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      For Donald Trump, the Recriminations Will Be Televised

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      The former president’s trials aren’t being aired. That isn’t stopping him from turning them into a political reality show.The civil-fraud case against Donald J. Trump’s businesses in New York, in which he was ordered to pay a penalty of $355 million, was not televised. Neither was his civil trial for the defamation of E. Jean Carroll. Nor — barring an unlikely change in federal court policy — will be his looming federal election-interference trial.But outside the courtroom, the show goes on.In each case, Mr. Trump has sought out the cameras, or brought in his own, to offer a stream-of-consciousness heave of legal complaints and re-election arguments. In the process, the former reality-TV host and current presidential candidate has turned his many legal cases into one-sided TV productions and campaign ads.To TV producers, because Mr. Trump is a former president, a candidate and high-profile defendant, his on-camera tirades are news. But there is also a kind of transaction at work. TV news craves conflict and active visuals. There are only so many times you can show a motorcade, or reporters cooling their heels in the street. Mr. Trump’s appearances give them sound, fury and B-roll.At the same time, Mr. Trump gets the kind of unfiltered access to the airwaves that networks were, once upon a brief time, wary of giving a candidate notorious for fabrications and conspiracy theories.On the day a judge set a trial date for his Manhattan criminal case stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn star, cable news networks took him live as he called the case a Biden-campaign plot to steal the election: “This is their way of cheating this time. Last time, they had a different way.”On Friday evening, after the civil-fraud ruling, he spoke to the cameras at his home and private club Mar-a-Lago, claiming that the case (brought by the New York attorney general) “all comes out of Biden,” accusing the judge of corruption, citing his election poll numbers and lamenting that “the migrants come in and they take over New York.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Genius: MLK/X’ Offers Portraits of the Icons as Vital Young Men

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      “We wanted to take them off the T-shirts and make them real,” said Gina Prince-Bythewood, who created the series with her husband Reggie Rock Bythewood.The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X are among American history’s most thoroughly chronicled figures, their voices and mannerisms captured forever on recording after recording, their lives picked over in book after book.By himself, Malcolm X has been the subject of two Pulitzer-winning biographies in the past 13 years and just last year Jonathan Eig’s “King: A Life” landed a spot on Barack Obama’s yearly best-books list. Both men adorn countless T-shirts, posters and memes. They aren’t just people; they’re also symbols — of civil rights, of social progress, of a decade that saw many of its heroes murdered.But symbols don’t make for particularly compelling drama. So when Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Aaron Pierre signed on to play King and Malcolm X, respectively, in the new National Geographic series “Genius: MLK/X,” which premiered earlier this month, they knew their imperative was to make their iconic characters as human as possible and leave more famous portrayals in the past.“The first thing I had to do, and the first thing I needed everyone around me to do, was to stop speaking about them as icons,” Harrison said in a video interview last month alongside Pierre. “I had to live in the moment that they existed. They did not know who they were or where they were going.”Gina Prince-Bythewood, who, with her husband, Reggie Rock Bythewood, are among the executive producers of the series, put it this way: “We wanted to take them off the T-shirts and make them real and tangible for an audience. And to do that, you need to show their humanity.”Jayme Lawson, as Betty Shabazz, and Pierre in “Genius.” The series emphasizes the strength and support of the men’s wives.Richard DuCree/National GeographicWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Walking Dead’: Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira Are Back. Will Audiences Follow?

