Category: Joe Rogan

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Joe Rogan Kamala Harris

Surprise, Joe Rogan ratf–ked Kamala Harris in the last weeks of the election

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I’m not interested in reading many of the forthcoming books about the 2024 election. I was there, I know what happened, I watched in real time, and I know exactly how thoroughly both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris got f–ked over. So many people f–ked around, and the only thing left to cover is the “finding out” half of the equation. Well, Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes have written one of the first books about the election, FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. As I said, I have no interest in reading it. But NBC published an excerpt for free, so here you go. Right around Election Day, there was this talking point repeated over and over by white men especially: why didn’t Kamala Harris go on Joe Rogan’s show? Was she scared? It really mattered to those dumbasses that Donald Trump and JD Vance went on Rogan’s show, and that became “the reason” why those voters “turned against” Harris. Well, this book reveals that Harris was fully prepared to go on Rogan’s show and then Rogan ratf–ked her.

On October 11, Harris deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty, the aide in charge of digital strategy, made the first Zoom call to start negotiating with Rogan’s reps. He did not know what to expect. These might be juiced-up, UFC-looking supplement people, he thought. He was surprised—perhaps a tad disappointed—to find out that Rogan’s associates were more like Hollywood agents. In that vein, they outlined the podcaster’s conditions for an interview: no staff in the studio, no topic restrictions, and Harris would have to sign a waiver. There was one more item in the small print: Harris would have to come to Austin, Texas. Rogan’s reps said that might be negotiable, but he had only once done an interview with an out-of-studio guest.

Along with fellow Harris campaign advisers Stephanie Cutter and Brian Fallon, Flaherty offered up that Harris would be happy to talk about social media censorship, weed, and other issues they thought would be of most interest to his listeners. From their perspective, it was a suggestion of possible topics, not an exhaustive or exclusive list. That’s not what Rogan wanted to talk about. “Joe just wants to talk about the economy, the border, and abortion,” one of his reps said, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.

After two Zoom sessions, Flaherty called the Rogan intermediaries with an offer. Could Rogan join Harris in Michigan? he asked, proposing a date later in the week. No-go, the Rogan team said after reaching the host on a weeklong hunting trip. Austin or nothing.

“That’s going to be tough,” Flaherty said. “We’re only a few weeks out from the election.” Harris had less than zero reason to be in Texas. It was not a swing state. Her campaign was flush with cash—so it made no sense to take her off the trail to raise money. She was in battleground-or-bust mode. Plus, a detour to Texas might smell like desperation to the press and a waste of money to donors.

Harris campaign chief Jennifer O’Malley Dillon broke the impasse. Harris would be in Atlanta on October 24 with Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen. O’Malley Dillon said the campaign could fly her to Houston for a rally—under the cover of visiting a state with one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws—to put her in proximity to Austin. She dispatched an advance team to the Texas state capital to do a walk-through of Rogan’s studio and get ready for a Harris arrival. She authorized her negotiating team to give Rogan what he demanded—an in-studio interview in Austin—on October 25. For many Democratic operatives outside the campaign, the October 22 announcement that Harris would hold a Houston rally felt like a palm-to-face moment. She was going to lose Texas, by a lot, and a visit would not force Trump to spend his limited campaign money there.

Only a few people knew the real reason: the whole Houston rally was built to put her in proximity to Rogan. The ongoing negotiations on that were touch-and-go. Flaherty had called his Rogan contacts on October 18, before the rally was set. “We could do Friday, the 25th,” Flaherty said. “Wish we had known about this sooner, because he has the 25th blocked out as a personal day,” one of Rogan’s reps said.

“What about Saturday morning?” Flaherty countered. “Only if it’s before 8:30 a.m.,” came the tough reply.

The tone is different, Flaherty thought. The vice president of the United States is offering to come to your f—ing show, and you keep putting up more hoops. Harris’s team still wanted to make it work, but a new wariness set in. On October 22, the same day the Harris camp announced the rally, the Associated Press reported that Trump would be Rogan’s guest on Friday — the “personal day” Rogan had originally reserved.

