LOS ANGELES (AP) — Although he is most prominently known for his decades-long rap career and being everyone’s “uncle,” Snoop Dogg has proven his talent extends beyond what he does in the recording studio.
That’s been evident the past two weeks, as Snoop became a breakout star of the Paris Olympics, bearing the torch, hitting the gym with the U.S. Olympic weightlifting team and freestyling to horses trotting during the dressage competition.
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Although he is most prominently known for his decades-long rap career and being everyone’s “uncle,” Snoop Dogg has proven his talent extends beyond what he does in the recording studio.
FILE - Snoop Dogg throws out the ceremonial first pitch before a baseball game between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Cincinnati Reds Saturday, June 15, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps, File)
Snoop Dogg watches the dressage team Grand Prix final at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024, in Versailles, France. (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)
Snoop Dogg attends the women's pool C beach volleyball match between USA and France at Eiffel Tower Stadium at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Wednesday, July 31, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte)
American artist Snoop Dogg, center, sits in the audience prior to the breaking competition at La Concorde Urban Park at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin)
Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart during the dressage team Grand Prix final at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024, in Versailles, France. (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)
Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart watch the dressage team Grand Prix final, at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024, in Versailles, France. (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)
The sneakers of American artist Snoop Dogg as he performs on stage prior to the breaking competition at La Concorde Urban Park at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin)
FILE - U.S. artist Snoop Dogg gestures during the men's skateboarding park finals at the 2024 Summer Olympics, on Aug. 7, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)
He also performed, along with Dr. Dre, at the closing ceremony to hand off the games to its 2028 host city: Los Angeles.
It’s the latest in a series of “side quests” (extra adventures outside the world of music) by the hip-hop legend — from co-hosting a cooking show with Martha Stewart to unexpectedly stepping in during a Wrestlemania match — that have made him a social media sensation and keep fans amazed at his versatility.
Snoop Dogg’s time in Paris for the 2024 Olympics left the world with one question: is there anything he can’t do?
Before the Games kicked off, he joined athletes at the U.S. Olympic trials, where he ran the 200-meter dash in 34.44 seconds and got a lesson in pole vaulting.
He tested his swimming skills, joining Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time, for a special swimming lesson as part of NBC's coverage. He also practiced fencing, weightlifting and even has his own Olympic pin that features him blowing clouds of smoke that form the Olympic rings.
One of the artist’s most important jobs at the Games was bearing the Olympic torch. He carried the highly-recognized symbol through Saint-Denis, smiling and blowing kisses to fans chanting his name.
In June, Snoop went viral for his unique commentary at the Reds vs. Brewers game.
After stepping on the field to throw the game’s first pitch, the hip-hop star did not hesitate to pull out his rap skills, spitting rhymes on the spot during several plays. “Give him a single. He does like to mingle, and my favorite jingle is the S to the N double O, no no,” he said during the broadcast as Brewers catcher Gary Sànchez reached first base.
He also referenced his classic hit “Gin and Juice,” saying, “They laid back with they mind on they money right now,” referring to the team’s “Brew Crew.”
Snoop is not new to the sports commentator role. In 2023, he co-hosted a segment between matches at WrestleMania with wrestler Mike “The Miz” Mizanin.
Mizanin faced Shane McMahon in a match that resulted in McMahon tearing his quad before the event ended.
To no one’s surprise, the Doggfather stepped in.
Snoop finished the match, landing two punches and coming out on top after crushing The Miz with a People’s Elbow, The Rock’s iconic move.
Imagine pulling up to a drive-thru window and having Snoop Dogg hand over your order.
This happened to hundreds of lucky fans when he visited a “Raising Cane’s” restaurant in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in 2021.
The collaboration was to support the franchise’s Drive-Thru Comedy Series and his “Snoop Dogg presents Algorithm” album.
He gave away copies of the CD while posing for photos and cracking jokes with customers.
He also earned Employee of the Month in 2019 while working at a Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru in Los Angeles to promote their plant-based menu and Beyond Sausage Sandwich.
In 2016, the rapper co-hosted an Emmy-nominated cooking show with his best friend, Martha Stewart. In “Martha and Snoop’s Potluck Party Challenge,” the duo was joined by celebrity guests like Paris Hilton and Usher and competed in several culinary challenges.
The show shared recipes for specialty dishes and gave viewers a closer look into Stewart and Snoop’s special friendship.
The two reunited at the Paris Olympics for the dressage competition. Stewart rated Snoop’s outfits as they reminisced about how their bond has grown over the years.
Snoop’s fun won’t end with the Olympics. He will share his musical expertise as a coach on NBC’s “The Voice” alongside Gwen Stefani, Reba McEntire and Michael Bublé.
