NBC poll shows that Donald Trump now has 50% acceptance among conservatives, LA's economically segregated neighborhoods, Eazy E to Keanu: a chat with Jason Mitchell.
Coming to terms with Trump: Holdout Republicans might finally be accepting their frontrunner
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump swept Tuesday's East coast primaries by a landslide.
In his victory speech last night, Trump didn't mince words:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCC2dt_br-w
The wins come on the heels of a new NBC poll of around 10,000 adults. The sample reveals Trump has the support of just shy of 50 percent of GOP voters nationwide.
Are Republican voters who were once unsure about The Donald finally warming up to the billionaire?
Take Two put this question to David Merritt, political director for Luntz Global, a conservative messaging and communications firm out of New York.
Press the blue play button above to hear the interview.
Anaheim City Council tables Trump resolution, protester pepper sprays crowd
Five people including two children were pepper sprayed outside Anaheim City Hall Tuesday night as the City Council considered a resolution to denounce remarks by Donald Trump.
Following protests and five hours of public comment from more than 76 speakers, the Council decided to take no action on the matter, OC register reporter Joseph Pimentel told Take Two early Wednesday.
The resolution stated the Council would "reject and condemn the divisive rhetoric of presidential candidate Donald Trump," stating that his words are contrary to the state and U.S. constitutions, as well as with the city of Anaheim's values.
“The resolution is being offered on behalf of the tens of thousands that have been the recipients of the attacks, and those attacks have denigrated their basic humanity in many cases," Anaheim Councilwoman Kris Murray told KPCC's "Take Two" on Tuesday.
Pimentel told Take Two how the scene got out of hand:
It was crazy, to say the least. It really was an in-your-face type of thing. Two dozen Trump supporters were there. They had bullhorns. They were carrying American flags, and anyone who challenges them, just to talk about Donald Trump, five of them would swarm them and pepper them with questions: "Are you from here? Are you an illegal? Were you born here?" If you say you’re not from here, they’ll tell you to go back to Mexico. They’ll do anything to rile you up, but they won’t get physical.
Warning: The video below contains language that may be offensive to some.
It got ugly with #Pepperspray in front of #Anaheim City Hall. Sounds of a stun gun could be heard. Children hurt 6pm pic.twitter.com/oq9EFXgPAH
— michele gile (@michelegiletv) April 27, 2016
The gathering got physical, Pimentel said, when a Trump detractor who had been yelling profanities at Trump supporters jumped into their crowd and started pepper spraying people. Five people were pepper sprayed, including two children.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC2nNYzBG1g
“That was painful to see an 8-year-old get pepper sprayed and just crying hysterically, because pepper spray is not a laughing matter,” said Pimentel. “Grown men and police officers cry when they get pepper sprayed.”
The man who pepper sprayed the crowd was not apprehended or detained. Though there was a large police presence at City Hall, Pimentel said officers were not in that area when the incident occurred.
Anaheim is a very diverse city, and people are split over Donald Trump. That divide showed Tuesday, Pimentel noted, even among the Anaheim City Council, which voted 3-2 to table the resolution.
“Mayor Tom Tait led the way and felt a local city government has no business to weigh in on a candidate or a national campaign,” Pimentel said.
After about five hours of hearing public comment, the Council took no action on the Trump resolution. Councilwoman Murray tried to amend the resolution to denounce all candidates who use divisive rhetoric, not just Trump, but Tait considered that to be a completely new resolution.
A Trump rally is scheduled for Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Orange County Fairgrounds Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa.
'It's huge!': Endeavour shuttle fuel tank makes its way through the Panama Canal
In the fall of 2012, the space shuttle Endeavour wowed crowds as it traveled 12-miles throughout Southern California.
It went from Los Angeles International Airport, through Inglewood, to the California Science Center in Exposition Park.
Now a massive fuel tank built for the space shuttle is on its way to L.A. via the Panama Canal.
NPR correspondent Carrie Kahn was there as the tank made its way through the canal yesterday and she took a moment to speak to Take Two host Alex Cohen about its journey.
Interview Highlights
Describing the fuel tank:
"It's huge! It's really big and its very long. It's longer than the shuttle...they call it the banana I was expecting to see this long yellow thing come through but it's very rusted colored orange, oxidized. And it looks like a bullet...it actually is the shape of a certain bullet size and it was really big to see it come through the canal."
On the route:
"It was outside New Orleans, in Louisiana at a NASA facility there and that's where these fuel tanks were built. And there was a large number of fuel tanks that were used in the shuttle operations for many years until the Columbia disaster and that's why this is the only remaining fuel tank left of its kind. So, the California science center wanted that because what they want to do...they want to construct an exhibit where the shuttle is actually upright and it is in launch position and they have the rocket boosters...and they wanted the fuel tank."
To hear the full interview, click the blue play button above.