Mutual friends Elon Musk and Dana White had convinced Trump and Rogan to bury their dispute, according to a Trump aide. There would be no Harris interview.

[From NBC News]

Yeah, f–k Joe Rogan. Not only did he play these disrespectful games, his team spread it around that Harris “refused” to do the show. Magically, the story was “why won’t Harris reach out to young men” and “what is she afraid of” and “she can’t handle a Rogan interview.” Like, that was a HUGE issue with college-aged guys in this election cycle, it was its own little stand-alone culture war. I hope Joe Rogan ***** on a rusty ***********.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Spotify.

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donald trump Joe Rogan politics

Donald Trump received the coveted Joe Rogan & Proud Boy endorsements

donald-trump-received-the-coveted-joe-rogan-&-proud-boy-endorsements

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Rachel Maddow pointed out something last night which hadn’t occurred to me: the white nationalist terrorists supporting Donald Trump don’t have any new plans, they’re just running the same old playbook. They plan to disrupt voting anyway they can, they plan to declare victory even if it doesn’t go their way and they plan to attempt another insurrection. Speaking of, the Proud Boys – the extremist, white-nationalist, misogynist group – has promised to put “boots on the ground” today. As the Philly elected officials said yesterday: f–k around and find out. Y’all want to play militia? You’re going to prison. Anyway, surprising no one, Joe Rogan has officially endorsed Donald Trump. I’m not saying Rogan is a Proud Boy (he’s not), but he definitely understands his audience. Rogan was also too racist/scared to fly to Kamala Harris to interview her.

Joe Rogan, the enormously popular podcast host who brought Donald J. Trump onto his show for a three-hour episode last month, endorsed the former president in a post on social media on Monday.

Mr. Rogan, who also spoke at length with Senator JD Vance of Ohio, Mr. Trump’s running mate, and Elon Musk, a prominent Trump surrogate, on recent episodes of his podcast, said Mr. Musk made “what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way.”

“For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump,” Mr. Rogan, host of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” wrote on Monday evening, without offering details of what Mr. Musk said that convinced him.

Minutes later, Mr. Trump promoted Mr. Rogan’s endorsement from the campaign trail in Pittsburgh, falsely suggesting that Mr. Rogan had never before endorsed a political candidate. Mr. Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2020.

“He’s the biggest there is,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Rogan, adding, “Somebody said the biggest beyond anybody in a long time.” The Trump campaign soon sent out a fund-raising email playing up Mr. Rogan’s endorsement.

[From The NY Times]

The Times also pointed out something I forgot, which is that Rogan initially supported Robert Kennedy Jr, not Trump. Because Rogan’s big thing is being anti-vaccine and Kennedy was the anti-vaxxer candidate. It’s also funny because (arguably) Trump’s only real “achievement” in office was throwing everything into getting a Covid vaccine as fast as possible in 2020. Trump couldn’t even run on that – whenever he mentioned vaccines, his own people booed him. Anyway, here’s the American male brain trust talking about the mental health of whales.

just a couple of dudes chattin about whales being driven crazy by wind energy pic.twitter.com/fWKHj76gLF

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 26, 2024

Call me crazy , but at the Reading Trump rally, another journalist and I thought it sounded like Trump was saying goodbye. Like he knew he was going to lose pic.twitter.com/arUFuu5R4b

— Sandi Bachom ???? (@sandibachom) November 4, 2024

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

Photos courtesy of Getty, Avalon Red, Backgrid, Instagram.