US artist Snoop Dogg gestures during the men's skateboarding park finals at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
FILE - Snoop Dogg throws out the ceremonial first pitch before a baseball game between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Cincinnati Reds Saturday, June 15, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps, File)
Snoop Dogg watches the dressage team Grand Prix final at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024, in Versailles, France. (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)
Snoop Dogg attends the women's pool C beach volleyball match between USA and France at Eiffel Tower Stadium at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Wednesday, July 31, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte)
American artist Snoop Dogg, center, sits in the audience prior to the breaking competition at La Concorde Urban Park at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin)
Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart during the dressage team Grand Prix final at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024, in Versailles, France. (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)
Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart watch the dressage team Grand Prix final, at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024, in Versailles, France. (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)
The sneakers of American artist Snoop Dogg as he performs on stage prior to the breaking competition at La Concorde Urban Park at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin)
FILE - U.S. artist Snoop Dogg gestures during the men's skateboarding park finals at the 2024 Summer Olympics, on Aug. 7, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are gearing up to take the stage for Tuesday night’s debate in Philadelphia, where they’ll fight to sway 2024 election voters on the biggest stage in U.S. politics.
The event, at 9 p.m. Eastern, will offer Americans their most detailed look at a campaign that’s dramatically changed since the last debate in June. In rapid fashion, President Joe Biden bowed out of the race after his disastrous performance, Trump survived an assassination attempt and bothsides chose their running mates.
Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.
Here’s the latest:
Donald Trump’s inner circle says Kamala Harris has plenty of weaknesses she’ll have to defend on the debate stage, from inflation under President Joe Biden to the more liberal positions she took in her own 2020 presidential campaign before tacking toward the center.
Some Republicans are worried the freewheeling former president may miss some opportunities to put Harris on the defensive.
“Some of the biggest concerns of the American people remain the border crisis, the economy and inflation,” said Marc Short, who led debate preparations for Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, when he took Harris on in the the 2020 campaign.
“My advice would be to force real conversations on the border, economics and international affairs. And put her on the defensive on all the things she’s flip-flopped on,” Short said. “But I’m not sitting here with confidence that he’s going to be able to prosecute the case effectively.”
Short recalled how detailed Pence was in preparing for Harris, with days of “full dress rehearsals” against stand-ins who knew questions ahead of time and had prepared answers based on Harris’ positions and public statements. “That’s just not Trump’s style,” said Short. “You know, I would not anticipate a deeply substantive debate. But you never know.”
That’s according to a person familiar with his plans who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.
The Republican former president, who’s from New York, is scheduled to visit the memorial site in lower Manhattan.
Biden and Harris are also set to visit as the president and vice president make stops at ground zero in New York for a ceremony at the National Sept. 11 Memorial plaza, the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon.
Trump is also set to visit the Pennsylvania site Wednesday but it wasn’t clear if he and Harris would come face-to-face on any of their stops as they mark the 23rd anniversary of the attacks the day after their debate.
— Michelle L. Price
Four years ago, Kamala Harris and Mike Pence met in the 2020 vice presidential debate in what was mostly a civil, substantive debate. But a tiny insect ended up stealing more of its fair share of the spotlight.
Marc Short, who led Pence’s debate prep, still shakes his head thinking about the fly that landed on Pence’s head during the debate, a stark image of the dark insect set against Pence’s white hair.
“On the actual substance you we were very pleased with Pence’s answers back and forth in that debate,” Short said. Unfortunately, he added, “a lot of the after coverage was focused on the fly.”
Indeed, it became an immediate social media sensation, made its way into the ubiquitous takeaway analysis pieces that every major news outlet produces and was part of NBC’s Saturday Night Live “Cold Open” skit days later.
The lesson, Short said, is that candidates, no matter how much they prepare, cannot always control the conversation coming out of a debate.
“She just needs to be herself, and she will be fine,” South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn told reporters at a White House celebration for the South Carolina Gamecocks, the 2024 NCAA women’s basketball champs.
Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee chairman, said he was confident Harris will show herself to be more presidential than former President Donald Trump.
“Listen, I think if the vice president is herself, she’s going to be fantastic,” said Harrison, another South Carolinian who attended the White House ceremony. “She’s going to be presidential, and we know Donald Trump is going to do what Donald Trump does.”
If he wins in November, Trump, who’s 78, will be the oldest person ever elected to the presidency. And a new Pew Research Center poll finds that about half of voters think his age will hurt his candidacy. Only 3% of voters think his age will help him, and the rest say it won’t make a difference.
