PEOPLE IN THE NEWS
MSNBC’s Williams calls images of missile launch ‘beautiful’
Brian Williams is facing online criticism for waxing poetic about what he called “beautiful pictures” of U.S. missiles launching during an attack on a Syrian air base.
Video released by the military shows Tomahawk missiles targeted for a Syrian airfield launching Thursday from the decks of U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea. During his MSNBC program, “The 11th Hour,” late Thursday night, Williams said the “beautiful pictures at night” tempted him to quote a line from a Leonard Cohen song: “I am guided by the beauty of our weapons.” He went on to call the images “beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments.”
Williams was quickly mocked and criticized on Twitter for the remarks, with some users suggesting they were insensitive to the realities of war.
Johansson: Ivanka Trump ‘baffles me’
Scarlett Johansson says Ivanka Trump could have a “big impact” by being vocal, and she’s baffled by the first daughter’s reluctance to take a public stance on controversial issues related to her father’s administration.
Speaking at the Women in the World summit Thursday in New York, Johansson referenced an interview Trump gave with CBS News earlier this week in which she suggested that she voices disagreement to her father “quietly and directly and candidly.”
Johansson portrayed Trump in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that showed Trump pitching a perfume called “Complicit.” Trump answered the notion that she’s complicit in her father’s policies by telling CBS, “If being complicit is wanting to be a force for good and to make a positive impact, then I’m complicit.”