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J.D. Vance Joe Rogan politics

JD Vance insists that he & Donald Trump will win ‘the normal gay guy vote’

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Other than Kamala Harris’s team, I’m not sure who watched or listened to JD Vance’s interview with Joe Rogan on Thursday. Kamala HQ did more to spread clips of the interview than any other social media account. In the final days, it definitely seems like Harris’s campaign is like “no, listen to what these men are actually saying.” For the Trump campaign, Vance’s interview was probably intended as a do-over, considering Trump’s Rogan interview was such a catastrophe. The only reason Trump’s Swiss-cheese-brain utterances on Rogan’s show weren’t headline news for days is because few people cared enough to listen to the whole damn thing. I assume the same is true of this Vance interview.

Vance suggested that wealthy parents might go so far as to coerce their children to undergo gender surgeries to get into better colleges and universities.

“If you are a middle-class or upper-middle class white parent, and the only thing that you care about is whether your child goes into Harvard or Yale, obviously that pathway has become a lot harder for a lot of upper-middle class kids,” he said, adding that “the one way that those people can participate in the DEI bureaucracy in this country is to be trans.”

Vance later argued that he wouldn’t be surprised if Trump won “the normal gay guy vote because again, they just wanted to be left the hell alone.”

Vance told Rogan that he was mini golfing with his family in Ohio when he learned that Trump had been shot in the ear during his Butler, Pa. rally in June.

“I actually thought they had killed him because when you first see the video he grabs his ear and then he goes down,” Vance recalled after seeing the video of Trump’s July 13 rally. “I’m like, ‘Oh my God, they just killed him.’ At first I was so pissed, but then I go into like fight or flight mode. I grab my kids up, throw them in the car, go home and load all my guns. And basically stand like a sentry in our front door, and that was my reaction to it.”

[From USA Today]

Ah, yes, every middle-class white parent is like “my child must become trans to get into Harvard.” That’s absolutely 100% a thing which is happening all over the country, thanks, JD. The sh-t about Vance racing home from mini-golf to load his guns when Trump was “shot” is a bonkers story too. As for the “normal gay guy vote” – lmao, Vance thinks he appeals to gay men, doesn’t he?

Some clips of Vance’s interview:

Rogan: Roe was the law of the land and all of a sudden that had been taken away and you have these men trying to dictate what women can and cannot do with their bodies

Vance: Yeah, yeah… but you have women who go too far and try to celebrate it

Rogan: Very few do that pic.twitter.com/Yb7xmPMq74

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 31, 2024

Rogan: The concern is men are making decisions on what women can do. Some states have extreme laws that put women in vulnerable positions and if they go to another state, they could then be prosecuted. It’s concerning

Vance: I haven’t heard of this as something that actually… pic.twitter.com/fzjMEMyML6

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 31, 2024

WATCH: A CNN panel laughs hysterically at JD Vance telling Joe Rogan he and Trump will win “normal gay guys”, and parents are making their kids trans to get them into good colleges pic.twitter.com/oqkTW82WaK

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) November 1, 2024

Top 8 Dumbest Things JD Vance has said

From creating a new meme by deriding ‘childless cat ladies’ to claiming careers are a ‘path to misery’ for women, JD Vance has said some stupid and offensive sh-t. Get the top 8 stories with the dumbest things he’s said when you sign up for our mailing list!

– Katie at Celebitchy



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Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.

Categories
Joe Rogan Kamala Harris politics

Joe Rogan refused to travel to interview VP Kamala Harris for his podcast

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For several weeks, there have been rumors that Joe Rogan wanted to interview Kamala Harris and that Harris wanted to do the interview too. Rogan is anti-vaxxer trash BUT he has one of the biggest podcasts in the country, and his personal politics don’t really fall within traditional Democratic/Republican lines. Donald Trump recently sat down for an hours-long Rogan interview which didn’t actually go over so well – Trump was unhinged, per usual, but the format really showcased Trump’s mushbrain and inability to stay on topic or… make any kind of sense. So, the Harris campaign has been in negotiations with Rogan and his people, and then Rogan tweeted this yesterday:

Also, for the record the Harris campaign has not passed on doing the podcast. They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her and they only wanted to do an hour. I strongly feel the best way to do it is in the studio in Austin. My sincere wish is to just have a nice conversation and get to know her as a human being. I really hope we can make it happen.