The results are the opposite for Harris, who at 59 is nearly two decades younger than her opponent. About half say her age will help her, while only 3% say it will hurt her.
With Harris as the Democratic candidate, Trump may have lost an advantage over President Joe Biden – the perception that he’s more mentally prepared for the job. About 6 in 10 voters say the phrase “mentally sharp” describes Harris very or fairly well, while about half say that about Trump. Back in July, when Biden was still his opponent, about 6 in 10 voters said Trump was “mentally sharp,” while only about one-quarter said the same of Biden.
Harris’s candidacy is historic – if elected, she’d be the first woman president, as well as the first Asian American and first Black woman president. Voters are more likely to think those identities will help her than hurt her at the ballot box this fall, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center.
About 4 in 10 voters think Harris’s Asian and Black identity will help her in November, and a similar share think the same about her identity as a woman. They’re more likely to see her gender as a liability than her race: About 3 in 10 say the fact that Harris is a woman will hurt her in November, while about 3 in 10 say that about the fact that she is Asian and Black.
The voters who are most concerned that Harris’s race and gender will be a liability are her own supporters. About 4 in 10 Harris supporters, for instance, say the fact that Harris is a woman will hurt her with voters, compared to 16% of Trump supporters.
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will meet face-to-face for the first time in a highly-anticipated debate Tuesday night. The two presidential candidates describe the state of the country in starkly different terms. Trump often paints a dark picture centered around issues such as immigration and high inflation, while Harris focuses on optimism for the future, promising that “we’re not going back.”
The first debate of the 2024 election in June — at which President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance ultimately forced him from the race — featured multiple false and misleading claims from both candidates and it’s likely that Tuesday’s match-up will include much of the same.
▶ Read more about claims made by the candidates
And both of them plan to say why the Democrat would be better than Republican Donald Trump.
Anthony Scaramucci was briefly the Trump White House’s communications director, while Olivia Troye was a homeland security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence and was involved in Trump’s coronavirus task force. The Harris campaign said both will speak out against Trump before the debate starts.
In a form of political judo, the Harris campaign has been trying to use Trump’s former aides against him, trying to show that those who know him best see him as unfit to return to the White House.
This year’s presidential race is a genuine contest of ideas between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump — with clear differences on taxes, abortion, immigration, global alliances, climate change and democracy itself.
Since replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, Harris has pledged to chart a new way forward even as she’s embraced many of his ideas. She wants middle class tax cuts, tax hikes on the wealthy and corporations, a restoration of abortion rights and a government that aggressively addresses climate change, among other stances.
Seeking a return to the White House, Trump wants to accomplish much of what he couldn’t do during a term that was sidetracked by the global pandemic. The Republican wants the extension and expansion of his 2017 tax cuts, a massive increase in tariffs, more support for fossil fuels and a greater concentration of government power in the White House.
The two candidates have spelled out their ideas in speeches, advertisements and other venues. Many of their proposals lack specifics, making it difficult to judge exactly how they would translate their intentions into law or pay for them.
▶ Read more about where the candidates stand on issues
With early voting fast approaching, the rhetoric by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has turned more ominous with a pledge to prosecute anyone who “cheats” in the election in the same way he believes they did in 2020, when he falsely claimed he won and attacked those who stood by their accurate vote tallies.
He also told a gathering of police officers last Friday that they should “watch for the voter fraud,” an apparent attempt to enlist law enforcement that would be legally dubious.
Trump has contended, without providing evidence, that he lost the 2020 election only because of cheating by Democrats, election officials and other, unspecified forces.
On Saturday, Trump promised that this year those who cheat “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” should he win in November. He said he was referencing everyone from election officials to attorneys, political staffers and donors.
▶ Read more about Trump’s rhetoric on the election
The debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump won’t have an audience, live microphones when candidates aren’t speaking, or written notes, according to rules ABC News, the host network, shared with both campaigns last month.
The parameters in place for the Tuesday night debate are essentially the same as they were for the June debate between Trump and President Joe Biden, a disastrous performance for the incumbent Democrat that fueled his exit from the campaign.
It's the only debate that’s been firmly scheduled and could be the only time voters see Harris and Trump go head to head before the November general election.
▶ Read more about the rules for the Trump-Harris debate
In this combination photo, Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks during a debate, Oct. 7, 2020, in Salt Lake City, left, and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a debate, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo)
The motorcade of Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris passes a billboard in support of Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, ahead of the presidential debate with Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris arrives on Air Force Two at Atlantic Aviation Philadelphia, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, near Philadelphia International Airport, ahead of the presidential debate with Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Signage at the media filing center ahead of tomorrow's presidential debate between Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
