. “We’re going to Oklahoma.”


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The president was in Oklahoma as part of a 32-day campaign blitz ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, campaigning in Durant for Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Mazzei and U.S. Senate candidate Kevin Hern after appearing with Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton in Texas.

Trump said he refused to skip Oklahoma in part because of his electoral history in the state, telling the crowd that he had won all 77 counties in each of his three presidential campaigns.

No injuries were reported during the high-speed motorcade. Trump did not provide a measured speed for the Beast itself. The speed limits on the roads between the two cities range from 45 mph to 75 mph depending on the stretch of road.

The post Get in, loser! We’re going to Oklahoma appeared first on Salon.com.

Brad Pitt’s comeback act has faltered

29 September 2026 at 00:45

Brad Pitt and Paramount Pictures have quite a bit in common these days. Both Pitt and Paramount have leaned into machismo to appeal to a wider male demographic; both are trying to salvage their reputations after a string of tumultuous events and bad press; and neither has put out a good movie in over a year. Is it really any wonder that their latest collaboration, the by-the-numbers survival film “Heart of the Beast,” was crushed by a seven-year-old superhero movie?

If you’ve kept up with the headlines, probably not. After David Ellison acquired Paramount and set his sights on Warner Bros., goodwill has been hard to come by for the studio. Likewise with Pitt, a string of abuse allegations from his ex-wife, Angelina Jolie, led to the actor favoring producing over acting, stepping behind the scenes to minimize the damage. Perhaps if viewers don’t see Pitt as much, they’ll forget the allegations and embrace him once more as a movie star. When “F1” did gangbusters numbers last summer, it looked as though that strategy might work.

But with “Heart of the Beast” generating a fraction of the response Pitt’s films did even less than a decade ago, it’s evident that his star power has taken a hit. Case in point: “Heart of the Beast” was bested in its opening weekend by “Avengers Endgame: Encore,” a theatrical rerelease of Marvel’s 2019 hit. Though the new edition includes a few minutes of new footage, it’s telling that a pre-pandemic slice of superhero action — that any viewer could easily throw on in their living room at the push of a button — stomped all over Pitt’s brand new film.

Whether the underperformance is the result of Pitt’s smug Hollywood persona, or the fact that “Heart of the Beast” — where Pitt and his trusty dog, both Army vets, must preposterously brave the elements — is just “Homeward Bound” for beer-drinking buddies, is hard to say exactly. But it’s telling that, unless a massively popular sport with a built-in audience is involved, the turnout for a Pitt movie is waning. Even the faux-prestige of 2022’s “Babylon” couldn’t sway viewers. If neither Oscar-bait nor dude movies are working for Pitt, perhaps he should consider that positioning himself onscreen as the picture of militarized masculinity might not appeal to those who read the news.

The post Brad Pitt’s comeback act has faltered appeared first on Salon.com.

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