[From Rogan’s Twitter]

It’s absolutely bonkers that Rogan wanted the Democratic presidential nominee and the sitting Vice President of the United States to come to him in the final weeks of the campaign. Like, she absolutely needs to be in the battleground states, not detouring to sit in Joe Rogan’s Austin studio for hours. When Alex Cooper interviewed Kamala for Call Her Daddy, apparently it was done on the fly in a hotel room, and Cooper’s people did some set dressing to make it look like a variation on Cooper’s usual set. Charlamagne Tha God also made arrangements to record his interview with VP Harris outside of his usual studio. Even a major TV program like 60 Minutes doesn’t make the candidate COME TO THEM. Why is Rogan too much of a baby to fly to meet the VPOTUS???

So the sitting Vice President and likely the next President of the United States should fly over to see you? ????

Respect for the office of VP as well as the fact that she has a competitive race to run, suggests you get your ass on a plane and talk to her wherever see is. https://t.co/RiXkbEITla

— Alexander S. Vindman ???????? (@AVindman) October 29, 2024

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, screecaps courtesy of The Joe Rogan Experience.

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Joe Rogan

Joe Rogan said a lot of horrible crap about vaccines & trans people in his Netflix special

joe-rogan-said-a-lot-of-horrible-crap-about-vaccines-&-trans-people-in-his-netflix-special

I’m old enough to remember the sitcom News Radio. That was one of Joe Rogan’s first gigs! He starred on that sitcom with Dave Foley, Maura Tierney, Phil Hartmann and Andy Dick. After that, he hosted reality shows and announced UFC shows. I think the UFC gigs are what shifted everything for Rogan – he became a relatable, muscle-bound bro beloved by a certain toxic male demographic. I just find it useful to go back to the start of everything to see where everything went off the rails. How one f–knut actor became the North Star for incels and douchebags. Rogan currently has a very lucrative and popular Spotify show, but he’s also decided to dip his toe back in the entertainment world. Not acting, but stand-up. Netflix gave Rogan a “comedy special.” It went poorly. The special is called Burn the Boats and it’s his first “special” since 2018. He basically stood up there and ranted about vaccines and transgender folks.

Joe Rogan’s latest special, named “Burn the Boats,” debuted live on Netflix on Saturday night and amplified some of the controversial views he has discussed on his podcast before. Yet he was also self-deprecating about his perceived impact on culture. “That might be misinformation,” he said, as the tag of a joke early on. “Don’t say you heard it from me, because I am known for that sh-t.”

Rogan discussed his skepticism of COVID vaccines early in the special.

“COVID was just so strange,” he said. “And we lost a lot of people during COVID, and most of them are still alive. There’s a lot of people that I don’t f–k with anymore. Before COVID, I would have told you that vaccines are the most important invention in human history. After COVID, I’m like, ‘I don’t think we went to the moon. I think Michelle Obama’s got a d-ck. I think Pizzagate is real. I think there’s direct energy weapons in Antarctica.’ I’m just kidding — I don’t think Michelle Obama’s got a d-ck, but I believe all of that other sh-t.”

Later, he skewered the blowback about COVID discussions on his podcast, saying, “If you’re getting your vaccine information from me, is that really my fault?”

Elsewhere in the special, he followed in the footsteps of comedians like Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais, who have been criticized for jokes about trans people in their specials. Rogan started his similar batch of material with a run of jokes about “pregnant men” and then broadened it to his viewpoint that trans acceptance has been happening too quickly in American culture.

“I’m open-minded,” he said. “I just want to know what happened. It’s almost like a pervert wizard waved a magic spell on the whole world. ‘With a wave of this wand, you can walk into the women’s locker room with a hard c-ck, and anybody who complains is a Nazi. Abracadabra!’ And it just works! And everyone just accepts this new reality, and it’s f–king weird. I just think we need standards. You can’t just put lipstick on and now you can sh-t in the women’s room!”

