PARIS (AP) — Paris: the Olympic gold medalist of naughtiness.
Revolution ran like a high-voltage wire through the wacky, wonderful and rule-breaking Olympic opening ceremony that the French capital used to astound, bemuse and, at times, poke a finger in the eye of global audiences on Friday night.
That Paris put on the most flamboyant and diversity-celebrating of opening ceremonies wasn't a surprise. Anything less would have seemed a betrayal of the pride the French capital takes in being a home to humanity in all its richness.
But still. Wow. Paris didn't just push the envelope. It did away with it entirely as it hammered home a message that freedom must know no bounds.
A practically naked singer painted blue made thinly veiled references to his body parts. Blonde-bearded drag queen Piche crawled on all fours to the thumping beat of “Freed From Desire” by singer-songwriter Gala, who has long been a potent voice against homophobia. There were the beginnings of a menage à trois — the door was slammed on the camera before things got really steamy — and the tail end of an intimate embrace between two men who danced away, hugging and holding hands.
“In France, we have the right to love each other, as we want and with who we want. In France, we have the right to believe or to not believe. In France, we have a lot of rights. Voila,” said the audacious show's artistic director, Thomas Jolly.
Jolly, who is gay, says being bullied as a child for supposedly being effeminate drove home early on how unjust discrimination is.
The amorous vibe and impudence were too much for some.
“Know that it is not France that is speaking but a left-wing minority ready for any provocation,” posted far-right French politician Marion Maréchal, adding a hashtagged “notinmyname.”
Here's a closer look at how Paris both awed and shocked.
DJ and producer Barbara Butch, an LGBTQ+ icon who calls herself a “love activist,” wore a silver headdress that looked like a halo as she got a party going on a footbridge across the Seine, above parading athletes — including those from countries that criminalize LGBTQ+ people. Drag artists, dancers and others flanked Butch on both sides.
The tableau brought to mind Leonardo da Vinci's “Last Supper,” which depicts the moment when Jesus Christ declared that an apostle would betray him.
Jolly says that wasn't his intention. He saw the moment as a celebration of diversity, and the table on which Butch spun her tunes as a tribute to feasting and French gastronomy.
“My wish isn't to be subversive, nor to mock or to shock,” Jolly said. “Most of all, I wanted to send a message of love, a message of inclusion and not at all to divide.”
Still, critics couldn't unsee what they saw.
“One of the main performances of the Olympics was an LGBT mockery of a sacred Christian story - the Last Supper - the last supper of Christ. The apostles were portrayed by transvestites,” the spokesperson for Russia's Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, posted on Telegram.
“Apparently, in Paris they decided that since the Olympic rings are multi-colored, they can turn everything into one big gay parade,” she added.
The French Catholic Church's conference of bishops deplored what it described as “scenes of derision and mockery of Christianity” and said “our thoughts are with all the Christians from all continents who were hurt by the outrage and provocation of certain scenes.”
LGBTQ+ athletes, though, seemed to have a whale of a time. British diver Tom Daley posted a photo of himself recreating the standout Kate Winslet-Leonardo DiCaprio scene from “Titanic,” only with the roles reversed: He was at the boat's prow with arms outstretched, as rower Helen Glover held him from behind.
When a giant silver dome lifted to reveal singer Philippe Katerine reclining on a crown of fruit and flowers, practically naked and painted blue, audiences who didn't think he was Papa Smurf may have guessed that he represented Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and ecstasy.
But unless they speak French, they may not have caught the cheekiness of his lyrics.
“Where to hide a revolver when you’re completely naked?” he sang, pointing down to his groin. “I know where you’re thinking. But that’s not a good idea.”
“No more rich and poor when you go back to being naked. Yes,” Katerine continued.
Decades after Brigitte Bardot sang “Naked in the Sun,” this was Paris' reminder that everyone starts life in their birthday suit, so where's the shame?
Paris museums are full of paintings that celebrate the human form. Gustave Courbet's “Origin of the World” hangs in the Musée d'Orsay. The 16th-century “Gabrielle d’Estrées and one of her sisters,” showing one bare-breasted woman pinching the nipple of another, hangs in the Louvre.
