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 Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/GettyJoseph Weisberg's book Russia Upside Down started with a lecture he never gave. The Americans showrunner worked briefly in the CIA, where his fascination with, and research about, Russia began. However, the lecture would be on counterintelligence, which wasn't his field of expertise.
Instead of throwing away his Russia notes for the canceled class, he decided to write a book about it. And his stance is clear: Russia is not as bad as we think it is.
"I read this book by a guy who had been a KGB officer and his book was about him and his friends [in the] KGB," he tells Molly Jong-Fast on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal. "And they sounded exactly like me and my friends from the CIA."
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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 NBCColin Jost opened the Halloween edition of Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" with the "most haunting image" he saw this past week. No, it wasn't Kanye West in his creepy white mask, he joked: "Sorry, Ye, he goes by Ye now. Even though no one looks at this and goes, ‘Yay!'"
He was actually talking about Steve Bannon, "former White House, I want to say garbage man," who was held in contempt of Congress this week for avoiding a subpoena in the January 6th investigation. "But this is what Bannon wants," Jost said. "It just plays into his whole persecuted messiah complex. But Bannon is similar to Jesus in that he looks like he's been dead for three days."
"After weeks of intense media scrutiny, Facebook is planning to change its company's name," Jost continued. "If you want to know how Facebook is handling the pressure, the answer is exactly as well as Kanye.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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 Getty ImagesIn plain language, President Joe Biden rejected former President Donald Trump's assertion of executive privilege over executive branch information pertaining to the Jan. 6 insurrection. In a letter to the archivist of the United States, White House counsel shared that executive privilege "is not in the best interests" of the country. The White House's interpretation is consistent with the first use of executive privilege by George Washington and the powerful precedent that he established in 1796. This limited scope of executive privilege, and the inherit right of congressional oversight, is a welcome step toward a more balanced government.
The words "executive privilege" do not exist in the Constitution, nor is there a right to presidential privacy articulated in the original document. Yet, as presidential authority expanded over the course of the 20th century, so too did presidents' assertion of executive privilege—all without additional legislation, statute, or constitutional amendment defining this right. Instead, the president's authority to keep certain information private stems from precedent, custom, and norms.
On March 30, 1796, President George Washington asserted executive privilege for the first time. A few days prior, Jeffersonian Republicans in the House of Representatives had requested all executive papers pertaining to the Jay Treaty. John Jay had ne
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 Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin said Saturday that if he is elected the commonwealth's next governor he will "ban" the teaching of critical race theory on his first day in office.
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 The State Department on Friday conceded that there are significantly more Americans trapped in Afghanistan than previously known -- leading to Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., to accuse the administration of a "betrayal" of Americans abroad.
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 College Republicans at Washington & Lee University were told last month to take down materials in support of Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin -- a move the university said was done to keep it in compliance with its non-profit status under the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
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 KOB TV News/Handout via REUTERSThere were previous concerns raised about the 24-year-old armorer who was hired on Alec Baldwin's film Rust, with two production sources telling The Daily Beast that filming on the set of her last movie was briefly stopped after she allegedly gave a gun to an 11-year-old actress without checking it properly.
"She was a bit careless with the guns, waving it around every now and again," said a source, who worked alongside armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed on the upcoming Nicolas Cage film, The Old Way. "There were a couple times she was loading the blanks and doing it in a fashion that we thought was unsafe."
Gutierrez-Reed was identified in a Santa Fe Sheriff's Office search warrant affidavit as the armorer on set when Baldwin was given a prop gun he believed was safe. Baldwin discharged the gun, fatally striking 42-year-old cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injuring 48-year-old director Joel Souza. No charges have been brought but the sheriff's office's investigation is ongoing.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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 NBCOver the course of nine seasons as a cast member on Saturday Night Live, Jason Sudeikis played dozens of recurring characters, perhaps most famously then-Vice President Joe Biden. In the years since, the show first went the stunt-casting route—to disastrous effect—with Jim Carrey, before briefly turning the role over to Alex Moffat and then this season letting new featured player James Austin Johnson take the reins.
When the Ted Lasso star returned to host SNL for the first time this week, they couldn't help but give him another shot at the current president.
After a cold open in which Chloe Fineman's Jen Psaki reluctantly informed SNL's new Biden about his sinking poll numbers, Johnson looked into the camera and said, "I don't understand. People used to like me. The press would call me ‘Uncle Joe.' I miss the old me. Where the hell did that guy go?"
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Kim Leadbeater says a "serious conversation" about the safety of people in public life is needed.
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 The U.S. will "unfortunately" continue to delay the public release of records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and officials say the COVID-19 pandemic is to blame.
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The secret government files were originally supposed to be publicly disclosed by next week.
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 An Arizona political commentator charged in the US Capitol riot spoke at a small right-wing rally in Phoenix last month that was attended by over a dozen Proud Boys, even though a federal judge had ordered him not to associate with any members of the extremist group.
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An airstrike in northwest Syria Friday killed senior al Qaeda leader Abdul Hamid al-Matar, according to the US Central Command.
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 Orange County Department of Corrections via ReutersMinutes after Alex Murdaugh called Hampton County dispatchers claiming a "white fella" pulled over and shot him point-blank in the head on a South Carolina backroad, authorities began to receive calls from witnesses who cast immediate doubt on the lawyer's extraordinary tale.
"We are on Salkehatchie Road and there is a male on the side of the road with blood all over him and he's waving his hands," a woman told emergency dispatchers, according to newly released 911 calls obtained by The Daily Beast. "He's fine—he looks fine but it kinda looks like a set-up so we didn't stop."
The call came just minutes after Murdaugh told a Hampton County dispatcher that he had stopped alongside a church after getting a flat tire and someone pulled over and offered to help him. The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division released three 911 calls from the Sept. 4 incident on Friday, totally 11 minutes, as the roiling saga continues to make national headlines.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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US Border Patrol made nearly 1.66 million arrests for unlawful crossings on the US-Mexico border over the past year, the highest annual number of apprehensions on record, according to year-end data released by the agency Friday.
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 AP Photo/Patrick SemanskyAn event listing for the Virginia Tea Party's "Backlash to Socialism" summit makes no mention of Glenn Youngkin. The aspiring governor is absent from a photo gallery of the event, and there's not a peep about it on his Facebook page, where he posted pictures from a different event that same day.
But Youngkin recorded an address that played at the event, which was sponsored by the far-right John Birch Society and featured a keynote speaker who went on a conspiratorial diatribe about supposed communist infiltration, according to videos reviewed by The Daily Beast.
Youngkin, Virginia's Republican gubernatorial nominee, is running a tight race against Democrat Terry McAuliffe. In a bid to flip the democratically held office, Youngkin has pitched himself to the state's moderates and independents, and maintained a careful distance from the GOP's more extreme voices. But Youngkin's path to victory also requires support from Donald Trump's base—and video from the June 26 Tea Party event suggests that Youngkin is privately comfortable courting more fringe votes.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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