Later on, he turned his attention to gay men, saying, “I don’t hate anybody. I love everyone. And I love gay men. But I think about gay men the same way I think about mountain lions: I’m happy they’re real, but I don’t want to be surrounded by them. They’re a bunch of dudes who f–k dudes. I don’t like my chances, OK? They’re not unicorns — they’re just men who f–k men. And every man who’s ever lived is a shifty c-m salesman, OK? 100%. Especially the ones who say they’re not.”

[From Variety]

I need a shower after reading all of that. What has always struck me about the “trans panic” and the selective obsession with bathrooms is that all of their supposed concerns are confessions. They’re always talking about what THEY would do if they went into women’s bathrooms (rape), what they would do if they were gay (rape) and what they want to do in their vision of a perfect society (rape without consequences). The anti-vaxx stuff is so… exhausting. We’re apparently still doing it in the year of our lord Beyonce 2024. I have one subtle agreement with Rogan, which is that “vaccine conspiracies” are sort of the gateway-conspiracy for all of the other bullsh-t. If you’re gullible and stupid enough to believe that vaccines are a government conspiracy to implant 5G in your brain, you’re more susceptible to believe that IKEA and Pizza Hut coordinate a trafficking ring.

Sidenote: all of the people screaming about trafficking conspiracies are always so f–king silent about Donald Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Photos courtesy of Netflix.

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Joe Rogan Kevin James Weight Loss

Kevin James told Joe Rogan he lost 60 pounds by fasting for 41 days

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Last year, Kevin James had an unexpected surge in cultural relevance when an old promo picture of him from his The King of Queens days suddenly blew up as a meme. Even though it was the first time that most people had thought of Kevin outside of reruns on CBS/Peacock, he’s actually been steadily working for two decades. Well, for some reason that I don’t really want to know about, Kevin appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast a couple of weeks ago. During the interview, he talked about his career, including some of his weight struggles. Kevin shared that while he was recently filming a horror movie, he lost about 50lbs. When the movie was over, he gained all of the weight back. After gaining it back, he found out he needed to do reshoots and had to lose the weight all over again. So, he ended up losing 60lbs by “fasting,” which entailed sustaining on some salt and water over the course of 41 days. Holy yo-yo dieting, Batman.

The King of Queens star Kevin James recently stopped by The Joe Rogan Experience for a wide-ranging interview covering everything from his career to his own body. At one point in the conversation, he explained that while filming a new movie, he underwent a dramatic weight loss, then weight gain, then an even bigger rapid loss. But the extreme method he described is far from a healthy approach to achieve his desired result. The actor explained to Rogan that he lost weight to play a priest in an unnamed upcoming horror movie, getting down to 230 pounds. After shooting had wrapped, he packed on 50 pounds and got back up to 280. When he learned he had to do reshoots later, he had to lose all the weight again.

“I can lose it really quick, I can fast and lose it,” he said of his yo-yo dieting tactics. “Seriously, I can lose it quick… I can do it in a month. Less than a month.”

He went on to explain how he fasted for multiple weeks—”41 and a half” days to be exact—to drop the weight for the reshoots quickly. But it wasn’t intermittent fasting, an approach where you restrict the number of hours per day you can eat food which has gained popularity in some health circles in recent years and has been proven in studies to be safe and effective. Instead, he claims he survived only on “water and a little salt” for approximately six weeks.

“When I lock on, I can do something,” he stated plainly. “I started fasting, I didn’t say ‘I’m going to do 40 days,’ I just said ‘I’m going to do whatever I can.’”

That doesn’t mean it was a smooth ride the whole time. “I felt pretty good for a while, and then I’d have these dips, like wow, I feel pretty miserable,” he confessed.

In the end, he dropped all the weight he initially lost for the movie and then some. “I lost, I think, like 60 pounds,” he said. “I didn’t even take vitamins… It cleansed everything out of me.” In the interview, however, James acknowledged that this wasn’t the best advice for others. “I’m not saying it’s the way to go for everybody, I don’t know,” he said.