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      When Rick Grimes, the rugged, righteous former sheriff played by Andrew Lincoln in AMC’s zombie horror series “The Walking Dead,” was written out of the series at Lincoln’s request in its ninth season, the show seemed to lose its hero, its heart and its hopeful moral center. A well-weathered and much brutalized leader, Rick was part of an ever-expanding ensemble but always felt like the main character.Rick’s departure created a vacuum that the show — which concluded in November 2022 after more than 150 episodes and 11 seasons — could never quite fill, even as a six-year time jump moved the story ahead into the future. Audiences seemed to lose interest, too: Ratings plummeted toward the end of the show’s run to a fraction of what they were during its mid-2010s peak popularity.Rick was never actually killed off: He left “The Walking Dead” under mysterious (and somewhat contentious) circumstances, whisked away by an unexplained helicopter with the promise of one day returning in a planned series of movies. Those movies instead morphed into a new six-part mini-series that reveals what happened to Rick after his sudden departure. “The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live,” premiering Feb. 25 on AMC and AMC+, finds Lincoln reprising his signature role in a new setting: a dystopian metropolis called the Civic Republic ruled by a military police force called the Civic Republic Military, or C.R.M.“The Ones Who Live” reunites Rick with his wife, Michonne, the katana-wielding firebrand played by Danai Gurira, who left “The Walking Dead” early in the show’s 10th season. Gurira and Lincoln have stepped up to serve as executive producers on “The Ones Who Live,” with Gurira also credited as a creator alongside Scott M. Gimple, the former “Walking Dead” showrunner and current chief content officer for the “Walking Dead” universe.Lincoln and Gurira starred together for many years in “The Walking Dead” until Lincoln left in Season 9, and Gurira in Season 10.Jackson Lee Davis/AMCIn a video interview from Los Angeles just before the premiere screening of “The Ones Who Live,” Lincoln and Gurira were chatty and playful, with the air of old friends who are totally at ease together. Lincoln, blithe and funny, kept insisting that Gurira answer questions first, while Gurira, trying to hastily scarf down a salad, mimicked him back: “You go ahead.” “No, you go ahead!” “No, YOU go ahead!” They eventually managed to discuss why they left “The Walking Dead,” why they came back and how “The Ones Who Live” differs from the original. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Best True Crime to Stream: Viral Stories With a Twist

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      What happens when widespread attention plays an unexpected role in a crime or investigation? Here are four picks across television, documentaries and podcasts that explore the question.These days, it’s common for a true crime story to go viral, but that interest often gathers momentum only after an investigation, documentary, podcast or online conversation brings to light a previously unfamiliar saga. For this streaming list, I wanted to look instead at stories that were, to some degree, viral already, and where that buzz was essential to the yarn itself — altering or shaping the unusual events. Here are four memorable offerings.Documentary film“The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker”Caleb McGillvary, known as Kai, may have been among the first so-called milkshake ducks, a term for a noncelebrity who delights the internet, only to fall from grace.In 2013, he was interviewed for an on-the-scene news segment in which he recounted how he had intervened to stop a crime while hitchhiking in Fresno, Calif. The video, where he is referenced as “Kai, the Homeless Hitchhiker With a Hatchet” quickly went viral, and McGillvary — a goofy, charismatic, eccentric vagabond — was hailed as a hero.Quickly came a bonanza of memes and television appearances — including a segment on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” — as well as talks of his own reality show. But the good times didn’t last. A few months later, he was arrested on charges that he had killed a man in New Jersey.This 2023 Netflix documentary, from the director Colette Camden, unpacks McGillvary’s internet fame, the subsequent fallout and his murder trial. It also serves as a time capsule of sorts, capturing the frenetic pace and fickle mood of American web culture in the mid-2010s.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Late Night Recaps Trump’s Double-Trouble Trial Day