Sports Roundup: The NFL draft and the fate of the Lakers
The Los Angeles Rams make the first overall selection in the NFL Draft and the Lakers have a job opening for a new head coach, who could they choose? We hit the big stories in sports with
(To hear the segment, click the blue arrow. And we mistakenly identified college QB Carson Wentz as playing for South Dakota when he is from North Dakota State.)
For 'Straight Outta Compton' star Jason Mitchell, Key & Peele's Keanu a 'juicier' triumph
The new film "Keanu" stars the comic duo known as Key & Peele as Clarence and Rell, two average, law-abiding citizens living in Los Angeles.
The two suddenly find themselves swept up in a life of crime when they try to retrieve Rell's adorable kitten, Keanu, who's fallen into the hands of a notorious gang leader named Cheddar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjEusWO6VPg
Cheddar's posse is made up of guys who couldn't quite make it into the Bloods or the Crips; they're called The Blips. Among the Blips gang is a man named Bud, played by actor Jason Mitchell.
You might remember Mitchell from his performance as Eazy-E in last year's Straight "Outta Compton."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOtOjEpkDMI
Mitchell sat down with Take Two's Alex Cohen to talk about his unconventional journey to stardom.
You started acting not that long ago. How'd you get into it?
I actually started acting to make new friends. I was 23-years-old, and I was kinda working dead-end jobs. It was really just unfulfilling. One day I heard this random ad on the radio about this six-week acting class and I went there and I just really, really, really fell in love with it. By the middle of the fourth week, they had an agent come in, and she's like, 'I need everybody to take this a little bit more seriously because this could change your life. Because it's about to change this guy's life.'
She's pointing to you and saying 'this guy's life is going to change?'
Yeah. It took me a little while — maybe like five or six months to book — but it turned into a career.
Indeed, it did, but not without a couple of hitches in the beginning. You landed a part in a Mark Wahlberg film called "Contraband." As I understand it you made the movie and then you got into a little bit of trouble. Would you mind telling us a bit about what happened there?
Yeah, I was actually on probation for something that I had done prior. The movie was just about to come out, and it was just about to premiere, and it premiered in France too, and it was going to be amazing, but I violated, and they sent me to jail, and I had to watch all of that incarcerated.
It put me in a different mind frame because it was one extreme to another. I potentially have the potential to be able to be all the way in France with Mark Wahlberg, and I'm in jail? Are you serious? So I'm just like, you know what, if God lets me out of this then it's no more.
This new film, "Keanu," with Key & Peele, you are once again playing a gangster. He's part of this crew called The Blips. When you first read this script — especially coming out of "Straight Outta Compton" — what did you make of it?
It was hysterical to me. After I did Straight Outta Compton, the main thing that I was focused on was not becoming type-cast. So I was like, you know what? I think it would be cool to play somewhat of the same character, but totally different and make it all about comedic timing versus just telling jokes. I felt like it was a different element that I could show to — not only to my fans — but to show the filmmakers around me — that I got a few things in the trick bag.
Jason, when the premiere of the film that you worked on with Mark Wahlberg happened, you were in jail. The premiere of this film happens tonight. You get to be there. What do you think that moment's going to be like for you?
It's triumphant in a different kind of way because "Straight Outta Compton" was the greatest thing that ever happened to me, but I felt like it was that time where luck met preparation and timing. But I did this movie before "Straight Outta Compton" came out, so as an actor I feel like I went and accomplished something totally different. And I went and put my feet in the sand where I choose to put it, and it just makes it a whole lot juicier for me, you know?
Press the blue play button above to hear the interview.
(Dialogue has been edited.)
What Japanese monks and Finnish merchants are teaching us about climate change
You wouldn't think that a Japanese monk and a merchant from Finland would have much in common, but it turns out they do: Climate change.
The men — and others — kept meticulous records dating back almost 700 years, and are now providing scientists with the earliest evidence of global shifts in the environment.
The data has been crunched and more details are now available in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
Sapna Sharma is a professor at York University in Toronto, Canada, and John Magnuson is a professor emeritus of limnology and zoology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. They authored the report, and Magnuson joined host A Martinez to tell more about what they found.
Interview highlights
How the records were discovered:
"Well in the 1990s, NSF (National Science Foundation) sponsored a workshop that we did in which we gathered scientists from lake areas around the northern hemisphere that had long ice records... and one of the records was this record from Lake Suwa, and Dr. Arai brought that record, and another record was from River Torne, and then we've stayed with these scientists and interacted with them, and updated them, so that we could do this paper using the most current data."