James himself acknowledged that he didn’t go about losing weight in the healthiest way, and that he gained much of the weight back afterwards. Looking ahead, he wants to focus on his diet and establish a sustainable routine to stay in good shape for years to come.

[From Yahoo]

Oh man, that sounds miserable. While different bodies respond to different types of diets and exercise, that’s not what Kevin did here. It’s absolutely worth pointing out that what he did wasn’t fasting or intermittent fasting or however he wants to present it so that it’s less jarring. He was starving himself. I would have been so hangry after about 12 hours of that method. I wish that Kevin had worked with a dietician or nutritionist to lose the weight safely. If he really did sustain on nothing but salt and water for 41 days without taking any vitamins, then that is crazy. All of that drastic weight loss and gain cannot be healthy for him. He has so many resources available to him, too. I hope he’s serious about focusing on a better diet and exercise routine to live a healthier life in the future.

Screenshots from YouTube and Instagram

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Joe Rogan

Joe Rogan has a new multi-year deal with Spotify worth $250 million

joe-rogan-has-a-new-multi-year-deal-with-spotify-worth-$250-million

Last July, Spotify pulled the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s contract after only one successful season of Meghan’s Archetypes podcast. The British media – and some of the trade papers in LA – had a field day, because apparently Harry and Meghan were the stand-alone story and it wasn’t about the larger issues with the paid-subscriber model for Spotify-exclusive podcasts. Months later, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said as much, that the Sussexes’ were victims of a larger, industry-wide post-pandemic restructuring. Of course, that larger narrative – which also included the Obamas leaving Spotify – was ignored by haters. What was also ignored was Spotify’s blatant shift to right-wing podcasting and the fact that Joe Rogan is their golden goose. Rogan is a vaccine skeptic and he favors right-wing guests and talking points. Spotify just loaded up the money truck for his new contract.

Spotify has reached a new deal with star podcaster Joe Rogan that will allow his hit show to be distributed broadly. Rogan’s fresh deal—estimated to be worth as much as $250 million over its multiyear term, according to people familiar with the matter—involves an upfront minimum guarantee, plus a revenue sharing agreement based on ad sales.

Under the new licensing agreement, Spotify will sell ads for and distribute “The Joe Rogan Experience” across several podcast platforms, including in a video format on YouTube, the company said Friday. Under his previous deal, the show was exclusive to Spotify.

“The Joe Rogan Experience” has released more than 2,200 episodes.

“Cool conversations are a kind of mental nourishment,” Rogan said in a Spotify blog post announcing the new deal. Listening to those discussions “encourages people to have similar conversations with their friends, and it just generally makes life more interesting.”

The new deal is emblematic of shifting economics in podcasting, which has matured in both audience reach and advertising spending since Rogan’s last deal. Spotify is working to revise the terms of its deals with top talent so that shows are distributed on several platforms to maximize their audience and ad sales, rather than requiring exclusivity. It is also aiming to pay smaller minimum guarantees and emphasize revenue sharing, a model that helps share risk with talent.

Spotify struck its first deal with Rogan in 2020 during its initial blitz into the medium. It agreed to pay more than $100 million to bring “The Joe Rogan Experience” to Spotify exclusively in a bid to jump-start podcast listening on its platform. The show has remained far and away the most popular podcast on Spotify.

[From WSJ]

“The show has remained far and away the most popular podcast on Spotify” – I mean, Archetypes regularly dethroned it on a weekly basis, but I guess that doesn’t count when you’re busy polishing Rogan’s knob. It is legitimately wild to me that Joe Rogan, a washed-up actor turned reality-competition-show host turned UFC commentator, would end up as the voice of the increasingly chaotic “low-education white male” demographic. I don’t begrudge Rogan’s huge contract, but let’s not pretend that Spotify hasn’t made a very specific choice here.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, screencaps from ‘TJRE’.