Clad in a golden costume, French-Malian pop star Aya Nakamura strode confidently out of the hallowed doors of the Institut de France, a prestigious stronghold of French language, culture and commitment to freedom of thought. Even without a note being sung, the message of diversity, inclusion and Black pride was loud.
The most listened-to French-speaking artist in the world was a target of fierce attacks from extreme-right activists when her name emerged earlier this year as a possible performer at the show. Paris prosecutors opened an investigation of alleged racism targeting the singer.
Nakamura performed with musicians of the French military's Republican Guard, who danced around her.
Au revoir, closed minds and stuffy traditions.
When London hosted the Summer Games in 2012, it paid homage to the British monarchy by giving Queen Elizabeth II a starring role in the opening ceremony. Actor Daniel Craig, in character as James Bond, was shown visiting the head of state at Buckingham Palace before the pair appeared to parachute out of a helicopter over the stadium.
The French love to joyfully tease their neighbors across the English Channel and, perhaps not incidentally, took a totally different, utterly irreverent tack.
A freshly guillotined Marie Antoinette, France’s last queen before the French Revolution of 1789, was shown clutching her severed head, singing: “The aristocrats, we’ll hang them.” Then, heavy metal band Gojira tore the Paris evening with screeching electric guitar.
Freedom: Does anyone do it better than the French?
AP journalists Sylvie Corbet in Paris and Jim Heintz in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed.
For more coverage of the Paris Olympics, visit https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games.
Delegations arrive at the Trocadero as spectators watch French singer Philippe Katerine performing on a giant screen, in Paris, during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, July 26, 2024 in Paris. (Ludovic Marin/Pool Photo via AP)
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump wasn’t harmed in Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt as he golfed near his Florida club. But the second attack on his life in barely two months is likely to further unsettle an election cycle already marked by upheaval.
The man suspected in the incident, Ryan Wesley Routh, camped outside the golf course in West Palm Beach with food and a rifle for nearly 12 hours, according to court documents filed Monday. He is accused of lying in wait for the former president before a Secret Service agent opened fire, thwarting the potential attack.
Here are five things to know about what happened and where the investigation stands:
Routh, 58, faces charges of possessing a firearm despite a prior felony conviction and of possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. Additional charges are possible.
The suspect lived in North Carolina for most of his life before moving in 2018 to Kaaawa, Hawaii. He and his son operated a company building sheds, according to an archived version of the webpage for the business.
Routh appeared briefly in federal court in West Palm Beach on Monday. He had frequently posted on social media about the war in Ukraine and had a website where he sought to raise money and recruit volunteers to go to Kyiv to join the fight against the Russian invasion.
“Fight and die to stop aggression,” he posted on X in February 2023 about Ukraine. “Everyone should be outraged and helping.” In a video circulating online Routh said, “This is about good versus evil.”
He also wrote separately on X, “I am going to fight and die for Ukraine,” and he even traveled there.
Video shot by The Associated Press showed Routh at a small demonstration in Kyiv’s Independence Square in April 2022, two months after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of the country. A placard he was holding said: “We cannot tolerate corruption and evil for another 50+ years. End Russia for our kids.” Routh wore a blue vest with the U.S. flag on the back.
That same day, Routh also visited a makeshift memorial to “Foreigners killed by Putin.”
But Routh never served in the Ukrainian army or worked with its military, said Oleksandr Shahuri of the Foreigners Coordination Department of the Ukrainian Ground Forces Command.
Routh's politics, meanwhile, don't appear consistently aligned to one party or the other.
In June 2020, he offered a post on X directed at then-President Trump to say he would win reelection if he issued an executive order for the Justice Department to prosecute police misconduct. That year, he also posted in support of the Democratic presidential campaign of then-U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who has since left the party and endorsed Trump.
However, in recent years, his posts suggest he soured on Trump, and he expressed support for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
In July, following the assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania, Routh urged Biden and Harris to visit those wounded in the shooting at the hospital and to attend the funeral of a former fire chief killed at the rally.