On the original purpose of these records:
"The Japanese priests were keeping the records as part of a legend in the Shinto religion in which they had tried to explain these ridges that would form across the lake, ice ridges which we call them, they called them omiwatari... and it was a god, one of the male gods, would cross the lake when the lake was frozen to visit the female god on the other side of the lake, and the steps caused this ridge to form. Also those early Shinto priests were probably the intelligentsia of those communities, and they were trying to use these records to see if they could predict whether the rice crop would be good the next year. In the case of Finland, the gentleman who started the records was a businessman, and when the river was frozen, there weren't any bridges at that time, all of a sudden you could get across the river, it was important to commerce and trade, and when he no longer made the records, other people carried it on for the same reason."
What these records tell us about climate change:
"Basically what we did is we had records with human observers that went to before the Industrial Revolution began. And so we thought that a reasonable thing for us to do would be to analyze how fast the ice dates were changing for the period of time we had before the start of the Industrial Revolution, and then the period after the start of the Industrial Revolution. And in both systems what we found is that the recent records after the Industrial Revolution, the ice dates were moving towards a warmer condition, meaning the lake froze later and the river broke up earlier in the case of the Finnish one. And so in both cases, the ice dates after the Industrial Revolution started were changing more rapidly than before the Industrial Revolution began. I thought this was a pretty key finding."
#MoreThanMean: The online harassment of women sports writers
The Internet can be a pretty hateful space.
A place for trolls to hurl hateful words at all sorts of people...
Especially women who report on sports.
A new public service announcement titled hashtag More Than Mean aims to show just how ugly it can get.
In the video - several male sports fans read out real-life tweets about Julie Dicaro with Sports Illustrated and Sarah Spain with ESPN to the women themselves...
You can watch the video above, but a warning - the language got a bit rough.
Take Two's Alex Cohen was joined by the man who produced that video - Brad Burke is a sports marketing writer with the "Just Not Sports" podcast.
"In the process of producing the show and working in the [sports] industry, we have come across women who are just facing online harassment day in and day out," Burke said. "What we wanted to do... was to find a little bit more of an emotional way for the men to understand the power of these words."
Burke and his team told the sports fans- all male- about what they were going to be reading to the two women. It started out light-hearted enough (similar in tone to Jimmy Kimmel's regular segment 'Mean Tweets.').
But once the vulgarity and harshness of the tweets increased, it was clear that something had shifted in the shoot.
"The only way to describe it was the air got sucked out of the room," Burke said. "You could see them squirm in their chair. You could see them break eye contact. Some laughed nervously like they were in trouble. [It] elicited a response that was ... emotional, was physical and very troubling to these guys."
Through it all, Dicaro and Spain sat unmoved.
"The dignity and the sort of self-confidence that they display in the video is a large reason for why it's resonated so much with people," Burke said. "They're not complaining. They're just saying, 'See what we're dealing with?'"
The "#MoreThanMean" video has already been seen by millions of people on Facebook and YouTube. Burke does not believe that the attitudes of every online troll, but he does hope the message behind the video does stick with some people
"For all the sensible sports fans... on Twitter, or online or on Reddit comment boards, I hope that maybe this makes them think about it a little bit more and ... maybe grow a little less numb to it," Burke said. "Perhaps that will enable guys who are on the fence to think of this as less than a game and think 'Hey there's a human being on the other side of this. Do I really need to say these things about a sports team or a game or their opinions on it?'"
To hear the full conversation, click the blue player above.
The Styled Side: wedding planning goes extreme
Weddings are meant to be romantic, joyous and intimate.
But as people who've planned one know, planning a wedding can be crazy.
And in Southern California, couples have managed to turn the prep up to 11 to make sure their day is perfect.
Michelle Dalton Tyree from Fashion Trends Daily joins Take Two with some of the extreme services and trends that she's seeing in the wedding world.
"Out are facials and day spas," she says, "and what's in: your plastic surgeon."
Tyree recently got a press release with the subject line, "Bridal Bodies with Dr. Aaron Rollins."
Dr. Rollins is with Elite Body Sculpture in Beverly Hills, and the business is advertising what's called the Airsculpt Laser Liposculpture for women.
There is also a new weight loss treatment called Orbera, where a doctor will temporarily place a soft, rubber-like balloon into your stomach to help curb appetite. It is very new to America, having been used for years in many countries overseas.
L.A. bariatric surgeon Dr. Jeremy Korman says he plans to bring Orbera to a local market by going to bridal shows and placing ads in bridal magazines.
For the day of, Tyree says she's seeing another trend: hiring a maid of social.
That is, a person designated to craft the complete online presence of the marriage.
"I found this company called Maid of Social is billing itself as the answer to your social media woes on wedding day," she says.
They say they will post on your social media accounts, create hashtags, design a Snapchat geo filter and and find viral ways to get bridal vendors to notice you.
"In general, couples paying big bucks for web sites just for the wedding," says Tyree.
Tyree adds that couples are looking to give their guests an extravagant experience that transports them to another place.
"The pressure now is insane! We have social media to thank for pushing the envelope."
Follow Michelle Dalton Tyree on Instagram at @FashionTrendsDaily