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      “The only way to follow all of the action was to have multiple TVs,” Stephen Colbert said. “That’s why I watched all the proceedings today at a Buffalo Wild Wings.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.‘An Insane Day for America’Former President Donald Trump had two simultaneous criminal trials on Thursday: one in New York regarding falsified business records and another in Georgia pertaining to election interference.Stephen Colbert called it “an insane day for America, because it’s a regular day for Donald Trump.” He reminded viewers that in addition to those two cases and a civil fraud trial, the former president was “also facing the Jan. 6 trial in Washington D.C., the classified documents case in Florida, Colorado trying to throw him off the ballot for insurrection, and his appeal of the verdict of the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, in which a jury has already found that Trump committed sexual assault.”He concluded, “And yet, despite all this, people want to hire this maniac to be president.”“I know how numb we’ve become, but it’s not normal. No other candidate for the presidency has ever had to pause his campaign to defend himself in multiple courts. And I’d like to point out that in all seven of his cases, no one — no one — doubts that he did these things. We’re just sitting around patiently waiting to find out if the wheels of justice will grind fast enough for there to be any consequences.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And the media is covering it like it’s any other political story, like it’s all horse race. But in this horse race, one of the horses is old, while one of the horses is old, has hoof-in-mouth disease, and keeps quoting horse Hitler.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“This morning, Don Trump was back in the warm embrace of the American judicial system, the only place that truly loves and appreciates him.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“This is his version of uniting the country: criminal trials in the North and the South.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Trump unsuccessfully tried to get his trial in New York dismissed today, while he is also trying to get the prosecutor in Georgia dismissed. It’s a regular Dismiss America pageant that he’s running.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s never good when you’re summoned to court and you’re, like, ‘I can’t, I have court.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Trump didn’t attend the Georgia hearing, and I get it — it’s so annoying getting invited to a destination trial.” — JIMMY FALLON“The only way to follow all of the action was to have multiple TVs. That’s why I watched all the proceedings today at a Buffalo Wild Wings.” — STEPHEN COLBERTWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What to Watch This Weekend: An Icy Adventure

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      The star of “Free Solo” explores Greenland’s imperiled glaciers in the docuseries “Arctic Ascent With Alex Honnold,” now on Hulu.A scene from “Arctic Ascent With Alex Honnold.”National Geographic/Matt PycroftThoughtful personal growth, informed ideas about pending global disaster and moments of staggering athletic achievement are sprinkled throughout the mini-series “Arctic Ascent With Alex Honnold,” but they all take a back seat to the show’s sense of natural wonder. The cinematography in “Ascent” is staggeringly beautiful, and a ton of it is mesmerizing drone footage. (There’s so much drone footage that it includes drone shots of other drones.)The three-part story, which aired on National Geographic and is available now on Hulu, follows an expedition through Greenland’s imperiled glaciers. Honnold, the gutsy and gifted rock climber from “Free Solo,” anchors a group that includes two other elite rock climbers, a glaciologist who brightly describes her lifelong love of ice, a charismatic adventurer and a local expert.Honnold’s independence and single-mindedness were central to “Free Solo,” but here he has broadened his horizons a little, and the show leverages its excitement factor with its sense of ecological urgency. He and his climbing companions want to be the first people to climb Ingmikortilaq, a soaring, rocky cliff in a fjord in Greenland, and as part of the journey, they also help the glaciologist collect data and explain why the glaciers melting would be so disastrous for the planet.More people knowing and caring about a remote part of Greenland probably benefits humanity at large, but TV-wise, things are more exciting when people are getting beaned in the face by falling rocks. “Arctic” has a restrained respectability about it, but part of me yearned for the conventions of less-classy fare. In the third episode, Honnold and Mikey Schaefer, one of the other climbers, disagree about safety. Honnold argues that they’ve come all this way and might as well see the plan through, while Schaefer says that’s a terrible way to assess risk. Entire seasons of “Real Housewives” franchises have been built around less, but this just breezes by. When the expedition members lament that lousy weather has prevented the support team from bringing all the necessary gear, the YouTube monster in me wanted an entire play-by-play of every item they’d packed.But while I could do with a little more intrigue, there are worse ways to be wooed than with splendor. More

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      Review: ‘The Vince Staples Show’ Is a Hip-Hop Head Trip