Voter records show he registered as an unaffiliated voter in North Carolina in 2012, most recently voting in person during the state’s Democratic Party primary in March 2024. Federal campaign finance records show Routh made 19 small political donations totaling $140 since 2019 using his Hawaii address through a political action committee that supports Democratic candidates.
Records show that while living in Greensboro, North Carolina, Routh had multiple run-ins with law enforcement. The top FBI official in the Miami, Jeffrey B. Veltri, said Routh has numerous felony charges for stolen goods between 1997 and 2010. He also was the subject of a closed investigation in 2019 when someone reported he was in possession of a firearm despite his felony convictions, but Veltri said the tipster would not confirm making the report.
Routh was convicted in 2002 of possessing a weapon of mass destruction, according to online North Carolina Department of Adult Correction records.
Authorities spotted a firearm poking out of shrubbery on the West Palm Beach golf course around 400 to 500 yards from where Trump was playing. As the former president was moving through the fifth hole's fairway, an agent who was visually sweeping the area of the sixth hole's green saw the subject, armed with what he perceived to be a rifle, and immediately discharged his firearm, said acting Director Ronald Rowe Jr. of the U.S. Secret Service.
Rowe said Routh “did not have a line of sight to the former president” and did not fire at Secret Service agents before fleeing.
Routh sped away before being captured in a neighboring county. Body camera footage of Routh’s arrest showed him walking backward with his hands over his head on the side of a road before being handcuffed and led away.
The suspect is believed to have been positioned at the tree line of the golf course from about 1:59 a.m. to 1:31 p.m. Sunday. A digital camera, a loaded SKS-style rifle with a scope and a plastic bag containing food were recovered from the area.
Trump’s protective detail has been higher than some of his peers because of his high visibility and his campaign to seek the White House again. His security was bolstered days before the July 13 assassination attempt in Pennsylvania because of a threat on Trump’s life from Iran, U.S. officials said.
Trump initially posted, “I AM SAFE AND WELL!” and subsequently praised the Secret Service for protecting him.
But the former president pivoted Monday to the politics surrounding the incident, claiming — without evidence — that Biden and Harris comments that he is a threat to democracy had inspired the latest attempt on his life.
“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at," Trump told Fox News Digital. In a subsequent post on his social media site Monday, Trump wrote that the left “has taken politics in our Country to a whole new level of Hatred, Abuse, and Distrust.” He said “it will only get worse,” then veered into comments about immigration, even though there is no evidence immigrants were involved in the incident.
The former president made those comments despite his own long history of inflammatory campaign rhetoric and advocacy for jailing or prosecuting his political enemies.
Harris, Trump's Democratic opponent in the presidential election, posted on X that she was "glad he is safe. Violence has no place in America.”
Biden also avoided politics in his reaction. He said Monday that the Secret Service “needs more help” and urged Congress to provide additional resources to help the agency.
“America has suffered too many times the tragedy of an assassin’s bullet,” Biden said at the start of an address to the National HBCU Week Conference in Philadelphia. “It solves nothing. It just tears the country apart. We must do everything we can to prevent it and never give it any oxygen.”
Trump hasn't announced any changes to his schedule and spoke live on X on Monday night from his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Still, a presidential race already rocked by Biden giving up his reelection bid and the first attack on Trump now is being further shaped by a second one. The leaders of a congressional bipartisan task force investigating Trump's Pennsylvania shooting said they have requested a briefing by the Secret Service.
“We are thankful that the former President was not harmed, but remain deeply concerned about political violence and condemn it in all of its forms,” Reps. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and Jason Crow, D-Colo., said in a statement.
Weissert reported from Washington.
Ryan Wesley Routh holds up a banner during a rally in central Kyiv, Ukraine on Saturday April 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Alex Babenko)
Photos that show an AK-47 rifle, a backpack and a Go-Pro camera on a fence outside Trump International Golf Club taken after an apparent assassination attempt of Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, are displayed during a news conference at the Palm Beach County Main Library, Sunday. Sept. 15, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Stephany Matat)
This photo provided by the Martin County Sheriff's Office shows Sheriff's vehicles surrounding an SUV on the northbound I-95 in Martin County on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. (Martin County Sheriff's Office via AP)