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      Netflix adds to the rap-comedy canon with five episodes that showcase the star’s absurdist, deadpan sensibility.There have been enough offbeat comedies about rappers and hip-hop lately to make up their own genre — the shape-shifting surreality of “Atlanta,” the scatological farce of “Dave,” the social-media savvy of “Rap Sh!t” — not to mention a list of dramas and docu-series from “Empire” to “Wu-Tang: An American Saga.”On Thursday, Netflix adds “The Vince Staples Show,” an impressionistic alt-comedy built around the deadpan sensibility of its star. It is mordantly funny and visually arresting, although at five brief episodes, it’s more of an EP than a magnum opus.Staples, once affiliated with the alternative hip-hop collective Odd Future, is known not just for his music but for a self-aware sense of humor that’s made him a sharp presence on social media. In the series, whose executive producers include Staples and Kenya Barris (“black-ish”), he plays a version of himself, flexing his sardonic voice while playing with the sense of danger that informs many of his lyrics.In the first episode, Vince is pulled over after making a U-turn in his home town of Long Beach, Calif. The experience is part nightmare (he’s locked up with a white man with Nazi tattoos and a behemoth with a reputation for knifework); part satire (when he picks up the communal phone, a voice says, “Hello, and welcome to jail!” followed by the sound of children cheering); part hallucination (for his meal, he’s handed a sandwich topped with a Draw Two Uno card).Outside jail, Vince’s world is just as much of a comic dystopia. A bank visit turns into a combination heist flick and Jordan Peele horror story. On a trip to a water park, the loudspeaker announcements are cryptically menacing (“All children must be accompanied by adults of the same ethnic background”), and the cartoony park mascot glares at Vince with ill intent.Unlike other recent hip-hop comedies, the rap-business part of “Vince Staples” stays largely offscreen. We don’t see Vince recording or performing, though he does run into the megastar Rick Ross. Instead, his fame is the backdrop and premise. It gets him recognized in lockup (an admiring guard quotes his song “Norf Norf” at him); it gets him an invitation to speak at his old school that goes bizarrely south; it gets him targeted by relatives looking for loans.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel: Tom Suozzi Has ‘Very Big Clown Shoes to Fill’

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      Kimmel joked that New York’s special House election results had to be verified “to make sure the winner wasn’t George Santos in disguise.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Anybody But SantosTom Suozzi, a Democrat, won a special election on Tuesday to fill the congressional seat previously occupied by George Santos. The victory shrank the Republicans’ thin majority in the House. Jimmy Kimmel congratulated Suozzi on his win on Wednesday, saying, “You have some very big clown shoes to fill.”“You guys remember George Santos? Congressman, alleged felon, Sephora platinum member, Nobel laureate, Olympic gold medalist, Clark Kent having allergic reaction and Super Bowl M.V.P.?” — SETH MEYERS“They actually had to wait to verify the election to make sure the winner wasn’t George Santos in disguise.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s weird when you know nothing about someone but still know they’re an improvement.” — JIMMY FALLON“That’s right, Tom Suozzi is replacing George Santos, and just from looking at their resumes, the two of them are pretty different. For instance, under education, Suozzi put, ‘B.A. from Boston College.’ Santos put, ‘Ph.D. from Hogwarts.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Valentine’s Day Edition)“Today was Valentine’s Day, so I know what I’m getting tonight — eight hours of sleep.” — SETH MEYERS“As I’m sure you’re aware, it is Valentine’s Day. If you weren’t aware, probably why your wife’s been mad all day, not saying anything.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I want to extend a special welcome to those of you who are making love right now with the TV on. We see you.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That’s right, today is Valentine’s Day, and if you forgot, don’t worry, there’s a good chance President Biden did, too.” — JIMMY FALLON“Even Donald Trump posted a romantic message today. He wrote, ‘Biden is not too old, he’s too incompetent.’ As close as he gets to telling somebody he loves them.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Donald Trump celebrated the day by writing a valentine to his wife Melania, and then having his campaign send a mass email blast with the subject line ‘I love you, Melania!’ [imitating Melania] ‘Unsubscribe.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Even just graphically, it looks like a ransom letter, which I guess is fitting, given Melania’s current situation.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And then there’s a little box where you can leave a message for Melania that says, ‘We want 100,000 responses now!’ And of course, a button to make a donation to St. Valen-crime’s legal defense fund. What a lovely and a romantic gesture.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingOn Wednesday, Stephen Colbert was joined by his wife, Evie McGee Colbert, to present their new family cookbook, “Does This Taste Funny?”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightThe campy pop singer-songwriter Chappell Roan will perform on Thursday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutBeyoncé released two new songs from her upcoming country-rock album after the Super Bowl, diving deeper into a genre that has Black musicians at its roots. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording AcademyBeyoncé’s new musical turn highlights the exclusion of Black artists in country music. More